Octavian and his mother are dressed in finest silks and tutored in the manners of the highborn. Raised by a group of rational philosophers, the son of an exiled African princess has never known life beyond the walls of the mysterious College of Lucidity (the fictitious institute was partly based on the American Philosophical Society the author’s note mentions educational experiments conducted on Native American boys at Harvard University around the same time). Set outside Boston at the time of the Revolutionary War, Octavian’s tale addresses such subjects as slavery, patriotism, rationalism and the extent of human cruelty with unflinching courage and style. “Read it, even if just to get an idea of how different children’s writing can be”), I had to look it up. Anderson might agree – though that’s a subject for another day!) Suffice it to say that apart from the occasional, unusual children’s picture book, which I collect, I hardly ever venture between the covers of novels for children and young adults.īut when a writer friend – none other than my fellow book-fox Ariadne – described The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation : The Pox Party as original, daring, and quite unlike any children’s book she’d read before (“It makes comparable English children’s books seem awfully tame and polite,” she wrote. I’m also of the opinion that writing for children isn’t really all that different from writing for grown-ups (and I suspect that M.T. That’s not to say that the market isn’t brimming with talent and choice but when I read for pleasure, my first instinct is to make a dent in the teetering tower of books at my bedside – novels, poetry, short story and essay collections, history and art books. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume I, The Pox Party, by M.T. Andersonĭespite the fact that I write (among other things) books for children, I hardly ever read youth literature.
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