Tags
copy writing, Death of Bees, editing, House of Spirits, Isabel Allende, Magic Realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude, young adult fiction
“Books for kids need to be very entertaining. No preaching, no hidden messages, no condescending tone, no didactic stuff. Kids are smart: don’t underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don’t even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error. Kids like fantasy, imagination, humor, adventure, villains and suspense.”
– Comment taken from the New York Times Review of Books April 7th, 2013
Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer who has incorporated elements of Magic Realism into her stories, having been influenced to become a writer by Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Her most well-known work is The House of Spirits filmed in 1993 with a stellar cast including Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave. The most recent book read that Allende recommends is The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell. Mark Twain is the writer she would most like to meet; she imagines a sexy, energetic, and principled man- one who is a larger than life storyteller and liar. While noting that Magic Realism is no longer a trend since the 1980s, she sees elements of it in works by Salmon Rushdie and Toni Morrison. Magic Realism is for her the acknowledgment that the world is indeed a very mysterious place.
– Eleni Anastasiou