Talk:The View from Saturday

old

this story has lots of symbolism resembling the characters and settings!!!

— 15:51, 26 October 2008‎ 64.72.40.165

New picture

It is huge, but it's the only one I could get. {{fontcolor|pink|missalicia1994}} (talk) 02:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Character Fact

Doesn't Ethan have a crush on Nadia? Shouldn't this be included? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.15.196.20 (talk) 18:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

It is included, in a way. I wrote that, "after getting to know Nadia, [Ethan] discovers that he really likes halos."[1]

- PM800 (talk) 04:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Level

Simon & Schuster currently says online: The View From Saturday, age 8-12, grade 4-6[2]

--P64 (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Scholastic interview

E. L. Konigsburg, Interview Transcript. No date. Scholastic Teachers. scholastic.com.
—(interjection 2012-01-05) date evidently between 1996 month?? publication of her The View From Saturday and 2000 March 30 death of her "forever editor" Jean E. Karl.

These three exchanges quoted from the interview concern The View from Saturday directly and primarily.

Do you think friendships like Noah's, Nadia's, Ethan's, and Julian's really exist?

I think they do. I don't think it's common, but I think that's what made these kids special - they were all outsiders, and they were not competitive with each other, but allowed their strengths to complement each other.

Do you have anything in common with your characters?

There are parts in each of them that I relate to. Noah's resistance to authority, for example. Ethan's challenge for having a high-achieving sibling. Nadia's sense of having been abandoned. And I hope, Julian's kindness and outsiderness. Julian was the most outside of all of those children.

Why did you write The View From Saturday the way you did, as four different stories?

I wrote the book that way because that's the way it came to me. I thought children would enjoy meeting one character, and then two characters, and that they would enjoy seeing parts of the story repeated but in a different way. I thought that they would enjoy having the second character interact with the first character, with each story moving the general story along. And I had hoped that readers would feel very satisfied with themselves when they had it all worked out. And that's been my experience from the letters I get, that readers feel very satisfied after having read it.

--P64 (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Julian was the most outside of all those children

I should've thought Hamilton Knapp was the most outside -- he'd almost been an insider, but got passed over. No wonder he turns into a bully!

Nuttyskin (talk) 16:39, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Autobiographical statement

These three paragraphs from her 2000 autobiographical statement[3] directly and primarily concern A View From Saturday.

"I had started writing a story about a young man named Ethan Potter who boards a school bus the first day of sixth grade. The bus takes an unexpected turn, and a strangely dressed young man boards and sits down next to Ethan. He introduces himself as Julian and explains that his father is about to open a bed and breakfast inn--a B and B. At that point, I left my desk and took a walk along the beach. (By this time we had moved back to Florida.)

"When I write a book, I more or less start a movie in my head, and there I was doing a re-run of what I had written. When I got to where Julian was telling Ethan about the B and B, I remembered that I had a story in my files--my mixed-up files--about a young man named Noah whose mother insists that he write his grandparents a bread-and-butter letter, a B and B letter. That made me remember another short story I had about a dog named Ginger that plays the part of Sandy in the play Annie. And that led me to another story about an Academic Bowl team.

"Before I had finished my walk, I realized that all those short stories were united by a single theme. Taken together, they reinforced one another, and the whole became more than the sum of the parts. I knew that kids would love meeting one character and then two and three and four, and I also knew--because I had learned it from them--that they would think that fitting all the stories together was part of the adventure.

--P64 (talk) 18:56, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Publisher and editor

Publisher

For Atheneum Books for Young Readers 1996 (first edition; hardcover), I give ref name=catalog to a public library. Simon & Schuster ref name=publisher and Amazon list editions now for sale, Atheneum BYR 1998 (paper) and Jean Karl Books (paper) respectively.

Jean Karl Books is either one imprint within Atheneum, now within Simon & Schuster, or another name for Atheneum BYR, dating from the retirement of ABYR founder and longtime editor Jean E. Karl. Her references don't make this clear for me. We have no information on Jean Karl Books; no listing for that imprint at Simon & Schuster#Imprints.

Editor

• From references at Jean E. Karl we know: Jean Karl received E.L. Konigsburg's first two manuscripts together in 1966/1967. She continued with Atheneum as freelance editor after her retirement. She died 2000. Konigsburg called her "my forever editor" at or prior to her death.
• From ref name=transcript (no date) at E. L. Konigsburg we know: Konigsburg said "I've had the same editor always" subsequent to The View From Saturday (1996).

So we know that Karl edited Saturday —at least her sixth Newbery Medalist, because her obituary lists five others. But wikipedia asks that we not "put two and two together" as editors —that is banned original research— so I say it only here and at Talk: Jean E. Karl#Saturday editor. Perhaps someone else will provide direct identification of Karl as the editor. --P64 (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2011 (UTC)