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Apple Lock / Abaloc #2
The Change Child
In sixteenth-century Wales, a young girl's red-gold hair and lame foot make her suspect to her neighbors who fear that she is a fairy child and capable of magic.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 1970
34 people want to read
About the author
Jane Louise Curry
40 books30 followersJane Louise Curry was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, on September 24, 1932. She is the daughter of William Jack Curry Jr. and Helen Margaret Curry. Curry grew up in Pennsylvania (Kittanning and Johnstown), but upon her graduation from college she moved to Los Angeles, California, and London, England.
Curry attended the Pennsylvania State University in 1950, and she studied there until 1951 when she left for the Indiana State College (now known as Indiana University of Pennsylvania). In 1954, after graduation, Curry moved to California and worked as both an art teacher for the Los Angeles Public School District and a freelance artist. In 1957, Curry entered the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in order to study English literature, but in 1959 she left Los Angeles and became a teaching assistant at Stanford University. Curry was awarded the Fulbright grant in 1961 and the Stanford-Leverhulme fellowship in 1965, allowing her to pursue her graduate studies at the University of London. She earned her M.A. in 1962 and her Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Stanford University in 1969. From 1967-1968 and, again, from 1983-1984, Curry was an instructor of English literature at the college level. She became a lecturer in 1987. Besides her writings, Curry’s artworks are also considered among her achievements. She has had several paintings exhibited in London, and her works have even earned her a spot in the prestigious Royal Society of British Artists group exhibition. Among the many groups that Curry belongs to are the International Arthurian Society, the Authors Guild, the Children’s Literature Association, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers.
Curry illustrated and published her first book Down from the Lonely Mountain in 1965. This juvenile fiction based on Californian Native American folklore has paved the way for Curry’s expansive literary career. She has penned more than 30 novels, which are mostly based on child characters dealing with a wide variety of subjects. Many of Curry’s writings deal with folklore, such as the Native American folklore that she explores in her novels Turtle Island: Tales of Algonquian Nations and The Wonderful Sky Boat: And Other Native American Tales of the Southeast, and the retellings of famous European folk stories, such as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Robin Hood in the Greenwood, and The Christmas Knight. Yet she also delves into the genres of fantasy, such as in her novels Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Time and Me, Myself, and I; historical fiction, such as in her novels What the Dickens and Stolen Life; and mystery, such as in her novels The Bassumtyte Treasure and Moon Window.
Curry has been honored with many awards throughout her writing career. In 1970, her novel The Daybreakers earned Curry the Honor Book award from the Book World Spring Children’s Book Festival and the Outstanding Book by a Southern California Author Award from the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People. The Mystery Writers of America honored Curry two years in a row by awarding her the Edgar Allan Poe Award, or the Edgar, for Poor Tom’s Ghost in 1978 and The Bassumtyte Treasure in 1979. Also in 1979, for her complete body of work at that time, the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People presented Curry with the Distingushed Contribution to the Field of Children’s Literature Award.
Curry resides in Palo Alto, California, and London, England.
Curry attended the Pennsylvania State University in 1950, and she studied there until 1951 when she left for the Indiana State College (now known as Indiana University of Pennsylvania). In 1954, after graduation, Curry moved to California and worked as both an art teacher for the Los Angeles Public School District and a freelance artist. In 1957, Curry entered the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in order to study English literature, but in 1959 she left Los Angeles and became a teaching assistant at Stanford University. Curry was awarded the Fulbright grant in 1961 and the Stanford-Leverhulme fellowship in 1965, allowing her to pursue her graduate studies at the University of London. She earned her M.A. in 1962 and her Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Stanford University in 1969. From 1967-1968 and, again, from 1983-1984, Curry was an instructor of English literature at the college level. She became a lecturer in 1987. Besides her writings, Curry’s artworks are also considered among her achievements. She has had several paintings exhibited in London, and her works have even earned her a spot in the prestigious Royal Society of British Artists group exhibition. Among the many groups that Curry belongs to are the International Arthurian Society, the Authors Guild, the Children’s Literature Association, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers.
Curry illustrated and published her first book Down from the Lonely Mountain in 1965. This juvenile fiction based on Californian Native American folklore has paved the way for Curry’s expansive literary career. She has penned more than 30 novels, which are mostly based on child characters dealing with a wide variety of subjects. Many of Curry’s writings deal with folklore, such as the Native American folklore that she explores in her novels Turtle Island: Tales of Algonquian Nations and The Wonderful Sky Boat: And Other Native American Tales of the Southeast, and the retellings of famous European folk stories, such as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Robin Hood in the Greenwood, and The Christmas Knight. Yet she also delves into the genres of fantasy, such as in her novels Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Time and Me, Myself, and I; historical fiction, such as in her novels What the Dickens and Stolen Life; and mystery, such as in her novels The Bassumtyte Treasure and Moon Window.
Curry has been honored with many awards throughout her writing career. In 1970, her novel The Daybreakers earned Curry the Honor Book award from the Book World Spring Children’s Book Festival and the Outstanding Book by a Southern California Author Award from the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People. The Mystery Writers of America honored Curry two years in a row by awarding her the Edgar Allan Poe Award, or the Edgar, for Poor Tom’s Ghost in 1978 and The Bassumtyte Treasure in 1979. Also in 1979, for her complete body of work at that time, the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People presented Curry with the Distingushed Contribution to the Field of Children’s Literature Award.
Curry resides in Palo Alto, California, and London, England.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 19, 2020
The change child is set in Wales at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Eilian, the child of the title, is at odds with her surroundings in many ways. No one completely understands or accepts her nature or her aspirations. Therefore she cherishes within herself a compensatory self-image that involves some idea that she might actually be special, might have fairy blood in her, even though in everyday conversation she explicitly states, more than once, 'I am no changeling!'
Eilian's circumstances change twice during the novel, and although the cause of these changes, in terms of the real world, is the trouble between her father and the Rastall family over the inheritance of Plaseiran, the journeys involved constitute a quest-like experience for Eilian. She is forced in the course of this quest to learn to value other individuals and to give weight to their needs; to accept responsibility for her actions; and to be reconciled to the limitations and the potential of her own nature. She has to make a choice of allegiance, a commitment. While the outer problem of the inheritance is being worked out in plots and lawsuits, Eilian's growth is being worked out in a visit to Faery which, in the terms of the novel, 'really' happens, but can be shown to have much in common with traditional tales in which every action is expressive of some psychological trait or condition of the protagonist. Both these come together at the end of the book to reconcile Eilian with her mother, whose own attitude has become gentler as a result of her improved fortunes, so that she is ready to meet the advances of the more understanding Eilian.
At the level of the fantasy plot, then, there is much traditional material, carrying out its traditional function. In fact Eilian thinks she may be going into something like fairyland on her first journey to stay with her grandmother's troop of thieves, who are known as the Red Fairies. She is enchanted by them in the everyday sense of being very much in love with the idea of them, and she makes a kind of commitment to them in her heart on first meeting:
There were laughs and greetings and kisses, and in the light of the lanterns their hair shone gold and their eyes gleamed silver. Eilian tightened her arms around her uncle's waist until he could feel her heart pounding from excitement. 'Maybe I'll never go home', she thought. 'Maybe, maybe this is the true homecoming'. Mam and Dad seemed dim shadows in a heavier world.'
This romantic hope is knocked flat by Eilian's eventual discovery that the Red Fairies are in fact robbers; that Uncle Emrys is weak and under his mother's thumb; and that her dear Grandmother is plotting to sell her to Simon Rastall against her father's wishes.
Eilian next goes into the forest under the guidance of Goronwy, the boy who has always seemed quite ordinary, but now turns out, confusingly, to be one of the Fairy folk after all. In traditional tales being lost in the forest stands for a wandering in the inner world of the unconscious self. Eilian is not lost, but guided by the care - and criticism - of Goronwy. She passes through the forest with him, is aware of his sense that she is letting herself down by her self-absorbed attitude, and there comes to her realisation about the importance and uniqueness of other Selves; 'I only let him be Uncle, she thought, not Emrys ... But now he was his own. . .'
In the next confrontation, with the Fairy King, Eilian finally meets the truth about herself, like traditional figures in folktale who enter Faery and are changed by their meeting with its powerful figures. Eilian learns, ironically enough, that she is indeed of Fairy blood; but the learning is an ambivalence of bitterness and pleasure. For on the personal level, she sees that there is a sense in which this makes no difference. Her growing conviction, for example, that she may make a good singer but has not such skill as a poet as she had hoped, is affected neither way by this. And painfully, on the wider level, her arrival in Gardd Terfynol functions as the fulfilment for the Tylweth Teg of a prophecy that they must leave Middle-earth for the fairy kingdoms oversea. So the fact of Eilian's being who she is has brought: joy to Goronwy, who loves her; pain to the Tylweth Teg, who lose their ancient home; and to her, the continuing need to make the effort to accept herself and learn to accept others.
“Eilian was muddled. 'Change is not good then?' she ventured doubtfully.
'On the contrary, child. All that is good comes through it. But it is no sudden shift played on you, for what is growth but change and transformation? To fear it is to invite decay, but to live in hope it be imposed upon you by some kindly fate is to live a fool.
'I do not understand. Am I so foolish?' No sooner had she said it than a thought brushed past Eilian of the aching sameness, the dreaming-of-when-things would-be-differentness, of so many of her days.
The Lady smiled. 'Only in thinking we can give you love and peace if you have not tended the seeds of these things in your own heart.'”
Eilian has seen that she can and must come to terms with the contents of her own heart; her father reflects, when she has returned to their new home: “It is the real child's come home.” He senses that she is in some way more truly herself, more balanced and self-aware, than before her adventures. And Curry closes the novel with an age-old symbol of psychological and spiritual stability; the symbol of the tree.
“And I have bought a cherry tree,' said Eilian, 'which I must plant tomorrow.”
[Condensed from my article THE SENSE OF BELONGING: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVELS OF JANE LOUISE CURRY Published in the International Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 3, No. 3, Winter 1988, p176ff]
Eilian's circumstances change twice during the novel, and although the cause of these changes, in terms of the real world, is the trouble between her father and the Rastall family over the inheritance of Plaseiran, the journeys involved constitute a quest-like experience for Eilian. She is forced in the course of this quest to learn to value other individuals and to give weight to their needs; to accept responsibility for her actions; and to be reconciled to the limitations and the potential of her own nature. She has to make a choice of allegiance, a commitment. While the outer problem of the inheritance is being worked out in plots and lawsuits, Eilian's growth is being worked out in a visit to Faery which, in the terms of the novel, 'really' happens, but can be shown to have much in common with traditional tales in which every action is expressive of some psychological trait or condition of the protagonist. Both these come together at the end of the book to reconcile Eilian with her mother, whose own attitude has become gentler as a result of her improved fortunes, so that she is ready to meet the advances of the more understanding Eilian.
At the level of the fantasy plot, then, there is much traditional material, carrying out its traditional function. In fact Eilian thinks she may be going into something like fairyland on her first journey to stay with her grandmother's troop of thieves, who are known as the Red Fairies. She is enchanted by them in the everyday sense of being very much in love with the idea of them, and she makes a kind of commitment to them in her heart on first meeting:
There were laughs and greetings and kisses, and in the light of the lanterns their hair shone gold and their eyes gleamed silver. Eilian tightened her arms around her uncle's waist until he could feel her heart pounding from excitement. 'Maybe I'll never go home', she thought. 'Maybe, maybe this is the true homecoming'. Mam and Dad seemed dim shadows in a heavier world.'
This romantic hope is knocked flat by Eilian's eventual discovery that the Red Fairies are in fact robbers; that Uncle Emrys is weak and under his mother's thumb; and that her dear Grandmother is plotting to sell her to Simon Rastall against her father's wishes.
Eilian next goes into the forest under the guidance of Goronwy, the boy who has always seemed quite ordinary, but now turns out, confusingly, to be one of the Fairy folk after all. In traditional tales being lost in the forest stands for a wandering in the inner world of the unconscious self. Eilian is not lost, but guided by the care - and criticism - of Goronwy. She passes through the forest with him, is aware of his sense that she is letting herself down by her self-absorbed attitude, and there comes to her realisation about the importance and uniqueness of other Selves; 'I only let him be Uncle, she thought, not Emrys ... But now he was his own. . .'
In the next confrontation, with the Fairy King, Eilian finally meets the truth about herself, like traditional figures in folktale who enter Faery and are changed by their meeting with its powerful figures. Eilian learns, ironically enough, that she is indeed of Fairy blood; but the learning is an ambivalence of bitterness and pleasure. For on the personal level, she sees that there is a sense in which this makes no difference. Her growing conviction, for example, that she may make a good singer but has not such skill as a poet as she had hoped, is affected neither way by this. And painfully, on the wider level, her arrival in Gardd Terfynol functions as the fulfilment for the Tylweth Teg of a prophecy that they must leave Middle-earth for the fairy kingdoms oversea. So the fact of Eilian's being who she is has brought: joy to Goronwy, who loves her; pain to the Tylweth Teg, who lose their ancient home; and to her, the continuing need to make the effort to accept herself and learn to accept others.
“Eilian was muddled. 'Change is not good then?' she ventured doubtfully.
'On the contrary, child. All that is good comes through it. But it is no sudden shift played on you, for what is growth but change and transformation? To fear it is to invite decay, but to live in hope it be imposed upon you by some kindly fate is to live a fool.
'I do not understand. Am I so foolish?' No sooner had she said it than a thought brushed past Eilian of the aching sameness, the dreaming-of-when-things would-be-differentness, of so many of her days.
The Lady smiled. 'Only in thinking we can give you love and peace if you have not tended the seeds of these things in your own heart.'”
Eilian has seen that she can and must come to terms with the contents of her own heart; her father reflects, when she has returned to their new home: “It is the real child's come home.” He senses that she is in some way more truly herself, more balanced and self-aware, than before her adventures. And Curry closes the novel with an age-old symbol of psychological and spiritual stability; the symbol of the tree.
“And I have bought a cherry tree,' said Eilian, 'which I must plant tomorrow.”
[Condensed from my article THE SENSE OF BELONGING: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVELS OF JANE LOUISE CURRY Published in the International Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 3, No. 3, Winter 1988, p176ff]
December 23, 2024
This is the second book in the Abaloc series. Set in the 16th century, in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, it gives the back-story of the Fair Folk encountered in the first book, Beneath the Hill. It is completely different in style from the latter, and the Fair Folk do not make their full appearance until about two thirds of the way in. Twelve-year old Eilian is the star of this story which is basically an account of her journey and personal quest of self-discovery taking her from her life within the bosom of her peasant family to mixing with her relative thieves and vagabonds and onwards into Faery. The tale comes full circle with her final re-absorbtion into her family, although in changed circumstances, and Eilian herself has grown to know and accept herself as she is, and others as they are. It is a strange book. Beautifully written, vivid in its descriptions of landscape and costume, reading it was like reading a medieval or Renaissance tapestry with characters and landscape exquisitely woven with beautiful colours and textures. There was not much variation of dynamic. At times the text stopped just short of being cloying in its beauty and sweetness, hence, for me, four stars instead of five. As well, it is not an easy read - some effort is required on the part of the reader, although this, I think, is a good thing. I think it would be nice read with a parent or older sibling. As an evocation of Faery, I think it is superb, and it makes a wonderful backdrop to the first book of the series just because it is so different in style and concept. It deserves to be better known. I wish more young people would read and review it, I would love to know what they think of it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews