I’d been trying to write the story of an angel since 2003, when my two-year-old granddaughter told me this ‘story’: “Once upon a time in Spain there was an angel, and the angel was me. The end.” I tried all kinds of narrators and voices; none were right.
And then my husband accepted a one-year job in Switzerland. We immersed ourselves in re-learning Italian, and we arrived in a Swiss village in September of 2007. We found ourselves talking strangely and comically, mixing English and Italian, our tenses and grammar clashing and clanging.
In the village was a tall, old stone tower. As soon as I saw it, I knew that was where the angel lived, and finally I could hear her voice, a garbled mix of Italian and English. “Peoples!” she was saying, mimicking our own daily frustrations. “Are you knowing what I am meaning?”
As I wrote, I increasingly realized the similarities between the angel and a writer: they both ‘flish’ around in people’s minds, subtly shaping thoughts and feelings. Both can safeguard people/characters. This angel, like this writer, faces the question: What should I be doing? Am I doing enough?
What surprised me was the angel’s humanity—her compassion, her worries and fears, even a little vanity. The colorful young girl, Zola, who shakes up the angel is based on my granddaughter and on other imaginative youngsters I know. As often happens in my stories, it takes a child to reawaken the older people.
I did not expect the angel to be so funny. I am embarrassed to admit how much the angel makes me laugh. I didn't feel as if I were intentionally making her funny. Some of my favorite passages are: the pigeon scene; the lizard tail scene; the do-angels-have-wings scene.
A funny thing is happening now, as people are reading the advance review copies of The Unfinished Angel. I’m getting emails in the voice of the angel:
“I am loving this angel and feeling very glappy.” “Now when people are driving me crazy, I say, ‘Peoples! Peoples!’”
'Excellent. [Out of Shadows is] the latest lacerating addition to the boarding-school-as-living-hell genre ... read on if you have the courage. The author attended a similar establishment at the age of 12, and gives every indication of knowing exactly what he is writing about.'
Independent
Elmer's Special Day
by David McKee
'The first Elmer book seemed like a great and original one-off, McKee's extraordinary imagination and colourful art have between them maintained originality and delight over all these years: amazing.' Chris Brown, School Librarian
