#The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)

[sandybrett]

Oh, dear god(s), please don't let "grape" become an actual synonym for rape. Please don't let grapes, the delicious, nutritious, innocent fruit, become associated with rape.

I'm not triggered by discussions of rape, so I can't really speak to that experience. But based on what I know about euphemism treadmills, I think this is more likely to lead to some people being triggered by the word "grape" in certain contexts, even when it's intended to refer to the fruit, than it is to make discussions of rape any easier.

Just the other day I was thinking about a particular scene in the children's novel The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin. Our protagonist, Mrs. Carillon, has been arrested, and several other characters march on the jail with hand-painted signs that say things like "Free Mrs. Carillon." One character intended to simply paint "Mrs. Carillon" on his sign, but he used a piece of cardboard from a box that had the word "Grape" on it, with the result that the sign ended up saying "Grape Mrs. Carillon." Nine-year-old me thought that was hilarious.

I would like for future generations to be able to enjoy that scene as I did, without their minds immediately jumping to "Rape Mrs. Carillon."

Hi new friends. Please don’t censor words, especially triggering ones. Seeing trigger words written l!ke th!s doesn’t stop them from being triggering.

It just stops Tumblr’s built in filter (see under settings) from working which many of us have in place to protect ourselves.

This has happened to me multiple times this week, and as someone currently struggling with suicidal ideation, has not been great.

You are not on TikTok or Insta, please use the full words so people can protect themselves. Thank you 💖

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Famous Authors, Lesser Known Works

Round 1

Exile from Camelot :

Cherith Baldry is one of the authors of the infamous Warriors series. But she wrote a book about one of King Arthur's most underappreciated knights, Sir Kay. It gives so much depth and care to the character. It is also very homoromantic.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) :

I don't expect many people to have read it, but I think it's another clever and twisty mystery from the author of The Westing Game, and it deserves more attention. Justice for Mrs. Carillon!

[keepitdreamin]

trying to remember a book i read in like 5th or 6th grade and i think it's the westing game although i mostly just remember the vibe of reading this mystery book as a class and theorizing about who did it. i also remember at the time really liking the writing style so i guess i'll have to read it now and see if it rings any more bells.

[notemily]

YES, I haven't read it in years but they had to marry their kid to the other family's kid because of soup business reasons. but it wasn't the creepy kind of child marriage lol, it was in name only. they were supposed to meet up again as adults, but then Leon (who changed his name to Noel) disappears, and Caroline goes on a search for him, because he's her husband, at least officially. but throughout the plot of the story she falls in love with her friend Augie, I think, and at the end she decides she doesn't have to stay married to Leon/Noel just because of a business deal when they were kids. sort of an "it's okay to have your own life and not the life your parents planned for you" thing, I think.

The Westing Game is such a masterpiece, and this one isn't up to that caliber, but it's still a silly fun wordplay book that involves the tune to "On, Wisconsin!" and a grape workers' strike. also, the soup factory explodes? I should reread it.

There’s a plant called the “TomTato” which is a cherry tomato plant with potatoes as roots. It yields large quantities of both tomatoes and spuds.

[frenchifries]

you could just write whatever in the 70s

[queerheadcanonoftheday]

Today’s Queer Headcanon of the Day is: Mrs. Carillon is an acespec demigirl.

[dritatt]

Dicebox comic facebook

#Dicebox comic facebook full

Once you’re old enough to read chapter books, much less mystery books with complicated word puzzles embedded within, you’re certainly old enough to understand that the facts of daily life were different in the past. I wondered for a moment how much this would mystify the children of today, but I dismissed the thought as patronizing. In the Facebook era, it’s almost easier to find acquaintances than it is to lose them. Much of the story hinges on the search for a missing person, and the techniques employed in that search are, while inherently ridiculous, also very much of their time. The flip side of this is the effect the time period has on the plot. The lovely text-as-picture illustrations, which Ellen Raskin herself provided, are rendered in classic late sixties typography and line art.

#Dicebox comic facebook full

First published in 1971, it’s full of tongue-in-cheek period references (the grape workers strike, hippie art communes) that I blithely read past as a child. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin is one of those. Some are a delightful surprise, as I get to revisit everything I found wonderful about them as a kid while catching some of the more grown-up jokes and references – like suddenly realizing that funny skit from Sesame Street was a send-up of Saturday Night Live. (…not that I don’t still own all the ones that came after, too. Friends, I only wear three pairs of shoes, but I still own just about every book I cared about before my 18th birthday. I’ve been re-reading a few favorite books from childhood and adolescence recently, trying to remember what made them so engaging and important to my younger self.

[likeamadonnau2]

I was tagged by @bonos-grindcore-sideproject, my sister in bedge and card-carrying genius, to do this writer thing. Your wish is my command, beautiful Grindcore Woman!

1) How many works in progress do you currently have? Just The White Room, and I’ve been working on that for about a year. 73,000 words so far, and I’m pretty sure it’ll get to 100,000. 

2) Do you/would you write fanfiction? Yes, twelve year break notwithstanding.

3) Do you prefer paper books or ebooks?
 Both, but it is nice to have a device that allows me to look up words on the fly and read in the dark without disturbing my husband.

4) When did you start writing? I’ve been writing in one way or another ever since I was a child. Little illustrated stories and jokes for my friends, poetry, diaries, college publications, so much writing in school and at my job, technical writing, on and on.

5) Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with?
 Non-fic: if I need another set of eyes on it, I trust my husband. Fic: before I post it, if I have a question, I’ll ask PJ or Carina for an opinion, but for the most part I’m self-sufficient. Occasionally I will ask for my husband’s take on topics where he has more experience than I do. There have been times when he wants to read my fic, but right now is not one of those times, and I totally understand this because admittedly my little hobby is weird. Except he read Chapter 12 of TWR a few weeks ago because it was such a beast for me to write, and he was curious. Arrrrgh it makes me so uncomfortable when he cherry-picks! He teases me about my fic (”why do they always have to fuck?”), but he tells people I’m an “astonishingly good” writer. I love him so much.

6) Where is your favorite place to write?
 I write at my desk at home, and if I’m working on something that might be upsetting, I usually move to the most remote room in the house. I also have been known to set up camp for a day in a beloved public library.

7) Favorite childhood book?
 Charlotte’s Web, probably. I was weirdly obsessed with The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin when I was in 4th grade. Also Judy Blume books because they were my sole source of information about sex when I was in junior high.

8) Writing for fun or publication? The fic is 100% for fun and because I feel overwhelmingly compelled to write it. I’ve published a couple of nonfiction things, though.

9) Pen and paper or computer?
 Both. My outlines are written with pen in a notebook that fits in my purse and travels well. If I have no other choice, I’ll write a chapter in the notebook, but otherwise I love working on my computer.

10) Have you ever taken any writing classes? Self-taught, baby, but I had some world-class English teachers in high school, and I wrote SO MUCH in college/grad school for classes and other things.

11) What inspires you to write? As far as Ye Olde Bedge Ficce goes, they do. The chapter I just wrote where Edge talks about subroutines: THAT IS ME. Bono and Edge are my subroutines, and if I go to sleep trying to figure out some fic issue, they will wake me up during the wee hours and hand me an answer. I literally ask them, “What have you got for me?” And they bring it, and sometimes they demonstrate it, heee, and I write it down and try to go back to sleep. 

I am fascinated by the connections my mind can make, and as I get older, the connections come to me more easily. When I’m between stories, some image that no one else has written about will occur to me, and the urge to write that one thing and claim it as mine is so overwhelming that I’ll wrap a giant fic around it. With The White Room, I was looking at a photo of their house in Eze, and I focused on that one cupcake-like room perched on top and thought, “What goes on up there?” BOOM. I’m writing fic for a year. With Close it was the shaving scene (the fake Anton photos came to me almost immediately after that). With Fetish it was the hood scene. With Verse Two it was the callouses. 

So once I have a topic and a semi-coherent plan for how to write it, I’ll decorate it with things I notice in my everyday life, my own memories, art, science, LOVE, the compulsion to create, the beauty of nature, FOOD (ha), sex, friendship, sexy friendships, jokes, the thousands of things Bono and Edge do and say and their general gorgeousness and goodness, and all my research. I write for the BELOVED people who comment regularly and tell me what they like (hi PJ, Carina, Inchy). I don’t know how you can read a fic and not comment. But most of all I am writing for me. It is so much work, but nothing is as fun or as satisfying. 

Okay, anyone who wants to do this can! 

[nunopds]

Inteligente, simples e agradável para muitas idades.

No final do ano de 2017 a editora Bruaá lançou “Nunca se passa nada no meu bairro” de Ellen Raskin. Somos levados ao bairro de Carlos Alberto, um bairro onde segundo ele nunca acontecia nada mas na realidade muitas coisas excitantes e estranhas estão acontecendo ao mesmo tempo. Usando o mesmo plano fixo frontal ao longo de todo o livro, as ilustrações de Ellen Raskin dão a sensação cinematográfica de um plano-sequência ou de uma peça de teatro com cenário fixo.

O livro aborda de uma forma simples que não nos devemos acomodar, que a vida é uma grande aventura e senão estivermos atentos ela passa por nós sem darmos por isso.

Clique nas imagens para as visualizar em toda a sua extensão:

Eis a sinopse da editora:

O seu nome era Carlos Alberto e, tanto quanto ele conseguia ver, nunca se passava nada no seu bairro. Ele sonhava com desfiles de bandas, casas assombradas, leões e tigres ferozes e até fogo de artifício. Mas o que é que ele tinha? Nada. Nada que ele visse. Mas se olharmos bem, talvez vejamos algumas coisas que escaparam ao Carlos Alberto: um fogo que começa, um homem que escava um tesouro enterrado, um carteiro azarado, um paraquedista, uma ambulância que é chamada e outras cenas que se vão acumulando e oferecendo um contraponto colorido que irá oferecer horas de diversão aos leitores.

Ellen Raskin nasceu em Milwaukee, EUA, foi uma escritora, ilustradora e designer gráfica. Habitava em muitos mundos: no mundo dos livros, dos sonhos e na cidade de Nova Iorque, onde escreveu e ilustrou numa casa assombrada de 1820. Como designer gráfica, criou capas para mais de 1.000 livros, incluindo a primeira edição do clássico A Wrinkle in Time de Madeleine L’Engle. Foi autora de vários romances, incluindo “The Westing Game”, “Figgs & Phantoms”, “The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues” e “The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) “. Depois de anos a ilustrar as ideias dos outros, Ellen Raskin publica em 1966 o seu primeiro álbum ilustrado: “Nunca se passa nada no meu bairro”. Foi o primeiro de muitos. Raskin morreria aos 56 anos, a 8 de agosto de 1984, na cidade de Nova Iorque.

Nunca se passa nada no meu bairro Ellen Raskin Editora: Bruaá Páginas: 36 Encadernação: capa dura Dimensões: 20 x 16,5 cm ISBN: 978-989-8166-35-7 PVP: 12,50€

nota: agradecimento especial à editora pela oferta de um exemplar.

[sc name=”banner_flex”]

Nunca se passa nada no meu bairro #bandasdesenhadas #ellenraskin Inteligente, simples e agradável para muitas idades. No final do ano de 2017 a editora Bruaá lançou "Nunca se passa nada no meu bairro" de Ellen Raskin.

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Famous Authors, Lesser Known Works

Round 2

All American Girl :

Meg Cabot is better known for Princess Diaries

A poor middle sister just wants to skate by and get on with her art. Sure things get a little bumpy with her sister being a sister, but what really throws a wrench in her plan is her perfect timing to save the First Son from an assassination attempt! (and what do you know, he's about her age!)

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) :

I don't expect many people to have read it, but I think it's another clever and twisty mystery from the author of The Westing Game, and it deserves more attention. Justice for Mrs. Carillon!

[brightereyes]

when i read the mysterious disappearance of leon (i mean noel) i literally had a notebook that i would write down clues and puzzles in. i love you ellen raskin

this is an ellen raskin appreciation post

[notemily]

....

has anyone on this webbed site ever read The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin? because that right there is a pomato plant

There’s a plant called the “TomTato” which is a cherry tomato plant with potatoes as roots. It yields large quantities of both tomatoes and spuds.