Paul Park
Paul Park’s young adult series, “A Princess of Roumania” tells the story of 15-year-old Miranda, who is whisked away from our world to an alternate Earth filled with monsters and magic — and revelations about her station in life. The first book (which shares a title with the series name) was followed by “The Tourmaline” and, most recently, “The White Tyger.” The fourth book, “The Hidden World” — the conclusion to the series — is due to be release in 2008.
Park’s fantasy reveals a world where history has taken an alternate route, where Roumania is fighting Germany in order to rule the world, inhabited by shape-shifters and real magic. Our world, so it seems, is a pocket universe, a fantasy conceit created to hide Miranda from those who would hunt her down.
Park’s inspiration for Miranda’s adventures came from his own childhood fantasies of faraway lands filled with mystery.
“I have always been interested in Roumania ever since I was little, I don’t know why,” said Park, “and it’s probably not because I had a very clear idea of what the real place was, I’ve never been there, but for some reason it conjured up this rich sort of mythology in me.”
There is a fantasy narrative tradition in which the young protagonists encounter something that reveals not only a much wider world, but also the knowledge that all is not it seems. This usually involves being kidnapped by pirates or whisked away by a cyclone — more recently in young adult fiction it has involved letters of invitation to a wizarding school. With Park’s books, it is no different — Miranda starts her story with two feet in the real town of Williamstown, Massachusetts, until a serie of weird local events lead to her discovery of the “real” Earth.
“You go to some analog of the real world and often there’s a connection,” said Park, “there are figures in the real world that show up as symbolic analogs in the fantasy world and then you come back at the end. On some level, this is about the anxieties of coming of age. A lot of the things that happen in the fantasy world are connected to those anxieties in some ways.”
These are the themes typical to young adult authors as they walk a literary tightrope that involves pulling from a tradition of familiar tales to comfort the reader, while recasting these in new environment.
“Ideally, you want to have some sort of combination of that,” said Park, “so that there is something comforting about the books because it seems to connect with other texts or other emotions and feelings and also something that’s remarkable or astonishing or unique about them.”
Park notes that there are many ways that an author can use the archetypes and still present something new to his readers — the most common way is to create a strange landscape for a more familiar plot to unfold upon. An author can also play with traditional relationships to herald the unexpected — for instance, avoiding the romantic relationships between characters that have become so conventional or presenting the idea that “good” characters don’t always do “good” things or that adventures don’t always end safe at home.
“It’s like chess games,” said Park. “So many chess games, the first 10 or 12 moves are identical and then all of a sudden it takes this turn and it’s in some completely new place.”
In the past, young adult fantasy books could play things safe because of adult expectations of what is appropriate for younger readers. That’s certainly not the current vogue and Park, like others writing to that demographic, notes that the genre is as popular with adults as it is the target age groups. This opens up the possibilities of what ground the books can cover. Park feels that these books should reflect the experience of his younger readers — by approaching it with such honesty, the older readers will follow.
“Even more so than adults, young readers’ experiences are full of broken hearts and feelings of inadequacy,” said Park. “It’s so hard to grow up with a sense of your own power, your own good qualities, so I think it’s a natural thing for young readers to be drawn to different kinds of stories than the ones their parents think are necessarily appropriate for them, with strong moral role models.”
Park points out that the archetype of young people in a strange land exists in fantasy for a reason — it’s a message that resonates whether you are a 15-year-old in 1906 or 2006. Certainly, it’s one that George Lucas recognized, that such stories document a proving ground for kids, where they present themselves as individuals.
“The reassuring part is that the world you’re in is mysterious and your place in it is mysterious,” said Park, “but there’s this other dimension where it’s clearer, the role you’re supposed to play and what is expected of you and the criteria for success would be and that will clarify your role when you go back to the world that you come from. You’re looking for reassurance that your life has some kind of significance and your choices have some kind of significance and that’s something that’s not obvious as you’re growing up.”
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