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John Bellairs
Birthday:
January 17
Birth Name:
John Anthony Bellairs
Biography
I had a compulsive need to fantasize. I was overweight and the other kids thought I was weird and I liked to read. I was pretty much a loner until I made some lifelong friends in the Boy Scouts. I would walk back and forth between my home and Catholic school and have medieval fantasies featuring me as the hero. I was a little ashamed of it and wondered why I...
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I had a compulsive need to fantasize. I was overweight and the other kids thought I was weird and I liked to read. I was pretty much a loner until I made some lifelong friends in the Boy Scouts. I would walk back and forth between my home and Catholic school and have medieval fantasies featuring me as the hero. I was a little ashamed of it and wondered why I did it. I cherish my childhood. It was true I was lonely but the more I look back on it I see how fortunate I was. I was never abused or wanted for anything. I did not lead a hard life. I was just a kid who had a lot of trouble relating to other people. I have the imagination of a 10-year-old. I like coffins and bones and secret panels. Someone asked Dr. Seuss that question and his answer was personal retardation, his imagination was stuck around age 7. Same with me I pay taxes and have all the adult problems but my imagination is that of a 10-year-old.
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All of my children's books are autobiographical. They're a combination of the everyday and the fantastic, like the books of my favorite author, Charles Dickens. The common ordinary stuff - the bullies, the scaredy-cat kid Lewis, the grown-ups, the everyday incidents - all come from my own experience. I grew up in a beautiful small town in Michigan. Marshall ...
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All of my children's books are autobiographical. They're a combination of the everyday and the fantastic, like the books of my favorite author, Charles Dickens. The common ordinary stuff - the bullies, the scaredy-cat kid Lewis, the grown-ups, the everyday incidents - all come from my own experience. I grew up in a beautiful small town in Michigan. Marshall is full of strange and enormous old houses, and the place must have worked on my imagination, because I turned it into New Zebedee, the town in my trilogy about Lewis and Rose Rita. I've written about other places I've lived in, like Winona, Minnesota, which becomes Hoosac in The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. Gradually, I seem to be working in the details of my childhood, my dad's saloon, my mom's money worries, and so on. Writing seems to be (for me) a way of memorializing and transforming my own past. I write about things I wish had happened to me when I was a kid.
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Writing seems to be (for me) a way of memorializing and transforming my own past. I write about things I wish had happened to me when I was a kid.
Writing seems to be (for me) a way of memorializing and transforming my own past. I write about things I wish had happened to me when I was a kid.
I write because I like to fantasize, and because I love to talk. Also I have violent opinions which few will listen to, although they will respectfully plough through a book with these opinions.
I write because I like to fantasize, and because I love to talk. Also I have violent opinions which few will listen to, although they will respectfully plough through a book with these opinions.
John Bellairs
The author of 18 books including "St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies" (1966); "The Pedant and the Shuffly" (1968); the Tolkien-inspired fantasy "The Face in the Frost" (1969); and fifteen young-adult gothic supernatural thrillers staring such characters as Lewis Barnavelt, Johnny Dixon, and Anthony Monday. In 1955, after graduating from Marshall High School, he attended Notre Dame, and later made history when he and four other Notre Dame students appeared on the G.E. College Bowl program in March 1959. A Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Bellairs graduated Magna cum Laude with a Bachelors degree in English (1959). The following year he moved to Chicago and earned a Masters in English from The University of Chicago. He later taught at following colleges: 1963-65 - College of St. Teresa (Winona, MN) 1966-67 - Shimer College (Mount Carroll, IL) 1968-69 - Emmanuel College (Boston, MA) 1969-71 - Merrimack College (North Andover, MA) In 1973, his first young-adult novel, "The House with a Clock in its Walls," was published. In 1978, "The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn" followed with new characters. Both HOUSE and TREASURE were made into televised dramatizations in 1979. "The Curse of the Blue Figurine" (1983) introduced another series of characters living and battling supernatural events near Duston Heights, MA. In 1991, Bellairs died of cardiovascular disease. Two books and two drafts of his work were completed by author Brad Strickland, who in turn has released six of his own books using the Bellairs characters. Strickland's most recent release is 2001's "The Tower at the End of the World." In 1992, the Marshall (Michigan) Historical Society erected a marker for the Cronin House, the real life setting "The House with a Clock in its Walls," and another marker for Bellairs. In 2000 he was inducted into Haverhill (Massachusetts) Hall of Fame.
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