Locked in like prisoners . . .

they were forced to read until they could read no more. And why could they read no more? 
Not because they had given up the will to read, but because-

they had come to the end of the book.

Obviously this headline was a clever ploy to grab your attention. However, the facts happen to be true. This last friday at the Staunton library a group of sixth grade girls and their teacher Becky McKenzie allowed themselves to be locked into the library overnight for a read-in. Of my tween novel Coyote Summer.

I couldn't be more proud. In fact, if family matters had not necessitated my going out of state I would have locked myself in with them. 

A read-in. What a great idea. How I would have loved that as a young girl. In fact, I can picture the exact space we could have used in the Morristown TN library. The new one, that is; there wasn't even room for all the books in the old library, And besides, it was kind of creepy.

I had another great encounter with a young reader this month. While I was up north, one of my 10 year old first readers  brought me her edited version of my next book. 

I must admit, I had not expected her mother to print it out in its final mark-up state. Nor had I expected a line by line edit and critique from a 10 year old. I kind of thought she was going to read it as a PDF and tell me if she liked it or not. 

But my cousin's daughter's daughter (I have no idea what that makes her) Natalie doesn't do anything half-way. Not only did she comment, she commented on the comments. My personal favorites were a comment she made to me while we were going over her suggestions, "I don't think that comment is right. You might do it that way if this was a YA book, but not for kids my age," and of course my personal favorite,"I think the way Margo did it was better."

And - she changed the title. 
Thank you, Natalie. I agree with almost all of your suggestions.

Perhaps you can suggest a read-in at your local library when the next book comes out. I'm still thinking about that title.

Dear Sara Loewen . . .

(I have no idea why this showed back up here, when it was written a year ago. Oh, the mysteries of the internet . . .)

Why am I calling you dear?  I spoke to you for perhaps forty-five seconds at this year’s AWP conference.  You were manning the University of Alaska press table when I walked up.  I had no idea who you were, never heard of your book.  I’d attended a panel of Alaskan writers that morning and was actually there to purchase someone else’s book.  I don’t remember whose now, only that it wasn’t available and you told me I’d have to order it.  I’m sure I did, perhaps I’ve read it by now, or perhaps it’s sitting on my shelf;  in the stack of books waiting until I have more time.

But oh, my dear dear Sara Loewen.  You suggested your book, sitting on the corner of the table.  You said perhaps if I enjoyed reading about Alaska I would enjoy your book.  I liked the title, Gaining Daylight, and was taken by the subtitle Life on Two Islands.

 I spent years on an island.  I may have talked to you briefly about that.  But mostly I bought your book because you were there, and you pointed it out, and I would’ve been embarrassed not to buy it.  It would’ve felt somehow rude.  I wouldn’t have wanted someone to walk away after I’d suggested they buy my book.

I picked your book up last week, out of that pile of ‘to be gotten to’ books.  I picked it because it was small and light, because it was short essays that could be carried in my bag and read in waiting rooms.  I had no expectations.

Dear Sara Loewen,

 Your writing stuns me.  I read each essay slowly, once, and then again.  It’s been a long time since I savored a book as much as this one.  Every image is so clear, so bright.  Every word seems to be the perfect word, the only word that could possibly have been used to convey that idea, but that sentiment.  The things you write about and at the same time encompassing everything.  I don’t have the words to describe your words.  I’m not that good.

Dear, dear Sara Loewen.

 Whether you’re writing about salmon fishing, running your own skiff, substituting for second grade, whether you’re telling me about the Russians encamped on Kodiak Island, or Rose Tweed, the Bell of Kodiak during World War II, or baby humpback whales, it feels like everything you’re saying is true and right and important, and I want to know what you know, and I want to feel what you feel.  Do you know how rare this is to a reader like myself?  Do you know how good you are?

Sara Loewen, you inscribed my copy of Gaining Daylight.  You wrote “hope you visit Alaska one day soon.  You’ll love it.”

I visit Alaska.  In small, beautifully rendered, beautifully written essays.  I visit Kodiak Island and Amook Island.  I visit fish camps and beaches swept by fall winds, I visit the 1890’s Russian settlements, and the Army barracks in World War II.  I visit Rose Tweed Lake.  And it’s all because I happen to be in the right place at the right time on a snowy day in Boston.  And because of you, Sara Loewen.

Thank you.  Truly.

You can visit Alaska, too.

 saraloewen.com

A very roundabout review . . .

When I was in grade school my best friend was Elizabeth Holmes.  I might not have been her best friend, but I considered her mine.  I was not a kid who made a lot of friends.  Elizabeth and I wrote poetry, and traded first and second places back and forth in contests for several years.  Every year we ended up in the teachers lounge at school, as the winners of the local spelling bee, working on memorizing words in order to make regional or state champion.  Elizabeth usually went farther than I did.  She had more determination, even at that age.

 Fast-forward about thirty-five years.  I run into Elizabeth’s mother in our hometown when I’m visiting my father.  I screw my courage up (I hate asking questions to which I do not know the answers, because what if the answer is bad,) and ask her how Elizabeth is doing and where she is.  I get a phone number and an address in upstate New York.  I hate the phone, so I write. 

I tell her I was in the theater, and now I am running an Inn and cooking and that I started writing poetry again.

Not surprisingly, she is a professor.  It’s that concentration thing again.  And she writes poetry.  In fact, she has a book of poetry out.  I believe I overwhelm her with my eagerness to connect.  We don’t write again.  I buy her book of poetry.

Jump forward ten years.  I have several prize chapbooks and a book of poetry  published.  I look Elizabeth up on that amazing  new thing called the Internet.  She now has two books of poetry.

Elizabeth has married a professor of English.  I have married a professor of English.  Both of our professors are creative writers.

I write a sort of memoir of my time on the island.  Before and after this book I work on a series of middle readers for 8 to 12-year-olds.

It is 2014.  I am fifty-seven years old.  My first middle reader came out in April.  Elizabeth leaves a lovely note on my blog.  I look her up again.  She has published three middle readers.

I immediately buy her books and download them onto my Kindle.

Here’s my review for the first one:

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

Pretty Is by Elizabeth Holmes is one of a rare and rapidly vanishing species of middle reader, a well-rounded story told in an age-appropriate voice, a story with a plot and equally strong subplot. The characters are finely drawn and utterly believable, and there’s action, suspense, and even a moral that doesn’t sound preachy.  And yet, there are no vampires or werewolves, no epic battles, no fantasy worlds and no alternative dystopian futures.  How could it possibly interesting?

Erin and Monica are sisters, but they couldn’t be more different. Monica is one of those embarrassing older sisters who just doesn’t fit in. And Erin wants desperately to fit in, to be surrounded by a large group of friends. But the girls she used to be friends with are changing, and she’s feeling left out. And Erin knows that’s only going to get worse, as next year she will have to go to the same school with the embarrassing Monica, which will, she is sure, destroy any chance she has left of winning her old friends back. The summer starts out awfully, and goes downhill from there. No spoilers here, but through a series of events and misadventures Erin learns that not everyone has to be popular the same way, and even and older sister like Monica can turn out to be a pretty good friend when the chips are down.

Holmes captures perfectly the angst of that age, those girls on the cusp between adolescent and teen and feeling the pull of both worlds.

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

I don’t mean this to sound as if I have been in competition with Elizabeth Holmes my whole life.  What I’m trying to say is that I think it’s uncanny how two friends in elementary school can go such separate paths and yet windup somehow connecting at certain points all along the way.

She could always waterski better than me too.

So I’ve been reading . . .

a book about the New Bedford docks by Rory Nugent, and it started me thinking about my time on Cuttyhunk Island again.  Nugent’s book is called Down at the Docks, and it’s basically a history of the New Bedford waterfront through the eyes of a number of different people.

Although Cuttyhunk:Life on the Rock was first person anecdotal, many of the things I learned on the island I learned secondhand.  Sometimes third or fourth hand.  Way too many stories to put into one book, and of course there are always stories within the stories.  I’ve often been accused of telling a story by starting with the stories within the stories within the stories, which some people find much too time-consuming to listen to. 

I realize it is difficult to believe people such as these exist.  I have trouble believing it myself.  I mean, if you don’t know the back story and sometimes even the back story’s back story, how can you ever really understand what went on?  Of course, these are probably the same people who skip to the back of the book to see how it ends.  Heathens, I call them.

But I digress.  Astoundingly unusual for me, but it does happen.  

Back to the point – those stories that don’t get told.  What happens to them?

I can’t answer that from a philosophical point of view.  I didn’t take those classes in college.  

In my world the stories that didn’t make it into the book still get told to anyone who asks, some of them in conversation, some in letters or emails.  They used to make their way into poems, often slipping in without my knowledge or permission.  That happens a lot with poems.

But I don’t write poetry anymore.  

So where do the stories slip in?  Right now they’re sliding into my new series of middle readers.  Not the way they are told in my memoir, but pieced together like a quilt; a fragment from this story, a snip of that memory…

THE AVALON

 photo A. Hinson

WINTER HOUSE

 photo A. Hinson

THE ALLEN HOUSE

 (For example, in the book I'm working on now, 2nd in the Summerhood Island series, all three of these buildings have been morphed into one- The Sea Inn.)

A memoir should tell the truth, at least the truth as far as the author can remember it.

But fiction is made of a different cloth.  It can stretch in any direction, start out with a name or a place and weave more names and places from other times and other memories onto the beginning, into the middle, at the end, around the edges until you have something that resembles a place you have known, or a person you have met The end result is not like any place or anyone real.  Sometimes it's a quilt. Sometimes it's just a raggedy mish-mash. This is fiction.  This is what I’m writing now.  And I have to admit that the freedom  to invent, and re-invent - is lovely.

Yes, it’s true . . .

 We are way overdue for a recipe blog.

 But until a couple of days ago my recipes had been kidnapped and were being held hostage. And the worst part is the kidnapper wouldn’t even contact me about a ransom.  

And yes, it was irresponsible of me to send my only copy of my recipe file out into the world alone, a print copy at that, so faded and old as to be impossible to scan.  Mea culpa.

But who could know? And anyway, the crisis is over, and they are back safe and sound, with a backup file to boot. And you still aren’t going to get a recipe blog.

 At least not this time.

 Because I promised on Facebook that I’d write a quick book review. Even though Geoff Herbach’s  I’m with Stupid is a YA novel, and if I am going to put book reviews instead of recipes or anything else  on my blog I should be writing reviews about middle readers since my first one (Coyote Summer, remember) comes out this fall. Although I guess this is not really what you’d call a review.  So maybe that’s ok.

I’m reading YA novels lately because I happened upon one (Beautiful Music For Ugly Children) in the library and it stunned me. So I wrote Kirstin Cronn-Mills (the author), and during our brief correspondence she’s given me several other author’s names. And they have all been wonderful and truly amazing.  Amazing in that they speak to such universal truths, to the real problems you face growing up and the even realer problems you encounter trying to deal with them, that I found myself saying yes, yes! (sometimes even aloud) as I read.

Because up until lately, you see, it’s only been Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And now you are really beginning to wonder. Buffy? Where on earth is she going with this?

You know how some comics, like Ellen Degeneres, start out with a topic and seem to wander all over and then suddenly Bam! - there they are back where they started having tied everything up neatly?

Yeah.

 Well, that’s probably not going to happen here. But bear with me.

Buffy. The show that used vampires and demons and witches and odd reptilian creatures to tell great stories that just happened to touch on all of the problems high school kids face, sometimes providing solutions but even when there wasn’t an easy solution you came away from the show feeling ok about being different, or liking girls instead of boys, or not having a parent around, or having scales and a tail because that one made you a natural for the swim team?

Until recently, it seemed to me that with a few notable exceptions, Buffy was it. And when YA literature started to become popular again, it was full of dragons and vampires or it took place in the distant past or future or on another world.

These people, though, this latest crop of writers, the Kirstin Cronn-Mills’s and Geoff Herbachs and A.S. Hyatts and David Levithans, just to name a few, they write these raw, powerful stories with problems like the ones you had growing up, or people you knew had, and the endings aren’t always all happy but there’s usually at least a few answers and a lot of hope because that’s what you need when you are a teenager.  These are the stories I read and my heart tightens and then opens and oh, I wish I’d had these books when I was a teenager because they are my life.

That’s what I’m With Stupid did for me.

Take a kid who was bullied when younger, give him a terrible early memory he hasn't dealt with and a parent who's not really there for him. Throw in the fact that now he's a popular jock and a heck of a football player, partially because he's got this anger inside that he deals with by crushing the competition. How does he cope? Where is his life going? What happens when he decides to use his power for good instead of evil (sort of) ?

What happens is a piece of your life. Somewhere in this book, and others by the writers I've mentioned above, is a piece of your life. Doesn't matter who you are or what you were in high school. You're going to go - ""Wow. Yes." at some point. 

Guaranteed.

So, no. not really a book review. But what I wanted to say. 

And thank you, all of you YA writers out there.

Keep going.

The best of intentions…

Well, I had every intention of writing a book review of my friend Chris Grabenstein’s new middle grade novel collaboration with James Patterson, I Funny.  Because I liked it very much.  

 And I’ve always been interested in the collaborative process.  I’ve only had one successful poetry collaboration, although I tried it with a number of people.

I was very curious to see if I could tell which parts of the book were my friend Chris and which were Mr. Patterson, as I feel like I’ve read enough of Chris’s work to have a handle on his voice.  But it felt like a pretty seamless mesh of styles, and except for a few phrases that were definitely Chris’s, the voice seemed different from either of theirs alone.

But I digress.  

As I said, I was just getting ready to sit down and write a review when Chris posted a review from a young man who has his own blog.  And after reading his review I felt anyone who wanted a sense of the novel I Funny would be far better served to simply follow this link.  http://sammwak.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/jgb-2-0-i-funny/

 This kid is amazing.  I can’t wait to read his first novel, which I’m sure he will complete before finishing high school.

So maybe instead of reading and reviewing middle readers and young adult books I’ll just stick to books about islands, the ocean, and things of that sort, where I’m less likely to be one upped by a thirteen-year-old.

And don’t worry folks, this will count as my book review post, and the next post will be a recipe.  Honest.

Here is a totally random picture that has nothing to do with middle school, really.  Except it's a school. The Cuttyhunk schoolhouse, to be exact.

Mixing it up . . .

Well, the power was out again yesterday, but fortunately I had several hours of power left in my laptop, so you get a post earlier than you normally might have. 

I’m going to be switching things up a bit here in blog land, and along with remembrances and recipes, you’ll be getting the occasional book review.

Why? Well, for one thing, I write them. Books. Remember? In addition to my many other skills. And I read them. Voraciously. 

But mostly because it’s all about the story with me. Spoken, written, visual, it’s all story. And it’s all important. Because that’s how we learn, by story. We learn how to do concrete things, like cook. We learn how life was in a place we love, back before we could live it ourselves. And hopefully, we learn something about other people, and that way, about ourselves. 

And hey, if you are wondering why I am reviewing some of the books I’m reviewing, all I shall say for now is: patience. All will be revealed soon.

I love Juvenile and YA books. Always have. And now, with the Hunger Games, and the Twilight series, it’s become ok to admit it. Not that being slightly strange ever stopped me. 

Chris Grabenstein writes books, both adult and juvenile, that are great fun to read. And I’m not just saying that because I knew him in college. Honest.

Chris Grabenstein’s The Crossroads is his first YA/Juvenile novel, and I am almost as impressed with it as I am with his adult mysteries. 

Zack Jennings is a great character, an 11-year-old boy who’s a bit of a nerd and a loner. To make matters worse, he sees and hears things, things that are a lot like ghosts. His father’s remarriage and their move to his hometown bring Zack up against a variety of unsavory characters, both human and long-dead, and he is tapped to help right some long-ago wrongs. In the process he gains self-confidence, learns to trust himself, and takes us on a rollicking good ride in the process.

Read the book. 

Give it to your kids. 

They won’t even realize they’re learning something.