Zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas

The Oracle Speaks. Where is Security? Confession and Confusion. Fear Strikes. The Hero. Gains and Losses. Christmas Keys. Free Quiz. Social Sensitivity. Literary Qualities. Topics for Discussion. Essay Topics. Ideas for Reports and Papers. Snyder was born in Lemoore, California, and spent most of her life in Northern California, though she and her husband lived in Washington state and in Alaska during his time in the Air Force.

She began writing fiction in the s and worked with influential children's book editor Jean Karl on her debut novel Season of Ponieswhich Atheneum Books published in This was also the first of her thirteen collaborations with illustrator Alston Raible. Between andSnyder completed 46 books. Other [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. October 15, October 14, October 19, October 8, Retrieved October 13, Zilpha Keatley Snyder zksnyder.

Accessed November 23, Identifier: CLRCarchives. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN But the fear that supernatural interests are encouraged and advocated should be allayed by a thorough and careful reading. A quote from a letter from a young Stanley family fan seems to show that young readers are well able to get the message that Amanda the would-be witch is not the hero of the story.

The quote: " Would you please write some more Stanley family stories because they are my favorites. And if you do, will you please have David give Amanda a good crack on the head. So the '70s, with its emphasis on anything and everything mystical, supernatural, spiritual, or simply far-out, did play a part in motivating me to write the story. But times do change, and now again the temper of the times is significant, in that the attempts to censor Cupid do seem to attest to the greatly increased fear of the supernatural that seems to have arisen during the last decade.

It wasn't until at least fifteen years after the publication date of The Headless Cupid that I first became aware of any attacks on the book. It was about this time that librarians began to inform me that my book apparently had been placed on the list compiled by a group of people who object to any mention of certain subjects in books for children, textbooks as well as trade.

This list, which was sent to like-thinking groups all over the country, not only opposed any reference to the supernatural but also any mention or celebration of Halloween. Among their other prohibitions were also such obvious evils as feminism, gun controlevolution, yoga, meditation, one-worldism, vegetarianism, and secular humanism which apparently is defined as any attempt to encourage ethical behavior without reference to "God's word".

Zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas: Zilpha Keatley Snyder, who mined

Some of the attacks on my books were personal and even frightening. One of the first occurred when I was being driven to a school in Texas, where I was to give the first of several talks to large groups of children, and was informed that there had been an attempt to get me uninvited and that quite likely a group of protesters would be present at my speech.

They were, in fact, but apart from suspicious frowns and avid note taking they remained in the background. A little later, in Southern California, I was not so fortunate. At the end of a panel on book censorship, a young woman appeared on the stage, grabbed my hand, and put a book of matches in it. Shaking her finger in my face she announced that the matches were a gift and that I was going to repent and burn all of my books.

Afterward, recalling her glowing eyes and fiery rhetoric, I felt fortunate that she hadn't attempted to set fire to me. Other critiques are mainly puzzling. Gish stated that in The Headless Cupid one child threatens another with occult powers. I was so puzzled by this accusation that I reread Cupid from cover to cover, something that I hadn't done for many years, and was unable to discover what Ms.

Gish was referring to. The good news is, I really enjoyed the read. I was pleased to find that, in spite of its advanced age, the story holds up pretty well. And so it goes. Some of the accusations are almost funny. Like the self-appointed critic who asserted that the book teaches "how to relate to a familiar spirit. However, the crow obviously doesn't agree.

All Amanda ever reaps from her rites and rituals are a lot of pecks and scratches. The seance has been another bone of contention. There are, it seems, a certain number of people who were terribly offended by the portrayal of a seance attended by children. These people seem to think it quite likely that such an enterprise actually might call up evil spirits or even the devil himself—even a seance run by a fake, and very frustrated, medium and participated in by a rather unruly bunch of attendees.

Zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas: Inspired by her father's stories of

Perhaps I should admit, at this point, that when my sisters and I were close to the age of the Stanley kids, we had a brief spell of playing seance in a spooky and spiderwebby attic. However, the game didn't last long due to an aversion to spiders and to the apparent disinterest of the ghostly participants we were anticipating. We also played with a Ouija board for a while until arguments, over who was and who wasn't surreptitiously pushing the pointer, put a damper on the proceedings.

I can recall a number of confrontations along the lines of "You did too" and "I did not" but no ghostly encounters, other than pretend ones. And our mother, the offspring of many generations of Quakers and a devoted Christian, never seemed worried about our mystical game playing. She had, she said, tried the Ouija board herself as a child and seemed to see it, as we did, as imaginative game playing.

If, for instance, it should happen that a child playing with an Ouija board is inspired to act in an immoral manner, I feel quite certain that the place to look for the underlying motivation is in the realities, the real, everyday needs and fears, of that child's existence. That is what I meant when I had Mrs. Fortune, in The Witches of Worm, say that, "We all invite our own demons and we must exorcize our own.

A word about imaginative game playing in general, a theme that occurs in many of my books. I am firmly convinced that such game playing is one of the best ways for children to stretch their imaginations—right up there with reading and a thousand times better than watching TV. And should we encourage our children to develop their imagination? In my opinion a well-developed imagination is necessary not only for any kind of artistic endeavor, but also in many other career areas.

Imaginative approaches to problem solving are necessary not only for a successful zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas life, but also in the area of personal relationships. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could develop political leaders who could "imagine" a new and more successful approach to such problems as poverty and war!

But the pendulum continues to swing, and among the changes that passing time has brought are the increasing numerous attack on Cupid. It has been published in eleven languages. Gish, Kimbra Wilder. Snyder, Zilpha Keatley. The Headless Cupid. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell, Chicago, Ill. James Press, I am a fiction writer with a decided list towards the fantastical.

Like most writers I write for the joy of it, to exorcise old ghosts, and because I can't seem to stop, but I am also aware of a very personal motivation. I write as a legitimate means of indulging in an apparently inborn vice—the tendency to make things up. I write for middle-aged children because they are magical people. The most outstanding characteristic of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's work is her sensitivity to, respect for, and appreciation of children.

She seems to be attuned to the process of growing up, a process in which the imaginative young people Snyder writes about move freely between the everyday world adults know and the fanciful worlds children create to nourish the growth of their own minds and spirits. Although many of her characters read fantasy, they do not enter into someone else's fantasy world; they create their own worlds, often in groups through role playing or creative play.

Sometimes an individual character, such as Robin in The Velvet Room, will enter into a very private world which walls her off from the harsh realities of the world outside; but even then that world is used not just to hide but to gather strength, to learn to be more or different or better than one has been before. Snyder capitalizes on the creative acts of the child without demeaning them.

In addition, her novels possess a distinct charm and energy that carry readers into a story with the help of detailed descriptions and familiar characteristics. The Stanley children are the main characters in four of Snyder's books, and each child in the family is notable for specific gifts and talents. Readers are introduced to the family in The Headless Cupid and Amanda immediately captures interest with her bizarre costume and her crow which she says is her "Familiar.

The author respects young readers enough to have her characters, in this case the Stanley children, both accept and participate in Amanda's role playing while seeing through it as the means their stepsister uses to cope with her parents' divorce and her mother's remarriage. Even Amanda seems to be aware of what she is doing.

Zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas: Snyder was born on May 11,

In The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, it is Amanda's boastful tongue that causes the trouble but the united effort of all the children rescues them when they are captured by Red Mask and his gang. Snyder draws upon Blair's wild imagination to develop the story of Blair's Nightmare in which he seeks to bend the family's "no pets" rule but almost causes a tragedy in the process.

In Janie's Private Eyes, the latest of the Stanley family novels, neighborhood pets are suddenly missing. A Vietnamese family is blamed; and Janie, with the aid of her family and Thuy and Huy Tran, seeks to solve this mystery and find the missing dogs with the aid of her newly formed detective agency. Together these works create a richly detailed fanciful world beneath the cities above ground.

Those that live in Greensky are often tempted to eat the wissenberries which make them drowsy, but here too the classic battles between good and evil are fought. The Egypt Game is probably one of this author's most popular novels, and certainly one of her best. The Egypt game is an elaborate game played in a secret "temple" and filled with ritualistic gestures.

Through his observations of the game, an old professor takes a new interest in life and ultimately saves the children from unexpected danger. Although there is no special note taken of the fact, the players are a mixed group racially and ethnically which was at the time of publication still somewhat rare in American books for children.

Readers already know and care about April, Melanie, and Elizabeth as people before necessarily realizing that they are respectively caucasian, black, and Chinese. Snyder has said that The Witches of Worm grew from her reading of historical accounts of the Salem witch trials and from observations of the strange personality of a kitten in the family.

In this story Jessica brings home a skinny, ugly-looking kitten called Worm, although she never liked cats. Soon she begins doing mean things she would never do on her own, and realizes that Worm is really a witch's cat who has cast a spell on her. One of the strengths of this story is the fine line that divides the imagination of this lonely child who has been deserted by her father from the world of the supernatural.

Many of the young girls in Snyder's stories are lonely, either actually deserted by parents or left to their own devices for other reasons. Pamela in Season of Ponies, Snyder's first book, is unhappy because her father left her at Oak Farm with two stern old aunts for the summer. With the aid of an amulet her father gave her, however, Pamela meets a strange young man who appears out of the mist surrounded by horses and playing his flute.

The Changeling is told in retrospect by a high school sophomore who reflects on the effect Ivy Carson, the eccentric dancer daughter of a large, troublesome family, had on Martha's own blossoming from a very shy young girl to an aspiring actress. Summer McIntyre of The Birds of Summer has no father and her mother doesn't seem to be able to take responsibility for herself let alone her two daughters, so year-old Summer has to be responsible for the three of them.

In this book it is as much the mother as the daughter who seems to be walking the fine line between reality and fantasy in the process of growing up. Summer does imagine a caring father and writes letters to him which she keeps in a box, but basically she is a very level-headed young woman dealing with serious problems created by the mother who should have been caring for her.

Carly in And Condors Danced feels that she is invisible most of the time. Her mother is ill and her father for the most part stern and indifferent, so she escapes to the mountains or to her Aunt Mehitabel's where she is freer to indulge her imagination. But reality intrudes on her spirited imaginative adventures and she has to cope with many real-life tragedies in this story set on a California ranch at the turn of the century.

Robin of The Velvet Room separates herself from pressing family problems by "wandering off," both literally and figuratively. The velvet room of the title is the library of a deserted old house where Robin goes to read and dream about another life.

Zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas: Snyder, Zilpha. Keatley. The

Harry Houdini Marco is almost 12 when he helps an old man on a city bus and is rewarded with magical wings. This is one of Snyder's funniest novels when the magic of the wings is juxtaposed with the problems of everyday life of a rather clumsy child, resulting in the "black and blue" of the title. Dion in Eyes in the Fishbowl gets involved in strange, perhaps supernatural events in a large, realistically described department store.

In A Fabulous Creature James Fielding's " Don Juan Project," a plan to make him irresistible to girls, has to be carried out at an isolated resort where his parents take him for the summer. Squeak Saves the Day and Other Tooley Tales is a collection of seven stories for younger readers featuring the Tooley family, very small creatures who live in a miniature world threatened by humans whom they call Stompers.

These are short, very humorous stories of pure fantasy unlike most of Snyder's books for older children which exist in that fragile and magical space between reality and fantasy. In most of her books, Snyder's characters are very real and believable young people who just happen to have a touch of magic. This life of the imagination, played out slightly off center stage, helps characters cope effectively with the concerns of everyday existence.

In Books for Children,pp. Unhappy about his awkwardness and the prospects of a lonely, dull vacation, Harry is delighted when strange Mr. Mazzeeck gives him a magic lotion which grows wings and enables him to fly. His secret nightly flights over the bay and city of San Francisco not only bring Harry joy and adventure but also help to make dreams come true for him and his mother.

Perceptive characterization and a sympathetic depiction of the problems and pressures of daily living are skillfully blended with the magic of fantasy. Grades Beetz and Suzanne Niemeyer, pp. Washington, D. Zilpha Keatley Snyder, born on May 11,in Lemoore, California, has spent most of her life in her native state. Growing up before the age of television, traveling infrequently, and seeing few movies led her to depend on books for excitement.

A nearby library provided an inexhaustible supply of magic, adventure, and excitement. She decided at the age of eight to become a professional writer, but many years passed before the publication of her first book, Season of Ponies. Before her success as a writer, Snyder attended college, married, had children, and taught school for nine years.

She says students she had taught in Berkeley, California, served as models for the six main characters in The Egypt Game. Snyder also bases her characters and plotlines on her own experiences, family, friends, pets, interests, and travels. The Egypt Game is a story about a group of diverse, imaginative children playing a game about Egypt.

Like most of Snyder's books, however, the novel's simple title belies its complex subject matter; The Egypt Game focuses on the experiences of its precocious female protagonist, April, as she encounters loneliness, prejudice, friendship, and murder. Sent to live with her dead father's mother in California, April learns to adjust to her new environment, make friends, and care for her grandmother.

April and her friends who play the Egypt Game share a camaraderie that ignores differences in race, culture, and age. Although the members include whites, blacks, and Asians spanning from ages four through eleven, all are held together by their fascination with Egypt and their extremely active imaginations. But when real danger threatens the children, the adult characters reveal their prejudiced views and eventually learn from the children not to make assumptions about an outsider just because the person seems different.

Overall, The Egypt Game is an excellent study in the growth of love and the acceptance of others. The book is set in California in the mids on Orchard Avenue in a large university town. The area around Orchard Avenue is residential, consisting of zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas houses, modest homes, and small shops. The people of the area represent a wide variety of ethnic groups, and many of them work or study at the university.

April Hall has come to live with Caroline, her father's mother. Her father died in the Korean War when she was very young, and her mother, a singer and would-be actress, is currently on tour. Caroline lives in the Casa Rosada, a Spanish-style apartment house built in the s, where the apartments are large but relatively inexpensive. Caroline works in the zilpha keatley snyder biography summary of thomas at the university and has moved to the Casa Rosada so she will have room for April.

Among several small shops near the Casa Rosada, the A-Z shop sells antiques, curios, and used merchandise. This shop and its strange owner figure prominently in the novel. On the way back, she stops at the A-Z, investigates the shop, and talks to the owner, who seems quite uninterested in April and her questions. Most of the activity in the novel takes place in the boarded up storage yard behind the A-Z shop.

When April and her friend Melanie find a movable board in the fence, they enter the storage yard and discover the land of Egypt. Snyder develops a theme of unconditional friendship in the novel, demonstrating the unique ability of children to form communities that compensate for a lack of family structure and affection. Although April tries to hide her longing for the father she never knew, her hurt at her mother's neglect, and her insecurity in her new surroundings, she finds an extended family through the friendships of the Egypt group.

Melanie Ross, a black eleven-year-old, accepts her friendship despite April's bragging, lying, strange manner of dress, and eccentric behavior. They soon become as close as sisters. April accepts Melanie's four-year-old brother, Marshall, as one of the gang on equal terms. The girls add a newcomer of Chinese descent, nine-year-old Elizabeth Chung, to their gang almost from the minute they meet her, and they even accept two eleven-year-old boys, Ken Alvillar and Toby Kamataj into the Egypt Game.

April and Toby vie for the leadership of the group, but each is able to make concessions to the other. Because the children are willing to compromise and listen to different points of view, few conflicts arise among members of the group. The Egypt group, however, cannot completely substitute for a family, and Snyder addresses the need for children to have some type of familial stability.

Dumped on her grandmother while her mother is on the road, April glamorizes her mother's activities, looks, and behavior to try to comfort herself but is angered by her mother's absence. April has had a rather difficult life up to this point, and lacks a sense of belonging. She has been in and out of dozens of schools, has never had playmates her own age, and has depended on her imagination to make life more tolerable.

April's relationship with her grandmother moves from one of defiance and antagonism to one of love, acceptance, and a recognition of her own need for stability. Another theme concerns people's willingness to think the worst about someone who is different, mysterious, and private. Not only do the adults suspect that the Professor has murdered a child in the neighborhood, but the children also fear him.

April visits and talks to the Professor before becoming aware of the neighborhood attitudes. When a second child is murdered, only April speaks up for the Professor. April's loyalty to the Professor also stems from the fact that she, Melanie, and Marshall develop the Egypt Game using odds and ends they find in the Professor's storage yard. Unlike many adults, the children value the different and the foreign.

They research Egypt, invent their own hieroglyphic alphabet, and act out rituals for the good goddess Isis and the evil god Set. The murders contrast with the children's simple fantasy game of good versus evil and put an end to the Egypt Game for awhile. The killer remains at large, but gradually things return to normal until April is attacked in the storage yard.

The Professor saves April, and the killer is soon apprehended. The neighborhood adults try to make up for their behavior toward the Professor, who in turn becomes a friendly, helpful neighbor to them. Because the land of Egypt has been a place where the children share privacy and secrecy with best friends, April and Melanie realize that the presence of adults and violence has spoiled their enchanted land.

Although they know they can't go back to Egypt again, the novel ends with April saying "Melanie … what do you know about gypsies? Snyder's underlying theme addresses the nature of childhood in urban contemporary America. The Egypt Game seems to represent the creativity and hopefulness of childhood, as opposed to the unpredictably violent and suspicious world of adults.

April, who has experienced emotional violence in the loss of her father and the callousness of her starstruck mother, seems to demand her right to childhood, using the Egypt Game as a way of rejecting the pain that the adult world thrusts upon her. In Egypt she creates a world where she does not have to feel abandoned or hurt. Yet as the murders and the attack on April show, children cannot be protected or isolated from the often painful world around them.

Snyder's point is ultimately hopeful; she shows that April's imagination, her love of learning, and her close relationship with her grandmother and friends will enable her to survive—and to enjoy—growing up. The structure of The Egypt Game reflects Snyder's thematic emphasis on the encroachment of the adult world upon childhood. The book begins with what seems to be the opening sentence of a fairy-tale, "Not long ago …" Yet in the tradition of Hans Christian Andersenthe fairy-tale opening has dark overtones and quickly becomes an introduction to a strange man who spies on the little girls playing in his yard and who has aroused the fear and distrust of his neighbors.

Hence, although the novel is seemingly about children, for children, the adult world imposes its viewpoint from the beginning of the story, in keeping with Snyder's theme. The first chapter focuses exclusively on the perceptions and opinions of adults, from the Professor to the neighbors. The reader's first glimpse of childhood in the story comes from the eyes of the mysterious, unnamed Professor.

Only after Snyder establishes this hovering, unnerving adult presence, does she present the child characters, beginning with April. Snyder also employs symbolism to explore her theme. By naming April after the stormy month of spring, she emphasizes April's tempestuous upbringing and forceful personality; the name also highlights April's disguised vulnerability, suggesting the beauty and new growth of springtime.

Snyder symbolically situates the Egypt Game in the storage yard of a shop owned by a Professor and significantly named the A-Z shop. In the same way that young children begin their formal use of language at the basic level of the alphabet, so do April and her friends learn a new language of friendship, creativity, and survival through the game they play at the A-Z property.

Even Marshall's stuffed octopus, Security, plays an obviously symbolic role in the novel. In making Security a multi-tentacled octopus rather than a soft blanket or a cuddly teddy bear, Snyder replaces the conventional sign of childhood security with a more ominous figure, one that illustrates her notion that children in contemporary urban society cannot be completely protected from the complex world around them.

Even the imaginary land of Egypt, the haven the children create for themselves, is not secure from danger, and Security can do nothing for four-year-old Marshall when he witnesses the attack on April in Egypt. Snyder's ultimate view is realistic, not bleak, and the initially threatening Professor comes to represent true security. He watches over the children, saves April from the murderer, and encourages a new feeling of community in the neighborhood.

At the end of the novel, April is not safe from all pain and fear, or ready to live happily ever after, but Snyder shows that she has the security of a home and a group of people who love her as a result of her experience with the Egypt Game. Like Marshall—who leaves Security in his room at the novel's end, showing that he can face the world by himself—April learns to accept the stability that her newfound friends supply.

Set in an urban university community in California, The Egypt Game features ethnically diverse characters. While neither age nor race seem to enter the children's minds, the adults maintain some prejudices about anyone who seems "different. Indeed, the adults learn from the children and take measures to make amends with the Professor, whom they unjustly accuse of murder.

Parents and teachers might want to reinforce with younger readers the risks of being too trusting of adults, particularly strangers, but the inclusion of the murders in the plot makes this point as well. Snyder uses the murders to bring an element of realism to her depiction of urban childhood in the s and uses the violence to make a thematic point.

The narrative gives no details about the murders, and the reader never meets the victims, lessening the emotional impact of the incident. To fourteen-year-old Dion James, irritated by the clutter and insecurity of life with his charming, talented, but improvident father, the sumptuous Alcott-Simpson department store has been a symbol of elegance and order since childhood [in Eyes in the Fishbowl ].

Intrigued by the rumors of strange events going on in the store, Dion becomes personally involved when he meets the lovely, exotic Sara who, along with invisible child companions she refers to only as "the others," appears to be living in Alcott-Simpson's. Although the puzzling blend of the real and supernatural may be confusing to some young readers, the first-person narrative is an unusual contemporary story enriched with subtle but discerning commentary on human values.

In Books for Children,p.