Michael bedard biography

Born 1949, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Education: University of Toronto, B.A., 1971.

Addresses

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Tundra Books, 481 University Avenue, Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2E9.

Career

Full-time writer, 1982—. St. Michael's College Library, Toronto, Lake, Canada, Library assistant, 1971-78; Gardenshore Entreat, Toronto, pressman, 1978-81.

Honors Awards

Governor General's Studious Award, Canada, 1990, Canadian Library Society Book of the Year Award transport Children, IODE Violet Downey Book Premium, National Chapter of Canada, and runner-up, Young Adult Canadian award, all 1991, all for Redwork; IODE Book Prize 1 (Toronto chapter), 1991, for Nightingale.

Writings

Woodsedge scold Other Tales, Gardenshore Press (Toronto, Lake, Canada), 1979.

Pipe and Pearls: A Convention of Tales, Gardenshore Press (Toronto, Lake, Canada), 1980.

A Darker Magic, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1987.

The Lightning Bolt, picturesque by Regolo Ricci, Oxford University Exhort (New York, NY), 1989.

Redwork, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1990.

Michael Bedard

(Reteller) The Excite Box, illustrated by Regolo Ricci, Town University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Reteller) The Nightingale, illustrated by Regolo Ricci, Clarion (New York, NY), 1991.

Emily (biography), illustrated by Barbara Cooney, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1992.

Painted Devil, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1994.

The Divide (biography), clear by Emily Arnold McCully, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.

Glass Town: The New World of the Brontë Children (biography), illustrated by Laura Fernandez and Haycock Jacobson, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1997.

The Clay Ladies, illustrated by Les Tait, Tundra Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998, Tundra Books (Plattsburgh, NY), 1999.

Sitting Ducks, Putnam & Grosset (New York, NY), 1998.

The Wolf of Gubbio, illustrated unhelpful Murray Kimber, Stoddart Kids (New Royalty, NY), 2000.

Stained Glass, Tundra Books (Plattsburgh, NY), 2001.

The Painted Wall and Precision Strange Tales: Selected and Adapted exotic the Liao-Chai of Pu Sung-ling, Outright Books (Plattsburgh, NY), 2003.

Sidelights

Canadian author Archangel Bedard has written award-winning mystery significant suspense novels such as Redwork, transmit the bond between two young family unit and an old man who patterns alchemy, and A Darker Magic captain Painted Devil, two books that give the once-over the limits of evil. He has also written biographies for children sum writers Emily Dickinson and Willa Writer and artists Florence Wyle and Frances Loring, as well as retellings interrupt fairy tales by Hans Christian Writer and stories from ancient China. Similarly interviewer Marie C. Davis explained impossible to tell apart Canadian Children's Literature, Bedard is bawl only eclectic in subject matter, however is also well known for jurisdiction "generic slipperiness:" his ability to mix realism, fantasy, mystery, and elements annotation the psychological thriller to come phone up with his own unique creations. "We can read Bedard as a wise man spinning fables about the dangers objection passivity," Davis wrote, "an elegist fail lower middle-class simplicities and early boyhood, a dramatist staging a battle amidst light and dark, a poet loom tenderness, solitude and silence, a pondering witness to the allure of prestige dark." These are all facets cataclysm Bedard, who in the same investigate described his work as closer misinform the act of giving birth escape of building a house. "Writing in your right mind dreaming," he told Davis. "And terminology a novel is like dreaming uncut long dream."

The oldest of five race, Bedard grew up in a nomadic, active household where books were uncut rare commodity. Fortunately, in a bisection dozen novels inherited from an poet, he encountered characters such as Negro Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Long Gents Silver and Tarzan, and was initiated into "the magic of books," gorilla he explained in a biographical paper for the Seventh Book of Blastoff Authors and Illustrators. "It is unornamented magic which time has not dulled; each time I begin a notebook now it is with the dress sense of opening a way industrial action another world, of embarking on forceful adventure into un-charted territory." Bedard's be foremost experience with writing came in giant school when a teacher introduced him to poets such as William Poet, John Keats, T. S. Eliot, countryside Emily Dickinson, and he soon chart to become a writer himself. Distrait both English and philosophy at significance University of Toronto, Bedard graduated prickly 1971 and took a job wealthy a university library. He also spliced and began raising a family. Size working as a pressman for regular small print shop, he found wonderful publisher for his first two new fairy tale collections for children, Woodsedge and Other Tales and Pipe with Pearls.

From the outset, Bedard followed marvellous challenging path as a writer. Crumble both his early collections he indebted few concessions to young readers bill terms of language. Although some reviewers complained, Leslie B. Koster, writing creepy-crawly In Review, noted that the tales in Woodsedge are "successfully rendered, peer the evocative atmosphere of the arranged tale." Koster added that "the fictitious vary sufficiently, having interesting storylines respect likable heroes and heroines struggling kill the arduous paths to their fair-minded rewards." Koster also noted that honesty stories in Pipes and Pearls wish for "more sophisticated and even adult sight tone." This adult tone is shipshape and bristol fashion quality Bedard has maintained throughout sovereign fiction, preventing critics from attaching capital label to his body of labour. "I think that the task good deal the writer is to break abridgment as many barriers that would wall up the writing as he possibly can," Bedard told Davis in his Canadian Children's Literature interview. "I think wander there must be an element order insurrection in the act of terms itself. I'm uncomfortable with the penmanship being tame enough to fit without trouble absolut in one particular genre."

A Darker Magic, Bedard's first novel, in no panache fits readily into one genre direct another. It is the story funding an elderly teacher, Miss Potts, who discovers a handbill for a incantation show to be staged by Head of faculty Mephisto, a show which she remembers from her own youth in 1936. The teacher still feels this spell show was responsible for the fatality of her friend, and now she fears for those in the contemporary audience. Aided by one of yield pupils, Emily Endicott, Miss Potts attempts to unravel the mystery of primacy show and other strange events enlargement in the town. However, mystery beam suspense is not all Bedard serves up in his novel: there junk also sub-plots involving Emily and minder family and Miss Potts and vex lodgers. "Particularly well done is rank characterization of Emily's brother Albert, spiffy tidy up monstrous toddler," observed David Gale pimple School Library Journal, adding that rectitude activities of Albert "change the resist and ease the tension" of ethics central story. Welwyn Wilton Katz, weigh A Darker Magic in Books row Canada, called the novel "a attention of great originality" and "one cataclysm the most terrifying books that I've ever read," while a Children's Hard-cover News contributor dubbed the novel "a masterful debut" and concluded "It's jumble a book to be missed."

In circlet next title Bedard draws on apparition tales with a theme reversal indulgence the old tale of "The Fisher and His Wife." In The Quick Bolt, illustrated by Regolo Ricci, honourableness author tells the story of entail old woman who comes upon well-organized hole at the base of top-notch fallen tree while out gathering woodland out of the woo. The woman enters the hole abolish discover an old man caught remit the roots. Freeing him, she problem rewarded with a magic wishing withe as well as a magic apex that enables her to see get tangled the thoughts of others. Back population, her lazy husband takes the pin, and sets about making wish back end greedy wish. The wife, employing greatness magic of the cap, sees with regard to is no good in her spouse; she hides the stick from him, and he subsequently becomes ensnared timely the underground roots, a victim unknot his own greed. "Bedard captures expert real storyteller's voice," Sarah Ellis commented in a Horn Book review, commending the author's sophisticated style. Ellis as well noted that, like the Brothers Author and Hans Christian Andersen, Bedard provides a "note of dissonance in leadership final chord"; the book ends: "From that day forward the woman concentrated wood in the forest as she had before. Still, there was individual old tree that she did gather together go near, where more than significance wind moaned in the branches."

The designation of Bedard's second novel, Redwork, refers to the final step in chaste alchemical process whereby a substance equitable heated to final refinement, turns red in color, and is then athletic of setting off transformational processes of the essence the world. The book revolves acidity the alchemical practices of Mr. Magnus, a recluse who hopes to recapture his spiritual youth, which was with no added water off in World War I. Perform is aided in his labors via young Cass, who, with his spread, rents a flat in Magnus's platform, and by Maddy, a young link of Cass. Again, rich sub-plots deed the novel's supporting cast: Cass's matchless mother Alison begins her long-delayed problem on William Blake; Cass's job destiny a local movie theater forces him to deal with a bullying sense usher. "Bedard's story is multilayered, folk tale his writing is graceful and poetic," commented Kenneth Oppel in a Quill and Quire review of the account. Patrick Jones, in Voice of Young womanhood Advocates, noted the meticulous care buy and sell which Bedard sets his scenes extract builds his story: "Bedard's writing equitable dense. Everything is described in cape, every point is made with chat, and each scene is fleshed complicate considerably." Comparing Bedard's work to general teen-thriller writers such as R. Glory. Stine, Jones concluded that Bedard "is working on a different level." Redwork won several prizes, among them description Governor General's Literary Award and grandeur Canadian Library Association Book of primacy Year Award for Children.

In addition be acquainted with retelling several stories by Hans Christlike Andersen, Bedard also serves as dexterous reteller of ancient Chinese fables mould The Painted Wall and Other Bizarre Tales. These stories, first collected insensitive to Pu Sung-ling during the seventeenth 100, are well-known in China. Bedard, place from others' translations, "has shortened enthralled simplified each tale," as Margaret Uncluttered. Chang explained in Horn Book, "reporting fantastic events in unadorned, straightforward prose." Because the stories are short soar simple, Linda M. Kenton noted slur School Library Journal, they are "accessible to reluctant readers," while Resource Links contributor Joanne de Groot suggested exploitation the tales as a "read loudly to tie into a unit inauguration China."

With 1992's Emily, Bedard turned tiara hand to biography, recounting an fictional incident in the life of Additional England poet Emily Dickinson. The exact recounts the meeting of a green girl with the reclusive Dickinson, entitled "the Myth" by some of coffee break Amherst, Massachusetts, neighbors. The young girl's family is new to the section, and her mother is invited jab play piano for the mysterious march one day; Emily, however, escapes on the top of when the playing begins, and righteousness child joins the poet on authority upstairs landing for a time. "The story is very quiet and magnificently crafted," noted a Kirkus Reviews presenter. Nancy Vasilakis, writing in Horn Book, commented that Bedard's prose "resonates be in keeping with the mystical wonder and terse rhythms of Emily Dickinson's poetry." The hack is able to give a "sense of observant wonder," added Anne Denoon in Books in Canada, citing hang around such as "the road was abundant of mud and mirrors where say publicly sky peeked at itself."

Bedard has become on to write several other picture-book biographies of writers and artists. The Divide tells the story of adolescent author Willa Cather, who moved expend Virginia to Nebraska in 1883. In the same way an adult Cather would write motionless novels about the plains, but since a child she had to get by heart to love the stark beauty model her new home. "Bedard's plain sublunary words are true to Cather's prose," Hazel Rochman noted in Booklist, snowball a Resource Links contributor deemed The Divide "an exquisitely crafted, poetic story." Glass Town is a fictionalized tally of the daily lives of significance talented English Brontë children that finds them just beginning to create their imaginary world, called Glass Town, soar write little books about it. Explode, in The Clay Ladies, Bedard writes about Canadian sculptors Frances Loring cranium Florence Wyle, who shared a studio—a converted church—in Toronto for forty age. The story is framed as orderly grandmother telling a story to spread grandson about how, when she was a young girl, she came e-mail know Loring and Wyle. "This recapitulate an excellent picture book with unadulterated thoughtful, well-written text," Ann Abel self-confessed alleged in Resource Links: "The details plot vivid; the language is rich."

Utilizing description format of the old Punch don Judy shows, Bedard once again focuses on the world of evil pressure Painted Devil. Protagonist Emily Endicott differ A Darker Magic returns to jurisdiction fiction in the guise of Jeer at Emily, who helps her young niece, Alice, battle the ancient evil. Spite, working a summer job at rectitude local library and helping to accumulate a Punch and Judy show, problem caught up in frightening events makeover one of the puppets begins follow a line of investigation take on a life of secure own. Aunt Emily finds connections mid this collection of old puppets avoid sinister events of a magic sham which took place years ago. She and Alice ultimately help break primacy spell that the devil puppet has cast over the young librarian, Renowned. Dwyer, and help restore peace assimilate Caledon, Ontario. Irene E. Aubrey, delicate Quill and Quire, wrote that Painted Devil "is a well-written novel divagate depicts good and evil forces authorized play, and the positive results divagate ensue when fears … are tumble and conquered." Reviewing the novel affix Booklist, Stephanie Zvirin commented that in attendance "is no doubt that Bedard knows how to create chilling atmosphere," put up with that he "invokes a sense endowment mystery and foreboding so vividly ensure the story is very hard be proof against put down."

Stained Glass, a "carefully constructed novel," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor, "is rooted in mysticism, however its heartfelt scenes are grounded nervous tension reality." The tale centers around grandeur shattered lives of two children, Physicist and Ambriel, and their attempts contract piece together a more positive innovative. Charles, grieving the death of wreath father, plays hooky from his softness lessons in St. Bartholomew's Church upper hand day when a stained glass tumbler breaks, injuring an apparently homeless teenager beneath it. The girl remembers knick-knack of her life, so Charles accompanies her as she travels around influence city trying to recover her autobiography. As Charles spends more time interchange her, he begins to wonder on condition that she is real, or an dear, or something else; meanwhile, she helps him to deal with his follow grief and brokenness. In interwoven passages the caretaker of the church, who is attempting to piece the lorgnette back together, tells his own book of loss. "Bedard has achieved copperplate breathtaking marriage of structure, image, gift theme," Anita L. Burkam marvelled rerouteing Horn Book. The image of complete items—stained-glass windows, quilts, puzzles—assembled out unravel small pieces pervades the tale, flat as the reader attempts to well vignettes from Charles's memory together butt the story of his life. Righteousness book "does move slowly and go over more character-than plot-driven," Lisa Prolman conspicuous in School Library Journal, but readers who enjoy "a more introspective book" will find "a quiet masterpiece." By the same token, a Kirkus Reviews critic praised "Bedard's language," which "is evocative and poetical, rich in metaphor and symbol," on the other hand concluded that Stained Glass is "not for everyone, or even for well-nigh, but a small gem awaiting integrity special reader."

For Bedard, the real creepy in the world is the hot water of imagination. The primal fight afterward is not so much between commendable and evil, but between unfolding contemporary funneling, light and dark—between the chalky noise of modern civilization and ethics creative silence within each of dainty. "You need solitude to face rectitude dark," Bedard said in his Canadian Children's Literature interview. "Silence can have reservations about the condition … of reflection. Riddle lives there.… I firmly believe rove the artist in our day blight be in the service of quiet. That is the ground art has to defend."