Mythopoeic Awards 2022
I am wondering if any member(s) of the Mythopoeic Society would be willing to consider nominating my children's novel The Enchanted Grove for the Mythopoeic Awards for 2021.
The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for beginning readers to age thirteen in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees. Books for mature “Young Adults” may be moved to the Adult literature category.
You can see something about the Mythopoeic Awards in previous years here Mythopoeic Awards 2020: Call for Nominations (Friday Feature). And for the 2021 winners (for books published in 2020), see The 2021 Mythopoeic Awards Winners.
If there are any members of the Mythopoeic Society reading this, who might be willing to consider nominating The Enchanted Grove. I will gladly send a free review copy of the book. I'm not asking anyone to nominate it sight unseen, but only to decide, after reading it, whether they think it is worth nominating. I'm hoping that if anyone does that, that they will be willing to tell be why they thought it was, or wasn't worth nominating. That will in turn help me to decide whether it is worth spending time in writing sequels.
The Enchanted Grove is a novel for children aged about 9-12, in the tradition of The Chronicles of Narnia or Alan Garner's children's novels, like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. It is available as a paperback and in various e-book formats -- see here. It is set in the 1960s in the southern Drakensberg mountains of South Africa, and so in that sense it is a historical novel as well, though of course the fantasy elements are not historical. It is the story of three children, Jeffery, Janet and Catherine, who encounter teenage bullies, witches and political plots, which lead them into dangerous and frightening adventures.
You can see some reviews of the book in the GoodReads page, and if you think it sounds interesting, please add it to your "want to read list". There are also some reviews on the Amazon page.
Though it is a sequel to an earlier book, Of Wheels and Witches, it is not necessary to have read the earlier book in order to enjoy this one, which does have a few explanatory references to the earlier book.
You can learn more about the Mythopoeic Society from their blog, The Horn of Rohan Redux, and from their web site here. The Mythopoeic Society is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the “Inklings.”
Though I've never been a member -- the Mythopoeic Society operates mainly in North America -- I've known of the Society for more than 50 years, and in the early 1970s we used to exchange journals through an outfit called The Cosmic Circuit -- which described itself as an exchange of underground, upground and overground small magazines. We used to send them our journal Ikon, and they sent us their Mythopoeic journal. That was what we did before the appearance of electronic social media, which only arrived about 20 years later. I think I still have some copies of 1970 editions of the Mythopoeic Society's journal somewhere.
For more about the Mythopoeic Awards, and for previous years' winners, see the Wikipedia article here -- you might find some interesting books there that you haven't yet read.for modernity
And for those who may be wondering what "mythopoeic" means, it has to do with the making of myths, and applies to the writing of mythical stories. Myths were probably more familiar in premodern thought, and for modernity to say that something is mythical is often pejorative. Many modern people think that if something is called "mythical" it is therefore untrue, and not worthy of attention, or even harmful. For those who think in that way, I offer the following quote from the Orthodox Christian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev:
Myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept. It is high time that we stopped identifying myth with invention, with the illusions of primitive mentality, and with anything, in fact, which is essentially opposed to reality... The creation of myths among peoples denotes a real spiritual life, more real indeed than that of abstract concepts and rational thought. Myth is always concrete and expresses life better than abstract thought can do; its nature is bound up with that of symbol. Myth is the concrete recital of events and original phenomena of the spiritual life symbolized in the natural
world, which has engraved itself on the language memory and creative energy of the people... it brings two worlds together symbolically (N. Berdyaev, Freendom and the Spirit, 1948. p 70).
The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for beginning readers to age thirteen in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees. Books for mature “Young Adults” may be moved to the Adult literature category.
You can see something about the Mythopoeic Awards in previous years here Mythopoeic Awards 2020: Call for Nominations (Friday Feature). And for the 2021 winners (for books published in 2020), see The 2021 Mythopoeic Awards Winners.
If there are any members of the Mythopoeic Society reading this, who might be willing to consider nominating The Enchanted Grove. I will gladly send a free review copy of the book. I'm not asking anyone to nominate it sight unseen, but only to decide, after reading it, whether they think it is worth nominating. I'm hoping that if anyone does that, that they will be willing to tell be why they thought it was, or wasn't worth nominating. That will in turn help me to decide whether it is worth spending time in writing sequels.
The Enchanted Grove is a novel for children aged about 9-12, in the tradition of The Chronicles of Narnia or Alan Garner's children's novels, like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. It is available as a paperback and in various e-book formats -- see here. It is set in the 1960s in the southern Drakensberg mountains of South Africa, and so in that sense it is a historical novel as well, though of course the fantasy elements are not historical. It is the story of three children, Jeffery, Janet and Catherine, who encounter teenage bullies, witches and political plots, which lead them into dangerous and frightening adventures.
You can see some reviews of the book in the GoodReads page, and if you think it sounds interesting, please add it to your "want to read list". There are also some reviews on the Amazon page.
Though it is a sequel to an earlier book, Of Wheels and Witches, it is not necessary to have read the earlier book in order to enjoy this one, which does have a few explanatory references to the earlier book.
You can learn more about the Mythopoeic Society from their blog, The Horn of Rohan Redux, and from their web site here. The Mythopoeic Society is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the “Inklings.”
Though I've never been a member -- the Mythopoeic Society operates mainly in North America -- I've known of the Society for more than 50 years, and in the early 1970s we used to exchange journals through an outfit called The Cosmic Circuit -- which described itself as an exchange of underground, upground and overground small magazines. We used to send them our journal Ikon, and they sent us their Mythopoeic journal. That was what we did before the appearance of electronic social media, which only arrived about 20 years later. I think I still have some copies of 1970 editions of the Mythopoeic Society's journal somewhere.
For more about the Mythopoeic Awards, and for previous years' winners, see the Wikipedia article here -- you might find some interesting books there that you haven't yet read.for modernity
And for those who may be wondering what "mythopoeic" means, it has to do with the making of myths, and applies to the writing of mythical stories. Myths were probably more familiar in premodern thought, and for modernity to say that something is mythical is often pejorative. Many modern people think that if something is called "mythical" it is therefore untrue, and not worthy of attention, or even harmful. For those who think in that way, I offer the following quote from the Orthodox Christian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev:
Myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept. It is high time that we stopped identifying myth with invention, with the illusions of primitive mentality, and with anything, in fact, which is essentially opposed to reality... The creation of myths among peoples denotes a real spiritual life, more real indeed than that of abstract concepts and rational thought. Myth is always concrete and expresses life better than abstract thought can do; its nature is bound up with that of symbol. Myth is the concrete recital of events and original phenomena of the spiritual life symbolized in the natural
world, which has engraved itself on the language memory and creative energy of the people... it brings two worlds together symbolically (N. Berdyaev, Freendom and the Spirit, 1948. p 70).