Author Archives: virginiazimmerman

I love and admire many things about Madeleine L’Engle’s books, but what might impress me most is the way she creates a constellation of characters. She invents a whole world inhabited by an array of people, and her novels rise … Continue reading →

I am visiting my mother, and I have culled from her bookshelves a little stack of books that belong to me, childhood favorites that kept their places on the shelves even as my room stopped being mine. Some of these … Continue reading →

For the first time in over a year, I am back in Barcelona in the apartment where I wrote A Sketch in Time and where I imagined that Micah, Jamie and Celia lived. I have visited this apartment many times … Continue reading →

On the first day of class in my Young Adult Fiction course, I read Where the Wild Things Are to my students. I do this because it introduces many of the themes we will encounter throughout the semester and also … Continue reading →

Charles Dickens was born two hundred years ago today on February 7, 1812. Few literary figures have achieved such lasting renown as Dickens, a writer at once widely respected and popular both in his own time and now. Even children … Continue reading →

With some help from my editor father, I have a good draft of my bio for the Catalan edition of my book. If anyone can weigh in, I would be very grateful for feedback. Remember that the audience is Catalan-speaking … Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about carrying my main character, Micah, around with me. I haven’t been doing as much of this as I would like partly because Micah is 11 and a lot of my life wouldn’t … Continue reading →

Yesterday, I had occasion to talk with my students about a wonderful short essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” by C.S. Lewis. I love many things about this piece. For one thing, Lewis argues against critics of fantasy, … Continue reading →