orichalcum

Joan Aiken, an author I loved as a child, died today. Some of you may remember The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or The Stolen Lake, which were the most famous of her books. She also apparently wrote a bunch of well-regarded sequels to Jane Austen novels. She was 79, and so it's not that sad, but still...

Here are some quotes from her:

Children read to learn--even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries: it is all new to them.--Joan Aiken

''Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It's a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it. Therefore, if you write about something, hopefully you write about something that's better or more interesting than circumstances as they now are, and that way you hope to make a step towards it.