What do you think?
Rate this book
Tangled Butterfly
After an emotional outburst at her brother's wedding, Michelle is sent for a rest cure at Minnesota's Apostle Islands where she meets Paul, a young Native American writer who realizes how deeply disturbed she is
- GenresYoung Adult
162 pages, Hardcover
First published April 23, 1980
29 people want to read
About the author
Marion Dane Bauer
180 books186 followersMarion Dane Bauer is the author of more than one hundred books for young people, ranging from novelty and picture books through early readers, both fiction and nonfiction, books on writing, and middle-grade and young-adult novels. She has won numerous awards, including several Minnesota Book Awards, a Jane Addams Peace Association Award for RAIN OF FIRE, an American Library Association Newbery Honor Award for ON MY HONOR, a number of state children's choice awards and the Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota for the body of her work.
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
-------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
-------------------------------------
Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
-------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
-------------------------------------
Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 14, 2010
Although this thirty-year-old story shows its age in a lot of ways, the plot and the characters are timeless. An obviously mentally ill teenage girl, whose family refuses to see her problems staring them right in the face, encounters a young teacher and writer who, racked with guilt at his failure to prevent a former student's suicide, tries to help her. The rural Minnesota setting and Indian traditions add flavor to the plot, and the kidnapped baby subplot adds suspense.
This book is similar to the far better known I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Lisa, Bright and Dark , but in my opinion it's a much better story. A pity it's so obscure.
This book is similar to the far better known I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Lisa, Bright and Dark , but in my opinion it's a much better story. A pity it's so obscure.
January 20, 2012
Quick read, and different. Reading someone's perception of how it feels to be schizophrenic was interesting. (I realize "interesting" is so vague, but I'm not quite sure what else to assign to my reaction.) This didn't greatly enhance or change my worldview, but I hope I'll have increased compassion for anyone I encounter struggling with this (and other) mental disorder(s) after reading about one man's patience and willingness to go to great lengths to help the main character.
In the end: I found it for ten cents at the library--hard to go wrong!
In the end: I found it for ten cents at the library--hard to go wrong!
April 24, 2023
I just picked this up off of my FREE SHELF at my public library. And I am so glad I did. The story is so different from what I am used to reading these days. It's also something I can relate to, which is a breath of fresh air. It starts off a little slow, but the ending is unexpected. If you are looking for a YA book that isn't vamps and werewolves, this one is worth it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews