Today I came across a book entitled The Light of the World. It's a picture book about the life of Jesus, written by Katherine Paterson, and illustrated by Francois Roca. Paterson is the award-winning author of A Bridge to Teribithia, Jacob Have I Loved, and many other books. One recent book is about the famous Bread and Roses strike in 1912, which I only learned about last month, from a different source.
Paterson's a Presbyterian. The jacket blurb for The Light of the World quotes her: "The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress." I haven't read any of her books, but I did see the recent adaptation of Teribithia and was moved by it. I wasn't aware of her religious background: this quote puts a new slant on the film for me. I do appreciate stories that address grace and hope, not lightly or cheaply, but in the context of profound human pain.
Looks like she's like Madeline L'Engle in that she's a thoughtful, complex Christian writer whose YA books have been banned and railed against by certain conservative Christian moralists. Good for her.
(I don't know if Teribithia counts as fantasy or not, but it's close enough for me to post about it on this blog.)
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Paterson wrote a number of books which scarred me for life. "Bridge to Terabithia" had the girl's death. The book about the samarai's daughter had death, disfigurement, and abandonment. "Jacob Have I Loved" was about one siblings not measuring up to her sister... It seemed at the time (and I hope it's not true now) that in order to win a Newbery Award, you needed a dark depressing end.
But she had a very good collection of short stories that included one about a woman looking at a crucifix after the death of a loved one (a daughter?) and getting angry, then having a revelation. It was beautiful.
I picked up A bridge to Terabithia in a bookshop and liked it, once I'd sorted out the confusion of which character was which (a boy with a girl's name and a girl with a boy's name).
I liked it so much that I looked for her other books, but they were all a little disappointing after that one.
The themes/events of death, disfigurement, and abandonment that have thus far been duly noted within Paterson's body of work are not really the main bone of contention that I have with it. Conflict is, after all, part of the world in which we currently reside, groaning right alonside it for the redemption yet to occur.
Rather, it is the insipid quasi-intellectual, barely theological(speaking Biblically) notions such as positing that God would never create a Hell to send His creatures to, as He is too busy creating all of this (the created, visible world), that earn my discerning displeasure. Such drivel should not go unchallenged, even in some roundabout, metaphoric, or obtuse fashion, when it is included.
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