Kenneth Oppel: Canada ⋆ Author

"A good book should first and foremost entertain and give pleasure, but a great book also makes its reader consider (or reconsider) difficult issues."

Kenneth Oppel

The beginning of Kenneth Oppel's career as an author of children's literature was auspicious indeed. At the age of fourteen, he finished his first complete story, and a family friend who was acquainted with Roald Dahl sent him the manuscript. Dahl liked what he read so much that he helped get the manuscript published through his own agent. The result was Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure, which was published when Opel was only seventeen years old. Opel's career has never faltered since this first success.

Oppel's success is no accident. His writings for children and young adults fall in the realm of fantasy literature, especially steampunk. All of his novels are carefully researched and methodically outlined before they are written. Although Oppel values his organized approach, he acknowledges that much of his most engaging writing ends up being a calculated deviation from these outlines: "[I]nevitably, as you write, you take all sorts of detours, and those are often the most inspired and original parts of the book."

Oppel's oeuvre has developed with every publication since his first in 1985, his breakout as an acclaimed author came in 1997 with Silverwing. Since then critics and readers in general have followed him closely. In Canada, Oppel has won the Governor General's Award, the Canadian Library Association's Award, and the Vicky Metcalfe Award for Children's Literature. Oppel pleases his many fans by releasing quality novels at a steady rate. In 28 years of writing he has published 27 books, and his 28^th is on its way to the presses.

As a busy family man with three children and a prolific writing career, Oppel has been a very focused author, whose criteria in self-assessment is that the result of his labor is a good story that people enjoy. He has publicly balked at the notion of writing an ideologically charged work for children. Oppel works in writing to support his family, and to that extent he works to write literature that is both thoughtful and enjoyable. Many of his novels demonstrate an engagement with issues of ethical human relation to technological developments in the world. Recent novels in the Frankenstein series have been wildly successful examples of Oppel's visceral and incisive engagement with contemporary issues.