Tamora Pierce On The Reason Her Brilliant Books Haven’t Been Brought To The Screen (Yet) | The Mary Sue
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Tamora Pierce On The Reason Her Brilliant Books Haven’t Been Brought To The Screen (Yet)
Tamora Pierce has written dozens of incredibly-beloved medieval fantasy books about young women doing amazing things. So why, in this era of wildly-successful YA and fantasy book adaptations, do Pierce’s books remain un-filmed?
Pierce, who says she gets asked this all the time, had the following to say
about her characters’ lack of screen time:
My film agent tells me that the largest barrier to my getting a film deal is one of the things my fans like best: the fact that, for 14 of my Tortall books, and 10 of my Circle books, there is a good chance the reader will encounter friends from the earlier books. Readers of the Kel series will encounter characters from the Alanna and D readers of THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS will encounter characters from The Circle of Magic.
The feeling among moviemakers is that if Company A makes a movie based upon the Alanna books, and Company B makes a movie based on the Kel books, Company B will be profiting from all the work Company A did, for free! (Gasp! Say it’s not so!) The bottom line is that unless I get J.K. Rowling-hot, so that a film company will buy an entire universe, my chances of getting a film deal are Not Good. (My other alternative is to write a stand-alone book in a brand new universe, then not write any more in that universe. Where’s the fun in that?) Of course, Beka’s books may stand a chance, since they don’t have any characters from the other Tortall books except Pounce.
Tragically, I don’t doubt that Pierce’ but that’s why I’ve always thought her books would work better as a TV show, anyways. Game of Thrones gets record ratings, and Reign has a great cult following—what network wouldn’t want to combine the appeal of both into a female-driven series about girls coming into their own strengths and powers? If I ever get any pull in Hollywood (LOL), I swear to God this will be the first thing I make happen.
To her credit, Pierce takes it all incredibly well.
When I’m not writhing with envy, I actually don’t much mind. Unless I get as big as You-Know-Who, the likelihood that I will be given any degree of control or any advisory position on a movie is zilch. Have you ever heard the woefully incorrect joke: “How do you know who’s the stupidest starlet? She’s dating the writer”? (And that’s the writer of the movie writer.) Hollywood filmmakers are notorious for taking books and turning them inside out. Think a moment: “Eragon.” “Ella Enchanted.” “The Dark Is Rising.” “The Golden Compass.” I rest my case.
If I did make a movie deal (I can be had–movie money is VERY good), I would warn my fans not to expect to see my books on the screen. As I said above, Hollywood is notorious for changing the book in their translations. Books take place in the reader’s head. No one will capture what you imagine, which is what I love about books.
If you haven’t read any of Pierce’s books, stop reading this article and immediately go get the first book set in the medieval fantasy world of Tortall, Alanna: The First Adventure. One day I will write a piece about what her books have meant to me and how important they are for young women, but . Imagine Game of Thrones, but if there were several different series set in Westeros and they all had amazing female protagonists, including two lady knights, a WOC demigod who can speak with animals, a spy master, and a slum cop. Oh, and she wrote them ten years before Westeros was even a glimmer in GRRM’s eye.
If I’ve sold you on the books (or even if you’re just a die-hard fan like me), . Every book has a beautiful illustration, and even has a new foreward by Pierce herself! Full disclosure, , and it’s incredible. Go grab one for yourself and every YA lover you know for the holidays and get ready for a whole new world of awesome. So mote it be.
(via , image via )
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& 2015 The Mary Sue & | &I adored the
movie so thoroughly I saw it twice and bought the DVD as soon as it came out. Besides one terrific story and over the top acting by Meryl Streep, the film is just great eye candy. I even have a
for the California premiere of the movie. As you know from the film, the directress of
was Madame Brassart. Well, unbelievably, it happened to be that she was STILL at Le Cordon Bleu when I attended in&#! She was known as the Dragon Lady by the students. She signed my certificate de cuisine et patisserie. Missy Hawley and I cooked through parts of  the Art of French Cooking during the 70s in her wonderful kitchen. Julia was the reason I chose to go to Le Cordon Bleu. This is all an aside to the rest of the story.Julia Child was finishing her course at Le Cordon Bleu and starting
1952 What's Cooking in France; A lively introduction to the delights - and simplicity - of French Cooking. The dedication states, &To Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who loves France.& Helmut wrote the introduction. The cute little drawings were by Otto Fried. It was printed by Carey Press, New York. There are two Indexes, one in English, the other French.There is an undated [1953 according to Amazon] French edition, same price, also offering &five books at a time for $5.& What's Cuisine in France...; 50 delicious recipes, co-published by Ives Washburn and Editions Fischbacher, which happens to be Simca's husbands name. Librairie Fischbacher, founded 1850, was located on rue de Seine, 6e. No authors are mentioned on the cover or anywhere in the book. There is much to Simca's hand in this &European& edition. , drawings by Edwards and Fried. It has been completely reset to forty-eight pages, including two pages of Suggested Menus and Wines. And, xvii pages of advertising! Simca was a fiscal genius, to turn pages of recipes into underwriting the production costs. Inside the back cover is a handsome blue and white advertisement for the liqueur Benedictine, which was owned by Simca's family. The book was printed in France by Lecram Paris. 1955 What's Cooking in France... a British edition, 5s.net, with Louisette Bertholle as the sole author on the cover and title page. However, a note adjacent to the title page claims, &This book is the work of Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck of Paris, and of Helmut Ripperger, cooking editor, who helped with the writing.& Helmut Lothar Ripperger () was an author of books on art and music. He also wrote a series of single subject cookbooks in the US. , 1940; , 1941; , 1941; and , 1942. They are handsome works published by George W. Stewart, Inc., NY, NY. 
The remarkable thing about the first Olive Green cook book I purchased was its design. I bought it for its content, One Thousand Salads. I was more than persuaded by its comely cover. Blue and
white gingham, smart ivory paste-down outlined in green, with its title in red and a beautiful green and red trellised rose vine hugging a red cup of coffee sitting on a red handled service plate. Hummm. It sure was pretty. I had no idea at the time there were nine other cookery titles Ms. Green produced during her very short life. And, that she was a famous romance author. Lavender and Old Lace is the most recognizable today.
Book designer, , known for her highly stylized decorative book covers, outdid herself with this charming set. These are very handsome little books. Gilt top-edged paper, deckled for-edge, small but hefty for their size. Originally they were protected by plain brown paper dust wrappers with a little publisher's blurb on the cover. 
There is much to Ms. Green's biography. Olive Green is the pseudonym of Chicagoan Myrtle Reed () who married Irish-Canadian James Sydney McCullough in 1906. At the time of her marriage, she was an established and popular G. P. Putnam writer of &Edwardian chic lit.& She produced 17 books, innumerable household columns (under another pseudonym, Katherine LaFarge Norton) and the ten cookery volumes in the Putnam's Homemaker Series during her short 13 year writing career. Illustration: Lisel Ashlock from
by Dan Carlinsky 11 September 2007 &Hell in Paradise Flat.&
She came from a widely talented family, one whom quipped about Myrtle, &The only instrument she could play was the kitchen range.& Paradise Flat was the home she built before her marriage, where the 'keynote of her home was hospitality' and favorite toast was, &May our house always be too small to hold our friends.& of the Clements Library wrote a terrific article about the Putnam Series in the Fall 2003 issue of   (both are wonderful food history resources). Unfortunately, Myrtle Reed suffered her whole life with bouts of depression and ultimately committed suicide despite her roaring publishing success. Two beautiful volumes of her collected works, culinary and prose, were published posthumously:  and . One of my favorite food-related entries in the Year Book is, &Cooking and love may seem at first glance to be widely separated but no woman can have one without the other.&Each book is crammed with hundreds of recipes, supposedly 1000 per volume,  clearly written in an informal paragraph style. She expects some kitchen experience from her readers. These are not cooking school texts. No lists of ingredients. Just a clear thoughtful expression about how the recipe is to be produced in as few words, in as little space, as possible. An example from Everyday Desserts: Molasses Gingerbread-I.    (There are III Gingerbreads)Melt a tablespoonful of butter, add a cupful of molasses, a pinch of salt, half a cupful of sour milk or cream, and a heaping teaspoonful of ginger. Add a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little cold water, and a pinch of salt. Sift in two cupfuls of flour and bake in a quick oven in deep buttered tins. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve warm. The chapter titles within the volumes are quite unique to Ms. Green's style. She veers completely away from conventional categories, using instead Twenty-Eight Blanc Manges, or Twenty-Two Dumplings, and Twenty-Three Gingerbreads. In What to Have for Breakfast, she offers a parody of the popular Omar Khayyam&The Kitchen Rubaiyat.&  In One Thousand Simple Soups, she pens &The Ballad of the Empty Pantry and the Seven Guests.& The following list are the titles in the cookery series.I.  II.  III.  IV.   V.  VI.  VII.   VIII.  IX.  X.  My set of Olive Green cook books comes with a back story as well. The original owner, 15 year old Esther Atwood, known as a fine cook, purchased the set during a shopping trip to Coffyville, Kansas while a celebration was taking place on the anniversary of the demise of the notorious Dalton Gang (October, 1912). Esther married Don Weidman in 1920 and during their marriage the books moved with her from Kansas to Nebraska and Colorado. They finally ended up in Vancouver, Washington with Esther's granddaughter, Lane Weidman, who sold them to me.
The set retained most of the dust wrappers, which I had never seen. The books have been well cared for and cherished. And remain so. In the foreword to , Allan Ross Macdougall heaps praises on the enterprising author of these books, How to Cook Shellfish in particular.
It has long been held to be true that the appearance of charitable or community cook books came about as an adjunct to raising funds during the Civil War for veterans, widows and orphans through , the first held in Philadelphia in 1864.  by Maria J. Moss appeared at their Fair published by The Caxton Press of C. Sherman, Son & Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
This slim volume was groundbreaking in the history of women, book publishing, and the uniquely American fund-raising tradition. In
by Margaret Cook (1971) the author notes in the Pennsylvania entry The Poetical Cook-Book, &Apparently the first cook book published and sold in the United States to benefit a charitable cause.&Under the New York entries, Ms. Cook says of The Economist (1847) by the New-York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, &Apparently not a fund raising book for charity,& but instructions to the poor living on limited incomes.While researching the history of South Carolina cook books, I read in the introduction to  by Sarah Rutledge (1991, USC Press, Introduction by Anna Wells Rutledge) about Mrs. Elizabeth A. Poyas who &described what old time cooking was . . . long before Miss Sally Rutledge had favored us with that excellent volume 'The Carolina House-wife or Cookery Book, 'which she published for charitable purposes.& (The Olden Time of Carolina. By the Octogenarian Lady of Charleston, S.C., 1855.) 
Well, it really struck me that the reference to The Carolina House-wife as a charitable cook book is pretty impossible to have been overlooked! The impeccable introduction by Anna Wells Rutledge was first published in 1979 and has been reprinted at least twice by different publishers. There is no indication what charity would have benefited from the various printings of The Carolina House-wife, but I think a historian could look into the literature about her famous family and come to some conclusions about her activities. So perhaps we have a new first community cookbook!!!The Carolina Receipt Book; or Housekeeper's Assistant in Cookery Medicine and Other Subjects, Connected with the Management of a Family. By a Lady of Charleston. Charleston S.C. Printed by James S. Burges 1832. In the preface the author states, &...the profits of the work, it may be remarked, are destined to objects of public usefulness, which she hopes will secure for it a still larger extent of patronage. Charleston, S.C., May 17, 1832.This volume, published anonymously, may have been written by Ms. Rutledge (), but it does not match either in the preface or receipts in the The Carolina House-wife. There is some thought it may have been written by Sarah Rutledge's first cousin, Harriott Pinckney (), with whom Ms. Rutledge lived in 1849. Harriott's mother had a manuscript book of family receipts several which appeared in Sarah's book (Karen Hess discusses this in , 1992).So, perhaps in Mrs. Poyas' comments she erroneously believed 1. The Carolina House-wife ;was written by Sarah Rutledge as a charitable cook book, or, 2. She confused Ms. Rutledge's book with The Carolina Receipt Book ;that has the charitable attribution in the introduction, or, 3. Perhaps Sarah Rutledge was indeed the author of the earlier work, The Carolina Receipt Book which made her comments as a charitable offering.  Sarah Rutledge gathered not only her own family recipes into this book, but also from the wealthy families of Charleston kitchens thus making it a &community& cook book. 
In a 2007 issue of , there was an article concerning the rarity of Italian Cookery Books published in English before WWII. If I recall correctly, the author, Michelle Falke,  was speaking of American publishing history of Italian cooking, not those from England, for example. The enduring English love affair of Italian culture produced a  rich lode of kitchen literature. So my list includes any in the English language. If I have the book in my collection, I have linked it to my LibraryThing catalog so you may view it. I made an editorial decision to include a few corporate advertising booklets as it forms an often omitted contribution to energize public knowledge of the culinary genre of Italian heritage in our country. 
Indicates references to Falke, not in my collection. Double**after a title indicates those mentioned by her in my collection. Many books Ms. Falke references were without titles, just place names, so could not be listed.
Update May 21 2009: I received a very thorough addendum to this list from Robert W.Brower. Many thanks RWB, for your corrections, and, for your many additions, noted with +. Mille Grazie!
As usual, send an email with any additions and I will attribute your contributions.
The list is ordered according to publishing date, earliest to latest.
 H.L. Sidney Lear, 1884  London.
 Janet Ross, 1899 London.
    Maria Gironci, 1900 London.
  Sarah T. Rorer, 1900 Detroit.
  Mrs. W.G. Waters, 1901 London.
*Kitchen Wisdom 'italiano'  St. Anthony's Girls Brigade [und ] Hartford Ct.
 Mrs. Katharine Vassault, und 1910s San Francisco.
+Italian Recipes for Food Reformers  Maria Gironci, 1905 London.
+Some Italian Recipes and Others  Romolo, 1906 Wolverhampton.
 Italian Cookery   Antonia Isola, 1912 New York.**
+Can't Fail Cook Book  Isabelle Clark Swezy for John Vittucci Company 1915 Seattle.
   Julia Lovejoy Cuniberti, 1917 Janesville Wis.**
   Jack Cusimano, 1917 Los Angeles.**
   Maria Gentile, 1919 New York.**
  undated 1920s Providence RI. 
+Tested & Approved Recipes for Red Cross Macaroni Spaghetti & Noodles  The John P. Canepa Co. 1923 Chicago.
   Countess Morphy, 1930 London.
+One Hundred Genuine Italian Recipes  Alberto Alfani 1935 San Francisco.
   Henry Aimes Abot, 1936 San Francisco.
Mary Carmen Riello, 1936 New Haven Conn.
*+  North Bennet Industrial School, 1936 Boston.
   V. LaRosa, 1937 New York.
   Countess Morphy, 1937 London.
Mimi Tells You How to Prepare Your Favorite Italian Dishes at Home 1942 New York.
+A Collection of Genuine Italian Recipes, Easy to Prepare  Mattia Locatelli, 1939 New York.
+  Irma Goodrich Mazza, 1939 Boston.
 The Planters Edible Peanut Oil Co., 1940 Suffolk Va.
 Joseph Jerome 1941, Philadelphia.
+Italian Cook Book (adapted from Pellegrino Artusi) Joseph V. Di Cecco, 1940 New York.
11 Genuine Italian Spaghetti Sauces   Joseph D.G. Jerome, &#  Philadelphia.
*Italian Cook Book   Italian Ladies' Welfare Society, 1944 Kansas City.
   Angela Martignoni, 1945 New York.**
    Pellegrino Artusi & Olga Ragusa, 1945 New York.
   Nika Standen, 1946 New York.
   Crosby Gaige, 1947 New York.
&#  Brooklyn New York.
   Maria Lo Pinto & Milo Miloradovich, 1948 New York.
   Milan V. Petrovic, 1948 New York.**
  Hector Boiardi, und 1940s.**
   Ada Boni, 1950 New York.
  Albert Pollio, 1950 New York.
Buon appetito!!!
In an earlier post I introduced nineteenth century Recipe Holders. Here is a wonderful example of a handmade Holder acquired from an estate in Maine. By examining the contents, the original owner started this little beauty in England. Apparently the household immigrated to Ontario, Canada and ended their journey somewhere in
The 5.5x7-inch covers are closely woven brown linen (possibly hand-loomed) over cardboard. The fabric might have been red or blue and have faded to this common brown color, caused by oxidation. On the exterior is a sampler of embroidery stitches in green wool. Originally there was a green ribbon to tie the Holder closed. Notice the spine is ample to enfold many recipes through the years.
Inside, the folder boards are inset with black silk. there are five labeled envelopes sewn to the front board which organize the recipes by categories: Puddings, Candies, Cakes, Icings and Miscellaneous. Within these little envelopes are small pieces of paper with recipes written in a youthful hand, possibly a teen project of sorts.
Each time I find an old cook book at a garage or household sale, I feel like a delicious sleuth or voyeur of sorts. I feel that I'm snooping into someone's life, finding telltale signs of what happened in the cook's kitchen while she owned that book. I like to fill in the blanks, inferring details of her life, her likes, what she chose to write and cook. That's a fairly romantic notion. The story of a cook's kitchen is far from ordinary.
Here's how I do it.
At an estate sale in Wisconsin there was a well-loved first edition copy of the popular Rumford Complete Cook Book (c1908 by Lily Haxworth Wallace) sitting amidst a myriad of product pamphlets. There was no spine left to secure the pages to the book . The mottled blue cloth card covers were held together by an ancient rubber band. I gently opened the book and discovered the volume belonged to Mrs. W. M. Dickinson, who had penned her name and the date July 20th 1913. All the loose pages were covered with her recipes, first written in pencil, then snippets pasted to the outer boards. I moseyed over to the checkout counter of the sale with a firm grip on this little gem. I knew there must be a story between those two covers.
Leafing through the pages, there were check marks with comments on tried recipes. A big star * next to Green Tomato Pickle. Big parenthesis around Seed Cookies made with caraway. A note “O.K. makes 9” next to Pecan Sticks. Whole Wheat Biscuit had been rewritten “1 lb. whole wheat flour = 3 cups+" She noted, "additional baking powder, salt, butter and a large egg" to replace 1 small egg called for in the original recipe. To the recipe for Puff Paste, Mrs. D. translates
pound pastry flour equals 2 cups. Under each of her entries she uses a flourishie detail, ~~||~~, divulging a touch of her personality.
Recently I bought a little booklet, Kate Sargeant's , published in 2006, by Fred Kelso, Hengwrt Publishing Company, Lewisville, Pennsylvania. It is a reprint of the original book, published in 1899 by Charles Orr, Cleveland, Ohio. It is presumably the first English language cookbook dedicated to the little mushroom. In Mr. Kelso's introduction, he mentions &there were no other mushroom cookbooks published until Countess Morphy's 1938 Mushroom Recipes&.
So I had a look in the library here at Kitchen Garden Books and came up with some other titles to add to a bibliography. In Lavonne Brady Axford's excellent bibliography, ,  there is a list of more than two dozen books about mushroom cooking, some more contemporary (not included) and she was so useful in compiling this list.
William Rubel of  Santa Cruz, California contacted me recently with several excellent additions, noted by an *asterik. He recommends those marked with the pound sign# as being particularly important. Thank you William!
Many, many years ago when I first discovered the pleasure of reading food history I was& entranced by a picture in the 1964 American Heritage Cook Book, Illustrated History (p.286), Volume I. So charming, so colorful, of
such essence depicting the painful nostalgia of the American South. Here was a cookbook with a red and white gingham border with a beautiful painting of an African-American woman marketing, a basket draped over her arm and a fish about to be taken home for a family meal. The attribution states it's in the collection of& The Shadows, New Iberia, Louisiana. A property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A caption below the photograph says, &Cover of a manuscript cookbook made for a New Orleans family in the early 1900s. It was bound in the colors of their cook's aprons. She was called Zouzoute and she is portrayed on the cover.&
Decades later, while reading introductory remarks, &The Creole Heritage& by Shirley Abbott, in Madame Begue & Picayune Creole Cook Book, part of the Antique American Cook Books Series published in 1984, there she was again! Zouzoute as remarkable as ever.& The caption said pretty much the same thing except for this poignant comment about the fabric, & a 1900s New Orleans family shows their cook, Zouzoute, from whose apron the cover was made.&& I could not exactly remember where had I seen her before. And let it rest.&
Over the last few decades, I have managed to acquire several relatively scarce pieces of culinary Americana, the Recipe Folder. Before the days of recipe boxes, these special recipe cases, basically a handy oversize &envelope& where the cook collected all her loose slips of paper with hand written receipts. I observed that it seemed to be the custom when sharing a recipe, that they were passed along folded in half. I don't know if there was a standard size of writing paper and envelopes, into which the recipes were mailed. Maybe each company had their own size. They are almost always folded.
Recipe Folders were often made of cloth, sometimes leather and usually quite decorative. The example on the left is 5 inches by 10 inches. The cardboard is covered with cream linen and is hand painted. The illustration is of a medieval man and woman at table, a period when it was customary to toss scraps (orts) onto the floor to feed household pets. Quite a tidy tie-in to the bits and pieces tossed into the folder.
Inside the case there is hand-embroidered edging to the flaps on both sides in which to hold the recipes. On the outside, there are remnants of a linen ribbon sewn midway into the spine to secure the contents.
The Kentucky Housewife. A Collection of Recipes for Cooking by Mrs. Peter A. White, Chicago & New York, Belford Clarke & Co., c1885.
The Blue Grass Cook Book. A Manual of Useful Information for Housewives by Genvieve Long, Chicago, W. B. Conkey Company, c1903.
The Blue Grass Cook Book compiled by Minnie [Minerva] C. Fox, Duffield & Co., New York, c1904.
It took me a long time to find by Mrs. Peter A. White c1885. When it arrived a few weeks ago, it sure seemed v e r y familiar. As if, maybe, I already owned this book? Drat! I paid a handsome price for the pleasure of capturing an elusive title. So when I looked through my shelf of Kentucky cookery books, I placed my hands on
by Genvieve Long c1903. Well, the resemblance is more than passing. They are the same book! Different titles, different authors, different publishers, ever so slightly different cloth covers. And, the text block is identical, but the index of Blue Grass appears at the beginning of the book, and is at the end in Kentucky Housewife. I just noticed that the header of each page in Long's book says The Kentucky Housewife!
I forgot how much research I did several years ago trying to track down bibliographic information on the Blue Grass volume and Genvieve Long. Then it came to me!
In March 2006 I was inspired by an article from Bethany Ewald Bultman Who Saved Jambalaya? in , PPC 80 (a venerable publication on culinary history).  Ms. Bultman proposed that the recipe for Jambalaya among the Cajun population didn't come into general use until the middle of the 20th century. In my limited, but familiar, knowledge of Louisiana cookery and the literature about regional foods of the Creoles and Cajuns, I just knew that Bethany must not have had enough literature of the kitchen at hand when she came to some of her conclusions. Careening through some two dozen books, I assembled a list of citations forwarded to her via email. She thanked me and that seemed to be it.
COOKING IN OLD CREOLE DAYSBuy}