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 Few writers have inspired as much affection and interest among readers, young and old,
as Lloyd Alexander. Few writers have won so many literary honors. At one point, however,
it seemed unlikely that he would ever be a writer at all.
"My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author," Alexander recalls. "I was fifteen, in my last year of high school. My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work. "I had no idea how to find work, useful or otherwise. In fact, I had no idea how to become an author. If reading offered any preparation for writing, there were grounds for hope. I had been reading as long as I could remember. Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers. I loved all the world's mythologies; King Arthur was one of my heroes; I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield and my uncle's cane for the sword Excalibur. But I was afaid that not even Merlin the enchanter could transform me into a writer." His parents could not afford to send him to college. And so, when a Philadelphia bank had an opening for a messenger boy, he went to work there, feeling, he says, "like Robin Hood chained in the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon. As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract, and had to count on my fingers."
There he trained as a member of a combat team to be parachuted into France to work with the Resistance. "This, to my intense relief, did not happen," says Alexander. "Adventurous in imagination, a real parachute jump would have scared me out of my wits." Instead, Alexander and his group sailed to Wales to finish their training. This ancient, rough-hewn country, with its castles, mountains, and its own beautiful language made a trememdous impression on him. But not until years later did he realize he had been given a glimpse of another enchanted kingdom. Alexander was sent to Alsace-Lorraine, the Rhineland, and southern Germany. When the war ended, he was assigned to a counterintelligence unit in Paris. later he was discharged to attend the University of Paris. While a student, he met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine, and they soon married. Life abroad was fascinating, but eventually Alexander longed for home. "If I was to write anything worthwhile," he says, "I would have to be closer to my own roots." The young couple went back to Drexel Hill, near Philadelphia, where Alexander wrote novel after novel which publishers unhesitatingly turned down. To earn his living, he worked as a cartoonist, advertising writer, layout artist, and associate editor for a small magazine. It took seven years of constant rejection before his first novel was at last published. During the next ten years, he wrote for adults. And then he began writing for young people. It was, Alexander says, "the most creative and liberating experience of my life. In books for young people, I was able to express my own deepest feeling far more than I ever could when writing for adults."
Most of the books have been written in the form of fantasy. But fantasy, Alexander believes, is merely one of many ways to express attitudes and feelings about real people, real human relationships and problems. "My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings. I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will. All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts. If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn." |
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copyright Penguin USA |
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Selected books written by Alexander Lloyd |
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The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man by Lloyd Alexander A cat turned into a human by a magician is seduced by a lifestyle of adventure and love. Reading level: Ages 9-12
Gypsy Rizka
The Book of Three
The Castle of Llyr
Westmark The High King
The Arkadians |
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To view all books written by Lloyd Alexander, just click the "Go" button on the search box. |
For out of print books |
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Finally,
having saved some money, he quit and went to a local college. Dissatisfied with not having
not learned enough to be a writer, he left at the end of one term. Adventure, he decided,
was the best way. The United States had already entered World War II. Convinced that here
was a chance for real deeds of derring-do, he joined the army - and was promptly shipped
to Texas, where he became, in disheartening succession, an artilleryman, a cymbal player
in the band, an organist in the post chapel, and a first-aid man. At last, he was assigned
to a military intelligence center in Maryland. 
