Ghost Boy (28 page)

A.
Ghost Boy
is a fairly simple story meant to be taken pretty much as the truth, though parts of it definitely stretch the bounds of credulity. The reader, though, is meant to wonder for a while if the old Indian really does exist when he offers to take Harold off on his journey. It's not until the very ending, when the children of Liberty acknowledge that Harold has been gone for some time, that there's really no doubt that the entire story isn't taking place within Harold's mind as he sits in the empty field near Liberty.

Q.In the late 1940s, the circus was often the only place where people with gross physical deformities could find work. Such sideshow performers were exhibits and commonly called freaks. In today's more sensitive times such language and treatment have been expunged from popular culture. Why did you choose to use such blatant language? What did you anticipate your teen readers' reactions would be to such language in print? What about the reactions of adult readers?

A.
To be true to the period, Samuel and Tina and even the Cannibal King had to be referred to as freaks. I understood that the word, without even quotation marks around it, would appear insensitive or jarring to some people, but I never doubted that it was the right thing to do.

Nearly every character in
Ghost Boy
turns out to be a bit of a paradox. The monstrous ones are really nice people inside, while the nice people act in monstrous ways. Though that was a deliberate choice, I didn't intend the book to be a lesson in how to judge, or not judge, people. That was something for Harold to learn. I suppose, though, that it is a reflection of how I see the world, as I believe that no one can ever truly know anyone else. Quite possibly, you can never really know yourself.

There are other sensitivities. Harold is referred to as “that poor albino boy,” not as “that poor boy with albinism.” Thunder Wakes Him is “the old Indian” instead of “the old Native American.” But to force the politically correct terms into the characters' mouths would have sounded absurd.
Ghost Boy
was supposed to create a believable world for a boy in the 1940s, and I'll be very disappointed if it's criticized for its use of cruel-sounding terms.

Q. On second and even third readings of
Ghost Boy
, the richness of the language, the themes, and the characters reveal new levels of meaning to the reader. Does this happen to you as the writer as well? Can you give specific examples?

A.
The original version of
Ghost Boy
contained many more references to race and skin color. Thunder Wakes Him, especially, went on at great length about the meaning of being white.
Ghost Boy
's editor, Françoise Bui, encouraged me to take most of it out, and I'm very glad that she did. What is left comes naturally from the characters as they discuss their particular worries and hopes.

I think this is the time when most of those changes were made—the ones that were at once the smallest and the biggest. Françoise would mark a sentence as being unclear or a passage as being heavy-handed, and the rewriting would bring out the intended meaning.

As an aside, you might be interested to know that I'm just old enough to remember what was probably the very last of the traveling freak shows. When I was ten or eleven, I went to the Calgary Stampede with my brother and two cousins. We had just enough money to last the whole day if we were careful where every penny went.

I remember standing outside a booth of painted canvas, listening to the talker describe the creature inside and debating whether it was worth spending the dime to get inside. We sent a cousin as a scout, and she paid her dime and climbed up to a little platform where she had to peer down behind a screen. I can't remember what we hoped to see, but I can still see her standing there, shouting at us in a voice loud enough to carry halfway down the midway, “This is a gyp! He's just sitting there doing nothing.” To this day, I'm glad every time I think of it that I didn't pay my dime and see that poor soul inside.

         

INTERNET RESOURCES

NOAH Official Site

NOAH—the National Association for Albinism and Hypopigmentation.

http://www.albinism.org

International Albinism Center
at the University of Minnesota

Facts, research, and current science on albinism.

http://www.cbc.umn.edu/iac

Circusweb! Circuses Past and Present

A brief history of the circus from ancient times to today.

www.circusweb.com

Circus Stuff

A portal to circus-related resources on the Web.

www.circustuff.com

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey

Official Web site of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

www.ringling.com

This discussion guide was prepared by Clifford Wohl, educational consultant.

         

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