Magnificent Michelle Markel is today's Guest Teaching Author--and YOU can win her new book!

 
Howdy, Campers and Happy Poetry Friday!  (Scroll to the end to find out who's hosting today.)

I have the incredibly cool job of announcing the winner of Gone Fishing: A Novel in Verse by Tamera Will Wissinger; read the inspiring interview by Carmela here.  The lucky winner is...debut author and blogger Peggy Eddleman--yay, Peggy!

And if that isn't exciting enough, we have ANOTHER book giveaway contest beginning today, you lucky dogs!  Entry deadline is March 27th.  Details below.

Today I'm excited to introduce you to a dear friend and fab author, teacher and blogger, Michelle Markel.

Michelle's an avid fan and author of picture books, with a soft spot for biographies. Her titles include Dreamer From the Village: The Story of Marc Chagall, and The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, one of Booklist’s ten best children’s art books of 2012, and a New York Public Library Best Book for Reading and Sharing.   Michelle is one of my fellow instructors at UCLA Extension’s Writers Program,  and one of my colleagues in the Children’s Authors Network. She makes her home in California's San Fernando Valley, about forty miles from the ocean, where she claims her thoughts often drift.

All of Michelle's books are original, beautifully written, and impeccably researched.  Her latest book, and one you will surely want to win, is Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909, which received four (!!!!) starred reviews and is a Junior Library Guild selection.  It's the inspiring true story of Clara Lemlich, a young immigrant woman who led the biggest strike of women workers in U.S. history in that time.  All this IN A PICTURE BOOK!  
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So, MM...how did you become a Teaching Author?

When my kids were in school, for fun and spare change, I taught poetry classes to children and young adults.  As my career progressed, I began teaching adults what I knew about writing children's books and getting them published. I found it to be vastly rewarding. (A little secret is that instructors constantly learn things too). My favorite part of teaching has always been the writing prompts. (You've got lots of terrific ones on this website!)  Nothing beats a front row seat to a burst of creativity, especially when the creator is surprised at what she's made.

Thanks for your complimenting our writing prompts!  What's a common problem your students have and how do you address it?

Many students have problems writing for the picture book audience. They may use irony, abstractions, introspection, a sense of maturity, complex sentences, and cultural references unfamiliar to a young child. They need more exposure to picture book language, and practice on how to read mindfully- which is part of their homework. In class we look at passages from children's books for all different age levels. I ask the students to find what the texts have in common, and how they differ. I discuss the psychological and emotional stages of childhood development. I write awful passages and ask them to correct it, whole group. During workshops we talk about writing that seems too grown up.

I need to take your class, Michelle!  Would you share a favorite writing exercise for our readers?.Character and conflict often get the most attention in writing classes. But sometimes the most original and heartfelt writing is inspired by exercises on setting. People have strong feelings and a multitude of sensory memories about places where they've grown up, spent a lot of time, or visited. I was drawn to write about Henri Rousseau in large part because of my love of Paris...

 
...where I lived while pursuing a BA in French, which later led to an MA, and a visit with my husband and daughter.

One of my most successful prompts is: 

Write about two different characters who are placed into a new setting--the desert, the mountains, anywhere.  One passage will be from the POV of a character who loves it, and the other from a character who hates it.

This is an opportunity to practice characterization, use of imagery in creating setting, and mood.

The results are often poignant and/or humorous.

Can you share a story about writing or publishing?

I thought my manuscript for Brave Girl might be my toughest one to sell. It's the story of Clara Lemlich, a fearless labor organizer who led garment workers on a long, difficult strike during the winter of 1909.  The text was undoubtedly dramatic, but on the other hand, it was gritty, and there hadn't been many picture books published about injustice in the workplace, and none about this woman in particular.

Sometimes you just feel the call--and there's no turning back. I felt that Clara’s heroism--her return to the picket lines after multiple arrests and broken ribs--deserved to be recognized. I tried to capture her fiery spirit in the writing. 

Ironically, this manuscript helped me get an agent and not long after, a contract with one of my all-time favorite publishers. I'm fortunate that Melissa Sweet so sensitively brought the story to life, and I'm thrilled that it has been well received by the critics. 

Can you see why I'm a firm believer in taking risks, and writing with passion? 

Absolutely!  Thanks for tackling such an important topic and congratulations on those FOUR starred reviews: School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly--wowza!

Thank you so much for sitting down for a cuppa tea with our readers and for offering an autographed copy of Brave Girl for our book giveaway, Michelle!

"This book has fighting spirit in spades--

 you go, Clara!”--Booklist
(starred review) 

And now Children, as promised, here's your chance to win an autographed copy of Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 written by Michelle Markel and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Balzer and Bray).

You must follow our TeachingAuthors blog to enter our drawing. If you're not already a follower, you can sign up now in the sidebar to subscribe to our posts via email, Google Friend Connect, or Facebook Network blogs.

There are two ways to enter:
1) by a comment posted below
OR
2) by sending an email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com with "Book Giveaway" in the subject line.

Either way, to qualify, you must:
a) give us your first and last name AND
b) tell us how you follow us AND
c) tell us if you'll keep the book for yourself or give it to someone special.

If you enter via a comment, you MUST include a valid email address (formatted this way: youremail [at] gmail [dot] com).

Contest open only to residents of the United States. Incomplete entries will be discarded. Entry deadline is 11 pm (CST) Wednesday, March 27, 2013. Winners will be announced Friday, March 29.  Good luck to all!

And now...take a few minutes and try Michelle's writing prompt before you go.  You'll be glad you did.

Poetry Friday is hiding today!  It's at Ms Mac's blog, Check it Out, where she gifts us with a BEAUTIFUL poem by J. Patrick Lewis about Martin Luther King.  Wow.  Thanks for hosting, Jone!

...and do hop over to the 2nd Annual March Madness Poetry Tournament to watch your favorite "authletes" flex their poetic muscles and vote for your favorite poems!

 

 

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Posting....to ask for more writing exercise ideas (win a book!)!

Happy Poetry Friday!  Poem and Writing Workout below.

Our blog topic is reading as a writer.  I'm going to modify it and list some books I'm currently reading as a writing teacher. 

You may remember that after ten years as instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers Program, I'm teaching a brand-spanking-new class this summer.

My vision is to make this class as playful as the theater games class I took years ago.  No matter how tired my friend Steve and I were after a day in the corporate world, we couldn't wait to get to class.

What was so special about it that energized us?  We were moving or we were mediating, we were reacting to smells or blindfolded, we were hugging or we were chasing each other, we turned into gorillas or bananas.

I want my picture book students to be equally energized.  I want them out of their desks with exercises that get them stretching, walking, laughing, observing, closing their eyes, tasting, singing, crying, playing group games.  I'll be covering such topics as point of view, dialogue, rewriting, publishing and more.  Here are a few of the books I'm using:

• Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
• Unjournaling--Daily Writing Exercises that are Not Personal, Not Introspective, Not Boring by Dawn DiPrince and Cheryl Miller Thurston
• Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg
• Naming the World--and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer edited by Bret Anthony Johnston
  
  Would you like to win a copy of my novel in poems, Girl Coming in for a Landing?Many of you offered terrific writing exercises in the comments section of my February post. Got any more?  Share one of yours and if I pick your exercise, you'll win an autographed book.  (Residents of the USA only, please.) 
  
  I'm looking for the writing exercise that gets you up and moving or playing a game or using a prop.  An exercise that's physical or emotional or spiritual.  Can you share one writing exercise that you love, either as a writer or as a writing teacher?  What have you learned from it?

Writing Workout
The poet William Stafford wrote a poem every morning all of his life.  Since taking the National Poetry Month Challenge to write a poem a day for the month of April, I'm continuing, inspired by the book, Early Morning--Remembering my Father, William Stafford by Kim Stafford. 

Today part of a sentence Stafford wrote inspired me: "At a certain sound today I hear Father turn onto the gravel drive at supper time..."  It reminded me of our dog, Eli, sleeping on his couch in the upstairs bedroom as I write.

As soon as he hears my husband at the front gate, he runs to the open window, peers down, sees Gary and wildly wags his tail.

So I wrote this for my daily poem:

DOG WAITING UPSTAIRS
by April Halprin Wayland

shoes on cement               
key metal gate                   
whistle of man                
done with day’s work              

lifting an ear                   
wrinkling wet nose
twitching a tail

putting big paws on the ledge
dog looking down—man looking up
wiggly rump

galloping over the hall
tearing down all of the stairs
bounding outside

tangle of legs
plough into man
crash to the ground

licking this
most beloved
shoe

happily ever after

(until man leaves for work the next morning)

*     *     *     *     *     *

The dog's excitement seemed to lend itself to a short, clipped rhythm.  In poetry, a stressed beat is noted with a slash (/) while an unstressed beat is merely a period.  The rhythm I used in this poem was mostly: /../  (Shoes on cement  /../).

What about your memory of someone coming home?  Can you put it into a poem?
If the rhythm I used feels appropriate for your poem, try it yourself.  (For more guidance regarding poetic meter and rhythm, see Myra Cohn Livingston's book, Poem-Making.)

Remember to breathe.  Remember to enter to win my book by posting an exercise and including your email address.  And above all, remember to write with joy ~

poem, drawing and photo (c) April Halprin Wayland

Out and About in the Clover-dash-Shamrocks!

I’m Out-and-About and in clover today, wheeling to Springfield, Illinois to join four of my five fellow Teaching Authors for our Workshop tomorrow afternoon Thursday at the 42nd Annual Illinois Reading Conference.

(And, for the record, I care little o'bout the variety of the three-leafed plants that surround me – red, black, white or otherwise, all of which can be classified as Shamrocks. My Chicago River’s flowing green today!)

Visit us Friday to view photos of our singular workshop we’re co-presenting with Dr. Roxanne Owens and Dr. Marie Donovan of DePaul University’s School of Education – “Flabby to Fab-y: Writing Workouts to Shape Up Your Curriculum.” Thanks to you, our readers, we’re able to focus on the Top Ten Teaching-Writing Issues Teachers Face Daily and ways Young Writers can stretch, flex and bend.

You can exercise, too, of course, by checking out this year’s Children’s Choice Book Awards list, a joint project of the Children's Book Council and the International Reading Assocation.  Each year publishers submit hundreds of titles for consideration by five teams of some 12,000 young readers from across the country. Share the voting opportunity which began Monday, March 15, with your students, children, grandchildren, library patrons - AND/OR - use the list to acquaint yourself with titles children already enjoy. We children’s book writers need to know The Best of the Best as determined by – drum roll, please – our readers.

Finally, please remember: 11 pm today Wednesday is the deadline for our current book giveaway of Johanna Hurwitz’s I Fooled You: Ten Stories of Tricks, Jokes, and Switcheroos.

Keep those insightful questions comin’!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Esther Hershenhorn

*Credits for photo
http://www.lycoming.edu/
http://www.rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress/

Adding Flavor . . .Food Into Fiction

Happy Poetry Friday! 

A new poem and a Writing Workout are below. 

But first a brief commercial interruption. 

This is a gentle reminder about those goals you set for the New Year in conjunction with the contest to win my book, NEW YEAR AT THE PIER.   Remember that post?  Remember your goals? 

We’re expecting you to report back to us during the first two weeks in January.  If you didn't win the book last time, you'll have another chance in January when you report on your progress. How did you do? Who or what helped you? Who or what hindered you?

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

I asked my nephew Josh, who’s a high school science teacher, how I could introduce this week’s topic of food and fiction.

“Well, you could have them write a poem in ketchup,” he said.  That’s Josh for you. (Wouldn’t you love to be in one of his science classes?)

Message written in ketchup

 And actually, that was a very good place to begin, because I’m quite comfortable writing in food.

The night before anyone in our family has a birthday, I sneak down to the kitchen and write “Happy Birthday” in raisins.  It’s tradition.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to wake up to a raisin birthday card, really?

You guessed it...raisins!

I told Josh this.  He said, “Then you could write a poem about what happens to it when the birds come.”

Wow. 

I thought about my best friend, author Bruce Balan who’s sailing around the world on a catamaran.  (To be specific, he just left the Minerva Reef - a ring of coral less than 3 miles across, 250 miles southwest of Tonga – heading 800 miles to New Zealand.)

And I wrote this poem:

BIRD DAY CARD

by April Halprin Wayland

You’re at sea.

I’m on land.

It’s your birthday.

So I’m writing Happy Birthday

on the patio

in sunflower seeds

from my garden.

When the birds come

they will eat my words.

One of them

will fly out to sea,

will circle your boat,

will sit on your deck.

Can you guess

how that bird

will spell out

I miss you?

© April Halprin Wayland

Uh...okay…clearly I got into a bind with this poem!  I mean, I started out starry-eyed and poetic…and then I thought…Uh-oh…there’s only one way for the bird to bring those seeds to the boy on that boat…

It’s not exactly where I meant to go.  And I don’t mean to offend anyone.

But it is kind of funny.

So…here’s today's        

 Writing Workout

Think about a message you might write in food.
What food?
What message?
To whom? 

What happens when the message is received—if it is?
Now, write a poem or a story.
With joy, of course.
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Check out author Michelle Markel's terrific blog, The Cat and the Fiddle...today she lists Ten Things Picture Book Writers Can Learn From Shrek!  She's a terrific author (most recently of TYRANNOSAURUS MATH) and a fabulous teacher.

photos by April Halprin Wayland