"David and the Phoenix": The Sequel?

Recently I heard from Christopher LaForce, who, like me, is a fan of Edward Ormondroyd's 1957 middle-grade novel David and the Phoenix.

But there are a good number of fans of this book. So why did I immediately ask Chris if I could interview him?

Read for yourself:

Give a brief bio: who you are, where you live, what you do for a living?

First of all, I am thrilled to have you interview me, Marc! Thank you! My name is Chris LaForce. I was born in Massena, NY in 1961 and raised in a nearby hamlet called Chase Mills. After graduating from the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art (Dover, NJ) in 1987, I've lived in several locations, including Denver, CO and Asheville, NC. For the past 11 years, I've lived here in Taylors, SC with my wife, Amy and three children, Shannon, Ryan, and Jessica. Also for 11 years, I have been employed as a telecommunications Engineer at Windstream Communications, in nearby Greenville, SC.

What is your connection to David and the Phoenix?

I was introduced to David and the Phoenix in December 2015 when my 10-year-old son, Ryan, told me he had just read his mom's copy. My wife had saved her 1958 Weekly Reader Children's Book Club edition all these years because it was one of her favorite books as a child.

Shortly after Ryan filled me in on the book, he and his eight-year-old sister, Jessica, showed me that they had written the first two paragraphs of a sequel. Ryan loved the book, but was disappointed by the ending. He wanted a story wherein the Phoenix would be reunited with David, and would come to remember him. My two youngest asked me for "help" with the manuscript—but soon lost interest in the writing of it. So, in the beginning, this was only a labor of love for my children. As I composed the manuscript, however, I found myself becoming emotionally involved in it.

What made you reach out to me?

I searched the internet for information on Edward Ormondroyd, much like you did, and also found a dearth of info. I located your heartwarming tribute to him, and the video taken in 2011 at the Trumansburg Elementary library. It moved me deeply, and I felt compelled to post my thoughts on your blog.

You told me you reached out to Edward, too. How was your conversation?

I had the privilege of chatting on the phone with Edward on 1/23/16. The first thing he said to me was, "Well, LaForce Awakens!" I thought it was a clever start to a conversation, which was a wonderful and rewarding one. During our 45-minute chat, Edward said he realized now that he had left an angry Scientist out there, still a threat. I mentioned that I had my own solution for this, and for reuniting the Phoenix with a now teenaged David. Mr. Ormondroyd also advised during our conversation, that, although he'd never mentioned David's exact age, he had envisioned the boy as around nine years old, that of a fourth grader. Edward's wife, Joan, a former teacher and librarian, always told him that fourth graders were her favorite age group to teach.

What does he think about you (or anyone) writing a sequel?

Edward had no major objections to someone writing a sequel, although I sensed that he felt normal concerns—that it would be done in a manner that would do justice to his (epic!) original. He asked if I intended to get a publisher, or if it was only the labor of love for my kids that I mentioned earlier. I said I wasn't sure, although I have since decided for certain to get my manuscript published.

Did he make any requests regarding the sequel—things to do or not do?

When I told Edward I intended to mail him my manuscript for his perusal, he said that would be fine. He didn't want to be my editor, though. He said that he would only inform me when it had arrived. Edward didn't really have any requests, but he did voice a couple of concerns. When I told him my sequel takes place about four years after the original, he astutely brought up that the dynamics of a young teen differs from a boy of about age nine and that the reborn, golden Phoenix would be only four years old so he wouldn't be terribly experienced. I explained that I am definitely dealing with the maturing personality of David, and that, in my view, a Phoenix matures comparatively soon, being that, as "hatchlings," they are already physically adults. This Phoenix has a somewhat different personality than the one David befriended, still has limited life experience, and, obviously, a less sophisticated vocabulary. After I had explained this, Edward seemed to agree with the plausibility of it.

Did you decide to try to write a sequel and then come up with a plot, or did an idea for a specific plot come first?

Actually, as such things often go, it was somewhere in the middle. After talking with my son and thinking I might go ahead with writing a sequel, I had a general idea of what I wanted to do with the basic plot. I developed the story as I went along, though, and had a blast doing it!

Will your story have any new characters?

Yes, nearly half of the characters are new, although there are certainly some key figures returning. Without giving too much away, I can't necessarily refute that a certain Witch and Banshee don't make an appearance…

Will you try to get it published via a traditional publisher or do you plan to self-publish?

Although there are certainly a number of options out there today for self-publishing, I would like to find a traditional publisher—one that can not only get an author on Amazon and Barnes & Noble but also in [brick-and-mortar] bookstores (which ones remain, that is). If that doesn't work out to my satisfaction, then I'll go the self-publishing route.

Do you have a working title for the book?

The title is David and the Phoenix II, a Second Chance. It's rather simple, as I wanted to immediately catch the eye of those familiar with the classic original.

Are you writing it in the same style as DATP or will it have a more modern tone?

I decided from the beginning to keep my book in the same charming and wonderful style as Edward Ormondroyd's (as much as possible, anyway). Even the format of chapter titles and such are mirrored.

Have you ever attempted to write and illustrate a book before? If not, have you considered it? If not, why do you think DATP was the inspiration to do so?

I was actually in the midst of writing and illustrating another children's book that I call Waking the Dead. I'm putting my family and pets as the protagonists. Like it probably sounds, it's about the reanimated dead, but in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. I put that project on hold to pursue the DATP II project.

I created a comic strip many years ago called The Bedside Manor. Although I received several fairly positive responses, I wasn't offered a contract.

Anything you'd like to add?

As luck would have it, I just completed the text for my DATP book (and will begin illustrations shortly). An idea I'm formulating is that I'd like to create the illustrations in a style similar to the originals by Joan Raysor, but also blending elements from Purple House Press's Time at the Top, another Ormondroyd epic. That book's artist, Barb Ericksen, has a marvelous style. And, I'll probably throw in some of the illustrative, fading-away-at-the-periphery style of Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame. Incongruous, I know, but I think it can be done!

4/5/25 addendum: The unofficial sequel is out, available in print and pixel!

Three people I interviewed who get a lot of attention

Of the numerous beloved people from pop culture (books, movies, TV, music) I’ve interviewed over the last few years, three seem to generate more engagement than the rest (by which I mean more comments on the blog and more emails to me):

• Danny Janssen (Scooby-Doo)
• Mick Smiley (Ghostbusters)
• Edward Ormondroyd (David and the Phoenix)

An unlikely trio!

Twyla and the Phoenix

“Twyla and the Phoenix”

Singed by the flame
Wings spread anew
Rising in the air
Proud Phoenix
No more cowering in the shadows
You dance alive in the flames

Weakened by the emergence
But not for long
Fueled by the strength
The strength in her song

Songs compiled by the old tunes
In her head
Losing the fear
Forgetting the dread

Be proud Phoenix
You’ve begun anew
The embers are dying
That gave birth to you

Singed by the flames
Forged by the fire
Hope in the wingspan
Lifting from the pyre.

—Twyla Olsen (4/28/90)

On perhaps the most appropriate day for rebirth, January 1, I heard from an educator named Twyla Olsen.

Twyla lives in a small gold-rush town in the Sierra Foothills and instructs speech and communication classes at Columbia College. She is also an artist located at Studio B in downtown Sonora. She can frequently be found in the southwest, one of her favorite locales to paint scenery. 

She wrote me the (excerpted) following:

“Amazing to run across this information on David and the Phoenix. I didn’t think Mr. Ormondroyd would still be alive.” [MTN: Nor did I.]

She said she’d written the above poem many years after reading David and the Phoenix. I forwarded her kind message to Edward and the two connected directly.

I asked if Twyla is she’d elaborate on her connection to the book and explain why she reached out to me. She granted me permission to post her response:

The poem almost wrote itself. It appeared to me one evening sitting at the computer and in response to an English class assignment. I was a re-entry student at age 38, feeling both fear and excitement as I returned to school. This is when I first began experiencing the memory, power, and influence of a book I had read in 2nd grade.

 

Have you had something—a book, a poem or a myth that you read when you were very young—stay with you, guiding you throughout your life, reappearing exactly when you needed it? That’s what the book David and the Phoenix has been for me. 

It is amazing that the theme of this book that I read over 50 years ago as a child would impact my adult life in so many ways. 

[Soon after] I wrote the poem, I realized that it [had come] almost fully formed from my memory and impressions of Edward Ormondroyd’s book. But what evoked the memory? 

“Twyla could work harder if she tried and [could] receive better grades,” said Mrs. Hunt in 3rd grade. I was and have always been a creative thinker and given to daydreaming in class. Mrs. Hunt didn’t understand that my mind was full of images that I had no way of communicating to her. When I read, the world came alive with my mind’s pictures and David’s Phoenix was a powerful image.

I was curious when I wrote my Phoenix poem as an adult. Why had Mr. Ormondroyd’s book been dormant but still alive inside me for so long? Maybe it was the adventure of education. After writing the poem, I thought how amazing it would be if I could tell the author about this poem. I wanted to let him know how this book had captivated my young mind and at this unexpected moment suddenly reappeared! Unable to find any contact information for him, I went on about my life.

Fast forward to today. I began to work on a project persuading funders in education to remember how important the humanities and the arts are to a well-rounded education.  After all, I was living evidence that we cannot put imagination and creativity on a spreadsheet. We may not know how exposure to the arts will inspire or guide a student down the road. But I know deep down that without art, literature, and visualization, my own life experiences and career as an educator would have been far less colorful, and certainly less creative.

Doing research for this important presentation led me to your blog. I was amazed that you had interviewed Mr. Ormondroyd, and that the opportunity for me to share my poem with the author of David and the Phoenix was still a possibility! It was a chapter called “In Which Twyla Finds Marc on the Internet and Her Dream Comes True.”

Sharing my poem with Mr. Ormondroyd was life coming full circle and could very well indicate [the beginning of an auspicious] New Year.

An old phoenix takes a new roost

At the Knoxville Children’s Festival of Reading on 5/18/13, I received a most special gift.

Liza Martz, a fellow writer with whom I’d communicated online but not met in person, came to the festival. With that aforementioned gift.

I’ll let her describe it:
 

It was a book I kept with me all my life. I kept it next to my bed and read it when I felt scared, even as an adult. On 9/11/01, I went to a thrift store to hide from the horror if the day and found it in the book section for a dime. Even though I had my own copy I got it and have held onto it until I found the right person to give it to. It had to be someone who treasured the book as much as I did and still do. And you are that person. Phew. It finally has a good home!

The book: David and the Phoenix, written by Edward Ormondroyd, first published in 1957.

And this is the reason Liza so kindly gave this 1958 edition to me.

Thank you again, Liza. It was a moving gesture.

An aged author meets his fans for the first time

In 2011, I had a transformative experience as an author fan and as an author myself. I had the great fortune of helping to set up a surprise in which author Edward Ormondroyd, whose first book came out in 1957, met an audience of his fans for the first time in his career.

I have blogged about it in pieces and recently retold the story in one go at the site of the NPR radio show Snap Judgment.

Please read (or revisit, as the case may be) the story and if moved by Edward discovering groupies in his golden years, please comment there (and here, of course). My involvement aside, it is a lovely story about a deserving man.

Author Edward Ormondroyd in 1969

Edward wrote one of the most beloved novels of my childhood, David and the Phoenix (published 1957, though my childhood came later).

This year, I interviewed Edward. To my disappointment, he had almost no photos of himself.

Then I met him in person, and surprised him.

Now a friend, Connie Rockman, has unearthed some material on Edward that even Edward did not seem to remember existed, and luckily it includes a photo:
It's from the Third Book of Junior Authors (1972), but because Edward said he was still getting letters about David and the Phoenix "twelve years later," it's apparent that he wrote this in 1969.

Edward is the Phoenix: surprise for an author

 
Finding out that Edward Ormondroyd, author of the 1957 YA novel David and the Phoenix, was still with us (at age 86) was a highlight of my summer.

 
Contacting him and convincing him to let me interview him for my blog was as well.

Yet in terms of moving experiences, both turned out to be mere prologue to the Edward-related event that unfolded in Trumansburg, NY, on 12/2/11. I believe it is unprecedented in the known history of author visits at schools.

Like the fabled Phoenix of his book, Edward (as author) has risen again, and it didn’t require a pyre or fire of any kind.

In the interview, Edward said that, but for two “unofficial” (my term) exceptions, he never spoke in schools, as many children’s authors do today.

A humble and happy man, he didn’t say this with any discernible hint of regret or longing, but I saw an opportunity just the same.

By pure, freakish chance, at the same time I had been tracking down Edward, I was also booking an author visit at Trumansburg Elementary in Trumansburg, NY…which, I would soon learn, happens to be the town in which Edward lives.

Yet apparently, the fact that he is a published author is largely unknown among the townsfolk.

More broadly, David and the Phoenix remains beloved by certain adult readers yet largely unknown among the current generation.

I believed kids and Trumansburgians alike would be most interested in Edward’s books and in Edward himself.

So I asked Purple House Press, the exclusive publisher of David and the Phoenix, if they would discreetly donate copies of it to the school so the kids could take turns reading it in the month leading up to my appearance. The publisher kindly obliged and sent 30 paperbacks at no charge. The kids were not told that their assignment to read Edward’s novel had any connection to my upcoming author visit.

Edward had already planned to attend my talk—anonymously, he thought. But about halfway through, I ambushed the whole room.

I flashed a picture of David and the Phoenix, citing it as a childhood favorite. I innocently asked the kids if they knew the book. As I suspected, their reaction was excitement—and disbelief: what are the chances this guest author would mention the very book by an unrelated author that they all just so happened to read?

Then I announced that Edward just so happened to be in the room. I gestured to him to “introduce” him to the crowd—a surprised author greeting surprised fans...for the first time. He stood and endearingly bowed.

For the Q&A segment with which I close my program, I encouraged students to ask questions of either of us (not having cleared this in advance with Edward). To my great pleasure, upon hearing this, quite a few kids turned to Edward and shot up their hands.

Here are both segments on film—the intro (unfortunately, Edward is cut off, except for his bow) and the Q&A:

 

Edward’s wife and friend had accompanied him; later, his wife said Edward was touched and his friend said seeing Edward get such long-deserved attention brought tears to his eyes. Edward told me he had not thought I would involve him in my presentation, let alone even mention him.

After the presentation, Edward and I posed in front of an important word:

Edward requested this pose.
His wife shrugged and said authors of books for children
never fully grow up.

As if this weren’t memorable enough, the Ormondroyds kindly invited me to their house for dinner (featuring vegetables they grew themselves) that evening. Adding to the honor, fellow author Bruce Coville (whom I’d run into online but never in person) joined us.

Taken in Edward’s library, this photo shows (as Bruce commented) “three generations of David and the Phoenix”—the author (holding the lone first edition hardcover he owns), a fan from circa the first edition (Bruce), and a fan from circa the 1981 Scholastic edition (me):

 
Let’s recap the surprises bundled into this story:

• surprise on me: that Edward lives in same town as a school I was booked to speak at
• surprise on Edward: that I was going to shine the spotlight on him during my presentation and that the kids read David and the Phoenix in prep
• surprise on the kids: that Edward was there and that they'd read David and the Phoenix because Edward was going to be there
• surprise on the people of Trumansburg: that Edward lives in town

The press release I'd sent began with this plea: “Due to the surprise nature of this event, please do not run story (or even discuss locally) until after!” The Ithaca Journal (the region’s daily paper) covered it; the Fox TV affiliate WICZ told me they would be there, but they were a no-show.
  
The day prior, I had seen the film Hugo, in which a younger person shows an older person (silent era filmmaker Georges Méliès) who had a creative influence that he (the older person) is still fondly remembered. I felt like this Edward Experiment was a Hugo moment of my own.

Special thanks to Trumansburg Elementary librarian Gail Brisson who eagerly agreed to take on this additional effort and who managed to keep the whole thing a secret for a month, even from Edward’s wife…who, it just so happens, volunteers in the school.

First-ever interview with Edward Ormondroyd, author of “David and the Phoenix,” part 2 of 2

Part 1.

What was the second book you published and what was it about?

Next came The Tale of Alain, published by Follett. It was beautifully illustrated by Robert Frankenberg and showed an advance in writing skill, but I no longer care for it. It is too moralistic, a kind of secular Sunday school tract. There is no point in discussing it.

Which of your books was the hardest for you to write?

Castaways on Long Ago. I was some sixty (or was it eighty) pages into it before I realized that I had gotten off to a hopelessly wrong-footed start. I threw away the pages and began again with a little incident that becomes a leitmotif throughout the story. Things went well from then on.

How many picture books did you publish and what are the names/subjects?

Seven. In chronological order:

Jonathan Frederick Aloysius Brown. A small boy gets separated from his mother in a crowd. When she next sees him, he is on an elephant leading the circus parade.

Michael the Upstairs Dog. A confined German Shepherd finds his way to the street. A pack of new canine buddies follows him back to his apartment where chaos ensues.

Theodore. A scruff teddy bear is mistakenly run through the wash, making him so clean that Lucy, his owner, doesn’t recognize him. He takes adroit steps to render himself scruffy and recognizable again.

Broderick. A country mouse teaches himself to surf in a nearby lake, and with a human companion goes on to fame and fortune.

Theodore’s Rival. Thinking that Lucy’s new toy panda is a bear, Theodore is consumed by jealousy. Learning that he is still the bear of the family, he masterminds a thrilling rescue of the lost panda.

Imagination Greene. A Colonial farmboy “invents” the automobile, the telephone, and television while clowning for his younger sister. [MTN: Because of its clever premise, I bought a used copy of this out-of-print book, which was published in 1973; I was surprised to see that the back flap bio of Edward does not mention David and the Phoenix, which seems to be his most well-known book.]

Johnny Castleseed. A boy and his father build a beautiful sandcastle by the drip method. Some spectators begin to imitate them, showing the invisible Johnny Castleseed has passed by, scattering castle seeds.

Are all of your books for young readers?

Yes, but adults can enjoy them too. I used to read a lot of terribly boring picture books to my kids and vowed that if I ever wrote picture books, the read-aloud adults would enjoy them along with their children.

Which book is your most personal and why?

Time at the Top. Absolutely. It was such a pleasure to write, maybe because I put myself in it under my own name as one of the characters. A very close second is the sequel, All in Good Time, where I again do something that advances the plot. But all my books are personal. You can’t write fiction impersonally.

Did you ever consider a sequel to David and the Phoenix?

I not only considered it, I was fool enough to write it. Disaster! I threw away the whole book.

What was the sequel about? When did you write it? Did you save no copy?

Well, the Phoenix was irrevocably gone, so I substituted a gnome-like figure, and he and David set out on a quest, carried by a flying suitcase...but of course without the old Phoenix it was as useless as Gone with the Wind without Scarlett O'Hara. I can't remember when I committed this literary crime. No copy. My wastebasket is a receptacle of no return.

If at one point you stopped trying for publication, when and why?

My writing career ended some time in the early 1970s when I realized that the reason I was so hopelessly bogged down in a new book was because the gift of invention had left me, and it was time to get a day job. Fortunately, one was waiting for me.What was it?

Joan and I had come to Ithaca, NY by then. In 1973 or '74 I applied for and got a job as Head of Technical Services in the Finger Lakes Library System.

Which, if any, of your out-of-print books would you like to see reissued? Is it the one you see as most commercial to a modern readership?

Castaways on Long Ago has been reissued by Green Mansion Press. Purple House Press has reissued Time at the Top in addition to David and the Phoenix. A dramatic reading of the latter is available from Full Cast Audio: I read the narrative and actors read the dialog. The first reissue of Time at the Top has sold out, so Purple House Press plans to reissue it again along with its sequel All in Good Time in one volume this fall. Dial Books for Young Readers reissued Theodore with colorful new illustrations, then abandoned it when the economic meltdown left it dead in the water. I would like to see Theodore, Theodore’s Rival, and Broderick reissued, but don’t have any expectations that it will happen.

Do you read any fantasy novels of today?

I don’t seek them out as such. This question led me to the realization that some of my favorite novels are indeed fantasies: Norman Douglas’s South Wind, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake, Nabakov’s Pale Fire.

Have you ever spoken in schools?

Well, I’ve read two of my picture books to gratify my grandson Connor (and his kindergarten teacher) and once at the instance of my wife who volunteers as a teacher’s assistant in a local grammar school.

Please tell me about your wife and children.

Joan and I met when we were both working for the Contra Costa County Library System in California. She had four children and I had three. They are all grown now and living on the west coast, to our sorrow: Karen, a psychotherapist; Jeff an agroecologist and consultant in carbon sequestration; Evan, an architectural and industrial model maker; Gordie, a construction contractor; Claire, a lawyer working for the county personnel department; Aster, an events coordinator; and Beth, a quilter.

Our grandchildren are Brian, who is in college studying architecture; Connor, who just graduated from high school and wants to be a wilderness educator, and Jade, who is in middle school, plays cello, and has distinct artistic abilities.

Where do you live?

Trumansburg, NY, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region, one of the most beautiful landscapes in America.

Do people in your community know you are an author?

Some do, probably most don’t.

Edward today

When was the last time you were asked to speak or appear as an author at an event?

Approximately forty years ago. I told a group of children’s librarians the story of David and the Phoenix—inception, wandering in the wilderness, publication. I learned a little later that what they had wanted to hear about was Time at the Top. And so it goes (as Kurt Vonnegut was so fond of saying).

Have you saved any articles that have been published about you, and if so, when/where are they from?

I’m not aware of any article having been published about me, but a lovely one was published about David and the Phoenix. It was published in 2009 by Roaring Book Press in a book titled Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. People from all walks of life tell about the children’s book that meant the most to them. The essay on David and the Phoenix was written by Professor Gerald Early of Washington University and contains the most flattering words and author can hear: “After I finished reading it, I immediately reread it.”

What interests/activities occupy you these days?

Gardening, practicing piano, trying to keep up with the too-many periodicals we subscribe to, reading new books and rereading old favorites, birdwatching, walking, concert-going. Joan sees to it that we have a lively social life.

How are you feeling?

My joints creak, my bones ache, my vision and hearing are declining—but I feel great!

Are you still writing, and if so, what about?

I’ve made some stabs at it—a couple of poems, memoir-essays—but my discipline is not what it was.

What was your reaction when you learned why I was contacting you?

I was overawed when you introduced yourself as the author of some 70 books. I was intrigued, too. Although I am computer-illiterate I know about blogs, but never dreamed of actually appearing in one.

How do you want people to remember you?

You know, I hadn’t even thought about this until you asked. On reflection, I’ll take a cue from Marianne Moore. As a writer I’d like to be remembered as a maker of imaginary worlds with real characters in them.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Lots, but I’m tired. Aren’t you?

The surprise that happened next. 

Note: The only authorized publisher for Edward's books, including David and the Phoenix and the newly-released, first-ever combined edition of Time at the Top (1963) and its 1975 sequel All in Good Time, is Purple House Press.

First-ever interview with Edward Ormondroyd, author of “David and the Phoenix,” part 1 of 2

As a boy, I read and loved a novel called David and the Phoenix.


A few years into my professional writing career, I rediscovered the book, which had recently been reissued by Purple House Press.

Much more recently, I discovered the author himself, the charming Edward Ormondroyd. After several attempts, I managed to get his attention and asked if I could interview him.

I continue to be surprised whenever I find that someone whose work I loved in a younger day has almost no or literally no online presence—barely a photo and nary an interview. But then I get excited because it means maybe I can be the one to help change that.

As is the case here. For Edward kindly agreed to an interview and generously shared a richer tableau than I could’ve rightfully asked. (Then again, I did ask a lot, to which Edward wrote “Cry you mercy, sir! Forty-one questions!”)

Here are his (approximately) 41 answers (among them, another reminder that a rejection is not always the end):

When and where were you born? Where did you grow up?

1925. Wilkinsburg, PA. From age 5 to 12, Swarthmore, PA. From 12 through high school, Ann Arbor, MI. I’m still growing up...I hope.

What was your childhood like?

Suburban, mildly affluent, for the most part idyllic. In those Depression days children were not densely scheduled as they now seem to be. Once chores (lawn mowing, carrying out the garbage, weeding) were done, I was free to roam with my friends through a landscape much more accessible than any comparable one now.

Did you have a favorite book as a child?

I loved so many that it is impossible to pick a favorite. All of A.A. Milne. Kipling’s Jungle books and Just So Stories. Treasure Island and A Child’s Garden of Verses. Heidi. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Later I came under the spell of Arthur Ransome—in fact, I’m still under his spell.

What kind of student were you?

Pretty backward in arithmetic, but pretty adept in other subjects. When math became more interesting, at the algebra stage, I began to catch on and catch up. I was a dud in sports (but a good swimmer).

What were your feelings about serving in WWII? Did you see combat?

I couldn’t wait to join up. It wasn’t patriotism so much as allure of a great adventure. I joined the Navy as soon after high school as I could (1943). It was an intense learning experience for a well-bred, well-educated, sheltered boy to be thrown in with roughs and rowdies, Southerners still sore about losing the Civil War, older men, kids from the working class, from farms, from big cities. And I loved being at sea.

I never saw combat in the sense of being involved in the great Pacific naval battles, but my ship, a destroyer escort, was close astern an aircraft carrier when the carrier was hit by a kamikaze and caught on fire. The fire could not be controlled and the ship had to be abandoned after the aviation gasoline and ammunition locker exploded. I was on the bridge as a scared and horrified witness of the whole disaster. It was enough action to last me a lifetime.

What was your college experience?

I was one of the horde of veterans that poured into UC Berkeley on the GI Bill. The administration had to set up a circus tent to process us through and the line of applicants snaked around several city blocks. I majored in English literature. I was so hungry to know that I wanted to take every course in the catalog. Except for an intense spell of depression, for which I could not account (nor can I now), I had an exciting and enjoyable freshman year.

As a sophomore I acquired two roommates, a physics major and a public health major who was a refugee from wartime Vienna. We rented a third-floor apartment, sharing the rent of—hold on to your chair—$32.50. We called the place Heaven’s Cellar. We did our own cooking, most of it edible, and lived very well on our government stipends of $65 a month. We even had jug wine (one dollar a gallon) with dinners and thought ourselves immensely sophisticated. I later returned to library school at Berkeley and took an MLS degree.

Folk songs were all the rage; it was the time of Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennett, John Jacob Niles. Classical music was a shared interest, too. I joined the staff of the campus literary magazine and published a story and a poem. Of course went to the home football games to cheer the team, whistle and howl at the drum majorettes, and make indelicate gestures at our opponents, especially Stanford. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

What was your first job after college?

Nothing in my education prepared me for a white-collar job and I had no interest in becoming a member of academe. The chronology of my work experience is hopelessly mixed up in my memory but my first job was in a paper processing plant, one of the many small factories in the western end of Berkeley. I learned to operate a cutting machine and joined a union. Later I clerked in a bookstore. I thought of it all as a way of subsidizing my career as a writer. I was writing not-very-good stories and keeping a journal. I learned to play the recorder, which in later years led to a position in a Renaissance band. A shortage of sailors led me to ship out for a time as an AB seaman with Standard Oil—tanker runs from the refineries of Richmond to Alaska and Hawaii. This was so lucrative that I could live on my savings for long periods without working at all. It will be no surprise that after library school I got a job as a librarian.

When did you realize you’d like to write books?

By the end of high school I knew I wanted to write—but I didn’t know what to write about. The idea of writing a book, let alone a children’s book, didn’t occur to me until I found myself composing David and the Phoenix in college. I’m still surprised that it happened. It was as if the choice made me rather than the other way around.

What inspired you to write David and the Phoenix?

As I explain in the foreword to the reprint of David and the Phoenix by Purple House Press, I was walking on the Berkeley campus when a vision flashed in my mind of a large bird hurling itself out of an upstairs window and becoming entangled in a rose arbor below. It’s a complete mystery to me where that came from. Alpha Centauri, perhaps? That the bird might be the Phoenix might have been suggested by a scene in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, which I had just read. I was familiar with the Phoenix legend [i.e. that there is only one at a time]. My bird’s character may have been suggested by Major Hoople, a fat and pompous character in a newspaper cartoon called Our Boarding House. Perhaps the notion of David riding the Phoenix’s back came from The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf, in which a very small boy is carried to various adventures on the back of a goose.

from the 1957 (first edition) jacket

Edward circa 1960

I know it was your first published book but was it the first book you wrote with the intention of publication?

Thereby hangs a tale of coincidence, mystery, and irony. I wasn’t consciously thinking of publication when I began David and the Phoenix. An intriguing idea had come to me and I was having fun seeing what I could do with it. I think my main motive was to amuse two dear friends, Shirley and Josh, who eventually became the dedicatees. Of course, publication did become a goal as I proceeded, but I was totally in the dark as to how one achieved it. At last, here was this thick completed manuscript—now what?

Here’s the coincidence part. Just about this time I somehow learned that Follett Publishing Company in Chicago was launching a contest: previously unpublished writers could submit their juvenile manuscripts and the winner would not only be published but awarded a substantial cash prize. I sent in my book, and after a long period of hopes and fears, got it back with blandly-worded regrets.

Now began the seven-year period that I think of as the years wandering in the wilderness. I didn’t know that I could have gone to the public library to be supplied with a plethora of publishing information—names and addresses. So yet again it was…now what?

Not long after the return of my book, I got a very nice note from a very nice lady. (Would that I could remember her name, to thank her or her memory for this kindness and a later one.) She said that she had been on the panel of judges for the Follett contest, had liked my book very much, and wanted to see it published; send it to—and she gave me the names and addresses of some juvenile editors. I thanked her and duly sent off the manuscript to the suggested editors. It was duly rejected by each one.

At a party I met a young lady who told me she was off to New York shortly in the hopes of becoming a literary agent. “Exactly what I need!” I said. She read my story, said she loved it, and set off. And vanished. She never got in touch with me, I didn’t know how to get in touch with her, and the rest, as they say, is silence.

Then there was the delivery service. It didn’t attempt to sell your book but for a fee would deliver it to three publishers’ offices. I retype the manuscript from the carbon copy and sent it off. A very long silence, at the end of which I wrote to ask what was up. The apologetic answer: they had lost the manuscript.

While poor David and the Phoenix wandered in the wilderness, I was busy writing between or during jobs. Having written a children’s book was all very well, but I thought a real writer’s goal should be the Great American Novel. I went through a lot of literary turmoil to discover that I didn’t have the chops for the Great American Novel, or even an ordinary American novel.

Then something amazing happened. Years after her first note, the very kind lady wrote me another. She said she had been waiting a long time for my book’s appearance on some publisher’s list and was disappointed not to find it. [She recommended some agents and I selected one at random.] It was the turnaround moment.

Muriel Fuller knew her stuff and had a great sense of humor. She liked David and the Phoenix, I liked her, and we were in business forthwith. She began collecting rejections, too, but because she could talk directly to editors she also began to get valuable suggestions. The most cogent was that the manuscript was too long. She agreed. I probably balked at first but was finally persuaded to get out my chainsaw and scalpel. The story was cut by at least a third and I had to admit that the leaner version was the better one.

Ms. Fuller finally sold it—to Follett, the very first publisher to have rejected it seven years before. Not only that, she placed it in a Sunday school magazine for children, name and denomination now forgotten. Best of all, she sold it to the Weekly Reader Book Club.

By chance do you still have the rejection letters?

I collected them for a while, then discarded them all. There was nothing to be learned from their bland, [similar] wording. [They were] printed up in advance, of course, and I can understand and appreciate why. Still, if some editor had scrawled on a scrap of paper “We don’t like your story and wouldn’t dream of publishing it,” I would not only have saved the letter, I would have framed it!

Which job from the list above was your day job while writing David and the Phoenix?

I believe most or all of it was written while I was being supported by the GI Bill. Sorry to be so vague, but it all happened more than half a century ago.

Do you remember how long the book took you to write?

It was not written in a single stretch of time. Other matters intervened at least twice. Let’s say, all in all, about six months. A major revision made at one editor’s suggestion must have taken another month, at least, because all the decisions I had to make were not easy.

Did you write it longhand or by typewriter?

I wrote it in longhand first ([probably pencil because the first ballpoint pens were so frustratingly unreliable) and then typed it up when the cross-outs, interlineations, and marginal additions threatened to make the whole page incoherent even to me. Of course, the typed version would be put through many revisions, too. I wrote all my books this way.

Do you remember how you reacted when you learned it would be published?

No, but I must have been elated after all those years of wandering in the wilderness. I think I also had a naive conviction that I was on the brink of fame and fortune.

Did you do signings or other appearances to promote the book?

No, in those days it was the publisher’s job to promote a book, not the author’s. I have since done signings but under only the most local of circumstances, and not in the interest of promotion.

What was the reception to David and the Phoenix from reviewers, teachers, kids?

I never read any reviews of the book—they were published in newspapers and periodicals that I didn’t subscribe to or didn’t even know about. No one clipped them out to send to me. The local Bay Area reviews must have been positive because the Commonwealth Club of California awarded me a silver medal for the best juvenile of 1957. I had to give a speech at their annual literary awards dinner. (Terrifying!)

I began to hear from teachers, and occasionally still do, who enjoyed reading it to their pupils, whose letters they would include along with their own. The most heartening responses are from now-middle-aged readers who tell me how much they loved it as kids, and how much they look forward to sharing it with grandchildren, nieces. and nephews.

Was there ever talk of turning David and the Phoenix into a film? If so, what happened? If not, would you like that?

Oh yes, lots of talk, mostly by graduates of film school who fantasized about making a film but didn’t have the necessary contacts in the industry. Ten years or so after publication, a caricature of a Hollywood [producer called and] offered me $10,000 for the rights. “Ask for more,” a friend suggested. I did, and that was the end of that. I might have suspected a put-on except none of my friends would have been capable of such a prank.

The [following] story is so amusing that my wife Joan still tells it to general hilarity at dinner parties. Disney wanted to make it into [one of] its trademark animated cartoon[s]. [When they first called, Joan thought it was a promotional call for Disneyland, said “We’re not interested,” and hung up. The Disney person, now puzzled, called back and said they wanted to make a movie.]

The money on offer was, by industry standards, stingy. [Plus] Jill Morgan, my new publisher at Purple House Press, and I simply didn’t like what Disney does with its “properties.” On the very brink of the deadline, a young man burst on the scene begging us not to sign with Disney. He had loved David and the Phoenix since he was a boy and was determined to organize a film himself and do it true to the story. He was in the industry and had plenty of contacts. So convincing was he that we told Disney no and gave him our blessing.

He has aroused a lot of interest wherever he’s taken it, but at the end of seven years has still not found someone to put up the money. I would like a film to be made, but only if the spirit of the book is kept in the transition.

As a coda, a more upbeat story: Bruce Coville formed a company called Full Cast Audio to record dramatic readings of children’s books in which the author reads the narrative parts and actors read the dialogue. He invited me to record David and the Phoenix. It was a fascinating—and exhausting—process. The company has since succumbed to the economic downturn, but the recording is still available, and occasionally outsells the book itself.

By the way, my favorite of my books, Time at the Top, was made into a movie for TV by Showtime. When I read the script, I was so appalled at what had been done to my beloved story that I have never been able to bring myself to watch it.

Part 2.

Note: The only authorized publisher for Edward's books, including David and the Phoenix and the newly-released, first-ever combined edition of Time at the Top (1963) and its 1975 sequel All in Good Time, is Purple House Press.