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Written by maljonic
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Wednesday, 30 August 2006 |
Here is a nice little article/review of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld in A Hat Full of Sky, with thoughts on Feegles included.
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If you discover only one new writer this season, let it be celebrated British writer Terry Pratchett (with more than 35 million books sold).
Pratchett writes adult science fiction, middle grade, young adult sci-fi novels, and more.
Most children’s writers know that 1) boys don’t want to read about girl characters (though, curiously, girls will read about boys or girls); and 2) children don’t like to read about kids who are younger than they are.
Therefore, writers who cater to boys will write only about boys, and writers who aim for, let’s say, an audience of 13-year-olds will feature a main character who is at least 15 years old.
In Terry Pratchett’s A Hat Full of Sky, Pratchett does it all wrong from the very beginning. Though the intended audience most likely is boys and girls in the age group of about 10 to 15, an 11-year-old girl, Tiffany Achin, is the main character.
But Pratchett pulls it off. Fifteen-year-old boys, like 10-year-old girls, will love Pratchett’s books. The ill-tempered, drunken, and uneducated fairy folk, the Nac Mac Feegles, help saturate the book with humor.
Though A Hat Full of Sky is unusually funny, it isn’t necessarily humor which makes Pratchett stand out as such a great writer. Nor is it his lovely grasp of language.
No, there is something else to Pratchett’s seemingly light story about a young girl who has always known she was different and who starts on her journey toward becoming a witch.
I think it’s the little nuggets of truth sprinkled through the novel, which makes Pratchett so great, nuggets that in the end come together as a cohesive whole and make us understand the world and ourselves a little bit better.
by By EVA APELQVIST
Spooner Advocate
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