Swallowing the Golden Stone: Stories and Essays

by Walter Wangerin Jr., Kevin Kimber (Illustrator)

A collection of stories, essays, and poems, including "Lowercase People," "Elisabeth and the Water-Troll," and "To Weave a World."

Story: Lowercase people
Foreword
Story: Elisabeth and the water-troll
Comment: Authors and artist
Story: Branta and the golden stone
Essay: Writing of Branta and other affections
Story: Solomon Grundy
Comment: Sometimes sound is sense
Poem: When mother commanded
My brother and me to "clean your room!"
Story: Lily
Essay: To weave a world
Story: Resurrection of Karen McDermott
Poem: Wish
Essay: Shaper
Story: Saxifrage, the break-rock
Comment: Adult's tale in children's clothing
Story: Riding the horse whose name is I am
Essay: Ethic for aesthetics
Essay: For Chapman, while he is in hate with God
Story: Putzel, Putzel, I love you so much
Essay: Generations; Adams, Stieglitz, Sendak and me

Genres: Fiction

176 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Walter Wangerin Jr. is widely recognized as one of the most gifted writers writing today on the issues of faith and spirituality. Starting with the renowned Book of the Dun Cow, Wangerin's writing career has encompassed most every genre: fiction, essay, short story, children's story, meditation, and biblical exposition. His writing voice is immediately recognizable, and his fans number in the millions. The author of over forty books, Wangerin has won the National Book Award, New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year Award, and several Gold Medallions, including best-fiction awards for both The Book of God and Paul: A Novel. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.

Reviews

[Jessica Linn Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of this book was really excellent. It is a partnership of story, poetry, fairytale, and essay; usually essay on story or the art of creating story, specifically for children. However, although I enjoyed the essays to the extreme, a good portion of the stories (though splendid stories!) did not resonate with me personally.

Especially wonderful is the essay The Writing of Branta and Other Affections. Here he explains that "...having both acknowledged and named the difficulties which children had only callowly sensed before, the plots of ...stories can carry the child through difficulty!" And also, "...that the child who engages ...fully and ...personally with a story... (answering questions, talking, dialoguing) may... discover a piece of her own identity, and call her own self by name. To identify well with a major character in a story is to identify oneself."

Also on naming..."It is precisely this sort of naming that the story is and accomplishes for the feelings of children. The whole story—its full experience from "Once upon a time" to "happily ever after"—becomes the name of some previously nameless and shapeless trouble truly encountered in children's lives..."

And then explains that "the story helps children to know what otherwise would lurk in the unknowable regions of their dark souls, or of the dark world. ...The story establishes effective, useful, healthy relationships with things now given shape. ...The story even gives the children purpose and value, valor and strength, goodness and worth..."

He iterates the truth that "the stories that contain badness are not bad stories. Rather, they are among some of the best. Because the storyteller who loves the children and gives the whole of his or her self to them by means of the tale—inviting at the same time the whole of the children's selves—is of all people the best able to confront true and truly terrible things with the children."

Other essays also cut deep into the meaning of story and poetry crafting and his personal experience with creating stories, including the essay An Ethic for Aesthetics where he lays out the Five Covenants that he, the writer, must keep while writing. He writes, "...the covenantal relationships which I maintain with five elements of the world within which I write: they shape the tale that shapes the children. And it is ever my effort, by a wary obedience to these covenants, to 'get it right.'"

Wangerin reaches into his wonderfully diverse toolbox of life, poetry, religion, and philosophy to serve up stories and essays that feed the soul. He concludes the book with a tribute to Maurice Sendak, who was a mentor to him throughout his writing career.

I would highly recommend this book to tellers of stories, whether they tell their stories in text, aurally, or with images. It gives incredible perspective on the power of story (for good or for ill) and the story teller's responsibility and capacity to inform, shape, empower, and comfort the children they impart the tale to.

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dedicated to Maurice Sendak, who was a mentor to Wangerin, this collection of children's stories, interspersed with essays about the writer's craft and the meanings in particular stories, gives fantastic insight into how Wangerin thinks. He believes that stories should not hide the reality of evil from children. On the contrary, children have experienced evil already in their own young lives and in their fears. By giving voice to the "wild things," a story can enable a child to work through those fears, identify with the hero, and find the strength she already has within herself for overcoming them. Wangerin also discusses the covenants he honors as a writer of stories, covenants with five things: perceived reality, the conventions and community of his craft (writers who have gone before him), his audience, the community at large, and his faith. The stories alone in this volume are marvellous, but the essays make it an extremely engaging work for adults.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

The short stories are a weird mix of both heavy and delightful while the essays in between are fascinating discussions of childrens storytelling and what the themes mean in the stories.
Overall, it's a really solid anthology that I would recommend for people who are interested in understanding the craft of writing Christian children's literature.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the essays as much as I did the stories. I have a better understanding of the relationship between storytellers and their audience and the influence of the elder storyteller over the younger storyteller.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a little weird but parts of it were enjoyable.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. It was my nightly reading while I sat by the door of my child's room as he fell asleep. I love the way the stories are told and the essays show the importance of story and the way they shape. I wouldn't call myself a storyteller, but this makes everything in me long to be one. Truly breathtaking. Highly recommend.

[Sonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read a 2 of the stories in this book, they where the only ones that where OK..and they where BOTH really sad!!:P