Playing With Words

My favorite memory of time spent with my mother while living in Tokushima, Japan is of her reading fairy tales and other stories to my sister and me. The words once upon a time would hook my interest from the start, carrying me off to faraway places in my imagination.

Many of these well-known tales were once told to audiences of all ages. For centuries, there had been no attempt to eliminate gory details to spare a child’s sensitivities. In the late 1800’s to mid-1900s–the “golden age of children’s literature”–these stories from the oral tradition were rewritten with children in mind. Their compilers eliminated or toned down the fear-inducing descriptive passages that once passed from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth. By doing so, they could provide young readers with moral guidance by making the lessons hidden within them more digestible.

Many of the folktales we remember from childhood were once shared by travelers moving from eastern to western Europe, and from northern Europe—Scandinavia—to the southern countries of Spain, France, and Italy. In addition, well-known tales such as the One Thousand and One Nights and other collections like it, originated in places much farther away: the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Centuries ago, there were no visible boundaries or fences between countries, and so people shared stories and food as they walked together along dusty roads or gathered around the warmth of a campfire. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written over six centuries ago, provided a framework for this “telling” of tales in the oral tradition. Human, animal, and supernatural “characters” in many of them continue to be told and retold in cultures far from one another, and often bear similarities with respect to theme and plot. Thankfully, those of indigenous authors located around the world, originating in their own First Nations cultures, are being written and published today for all age levels. I only wish I’d had them to read when I was young!

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Years ago, at the first meeting of Inklinks, a writers’ group of which I was once a member, a friend told us about a book she’d read–a collection of short stories written by well-known authors. They’d all been invited to write on the subject of an empty box. It sounded like an intriguing idea for us to adopt, and so we borrowed that title to use as our own personal writing prompt in preparation for the second of our bi-weekly meetings. It may have seemed like “homework” so some, but we all felt accountable to one another for bringing a piece of writing that we could read aloud.

While lying awake that night, my thoughts ricocheted from one idea to another: The “empty box” became an “empty shoe box” in my mind’s eye, which made me wonder what kind of shoes might have been stored in it. My imagination quickly went to work, An hour later, I knew I had to get out of bed and jot down a few notes before I could get any rest, and so I did. The next day my original fairy tale–Prince Nicolai and the Empty Box—practically wrote itself. Years later, it was long-listed by two national “Writing for Children and Young Adults” competitions for unpublished manuscripts, the first administered by The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC), and the second by the Canadian Association of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers (CANSCAIP.)

Prince Nicolai and the Empty Box is now available for order online and in stock at a number of independent bookstores worldwide, including Barnes and Noble. The organization Bookshop has raised over $37,000,000 for independent booksellers in the US and UK. Unfortunately, there is no counterpart for this organization in Canada, but if you wish to order online and you live in the US or UK, I recommend you visit that site and designate an independent bookshop close to you where you would like a donation to be made. Within Canada, my picture book is available for order online at Indigo.ca. If you do read this illustrated storybook for older kids, I hope you will leave a review on Goodreads, on book discussion blogs, or on reviewing sites. Thanks for visiting this page. See you soon!