CHILDHOOD OF THE MAGICIAN Nancy Willard short stories

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

"I always thought of my mind as a huge office," the child Erica says in the first group of stories, "rather like my father's, only round: a room inside a giant tree trunk; papers everywhere that came alive when I called them, on shelves, in drawers, in baskets and bins, some neatly stacked, some stuck together with old apple cores and lollipops...." Rummaging inside this room, Nancy Willard evokes the strange half-world in which imaginative children live; a world governed by rules and gestures, encircled by dire warnings, trembling on the edge of magic, yet somehow bound up with practical matters that regulate the adult world to which she will one day belong entirely.

In the second half of the book, Erica has grown up, and with deft touches she evokes her relationship with her husband Theo, their marriage, her pregnancy, and the birth of their first child; she looks lovingly at the sadness of old age and dependency when she visits her parents, in "The Life of a Famous Man," or explores the blindness of Theo's mother, in "Going Blind."

There is humor in the stories, gentleness, and perception. An exceptionally talented writer, Nancy Willard has been able to recapture the dimensions of childhood, creating her own adult magic with words.

NANCY WILLARD lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her husband and small son, and teaches English at Vassar College. "Theo's Girl," one of the stories in this collection, was chosen as an 0. Henry Awards Prize story in 1970. Her poetry has been published in various journals, and a children's book is scheduled to appear next year.

Early book by an award-winning children's author who has also writing several excellent science fiction/fantasy books that include Things Invisible to See, Firebrat and The Trouble with Unicorns. Her childrens books include The Merry History of a Christmas Pie, Sailing to Cythera, and Other Anatole Stories, The Marzipan Moon and Beauty and the Beast.

According to the Woodstock Poetry Festival:

If William Blake and Emily Dickinson had married in Eternity and had a daughter, her name would have been Nancy Willard. Willard, who has written poetry, novels, essays, and many acclaimed children's books (including A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, which was the first poetry book to win a Newbery Medal), brings an abiding sense of wonder and an elfin lightness to whatever she touches. As one critic noted of her collection of essays on writing, Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories, "these are deeply serious essays, but this magical writer is so nimble and generous that her lessons feel like inspired play." Among her collections of poetry are Water Walker, Household Tales of Moon and Water and Swimming Lessons: New and Selected Poems. Willard and her husband, the photographer Eric Lindbloom, live in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she teaches at Vassar College.

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