Author | E. L. Konigsburg |
---|---|
Illustrator | E. L. Konigsburg |
Language | English |
Genre | Children's novel |
Publisher | Atheneum Books/Simon and Schuster |
Publication date | 1967 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
Pages | 128 pp (paper) |
ISBN | 0-440-44162-5 (paper) |
OCLC | 11687301 |
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth is a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg. It was published by Atheneum Books in 1967 and next year in the UK by Macmillan under the title Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth and Me. [1]
Jennifer, Hecate was the author's first book published, the same year as her second book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler . Mixed-Up Files won the 1968 Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate won a Newbery Honor, making Konigsburg the only person to win both citations in one year. [2] [n 1] She had submitted both manuscripts to editor Jean E. Karl, who accepted both. [3]
Jennifer, Hecate is narrated by the protagonist Elizabeth in the title. She has moved into a big apartment building in a town where almost everyone lives in a house. [4] She doesn't yet have any friends when she meets Jennifer on her way back to school after lunch on Halloween day. Although dressed as a Pilgrim, Jennifer claims to be a real witch. After one Saturday meeting, Jennifer takes Elizabeth as an apprentice and sets weekly meetings with assignments. "For the first week...you must eat a raw egg every day. And you must bring me an egg every day. Make mine hard boiled." [5] They meet only in school, the library, the park, or the woods between home and school. The apprenticeship is difficult for Elizabeth. Sometimes she gets mad at Jennifer, but "before I'd got Jennifer, I'd had no one." [6]
After several weeks, they choose a long project—to prepare an ointment that conveys the ability to fly. It will also be a test for Elizabeth's promotion from apprentice. The final ingredient will be a live toad, selected in advance. During the intervening months, the toad becomes a pet. Elizabeth stops Jennifer from adding him to the brew, which terminates the ointment and their friendship. Later she realizes that her affection for the toad was part of the test.
Finally, Elizabeth deduces that Jennifer's dad is gardener at "The Estate" across the street, and they live on site. As Elizabeth proudly puts the clues together, Jennifer is walking to her door. Inside, Jennifer soon laughs and admits that the whole witch thing was just a make-believe fantasy. The two girls become normal friends who focus on reality-based pursuits.
Konigsburg recognized that her children were "suburban kids, comfortable/uncomfortable kids". [7] Their experiences were quite unlike her own, more like her former students at Bartram School for Girls in Jacksonville, Florida; [1] they were "softly comfortable on the outside and solidly uncomfortable on the inside." [8]
She wrote for the Book of Junior Authors that Jennifer, Hecate was "based upon what happened when my daughter was the newcomer to our apartment house in Port Chester, New York" [7] where the family had relocated from Jacksonville in 1962. [1]
Some controversy regarding Konigsburg's works has concerned censorship, she told Scholastic Teachers. For example, "there are people who don't like Jennifer, Hecate ... because the little girl pretends to be a witch." [9]
The book was turned into an NBC Children's Theatre feature titled Jennifer and Me that aired on March 3, 1973. [10] [11] Peabody Award winner June Reig produced, directed and wrote the special. [12]
Ann Macbeth was a British embroiderer, designer, teacher and author. She was a member of the Glasgow Movement where she was an associate of Margaret MacDonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and many other 'Glasgow Girls'. She was also an active suffragette and designed banners for suffragists and suffragettes movements.
Flying ointment is a hallucinogenic ointment said to have been used by witches in the practice of European witchcraft from at least as far back as the Early Modern period, when detailed recipes for such preparations were first recorded and when their usage spread to colonial North America.
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction. She is one of six writers to win two Newbery Medals, the venerable American Library Association award for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American children's literature."
Jennifer L. Holm is an American children's writer, and recipient of three Newbery Honors and the Eisner Award.
Robin McKinley is an American author best known for her fantasy novels and fairy tale retellings. Her 1984 novel The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as the year's best new American children's book. In 2022, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 39th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
The Witch is a Jacobean play, a tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton. The play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. It is thought to have been written between 1613 and 1616; it was not printed in its own era, and existed only in manuscript until it was published by Isaac Reed in 1778.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder was an American author of books for children and young adults. Three of Snyder's works were named Newbery Honor books: The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm. She was most famous for writing adventure stories and fantasies.
The Hero and the Crown is a fantasy novel written by Robin McKinley and published by Greenwillow Books in 1984. It is the winner of the 1985 Newbery Medal award. This story focuses on "Aerin Dragon-Killer", also known as "Aerin Firehair", the heroine who is introduced as a legendary character in The Blue Sword. The book narrates Aerin's evolution from the shy, retiring daughter of the King of Damar to the heroic queen who protects her people from the demonic Northerners.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is a novel by E. L. Konigsburg. The book follows siblings Claudia and Jamie Kincaid as they run away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was published by Atheneum in 1967, the second book published from two manuscripts the new writer had submitted to editor Jean E. Karl.
Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.
Nancy Barbara Bond is an American author of children's literature. In 1977 her first book, A String in the Harp, was fantasy novel with an element of folklore, set in West Wales. It received a Newbery honor and the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award, and remains in print.
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Betsy Reilly Lewin is an American illustrator from Clearfield, Pennsylvania. She studied illustration at Pratt Institute. After graduation, she began designing greeting cards. She began writing and illustrating stories for children's magazines and eventually children's books. She is married to children's book illustrator Ted Lewin and with him has co-written and illustrated several books about their travels to remote places, including Uganda in Gorilla Walk and Mongolia in Horse Song, as well as How to Babysit a Leopard: and Other True Stories from Our Travels Across Six Continents. She is arguably best known for the Caldecott Honor Book Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type.
Up from Jericho Tel is a children's novel written and illustrated by E. L. Konigsburg, published by Atheneum Books in 1986.
Stephanie S. Tolan is an American author of children's books. Her book Surviving the Applewhites received a Newbery Honor in 2003. She obtained a master's degree in English at Purdue University. Tolan is a senior fellow at the Institute for Educational Advancement. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband. Her papers are kept at the University of Central Missouri.
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, often referred as The Triple Hecate or simply Hecate, is a 1795 work of art by the English artist and poet William Blake which depicts Enitharmon, a female character in his mythology, or Hecate, a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess of magic and the underworld. The work presents a nightmarish scene with fantastic creatures.
The Second Mrs. Giaconda, later The Second Mrs. Gioconda, is a historical novel for children by E. L. Konigsburg. Set primarily in Milan, Italy, it features Leonardo da Vinci, his servant Salai, and duchess Beatrice d'Este. Through the experiences of Salai narrated in third person, it explores the background of da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Jean Edna Karl was an American book editor who specialized in children's and science fiction titles. She founded and led the children's division and young adult and science fiction imprints at Atheneum Books, where she oversaw or edited books that won two Caldecott Medals and five Newbery Medals. One of the Newberys went to the new writer E. L. Konigsburg in 1968 for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
Liar & Spy is a children's novel written by Rebecca Stead published in 2012 that is set in Brooklyn and describes the adventures of Georges and Safer, two middle school students who are working to unmask a suspected spy in their building. At the same time, Georges is experiencing a casual bullying that adults in his life seem to minimize. Stead was the first American author to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Liar & Spy, in 2013.
E. L. Konigsburg, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, New York: Atheneum Books, 1967. Third Aladdin Paperbacks edition, February 2007.