Amy MacDonald – Carol's Notebook

Author: Amy MacDonald

Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Amy MacDonald received her B.A. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. She has been employed in a number of positions related to writing and publishing. She worked as an editor of the Harvard Post and Highwire Magazine (a magazine for teenagers) and as a copy editor at Cambridge University Press in England. She was awarded a fellowship to study journalism at the Journalists in Europe program administered by the Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris in 1982. As a freelance writer, her work has appeared in many national and international publications.

Her books include Little Beaver and the Echo, Rachel Fister’s Blister, Cousin Ruth’s Tooth, No More Nice, No More Nasty, Please Malese!, The Spider Who Created the World, and Quentin Fenton Herter III. These books have won awards ranging from Best Books for Babies to the IRA/CBC Children’s Choice Award, to the Oppenheim Platinum and Parents Choice Gold awards.

Her documentary film, “On This Island,” about the role of arts in Maine’s smallest, island school, earned a New England Emmy nomination and was screened on national television (PBS’s Independent Lens series).

She has taught writing at Harvard University, the Stonecoast Writers Conference, and the University of Maine. As a member of the New England Foundation for the Arts Touring Artist Roster, she has conducted workshops in hundreds of schools from Maine to California (and abroad). After developing teacher training workshops for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C, she was invited to join their national Partners in Education roster as one of 30 Kennedy Center teaching artists who teach an arts-intergrated approach to the curriculum. She is an Associate Editor of Teaching Artist Journal.

Today's Tale is a retelling of a story from Haiti. The back of the book explains that in Haiti, the trickster is known as Malese, derived from the French "malice". Sometimes Malese is evil and sometimes he is mischievous, but above all, he enjoys taking advantage of people, including his friends who can't seem to catch on to his cunning ways. This story was adapted from the original, "The Magic Island", written in 1929 by W.B. Seabrook This book is just pure fun. The pictures are gorgeous, simply drawn but full of vibrant colors. Malese tricks his neighbors into giving him everything from shoes to rum for a cake. The end up throwing him in jail for a month, but of course Malese is pretty sly. By the end, not only is he out of jail, but his neighbors are fixing up his house for him—for free of course. At first I thought it's kind of a shame that Malese never learns...