Frame of Reference

Introduction

Annette Goldsmith

Welcome to another tardy issue of The Looking Glass! We hope it was worth the wait. Though this is not officially a theme issue, we nevertheless have a few mini themes, including a significant Celtic component. Alice's Academy, the peer-reviewed section, features Kathryn Graham's rich comparison of the John Sayles film, The Secret of Roan Inish, and the Rosalie K. Fry children's book that inspired it. With his usual panache, Jeff Garrett reviews Irish scholar Emer O'Sullivan's book about German translations of the Alice books in ykcowrebbaJ. And don't miss In the Twinkling of an Eye, in which Dublin writer Siobhán Parkinson regales us with a very funny excerpt from her forthcoming book, Cows are Vegetarians.

Birthdays also figure in this issue. It's the twentieth anniversary of IBBY-Canada, the Canadian section of the International Board on Books for Young People, and they're celebrating with an exhibition of Honour List books, as Jeffrey Canton recounts in Looking Glass Lore. Of course the next issue, April 2, 2001 (TLG 5:1) will mark our fourth birthday. The nicest present you could give us would be to bookmark our site and tell your friends about us. Incidentally, many readers go to our original site, see the first few issues, and think we've ceased publication. We're still working on transferring those issues to this site, so please also spread the word that we're still here.

The MaD hAtTeR, our intrepid gossip columnist, certainly likes to spread the word: he busies himself delivering the dirt on the children's book world from Beijing to High Point, North Carolina, and serves it up in Spyglass. On a more practical note, Ann Thurston's My Own Invention tells the fascinating story of her role in the Reader-to-Reader: Ghana program, cultural dissonance and all.

For your reading pleasure, a few favourite articles are still posted: Pig and Pepper, our food column, goes to Lyon to visit The Little Prince, and whip up a warm potato and Lyonnais sausage salad. Check out Jeffrey Canton's penetrating second look at Harry Potter in Illuminating Texts. The delightfully difficult Acrostic remains; if you give up, here are the answers.

Older columns consigned to the Rabbit Hole (i.e. the archives) but still easy to access: The Caucus-Race, Mirrors and Windows, The Monitor, Personal Reflections and Picture Window.

Please contact us with your comments and ideas. Let us know if you'd like to write for us, or just send a note to say hello.

Editorially yours,

Annette Goldsmith

Volume 5, Issue 3, The Looking Glass, 2000

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"Frame of Reference - Introduction" © Annette Goldsmith, 2000
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