Author Levine gives Disney sprinkle of 'Fairy Dust' |
| Written by fairystory.org | ||||
BY DELIA O'HARA Kid Zone Gail Carson Levine, the author of the beloved middle-school novel Ella Enchanted, takes on Neverland in Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, the first book in the new Disney Fairies series of illustrated novels for girls ages 6-10. Disney honchos are so pleased with Fairy Dust that they have ordered an initial printing of a whopping 1 million books, and Levine will be in the Chicago area this weekend to read and sign some of them for young readers. The books were the Disney people's idea. The massive success the Magic Tree House, Lemony Snicket and other children's book series is not lost on them, and they asked Levine to "set up the world" for a series that would take off from J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan -- but without Peter Pan or Captain Hook. It turns out that Peter Pan was Levine's favorite book as a child. "I thought Wendy was an idiot for going home," she said in a recent phone interview. At work on Fairy Dust, Levine tried hard to keep Pan and Hook out of the action as per her instructions, but "they kept poking themselves in." Even so, the new book, which is illustrated by David Christiana, is "all about the fairies," she says; Tinkerbell is just the beginning. Levine did keep some of Barrie's ideas, like the notion that a fairy is born every time a baby laughs for the first time. "I was able to catch the flavor of Barrie because I worshipped his work," she says. Other writers also will contribute books to the Disney series, and Levine plans to write at least one more book herself. "It's an adventure for me," she says. "I'm not putting any limits on where it's going to go." Asked why Barrie's venerable tale of a place where children stay children forever is so popular today, Levine says, "I've heard it said that Barrie invented the modern idea of childhood. His representation was more child-centered than an earlier sense of children was. In Peter Pan, the world revolves around children."
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