James, J. Alison 1962-
BIO
At home now in a grass-roofed cottage in Vermont, Alison James has lived all over the world. When she was 16, her father got a job with the State Department, the family moved to Pakistan, then to Egypt and later, Liberia. Her interest in translating led her to spend a great deal of time in Europe as well. When she was at Vassar College, Alison James was selected for a class in Verse Writing with Nancy Willard (Newbery Award for A Visit to William Blake’s Inn). She went on to write her thesis on Elsa Beskow, the Swedish Beatrix Potter.
After her graduation, she was delighted to find a Master’s Degree program in Children’s Literature at Simmons College. Here she studied Mythic Patterns with Ethyl and Paul Hines, Fantasy with Betty Levin, and Writing for Children with Nancy Bond (Newbery Honor for A String in the Harp). For her creative thesis, Alison James started writing Sing for a Gentle Rain under the advice of Nancy Bond. After a lecture by esteemed editor, Margaret K. McElderry, Ms. James was encouraged when she was told to send her book along when it was “as fine as you can possibly make it.” Margaret McElderry edited several drafts of the book, and it was published by editor, Marcia Marshall, whose office was across the hallway at Atheneum Books for Children. This became her entry into a wonderful publishing career.
Another Vassar graduate, working as a children's book editor introduced Alison James to the publisher North-South Books. Since that introduction in 1991, James has been translating a number of picture books for them each year. North-South has a parent company in Switzerland, Nord-Sud Verlag, and many of their books originate in German. A complete list of translations can be found here: translations
Sing for a Gentle Rain is a time-travel fantasy about a high school student named James Winter who is pulled back to the year 1280 where he meets a young Anasazi woman, Spring Rain. Her people are threatened by extinction because of an extended drought. It is Spring Rain’s desperate prayers that bring James back in time. Her grandfather, Anasan is the tribal shaman and leader. He has reluctantly taught Spring Rain their songs of power, but Anasan cannot bring himself to reveal their meaning to a girl, even though she is the last of their line. Their people cannot move forward until Spring Rain has a son who can lead them to a new land. The problem is that there are no young men in their community to father her child. James, himself half-Pueblo, finds many things that he has in common with Spring Rain. For him, a painful discovery of culture and language evolves into a rich love for Spring Rain.
Kirkus, in a pointer review, wrote “This beautifully imagined story is well grounded in what is know of the ancient peoples of the Southwest and in the believable characterization of a bright boy, at odds with his own time, whose circumstances open him to a rich experience that grows out of his complex heritage.” Roger Sutton, writing for the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, comments that “Both teens are convincingly of their respective times, and their cross-cultural romance is realistically awkward – witness James’ distress when he is asked by the community of elders to engage in a hunting competition to demonstrate his manly mettle.” In the Horn Book, Nancy Vasilakis praised James’s “unobtrusive blending of the real and fantastic….The shifts in time are smooth and plausible, the author’s vivid detailing of scenes giving life to both modern and ancient episodes…. First novelist J. Alison James confers contemporary relevance to a primitive culture through the bittersweet coming-of-age experience of her adolescent protagonists.”
Switching from the American Southwest to a limestone island off the coast of Sweden, James’s second novel, Runa, tells about a twelve-year-old girl named Runa who travels to Sweden to visit her grandfather. While there, she learns of a curse begun a thousand years ago in which all girls in her family born on Midsummer Day, must die on their thirteenth birthday. Runa turns thirteen in three days, and must solve the mystery of how to avoid her fate.
James says, “Runa’s evolution was more organic; ideas stuck together like atoms to a molecule, each idea changing the structure and forming something new. Powerful, mythic stories clustered around a theme of sacrifice, like the story of Iphigenia, the daughter of King Agamemnon who he had to sacrifice at the start of the Trojan War; or the play Equus. The central catalyst for Runa, was a more personal tragedy. One month before my wedding, my beloved grandmother died. Two years later, a month before my first daughter was born, my mother was killed in a car accident. I was struggling with the unanswerable question of why I had to give up so much to gain such blessings.”
Runa was published a few years before ‘bleak books’ became popular in Young Adult literature. The reviews, perhaps uncomfortable with the subject of human sacrifice in a modern American child, were inconsistent with each other. The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books wrote this about the book: “Runa soon discovers that she is the latest link in a chain of sacrifices that goes back to the death of Balder. Centuries ago, an ancestress of Runa’s had disrupted a Midsummer sacrifice to the Norse god when she refused to allow the priests to immolate her beloved horse, and offered them her thirteen-year-old daughter instead. … With echoes of The Owl Service (not to mention Götterdämmerung), the mythic core of the novel is fierce and dark, but the writing, while smooth, doesn’t match the material.” And Ann Welton, reviewing for Voice of Youth Advocates, felt that “While it’s easy to be caught in the plot, caring about the characters is a more difficult proposition. The setting, the Swedish island of Gotland is beautifully described in visual language.”
Wendy E. Betts, writing for The Web Online Review, came the closest to the core of the book when she wrote, “If there is anything more heartbreaking than death, perhaps it is meaningless death: death by cruel accident, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time – death with no purpose, no honor, no redemption. Runa tells the unusual story of a girl who faces her own imminent death and decides to make it a purposeful one, confronting it with pride, acceptance and heroism…. Runa is a haunting, beautifully written book, with a mystical quality that does not stop it from being painfully real and believable. Runa’s horror and fear are vividly drawn, as she faces the terrible past and equally terrible future; her final moments of sacrifice reach an overwhelming peak of existential beauty. Still, Runa is uncomfortable reading…. The end of Runa is like an unexpected immersion into an alien culture: a valuable experience, but a perturbing one.”
The way Alison James sees the world is more like the genre magic realism than any other genre. Her first original picture-book, Eucalyptus Wings, is a story of magic and friendship. Drawing from early childhood memories of a swing that her father built high in a eucalyptus tree in their back yard, James wrote a story about two girls who find a magical cocoon that for just one night, gives them the ability to fly. When the magic is finished, they are left with the realization that it will never happen again. Their seemingly endless joy is suddenly like the rubber pieces of a popped balloon: lifeless. But when Kiria goes back home, she discovers the swing that her father has been making for her: “a swing with ropes so long it will give you wings!”
Well-known artist Demi, was struck by the message of the book. She created her well-known delicately detailed pen-and-ink art over a watery wash that portrays the landscape. The book gleams with the light of gold ink on many of the pages. Her art helps to convey the theme of fully appreciating a moment. James put it this way: “Sometimes we have an experience that is unrepeatable. Eucalyptus Wings is about allowing that experience to internalize, to become part of the story that makes us who we are.”
Where Alison James lives, there is drumming group of Japanese Taiko; she has always been riveted by their performances. One year, they played a piece that had a program note about its story: A small village in ancient Japan frightened off invading Samurai warriors by wearing demon masks and pounding on their drums. It immediately struck James as a perfect story for a picture book. When their family moved to Okayama, Japan the following year, she took a research trip to the peninsula of Noto Hanto, where the event took place. She met with the descendants of the original villagers, saw them perform their drumming, and photographed their masks. Then she wrote the story, The Drums of Noto Hanto, using strongly rhythmic language for the sounds of the drums: “Don kada Don Don!” Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a starred review, calling it “dramatic” and a “splendid picture book.” The critic also observed that James “parades a series of verbal images as colorful as they are powerful… and her skillful use of onomatopoeia conveys the differing timbers and types of drums. The text exudes a palpable energy.” School Library Journal contributor Grace Oliff began her review by saying, “A simply yet powerfully told tale of underdogs who triumph not by brawn but by courage and ingenuity,” and concluded that The Drums of Noto Hanto is “a unique and interesting tale.”
The Drums of Noto Hanto has, according to the PW review, “strikingly handsome cut-paper illustrations, reminiscent of David Wisniewski’s work,” done by Japanese artist Tsukushi. PW continues, “From the opening image of a drum that protrudes onto the spread as theatrically as the nearby isles erupting form the sea of Japan, this tale will grab readers’ attention…. A samurai battleship sails against a blood-red sky, masked villagers dance wildly by firelight, and drummers sit in a circle concentric with the edge of the globe and the drum as they beat for their lives – the vividness of the spreads is nothing short of hypnotic.”
James has taken a performance of The Drums of Noto Hanto into schools and bookstores nationwide. She tours with a member of the Burlington Taiko Group, and the book comes to life with thunderous Taiko drumming. Children make replicas of the masks from the book, learn to play the Taiko and write Haiku poetry in workshops. Judy Hijikata independent children’s bookseller from Imagination Station in Arlington, Virginia had this to say about their performance: “She’s the best author by a long shot that I’ve ever seen. She does a good reading, she has a lot of energy… Not only does the drummer add an unusual element, this particular guy is dynamic! He’s energetic, knowledgeable, and committed to kids and books.”
Of the many titles that James has translated, none has been so popular as Marcus Pfister’s Rainbow Fish series. Starring a plucky fish with iridescent scales, this book made a publishing debut with laminated holographic foil. The publisher was fairly certain the book would either take of wildly or die a swift death. When the initial printing of 8,000 sold out in the first week, they knew they had a bestseller. Many other of James’s translations have more literary depth, but The Rainbow Fish, with more than 3 million copies in print, is hands-down the biggest hit with children.
James is currently at work on several projects, two picture books, a novel for children, and two for adults. She continues to translate for North South books.
PERSONAL : Born March 8, 1962, in Escondido, CA, daughter of Ednah and Norman Illsley; much of childhood spent in Ft. Collins, CO. Married to Joplin James (teacher) June 21, 1986; children: Anika (1988) and McKinley (1996). Nationality: United States. Education: Vassar College, A.B., 1983; Simmons College, M.A., 1985. Politics: Progressive. Religion: Society of Friends (Quaker).
CAREER: Author and translator 1984 --. Librarian in Everett, MA, Milton and Lincoln VT, and Lake Placid NY, 1985-91. ESL teacher in Okayama, Japan, 1994-95 and Oslo, Norway, 1995-96. Director of Kindling Words, and annual retreat for children’s book professionals, 1992 --. Thai Yoga Massage therapist, Yoga through Storytelling teacher, TESOL Teacher trainer, Motivational Speaker.
AWARDS, HONORS: For Sing for a Gentle Rain, Highest Honor for Fiction award, Society of School Librarians International, Best Books for Young Adults, ALA, Pick of the List, Young Adults Choice, CBC/IRA, New York Public Library 1991 Books for the Teen Age. The Drums of Noto Hanto, NCSS-CBC Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies; Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. The Rainbow Fish, a Christopher Medal for the translation.
WRITINGS:
Sing for a Gentle Rain, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1990.
Runa, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1993.
Eucalyptus Wings, illustrated by Demi, Atheneum (New York, NY) 1995
The Drums of Noto Hanto, illustrated by Tsukushi, DK Ink/Jackson, (New York, NY), 1999
Contributor of entries to The Reader’s Companion to Children’s Literature, edited by Anita Silvey, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1995
The Audition, a short story included in the collection, What a Song can Do, edited by Jennifer Armstrong, Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.
Translations
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Horn Book, January, 1991, Nancy Vasilakis, review of Sing for a Gentle Rain, p. 74
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, December, 1990, Roger Sutton, review of Sing for a Gentle Rain; August 4, 1993, review of Runa.
Kirkus, October, 1990, review of Sing for a Gentle Rain.
The Web Online Review, September, 1993, Wendy E. Betts, review of Runa.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 1993, Ann Welton, review of Runa.
School Library Journal, August 1999, Grace Oliff, review of The Drums of Noto Hanto, p. 137.
Publisher’s Weekly, July 12, 1999, review of The Drums of Noto Hanto, p. 94.
from Something About the Author
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