A Women's History Month Sonnet

In honor of Women's History Month and Poetry Friday, today I'm sharing an original sonnet about a little-known woman of history. You'll find my poem at the end of this post.

Today happens to also be the official release date of the movie adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's classic novel, A Wrinkle in Time. Yesterday, for International Women's Day, a number of people Tweeted about their favorite female authors as part of #IWD2018. Well, Madeleine L'Engle is one of my favorite authors period, male or female.

Our Not for Kids Only Book Club reread A Wrinkle in Time for our March book and we'll be going to see the movie this weekend. While I'm disappointed that the early reviews aren't very positive, I'm still looking forward to the outing. I hadn't read the book in years, yet some of the scenes were still quite vivid in my memory. I'd completely forgotten other parts, though, and I'm curious to see how the story has been interpreted for the film.

Instead of tweeting about authors, yesterday I shared an image honoring the two amazing sisters who inspired my YA novel, Playing by Heart.

As I've shared here before, Playing by Heart grew out of my research for a nonfiction biography of Italian linguist and mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Even though I have an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, I never heard of Agnesi until I came across her name in an article about little-known women of history. I wrote the biography, in part, because I found her life fascinating, but also because there are so many myths about her, both in print and online. I still hope to find a publisher for that biography. Meanwhile, I have created a website to dispel some of the myths. Yesterday, for International Women's Day, I posted the above image there, along with some credible references for those who'd like to know the truth of Maria Gaetana's story. I also shared that I'm currently offering a special Playing by Heart "Book Bag and Swag" giveaway for Women's History Month. I invite all our TeachingAuthors readers to enter the giveaway. You'll find all the details on this page of my website, along with a link to where you can download a free PDF excerpt of Playing by Heart.

Later this month, Carla will announce a special Women's History Month book giveaway here on our TeachingAuthors blog. Be sure to watch for that!

I mentioned above that I'd be sharing an original sonnet today--the first I ever wrote. I was inspired by a sonnet published as a tribute to Maria Gaetana Agnesi when she was only five years old. That sonnet, written in Italian, praised how “marvelously” she spoke her first foreign language, French. (Maria Gaetana mastered seven languages by the time she was a teen.) Since I couldn't translate the original sonnet without losing its form, I wrote my own, which you can read below. My sonnet, like the one published in 1723, follows the pattern found in “Italian" sonnets. They have a “turn” or change in thought that is signaled by a change in the rhyme pattern. I hope you can spot the “turn” in my poem. 

By the way, when re-reading A Wrinkle in Time I was struck by something Mrs. Whatsit says that I didn't recall. It, too reads like a poem:

Be sure to check out this month's Poetry Friday roundup hosted by Michelle at Today's Little Ditty.

And remember to always Write with Joy!

Carmela

At Long Last--Tessering!

     What book do you wish you had read as a child?  Are you kidding?  I read everything as a child!!

      A trip to the public library was as much a part of my week as piano lessons and allergy shots.  Plus, there were the biweekly class visits to the school library…and then I remembered.  Until graduate school, I had never read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

    Why not?

    Simple.  The one copy in the school library was always checked out.  For two years I watched someone else check out the book with the cool “space age” jacket graphics.  Wrinkle was the must read, IT book, for fifth and sixth graders. Madeleine L’Engle was our J.K. Rowling.

     The public library?   It owned multiple copies….all apparently on “permanent” check out.

     Then I went to junior high.  The librarian informed me that “Newbery books are for younger children” with a look that made me feel like a dolt for even asking.   

   Years passed and I went to the University of Tennessee, where an MLIS in children’s services meant reading hundreds of children’s books.  Their library had multiple copies of everything, including AWrinkle in Time.

     I’m glad that I read this as an adult.  In elementary school, I would have seen a quest/adventure novel.  The first line of the book is “It was a dark and stormy night.”   I wouldn’t have understood the irony, but would immediately have been drawn into  Meg Murry’s world.

     Meg sounded oddly like me (probably every girl who has read this book thinks the same thing); she has braces and glasses and no social graces. Her father has simply disappeared, apparently abandoning his family.  Again, I could identify.  My father, the FBI agent was gone on out-of-town assignments for months at a time. Some of the neighbors asked if I really had a father.

     That Meg is something of a math whiz and all the math references would have stopped me momentarily. I hated math and didn’t understand people who did.  But by the time we learn this about Meg, we are already invested in her as a character, so I would’ve overlooked this character “flaw”.

    I know I wouldn’t have understood most of L’Engle’s literary references, and would have skipped over them. They are not essential to the basic story.

   What I would’ve understood was the theme of Conformity is Evil and we should all Do Our Own thing.  I would’ve been reading this in 1966, at the dawn of the "Age of Aquarius," when life was all about Sticking it to the Establishment.  The conformity on the planet Camzotz, would have reminded me of a favorite folk song, Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes.”

  Little boxes on the hillside,

  Little boxes made of ticky tacky, 

  Little boxes on the hillside,

  Little boxes all the same.

  There's a green one and a pink one

  And a blue one and a yellow one

  And they're all made out of ticky tacky

  And they all look just the same.   

      Down with conformity! Up with the individual!

      As an adult reader, I viewed the struggle between the villain, IT and Meg, for the soul of her little brother, Charles Wallace, in more spiritual terms. Reading it then (and now) I focused more on the themes of Good and Evil.  I read this the same year I saw Star Wars, and was struck by the similarity in theme. (“Go toward the light, Luke!”)

      As a writer, I know something about Madeleine L’Engle’s struggle to publish this book, her second.  After 30 some rejections, L’Engle had thrown in the towel. Had her agent not sent it to just one more editor, Robert Farrar, at what is now Farrar Straus Giroux, it would never have seen the light of day.  (This is a story I tell myself every time I get a rejection.) When your rejections include words like “weird” “strange” and the ever popular “unmarketable” you sort of lose hope.

      I am sure that those childrens’ editors found the Cold War themes of totalitarianism, brainwashing and a numb existence, unsuitable for children.  When it was finally published in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, these themes resonated even more. I don’t believe it was an accident that it became the 1963 Newbery winner. (Newbery committees are notable for thinking outside the box—boxes made of ticky tacky.)

     As a writer, I did have trouble with my suspension of disbelief from time to time.  I accepted that Meg and Charles Wallace spoke like adults (because they were “different”).  I was willing to believe “tessering”, even if the explanation involved math and physics (which I still don’t understand.)  I couldn’t decide what Calvin’s role was in all this (Friend? lLove interest? Set up for future sequels?)  I also couldn’t figure out just why Meg’s father was being held captive on Camzotz.  But these are minor points in a book that has stood the test of time.

     2012 marks the 50^th anniversary of Wrinkle’s publication.  I have not read any of the Harry Potter books (either). I wonder if kids will be as wild about Harry, fifty years hence. I think Meg Murry will be around in 2062.

 Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Reading as an Eater

Reading Mary Ann's last post reminded me of a wonderful handbook for young writers that I recently bought for a talented neighbor.  In it, Anne Mazer bravely confesses that she's never much cared for Charlotte's Web.  While I adored Charlotte's Web and probably read it a dozen times, I must admit that I have no memory whatsoever of the passage Mary Ann cited with such love and affection.  I am a foodie, and instead it was the buttermilk in the creases of Wilbur's ears and the scraps of Templeton's newspapers that made a lifelong impression on me.

Reading, as I always tell my students, is a highly subjective experience.

A Wrinkle in Time conjures for me images of cocoa; lettuce and tomato sandwiches; turkey and dressing.  Of course I also remember pulsating IT, the rhythm of the bouncing balls and jump ropes, the quirky language of the three Mrs. Ws. 

In short, I am not a visual thinker.  At all.  I don't care whether the heroine of my book has honey-colored hair or which brand of shoes she is wearing.  What grounds me in an alternate reality is the scent of freshly cut grass or the taste of a dark chocolate Reese's cup.  Yet how to describe these sensations?  Because many of us are visual thinkers, English, I would venture to say, has evolved to possess a dearth of descriptive words for scents, sounds, and, to a slightly lesser extent, tastes.

From Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary:

"Ramona bit into her hamburger.  Bliss.  Warm, soft, juicy, tart with relish.  Juice dribbled down her chin.  She noticed her mother start to say something and chnage her mind.  Ramona caught the dribble with her paper napkin before it reached her collar.  The French fries -- crip on the outside, mealy on the inside -- tasted better than anything Ramona had ever eaten."   

I never liked hamburgers as a kid until I read this passage.  I don't believe that Beverly Cleary is best known for her descriptive language, but I still think of this scene every time I eat a french fry.

Of course the brilliance of Beverly Cleary is typically recognized to be in her humor, and these are the other passages that have always stayed with me.  From the first page of Ramona the Pest:

"'I'm not acting like a pest.  I'm singing and skipping,' said Ramona, who had only recently learned to skip with both feet."

I have a five-year-old daughter, and Ramona IS my daughter.  Oh, when Ramona thought she had to sit still for "the present," when she described her eye color as "brown and white," when she understood the lyrics of the national anthem to involve a "dawnzer" that emitted a "lee light" -- what child could not empathize with these situations and laugh?  I am typing this paragraph and thinking, "I can't WAIT to read these books to my kids!"

So food and funny is what does it for me.  What an interesting exercise in self-analysis this has been!  As writers and readers, it is always a good idea to ask ourselves -- what are our touchstones?  And why?
--Jeanne Marie

P.S. Don't forget to enter our fabulous Patricia Reilly Giff two-book-set book giveaway!