The Books
The world of Green-Sky
Zilpha Keatley Snyder's rich imagination provided us with the beautiful, verdant world of Green-Sky and the characters that lived within when the book Below the Root was published in 1975 by Atheneum. The book And All Between followed close on its heels in 1976, and Until the Celebration continuing the pattern, arriving in 1977, all beautifully illustrated by Alton Raible, whose illustrations also grace this web page. The trilogy of books was received well and achieved the high level of success that was common for Mrs. Snyder's books; teachers and students both loved them, and so did critics as the books won acclaim from all kinds of sources. However, as books do, these silently entered the realm of fantasy classics and were not heard from for a while.
Mrs. Snyder had been receiving some mail regarding the end of Until the Celebration from readers who were somewhat distressed; naturally, Mrs. Snyder didn't want her readers to be upset at the ending she had written, so she began to think about a way to make it better. At about this time, she was contacted by a programmer named Dale Disharoon, who had been a huge fan of the Green-Sky books and offered to solve her problem by introducing the final chapter of the Green-Sky saga in the form of a game for the relatively new frontier of the PC. Mrs. Snyder accepted, and they went into a partnership of creativity, Snyder writing the story for the game and Disharoon programming it in, working with her specifications; they were joined at the final stage by Bill Groetzinger, who provided the artwork for the accompanying box and other documents, making it a very richly-planned and highly-developed game, and also making it the end of the Green-Sky saga, spurring a re-release of the original trilogy of books by Tor. The game was released in 1984 for the Apple and other ports followed soon after, with the re-release of the books falling soon after; the game was an unprecedented format and, predictably, an immense success, especially with educators and children who might otherwise be uncomfortable around the PC. The new books were paperback format, once again praised for their ingenuity, and new cover artwork was supplied by James C. Christensen, but the interior art by Raible was sadly omitted.
The releases of the game for different formats continued until around 1987, and then gradually technology once again moved on and most of the formats supported by "Below the Root" became obsolete. A few more years passed and another re-release of the original Green-Sky Trilogy occurred, and then there was another silence of years, until finally this web page was put up. And there you have it!:)
To find out more about Zilpha Keatley Snyder, go to her web page, which can be found by clicking here. If you have other questions about Green-Sky that aren't answered in her letter, you can email her, and she will most likely respond within a few days; she's the greatest living author I know, and she has affected my life so profoundly. She also genuinely cares about her readers, which really impresses me, but then I'm biased.:) Please do go to her page, because I think you'll be impressed, and please also do try and find her books, because they're well worth the search. Thanks again!
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