![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/5\/5d\/Free_to_Be..._You_and_Me_(album_cover).jpg\")
I still have my copy of this vinyl record. Just looking at it makes me smile.<\/p><\/div> “Atalanta told John about her telescopes and her pigeons, and\u00a0John\u00a0told Atalanta\u00a0about his globes and his geography studies. At the end of the day, they were friends. That same night, John set off by ship to discover new lands, and Atalanta set off on horseback to visit great cities. The king stayed home and thought about how the world\u00a0was changing.<\/p>\n “But now Atalanta is still off in the world, visiting towns and cities, and John is sailing the seas. Perhaps some day they will be married, and perhaps they will not. In any case, it is certain they are both living happily ever after.”<\/p>\n It would be hard for a girl today to understand how revolutionary this story ending was to a girl\u00a0in the 1970s. This was the first fairy tale I ever read that\u00a0told me I could choose a life of adventure, of independence. That along the way I\u00a0might find\u00a0boys\u00a0who were\u00a0my true friends, who wanted to stand beside me as equals, who\u00a0valued\u00a0my hopes and dreams as strongly as they valued their own. This story told me I could explore the world,\u00a0at my own pace, and in my own way. This story was freedom. I can’t emphasize enough how important “Atalanta” was to my sense of self and possibility. This author likely has no idea just how important her story was to a generation of girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIn case you aren’t familiar with Free to Be, <\/em>it\u00a0was a 1972 book and record album that gathered together\u00a0“stories for free children,” as Ms.<\/em> Magazine called them. These were stories that defied gender stereotypes and celebrated gender and racial equality.The record featured Marlo Thomas, Alan Alda, Rosey Grier, Mel Brooks, and a host of amazing\u00a0actors and singers performing poems, stories, plays and songs.\u00a0It was a formative album for a generation of children, encouraging individuality, honoring children’s hopes and fears and feelings, and doing it all with humor and energy. There were 14 authors represented in the original book,\u00a0and Betty Miles was one of them.
\nHer “Atalanta” was a retelling of the Greek myth about a strong, fiercely independent young woman. The original myth is fairly bloody; Betty Miles’ retelling omits the boar hunting and the beheading\u00a0of the vanquished suitors, while keeping the core of the myth: Atalanta wants to choose her own future.
\n(I’ll be quoting from the story as told on the record album. It’s worth mentioning here that the back-and-forth storytelling of Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda is marvelous. Marlo Thomas\u00a0reads\u00a0Atalanta’s narrative and dialogue, Alan Alda\u00a0takes the male narrative and roles. If you haven’t heard the album, it’s still available and so much fun to listen to.) Anyhow, back to Betty Miles’ story and why it was SO important to girls like me in the early 1970s. My childhood reactions are in brackets:
\nIn Betty Miles’\u00a0version of the story, Atalanta’s father is a king who decides\u00a0he must marry off his daughter, as fairy-tale kings are wont to do. He proposes a footrace, wherein the winner will earn Atalanta’s hand in marriage. Atalanta is a very fast runner, so she cleverly proposes an addendum: “‘Let there be a race,’ she says. ‘But you must let me run in it, too. And if I am not the winner, I will accept the wishes of the young man who is. If I am<\/em> the winner, I will choose for myself what I will do.'”
\n[I loved this perfectly reasonable, yet tradition-bucking proposal. It was calmly stated but scandalously defiant; I couldn’t imagine standing up to my father this way. Of course, I was also in the second grade at the time.]
\nThe king agreed to this. He would have his way, marry off his daughter, and enjoy a fine day of racing, as well.”
\n[The king’s insouciance always struck me as funny \u2013 and irksome.\u00a0It was clear how differently he and Atalanta experienced\u00a0the\u00a0event: so casual a day for him, so vital a race for her.]
\nSo Atalanta trains for the race, day after day. Unbeknownst to her, a young man from the town is also training just as hard.
\nOn the day of the race, suitor after suitor tries to catch Atalanta, but each falls short, until the only challenger remaining is the young townsman, John, who keeps pace with Atalanta “until he ran as her equal, side by side with her.”
\n[The significance of the phrase “ran as her equal” was not lost on me.]
\nAt first alarmed, Atalanta\u00a0shoots ahead, but John manages to\u00a0keep up with her. Atalanta is astonished. Then, “smiling with the pleasure of the race, Atalanta and Young John reached the finish line together, and together they broke through the golden ribbon that marked it.”
\n[I loved that phrase, ‘smiling with the pleasure of the race.’ It says so much in so little space, and leavens a\u00a0consequential occasion with\u00a0generosity and\u00a0joy.]
\nThe king tries to give Young the\u00a0“prize” -\u2013 i.e., his daughter\u00a0-\u2013 but John demurs.\u00a0“Thank you, Sir. But I could not possibly marry Atalanta unless she wished\u00a0to marry me. I have run this race for the chance to talk<\/em>\u00a0with Atalanta.”
\n[I absolutely LOVED John for this.]
\nHearing this, Atalanta laughs happily. “And I could not possibly marry you before I’ve gone off to see the world. But I would like nothing better\u00a0than to spend the afternoon<\/em> with you.”
\n[That last phrase always made me laugh. Even though I cheered for Atalanta’s\u00a0independence, her offer of ‘the afternoon’\u00a0did strike me as an amusingly paltry substitute for, you know, a whole lifetime.]
\nAnd then the story ends so perfectly I can hardly stand it:<\/p>\n
\nWhen Betty mentioned today, in an almost offhand way, that\u00a0“Atalanta” was hers, I felt a huge, unexpected wave of emotion. My throat lumped up\u00a0with a\u00a0wallop of\u00a0gratitude that overwhelmed me. I managed to keep the tears at bay, but I told Betty it was my favorite of all those favorite stories and songs, the one that meant the very most to me.
\nLater, at dinner,\u00a0I told a friend that I’d discovered\u00a0one of our customers was the\u00a0author of “Atalanta,” and she immediately welled up with tears. “That story changed my life,” she said, telling me her own version of what I’ve just shared with you here. That story changed lives, indeed.
\nI don’t think Betty Miles has any idea how powerful her short story was for thousands upon thousands of girls.
\nI think of the authors today who are writing books in which\u00a0children of color can see themselves, see lives unfolding with brilliant hope and potential, and wonder who, someday, will meet a bookseller 45 years later who will tell them, “You changed my life.” To those authors: keep writing. It means more than you’ll ever even imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"