Patti Frazee's Blog - Posts Tagged "circus"
Cirkus: the beginning
As I reread Cirkus to prepare to release it as an ebook, I started thinking about the process.
Many people asked me if I had a love of the circus when I was younger. The fact is...I had never been to a circus when I was young. In fact, I have never been to a circus (unless one counts Cirque de Soleil).
My first exposure to the circus, in person, was when I worked at the Omaha Civic Auditorium in Nebraska. Everyday on my way to the box office, where I worked, I passed the lion cages in the "backstage" area of the circus. Um...they were in these tiny cages with a tarp over them.
And the few times I got close to the elephants, I noticed the whip marks along their sides.
Both of these things totally turned me off of the circus. But they stuck with me...enough to put this kind of cruelty in the book. Mariana reacts to it many times in the book; she longs to free the animals.
When I did research for the book, I tried to stay away from anything about the animals because it made me sad. But I do know that circuses in the early 1900s didn't know how to treat these exotic animals. They treated their health care as they would a dog or cat. Many of the animals died over the winter months.
So no, I do not have a love for the circus. The book was born out of my interest in the conjoined twins...but more about that in a later blog.
Many people asked me if I had a love of the circus when I was younger. The fact is...I had never been to a circus when I was young. In fact, I have never been to a circus (unless one counts Cirque de Soleil).
My first exposure to the circus, in person, was when I worked at the Omaha Civic Auditorium in Nebraska. Everyday on my way to the box office, where I worked, I passed the lion cages in the "backstage" area of the circus. Um...they were in these tiny cages with a tarp over them.
And the few times I got close to the elephants, I noticed the whip marks along their sides.
Both of these things totally turned me off of the circus. But they stuck with me...enough to put this kind of cruelty in the book. Mariana reacts to it many times in the book; she longs to free the animals.
When I did research for the book, I tried to stay away from anything about the animals because it made me sad. But I do know that circuses in the early 1900s didn't know how to treat these exotic animals. They treated their health care as they would a dog or cat. Many of the animals died over the winter months.
So no, I do not have a love for the circus. The book was born out of my interest in the conjoined twins...but more about that in a later blog.
