A Dark Lyricist Turns to Tales for Children

Colin Meloy is the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, The Decemberists. He's also a children's writer.

From a story in the New York Times...

The brain behind the brainy rock band the Decemberists is changing course, putting his musical pursuits on hold to write a trilogy of children’s novels with his wife, Carson Ellis, an illustrator. They contain, in drips and dribbles, one of Mr. Meloy’s favorite motifs.

That would be blood. The dark colors in the first volume of “The Wildwood Chronicles,” titled “Wildwood” and recently published by Balzer & Bray, should not surprise anyone familiar with the band’s playfully roguish songbook, which includes, amid seafaring yarns and espionage procedurals, blanching descriptions of rape, torture and the serial murder of children.

The book, intended for ages 9 to 12, brims with grimly comic violence. Coyotes dressed in Napoleonic uniforms train musket, cannon and bayonet on woodland bandits, talking birds and an industrious rat named Septimus. Many perish in the fight, although not nearly as many as Decemberists fans might be accustomed to.

Mr. Meloy reined himself in, not only because he was writing for a young audience, but also because he had to keep his story sufficiently peopled for 541 pages. “In a book you have to consider the repercussions,” he said. “In a song, after three and a half minutes, it’s done. So you can kind of kill people off willy-nilly.”