A little more about Peter Dickinson

Fri 18 Dec 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

From Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link of Small Beer Press: “We are immensely sorry to hear of Peter Dickinson’s death. Publishing his collection Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures was an honor and we considered ourselves very lucky to have been able to bring four more of his titles back into print in recent years. Working with Peter, who had published so many good books, won so many awards, worked with so many publishers, was nerve wracking at first but he was so calm, dry, and funny that he soon put us at ease. He will be much missed.”

From Peter Dickinson’s family: “We are devastated to have lost him, but very, very grateful to have known him. He gave us so much, in his love for us and his stories which inspired us. He has left us with many memories and we will treasure them all.”

From The Guardian: “He was admired for the originality and range of his stories and the variety of settings he explored in them.”

From The Telegraph: “Dickinson’s stories combined riveting plots with a deep historical awareness and insight. Philip Pullman observed that they carried “a charge of excitement, and a restless exploration of large ideas, which I find unfailingly thrilling. . . . Dickinson had an unusual gift for putting himself into the shoes of his youthful protagonists — imagining how it feels to be a missionary’s son, orphaned in the Boxer Rebellion and lost in the mountains of Tibet (Tulku, 1979); describing what it would be like to be a 13-year-old girl in an over-populated future dystopia, whose memory has been transplanted to the brain of a chimp (Eva, 1989); portraying the life of a child guerrilla in a fictional African country (AK, 1990) or a Byzantine slave boy, fleeing rampaging Huns in the company of a tame bear (The Dancing Bear, 1972). “It is not part of fiction’s job to tell the reader what to think,” he explained. “But it can be fiction’s job to show the reader how it feels, because that can only be done through the imagination.”

From The New York Times: “Mr. Dickinson’s appetite for arcane knowledge and his taste for unusual situations, often those from the past, made him a highly unpredictable genre writer. . . . Although well plotted, Mr. Dickinson’s mysteries appealed to readers looking for something besides ingenious clockwork mechanisms. As often as not, his puzzles offered an excuse to explore deeper human and scientific issues.”

From Publishers Weekly: “His eldest daughter Philippa, the former managing director of Random House Children’s Publishers U.K., shared this remembrance: “There are so many images I have of my father, but perhaps the one which shines brightest at this moment is of him at the wheel of the family car, driving us all somewhere — to visit relatives, perhaps. In the days before radios in cars, the amazing stories he would tell us all the way there, and all the way back, was our ‘in-car entertainment.’ It was an extremely effective way of keeping four lively children amused during a long journey,” she said. “Some of these stories eventually became the beginnings of books which were published. Others never made it. I vividly recall a hilarious space adventure with giant spiders that had us all, including Dad, in fits of laughter — luckily there were fewer cars on the roads in those days. It was brilliant — and he did eventually get it down on paper but somehow it never quite worked as well . . . If it wasn’t a story, it might be an epic poem that he had learned by heart as a child. He also read to us every night at bedtime and continued to do so until we were into our early teens.” ”

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Peter’s family has suggested that rather than sending flowers, donations in Peter’s memory may be sent to his nominated charities: Save The Children; The Alzheimer’s Society; Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Peter Dickinson, R.I.P.

Thu 17 Dec 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

From the website of Peter Dickinson, 16 December 1927 – 16 December 2015:

It is with very great sadness that the death is announced of author and poet Peter Dickinson O.B.E. Peter died in Winchester on 16 December 2015 (his 88th birthday) after a brief illness. His family was by his side.

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson was born in Africa, but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of Punch, and then earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for adults and children. He wrote almost sixty books and has been published in 53 languages around the world.

Amongst many other awards, Peter Dickinson has been nine times short-listed for the prestigious Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice: Tulku (1979) and City of Gold (1980).

Peter Dickinson was also the first author to win the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for two consecutive novels: Skin Deep (The Glass-sided Ant’s Nest) (1968), and A Pride of Heroes (The Old English Peepshow) (1969).

His books have been nominated for and won many awards, including: The Boston-Globe Horn Book Award; The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize; The Whitbread Children’s Fiction Prize; The Michael L. Printz Award.

A collection of Peter Dickinson’s poetry, The Weir, was published in 2009. His last book, In the Palace of the Khans, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

Peter Dickinson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. He has also served as chairman of the Society of Authors. He was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2009.

Peter is survived by his four children from his first marriage, six grand-children and his second wife, author Robin McKinley.

Get cold

Wed 16 Dec 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Mary Rickert| Posted by: Gavin

David Abrams at the Quivering Pen included You Have Never Been Here on his list of Best Book Cover Designs of 2015:

Take a minute to admire that cover design. Notice how, through the magic of perspective, this woman seems to fly right at you with a pair of hands serving as wings. (The photo by Emma Powell is called ‘Angel.’) It’s the kind of off-putting, and yet beautiful, reaction one can get from reading Rickert’s fiction, short stories designed to scrape the skin from within.

It is weirdly warm in Western Massachusetts, many degrees above the norm, no snow on the ground — no real snow yet at all in fact, just as few of the lightest flurries one day and then nothing since — and people have been walking around without jackets. It is very strange, I hope it’s not the new norm. It seems odd to wish for cold weather but here in the northern hemisphere in mid December it’s what we’ve known for many years and unseasonal changes are getting more common.

So here’s a story from You Have Never Been Here about cold to remind me (weather-wise, at least!) what is to come.

“Cold Fires” by Mary Rickert:

It was so cold that daggered ice hung from the eaves with dangerous points that broke off and speared the snow in the afternoon sun, only to be formed again the next morning. Snowmobile shops and ski rental stores, filled with brightly polished snowmobiles and helmets and skis and poles and wool knitted caps and mittens with stars stitched on them and down jackets and bright-colored boots, stood frozen at the point of expectation when that first great snow fell on Christmas night and everyone thought that all that was needed for a good winter season was a good winter snow, until the cold reality set in and the employees munched popcorn or played cards in the back room because it was so cold that no one even wanted to go shopping, much less ride a snowmobile. Cars didn’t start but heaved and ticked and remained solidly immobile, stalagmites of ice holding them firm. Motorists called Triple A and Triple A’s phone lines became so congested that calls were routed to a trucking company in Pennsylvania, where a woman with a very stressed voice answered the calls with the curt suggestion that the caller hang up and dial again.

It was so cold dogs barked to go outside, and immediately barked to come back in, and then barked to go back out again; frustrated dog owners leashed their pets and stood shivering in the snow as shivering dogs lifted icy paws, walking in a kind of Irish dance, spinning in that dog circle thing, trying to find the perfect spot to relieve themselves while dancing high paws to keep from freezing to the ground.

It was so cold birds fell from the sky like tossed rocks, frozen except for their tiny eyes, which focused on the sun as if trying to understand its betrayal. read on