Reading

Some more wonderful books I've read over the summer:

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Wow! A book that promised a glimpse into 1940s British India and so much more. The central character, Vidya, is forced to question the customs by which they live by, the very beliefs they have after her father is brutally clubbed by the British police. Although the title is aimed at Vidya *climbing the stairs* to gain knowledge, I found her brother's story much more riveting. At times Vidya appeared too naive for her age (she is 15) though this probably reflects our own reality now with children growing up too fast.

A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
This book was clearly crafted with a great deal of love. The author chooses her words with extreme care. This retelling of Rumplestilskin was fresh and different. I confess that despite the gorgeous writing (and cover) I didn't identify with Charlotte Miller. Perhaps because Charlotte is business-minded, the older sister ... and I am neither. I felt much more connected to her impetuous younger sister.

The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel
Not many books are set in tenth century Ireland. I didn't realize that Vikings were raiding this area so often. Another beautifully rendered historical fantasy. And the romance between Aidan and Lana crackled just perfectly. Gorgeous cover.


Head Case by Sarah Aronson

This was one gritty book and reminded me of the time I spent working in the spinal-cord injury ward at the Veteran’s Hospital. I’d play chess or rummy, read books to the patients who practically lived at the hospital because they had so many other medical problems. They had few visitors and loved a good game. And these brave men reminded me daily how lucky I was to walk out of there. Ms. Aronson doesn’t spare us on what it could be like to live with quadriplegia. Frank Marder narrates his grim story, with humor, without sentimentality: Two people are dead. I have to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down. And you read ahead and find out how a nice boy like Frank ends up like this.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
This book reminded me of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee because the narrator is looking back after many years. From the inside cover: It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove -- a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others -- who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

I've also been reading a lot of how-to-raise-dog books and my favorite so far is Bill Tarrant's Retriever Pups: the Formative First Year. Beautifully written and full of practical advice on living with your dog.

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I hope your summer's been full of good books, rest and relaxation and good times with your family.

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The Underneath

I haven't been writing much, but reading tons. And even though I read The Underneath by Kathi Appelt a short while back, her voice and characters are in my head, and I wonder whether Ranger sings the blues again, whether the kittens, Sabine and Puck, have kittens of their own and what new stories the trees harbor.

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I have mixed feelings about this book. It's luminous. The author is clearly a poet -- every word has been chosen with care. But I wondered whether this is a book for children, whether children would enjoy it. My nine-year-old, who is a voracious reader and mature for his age, put this one down. This is a boy who read Where the Red Fern Grows when he was seven, who couldn't put it down, even though he could barely read through the tears. We were all reading it together, but being the way he is, he read ahead and discovered tragedy for himself, alone. Later he told his then five-year-old sister what happened (to more tears). But I digress.

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We aren't strangers to Ms. Appelt's books. My kids loved her Bubba and Beau series of picture books. And I discovered her memoir -- My Father's Summers. What a lot of memories that book churned up for me. But The Underneath is Ms. Appelt's best book. I'll say this inspite of all the kvetching I'm going to do, which isn't much.

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The book starts off beautifully: There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. Immediately I have this intense longing to pick up this calico cat. How her life and those of her kittens unfolds is the central thread. But Ms. Appelt interrupts the thread with several others -- the trees, the snake, the alligator, and many more. They all eventually come together, and I sighed a huge sigh of satisfaction at the end. Because like a Victor Hugo novel, everything is accounted for, explained. There are no loose threads. And I thoroughly enjoyed the magic realism, reminiscent in the stories of South American authors Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende.

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I could hear Ms. Appelt's voice (and I do not know her), her Texas accent, telling me this story. She is a master. From the first sentence you can trust her, inspite of the maddening interludes (which aren't really interludes at all). I will read this book aloud to my children when they are older. And I know my son will read ahead ... and discover pain and anguish for himself. And love too. It's power.

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I'm thinking Newbery :) What about you?

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Brewing, Composting, Percolating

I've been doing a fair bit of scribbling in my notebook. Nothing earth-shattering. Just processing ideas, writing about the pup, the kids, about me not writing productively (that is, no deadlines). A couple of days ago, a voice emerged. "This is my purpose," she said. And my hand is aching as this girl tells her purpose, or what she assumes is her purpose. It's a story that explores duty and freedom. I have been thinking of this for years and years and years. And finally, there's the voice, the perfect characters to explore this idea with.
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Almost all my stories, both short and long, have an extremely long gestation period. We're talking years here, not months. My historical YA has been percolating for a good twenty years. The novel I wrote last fall had been composting for a couple more decades. And this one -- I don't know what it is yet -- but I've been thinking about this in some way for close to thirty years. I'm in my 40s, so yes, I was a kid when I was first thinking about this. To finally have words to express these ideas is exhilarating. This is what I love about writing.
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So tell me, how long do your stories brew in your head before you actually start writing?
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Do the Right Thing

Just by chance, I saw one of my pictures on someone else's blog, unacknowledged, without my permission. Folks, this is not right. In the words of Kevan Atteberry, "What would your mother say? Hmmm?"

As I am fond of saying to my own children, "Do the right thing, even when I'm not watching." This is good advice for adults as well.

Fair use means taking without permission. But it doesn't mean not to acknowledge the source. Please folks, always, always acknowledge your source. As a writer of nonfiction, I am highly aware of this. The source of every quote and fact I choose to include in my article is meticulously recorded should I need to refer to it. Plus, it allows my readers to go further with their own reading, should they choose to.

I enjoy taking pictures. I'm not a professional but I've been complimented many times on the pictures I've taken. It makes me feel good to share a few images from my life. Why would anybody want to take them without acknowledging the source? And it's all the more distressing that it's another person in the business.

Do the right thing. It's easy.
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Feed Me!

We spied four eggs, and three have hatched. Mama and Papa Junco feed their babies countless times a day. These babies aren't cute per se, but we sure love their cheeping.

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I'm loving this summer. Writing is on the backburner. Now that my children go to school full-time, I don't even try to carve in productive writing time when they're home. It's enough to just scribble in my notebook. Time is going so fast ... before we know it, the baby birds will fledge and my kiddos will be heading out of the house. I also believe in the power of the subconscious to keep working in the background. Or perhaps it's my excuse for being lazy ...

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Tell me, do you ever use your kids as an excuse?

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A New Addition

I had forgotten what it was like to have a new baby in the house. Here's our baby of the family. She's a two-month-old, mostly golden retriever, a love. The cats are wary but adjusting surprisingly well. I hope to post a picture of the three of them cuddling up together soon.
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Speaking Engagements

Last year, I spoke to a small group of very talented writers in Bellingham, WA about writing nonfiction. I loved the responsive audience. This year, I spoke about magazine writing at one of *my* regional SCBWI monthly meetings (picture). Again, I was delighted with a wonderfully attentive audience. And the best part was seeing them again a month later at the annual conference and hearing some of their success stories.

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I am so pleased to be invited to speak again in the area. The first one is coming up in November, on magazine writing, at the University of Washington Extension class on Writing for Children and the second is coming up much later in April on work-for-hire writing as part of our local SCBWI monthly series. I'm pleased that nonfiction writing is getting some attention.

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I know that people almost always think of writing The Great American Novel when they think of writing at all (myself included when I was a newbie writer), and many of the classes are geared towards novel writing. However, it's much easier for writers to break into the magazine market, particularly with nonfiction. What's fascinating is that children begin writing with nonfiction. I do lots of class visits and the majority of children write about their families, pets, friends, etc. Towards the end of Grade 1, I see fictionalization of real events. I wonder why writers shy away from nonfiction ... it is truly in our bones.

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When I first started writing, almost everything was geared towards fiction. I love reading and writing nonfiction and told myself that I would try to bring it more attention in our area. I doubt I can ever make it as sexy as fiction, but again, I revel in these small successes.

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Summer

Summer flowers (these are Kalmia -- very showy, no? -- even the buds are interesting) and new life (those are junco eggs in our fuschia) give us so much pleasure. We're having very lazy days reading, playing games, watching the birds and squirrels in our backyard, going swimming, even napping. I had hoped to work more productively on my novel revisions, but find that I'm too tired to work at the end of a lazy day.

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What I am doing is writing in my notebook -- I usually start out with a writing prompt from this wonderful book: Prompts and Practices by Judy Reeves. After a few minutes, it invariably leads me to some random bit in my novel. I write for as long as I can, usually about 20 minutes or so, before my train of thought is interrupted. But it's enough for now. I hope I can find all the good bits in the fall ...

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I realize that I need to be able to write daily to keep my equilibrium. Writing is how I make sense of the world, how I process thoughts and ideas. I get cranky without my daily writing fix. My trusty notebook and pen go everywhere with me.

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Tell me, how do you stay disciplined during the summer? Or do you take the summer off and just recharge, be lazy? Before school days, I worked only on short stories, I mean very short stories, those you can scribble out a first draft in 10-15 minutes, but I find that for longer works I need more than 15 minutes to make progress. An hour with no interruptions is the bare minimum. And I can carve out that time at night ... but I'm sorry to say, my discipline is flagging.

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I've been reading some wonderful books instead:

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The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson is the kind of book that makes you think -- deep and hard -- about what it means to be human. As a scientist who doesn't always believe in progress (just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should do it), I found this to be a thought-provoking book. I am usually not a fan of novels written in the present tense, but it is just the right voice for this book.

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The Doctor by Patricia Duncker is historical fiction that imagines the life of James Miranda Barry, who was discovered upon his death to be a woman. I was instantly reminded of Rough, Tough Charley by Verla Kay, who was able to encapsulate the life of a certain Charley Parkhurst in just 32 pages. Mem Fox was right when she said, "Writing a picture book is like writing War and Peace in Haiku."

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling is probably my most favorite book out of the series. We are finally reading these books together with the children and they are enjoying them immensely. Both kids are also reading ahead, but reading together is something I hope we will continue for a long time to come.

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I Asked a Tiger to Tea

My seven-year-old daughter received this book as a birthday present. It appeals to her sense of whimsy and word-play. She enjoys writing and since her brother got to do a review, she wanted to review this book. Here it is:

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I Asked a Tiger to Tea is a funny book with very funny poems. It has new pictures [by Melanie Hall] to go with old poems [by Ivy O. Eastwick]. My favorite poem is The Extraordinary Puffin because there is a puffin trying to learn all he can -- history, geography, algebra, wisdom and wit. I want to be as smart as he is.

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May is my birthday month and the poem "May" feels like it was written just for me.

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The Mysterious Universe

This is what my nine-year-old son has to say about this book:

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I think THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE is a great book because it describes everything it talks about very well. It has lots of facts about light-years, dark energy, supernovae and black holes. It has really great photographs by Nic Bishop. There are even parts that are funny. This is a great book on astronomy. Anybody from 8 to 88 can read it and understand it. Happy Reading!

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I think my son might well be the first child to have read and reviewed this book. I agree with him. Ellen Jackson and Nic Bishop have done a beautiful job explaining this mysterious universe. Read an interview with the universe here. And get ready for some very interesting conversations with your children.

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