Loving a Garden into Being

Greenprints AKA “The Weeder’s Digest,” a light-hearted small magazine, feeds both my passions – writing and gardening. This isn’t a how-to magazine. I get that from Mississippi Gardener, introduced by my sister Gwyn when I returned to this state. Greenprints contains stories, poems, and quotes about gardens and garden-tenders. It’s a just-for-fun kind of magazine.

Recently it carried a Chinese proverb: A real garden where one can enter in and forget the world cannot be made in a week or a month or a year. It must be planned for and waited for and loved into being. The proverb made me reflect on my own yard and its progression.

The previous owners of our house created a beautiful yard, which didn’t fit my taste much better than the pink paint throughout the house. We took care of the paint color before we moved in. The yard, with its formal shrubs shaped like football helmets or tissue boxes and flowers that bloomed in proper rows and spaces, has taken longer. I’ve slowly loved it into a haphazard passalong country garden with:
•    Old-fashioned leggy yellow chrysanthemums inherited from Mama’s yard
•    Asters from Gwyn
•    Lantana – butterfly favorite in multiple colors and varieties
•    Wildflowers - coreopsis, goldenrod, coneflower, rose of Sharon, Queen Anne's lace, spiderwort
•    My mother-in-law’s old-fashioned red rose
•    Pink daisy-like mums from Uncle Leo
•    Papaw’s milk and wine lilies
•    Mexican petunias – so invasive that I am now trying to prevent them from taking the whole yard

Actually, there are too many to name. If I like a flower, I try a few. They respond by dying, blooming, reseeding, taking over – I never know, but it’s always entertaining. With my red-berried holly and nandina for the winter months, there is always something blooming and something coming on. So far it’s only taken eleven years to love this garden into being.

Perfect Timing

I love it when time brings things together in the proper order.

•    Having heard about her for some time from our mutual friend Kimberly Willis Holt, I first met Rebecca Kai Dotlich at the April 2012 Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. I fell in love with her voice and poetry. [See my “Pocket Poem” blog.]
•    My newest grandchild, Benjamin Taylor Butler, was born on August 18, 2012.
•    Rebecca’s new picture book What Can a Crane Pick Up? was released in September 2012 – a perfect fit for a little boy.
•    With a bit of arranging between us, I received a signed copy for Benjamin in the mail from her on October 11.
•    On October 25, I will be flying up for my first visit with him bringing his first book with an author signature. Perfect timing!

Her signature is apropos to both the book and the boy. “Hello, Ben! Here’s your 1st signed book to “BUILD” your library!”

Having the long held opinion that a child is never too young for books, I’m figuring he’ll enjoy the music of the words and the colors of the pictures while I rock him now. As he gets older, he’ll enjoy the poetry and humor. An added bonus for his parents is that the book will be one they are willing to read over and over – as he will surely request.

If you happen to be looking for a fun book for a kid, you need look no further. [Girls will like it, too!]

Son

If you read aloud and give a girl the gift of story, she may demand that you teach her to read before she starts to school.

If the girl learns to read, she may want you to read the books that she brings home from the library with her.

If you read her books with her, she may insist on reading your books with you.

If both of you have read the same books, the girl may discuss the books with you.

If her love of reading continues, the girl may grow up to be a librarian.

If she grows up to be a librarian with access to reviews of new releases, you may get special books for Mother’s Day, your birthday, and Christmas.

My apologies to Laura Numeroff for borrowing the pattern from her not-to-be missed picture books beginning with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but my sequence happened just this way. The special birthday book – late only because the release date was three days after my birthday – was Son, the last in the Lois Lowry quartet that began with The Giver. Coming out during Banned Books Week made the release time doubly appropriate since The Giver is near the top of every banned book list with its crime of making the reader think.

If you read my “Whatsitsname Book Group” blog, you know I was waiting for the release and had a guess about the name of the book. As I expected, I was wrong. Predictable is not a description for Lois Lowry. But I was happy with the boy who turned out to be the Son.

I highly recommend what the girl, now librarian, said she planned to do. Read the first three if you never have or if you haven’t read them recently before you read this one. In order, the quartet is The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son. Kirkus Reviews says Son stands on its own. It probably does, but as I read, I saw many things that would be missed if the reader had not read the other three.

The book follows the theme set out in the first three books of the value in every person, referred to on page 290. “It had been Jonas, during his time as Leader, who had gently but firmly reminded the villagers that they had all been outsiders once. They had all come here for a new life. Eventually they had voted to remain what they had become: a sanctuary, a place of welcome.” The Giver remains my favorite, but I enjoyed all four.

If you love Lois Lowry books, Son does not disappoint. Neither does the girl who became a librarian.

In Defense of Goldenrod

I find myself defending goldenrod every year about this time. My first memory of the false accusation that it causes allergies came when I was ten or so. My mother had some kind of meeting. As usual, she did one of her beautiful flower arrangements for the table. Goldenrod served as the anchor and was finished with a mixture of other fall flowers. Mama regularly treated wild flowers with the same esteem as her cultivated ones. She also liked Queen Anne’s Lace and used it in my wedding arrangements.

One of the ladies who attended the meeting commented as soon as she spotted the flowers that she was very allergic to goldenrod. Mama took the flowers out and dumped them. As best I can remember, she never again used them in an arrangement when anyone would be with us other than family.

For the record, there are many species of goldenrod – all beautiful and none allergenic. The problem is that they are prominent to the eye at the same time that the nondescript ragweed is blooming. They get the blame for the problem caused by the ragweed, which has pollen that can blow as far as 100 miles. I liken it to the schoolboy who gets punished for an outburst when a little girl has been kicking him under the table for fifteen minutes.

I love the golden spikes as they herald the beginning of fall, my favorite season of the year. I didn’t have any in my yard when I moved here, and I share Mama’s nondiscriminatory policy toward wildflowers. I pulled off a few seed heads from roadside blooms when I went for my daily walk the first year I was here and just threw them out a couple of places around the yard. Since they are prolific re-seeders, I now have a satisfying number around the edges of my yard each fall. And the spectacular fields of them and black-eyed Susans between my house and the dentist’s office shortens my 35 mile trip north this time of year.

So if you have the opportunity to relish some goldenrod, just enjoy. But do your best not to get within a hundred miles of the ragweed.

Yes, He Did

The big Facebook question for my recent birthday was, “Did Al bake you a cake?’ with a frequent addendum, “What kind?” The answer is “Yes, it was a feather light yellow layer cake with penuche icing.”

But it was not always this way! Al grew up in a household with four boys and a mother who was Queen of the Kitchen. When we married, the extent of his culinary skills was popcorn with peanuts that roasted as the corn popped. [This is quite delicious. I often claim it is both the reason I married him and the reason I stay married to him.]

In the early days of our marriage, he volunteered to chop onions or peel potatoes, but left the cooking to me. He also instituted a system. If I cooked, he cleaned up. I liked cooking. Cleaning up? – Not so much. It worked for me.

About fifteen years into the marriage, our church had a cook-off where the deacons and pastor were to bake a cake for a church event with no help from their wives. The cakes would be judged and given ribbons. After choosing to bake a cake with a gazillion ingredients and asking two and a half gazillion questions, Al had the cake ready to go in the oven – which he had failed to turn on. Wonder of wonders, he won first prize and gained something far beyond his blue ribbon.

A whole new hobby began as he delved into the cookbook for more cake recipes, and then went on to recipes for other foods. Our children’s friends checked to see when he was making Oklahoma Dip. Today’s church potluck attendees corner me to see what Al brought, hoping for his famous Carrot Cake or Chocolate Sheath Cake, which they often mistakenly call his “brownies.”

We now operate under a different arrangement with the cooking coming out somewhere near fifty-fifty. He has also altered his system. If I cook, he cleans up. If he cooks, he cleans up. It works for me.

First Anniversary

Today completes one full year of this blog. I had been wondering how to mark this first anniversary until I heard Karen Cushman at LA SCBWI. I am borrowing her sentence since it expresses my feelings exactly, “Every time I write a word, I offer my heart to my reader.”
    
When I started, the advice said to be consistent in posting and to be committed to the writing so your readers knew they could count on you. I began posting twice a week with a bit of experimenting initially with which days were best for me to become consistent. Within a month, I had figured it out and set my schedule for Mondays and Fridays – usually before 6 AM Central Standard or Daylight Time. I wondered how well I would stay with it since I have never been a consistent journal writer. I think the obligation calling to me from those to whom I offered my heart - my readers – has helped me stay on track.
    
I’ve thought this so seriously that at times I’ve wanted to insert “Reader” like Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre or “Dear Reader” like Kate De Camillo in The Tale of Despereaux.
    
It’s been an interesting journey with readers who are regulars, readers who are now-and-then, and readers who stumble upon the blog once in a while. Family members, local friends, friends from other places and long ago, former students whom I now count among my adult friends, and new acquaintances mingle with people who found my blog because they googled a word. Surprising to me have been the number of international hits. I can only assume they have found the blog by word searches.
    
Other curiosities have come from which blogs have received the most hits – not necessarily the ones I spent the most time on.  I’ve wondered why “Yes, Virginia, There Is” that I considered a light-hearted Christmas piece continues to get hits every week and why others have popped back up after a long silence – “Wet Cement Childhood” and “The Forest Lover.” I can figure that “A Teacher Who Made a Difference to Me” got extra hits because school started.
    
As I promised in “About This Blog,” I've offered:
•    readin” – [more that 130 book mentions and a number of poems],
•    writin’ – it’s all been writin’,
•    and not that much ‘rithmetic – just the Baylor numbers in “A Bit of Baylor ‘Rithmetic” and the bees in “Bees 8, Virginia 0” with the addition of one more as I note that twice a week for one year makes for 104 blogs.

Monday I will start the second year with a similar promise. ‘Rithmetic won’t come that often unless Baylor has another good year or – miracle of miracles – Ole Miss has one. And Dear Reader, I’m offering them from my heart to you.

Celebration Times Two

I do love celebrations! September 15 – October 15 has been designated as Hispanic Heritage Month. I’m creating my own festivity by rereading a couple of favorite picture books – one old and one new. The old favorite is Tomas and the Library Lady by Pat Mora, a warm true story of a Latino boy who found a new world in the library while his parents followed the crops as farm workers. The after note identifies the boy. He grew up to be Dr. Tomas Rivera – a writer, professor, university administrator, and national education leader – with a library named for him at the University of California at Riverside. Just perfect!

The new favorite, Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina, takes its roots in a true story from her family. This book won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for 2012. In her acceptance speech as Meg told “the rest of the story,” she had her audience alternating between laughing and crying. The story line has the little girl [Meg?] helping Tia Isa, her aunt who is younger and more fun-loving than the other adults in the family, save money for a car. Part of myAunt Ruth reason for loving the book is that I also have an aunt who was a lot of fun and sometimes helped fudge a few adult rules. Her age made her about as much sister as aunt. I call her Aunt Ruth. You’ll want to be sure to read the book if you have one of those aunts.

You may want to join this celebration by reading these books or by finding additional Hispanic Heritage candidates at the American Library Association’s website under the Pura Belpré Awards. The medal is set up to honor Latino/Latina writers and illustrators whose works best portray, affirm, and celebrate the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. You’ll find their great stories and beautiful artwork at: http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants.

Oh, and if you should have a chance to hear Pat Mora or Meg Medina speak – take it!

Not Kidding

Sometimes “stuffy” seems to be the appropriate synonym for “scholarly.” You might get a clue from the book title that this is incorrect for Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature written by Philip Nel and published by University Press of Mississippi.

The couple illustrated the old adage of opposites attracting in both physical characteristics and personality. Crockett was tall, unruffled, and a night owl. Ruth was tiny, apprehensive, and tended to fall asleep before the party was over. In their early success, his Barnaby cartoons appealed to the intelligentsia while her The Carrot Seed, which he illustrated with a child resembling Barnaby, was a hit with the preschool crowd and made the recommended reading list for the Catholic Church.

In philosophy and life interests, they were more alike. They shared concern for the powerless and for the civil rights of all people. Their leftward political leanings and openness about these concerns in the late 40s and early 50s brought them under suspicion by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Their skirmishes with the FBI seemed even more amusing when the surveillance was dropped to keep from embarrassing the bureau shortly before the publication of Crockett’s iconic Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Of real reader interest are some of the people who were part of their lives, names recognizable from their literary or political history. They mentored Maurice Sendak early in his life at the beginning of his career. Ruth coached him on illustrating her book – sometimes getting into arguments that Crockett had to referee. Then there was young Ronny Howard, before he was Opie, starring as Crockett’s Barnaby in Ronald Reagan’s General Electric Theater. Any page turn may bring the reader to an “I know who that is!” moment.

Of interest to today’s children’s writers are the differences in the way Ruth and Crockett worked with editors and illustrators. They had an ongoing ambivalent relationship with editor Ursula Nordstrom, and Ruth regularly gave instructions to her illustrators and sometimes had them do their work over. She was not happy at the end of her career when she had to work more like they do today when the writer and illustrator seldom meet or communicate.

Since Philip Nel did his research well, the book is quite scholarly. However, the reader finds Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss to be real people likely to be good dinner companions. The reader finds irony in Crockett’s fascination with intricate artistic geometric forms balanced with the simplicity of Harold’s crayon. And Ruth provides a great deal of fun along with a cure for aging – just backdate your birth by ten years. [She advises ten rather than another number because it’s easier to remember.] I’m not kidding when I add the adjectives “surprising” and “satisfying” to “scholarly” in describing the book. I'm just sorry I couldn’t have that dinner with them.    

Write It Right!

Nothing distracts me when I’m reading like inaccuracy for what happens given the setting of the story. A few years ago I met a nice guy at Main Street Books, our local independent book store, and bought his book. I loved his well-written Civil War novel set in North Mississippi for the first three quarters of the book. Then he had his soldier protagonist return to Iuka, Mississippi, where he had fought for a couple of months, expecting to renew his romance with a young widow where he found his surprise two-year-old child. So far, it could have happened just like the author told it. Then he made the grandmother, the widow’s mother, delighted to see the soldier and destroyed all credibility. In Iuka in the 1860s, the grandmother would only have been thrilled to have hung him from the highest tree. Today’s morals in yesterday’s stories do not work.

A similar instance came when I was reading middle grade and young adult books along with my friend who was on the Newbery Committee. She had asked me to give her my opinions about the books I read. You can guess how little effort it took to talk me into that project! One of the books had two “nice” girls in the 50s who swore like sailors regularly in front of the mother with no reaction on her part. Wrong again – not in the 1950s! One swear word, especially from a girl, in a mother’s earshot would have called for major mouth washing with a bar of Dial soap.

I read a historical novel with a conversation between a Southern Captain and a Yankee Colonel after the Civil War. I thought I’d missed something when the captain used, “y’all” as a form of address. I traced back several pages to find the other people in the discussion. Not there. The author should have let a Southerner read her text! It took me back to my school days when a couple of boys had this huge argument with our English teacher that “you” being both singular and plural would never work. They insisted that “y’all” made a perfect plural for “you” and should be used in the entire English-speaking world. [On another issue, be sure to note where the apostrophe is. My daughter becomes Anna-gone-Bananas when she sees it spelled “ya’ll.”]

The trouble with being so picky is that I’ve lost a very good line from my as-yet-unpublished middle grade novel set in 1946. As Jimmy shows the new preacher’s daughter the school and points out the cafeteria, he says, “They cook the food with a lot of fatback and not much imagination.” I was thrilled, as writers are, when they create a wonderful sentence until I got the issue of The Journal of Mississippi History that dated the beginnings of the school lunch program to 1947. I even have a plate and bowl from the community school cafeteria, given as souvenirs at the recent 175 anniversary church celebration. [See my “Up from the Ashes” blog.] I, too, have to get it right.

Wonder what kind of story I could write that is set after 1947?  I hate to toss such a good sentence.

My Art Lessons

Spotty and spasmodic come to mind as the best descriptions of my art education. In its beginnings, it was do-it-yourself as I perused the classic paintings in the Bible storybook Mama used to read. My memory says it was published by Eerdman’s and entirely illustrated in a full-page painting of classic art for each story. The painting I think of first is Daniel in the lion’s den that I believe to be Daniel's Answer to the King by Briton Rivière. Don’t hold me to exact details on this since I was five or six at the time. I do remember loving all the paintings and spending considerable time poring over them after the story was finished.  

Rural schools I attended had nothing remotely resembling even an art appreciation class, and I missed it in college by using music appreciation to fill my fine arts requirement – keeping a close tie with my comfort zone. My next lessons came as an adult with do-it-yourself lessons again, this time in European art galleries, courtesy of Army designations for home in France, Belgium, and Germany. The biggest surprise in these lessons came in discovering the small size of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

Andy Wood, an extraordinary art teacher in South Polk Elementary School in Louisiana, gave me my next lessons. She knew how to encourage my second graders who were as untalented as their teacher and to bring out the gifts in those with natural talent. After listening to me bemoaning the fact that I lacked ability to follow up on the wonderful art lessons she gave, she said, “You can teach art. You just have to remind the students of two things. Nothing is just one color; there is also a bit of red in a green tree. And artists use all of their space.” She not only assisted me with my second graders but helped me see more in the art I looked at and contemplated. Her mixed media painting featuring a coffee cup hangs in my kitchen.

In recent years, I have found a real art teacher. Grandson Hayden, blessed with both talent and good art teachers, patiently gives instructions to a grandmother who had neither. One year he told me how he’d learned to find the central theme in a miniature part of a picture or photograph and use that for his drawing. He was preparing me for our Christmas present – a piece of art he did of my hand through my husband’s arm from our wedding picture.

Recently, he took me through The Snowy Day page by page, knowing my love for author Ezra Jack Keats and the story in the book, and showed me what artist Ezra Jack Keats intended for the eye to see. He pointed out the assorted color collage that anchors the bathtub on one page. In my favorite instruction, he showed me how the point of Peter’s hat draws the reader’s eye to the opposite part of the page to track the footsteps in the snow.

Hayden, a freshman at the University of Hawaii, plans to add teaching credentials to his major in art. In an unbiased prediction, he will be a good art teacher. He’s had practice already with his grandmother.

Without Books

Left to my own preferences in books, I would read nonfiction, mysteries, historical fiction, and realistic literary fiction. My Classics Book Club at Oak Grove Library sometimes pushes me out of my comfort zone as it has with our last selection of Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury’s book, whose title is based on his perception of the temperature at which a book will self-combust, conjures up some thought-provoking ideas.

The question in a community where firemen burn houses that are found to contain books is, “Do you know why books are hated and feared?” The provocative answer is that they show the pores in life. This book is not really about censorship but about experiencing all of life. He started me thinking of important things – and some not so important that I would have missed without books.

I often need Anne Frank’s reminder from her diary, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

I learned during my gazillion readings of Little Women, that Jo’s loneliness even as she shares the happiness in a family crowd, can bring as many tears as the death of her beloved sister Beth. [I cry over books more often than movies and probably more than in real life, sometimes to the point of having to gain control before I can finish reading.]

From Mr. Gilbreth’s autocratic rule of the family dinner table in Cheaper by the Dozen which I read aloud to my junior high students, we learned the phrase “Not of general interest,” which he used to squelch any topic he did not want discussed. Consequently, they knew when I said, “Not of general interest,” that they had strayed too far from the English class topic – and probably pictured me as the autocrat!

I’ve learned good timing from Richard Peck in The Teacher’s Funeral, “If your teacher has to die, August isn’t a bad time of year for it.”

Even without being a cat lover, my heart learned compassion as Kathi Apelt began The Underneath, “There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned by the side of the road.”

Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends gives what must be the scientific reason that “You’ll see catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you’re born you’re never gonna see no Unicorn.”

In When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt, I learned in the first sentence that “Nothing ever happens in Antler, Texas,” but then something did.

And who knows, if it hadn’t been for the good advice from Mo Willems, I might have let that crazy pigeon drive the bus!

I think Ray Bradbury is right. Books show us the pores, the real, in life and lead us to see everything from beauty to pain to laughter in the everyday. So far I’ve enjoyed the trips beyond my comfort zone brought on by this book club and some of the books visited for the first time or reread that fit in with my own preferences. I can’t wait to enjoy again next month’s selection of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But let me say for sure that if Moby Dick is ever on our list, I’m outta’ here – at least for that month.
 

Atoning for Pencil Freeze

To borrow a phrase from my friend and writing buddy Virginia Howard, there are speakers who “freeze your pencil” resulting in no notes on their talks. Ruta Sepetys, for example. Engrossed in her story at the Los Angeles SCBWI Summer Conference, I forgot the steno pad and pencil I had in my hand until they dropped to the floor when I joined the other 1233 attendees in a standing ovation.

I’ve atoned by taking notes as I read her book Between Shades of Gray. [I know – there’s another popular gray book this year. This is not it.] But this book is a New York Times notable book, an international bestseller, and a Carnegie Medal nominee. Billed as a young adult novel and set in the reality of Lithuania’s disappearance from maps from 1941–1990, its fictional account of Lina’s journey grips and holds a reader of any age. Lina’s unrelieved courage and creativity, from the moment she and her family are arrested in the middle of the night, carry her through inhuman living conditions sparked with hope in the drawings she secretly creates and passes along.

A few quotes will give you a small taste:

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.”

From Lina’s view as the train pulled away from the platform:

“The priest looked up, flung oil, and made the sign of the cross as our train rolled away. He was issuing last rites.”

As Lina watched over her brother Jonas, near death from scurvy and starvation, and remembered her dashed hopes of going to art school and her favorite artist Edvard Munch:  

“Each time I closed my eyes, I saw the painting of ‘The Scream’ in my head, but the face was my face.”

The truth in this fiction came from Ruta’s search in real life for her family roots, which took her to a happening the world has forgotten. She has brought it back to life in Lina. Lest we forget . . .

P. S. This was a hearty meat-and-potatoes grow-your-soul kind of read. You might want to follow, as I did, with a light strawberries-and-cream-dessert – French by Heart by Rebecca S. Ramsey.

Overlooked Hurricane Hints

The Red Cross gives a valuable list of preparations for upcoming hurricanes during this season, but they missed a few. Here’s my top ten list of missed items, many of them related to the expectation of electricity going out – as ours did for 13 days and 6 hours after Katrina.
1.    Assemble a tall stack of books to read.
2.    Print out the manuscript-in-progress for editing.
3.    Charge Kindle, cell phone, and camera batteries.
4.    Clear the dining table and get out a jigsaw puzzle.
5.    Harvest all the cut flowers and bring them inside for bouquets.
6.    Gather gardening tools and lock them in the shed so they don’t become missiles in the wind.
7.    Make weird meals from things that might spoil in the fridge or freezer. Examples? You don’t really want to know.
8.    Shower today whether you need to or not. There may be no clean water tomorrow. [There’s an irony here, since more than enough comes down.]
9.    Send a memo to weather reporters: (A) It is Gulf-port, not Golf-port, although people are known to play golf there. (B) Biloxi is pronounced Bi-luck-si, not Bi-lock-si. Don’t ask me why, but residents get to choose how to pronounce their own cities. (C) The Land Mass between Mobile and New Orleans is called Mississippi.
10.    And most important - eat that last dark chocolate Klondike ice cream bar so it doesn’t melt.

Beware August 29

My woods trying hard to come back

When I planned this blog several weeks ago, I had no idea we would be experiencing Hurricane Isaac on the seventh anniversary of Katrina. While Isaac has dumped way too much water and worn out his welcome as he drags his feet getting out of here, we are thankful he has not left as much damage as his sister in his wake. I wrote this poem as part of my own recovery after Katrina.

Eleven years ago –
Mississippi woods out back
clinched the sale
of a home to grow old in.

The woods turned me
into a child again –
ambling down Papaw’s lane;
watching squirrels play tag through the treetops;
seeing cardinals and Eastern bluebirds
swoop from tree to tree;
listening to woodpeckers rat-a-tatting;
surrounded by majestic oaks, swaying pines, “hicker-nut” trees,
beautyberry bushes.

Seven years ago on
The morning after Katrina’s
opaque white rain and roaring wind,
in my woods,
pines stood popped off like
little boys’ pencil fights,
roots and trunks of stately oaks
lay fallen crosswise
like too many grandchildren
sleeping in the same bed.

I felt pieces of my heart shatter into

grief with searchers
for family and friends;

mourning for lost
jobs and homes;

anger at those who would
loot, shoot, and gouge;

relief that Katrina was gone and
we were safe;

gratitude for
our intact home;

and one sizeable shard of
lament for woods
that will not renew in my lifetime.

This poem was published in the “When Things Get Back to Normal” issue of Thema Magazine [Vol. 20, No. 3; Autumn 2008]

Firsts

First day of school, first plane ride, first kiss, first grandchild – there’s something about firsts. Today is my first appearance on a blog tour!

Preparation is underway for the upcoming fall conference sponsored by Southern Breeze Region of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in Birmingham, Alabama on October 20, aptly called Writing and Illustrating for Kids (WIK).

A blog tour, which will be a first for me, introduces the workshop leaders.  I will be leading a workshop called “Story of a Story” about the possibilities in writing for children’s magazines. Beginning today, Bonnie Herold carries my interview at  http://tenacioustelleroftales.blogspot.com. She picked up on the butterfly metaphor on my website and carried that thread through her interview. I’m honored to have someone who pays attention interviewing for my first blog tour.

If you are interested in learning about writing for children, meeting editors and agents, or connecting with other writers and illustrators, learn more about the event at  https://www.southern-breeze.net/wik12_schedule.html - after you’ve followed me on the blog tour, of course!
 

Advice Not Taken

Not!A distillation of advice I’ve heard for conference attendees is, “Listen to everything, consider advice carefully, keep what works for you, and feel free to discard the rest.” Come to think of it, that’s not a bad plan for life as well, but I diverge.

Deborah Underwood’s topic at the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles was “The Power of Quiet.” She emphasized the importance of quiet for the creative person. I listened and agreed with much of what she said, knowing that good ideas often come with my mind unoccupied while my hands are busy in the garden. [They also come sometimes during Sunday sermons, but that’s another story.]

Then Deborah made a proposal that almost sent me screaming from the room. She suggested that we sit on the edge of the bed for twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing. Talk about torture! I can’t even watch TV without busywork in my hands! That part of the advice careened directly into the discard pile. Maybe it will work for someone who’s a little less frenetic.

But since I am in need of a new idea, I think I’ll go out and pull a few weeds.

No Surprise Present

If your grandmother’s business card reads “Retired Teacher – Working Writer,” predictable presents come for birthdays and Christmas. On his tenth birthday, Jack called attention to this phenomenon at the dinner hosted by his parents with his best friend, his other grandmother, and us in attendance. When time came for presents, he picked up ours and said, “I think it’s a book.” He got a good laugh for stating the obvious.

The only surprise comes in which book I’ve gotten signed. One year, Gary Schmidt spoke at the Faye B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival on the release day for Okay for Now – and signed three Christmas presents. Sometimes it’s been a Jerry Pinkney picture book for an almost grown grandson so he can have the art. There’ve been books signed by Jane Yolen, Richard Peck, Lois Lowry, and Dan Yaccarino. This year’s are still a secret, but let me say I stood in line for more than two hours after a full day of workshops at the SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles to get some special books autographed.

And now there’s a new little one! Jack might tell his cousin what to expect – or maybe he can guess when he is old enough to examine his afghan made by the aforementioned grandmother. I crossed a multitude of stitches in this creation that includes Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin; Babar and Celeste; Spot; Paddington; and especially Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny.
Welcome to the world, Benjamin Taylor Butler. May your life be filled with stories. You can count on me to help that wish come true!

Cake and Icing

In her appearance on an agent’s panel at the recent SCBWI conference in Los Angeles, Deborah Warren said, “Cherish your gift and relish the gifts you give to children. When publishing comes it’s icing on the cake, but the cake is good nonetheless.” What an apropos metaphor!
    It set me to appreciating the metaphor in my own life. For almost three years, Jacob Ezra Katz’s journey to become Ezra Jack Keats has been the focus of my writing life. It’s been cake! It all started with a conversation with Ellen Ruffin, curator of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, and Deborah Pope, director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. They set me on an assignment to find treasures in the Keats archives for the 50th anniversary edition of The Snowy Day, winner of the Caldecott Award and the first full color picture book to feature a black child as the protagonist in a non-stereotypical way. A short deadline left me no time to linger among the two large boxes of correspondence files and the 170 + archival boxes of Keats memorabilia. However, I saw a biography begging to be written and knew I would return.
    Deadline finished, I came back to read each letter, see each painting, and take in each of Keats’s own anecdotes. Special Collections librarians managing the desk in the Reading Room kept me supplied with the next box and feigned interest in my end-of-the-day accounts of new things I’d learned. Come to think of it, the interest may not have been feigned. They mostly match me nerd for nerd.
    Months later with information stored in my computer, the sorting and writing began. Like setting out ingredients and measuring utensils on the counter, I put the stories in chronological order and began to write. The cake began to take shape. The smell from the oven has included the writing of the story, phone calls with questions from people who now consider me a Keats expert, friendships with “Keats people,” and a trip to New York for the opening of the Ezra Jack Keats exhibit at the Jewish Museum. I’ve loved every whiff of the aroma, and I do cherish the gift.
    All the same, I’d like the icing of the book in my hand with "Virginia McGee Butler" running down its spine!

Show, Don't Tell

Family gatherings seem to be equally about memories, eating, and building current relationships. My husband’s family gathered recently where my sister-in-law put on a spread that would have made our mother-in-law proud. One of the nieces brought up the eulogy I wrote and read at my mother-in-law’s funeral. Mama Butler, as she was known to family, lived by the writing adage, “Show, don’t tell,” without having heard it. My eulogy went like this:

Mama Butler knew how to say, “I love you,” in a way that involved no words. Her sons and grandchildren heard and understood.
    She grew up in a silent generation that seldom spoke about feelings. Instead, she demonstrated. Her sons tasted her love daily as they grew up and again when they returned as adults.
    I married her youngest son and tried to improve her habits. When the family was coming for dinner, there would be fried chicken, ham, pot roast, purple-hull peas, butter beans, creamed corn (sliced thinly three times and scrapped off the cob), potato salad, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top from an unwritten recipe only she could duplicate, macaroni and cheese, Jell-O salad, rolls, cornbread, and at least two kinds of cake and always her chocolate pie which has never been reproduced.
    I tried to convince her that nobody could eat all that at one sitting. It was only necessary, I said, to fix one well-balanced meal with one kind of meat or main dish, a couple of vegetables, a salad, one bread, and a dessert. I suggested she’d enjoy her company more if she were not so tired. None of this was heeded.
    Noticing that her grandson Lance scraped the meringue off his pie and left the crust, I suggested that she make some chocolate pudding and save herself some trouble. “Lance likes chocolate pie,” she said.
    When I tried to improve her habits, she countered with the name of a son or grandchild who would surely starve if a particular favorite wasn’t on the table. I hadn’t seen the message in the food.
     I appealed to her fatigue, which would prevent her entering the lively discussions that followed the meal. She said, “I just enjoy listening and seeing people enjoy what I have cooked.” Finally, I gave up out of frustration, seeing that it was useless. I remained convinced that I was right. I have no idea why I thought I would make any changes in her behavior when the other three daughters-in-law had been unable to.
    Eventually, we moved and were the ones returning for the special occasions. I don’t remember when I realized that I, too, had succumbed to anticipating her meals. We’d arrive at the front door. Even before she answered our knock, I could see her coming out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, not a silver hair out of place in spite of the heat of the kitchen. The aroma preceded her. The mixture included my own favorites: purple-hull peas, creamed corn, fried chicken, and cornbread. I began to hear what she was saying in the kitchen.
    With the dinner on the table, she gave warnings about which things weren’t quite right this time.
    “The meringue didn’t rise quite high enough.”
    “These store eggs are not as good as when I used to have my own chickens.”
    “The corn is not as good as last year. I think the weather’s been too dry.”
    “The icing on the cake didn’t harden right. I think I should have cooked it a little longer.”
    We never found these flaws.
    I began to see her pleasure in watching her family enjoy the after dinner talking and teasing, punctuated with return trips to the kitchen for another piece of fried chicken, another glass of boiled custard, or another sliver of cake. A final round brought enough nourishment for the trip home.
    Mama Butler finally learned to say the words, “I love you,” – from her grandchildren, I think. But those who loved her still heard them best around her table.

Answering a Hard Question

These children tend to stutter when asked “Where are you from?” Children of military parents are from nowhere – and everywhere. Lovingly called “military brats,” they’ve been hard to find in a book until Kimberly Willis Holt came on the scene.

In his recent address to 1234 attendees at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in Los Angeles, Bryan Collier talked about how important it was to see himself in The Snowy Day. As I listened, I remembered when book children lived in middle-class white families with a mother, father, one or two siblings, and a pet – or the problem was the lack of such a family and the resolution was finding one. Ezra Jack Keats broke a mold when Peter, his Snowy Day protagonist, was black – just a little boy doing what all children do in the snow.

After The Snowy Day, other authors have included children of other economic levels, races, and cultures in their books. Publishers today look for those stories. Besides all children's need  to find people like themselves in a book, I believe it’s also important for them to find those who are different – and to discover how much they are alike after all. Peter’s skin color may have been different for many children who read the book, but he loved the very same things they did when the white stuff began to fall.

Other ways children are different have nothing to do with ethnicity. Military children come in all varieties, one of the things I treasured about teaching in schools on or near military bases. But they have a culture all their own. They fit, sort of, with extended families they visit maybe once or twice a year. They fit, sort of, with the new community they may live in for six months, three years, or five if they are lucky. As a rule, they learn to adapt quickly to new homes and friends and have wonderful opportunities to experience the world. They also have unique challenges. I’ll not go into all of this because it’s told better in Kimberly’s books.

This week marks the release of Piper Reed, Forever Friend, the sixth in a series that follows the ups and downs of a Navy Brat. Kimberly Willis Holt writes from experience, her early memories including kindergarten in France and a stint in Guam with her Navy father. These books are for military children Kimberly [on the right] and me at the Children's Book Festivalwho can see themselves and say, “Yeah, just like me,” and for those who wonder what it would be like to live this nomadic life. Carey Hagan in the September/October 2011 issue of The Horn Book Magazine points out that these are books about a girl that a boy would read.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be in a military family or if you know a military child who needs to find himself or herself in a book, meet Piper Reed.