Visualizing Composite Characters, Whether Or Not They're Modeled on "Real" People

I think every piece of fiction I've ever written has been inspired by real life--either mine or someone else's. Life is a rich source of material for everything from story ideas to characterization, setting, plot, sensory details, etc. But turning life into fiction has its own set of problems, which is what led Michelle T. to submit her "Ask the TeachingAuthors" question.

Michelle is struggling with the same problems I had writing Rosa, Sola. My novel, which started out as a short story, was based on events that happened to me around age 10. When I wrote the short story's first draft, the main character was me--I used my own name and the real names of all the other people involved. I was trying to make the draft feel as true-to-life as possible. I also hoped that by using the real names I could better connect with the emotions I experienced at the time.

To help me get even deeper into the mind of my ten-year-old self, I dug out my fourth-grade class photograph and other family pictures. Looking at those photographs did indeed help me reconnect with what it felt like growing up in the 1960s as the daughter of Italian-immigrant parents. But reminiscing created problems, too, even after I gave all my characters new names. Using my fourth-grade photograph to represent Rosa Bernardi made it too easy to think of myself as the main character. That, in turn, interfered with my ability to see the story's possibilities.

Luckily, around that time I discovered Robin Hemley's Turning Life into Fiction. The book helped me find solutions to many of my problems. As Hemley explains:

"It's important that you don't think of your main character as yourself. The character can be based on you, but you must make a distinction. Otherwise, you might be unwilling to allow things to happen to the character that you wouldn't want happening to yourself, or allow your character to behave in a way you wouldn't normally behave."

After reading that, I put away my fourth-grade picture and began searching in newspapers and magazines for a photograph to represent Rosa. However, Rosa, Sola is set in the 1960s, and all the girls I found looked too modern. Finally, I came across a used book called Italy, which was published in 1961 as part of the World Library series. The book was filled with black and white photographs of Italians going about their daily lives. Perfetto! On page 15, I found a shot of a group of girls playing beside a fountain. One of those girls became Rosa Bernardi, and three others in the shot came to represent Rosa's best friend AnnaMaria and her sisters. On other pages I found images for Rosa's mother, father, and godmother. The photographs helped me visualize my characters as composites who exhibited a blend of personality traits and idiosyncrasies from real people I knew. In other words, they became complex, well-rounded, fictional characters.

I'm currently working on a historical young-adult novel based on two sisters who lived in eighteenth-century Italy. This time, I turned to the Internet to find photographs to represent my characters. Using Google images, I searched for portraits of eighteenth-century Italian men and women to people my novel. I found some great images that also helped me visualize the clothing and furniture of the period. However, I couldn't find a portrait that fit the mental image I already had of my protagonist's father.

Then I remembered a technique young-adult author Richard Peck shared at a conference--he often bases his characters on movie actors. For example, he told us that Grandma Dowdel in A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago was modeled after Marjorie Main's portrayal of Ma Kettle.

So I went hunting on the Internet Movie Database for someone who would fit the role of the father in my novel. I found the perfect match, at least for now. (I'm not going to say who it is though, in case I change my mind later.)

Finding (or drawing) pictures to represent our characters is a useful technique for making them more "real," not only in our own minds, but in our readers' minds, too. It doesn't matter if our characters are based on people we know or not. But if you'd like to practice turning people you know into composite characters, try the following Writing Workout.

Writing Workout:

Visualizing Composite Characters

This exercise is based on one in Josip Novakovich's book Writing Fiction Step by Step:

Choose physical characteristics from three people you know to construct a composite character. For example, you can take the eyes from one, the nose and ears from the second, the mouth and hair from the third. Make your composite's overall body shape match one of the three. You don't have to copy the "real life" traits exactly--feel free to exaggerate to make them more striking. If you like to draw, create an illustration representing your composite character. Or make copies of photographs of your "models," and cut and paste them together.

Now, select an interesting personality trait from one of these three people, or a fourth person. Perhaps you know someone who likes puns and plays on words. Give that trait to your composite character. Then place your character in a scene, give him or her a problem, and see what happens!

Polish Those Nuggets until They Shine! More on Writing Fiction Inspired by Reality

Mining your memories? That’s only Step One. You still have to refine what you dig up. As Esther says in her Wednesday post, people, places, and things we know often turn up in our fiction—but not exactly as themselves. How do we unearth an event from real life and shape it into a story? Here are some possibilities.

1. Exaggerate. This is my twin sister Judy, my roommate during our college years. She and the cats she’s holding inspired my first picture book, Cats on Judy, which began with a simple observation: the cats always slept on Judy’s bed. The story’s resemblance to reality ends at that point, though. No one could really sleep with “one [cat] in her arms and one on her head,” let alone “one on her knees and one on her chest” and “one on her back and one on her feet.” When I wrote those lines, I stretched the truth beyond the believable to the intentionally silly. The clever illustrator, Judith DuFour Love, added two cats to the picture each time one of those lines appeared, giving Judy six tumbling, frolicking cats and making the story even more preposterous.

2. Focus on an emotion. My son Jimmy has always been a singer. Now about to head off to college, he looked like this around the time I wrote Sing-Along Song. Jimmy inspired me not only because of his love of music but also by helping me remember my own musical childhood. My six sisters and I sang while we did the dishes, performed for visitors, and arranged musicals in our backyard. Remembering those experiences helped me imagine a safe home, a loving family, and a child who knows the joy of singing along with whatever the day brings.

3. Write from a different character’s point of view. See the white streak in the water in the middle of the picture? That’s the canoe my husband and I were paddling on a family camping trip, pinned against a clump of trees in the fast-flowing Buffalo River. In an article in the 2009 Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, “Fiction Inspired by Reality: Put Some Life in Your Work,” I wrote about my search for a way to make a story out of that challenging situation. In my unpublished middle grade novel Nothing but Water, I shifted to the viewpoint of a girl who watches her parents’ canoe capsize and then must take charge of her younger brother in the wilderness.

4. Change the time frame. In her Friday post, Mary Ann mentions compressing events. You can also change their sequence. In order to make the canoe crash story be that of the protagonist and her younger brother (rather than that of their parents), I reversed the sequence of two actual events so that the parents are forced to leave their children alone.

5. Extrapolate. In a young adult novel I began for National Novel Writing Month, I’m exploring what might have happened if a high school stunt had gone further. Judy and I (yes, we’re identical twins) switched classes once: she passed my impossible swimming test; I flunked her surprise English quiz. As payment, she made me go ice skating with a boy she no longer liked and didn’t have the heart to break up with. In real life, we were afraid to try another switch. In my novel in progress, one switch leads to another, relationships intertwine, and the twins are forced to untangle a convoluted muddle of emotions.

6. Make it up! That’s what we writers do, right? At each turning point, look for a logical, believable, different direction that moves your story forward. Give yourself time to think and room to play around with options.

Keep polishing those nuggets! Your story will sparkle!

Writing Workout: Mining and Refining

Choose any of the methods above to turn your real-life story into fiction. Look at each event as a turning point. Imagine all the options you can. What if a character makes a different decision or misses an opportunity? What if good intentions lead to unexpected consequences? What about events beyond the character’s control? Here are a few more suggestions.

• Change the setting. Put your characters and their problems into a different time or place.
• Create a misunderstanding.
• Impose a deadline to add tension.
• Focus on a small event and blow it out of proportion.
• Introduce a witness who sees something that should be kept secret.

Give yourself permission to play with the possibilities. Have fun!

Writing from Life Without Boring Yourself by Mary Ann Rodman

I read somewhere that all first novels are “semi-autobiographical” and are always dedicated to the author’s parents. Guilty. However, what I learned in writing Yankee Girl is that “semi-autobiographical” is not the same thing as a memoir with all the names changed to “protect the innocent.”

When I critique a manuscript, the author is always amazed when I say, “This is something that happened to you,” or “This is a family story, isn’t it?” I’m not Karnack the Great. There are certain hallmarks of writing ripped from your family album/high school diary. Here they are:

1. Stories that meander. Life doesn’t fall into neat little story arcs with climaxes and denouements and resolutions. Between the exciting and interesting parts that inspired you to write the story, are the dull parts . . . flunked tests, bad hair days, barfy school lunches. In the first draft of Yankee Girl, I included them all. Then I wondered why a book about a pretty intense time and place (Mississippi, 1964) was so boring. Which brings me to a cardinal rule of writing; if it doesn’t move the story along, cut it. Unless that bad hair day turns out to be a key plot point, or you need it for a specific reason, CUT IT!


2. “Because it really happened that way” is not that reason. A truckload of specific details can bury your story. Anyone who reads my novels knows my fondness for using period detail . . . AquaNet hairspray, Beechnut’s Fruit Stripe Gum (“five different flavors!”), popular music titles. But a little bit of this goes a long way. When you describe every article of clothing a character is wearing, I expect that character to turn out to be a major player, and those clothes to tell me something about the person. If not . . . well, you know what to do! When I point this out to the author, nine times out of ten, I get the argument “But it really happened that way.” Rule three . . .


3. . . . unless it makes sense within the context of the story, nobody cares if it “really happened that way.” This is fiction. Fiction is shaped reality. I didn’t “invent” any of the events of Yankee Girl. I did fiddle with time lines, smooshing events that happened over perhaps five years into one school year. Some of the things that happen to Valerie actually happened to me. Some of the things that happened to Alice Ann happened to my parents or their friends or people I knew in high school. I combined several people to make one character. This is why it’s semi-autobiographical and not biographical.


4. The “real life” part of your story is only the seed. Yes, you might start off writing about something that happened to you in the eighth grade, with yourself as the main character, but the story eventually has to find a life and meaning of its own.


5. Writing a main character who is essentially you is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. It sounds easy, but like playing “yourself” on stage, it isn’t. With Yankee Girl, I grew bored writing about myself as Alice Ann. I never realized how utterly dull I was. Why would anyone want to spend 200 plus pages with this character? That is when you try to put as much distance between you and your fictional self as you can, while remaining emotionally true to the story. At eleven, I had no self-esteem and was afraid of everything (not without reason, if you’ve read the book). I made Alice Ann everything I wished I had been . . . mouthier, braver, smarter.
   

I went through the same process again with Jimmy's Stars, which was based on my mother’s family during World War II. Ellie, the main character, began life as my favorite aunt. By the time I turned the manuscript in, Ellie was part Aunt Agnes, part my own mother, and part a girl I knew in second grade. When my aunt’s daughter read the book, she asked “Um . . . was that supposed to be my mom?” The answer? No. My aunt was the sand in the oyster who attracted all sorts of other influences. In the end, Ellie McKelvey was not my aunt or my mother or Barbara from second grade. Ellie was a full-blown fictional character, living in a real time and place, living events that had their genesis in family lore, but that turned out much, much differently in the book.

This week’s reading list is on the meager side. By the time you read this, I will be recovering from retinal re-attachment surgery. So here it is (such as it is):
Picture book: FARMER DALE’S RED PICKUP TRUCK by Lisa Wheeler (2004, School Library Journal)
Middle grade: ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL* by Nora Raleigh Baskin (2009, Kirkus Reviews) TROPICAL SECRETS* by Margaret Engle (2009, Kirkus Reviews)
YA: WHAT WORLD IS LEFT by Monique Polak (2008, YALSA list), HOPPER GRASS by Chris Carlton Brown (2009, Kirkus Reviews)
(* indicates that I couldn't decide if this was upper middle grade or lower YA.)

Writing Workout: Fictionalizing Real Life

Write about an event or an anecdote from your life in which you are a central character.

Now write the same anecdote in which the central character (you) is the exact OPPOSITE of the real you. If you are shy, make the character aggressive. Instead of kindly, make yourself a bully or a “mean girl.” See what happens to your anecdote.

Did the story take a different direction?
Was it harder or easier to write about that central “you” character?
Are you surprised by the results?

Our First "Ask the TeachingAuthors" Question

As Esther mentioned yesterday, our current series of posts is in response to an "Ask the TeachingAuthors" question submitted by one of our blog readers--our first question, in fact! It was sent in by Michelle T, a librarian in Ohio who is working on a young-adult novel.

The following is an excerpt from Michelle's email:

"My challenge, and why I'm writing you today, is that my main character in the YA novel is partly based on myself as a freshman in high school-- although she's definitely evolving into her own distinct personality -- and sometimes I'm too caught up in not wanting her to be me, but still feeling too connected to her to let her be distinctive. . . .

Do you have any quick tricks or tips on how to use memories and feelings and experiences, yet still create a separate, distinct, three-dimensional character?"

Michelle directed her question specifically to Mary Ann Rodman. Mary Ann will share her response tomorrow, along with a related Writing Workout. Additionally, because we all receive questions about "turning life into fiction" from our students, the rest of us will be sharing our thoughts on the subject as well. To access all the posts on the topic, see "Turning Life into Fiction."

If you have a writing-related question for the Teaching Authors, or a topic you'd like us to address, I invite you to use the link in the sidebar to send it to us.

So, What's Life Got to Do With It Anyway? by Esther Hershenhorn

The above title’s question is a variation of this week’s Ask the TeachingAuthors question, "What’s the connection between Life and Fiction?”

My answer?

Real Life works its way into our writing and words, invited or not, intentionally or otherwise.
And how could it not? We’re reservoirs of life events, memories, emotions, collectors of people, places and things.

Sometimes, Life serves up a story on a silver platter, as in my picture book Fancy That, when a chance meeting with a modern-day folk artist sparked a story idea. Steven Shelton’s Craft Show booth sign “Limner and Fancy Painter” drew my interest. Further questioning revealed the young artist was traveling America, living the life of a 19th-century itinerant sign and portrait painter! I could feel my heart quicken, my Writer’s brain spin, as I hurriedly scribbled down Steven’s every comment. I knew I’d found my very next book.

And other times? Other times, as in my picture book Chicken Soup by Heart, loved ones surprised me, showing up in a character’s actions, voice or word choice even. My character Rudie Dinkins’ after-school baby-sitter Mrs. Gittel cooks up the World’s Best Chicken Soup and offers up a liver spot count-along, as did my son’s maternal Philadelphia Grandmom; Mrs. Gittel calls Rudie “Boychick” and lets him win at cards, just like my son’s paternal poker-playing Florida Nana.

Whenever I’m reading, the writer in me, ever-curious, wonders about the story’s spark. Was it a Real Life happening? A memory? A What if? I encourage all writers to do the same.

Discovering a supposition’s accuracy is easy. Simply Google the author’s name and book title, adding the words “interview with…”

Or, visit author websites and blogs to learn a book’s story spark or back-story.

Doing the above, I learned the back-story of author-illustrator Marla Frazee’s A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever (Harcourt), a glorious tongue-in-cheek travel journal that celebrates friendship, summer, the great outdoors and grandparents. Wanting to thank her son James’ friend Eamon’s grandparents for the lovely vacation they’d given James, Frazee chose to write the thank you note as a small book, illustrated by James and Eamon. Eamon’s mom, it turns out, was none other than Allyn Johnson, Frazee’s then Harcourt editor. Armed with Johnson’s encouragement, Frazee began to develop the story idea to see if it could become a book.

I’m happy to report: three of Frazee’s pencil and gouache images from the 2009 Caldecott Honor book currently hang in Gallery 10 and the Vitale Family Room of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Kraft Education Center, part of a must-see exhibit of original paintings, drawings and prints from 17 picture books that received a Caldecott Medal or Honor Award between 2006 and 2009. To learn more about this exhibit, visit the Art Institute of Chicago website. If you’re coming to Chicago between now and October, perhaps for the July 11-14 American Library Association Conference at McCormick Place, make time to stop, study, ogle and celebrate the works of Beth Krommes, Melissa Sweet and Uri Shulevitz, just to name a few.

Who knows? Maybe the experience will work its way into your fiction!

Writing Workout: A Thank You Mini-Book

Try your hand at creating fiction from Real Life by doing what Marla Frazee did. Write a thank you note, for a gift, for a kindness, for a gesture, for an experience, ONLY express your gratitude as a story within a mini-book!

Think Who, What, When, Where, How and Why.

Think characters, actions, time and setting.

Create a beginning, muddle the middle, then resolve the story in a satisfying way.

Here are two links to websites that will help you physically, artfully create all kinds of mini-books:

http://www.canby.com/hockmanchupp/student_folder_websites.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/minibook/index.htm

Reading Lists and Remembrances--posted by Carmela Martino

In her recent post, "Read Your Brains Out" (part of our Children's Book Week series), Mary Ann Rodman shared some references for recommended reading. As a follow-up, we've added links from this blog to online recommended reading lists--see the sidebar section labeled "Children's/YA Reading Lists." Now you have no excuse for not "reading your brains out." (And if you have suggestions for other online recommended reading lists, please let us know.)

By the way, Mary Ann was too modest to mention that her middle-grade novel, Yankee Girl, made one of those recommended reading lists: the Spring '09 Indie Booksellers Recommendations for Kids.
Congratulations, Mary Ann!

Two other new features on our blog:
1) We often receive questions from our students about graduate programs specific to writing children's literature. (Perhaps this is because four of the TeachingAuthors hold MFAs in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College.) To help answer those questions, I've added a section in the sidebar with links to "Graduate Programs in Writing for Children and Young Adults." If you know of any I missed, please let us know.

2) We've added a link to show our support for independent bookstores. We encourage all readers to shop at independent booksellers, either online or in person.

Finally, today is Memorial Day here in the United States, a day to remember those who have died while serving our country. In the May, 2009 issue of the Illinois Reading Council (IRC) Communicator, IRC president Roxanne Owens discusses using the poem "In Flanders Field," by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, as part of a middle school Veteran's Day project. After discovering that the poem has been set to music, Owens incorporated the following YouTube videoclip into her lesson. The clip features high school dancers interpreting the poem's lyrics

This Is My Brain—This Is My Brain On Books--by April Halprin Wayland

I have something embarrassing to tell you. Something that makes me feel as small as a flea, especially in the kidlit blogosphere.

I am a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w reader.

Or maybe I’m simply a distr—did you see that!?!—acted reader.

Either way, though I do read, I don't eat novels for breakfast like every single solitary author, teacher and librarian I know.

On the other hand, I love listening to books while I drive. Those I eat for breakfast, lunch and dessert.

Reading is a sometimes frustrating search for that satisfying click in my brain. Why don’t I read as fast as my very smart husband? He’s a CPA but he reads as if he were a librarian.

Maybe it has to do with the way I was taught to read (an experimental method of the 1960s) or maybe my brain is just wired differently than yours. Probably.

In any case for me, getting into a book is like diving into black water with a braided rope I’m supposed to slip onto a hook on the bottom of a boat.

I can’t see, I don’t want to be there, I don’t like the yucky taste in my mouth. I just want to do it and get back to dry land, ASAP. My fingers feel the boat bottom. They slide over the slimy wood, searching for the blasted hook. Where the heck is it?

And then…wait. Here it is! I loop my rope over the hook and make a good strong knot.

I float. Look around. And hey—the water’ s clear here! And…was that a cobalt blue fish? Schools of silvery things swim past my cheek. Elegant plants sway with the current.

Now I’m in no rush. In fact, I don’t want to leave this place. Ever. Now I’m the one that’s hooked.

That’s what cracking a new book feels like to me. A grumbly sort of “should” on my to-do list…resentment at having to take the time…and then, finally, click: that glorious never-wanting-to-put-this-book-down rush.

Here’s a poem about reading, a WIP—work-in-progress—for my novel-in-poems about a girl struggling with issues of food, fat, faith and friends. The book is called THIRTEEN, FOURTEEN, FATTEEN.

I AM READING NOVELS AGAIN FOR DR. T’S CLASS

I wade into a weedy,

dog-doo

squishy place.

Something slimy

tangles around my ankles,

drags me down.

I breaststroke

through

muddy pages,

close my mouth

against who-knows-what

in this water.

I put my head down,

pull hard against this current,

this black water,

until…

my body

lifts.

I flow

to the wide part,

to the clear water.

No undertow.

Floating.

Ohhhhhh…

Each page

pours something silky-milky

into the bliss of my brain…

Let me linger.

Let me remain.

Let me never go back to dry land.

(So why—why—WHY!?!?—

aren’t I reading 24/7

instead of eating 24/7?)

from the unpublished novel in poems, THIRTEEN, FOURTEEN, FATTEEN © April Halprin Wayland

So, tell me--does anyone else feel like this? Please tell me I’m not the only one! **********************************************************************************

It's Poetry Friday--write a poem today! Try the following Writing Workout. It's one of my favorite ways to crank up my poetry engine.

WRITING WORKOUT

FIVE RANDOM WORDS--A POETRY GAME

One summer, Myra Cohn Livingston gave her Master Class several variations on this exercise. She liked our poems so much, she collected them into a collection called, I AM WRITING A POEM ABOUT...

It was like a game. Like magnetic words on the refrigerator door. A word bowl filled with slips of paper, one word per slip. A word written on the bottom of each shoe, tossed into the center of the classroom.

Play this game alone, in class, with a group of friends, with another poet via email.

Here's all you do: choose five nouns.

Four could be related in some way and the fifth? Completely unrelated. For example: match, flame, fireplace, logs, walrus.

Or pick five unrelated words like: piano, blueberry, pigeon, cliff, map

.

To find them, look around the house, use a dictionary, leaf through a book or newspaper, take a walk outside, or ask family members for a word. (I just called to my teen son in his room, "Give me a noun!" He called back, "Map!")

Don’t think too hard, too long. Pull them out of your hat and write them down. Now.

Feel the words in your body. Close your eyes and find associations. Play with the words! Write a poem. Rhyme only if it serves the poem.

Cut words. Cut more.

Poetry is meant to be read aloud. So read it aloud. To your cat.

Change what needs to be changed. Shift for the gold.

Read it aloud again. Is it finished? Do you like it? Then stand, stretch, smile.

Do the poetry dance!

Now, share your poem with someone you love.

**************************************************************

Reading Like a Ten-Year-Old

by Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford

My childhood days conjure memories of chocolate ice cream and Cheetos fingerprints smeared across dogeared pages. Books accompanied me to baseball games; they lulled me to sleep (or kept me awake); they helped pass the time on long winter days while I snuggled under a blanket fort or on endless summer days poolside. In short, reading was sheer pleasure.

At some time during the seismic shift that was puberty, books ceased to provide the steady, reliable comfort I'd always known. Not to say that I'd always read about happy topics. But seventh grade was the beginning of the end of my literary innocence. Perhaps my enjoyment of Treasure Island was foiled by too-high expectations for entertainment and excitement. But a successive spate of reading assignments like The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter, Billy Budd, and Intruder in the Dust had a cumulative effect of making literature distinctly unfun.

I am not, of course, arguing against a solid education in the classics. I am arguing against a rigid curriculum that allows very little room (or time) for individual choice. By high school, busy as I was between track and soccer and band and SATs and drawing Venn diagrams about Tom Jones for homework, I am sad to admit that I was no longer an avid reader.

Our high school reading list (and this was in the '80s, not the Dark Ages) was comprised entirely of novels and plays written by men. I appreciated many gems my teachers introduced -- Cry, the Beloved Country; Huck Finn; Macbeth; The Grapes of Wrath. I especially appreciated the wisdom of a teacher, Mr. Bennett, when I complained about the the appearance of a five-and-a-half-page sentence in a Faulkner novel. Was the point of writing not to be clear? I asked him. After all, I had studied Strunk and White and George Orwell in his class. Bless him, he did not disagree with me.

In college, I read dense journal articles and was expected to learn to emulate this jargony "academic" style in my own writing. I decided a career in academia was not for me.
Now, reading and writing both being highly subjective activities, I realize that my Little House on the Prairie might be someone else's Treasure Island.

But as I grew more serious about writing for children, I also realized that kids' literature has changed significantly since my own childhood. The body of work is, as a whole, much higher in quality; it is also, as a whole, much darker.

Again, my argument is not that children can't handle depressing material or that they should be shielded from it. However, I do believe that it is in many ways easier to write passably well about death, depression, rape, abuse and other weighty issues than it is to present a convincing slice-of-life story that is relatable and also manages to stand the test of time.

When I was at Vermont College, MFA students were required to write two critical essays per month. I read so many books in a row that I disliked that a wise mentor advised me to go back to a book I'd loved and examine what I'd loved about it. Relief! Bliss!

A lot (nearly everything) may have changed in 30 years; but the same words and characters that delighted me as a kid are still there, still as powerful and magical to me as ever.

I am a person who subsisted for a week of my adult life on Cheetos and chocolate alone. While I agree with Mary Ann that a diet of literary potato chips is not good for the digestion or for the soul, my humble hope is not to write Ulysses. I'd be much happier leaving my mark with the literary equivalent of a Hershey's Kiss or, perhaps, a nice, juicy plum.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
-- William Carlos Williams

Read Your Brains Out, Part Deux by Mary Ann Rodman

I read so much that I keep a reading log of what I've read, when, and where or how I learned about the book. I thought I would share what I've read in the two weeks since I last posted (OK, not counting yesterday's post) With one exception, I don't personally know any of these authors, so these are not books I am plugging for a friend (and the exception is a book I would have read anyway as research for a future piece.) Here is the list by genre, including publishing date. Where I learned of the book is in parenthesis. * indicates that I couldn't decide if this was upper middle grade or lower YA.

Picture books--SONG OF MIDDLE C by Alison McGhee, 2009 (Kirkus Reviews) DIRT ON THEIR SKIRTS by Doreen Rappaport & Lyndall Callanm 1998 (Amazon search), THE BEST FIGURE SKATER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLF by Linda Bailey, 2001 (Amazon search).

Easy readers--SLIP, SLIDE, SKATE by Gail Herman, 1999 (Amazon search).

Middle grade fiction--THE CHOSEN ONE by Carol Lynn Williams, 2009*(Kirkus Reviews)

Middle grade non-fiction--ELLIS ISLAND by Raymond Bial, 2009 (Kirkus Reviews)

RED SCARF GIRL by Ji-Li Jiang, 1997 (Summer reading list), DENIED, DETAINED, DEPORTED by Ann Bausum, 2009 *(Kirkus Reviews)

YA--IF I STAY by Gayle Forman 2009 (YALSA list) THE OTHER HALF OF LIFE by Kim Alblon Whitney, 2009 (YALSA list) BECAUSE I AM FURNITURE by Thalia Chaltas, 2009

(YALSA list) WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED by Judy Blundell, 2008 (National Book Award Winner), ALL THE BROKEN PIECES by Ann E. Burg, 2009 *(YALSA list) THE SCHOOL FOR DANGEROUS GIRLS by Eliot Scherfer, 2009 (YALSA list) THIS FULL HOUSE by Virginia Euwer Wolff, 2009 (Publishers Weekly)

YA(or adult) non-fiction--HOPE'S BOY by Andrew Bridge, 2008 (Summer reading list)

Adult non-fiction--THE JOURNAL OF HELENE BERR, 2008 (Publishers Weekly), CLOSING TIME by Joe Queenan, 2009 (Publishers Weekly).

Tune in next time for my further adventures in reading. Looking over this post, I think I'll show this to my family. . .it might explain why our house has dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds.