美国国家公共电台 NPR 'School For Good And Evil' Is A Kids' Fantasy Series For The Fake News Era

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

"The School For Good And Evil" isn't just a fantasy novel series for middle-grade readers. It's a low-key empire.

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CHANG: There's an interactive¹ website, a YouTube channel...

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JOANN YAO: So this week, we are going announce the contest winners for the character collage² contest that we've been hosting on the website...

CHANG: There are Tweets, Instagrams, trailers.

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CHANG: Just in time for the fourth book, "Quests For Glory," NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin is here to fill you in if you're not yet familiar with Sophie, Agatha and the Endless Woods.

SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE³: The man behind "The School For Good And Evil" empire, Soman Chainani, is a dashing young guy whose CrossFit skills you can follow on Twitter along with excerpts⁴ of the new book, #book4.

SOMAN CHAINANI: Growing up, I idolized Madonna and not for her music as much as her sort of, like, business sense, you know? That was always my dream...

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Really.

CHAINANI: ...To sort of manage a low-key empire. And so, you know, it's funny that it's ended up this way.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Growing up in Miami in the '80s, when he wasn't idealizing Madonna as entrepreneur, he was bingeing on animated⁵ movies - "The Little Mermaid," "Sleeping Beauty," "Beauty And The Beast."

CHAINANI: I watched Disney movies almost "Clockwork Orange" style - with my eyes pried⁶ open, being completely brainwashed by Disney. I mean my life was Disney. Everything I knew about the world, about story structure, about narrative⁷ came from Disney. And then, you know, I went to college, and my first class at Harvard was this seminar on fairy tales.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Reading the original, much darker, much more complicated stories the Disney movies were based on made him feel like he'd been cheated.

CHAINANI: That's where I think "The School For Good Evil" came from. It was this desire to reclaim⁸ fairy tales and give kids an alternative to Disney set in a similar fairy tale world that looked like Disney but ultimately break it all down, you know, and show them a way of thinking beyond the Disney good and evil matrix, which I am convinced is corrupting⁹ so much of the way kids think.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: The first breakdown¹⁰ of the good-evil Disney matrix comes right when the series begins. The School for Good and Evil is where good kids learn to be fairy tale heroes, and bad kids learn to be villains¹¹ and murderers and monsters.

In the first book, Sophie, a blonde, gorgeous girl who always felt she was destined¹² to be a princess, gets dropped off at the School for Evil while her witchy best friend who lives in a graveyard¹³ ends up at the School for Good. In the Endless Woods that surround the school, you come across some familiar characters, like Merlin, Robin¹⁴ Hood¹⁵, Captain Hook. But the students are at the center.

CHAINANI: We are generating a new sort of era of fairy tale characters that are going to be relevant for the modern world, right? These are kids who are going to be able to look at the past fairy tales and then live out their own.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: There's also a very important magic pen called "The Storian." The pen has a will of its own and drafts the official version of new fairy tales as they unfold in a grand, blank storybook. Halfway¹⁶ through the fourth book, we learn - spoiler alert - that there's another pen just like it drafting the same story with the same characters but from a totally different perspective, like fairy tale fake news.

CHAINANI: I started this book two months before the presidential election, and it went to press about a month and a half ago.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Chainani is aware that day-to-day politics doesn't age well, but there are themes that readers in 2017 will recognize.

CHAINANI: Truth and lies and good and evil - they mix in the world. Both sides claim to be good. Both sides claim to be telling the truth.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: The power of a lie that feels true and drives people's behavior - that's at the heart of book four, a theme that feels very now. Reading these books, it's hard not to think about "Harry¹⁷ Potter." There's magic. There's school. There's some PG romance. Chainani says he's a fan. But with his books, he tried to move away from the warm safety of "Harry Potter."

CHAINANI: It felt like there was no way that series was going to end with Harry in a pool of blood and Voldemort kicking his heels into the sunset - right? - because it just had such a strong kind of moral spine¹⁸ to it.

And I thought, you know, kids needed something that felt more unstable¹⁹ and that reflected that uncertainty²⁰ not just of the world but of junior high and high school where kids lie all the time and bad kids win all the time. And so I wanted all the readers to feel slightly uneasy the entire way through.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: This is a big book, more than 500 pages long. Your reward for making it to the end is a crazy plot twist. It's so unexpected, it'll keep you hooked for books five and six, the film version which Universal is working on and whatever worlds Soman Chainani comes up with next. Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.

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1 interactive   

adj.相互作用的，互相影响的，（电脑）交互的

参考例句：

• The psychotherapy is carried out in small interactive groups.这种心理治疗是在互动的小组之间进行的。
• This will make videogames more interactive than ever.这将使电子游戏的互动性更胜以往。

2 collage   

n.拼贴画；v.拼贴；把……创作成拼贴画

参考例句：

• A collage of coloured paper covers a table top.一副彩纸拼贴画盖在桌面上。
• He has used a mixture of mosaic,collage and felt-tip pen.他混合使用了马赛克、拼贴画和毡头笔。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 excerpts   

n.摘录，摘要( excerpt的名词复数 )；节选（音乐，电影）片段

参考例句：

• Some excerpts from a Renaissance mass are spatchcocked into Gluck's pallid Don Juan music. 一些文艺复光时期的弥撒的选节被不适当地加入到了格鲁克平淡无味的唐璜音乐中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is editing together excerpts of some of his films. 他正在将自己制作的一些电影的片断进行剪辑合成。 来自辞典例句

5 animated   

adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的

参考例句：

• His observations gave rise to an animated and lively discussion.他的言论引起了一场气氛热烈而活跃的讨论。
• We had an animated discussion over current events last evening.昨天晚上我们热烈地讨论时事。

6 pried   

v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的过去式和过去分词 )；撬开

参考例句：

• We pried open the locked door with an iron bar. 我们用铁棍把锁着的门撬开。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. 因此汤姆撬开它的嘴，把止痛药灌下去。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

7 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

8 reclaim   

v.要求归还，收回；开垦

参考例句：

• I have tried to reclaim my money without success.我没能把钱取回来。
• You must present this ticket when you reclaim your luggage.当你要取回行李时，必须出示这张票子。

9 corrupting   

（使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏

参考例句：

• It would be corrupting discipline to leave him unpunished. 不惩治他会败坏风纪。
• It would be corrupting military discipline to leave him unpunished. 不惩治他会败坏军纪。

10 breakdown   

n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌

参考例句：

• She suffered a nervous breakdown.她患神经衰弱。
• The plane had a breakdown in the air,but it was fortunately removed by the ace pilot.飞机在空中发生了故障，但幸运的是被王牌驾驶员排除了。

11 villains   

n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼

参考例句：

• The impression of villains was inescapable. 留下恶棍的印象是不可避免的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Some villains robbed the widow of the savings. 有几个歹徒将寡妇的积蓄劫走了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

12 destined   

adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的

参考例句：

• It was destined that they would marry.他们结婚是缘分。
• The shipment is destined for America.这批货物将运往美国。

13 graveyard   

n.坟场

参考例句：

• All the town was drifting toward the graveyard.全镇的人都象流水似地向那坟场涌过去。
• Living next to a graveyard would give me the creeps.居住在墓地旁边会使我毛骨悚然。

14 robin   

n.知更鸟，红襟鸟

参考例句：

• The robin is the messenger of spring.知更鸟是报春的使者。
• We knew spring was coming as we had seen a robin.我们看见了一只知更鸟，知道春天要到了。

15 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

16 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

17 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

18 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

19 unstable   

adj.不稳定的，易变的

参考例句：

• This bookcase is too unstable to hold so many books.这书橱很不结实，装不了这么多书。
• The patient's condition was unstable.那患者的病情不稳定。

20 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。