Sunday, January 30, 2011

Happy Birthday Lloyd Alexander!

Picture courtesy of Michael Tunnel, BYU


Happy Birthday Lloyd Alexander!  Today is January 30th, 2011 and were he still here with us, would have been Lloyd Alexander’s 87th birthday. 

I couldn’t think of a better day to launch this blog, “Friends of Lloyd Alexander”. I have big dreams for this blog. My vision is that this will be a one stop shop for information and discussion of the work, life and ongoing legacy and influence of Lloyd Alexander.



There are several goals that I hope to achieve in this ongoing project:
  1. Have fun and celebrate creativity and imagination
  2. For the last two years, it has been my pleasure to host the annual “Lloyd Alexander Remembrance Day” at both Drexel Hill Middle School in Drexel Hill, PA and also at Pennridge North Middle School in Perkasie, PA. I will recap and report on those events here.
  3. As part of my research for Lloyd Alexander Remembrance Day it has been a joy to interview many of his friends and associates (hence the title of this blog). I would like to share those insights and stories with you.
  4. My online research has uncovered a number of other like minded individuals who in some way, shape or form have celebrated Lloyd and his work. We’ll see them here also.
  5. Finally, my “big project” comes to me as an inspiration from “Julie and Julia”. Although he is most well known as the Newbery Award winning author of the Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander wrote more than 40 books. I have spent time over the last two years collecting those books. I plan on reading them in the order in which he wrote them, and then blogging about my ideas and impressions of them. Not a literary critique, but more of a “Chris and Lloyd” project.
So there will be much more to come. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed investigating and discovering the world of all things Lloyd Alexander.

PS: Thanks to Karen Sterling, librarian at Pennridge North Middle School, for planting the idea that a blog would be a great way to share all of my research.