Tag Archive: young adult
By Beth Ain
In 1776 Paris, when Jean-Honore Fragonard sat down to paint the portrait he would call Portrait of a Young Girl Reading, I’m betting it never crossed his mind that sometime in the year 2008 in New York City, a writer would come upon his painting and feel inspired to write a book about a girl he spent about one hour painting. No, the artist probably thought he had done just about all there was to be done with the work. And of course, he had. It is a lovely portrait.
And I might have left that painting alone, too, if it weren’t for one burning question I had. What was that young girl reading? I had to figure it out. What I learned, though, was that Portrait of a Young Girl Reading was not painted at a traditional portrait sitting. More likely, it was one of Fragonard’s “fantasy portraits,” portraits that came from somewhere inside of him, someone he’d observed or wondered about. I took Fragonard’s affection for conjuring paintings out of his own imagination as my cue. I don’t know who that girl was to Fragonard. I couldn’t possibly know. But I could figure out who she was to me.
So why would that girl be there and what was she reading and why was she reading a book during a portrait sitting at all? Well, it had to be that this young girl was like so many young girls throughout time—she had to have angst! So, I looked at her face and thought that she probably had to go and sit for her portrait because her overbearing, social climbing mother made her go. And she had to have been nervous and her body would not be able to settle. So what would the artist have done? I think he might have thought to hand her something to hold onto, something like a book, a battered copy of Candide to still her fidgety hands. And I think his idea would have worked. Her body would have settled, but a spark would have been ignited that would have turned her own revolutionary rumblings into little earthquakes.
And all of a sudden, she would see everything differently. At a time when the world was changing in ways that would re-shape history, she would want to participate in it and not be a pretty picture at all. She would want to feel what love feels like and what dinner with thinking and acting people feels like. And she would want to meet, have to meet, that Benjamin Franklin, whose presence in Paris meant swooning for most aristocratic Frenchwomen, but for her it meant something more.
She was changed. The girl in the painting would have become someone who wanted her life to mean something and who would find a way to make it happen at any cost. And that was that. My story was born. Out of a painting by a man who painted so many young women in his lifetime—young women who swung on swings, played games, held babies close. But only one was holding a book, so only one could be Sabine.
IMAGE:Young Girl Reading, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1770. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.
By Melissa L.
Here’s a look at what’s coming up in YA.
Beth Ain’s The Revolution of Sabine
is set in 1776 Paris. The American Revolution is the talk of the town, and everyone is planning parties to honor the man behind it all: Benjamin Franklin. Sabine Durand’s mother, obsessed with making her party perfect in order to impress the other members of the French aristocracy, is no exception.
But Sabine herself has much less regard for the social conventions that seem to dictate her mother’s life. When she secretly renews her friendship with Michel, her governess’s son, and has her portrait painted by the famous Fragonard, her outlook begins to change. She visits her first salon, meets Mr. Franklin himself, and begins to read the works of Voltaire. Now Sabine longs for change in her own life…but can she defy her mother and the rest of the aristocracy?
Beth Ain is a former editor who is also the author of When Christmas Comes Again
, a novel set during World War I. In her post for us, she plans to describe how she got the idea for The Revolution of Sabine.
Look for a post from Beth soon on Wonders & Marvels!
Melissa L. is the YA Editorial Assistant for Wonders and Marvels. You can read more about her here: Editorial Staff.
By Lisa Klein
When I decided to set my latest book, Lady Macbeth’s Daughter
, in eleventh-century Scotland—when the historical Macbeth actually lived—it was a bit of a challenge to get the setting right. Hardly anyone was literate, and there was constant warfare, so we have no written records. I decided I could either make everything up or fly to Scotland and try to find clues in the ruins that do remain from those “dark ages.” Needing a vacation, I chose the latter option.
In Scotland, I saw stone cirlces even more marvelous than the Stonehenge in southern England. They are everywhere. Some stand in pastures in Argyll, where cows graze around them. The most amazing and untouched circle of stones, however, is on the Isle of Lewis—Calanais, which has been standing for as long as four thousand years. There are fifty stones: a center circle of 13 stones from which a double row of stones extends north, and shorter, single rows to the east, west, and south. It is shaped like a cross, but was erected two thousand years before that Christian symbol came into use.
No one knows the purpose of these stones: to follow the lunar cycle, perhaps, or to be a ritual gathering place for the community. They must have been important, though, because people went to an awful lot of trouble to move 5-ton stones and stand them upright. And without engines or cranes! How did they do it? And why? These stones so captured my imagination that I invented Stravenock Henge and made it an important setting in Lady Macbeth’s Daughter, a place where the supernatural breaks into my heroine’s life.
Lisa Klein is the author of three historical novels for young adults. Her most recent book is Lady Macbeth’s Daughter. Vist her website at www.authorlisaklein.com.
IMAGE: Calanais Standing Stones, the Isle of Lewis, Callanish, Scotland from the writers personal collection
By Sarah MacLean
1. I enjoy drinking water. During the Regency, there was no public sewage system in London, so much of it was deposited directly into the River Thames. This was true in most cities and towns across the country and, therefore, drinking a glass of water wasn’t just unpleasant—it was downright dangerous.
2. I like indoor plumbing. While the first flushing toilets date back to the Minoans, the toilet of choice for Regency homes was the chamber pot, which varied from a simple open bucket to a lovely ceramic pot with a lid. Not pleasant. Not clean. Baths were not much better—the water was pumped into a bathing room or carried to a bathtub by servants. The hassle and unpleasantness of the entire experience meant that most people—yes, even those attractive Colin Firth lookalikes—bathed once every week or ten days at the very most.
3. Modern doctors leave the shaves and haircuts to the professionals. The Regency wasn’t that long ago – less than 200 years – and even now it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come. During the early part of the 19th century, bloodletting was practiced by a “surgeon,” who was most often a barber/surgeon. The red stripe on the barber pole represents the blood he’d happily drain from your body if you needed it. And you didn’t need it. I promise.
4. I know who to call if I get robbed. There was no formal police force in London until an Act of Parliament formed one in 1828. Before that, if something went wrong, you crossed your fingers and hoped that the privately funded police force or the publicly funded watchmen in your parish would be able to sort everything out. Good luck.
Of course, my characters never have to use “the necessary,” their clothes are clean and smell like lemon and lavender, their doctors have very modern sensibilities, and their villains are always brought to justice. Which makes for a lot fewer readers crying out “eeeewwwwww . . .” as they read—something that can really pull a person out of a love story.
Sarah MacLean is the author of The Season
, a young-adult Regency romance, and the forthcoming Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
, a Regency-set romance for adults. Sarah grew up in Rhode Island, obsessed with historical romance and bemoaning the fact that she was born far too late for her own season. Her love of all things historical helped to earn her a B.A. in History from Smith College and a Masters in Education and Anthropology from Harvard University before she finally set pen to paper and wrote her first book. Sarah now lives in New York City with her husband, their dog, and a ridiculously large collection of historical novels. Please visit her at www.macleanspace.com.
438 members
