3 FAB AudioBooks & a poem for Poetry Friday!

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Howdy, Campers!

It's POETRY FRIDAY!

Thanks to Margaret for hosting Poetry Friday today!
(My poem's at the end of this post.)
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Our topic is What are We Reading?  I love this topic...I've learned so much about my blogmates, our readers and books.

Carmela, JoAnn, Jill, Laura and Esther have each checked in about the books they've checked out this summer.

My turn!

Here's what I've read recently:
~ THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green on my Kindle (loved it)
~ WE ARE CALLED TO RISE by Laura McBride ~ adult book (wonderfully written...but why are adult books so sad?)
~ TEA WITH GRANDPA written and illustrated by Barney Saltzberg ~ (SPOILER ALERT: I've bought copies to give to grandparents who Skype their grandkids)

What I'm currently reading:
~ DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth on my Kindle (not crazy about the writing so far).

But I am CRAZY CAKES for audiobooks.  I live in Southern California, so maybe that explains it.  Or maybe I should say I live in my car in Southern California. :-)

So here is my list of  3 WONDERFUL audiobooks in the order I read them.  And yes, you can say "read them" if you listened to them. Because I said so.

ONE:

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork, read by Lincoln Hoppe (read a review here)

Lincoln Hoppe is an AMAZING voice actor.  I think I want to marry him.

Hang in there with this audiobook. At first it felt soooo slow...I wasn't sure I was going to keep listening. But, boy, am I glad I did. I mean, wow.

From the Random House website:
"Reminiscent of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary audiobook is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside."

TWO:

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt, read by Sam Freed

From Wikipedia:
"Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, published by Clarion Books, is a 2004 historical fiction book by Gary D. Schmidt. The book received the Newbery Honor in 2005 and was selected as a Michael L. Printz Honor that same year. The book was based on a real event. In 1912, the government of Maine put the residents of Malaga Island in a mental hospital and razed their homes."

“Schmidt’s writing is infused with feeling and rich in imagery. With fully developed, memorable characters. . . This novel will leave a powerful impression on readers.” ~ School Library Journal, Starred


THREE:

Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt—National Book Award Finalist.  Read by Lincoln Hoppe.  (!)

Here's what the National Book Award website says:
“In this stunning novel, Schmidt expertly weaves multiple themes of loss and recovery in a story teeming with distinctive, unusual characters and invaluable lessons about love, creativity, and survival.”

His main character, Doug Swieteck, first appeared in Schmidt’s Newbery Honor book, THE WEDNESDAY WARS.

Listen to an 8 minute NPR on-air interview of Schmidt about OKAY FOR NOW here.

There.  Those are my Fab 3.

What I look forward to listening to next:

~ THE WEDNESDAY WARS by Gary D. Schmidt, read by Joel Johnstone. I think I may have this read years ago; I can't wait to listen to it. (I'm inspired by Esther and am reading a string of books by the same author...something I almost never do.  Gary D. Schmidt is a brilliant and deeply affecting writer.)

LISTENING IN THE BACKSEAT
by April Halprin Wayland

Are we twisting,
risking all,

listening to what the writer
wires us,

what the teller
sells us?

Twisting, uncertain,
wheeling...to the final curtain?

Did you know that many folks read books aloud for your listening pleasure on YouTube?  Go to YouTube and search for a book title.  For example, click here for a sampling of folks reading THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.

And...if you know any flat-out beginning picture book writers in the Los Angeles area, my six-week class, Writing Picture Books for Children in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program starts August 6th.  (The student who benefits most from this class has never heard of SCBWI.)

poem and drawing (c)2014 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

posted by April Halprin Wayland...who's amazed that you've read all the way to here.  Thank you. 

The AUTHOR I'm Still Reading…

What have I been reading, and in some cases re-reading, these delicious summer days in Chicago?
Anything written by Dani Shapiro!

I hope that name rings a bell.                                                           
I declared her book STILL WRITING: THE PERILS AND PLEASURES OF WRITING a must-have for every writer’s shelf in my June 2 post.

Part memoir, part meditation on the creative process, part advice on craft, Dani Shapiro’s words enabled, empowered and equipped me to return to my writing and keep on keepin’ on.
In sharing those words weekly with my summer Newberry Library Writing Workshop students, I watched them do the same.

I knew instantly from her confession early on in STILL WRITING that I wanted and needed to read Dani Shapiro’s body of work, both fiction and nonfiction.

“My words are my pickax, and with them I chip away at the rough surface of whatever it is I still need to know.”

I began with SLOW MOTION: A MEMOIR OF A LIFE RESCUED BY TRAGEDY, Dani Shapiro’s honest, heartfelt telling of her true story, “a life turned around – not by miracles or happy endings, but by unexpected personal catastrophe.”

Next I read DEVOTION: A MEMOIR, the story of her ongoing three-tiered inner journey to discover what makes a life meaningful.

The novel FAMILY HISTORY followed.  Living up to its flap copy, it was indeed a “stunning and brutally honest novel about one family’s harrowing recovery from devastation.”  Rachel Jensen’s story of the family crisis brought about by her adolescent daughter’s pain grabbed me from the get-go and wouldn’t let go.

I can say the same about BLACK & WHITE’s Clara Brodeur and her story which explores the stuff and limits of the mother-daughter relationship.

All of the books mentioned, whether memoir or fiction, totally absorbed me. I adore reading stories about families, about creative souls, about the human condition.  I worried.  I cared. Each book spoke to me - the mother, grandmother and former wife, the daughter and sister, the human being, but also, the writer and teacher.  Each book was literally un-put-downable.  Dani Shapiro writes elegantly, truthfully, her camera lens focused on only what’s important to the characters and their internal and external actions.  Her superb craft in seamlessly weaving important back story details into the forward-moving story is to be envied, as well as studied.  

And study it I did, because that’s how I learned my craft long ago, when I knew zippo about how to write for children: I read the bodies of work of Charlotte Zolotow and James Marshall and MarjorieWeinman Sharmat, when I longed to write picture books, of Betsy Byars and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Lois Lowry, when I longed to write a novel.  I read them first as a reader, second as a writer.  And I spent time learning their writer’s stories too.

I now subscribe to Dani Shapiro’s blog  - which is how I first discovered STILL WRITING, thanks to Carmela’s  Facebook sharing of Bruce Black’s April 18 sharing of the blog post “On the Long Haul” on his blog Wordswimmer.   

Fortunately, the summer’s not over and neither is my reading. Dani Shapiro’s novels PICTURING THE WRECK, FUGITIVE BLUE and PLAYING WITH FIRE are currently on hold for me at my local Chicago Public Library branch.
 

I clipped these words by Barbara Kingsolver from my Sunday Chicago Tribune.

“I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.”

How true, how true.
 

Happy (Summer) Reading - and - Writing!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and want to write picture books, check out my fellow TeachingAuthor April Halprin Wayland’s upcoming class – Writing Picture Books for Children. It's Wednesday nights from August 6 through September 10.

 

We're Back! And Talking about What We've Been Reading

Hello Readers,
I hope you're all enjoying summer (well, at least those of you in the Northern Hemisphere!). These are definitely not "lazy, hazy days" for me. I spent much of our blogging break working on lesson plans for upcoming classes, including a children's writing camp that begins today. (If you'd like to see my summer class offerings, check out my website.)

Today I'm kicking off a series of posts in which we TeachingAuthors talk about a book we recently read or are currently reading. Thanks to the lovely Linda Baie over at TeacherDance, I know about a meme in the blogging community called "It's Monday, What Are You Reading?" hosted at Teach Mentor Texts. I'm happy to have a blog post that qualifies for the roundup!

The book I'd like to discuss is John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton). Even though this bestseller has been out since 2012 and has been made into a "major motion picture," I didn't get around to reading it till this month. I might not have read it all if it hadn't been selected as one of our Anderson's Bookshop's Not for Kids Only Book Club titles for August.

I'm happy to say that even though I don't typically read or write contemporary young adult novels, I enjoyed this one. I was especially struck by two things right at the beginning:

A. The Author's Note:

In case you haven't read it (or somehow missed the page) the book includes an unusual Author's Note before Chapter One: 

Author’s Note

      This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.

      Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

      I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

This note struck me for two reasons: 

1. It reminded me of a question I'm often asked. Since my novel, Rosa, Sola, is based on events from my own childhood, readers often want to know how much of the novel "really happened." I think many who ask it are disappointed by my answer: None of it "really happened" because my life events happened to me, not to Rosa Bernardi. I don't think I could have written the story if I hadn't been able to separate myself from my character. 
2. Green's note made me think more deeply about the nature of fiction and our purposes in reading/writing it. The note also reminded me of something I read years ago--that fiction is about Universal Truths, or "truth with a capital T." As a writer, I sometimes get so caught up in plot and craft, etc., that I can lose sight of the Truth.

If you'd like to read more about what Green meant by his Author's Note, see this page on his website.

B. That a story about cancer and death can be humorous:

From page one of The Fault in Our Stars, I was intrigued by the narrator's wit and voice. It begins:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

I have to admit--after first reading this sentence I wasn't completely sure Hazel was being sarcastic. After all, this was a book about a girl with cancer. But it soon became apparent that cancer hadn't killed her sense of humor. That surprised me, as did other things about the book. I'm not going to risk spoiling it for those of you who haven't read the novel yet by telling you what those other things were. I'll just say that I enjoyed the book more than I expected. And, reading as a writer, I learned from it.

I wonder how many of you, our readers, have read Green's book. I'd love to know what you thought of it. And if you have any "summer reading" recommendations, do share them with us. 

Happy writing (and reading)!

D.E.A.R. for Grownups

     I first met Beverly Cleary's memorable character Ramona Quimby as a supporting character in Henry and the Clubhouse where she all but stole the book. I was in graduate school before I discovered that after Cleary finished the Henry and Beezus series, she had gone on to give Ramona her own literary stage, where Henry and big sister Beezus were the background characters. The notion of D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read) was something I would've loved in my childhood. I had to fashion my own notion of D.E.A.R. It was called Stick a Book in Your Lap and Look Like You're Paying Attention in Class. (OK, it isn't much of an acronym.) It did not make me popular with my teachers.

    As adult writers and teachers, we need to make time for our own D.E.A.R.  I'm not talking about reading the latest (adult) best seller, or flipping through whatever literary dregs are in the doctor's waiting room. I am talking about reading the newest children's books that interest you. You know....the kind of book you want to write?

     I assumed that writers, especially children's writers, are readers. However, I never gave much thought as to what they were reading until last month. I was teaching an adult Writing for Children's workshop and had brought in tons of books from my personal collection (not the books I wrote; the books I own) to use as examples of different styles of writing. I have a very expensive book buying habit, because for the last fifteen years I have either lived where there was no library, or very poor ones. Books have changed since we were kids, even if you are a lot younger than I am (which is probably almost everyone reading this.) Yes, there are classics, like Ramona and her friends who will never die.
The first Henry Huggins book was published in 1950, Charlotte's Web, 1952  A Wrinkle in Time 1962.   These are timeless books although I sometimes wonder, given today's publishing climate if any of these three would be considered "commercial" enough to be published today.

   But back to my workshop.  My students devoured my books, then asked. "Where did you get these books?  How did you even know about them?" These writers were mostly young mothers who read to their children....whatever happened to be on the display counter in the picture book section of the library.   "These books aren't at (fill in the name of your local chain bookstore).  How could I find them in the library, if I don't know they exist?"

    Valid points. Chain bookstores, the only ones available to a good chunk of us, feature "sure sellers"...movie tie-ins, "celebrity" picture books, books that have become TV series or movies. A few of the books I brought were Newbery/Caldecott winners. Those are always front and center in bookstores and libraries, but for the rest of us hardworking, writers, just finding our books is a real challenge, let alone reading them.  They are out there....it's  just knowing where to look.

    That's why I spend thirty minutes of my D.A.R.E. each week scouting out the newest books online. Where?  Goodreads is one of my favorite places to see what other readers (and not professional reviewers) think of a book. (I do not know what effect it's recent acquisition by Amazon will have on this site, if any, but there are already thousands or reviews that have been written before this happened.)
I also like Kirkus Reviews.   Kirkus is a subscription service with a pretty hefty price tag. Their selling point is that they preview books up to two months pre-publication, which is great if you are a book store and need to know two months in advance if you are going to order the book. If you are willing to wait a whole week after publication, you can read the review online, for free. Kirkus is issued biweekly, except for a week mid-summer and one the first of January.

     You can also sign up for Publisher's Weekly online. Another print publication with a steep subscription price, you can get daily digests of articles, news as to what editor has been promoted, demoted or moved to another publisher. Thursdays is there special children's edition.  All free.

    There are tons of bloggers (including us!) who interview authors when they have a new book coming out. However, I would be amiss if I did not mention my favorite source of quality reading recommendations.  That is Cooperative Children's Book Center located at the University of Wisconsin. In addition to interviews and news about programs and lectures (if you happen to live in Wisconsin), b they review a "Book of the Week." The BOW is always a recently published book the staff at CCBC think is outstanding. They don't waste their time on junk. You may not agree with all of their choices but you will read them knowing that their selection was carefully considered by a group of people whose only "agenda" is to expose the children's literature community to the widest and best range of the newest books.

   So why are you still reading me? Right now, drop everything and scout out your next list of D.A.R.E. books.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Note from Carmela: With the impending demise of Google Reader, I'm looking at different ways our readers can follow our blog posts. (I'll be talking about this in my post on Friday.) Meanwhile, today I discovered the Bloglovin' site. In case you're interested: 
you can now follow the TeachingAuthors blog with Bloglovin' .

Something I Learned this Summer

We often blog here at TeachingAuthors about the value of "Reading as a Writer." (If you've missed those posts, you'll find them here.) Well, this summer, while reading a historical novel set in 18th-century Europe--the same setting as my current work-in-progress (WIP)--I noticed a writing technique worth imitating. My desire to share that technique here inspired our current TeachingAuthors blog topic: "Something I Learned (or re-learned) this Summer."

The novel I read was for adults, but the technique would work in any kind of novel--from beginning chapter books on up--that includes a scene where a character is eavesdropping. Note: I didn't know the historical novel I read would also include sexually explicit scenes. For that reason, I'm not going to mention the title here, in case any young writers are reading this post. :-) Instead, I'll refer to the novel by its initals: TAGD. If you really want to know the title, you can contact me via Facebook.

Untitled photo by uhhhlaine (cc) *see note

 The eavesdropping scene in TAGD caught my attention for three reasons:

1. It's the novel's opening scene;
2. The scene really hooked me and made me want to read on;
3. I'd been considering revising my young adult WIP to open with an eavesdropping scene.

I should mention that I already had an eavesdropping scene in my WIP. I was trying to decide whether to move that scene to the opening of the novel.

So what hooked me about the opening of TAGD? The use of details to flesh out not only the environment surrounding the main character, but also to help readers visualize the people she was listening in on. It's a simple technique that reaps great rewards.

Let me show you what I mean. Here's an excerpt from my WIP's eavesdropping scene BEFORE I revised it to add details. Note, the narrator is 13-year-old Emilia, and Maria is her older sister:    

     One day in early December, I overheard Mamma arguing with Father—something she never did. With the Sardinian occupation over, Father was planning to resume his academic meetings. He’d also decided to hire another tutor for Maria, to teach her philosophy and mathematics. As usual, Mamma did not approve.
     “What need does Maria have for another tutor?” Mamma said. “She already spends too much time with books. Haven’t you noticed her pallor? She did not recover from the throat illness the way her sisters did. Maria needs fresh air and physical activity, not more studies.”
     “Very well, then,” Father said, “We will increase the frequency of her dance lessons. And I will instruct her to keep a window open in her study. Come spring, I’ll have her tutors move her lessons to the garden.”
     “They will simply stuff her head with more book learning,” Mama said. “What of her real education, the one she would have received at a convent school? Maria should be learning practical skills, such as sewing and embroidery, and how to manage a home—skills that would make her a useful wife and mother.”
     “There will be time enough for that,” Father said. “She is still young.”
     “Young?” Mamma’s voice was shrill now. “Perhaps her modest demeanor has led you to forget that your eldest daughter is now 14! It is time to think of her future. Of her betrothal, and Emilia’s, too.”
     I started at the mention of my name. While I fully expected to marry one day, it had always seemed something in the distant future. 

After reading the opening of TAGD, I reread this scene and realized I hadn't provided any context for readers. There's no mention of where Emilia or her parents are when she overhears their argument. In fact, the scene is almost entirely dialogue. See if you can spot the changes in this revision:

    I was on my way to the harpsichord salon when I heard angry voices coming from Mamma’s sitting room. Drawing near, I realized Mamma was arguing with Father—something she rarely did. And something she should not be doing now, for she was heavy with child.
     There were already seven children in our family, and my youngest brother's birth had been a difficult one. Mamma had been bedridden for months afterward. She’d barely regained her strength when she was with child again. This time, she complained constantly of fatigue. And she grew more short-tempered with each passing day.
     Standing outside Mamma’s sitting room, I heard the irritation in her voice. “What need does Maria have for another tutor? She already spends too much time with books. Haven’t you noticed her pallor? She did not recover from the throat illness the way her sisters did. Maria needs fresh air and physical activity, not more studies.” I pictured Mamma seated in the high-backed armchair near the window, her tired legs atop the footstool cushion she herself had embroidered. No doubt her normally calm blue-gray eyes—eyes I had inherited—now flashed steely gray.
     “Very well, then,” Father said, “We will increase the frequency of her dance lessons. And I will order her to keep a window open in her study at all times.” His voice was calmer than Mamma’s. I leaned in closer and felt heat at the top of my head. The candle burning in the sconce beside the door was closer than I’d realized. Jerking my head away, I heard Father say, “Come spring, I’ll have her tutors move her lessons to the garden.”
     “They will simply stuff her head with more book learning,” Mamma said. “What of her real education, the one she would have received at a convent school? Maria should be cultivating practical skills, such as sewing and embroidery, and how to manage a home—skills that would make her a useful wife and mother.”
     “There will be time enough for that,” Father said. “She is young.”
     “Young?” Mamma’s voice was shrill. “Perhaps her modest demeanor has led you to forget that your eldest daughter is now 14! It is time to think of her future. Of her betrothal, and Emilia’s, too.”
       I started at the mention of my name. While I fully expected to marry one day, it had always seemed something in the distant future. 

In the revision, readers can now picture where the argument is taking place and where Emilia is standing as she eavesdrops. They also learn why Mamma is uncharacteristically irritable, and they can even visualize her through the eyes of Emilia's imagination:

I pictured Mamma seated in the high-backed armchair near the window, her tired legs atop the footstool cushion she herself had embroidered. No doubt her normally calm blue-gray eyes—eyes I had inherited—now flashed steely gray. 

These details not only help readers better "see" Mamma, they add clues about her personality, and Emilia's, too. The end result--I hope!--is that readers are more engaged in the story so that they'll be more likely to keep reading. I'd love to know if you agree. Do you think the revisions make the story stronger?

By the way, the above argument goes on for a few more paragraphs. At its conclusion, Emilia learns something that has profound implications and leads to an important decision on her part. Because of that, I decided not to open the novel with her eavesdropping. I felt readers needed to understand more about Emilia's character, and her position in the family, to understand the motives behind her decision.

Now it's your turn. Try the Writing Workout below to see how details can enhance a scene. And don't forget: You need to enter by 11 pm (CST) TODAY for a chance to win an autographed copy of Mary Ann Rodman's wonderful new picture book, The Roller Coaster Kid (Viking). See her post for details.

Oh, and I almost forgot: We've got an extra-special blog post lined up for Friday: A Writing Workout from a SURPRISE guest TeachingAuthor!  Be sure to stop by!

Writing Workout:

An Eavesdropping Scene

For this Writing Workout, you'll need a scene in which a character is eavesdropping on someone else's conversation. If you don't already have such a scene in a current WIP, you can create one using the above photo as a prompt. Start out with just the dialogue that the character overhears. Then go back and add sensory details that show exactly where your character is in relation to the people he or she is overhearing, and have your character imagine what the people are doing as they speak. Can you find a way to incorporate details that also provide clues about the characters' personalities?

Happy Writing!
Carmela Martino
* Note: If you use photos online, whether on a blog, Facebook, Pinterest, etc, I suggest you read "Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued for Using Pics on Your Blog" by author Roni Loren . The eavesdropping photo above was posted by uhhhlaine on Flickr. The designation (cc) is to indicate that its Creative Commons license allows sharing. Our Writing Workout logo is clipart.

Catching up on a Classic: The Phantom Tollbooth

Here on the TeachingAuthors blog, we've been discussing the classic children's books we never read till adulthood. The series was inspired, in part, by Esther's interview with Leonard Marcus in honor of the release of The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth last month. When Esther first told me about the new book, I felt a twinge of guilt--I'd never read the original Phantom Tollbooth. So I suggested this topic to motivate me to finally read Norton Juster's masterpiece. If you're wondering what classics and must-reads you may have missed, be sure to check out the links in the Writing Workout below.

I wasn't reading yet in 1961 when The Phantom Tollbooth was first published, but that was no excuse for my not reading this classic. When, as an adult, I became interested in writing for children, I began reading voraciously in the field. Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which Mary Ann blogged about on Monday, was one of the many children's books I came to as an adult that I fell in love with. (Unlike Mary Ann, I'm somewhat of a Math geek, which made me love L'Engle's book all the more!) Yet, despite a number of fellow children's literature enthusiasts telling me that Tollbooth was one of their all-time favorites, I never made time to read the book, until Esther's interview with Leonard Marcus inspired me to do so a few weeks ago.

I'm happy to report that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The wordplay and puns are great fun, but the Math geek in me was especially happy to see the book's celebration of numbers. I was also impressed at how Juster wove important themes about the value of education and action into such an entertaining read. One of my favorite paragraphs (among many) was:

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes," explained Reason quietly, "as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."

I believe the combination of entertainment and enduring themes contributed to making The Phantom Tollbooth such a classic. I'm grateful to Leonard Marcus for bringing this book back into the spotlight. In case you missed the short video in which Norton Juster, Jules Feiffer, and Leonard Marcus discuss the book's creation, I've embedded it below, or you can watch it at YouTube here.

Are there any classic children's/young adult books you missed reading as a child or teen? If so, please share their titles in the comments below. And if you need suggestions of children's/YA books now considered "must reads," see the Writing Workout below. 

Writing Workout:

Reading the Best Children's Books

How well-read are you in the field of children's and young adult literature? Last year, Elizabeth Bird at School Library Journal's Fuse#8 blog took a survey of her readers to come up with a list of the top 100 Children's Novels. The Phantom Tollbooth is #10 on that list. Now that I've read it, I can say I've read all the top 10! However, I see that there are two in the top 20 I haven't read yet: #16 Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh and #18 Matilda by Roald Dahl. Time to check those out.

If you are a picture book fan, you can see the results of her poll for the top 100 Picture Books, put together in 2009.

The Persnickety Snark blog conducted a similar poll in 2010 to determine the top 100 Young Adult Novels. (I've read the top 9 there. Hmm. More books to add to my reading list!)

If reader polls aren't your thing, this page links to lists of the best children's books as determined by a variety of organizations, including the New York Public Library, Publisher's Weekly, and the UK newspaper, The Guardian. 

Your assignment for this Writing Workout is actually a Reading Workout: Pick a genre and determine which of the books on these "best books" lists you haven't read yet, then read at least THREE of them! When you're done, come back and post a comment to any of our blog posts sharing your experience.

Happy Writing, and Reading!
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

The Book I FINALLY Read: The Velveteen Rabbit

I confess: until last Wednesday, November 2, 2011, I’d never read, from start to finish,
Margery Williams’ 1922 classic storybook The Velveteen Rabbit, Or How Toys Become Real.
Nor had anyone, while I was growing up, read it to me.

The above two facts got me wondering “Why?”
I certainly loved listening to stories. And once I learned to read to and for myself, I was pretty much always in the company of a book – a Golden Book, a Honey Bunch title, a fairy tale or a biography of a famous person’s childhood.
Was it because stuffed animals weren’t my thing? (Baby dolls and my very own Suzy Walker claimed much of my day’s play.)

To maximize my first-time reading experience, I made sure to purchase and read the Original Edition, illustrated (beautifully) by William Nicholson and published in 1922 by Doubleday Books for Young Readers to instant success.

Of course, I knew of this beloved classic.                                                    
I recall my University of Pennsylvania Children’s Literature Professor Dr. Huus introducing the book, assuming all of us had read it.
There wasn’t a fifth grade class I taught in which at least one student didn’t name the book as his or her All-Time Favorite.
My writers, both young and once-young, wrote, write and will continue to write, anthropomorphic stories about inanimate toys, lovingly referencing the velveteen rabbit.
I knew the story’s oft-recited line: “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
If quizzed, I could match William Nicholson’s cover, with its heart-grabbing bunny begging to be hugged, to Margery Williams’ title.
I nodded approvingly when reviewers compared the velveteen bunny to Kate DiCamillo’s china Edward Tulane.
The Velveteen Rabbit was the perfect name for baby stores, toy stores, children's dishware and clothing lines.

I simply hadn’t read the book from beginning to end.

From,

“There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.”

To,

“But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”

So, what do I think, now that I’ve read it?

Well, the Adult Reader in me teared up at the story’s Truths. Yes, indeedy, it does take a long time to become Real. And by the time you do, “most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby….but these things don’t matter.”
The illustrations so captured the rabbit’s innocence, ingenuousness, his sense of wonder, his sense of delight. I worried, I cheered, I gasped then sighed. The velveteen rabbit had become a Real Rabbit at last.
One story element that didn’t sit well with me, though?  The appearance of the nursery magic Fairy. The wonders she worked left me shaking my head, and not in a good way.


The Writer in me so admired the old-fashioned telling, the lovely language and how Williams built the story across first Christmas, then Spring, then Summer, then the Anxious Times. There was a recognizable sentiment – for the youngest of listeners, for the oldest of readers, and a loveable character who kept me turning the pages. Much of Williams’ language suited the young, accommodating their sensibilities and concrete intelligence. No wonder the book remains a best-seller today and like a true classic, sold well for the past 89 years. Researching Williams’ life, I learned of her father’s death when she was only 7 and how many of her books explored this life-long issue.
Again, though?  The nursery magic Fairy left me cold. I like Happy Ever After endings just as much as the next writer/reader, but the Fairy-driven resolution was too easy.  Or maybe it was how she appeared, from within a flower that bloomed from the rabbit's tear.  Did the Writer in me see a need for fore-shadowing?

As for that Long-ago Child who lives inside me, she shared she was hooked from the get-go, whether she'd played with stuffed animals or not. She seconded everything the Adult Reader liked and best of all, loved Nicholson’s illustrations.
The nursery magic Fairy apparently wasn’t a problem.  In fact, she whispered, “Everything about her was perfect."

If you’d like to read Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, again or for the first time, click here.

Esther Hershenhorn

Cultural Illiterate

I am supposed to be kicking off the next series of posts on "the book everyone read before me."  Well... I'm sure you don't have time to read a novel on this topic, and I don't have time to write one, so suffice it to say that my list is very long.

I have written many times about how I was a voracious reader as a kid and was cured of my habit by being forced in middle and high school to plow through the "classics."  I am a slow reader, a picky reader, and now that I am a grown-up, I choose to use my limited time to read only what I enjoy.  Sue me.

My grandmother shared a room with me from the time I was six to the time I was twelve.  She was functionally illiterate and highly disapproved of the time I spent with my nose buried in a book when I could be sweeping, dusting, or learning to cook.  (To this day, I relish the fact that I don't sweep, dust, or cook.)  My mom also did not read for leisure, though she enjoyed reading aloud to me.  I had a few of the old-time classics on my shelf, and I very much wanted to like them.  Hans Brinker (boring -- but pretty pictures); The Wind in the Willows (talking animals?  only E.B. White could make me believe);  I never even got through Winnie the Pooh.  After several unsuccessful attempts to read my way through the 19th century, and I made my peace and happily cast aside the (not-)dusty old tomes for Mitch and Amy and the Bobbsey Twins.  I must say, I never looked back.

My mom tells the story of changing schools in sixth grade and being enthralled by Moby-Dick as read aloud to the class by her new teacher.  We read Billy Budd in high school, and I promptly crossed Moby-Dick off my to-read list.  My dad (who is a reader's reader) raved about The Last of the Mohicans, and I did make it through that one -- only to wonder why I'd bothered. To Kill a Mockingbird was the only book I forced myself through during this period that was memorable to me for its magnificence.

I actually believe that the male-centricness of the "canon" is a big part of my problem.  While I can appreciate his brilliance, I can't say I'm a fan of macho Hemingway.  Whaling and warring are frankly not relatable or interesting to me.  At some point, I looked at War and Peace and Anna Karenina on the shelf in their thousand-page splendor and realized that, as a writer, I would need to know these stories; but I couldn't hack getting through them.  Thank God for movies!

Of course I could write a whole new post about the movies/TV shows I've never seen (inexcusable in a TV writer)...   The older I get, the shorter my attention span.  Since having kids, I can only consume information in small bites -- while working, while on the elliptical, while someone is talking in my ear.  I listen to a book on tape in the car, and my attention wanders.  Kids' books are the perfect reads for me right now -- maybe forever.

My 1st-grade daughter has just begun to read without prompting, totally for pleasure.  I noticed that she would still prefer to choose a long and potentially tricky picture book (i.e., Eloise) than a chapter book that requires more steady effort.  Like me, she appears to be a serial starter (poor thing).  However, as of this weekend, I think Beezus and Ramona has got her. :)

Happy week, and happy reading to all! -- Jeanne Marie

Our Book Giveaway Winners (plural)! - and - Another Patricia Reilly Giff Gift

Congratulations to teacher Karen Brooks of East Bridgewater, MA and parent and children's book reviewer/blogger Pat Zietlow Miller of Fitchburg, WI, our TWO TeachingAuthors Book Giveaway Winners of Patricia Reilly Giff’s first two Zigzag Kids series titles – Number One Kid and Big Whopper (Wendy Lamb Books, Random House).

We appreciate the many readers who entered our Book Giveaway, sharing their identities, passions and interests.

And, in keeping with my fellow TeachingAuthors’ sharing of model texts this month, how could I not offer up yet another Patricia Reilly Giff gift, the first page of her Newbery Honor middle grade novel Pictures of Hollis Woods (Wendy Lamb Books, Random House).

"This picture has a dollop of peanut butter on one edge, a smear of grape jelly on the other, and an X across the whole thing. I cut it out of a magazine for homework when I was six years old. “Look for words that being with W,” my teacher, Mrs. Evans, had said.

She was the one who marked in the X, spoiling my picture. She pointed. “This is a picture of a family, Hollis. A mother, M, a father, F, a brother, B, a sister, S. They’re standing in front of their house, H. I don’t see one W word here.”
I opened my mouth to say: How about W for wish, or W for want, or W for “Wouldn’t it be loverly,” like the song the music teacher had taught us?
But Mrs. Evans was at the next table by that time, shushing me over her shoulder.

Here’s the novel’s front flap copy in case you’re unfamiliar with this beautifully-written story.

“Twelve-year-old Hollis has been in so many foster homes, she can hardly remember them all. Hollis Woods is a mountain of trouble. She even runs away from the Regans, the one family who offers her a home.

When Hollis is sent to Josie, an elderly artist who is quirky and affectionate, she wants to stay. But Josie is growing more forgetful every day. If Social Services finds out, they'll take Hollis away and move Josie into a home. Well, Hollis Woods won't let anyone separate them. She's escaped the system before; this time, she plans to take Josie with her.

Still, even as she plans her future with Josie, Hollis dreams of the past summer with the Regans, fixing each special moment of her days with them in pictures she’ll never forget.”

I often share this first page in craft workshops.
Talk about Show, Don’t Tell.
“Did you see what she did there?!” I ask my writers.

Giff lets us hear Hollis share a visual memory, and just like that, we’re inside Hollis’ heart. Just like that, we know her longing to belong to someone.

Giff doesn't tell us that Hollis actually speaks the words.  She simply lets Hollis tell us "she opens her mouth" to speak the words.

The teacher's act of shushing Hollis before she actually speaks the words? A telling detail that allows us to know all we need to know about how the world sees Hollis.
How could we NOT want to turn the page?

This first page represents the first of fourteen "pictures" - i.e. memories - Hollis paints with words, pictures she intersperses between titled chapters that move her story's plotline along. Each picture is further set apart by its italicized print. The First Picture is titled X. Giff artfully uses the pictures as bricks to build Hollis' story. Hollis refers throughout the story, in her first-person telling, to "the W picture with the mother, the father, the brother, and the sister."

Esther Hershenhorn

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!



  

A Book Giveaway, Thinking Outside the Box, And A Summer Poem

Happy Poetry Friday!  The poem’s below but first….make sure to enter TeachingAuthors’ Magnificent Patricia Reilly Giff two-book-set book giveaway!

Okay, now let's settle down for the show. 

At TeachingAuthors we pick a topic, tilt our heads like my pup Eli does, and put our own spin on it. Our new topic, starting today is: Share a few lines you admire from a children’s book and why.

True confession: I don’t like jazz.  But I love out-of-the-box thinking.  And in the picture book GIANT STEPS, Chris Raschka creates a visual interpretation of jazz artist John Coltrane’s composition “Giant Steps” that is so out of the box, the cover doesn’t say “by Chris Raschka,” but “remixed by Chris Raschka”.

My favorite lines?  So many!  But the beginning lines grabbed me like no others:

"Good evening. And thank you for coming to our book." 

And so begins a wildly original book featuring a box, a snowflake, some raindrops, a kitten and an unseen narrator/conductor.

Publishers Weekly says, in part:
In this “innovative visual deconstruction of one of jazz saxophonist Coltrane's most beloved compositions…the unseen narrator/conductor introduces the performers…Each performer (representing percussion, bass, piano and sax) appears in a different color and shape... The performance begins, only to be interrupted when the kitten ("the melody on top of everything")…takes steps a little too large ("People, people! What happened?")...Those who possess a little musical knowledge will delight in such arch references as the conductor's hilarious critique ("First of all, raindrops, you were rushing on page 19"). Even the jacket repeats the book's central conceit: a clear plastic wrap featuring the kitten, painted in thick black outline, overlays the other elements. A must for jazz enthusiasts and, for first-timers, a clever introduction to this wildly creative musical genre. Ages 4-7.”

Raschka's approach is so unique and beautiful, I was sure that this book would win the Caldecott when it came out in 2002. 

Out-of-the-box thinking is beautiful in any genre.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve been watching The Great Food Truck Race (because some local --Hermosa Beach, CA--folks are in it).  The crew of the truck called Nom Nom includes such wonderfully original thinkers, it’s a pleasure to see how they approach each week’s competition.

One week they decided to pass on the challenge (talk about thinking outside the box in a challenge-based show…)…and still stayed in the game. Beautiful.

Perhaps you can approach today’s WRITING WORKOUT by thinking outside the box.  (I didn’t…but you may wish to!)

Here's today's simple writing prompt: before summer slips away, write a summer poem. You may wish to include repetition, as I did below, but you don’t have to.

Here's my poem:

I LIKE SUMMER IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

by April Halprin Wayland

I like summer

when Eli is chewing his old bone

which hasn’t had meat on it for forever

and it is a gnawing chewing crunchy sound

and I just mixed yogurt and honey and pecans together
which is deeply delicious

I like the summer

when Mom opens the roof of our old car

and we zoom down the road with all the windows down

and my job is to watch Eli to make sure

he’s only putting his head out of the window

and not trying to hang his whole body out.

I like summer

when shoes are optional and I opt no

and the breeze is good on my shoulders

and the cement is hot on the bottoms of my feet

and we get to go to the thrift store after all the errands

and I can buy anything I want for three dollars

and I pick the little red boat with a real sail

I like summer

when Dad puts one leg on the arm of our old couch

and he’s reading a mystery novel

and its night and you can hear the crickets outside

because the door is open

and Mom and I are playing Scrabble

and I have all the letters for SUMMERY

and the first M and the Y are on triple letter squares.

I like summer

because my breathing gets slower

and we don’t have to go anywhere

and we walk the dog without shoes

and a postcard comes from my friend who lives on a sail boat

and I am almost there with him,
swimming with the dolphins

and I am also here in our backyard, barefoot

eating a deeply delicious grape.

poem and photo © April Halprin Wayland

Eli Wayland

Writing Is Like a Box of Chocolates

       My favorite book is Charlotte's Web.  I loved it as a third grader, and I love it today. I cannot think of another book that makes laugh, cry and think . . .  sometimes in one paragraph.   Any book that can do all that for me, over a period of . . . well, a lot of years . . . is my definition of a masterpiece.
       E.B. White's seamless writing is a delight to read . . . and hard to pull apart for examination.  One thing that struck me as a child, was his use of lists as description.  He does it in several places, particularly in describing the contents of Wilbur's slops.  My favorite "list"is this one, after Charlotte's first web message.

           The Zukerman's driveway was full of  cars and trucks from morning till night--Fords and Chevvies and Buick roadmasters and GMC pickups and Plymouths and Studebakers and Packards and DeSotos with gyromatic transmissions and Oldsmobiles with rocket engines and Jeep station wagons and Pontiacs. ---pg. 83-84.

      White could have ended the sentence at the word "night", and still had a perfectly serviceable sentence. But, no, he wanted to show the reader how many different kinds of people, through their various vehicles, came to see the wonder of the web.
      I am sure E.B. White never gave a thought as to whether he was writing a "timeless" story to be read sixty years later in a world without Studebakers, Packards and DeSotos. Even reading it for the first time in the early 1960's. those cars were as dead as the dodo for me. That small detail never bothered me. What struck me was White specificity in using those brand names.  Without knowing what it was called, I was introduced to the concept of specific writing.          
       While revising, I spend hours and hours picking over my word selection. Rather like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, ("you never know what you'll get") I never know how a specific noun, verb, adjective and occasionally, an adverb is going to feel in a sentence. I insert the word, and read the sentence out loud.  Often, a word that sounded just fine in my head, tastes like a lemon cream center when spoken.
         I hate lemon cream chocolates.
         Unlike, Forrest, who was perfectly content to let life surprise him, I punch holes in my words, looking for the one with the maple fudge center.
         I love maple fudge chocolates.
         The perfect word, that specific detail, will melt slowly and sweetly on my tongue, like my favorite candy. Looking for that one word--the one that can describe that moment, that emotion, that person--is the reason I write so slowly. I can select, "chew" and reject words for hours on end. As Mark Twain said "The difference between the right words and the wrong word, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
        When I have bitten into my nineteenth lemon cream, sometimes I use the listing method, writing down all the possibilities I can think of. Sometimes, I end up using the entire list, as White did.  More often, listing frees my mind to produce that one word.  For instance, in my picture book, Surprise Soup, I stalled out in the scene in which Kevie actually makes soup. I don't cook. Period. I couldn't list cooking techniques or tools. I could, however, list the sounds of cooking, since that is as close as I get to a kitchen.  Listing sounds -- splishety splash, chippety chop, scrubbety scrub-- got me back on track.
        In writing, finding that maple fudge chocolate is everything.

Writing Workout

       In her book Paper Lightning, Darcy Pattison uses the phrase "billions-and-billons to one-and-only-one" to explain specific writing to students. For example, "I caught a fish" is a dull sentence because there are billions-and-billions of fish. Pick a specific fish, maybe sharks. Still, there are lots and lots of species of shark (360, to be specific!). OK, how about a bull shark?  Having narrowed it down to a specific kind of shark, what is different about this particular shark? Maybe he had an evil look in his eye.So our new sentence would be "I caught a bull shark with an evil look in his eye."
      To get to that specificity, you can do a "list drill". Pick non-specific nouns that are common to your student's writing such as bike, dance, video game. Pick one, and give the students one minute to quickly write down all the possible specific types of bikes, dances or video games. (I always tell my students not to "think too hard....just write!") After each one minute drill, I encourage (never demand) that students share their descriptors. This can be done with nouns, verbs and adjectives (adverbs are a whole other topic!).  This trains the student to quickly think of alternatives in the revision process.

P.S. I apologize for the lateness of this post---today is the first day of school here in Atlanta. Utter mayhem!

---posted by Mary Ann Rodman