![]() ![]() It’s easy to see in retrospect that exploring alternate realities began as a game in childhood and eventually became a consuming pastime, otherwise known as research. My next several books were historical novels (Earthly Astonishments, Mable Riley, and How It Happened in Peach Hill), set in worlds utterly different from my own. My earliest chapter books (the Invisible trilogy) were about an ordinary child who stumbles across enchantment. This later fed my approach to fiction: My heroines are small part “me” and large part invention of who I’d like to be, or to have been. ![]() ![]() I learned the advantage of being a stranger I created a new character for myself, far from my family and not dependent on anyone’s preconceptions. When I was 14, I spent a year in a Quaker boarding school in England, encountering a world utterly different from my own, no magic necessary. In my childhood activities, I played with dolls way past the normal age, made dioramas out of junk scraps, directed backyard plays with casts of neighborhood kids, and was always, always reading–only as an adult can I clearly see my pursuit of illusion. As I grew older, I felt the same thrill of seeing mysteries unveiled when I went to the theatre or read a book. I really thought that if I looked hard enough, I might find a magic nickel or a secret room behind the bookcase or a gnarled gnome whom only I could see. When I was a child, I liked to read books about ordinary children who stumbled across enchantment. ![]()
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