SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Philip C. Stead's new novel has such a long title. I have to take a breath to utter it - "A Potion, A Powder, A Little Bit Of Magic: Or, Like Lightning In An Umbrella Storm, A Story Out Of Order." But then, as he says, he's been working on it for seven, 24 or 36 years. In the novel, Bernadette, a goatkeeper, must find Lancelot, a goat who has escaped, because the king's castle rests on 24 goats, and if she can't find the missing goat, the king might indulge his taste for turtle stew, and Perseverance the turtle is Bernadette's dearest friend in the kingdom. So she sets out on a journey on the River of Uncertainty and encounters a wizard whose memory is beginning to fade.
PHILIP C STEAD: (Reading) Bernadette gathered her courage. I'm wondering, she asked, are you an ogre? If so, I believe we are here to slay you. Oh, thank goodness, no, said the old man. He gave a wide smile. I've been many unpleasant things in my life, but never once have I been an ogre, or at least not that I can remember. And I can remember so little these days, except for my name. It is, um, wait just a minute now. Where did I leave it? Oh, yes, there it is - Adelbert. But my friends call me Adelbert the Magnificent, or just Adelbert for short.
(Reading) I was once an extraordinary magician, and believe me, I never once used my magic for harm, at least not that I can remember. And I can remember so little these days, except for my name, which, of course, I do not need to. Bernadette kindly interrupted. My name is Bernadette, she said, but my friends call me Bernadette the Brave.
SIMON: And Philip C. Stead, the Caldecott Medal-winning author, joins us from the studios of Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, North Carolina. Thanks so much for being with us.
STEAD: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
SIMON: I gather 36 years ago you read "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster, illustrated by the great Jules Feiffer, and that book set off something in you?
STEAD: It did. I mean, I would say it was more than just that book, but that is one that kind of sits apart. Third grade is when books really came alive for me. That's when I became an independent reader. And books, for me, were my first windows into the truth of the world, and not just the world as it was being presented to me by people that had, you know, my best interests at heart but also wanted to keep me safe from things that might frighten me.
SIMON: We mentioned that Bernadette the Brave is a goat keeper. Can you name her goats in order of their irritability?
STEAD: You're really putting me on the spot here.
SIMON: (Laughter).
STEAD: There are 24 goats in this book. Some of them are named after family members. Some of them are named after children of my friends. But I believe we're talking about Lancelot, Francis, Martha, Barbara (ph), Wendell (ph), Mary, Alice, Margie (ph), Nancy, Janey (ph), Agnes (ph), Olive, Ogden, Louis, Felix, Frederick, Hazel, Mabel, Frankie (ph), Hurdy-gurdy (ph), Birdie (ph), Abbie (ph) and Steve. I think that's 24.
(APPLAUSE)
SIMON: I'm sorry if my question even seemed to raise the spectre of doubting.
STEAD: (Laughter).
SIMON: Bernadette begins her quest in search of Lancelot with a ride on a boat that doesn't grant wishes, and it used to be a tree that did grant wishes. Do I get that right? It wouldn't seem to be very promising.
STEAD: Well, there's a little bit of false advertising in this book. Bernadette has heard that there is a tree who grants wishes, and so when she's faced with this sort of impossible scenario where she has to save the life of her greatest friend, a turtle named Perseverance, she figures her only option is to find this tree. But when she finds it, it's not really what she expects it to be. It's a tree that's very much sort of given up on humanity and given up on the greedy sort of requests that it's so...
SIMON: Yeah.
STEAD: ...Used to hearing, and it's become cynical. And something about Bernadette changes something in the tree. And the tree is not quite ready to become its best self yet. And rather than giving up on her and staying in the same spot that it's been stuck in for the last 900 years on the side of the River of Uncertainty, it changes itself into a boat and it becomes her first travel companion.
SIMON: Wealth in this kingdom is measured in gold or potatoes. And I ran that through my mind a bit. No amount of gold can buy potatoes if the world doesn't have any, and a hungry person can't eat just gold.
STEAD: When I was coming up with the sort of unusual rules of how this kingdom functions, it was important to me that nothing really make that much sense, that the rules feel arbitrary, that it feels like it's always a lose-lose situation. The only one who can really win in this world is the king, who is the embodiment, essentially, of every negative human trait you could ask for, from sloth to greed, laziness, corruption. All the things that, you know, if we're honest and we're looking at many of the people that come to power now, we see those same traits. And we're often, when we're not the ones in power, forced to live under these unusual conditions where all you've got as currency are gold or potatoes.
SIMON: As Bernadette nears the effective end of her mission, she wonders what she's learned. And it occurred to me that so many novels that engage young readers seem to revolve around a journey or a quest. Why do you think that is?
STEAD: I suppose you can look at almost any book, any narrative at all, as a journey. Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but as a writer, plot is actually not all that interesting to me. What's interesting to me is character and language - those two things and how those two things work together. And so it was almost an irritation to me that I had to have my characters do something. And maybe that's part of the reason why this book is so strange, because I was trying to keep myself interested as I was writing. One of the sort of tenets that I had in the studio is that if I didn't expect a thing to happen next, then it was very likely that my reader wouldn't expect it either. And I tried to write every single day in a way that I was personally surprised, and that kept my interest on the project for so long.
I didn't know where this book was going as I was writing, but there was one thing I did know, and that was what I wanted Bernadette to realize about herself at the end of this story. And it - I'm hesitant to even say it 'cause it'll give away part of the story, but there are 24 morals in...
SIMON: Yeah.
STEAD: ...This story, which is one of the unusual elements.
SIMON: Like never stand up in a rowboat.
STEAD: Never stand up in a rowboat, which is very important to know. Yeah, some of them are played for comedy, some of them are played for seriousness or poignancy. And it's the very last one that you get, at the very end of the story - or the beginning of the story, depending on your point of view - and it's something that Bernadette is told about herself that she can take as a lesson in her life. And it was the one thing that I really wanted readers to take away from this story.
SIMON: Another one that you have that sticks right with me is reading and writing should feel a lot like play.
STEAD: Yeah. No, for me, that was the thing I was telling myself every single day in the studio, because the books that were so meaningful to me when I was 10 years old felt like a game that I was playing with the authors. I didn't feel like an audience. I felt like a participant. "The Phantom Tollbooth" did that for me. The books of Roald Dahl did that for me. "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin was one of my favorites - did the same sort of thing for me. And I hope that my book does that for children, too, and for grown-ups.
SIMON: Yeah. Philip C. Stead. His new novel for young readers is "A Potion, A Powder, A Little Bit Of Magic: Or, Like Lightning In An Umbrella Storm." Thank you so much for being with us.
STEAD: Thank you. This was great. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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