intertextuality
When I wrote Wish, I incorporated one of my favorite picture books into the narrative by having Genna read Christopher Myers’ Wings to her baby brother. This time around, I’ve got Genna searching for signs of magic, which leads her to discover Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly. For half a year after graduating from college, I worked in a black bookstore in Toronto—to this day, certain book covers are fixed in my mind because it was my job to display the books and everything was placed on the shelf face forward to take up space. The Dillons’ illustrations work on me like some kind of enchantment—I can gaze at them for hours! I’m looking forward to meeting them at the upcoming A is for Anansi conference in October. Right now I’m writing the chapter where Genna asks her mother to tell her a fairy tale and instead is handed a tattered second-hand copy of The People Could Fly…I’m at 47.5K words and am aiming for 50K by the time Masterpiece Theatre comes on tomorrow night…
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