When bestselling author Katherine Rundell meets young readers, they sometimes play it cool.
They know fantasy books like her "Impossible Creatures," set on magical hidden islands with dragons and sphinxes, are fiction. But they lean in anyway, with a glint in their eyes, and ask, "Just to check, though, is any of it real?"
It's a rewarding comment for the author, 39, who crafted a world real enough to spark that kind of wonder. Speaking to USA TODAY with the soothing lilt of a Miss Honey, Rundell is protective of her young readers and their imaginations. In a recent essay in The Guardian, she argued that artificial intelligence "risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking."
Could fantasy books be the antidote? Rundell is the first author since J.K. Rowling to simultaneously top the children's book charts in the UK and U.S. Queen Camilla will gift every Year 6 student in the UK a copy of "Impossible Creatures" for Christmas this year. Walt Disney Studios has ***** ed up the film rights for a whopping seven figures. And a recent review said the series' next installment, "The Neverfear" (out now from Knopf Books for Young Readers) "would make JRR Tolkien proud."
"I don't think the world is going to become an easier place to be in the next few years. I think it's going to get harder … So I would love to write a book that has in it peril, danger, but also has in it a sense that even amid peril and danger and fear, it is worth finding reasons to rejoice," she tells USA TODAY. "There is a reason that the book begins and ends with a feast, because I wanted the idea that there is always cause for hope. There is always a reason to come together and celebrate love, celebrate humanity."
#year
They know fantasy books like her "Impossible Creatures," set on magical hidden islands with dragons and sphinxes, are fiction. But they lean in anyway, with a glint in their eyes, and ask, "Just to check, though, is any of it real?"
It's a rewarding comment for the author, 39, who crafted a world real enough to spark that kind of wonder. Speaking to USA TODAY with the soothing lilt of a Miss Honey, Rundell is protective of her young readers and their imaginations. In a recent essay in The Guardian, she argued that artificial intelligence "risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking."
Could fantasy books be the antidote? Rundell is the first author since J.K. Rowling to simultaneously top the children's book charts in the UK and U.S. Queen Camilla will gift every Year 6 student in the UK a copy of "Impossible Creatures" for Christmas this year. Walt Disney Studios has ***** ed up the film rights for a whopping seven figures. And a recent review said the series' next installment, "The Neverfear" (out now from Knopf Books for Young Readers) "would make JRR Tolkien proud."
"I don't think the world is going to become an easier place to be in the next few years. I think it's going to get harder … So I would love to write a book that has in it peril, danger, but also has in it a sense that even amid peril and danger and fear, it is worth finding reasons to rejoice," she tells USA TODAY. "There is a reason that the book begins and ends with a feast, because I wanted the idea that there is always cause for hope. There is always a reason to come together and celebrate love, celebrate humanity."
#year
2 months ago
