Young Adult Fiction Writer Natalie Babbitt

Kneeknock Rise (1970) begins with an introductory passage that embodies the theme to be explored in the remainder of the book:

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

Babbitt opens her book with a description of the setting and its history, in this case the history of the Mammoth Mountains and why they were so named. The people of the village of Instep are also portrayed, along with the particular pride they take in one of the Mammoth Mountains, Kneeknock Rise, a mountain that reached high up into the mist and on which some unknown creature lives, a creature called the Megrimum. This monster and the place where it lives occupy a central position in the consciousness of the people of Instep, who react to the disappearance of sheep and the souring of mil

. . .
shop and sniffed the May breeze hopefully. "There's something in the air, no doubt about it. . . Something's going to happen." The characters in this story are evocations of characters in Gothic mysteries--the blacksmith, the housekeeper, the mysterious people who live in the hall, the robber, and the detective hired to find out what is really going on at Goody Hall. Indeed, the background is very British in tone, while the story as it unfolds carries the reader back into earlier mythology by evoking images of Hercules and his Twelve Labors or King Midas and his gold. The name Midas Goody clearly makes that man seem like the miserly king of legend, the king who turned everything he touched to gold. The detective is Hercules Feltwright, sometimes an actor, and Babbitt uses the inherent reference in his first name as a comic device as she recalls the Twelve Labors of hercules in much smaller form when Feltwright strangles an earthworm, kills a mad cat, descends into Midas Goody's tomb, and encounters a three-headed Cerberus in the form of a statue. In the novel, Feltwright has to deal with gypsy seances, hidden treasure, mistaken identities, and other trappings of the Gothic mystery, all presented in humorous form while the
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Approximate Word count = 2304
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)