My Month of Wild Adventure and a Poem

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Konnichiwa, Campers! Happy Poetry Friday and Happy nearly National Poetry Month! PF link and my own poem are below.

And...you have 'til the end of today to enter our giveaway! Details below.

We TeachingAuthors are excited that National Poetry Month begins on April 1st! (And I'm busily stretching my neck, preparing to turn my head a gazillion times an hour for the next 30 days, thinking someone is calling my name.)

Lately, as those of you who follow this blog may remember, I've been in a questioning mode about my writing life. So I set out on an adventure--to take a step back--without much Wi-Fi, social media, voice mail, phone calls or text. To be honest, most of that wasn't on purpose--most of it was because Wi-Fi was spotty at best and I was so busy doing outside stuff I had no time at the end of the day except to write my poem and fall into bed, happily exhausted.

I spent two weeks hiking in New Zealand:

So much beauty...so many miles of trails ~

and then two weeks in Japan with my dear friends, author Bruce Balan and his wife, Alene. They live on their cherry red trimaran, Migration, which takes its name from Bruce's first picture book, The Cherry Migration. They've lived on her for 12 years, sailing around the world.

Bruce and I were invited to speak at two schools in Japan: Marist Brothers International School and Fukuoka International School.

In we go!

Fukuoka International School: Best. Library Door. Ever.

 

Lucky, lucky me!

My notes before meeting  Bruce and Alene's friends for dinner...
a new language and new names ~

Sugoi! (= wow!) I'm still glowing. I don't have any conclusions yet...but here's the poem I sent Bruce last night--and below it is the backstory. (We love the backstory of each other's poems).

CAN'T


"Can't," says Ant.

"Just try," says Fly.

"Why?" asked Trout.



"I'll cry," says Ant.

"Defy," says Fly.

"Won't die," says Trout.



"No," weeps Ant.

"Move slow," says Fly.

"Have a go," says Trout.



"Freak out!" screams Ant.

"Don't doubt," says Fly.

"Find out," says Trout.



"Find out?" asks Ant.

So Fly 

helped Ant

just try.



And Trout

helped Ant

find out. 

And Ant?

Didn't die.

poem © 2017 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

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Backstory: Today I heard an actor talk about roles that scare him. He says yes to them to find out if he can do them or not. He said, "What's the worst that can happen—I find out that I can't." Wow. I hope I can be less attached to the outcome when I write. For now, I am inspired by the words FIND OUT.

Maybe I can do it...to find out if I can do it. That feels light...like something easy, no big deal, as if I'm taking a little kid's hand and leading her to the playground so we can both try the slide, just to find out if it's scary.

Hmmmm.

Okay, Campers...what are you most afraid of doing? Write a poem about it (and share it with us if you're feeling brave) for National Poetry Month.

And if you're reading this on Friday, you still have time to enter our giveaway for a chance to win Matt Bird's The Secret of Story...it ends tonight, March 31, 2017.

Thank you, dear Amy LV of The Poem Farm, for hosting Poetry Friday!

posted guiltily (for including too many photos) by April Halprin Wayland, with help from her happy hiker's feet!

Ahhhhh....the half-way point of one of our longest hikes in New Zealand

Hot Summer History Reads

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It's summer time! Yahoo! And what better way to celebrate summer than to indulge in some summer time reading.  It’s my favorite genre to write and read. Historical fiction is the coming together of two opposing elements: fact and fiction. But as the great Katherine Patterson once said, “…historical fiction [is] a bastard child of letters, respectable neither as history nor as fiction.”  I’ve written before, how defining historical fiction shares similar idiosyncrasies as Doctor Who.

When Patterson wrote historical fiction, she was often taken to task for writing stories that were considered not true to contemporary readers. But, said Patterson, “…In many instances, historical fiction is much more realistic than a lot of today’s realism…Nothing becomes dated more quickly than contemporary fiction.” In the best of historical fiction, as with any story, a child becomes a hero who gains power over her situation, a theme that contemporary readers appreciate.

And summer time is the best time for savoring my favorite historical reads.

 

I read this book in one sitting. An exciting read from Avi is City of Orphans (2011). The book follows young Maks Geless, a newsie scraping a living on the mean streets of New York City in 1893. Maks’ sister Emma has been arrested and he has only four days to prove her innocence.

Paul Fleischman’s award-winning Bull Run (1993) brings together sixteen distinct viewpoints in the

gripping retelling of the first great battle of the Civil War. This can be either an easy afternoon read or a fun summer performance for readers’ theater. An amazing study in perspective!

I revisited these books this summer, following the discussions on diversity in literature. Laurie Halse Anderson’s Seeds of America Trilogy begins with Chains (2010). As the Revolutionary War starts, young Isabel wages her own fight for freedom. The story continues in its sequel, Forge (2012) with Curzon as an escaped slave serving with the Continental Army. A particularly moving and heart-stomping depiction of the struggles that the enslaved and the freemen endured during the country’s fight for its own freedom.

Westerns are my absolute favorite. Laurie J. Edwards, under the pen name Erin Johnson, introduced Grace Milton in her Western for young adults, Grace and the Guiltless (2014), Book One of the Wanted Series. When her family is murdered by the Guiltless Gang, Grace struggles to survive the wilderness and her grief. Her story continues in the sequel, Her Cold Revenge (August, 2015), as Grace becomes a bounty hunter and hunts the gang that killed her family.

 As one reviewer offered, this may just be the story that hooks a new generation of readers on the Western genre. For a summer treat, you can read the first chapters of Her Cold Revenge here!

Another series that I have particularly enjoyed this summer is Iain Lawrence’ High Seas Trilogy. The Wreckers (1998) and its companion The Smugglers (1999) follows young John Spencer in a high-sea adventure complete with swashbuckling characters, salty dialogue and a spine-tingling cliffhangers. The story continues with The Buccaneers (2001). This series reminds me of another favorite, Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.



Let the adventure begin! 

Bobbi Miller