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style="font-size:90%">Author: Eleanor Cameron1912-1996 I chose Eleanor Cameron because the familiar Mushroom Planet books and her later novels seem in a way like the work of two different writers. I've always wondered why. The pleasurable task of rereading all her books one after the other soon revealed that Cameron's passionate interests, explored throughout a writing career of almost fifty years, weave through all her work from Wonderful Flight to Private Worlds. Like Julia Redfern with her "Book of Strangeness," Cameron always tries to instill "if not outright magic, then the feeling of magic, of wonder in the everyday world." To Cameron a sense of place is all important: "place, for me, must be loved and known, it gives rise to the book and its characters." Basidium-X, the Mushroom Planet, exists only in the world ofimagination, yet the science is well researched and Chuck and David's first glimpse of the tiny satellite rings completely true:
California as it was earlier in this century has never been so clearly evoked for children as in Cameron's books: Redwood Cove, a fusion of her favorite places in Northern California in the setting for The Terrible Churnadryne and The Mysterious Christmas Shell; San Francisco,with its special airiness and light, in The Court of the Stone Children ; Berkeley, in the glorious days when you could see right across San Francisco Bay, in the Julia Books. Seen through her writer's eye, the details of Cameron's places, of the natural world and the character's physical surroundings, feel like memories from one's own life. Growing from these vivid surroundings, Cameron's characters, even her minor ones, seem immediate, existing as real people outside the books. Remember the faintly mushroom-like Mr. Bass, smoothing "a long, thin weblike hand" over the side of Chuck and David's spaceship, speaking "with a voice so distant, as if a wind from a far place had carried it to them."? Or our first glimpse of Mr. Theo, standing under the porch light at night with a "much-abused, ancient auto robe folded neatly over one arm" and a face "so like that of the boys' dear friend, Mr. Tyco Bass - the large eyes, the small, eager features, and the big head." The Julia Redfern books explore character even more intricately. I recently reread them in the order they were written, beginning at a pivotal period in Julia's preadolescence, moving back through time to her early childhood, and then finally forward to the threshold of adulthood. Read in this way the whole forms a fascinating and complex "novel" for older children. Layers of character are revealed and concealed as family members and family memories surface in different times and places. I had read somewhere that the Julia Redfern books were an old-fashioned series like Lovelace's Betsy series. Not at all! In fact, the places and characters in Cameron's books are so vivid, that they almost obliterate a sense of historical time. When Aunt Lily in To the Green Mountains told Kath that her trees were planted by Johnny Appleseed sixty years ago or more, it jarred me as a reader. Actually, I hadn't been noticing what time it was! In The Green and Burning Tree, Cameron writes extensively about her understanding of the cyclical nature of time. We can neither perceive (or will not let ourselves, because of that unconscious inhibition or rejection) the whole Globe of Time, nor, under ordinary circumstances do we seem able to slip about in it at will except through memory; or in dreams when the barriers are down. Whether the book is science fiction like the Mushroom planet books, or a simple fantasy, like The Terrible Churnadryne, or a realistic novel like The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern, the reader has the same experience of "a vast, all-inclusive present". Writing about the sequence of the Julia books, Cameron says, "The strange thing about going backwards is to find explanations waiting for what happened later in the time of the novels. It gives the writer a curious feeling that perhaps the whole pattern had always been there." Eleanor Cameron's own life began in Winnipeg, Manitoba on March 23, 1912. She credits her English mother's love of storytelling for her early delight with English fantasies and fairy tales. After a three year stay in Ohio, where her father tried to farm and her mother ran a hotel (as in To the Green Mountains,) the family moved to Berkeley and stayed there until Eleanor Cameron was sixteen, taking trips to Yosemite, the redwood forests in Marin, and the Monterey Peninsula. During this period her parents were divorced and she lived alone with her mother, in "a room made of windows." On her mother's remarriage, the family moved to a larger house in the hills. The memories of this period provide much of the material for her books. Then, at sixteen, in what was for her a terrible uprooting, Cameron and her family moved to Los Angeles. She later attended UCLA and the LA Art Center School for three years. In 1934, she married Ian Stuart Cameron, a printer, and they had one son, David. Eleanor Cameron worked for many years as a reference librarian for schools and businesses before beginning to write full time. Essentially a private person, Cameron was fascinated by the way the unconscious offers up themes and rearranged fragments of a writer's life for use in a piece of writing. "Situations ... are like usable places - mysterious in their ability to arouse the writer's creative response." Cameron does not dwell on her personal life, but she explains her writer's life very openly. She, like Julia, had always planned to support herself as a librarian so that she could be a 'real writer.' Although she had not published since high school, her first book, and her only novel written for adults, was accepted immediately, in 1950, for publication. Cameron writes of this book,
Cameron was struggling to find her own voice as an adult writer, when one day her son David, an avid Doctor Dolittle fan ... stood there at the side of my table and told me what he had dreamed of: a story about himself and his closest friend, and how they would build a little spaceship and go off and find a planet just their size, just about big enough to explore in a day or two. (The Green and Burning Leaf) And so, at David's request, the five Mushroom Planet books were born. In her late forties, while continuing the Mushroom Planet series, Cameron began to write pure fantasies with realistic settings, rather than science fiction. She was also becoming recognized for her thoughtful reflections on writing for children, as well as her insightful and outspoken critiques and her passionate advocacy of children's literature: The Green and Burning Tree: on the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books was published in 1969. In 1971, when Eleanor Cameron was fifty-nine, she turned to realistic fiction, and to Julia Redfern, a twelve year old writer very much like her younger self. In these later books she found a medium which would bring her closer to the adult novel-writing she had broken away from years before. She achieved, I think, in The Room Made of Windows, a perfect balance. According to Francis J. Molson, Cameron's work was slow to be recognized. Perhaps, he says, this was because of her early start in children's science fiction, not a respected field at the time. Perhaps, too, it was because of her outspoken reviews of the work of established writers. Cameron certainly tore into authors she disagreed with, like Lois Lenski, and she enjoyed a good debate with her friends as well! (Horn Book 1964). However she may be viewed critically, her popularity with the reading public remains strong. As the Mushroom Planet Books enter their fortieth year they are highly sought after by adults. Children enjoy them greatly once they have been introduced, although the fifties atmosphere makes them are a little dated for a child to pick up independently. Cameron's books for older children appeal primarily to very capable readers; we only hope that children will continue to have access to these beautiful books. Eleanor Cameron died in November, 1996, at the age of eighty-four, leaving a legacy of wonderful children's books. She is perhaps the only major children's writer who has also left us such a thorough and deep analysis of her own creative process and who has written so extensively on the whole field of children's literature. Three years before her death, she revised and published her second book of essays,The Seed and the Vision. Her last children's novel, the final book in the Redfern series, was finished when she was seventy-seven. In the final paragraph, Julia cries out:
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Bibliographical List: The Mushroom Planet Books Other Young Children's Fantasies The Julia Redfern Books (In the order written) Older Children's Novels Adult Novel Essays More About Eleanor Cameron
(used in this article) de Montreville, Doris. The Third Book of Junior
Authors, Wilson, 1972. An article for children written after Tree. Note to dealers: |
Annotated Bibliography The Mushroom Planet Books The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.
Robert Henneberger, illus. Little Brown, 1954 Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet. Robert Henneberger, illus. Little Brown, 1956 A Mystery for Mr. Bass. Leonard Shortall, illus. Little Brown, 1960 Time and Mr. Bass. Fred Meise, illus., 1967 Other Young Children's Fantasies The Terrible Churnadryne. Beth and Joe Krush, illus., Little Brown, 1959 The Mysterious
Christmas Shell. Beth and Joe Krush, illus., Little Brown, 1961 The Beast With the Magical Horn. Beth and Joe Krush,
illus., Little Brown, 1963 A Room Made of
Windows. The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern. The Court of the Stone Children. Dutton, 1973 (fantasy) To the Green Mountains. Dutton, 1975 |