Bookathon - A

 I'm missing a letter A from my alphabet tray. Some kid must have pocketed it while I was handing out the letters, and taken it home. Maybe their name starts with 'A'. I have been looking for it for several weeks but it's not likely it will be found. 

I play this game with the year 1s. They close their eyes and I drop a wooden letter in their outstretched hands, and when they open them they all have a letter, then they have to find a book with that letter on it. It is the easiest game ever, and safe to say that most kids know their alphabet in year 1 and can locate a book with the letter on it. They then bring their book up to the issues desk and get their book issued and a stamp on their hand. 

The picture books are all organised by surname letter, though some libraries have done an about turn and don't go by alphabet, but categories, so all the princess books are together, and all the dinosaur books. I hadn't got around to doing that, but simple 26 alphabet letters seem sufficient for beginners. 

I've decided to do my bookathon this year by alphabet, so I'll have 26 authors possibly enough for the month of June, one for each day and 4 extras, to share with you. I'd loosely go by alphabet surname, but at a stretch if their name has a letter in it I would count it. 

So let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. 

A is for Atwood, Margaret. 

When looking at the A's in the fiction section, I make a beeline for anything by Margaret Atwood. Or I used to, not so much now, but she is one author who you can be guaranteed would draw you into a complete world. She was born in 1939, which makes her ancient, or wise, depending on your point of view, is Canadian (also, a point in her favour) and writes mostly about women. I think she was a feminist before that was even fashionable. She's a poet, and essayist, critic, but mostly a novelist, and her most famous novel is The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian fiction set in the future world of the Republic of Gilead, where everyone is devastated by a nuclear holocaust and women have been enslaved by the men for reproductive purposes. Of course that's already happening in Islam and Mormon communities, but Atwood makes it happen in the future to Canadians who are normally so law abiding and nice that it becomes quite macabre. 

It has since turned into a Netflix series, which I haven't seen, but there is a sequel called The Testaments where one of the characters called Aunt Lydia tells what happens after she escapes a public hanging. Or something. I remember one scene in The Handmaid's Tale where Offred (she's married to Fred) rebels and plays a game of forbidden Scrabble. Women aren't allowed to read in the new regime of course. 

They all dress like nuns and aren't allowed to have fun while they are mating. I am not sure what possessed Margaret Atwood to write a novel like this, but it's possibly the same impulse that Suzanne Collins had while she was writing The Hunger Games. 

Its not my most favourite of Atwood's oeuvre, that place in my heart belongs to Cat's Eye. Which I long to see made into a movie, but who knows, maybe one day. Could Peter Jackson direct it? You'd have to find a bunch of 9 year old girls though, because it's about childhood, growing up, and bullying.

Cat's Eye is semi- autobiographical, as there are some similarities to Atwood's own life growing up during World War 2 in Toronto, with an entomologist father who was a bit unconventional. She didn't end up becoming a scientist though but it's said God spoke to her and told her to become a writer. In the novel, the narrator becomes an artist. It's a bildingsroman of a sort and it's about memories, of a best friend/enemy who goes missing and the sort of girl bullying that unfortunately still happens even when you grow up and leave school (or go back to it, in my case) which never really leaves you. I've wondered what happens to Cordelia in the end. You'll have to read it and make up your own mind. 

 Atwood has written so many books, though I have surely read most all of her work up past the 90s. She came for a writers festival once promoting The Blind Assassin about a button factory worker..if I recall. And there was also Alias Grace, about a murderess and mesmerism. She wrote several short stories too. In Lady Oracle, a writer fakes her own death. In Surfacing, a woman goes feral in the wilderness. Oryx and Crake was the start of a  sci -fi trilogy. The Robber Bride was about a real life fairy tale villainess called Zenia who treacherously nearly destroys the lives of three of her naive friends until they all wise up and she has a dramatic comeuppance. I think that was the most satisfying of endings when *spoiler* the bad girl gets literally blown up. 

Of course all these books are a bit too adult for year 1s. She did write a picture book called 'Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut' that mostly consisted of sentences all starting with P... but I think anyone aged 16 or over should start reading anything by Margaret Atwood cos she really is an Amazing Author. Canadians possibly hate her because she always wins Booker Prizes and awards and is so prominent in the literary scene and hasn't put down her pen yet.