June 30

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Knowledge Spelled Backwards by A. R. Capetta

Posted by on June 30, 2024 in Author Posts | 1 Comment

Mrs. Petruny’s third grade classroom wasn’t just a classroom—it was a kingdom.

Specifically, it was the Kingdom of Edelwon. At first, I thought this name was simply magical and musical. I later learned from Mrs. Petruny that it was also Knowledge spelled backwards, with a few letters missing. 

I’d already spent an enormous amount of time in fantasy realms by third grade. I’d portaled through as many books as possible, keeping the ones I loved close at hand. I’d quested through the library—to the point that the librarians had to ask me to let some of the other kids have a chance to take out titles that I kept returning to. And I’d lurked in the corners of the nearby bookstores, making little stacks of books like a dragon hoarding treasure, before deciding which one to take home. 

I’d loved stories of magic for as long as I could remember. But I’d never been in a shared space of magic before. Mrs. Petruny’s class was my first time stepping into a kingdom where other people were on the same adventure at the same time.

Our writing exercises always had a magical, adventurous, or supernatural twist to them that encouraged us to think outside of the boxes of our daily lives and see where we landed. We read poetry every day, written out in beautiful calligraphic script by our teacher and read aloud to enhance the magic of the words.We spent lots of time on science, looking at the natural world as a source of wonder. (Mrs. Petruny was also a geologist and even took us on a dig, which is a story for another time!) Our classroom’s decorations went well beyond the usual posters tacked on the walls as we decided together what our kingdom should look like, using everyone’s artistic talents. We even had a class song, borrowed from the musical version of Camelot (with the lyrics changed, of course.) When we stepped into class every day, we became knights in search of knowledge—knowledge was what mattered in Edelwon, and it wasn’t about getting more than the people around you; the point was to enjoy the adventure of finding it. And one of the best places to find knowledge? Books.

We read.

Oh, how we read. 

As someone who already loved reading, this was a particular sort of delight. Nobody was limited to fantasy books, of course. But to a kid like me, a year in Edelwon was the perfect reason to search out every single book with a witch, wizard, wand, spell, or quest. I discovered many of my favorite stories that year and started to delight in writing and planning my own. Mrs. Petruny celebrated reading and writing as joyful and creative, not something we had to do to earn a grade or check a literacy box. 

Everything she did was like that—joyful, creative, grounded in wisdom and a little wild at the edges.

I shouldn’t be surprised that when I sat down to write a witch in the Hocus and Pocus series—a series stuffed with magic, of course—that this witch was joyful, creative, wise, and a little wild. (She even has hair that billows around her head in a cloud just like Mrs. Petruny did! I love that detail.) And this witch teaches, too. While she’s not a third-grade classroom instructor, she is mentor to three young apprentices and teaches them all about magic.

Just like Mrs. Petruny taught me.  

When I think about the Kingdom of Edelwon now, one thing is clear to me. Spelling knowledge backwards was the perfect foundation for a fantasy kingdom, and not just because of the fun wordplay. Stories of magic, fantasy, imagination, and adventure let us approach knowledge playfully and differently. They contain knowledge in a unique arrangement. This way of looking at the world doesn’t just teach us new lists of facts; it makes new things possible. It allows us to see and feel things we already know in new ways. 

Magic was everywhere in third grade, when I lived in the Kingdom of Edelwon.

When I moved on to fourth grade, it didn’t go away—magic followed me, and stayed forever.

Now I write about shared spaces of magic for kids, and hope that it stays with them too.

A. R. Capetta is the author of numerous novels, including Lambda Literary Award-winner The Heartbreak Bakery. A. R.’s next novel is called Costumes for Time Travelers. A. R. is delighted to be writing magical stories for younger readers, beginning with Hocus and Pocus and the Spell for Home. And coming soon: Hocus and Pocus and the Dragon Next Door, followed by Hocus and Pocus and the Snow Day Sorcery.