28 February 2008

February 29 - Leap Year

Over on my work blog today I wrote about Leap Year, which is tomorrow (actually Leap Day), and recalled an incident from childhood when a member of my school class whose birthday was on February 29, had to endure the rest of us enjoying a joke at his expense. When we turned 11, we told him he was only 3. Poor Geoffrey!

Anyway that set me wondering whether any fiction had been based on the idea.
Tonight I found It's My Birthday... Finally! A Leap Year Story (Paperback)
by Michelle Winfrey Whitaker (Author), Joyce M. Turley (Illustrator)
It is currently out of print, but here is the blurb.
On February 29, 1992, Michelle gave birth to a wonderful little "Leapling" (That's a baby born on Leap Day). Michelle and her husband named him Miles. Four years later on February 29, 1966, Miles celebrated his first Leap Year Birthday. Being only one or four - depending upon how you look at it - was not important to Miles, at that time. All he know was that he was having a birthday party. Over the next four years, Miles learned about the calendar and realized that his birthday date did not appear on the calendar each year. Finally, February 29, 2000 was drawing near and Miles was finally going to have a birthday that appeared on the calendar. As a special gift, Michelle wanted to buy him a children's storybook about Leap Year. To her surprise, she could not find one. Making a note of this, Michelle began to outline, "It's My Birthday... Finally! A Leap Year Story." However, it wasn't until two years later that Michelle began to write this story...

And Selina Davenport wrote a book in 1817 called LEAP YEAR; OR WOMAN'S PRIVILEGE. A NOVEL. IN FIVE VOLUMES.

Nadia Wheatley apparently has a title called LUCY IN THE LEAP YEAR.

Peter Cameron has a title called LEAP YEAR, a novel, written in weekly segments for the magazine 7 Days during the leap year of 1988, follows a group of New Yorkers coming to terms with their lives and loves in a vibrantly realized eighties NYC.

Over to you.

1 comment:

Maxine Clarke said...

A girl at my school whose birthday was 29 Feb was always teased along the lines of Geoffrey.

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