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Skellig
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From: Maia <maia>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 00:02:44 -0400
Joan, Sharon, et al - I can understand being "grossed out" by what Skellig ate; I can understand the story seeming unresolved, elusive, peculiar. But I think that has appeal in part because of these things.
Like , is intense. It is intimate, it is creepy crawly -- it is, in its own weird way, kind of like an honest story about sex. It talks about a lot of the things that grown ups don't discuss much with kids, things like death and hunger, like frailty and apathy and madness. Things that kids experience or see, or wonder about.
It's also about hope, perserverance, and such a blinding love of life that it knows no bounds. talks about the blazing flame that can burn in even the smallest little child.
Michael and Mina are on the outside of all of this, looking in, or looking out. They are for the most part normal, happy kids. Smart, sensitive; people you want to be, people you want to know. Through Persephone Joy and Skellig they come in contact with different currents, ones that many adolescents recognize: the roiling, amazing, curious powers of the world.
Michael and Mina haven't grown up yet -- they haven't hit the depths of intimacy to which adolescence often offers the first introduction; they haven't struggled with the pains of what it means to be dead or alive, or eternal. Mina is closer than Michael -- her philosophizing will catapult her to magic faster than he, I think -- but she is still a child. Persephone is too young to be a child, she's still raw, blazing life; Skellig is somewhere on another side of childhood, not human adulthood, but something else. Skellig stands in the doorframe of possibilities, soon to fly through.
For a kid looking out and in, like Mina and Michael, I think this book could have appeal. For a teen who is already inside the roiling waters, I think it offers hope: look again at the message behind the joint recoveries.
And, intentionally or not, Skellig is an excellent metaphor for adolescence: there, at the gates of maturity, your body is no longer what you thought you knew, frightening and amazing potentials seem to roll beneath your skin; you stand at the window in the night, uncertain of what things will look like in the morning, but just at that moment, you are transformed by the possibility of flight.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Thu 13 Jul 2000 11:02:44 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 00:02:44 -0400
Joan, Sharon, et al - I can understand being "grossed out" by what Skellig ate; I can understand the story seeming unresolved, elusive, peculiar. But I think that has appeal in part because of these things.
Like , is intense. It is intimate, it is creepy crawly -- it is, in its own weird way, kind of like an honest story about sex. It talks about a lot of the things that grown ups don't discuss much with kids, things like death and hunger, like frailty and apathy and madness. Things that kids experience or see, or wonder about.
It's also about hope, perserverance, and such a blinding love of life that it knows no bounds. talks about the blazing flame that can burn in even the smallest little child.
Michael and Mina are on the outside of all of this, looking in, or looking out. They are for the most part normal, happy kids. Smart, sensitive; people you want to be, people you want to know. Through Persephone Joy and Skellig they come in contact with different currents, ones that many adolescents recognize: the roiling, amazing, curious powers of the world.
Michael and Mina haven't grown up yet -- they haven't hit the depths of intimacy to which adolescence often offers the first introduction; they haven't struggled with the pains of what it means to be dead or alive, or eternal. Mina is closer than Michael -- her philosophizing will catapult her to magic faster than he, I think -- but she is still a child. Persephone is too young to be a child, she's still raw, blazing life; Skellig is somewhere on another side of childhood, not human adulthood, but something else. Skellig stands in the doorframe of possibilities, soon to fly through.
For a kid looking out and in, like Mina and Michael, I think this book could have appeal. For a teen who is already inside the roiling waters, I think it offers hope: look again at the message behind the joint recoveries.
And, intentionally or not, Skellig is an excellent metaphor for adolescence: there, at the gates of maturity, your body is no longer what you thought you knew, frightening and amazing potentials seem to roll beneath your skin; you stand at the window in the night, uncertain of what things will look like in the morning, but just at that moment, you are transformed by the possibility of flight.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Thu 13 Jul 2000 11:02:44 PM CDT
