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1976 Ally Sheedy Reads Mom The Wolf Man & Me Norma Klein Vinyl LP Record VG+
Vinyl / Jacket Grade per Goldmine Standard: VG+ / VG+; Jacket still in shrink
Norma Klein Mom, The Wolf Man and Me (abridged) Read by Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy When I wrote Mom, the Wolf Man and Me in two weeks in the spring of 1971 I had just turned thirty-three years old, and 1 had been publishing fiction for fourteen years. In my sophomore year in college 1 had had a short story accepted by a literary magazine, and in the decade and a half since that time, I had continued to publish short stories for adults in popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle, but mainly in literary magazines such as The Sewanee Review. My older daughter, Jenny, loved to be read to, and by the time she was three I had read literally thousands of picture books aloud to her. Like many mothers before me, particularly mothers who happened to be writers, I thought: why not try this? It seems easy. In 1970 and 1971 I wrote about a dozen picture books and sent them to an agent who specialized in children’s books. She said' that she thought that for an author, unknown in the field, to try and get a picture book text accepted at that time, just as federal money for libraries was drying up, would be just about im- possible. Why not try, she suggested, a contemporary novel for eight to twelve year olds? At first I was non-plused. My daughter was so much younger than that which meant that both what 1 had learned from observing her and what 1 had learned from reading to her would not be of much use. Apart from that, my own recollection of being eight or nine was exceedingly dim 1 did not have that absolute recall of childhood with which so many children's book authors arc apparently blessed. To make up for these defects, I went to the library and took out twenty or thirty novels for this age group. (Later, my agent was amazed that I had not read Harriet the Spy before writing Mom, the Wolf Man and Me since that was the novel she thought it most resembled.) I chose the first person because so many of the books 1 read seemed to be in that form. In fact, almost all of my sixty published stories had been written in the third person, which I tend to prefer, but I could see that the first person gave a certain directness and immediacy which children evidently liked. I don't know exactly why I selected the plot I did. I had had a teacher in college whose daughter—she was a few years younger than me—had become pregnant “out of wedlock" and had decided to keep the child, a practice less fashionable then than now. Some years later she married a young man, not the father of her child, and had another child with him. What had struck me was that this situation, which fifty years earlier would have been the cause for much grief and tearing out of hair, seemed to be handled with such calmness and maturity by everyone. I have always been drawn to writers who write with irony and humor: Wilde, Shaw, Austen. What appealed to me in this situation was taking a classic situation—an out-of-wedlock child—and reversing it, to show a child who felt herself to be privileged, not disgraced, by her social situ- ation. Apart from this, the book was only autobiographical in a general way. The setting was New York City because that was where 1 had lived all my life. The grand- parents, especially the grandfather, were based on my parents. The “Wolfman” was a combination of all the nice men I -had ever known, including my husband. Brett was some combination of my daughter, myself, and other little girls with whom 1 had been friendly. I can say now that I wrote the book in a state of total innocence about American mores. I had grown up among liberal, educated people who were open to new ideas. None of the friends to whom I showed the book found anything especially out of the ordinary about it. I was completely amazed when, upon publication, the book was either vilified as pornographic trash or hailed as a brave attempt at nonconformity. What I had hoped was to be judged on a literary basis. The comment I treasured most was one which only appeared in 1976 in a book entitled “Who’s Who in Children’s Literature.” In it the author, Margery Fisher, wrote: “It would be a pity if such a shrewd, perceptive study of individuals were outlawed or, conversely, if it were praised for a courageous stand against convention. In fact, this is an expert example of first person narrative in which every detail and every conversation, re- ported or direct, is properly related to Brett, the speaker throughout.” What has become evident to me in the four years since the book appeared is that there are still many, many taboos in the field of children’s literature. I had only inadvertently touched on one, In fact. I have found that the younger the child for whom one is writing, the greater the alarm on the part of certain parents and educa- tors if the content is thought to be “controversial.” Mom, the Wolf Man and Me, which is really a book for eight to twelve year olds—Brett is really a quite naive eleven, more like nine—has been pushed as a “young adult” book: the paperback cover has her looking like at least seventeen! All this will pass., I fully expect that when I am reading to my grandchildren, if I have any, the kinds of topics 1 would like to see written about will be accepted with- out a moment’s hesitation and we will feel the same amazement about how long it took for their acceptance as we feel today when we hear of “Ulysses” or “Lady Chattcrly’s Lover” being considered controversial. I look forward to that day, of course, but I also look forward to having such a fertile and relatively untouched field into which to delve, fictionally speaking. Children clearly respond to books that speak frankly of their condition—the thousands of letters I’ve received from all over the country make this clear. And I think that it is to children that we, as children’s book writers, have the final responsibility.NORMA KLEIN Norma Klein began publishing short stories while in college and her first two books appeared in 1972. One was a short story collection for adults, Love and Other Euphemisms. The other was a novel for children Mom, the Wolf Man and Me which appeared in an abridged version in Ms, Magazine and was chosen as a best book of the year by The New York Times and School Library Journal. Ms. Klein lives on the upper west side of Manhattan with her husband, Erwin Fleissner, and two daughters, Jenny and Katie. Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy was born on June 13, 1962. She is the author of She Was Nice to Mice, an adult book for children with the subtitle “The Other Side of Elizabeth I’s Character Never Before Revealed by Previous Historians.” Ms. Sheedy's extensive research into the Eliza- bethan period and her interest in mice led to the writing of the book at the age of 12. Her previous work has been pub- lished by the Village Voice, Ms. Magazine and the “New York Tinies Book Review.” She is currently an Associate Editor of Childrens Express magazine, and is a occasional guest celebrity panelist on CBS-TV’s To Tell the Truth show. CREDITS: Cover: Charles Lilly Library of Congress: 76-740403 Caedmon, 1976 Directed by Ward Botsford Abridged by Norma Klein Studio Recording and Tape Editing: Daniel A. Wolfert Mastering: Howard W. Harris SOURCE: MOM, THE WOLF MAN AND ME, Copyright 1972 by Norma Klein. Published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.





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