Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle

I only knew about one raven that could talk, and his only word was, “Nevermore.” But that was before I read Gabriel Finley and the Raven’s Riddle by George Hagen. It seems that in parts of Brooklyn, ravens not only carry on conversations with people but tell riddles and paravolate with their human amicus.

Perhaps this needs an explanation. In this enjoyable middle grade fantasy, Gabriel needs to find his mysteriously missing father. He belongs to a line of people who use their amicus ability in a special bond to talk to ravens. Somewhere the magic has played havoc with his father, and it becomes his job to find him and set him free.

Helping him along the way are Somes, a bully who becomes a friend; Abby, a nonconformist in cat’s eye glasses who wears one red boot and one blue one; and Pamela, the violinist daughter of his aunt’s old friend whom she takes in when they are down on their luck.

Danger comes from many sources, but the worst are the valravens that look exactly like ravens but have no sense of humor. They can be recognized by their lack of laughter when they hear an answer to a riddle. They don’t get the joke. For other dangers, paravolating is the solution. The amicus and raven become one, taking either the form of the bird or the form of the human, depending on which is safer choice.

Challenges also come in several forms, but my favorite is the writing desk with feet that moves from place to place and disguises itself by wearing a rose printed pink nightgown or a yellow rain slicker. Thankfully, it likes to dance so Pamela’s violin comes in handy for enticement when they need it to stand still and produce another clue.

Humor shows up in places along with both old and new riddles. Simply describing Pamela’s mother’s cooking as unappetizing would be too easy – “Judging by the colors bubbling around the lid, the evening dinner was a brown sweater.”

Like a middle grade reader, I spent an enjoyable Sunday afternoon believing all of this and sharing the tension as the children sort out which birds and humans are worthy of trust as they navigate the dangers that take them to Brooklyn’s underground.

Three Questions

A package in Tuesday’s mail reminded me of the three questions of 1999. The first had begun in the spring when I heard new children’s author Kimberly Willis Holt at our Louisiana chapter of SCBWI children’s writers. She had three books out – Mister and Me, My Louisiana Sky, and newly published When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. As I listened, I remembered the grant-writing invitation from the Louisiana Arts Commission that I hoped was still on my desk and not in the waste basket. Dreaming big, I asked if she would share her enthusiasm and writing knowledge in a workshop with my junior high language arts students in Leesville, Louisiana if I could get the grant money. We set a tentative date and agreement.

The second question arose in late summer. I opened the living section of the Alexandria Town Talk and found a spread with Kimberly’s picture announcing that Zachary Beaver was a finalist on the National Book Award list. Would she win? I had ambivalent feelings. Yes, I wanted her to win. No, I didn’t want to lose a golden opportunity for my students, which seemed inevitable with the time demands on a National Book Award Winner. I hadn’t heard from the grant, and we only had the tentative verbal agreement for her workshop.

Soon, the announcement of her NBA win brought another spread for the Town Talk. Kimberly’s grandparents lived a few miles south of Alexandria, and Louisiana is proud of its own. I was excited for her but uneasy for my students as the third question loomed. Would a National Book Award Winner have time for small town Leesville in rural Vernon Parish on the road to nowhere except Fort Polk? I still hadn’t heard from the grant.

I gave her time to enjoy her moment before I called to see if we remained on her schedule. She acknowledged the new whirlwind of her life, but said she’d discussed scheduling promises with her husband Jerry. They’d decided that an agreement was an agreement. Eventually, the grant came through.

What a week my students had! What credibility I had when she left! Here was a “real writer” telling them the same things I’d told them. What a wonderful friendship began that week as Kimberly and I found so many things in common with our military families – included our shared wedding date with her parents. How I have enjoyed the plethora of middle grade and picture books that have come from her pen in the years to follow – including her series on Piper Reed, based on the military childhood she shared with many of my students!

The package took me back to 1999 with a poster, a copy of the fifteenth anniversary edition of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, and a note from Kimberly claiming memories that match mine. I think I’ll take a break and go renew my acquaintance with Zachary. If you haven’t met him, pick up an anniversary copy and give yourself a treat.

Nest

One would think a girl on Cape Cod in the Nixon era, nicknamed Chirp for her bird-watching hobby, would be a set up for a lighthearted nature-experiencing life. Instead, in Nest, a debut novel by Esther Ehrlich, two truths emerge. Suicide is only permanent for the perpetrator, and depression is an equal opportunity trouble, striking youth as well as adults.

Chirp watches her dancer mother lose her skills to muscular sclerosis and her spirit to depression. Her psychiatrist father is at a loss to help. Chirp’s Jewish heritage, her difficult older sister Rachel, the neglected and/or abused neighbor Joey, and her birding form warp ribbons while normal middle school ordeals form the woof in this delightfully woven story.

When life overwhelms her, Chirp takes a lesson from the birds and builds a nest for retreat in her room. She makes hers with her pillow, encircled by her clothes and blankets. Her attempt to fly from that nest with Joey amps up the danger.

In spite of its subjects, I didn’t find this a sad book overall. The realism in its dealing with suicide, depression, and even Joey’s dysfunctional family is tempered with fun. Yet, I anticipated throughout that Chirp was going to find her song again. She was just that kind of girl. The characters come alive, and the story line is engaging. I recommend it for pleasure reading at any age or for an adult and child to read simultaneously and follow with discussion.

Bonus: Check out the author website at www.estherehrlich.com for background about the author and beautiful pictures of some of the birds Chirp would have seen.

Feed the Birds

I’ve always loved the song “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins, especially its refrain of
       “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
       Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.”

I hadn’t planned on the thought behind it becoming a theme in my life. When we moved to Hattiesburg, we already had a small row of blueberry bushes and a fair sized fig tree. Country girl that I am, I envisioned blueberries on my cereal, blueberry muffins, and blueberry pie – not to mention ripe figs eaten out of hand and fig preserves. Things haven’t worked out quite like I planned.

The first year I had blueberries for cereal any morning I wanted and enough blueberries for muffins to put in the freezer that lasted quite a while through the year. I even got one blueberry pie. The birds seemed to eat some along but not enough to bother my harvest. In ensuing years, the birds have discovered the blueberries sooner and sooner. This year I had blueberries on my cereal one morning before the birds discovered they were ripening and picked them off before they could turn blue.

The medium sized fig tree was leveled after Katrina as they dragged downed trees across it from my neighbor’s yard, the only open path to get them out. After the hurricane passed, we all did whatever was necessary as a community to help each other clean up the mess and move on. The sacrifice of a fig tree and a few nandinas seemed small compared to losses all around us.

Well, you can’t kill a nandina and evidently not a fig tree. It has come back, bigger and stronger. Most of the limbs are far beyond my reach. I’ve tried to bargain with the birds for them to take the top half and leave me the bottom half. They don’t listen. They peck one bite out of a fig and go to the next one. I did get enough figs to put up a few this year, but not enough to share with non-feathered friends as I have in the past.

I won’t get into the birds eating the few strawberries off my plants but will go on to the picture which shows a plant I am willing to share. In fact, they can have it all. A sunflower came up volunteer beneath the bird feeder this year. I caught this bird with my camera in the midst of his breakfast pecking away on the sunflower gone to seed.

I’m sure I should count my blessings – a yard full of birds and it hasn’t cost me a tuppence.

Personal

I read the advance reading copy of Personal by Lee Child on the planes and in the airports between Gulfport, Mississippi and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Then I tried to figure out what could be said in a review of a book that killed time predictably during a day of travel. I could honestly report that it had accomplished the purpose for which I had chosen it, but Jack Reacher can be counted on to bring justice to the criminal just like Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason, or Leroy Jethro Gibbs. That’s not new or different.

Lee Child solved my quandry for me in a book release interview on CBS This Morning. He told about watching his father search for a new book and asking him what kind of book he was looking for. His father said he was looking for one that was “the same, but different.” Those of us who retreat for pleasure to Agatha Christie or NCIS understand what he meant. Lee Child understands as well and said that was his aim when he wrote – to create something that was the same, but different.

This book, which sets Jack Reacher up as the target in the beginning, takes place in exotic places like Paris, London, and Arkansas. The international pursuit begins after a sharpshooter takes aim at the president of France. The CIA and its international counterparts give Jack a call and the chase is on. He soon recognizes the gunman as a criminal he caught once before and sent to prison for fifteen years. The shooter’s grudge against Jack is personal.

Reacher’s comfortably predictable misgivings about working with Casey Nice, a young female rookie, the series of dangers and near misses, and ultimate success satisfy the thriller fan looking for same, but different. I found Personal to be perfect airplane reading. It took my mind off the guy hogging the arm rest in the other seat.

Writing Rule # 3 - Shape Your Space

In an article in the August issue of The Writer, Kerrie Flanagan comes up with a new rule that I had not heard but had been following for some time. She doesn’t worry about neatness, which is good in my world. She does say to surround yourself with art, photographs, and objects that are meaningful and inspire creativity.

I think she’s right, but I would add one more important item to the list. In this world where even the likes of Stephen King and Kate Dicamillo tell harrowing stories of rejection after rejection of their work, I think writers (and maybe people who find writing as exciting as I find spending an afternoon trying to get one small ball into eighteen different holes) should also be surrounded by things that make them feel good about themselves.

For those days when yet another “no” shows up in the mailbox or via email, I have things around my office to remind me it’s not all about that particular bit of writing.
•    Atop my file cabinet to the right of my computer, I see my family of origin in a young picture of my parents when they were “courting,” Daddy’s second place domino trophy from a county harvest days contest, the country church I did for him in needlepoint, and a semi-current picture of the four McGee sisters.
•    A shelf on the next wall holds a goodbye poem written by my vice-principal when I retired, a cross-stitch made by a parent of a student who struggled to learn that reads “This is a Positive Learning Area,” and a book my daughter gave me – If You Were a Writer by Joan Lowery Nixon.
•    Wall three holds my bookcase sprinkled with family pictures – three children, their spouses, and ten grandchildren! On the top is a letter from Jessica Deen, a promising junior high writer, who wrote it as she finished her time with me.
•    Wall four holds diplomas from Ole Miss, Incarnate Word University, and the Institute of Children’s Literature, but the smiles they bring are less than the copy of my story about Ezra Jack Keats from Highlights for Children framed as an appreciation gift from my local library and a picture of workers on a beam above Manhattan that recalls an inside joke with my sisters.
•    Completing the circle back to the computer is a framed copy of my first fan letter for my story they published, thoughtfully passed along by Cricket Magazine. A full page, written in pencil by an eleven-year-old girl lauding the magazine, ends, “My favorite story in the last issue was ‘Rags and Riches’.”

The tour is completed with a faded poster given long ago by the same [and only] daughter of Snoopy typing away on top of his doghouse. The balloon bubble says, “It’s exciting when you’ve written something that you know is good” – a little reminder to find joy in the writing when the rejection pity party wants to take over.

Rory's Promise

How could I have guessed when I signed on to read and review an advance reading copy of Rory’s Promise by Michaela MacColl and Rosemary Nichols that I would actually meet the authors before I wrote the review? This historical fiction, set in the 1800s orphan world of New York City and an Arizona mining community, draws the reader into Rory’s struggle.   

Sandwiched between my reading the book and writing my review, the writers showed up at the Highlights retreat I attended. The book was published by Calkins Creek, an imprint of Highlights, and edited by Carolyn Yoder, the leader of our retreat.

The first bit of wonder for retreat participants came in their unique personal relationship since Rosemary is Michaela’s former stepmother, divorced from her father. As writers, we also joined in awe and questioned how they could partner to turn out this fascinating story. Most of us could not imagine writing with somebody else, especially something fictional. The short Me, Rosemary, Michaelaanswer is Micheala is the story person and Rosemary is the historical person, but each delves into the other’s side. We heard about a complicated process between the two of them that included fourteen editorial passes with Carolyn.

The story is well worth the trouble as Rory finagles her way through difficulties that pile on and increase as she tries to keep her promise never to forsake her younger sister. Grasping for a bit of status,  Rory and her sister Vi classify themselves as foundlings, which they think puts them in a bit better light with their parents dead, in contrast to the orphans abandoned by destitute mothers.

The difficult journey out West where Anglo and Mexican parents fight over babies they want to adopt is based on well-researched material and includes bits of true stories. Slight historical changes to fit the story are listed in back matter in the author’s note. The authors assured us the truth was in many ways even harder than the fiction they wrote.

Up until the final pages, I feared there was no way for the book to come to a satisfactory close. Rory’s Promise is written for middle grade and up. Note that “up” has no lid. If you love a good historical novel, this book is for you. I had come to that conclusion even before I met the delightful authors.

Tradition!

My division of the year into two seasons – College Football Season and The Rest of the Year – began as a tradition with my father when we lived ten miles north of Ole Miss. He taught me to follow the game on the radio and loved having a Saturday afternoon companion to cheer on the Rebels. Having a brother-in-law who was the university’s Alumni Director for many years and graduating from that fine institution has added to my fervor. I’ve rooted for them through good years, bad years, and two rounds of Mannings.

A different team and a third generation of college football enthusiasts was added during our nine year stay at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Just up the road in Waco, Baylor University played during the Grant Teaff years, and we believed. Contributing a chunk of my salary later – for eight years – as two sons got degrees at Baylor added considerably to my fervor for their Bears. Our family cheered “Sic ‘em, Bears” as we watched together.

Now you might think I would have to choose a favorite here. That has happened only once in history. In 1975, Ole Miss and Baylor played each other in Waco. My brother-in-law got us tickets in the Ole Miss Alumni section to bring our oldest son to the game and gave him a warning that he had to give “Hotty Toddy” cheers for Ole Miss. Murray was relieved when the president of the Alumni Association gave his uncle a stern look and said, “Son, you cheer for whoever you want to.” Murray sicced those bears and tried not to overdo his gloat when Baylor won.

[In an aside, just in case you are wondering what “Hotty Toddy” means, according to the website, it means nothing and everything. Go figure. Eli Manning is quoted as saying it just means you’re an Ole Miss fan. I think that’s about it.]

My season began last night with Ole Miss vs. Boise State. Thank goodness they didn’t play on that garish Boise State blue field. The first half wasn’t pretty, but I’ll take the 35-13 win.  

Sunday night the tradition takes in a fourth generation. Son #1 plans to be back in Waco at the christening of the new Baylor stadium with his son. Son #2 will make traditional football dip to eat with tortilla chips while watching at home with his son. I’m claiming a virtual game-watching presence with both sons and grandsons as I make my own dip to share and watch with Al.

The Rest of the Year is over. College Football Season is underway.

Hotty Toddy! Sic ‘em, Bears!

The Fourteenth Goldfish

Coincidence seems to turn up often in my life. I finished reading The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm just before I turned out the light to go to sleep. Shortly after I woke the next morning, an early morning radio news report on NPR featured the relationship between a positive attitude toward aging and increased longevity. The connection between a middle grade book and gerontology struck me as odd.

I’ve long been a fan of Jennifer Holm’s books. My favorites are her historical novels based on family stories – Penny from Heaven, Boston Jane, and the May Amelia books. My judgment evidently is shared by the Newbery Committees since she has shown up three times on their Honor Book lists. This book is quite different from those with a dose of intriguing fantasy.

Eleven year old Ellie copes with loss of a best friend, divorced parents, a new relationship for her mom, and dead goldfish – all fairly normal problems for a rising sixth grader. The twist comes when her scientific grandfather figures out a way to return to his youth and become her peer.

Ellie and her mom, who realize what he has done, pass Grandpa Melvin off as a cousin. The story line twists and turns as Grandpa alternately uses his knowledge from his years of living or behaves as an adolescent boy.

I questioned Grandpa Melvin’s decision to come back as 13-year-old. I loved the years I spent teaching people who were that age, but I consider those junior high years as the very worst in my own life.

The book was great fun to read and true to both of Melvin’s ages. I kept thinking it could also give rise to some good discussions about the pros and cons of being forever young. I pictured a middle school/junior high student and a grandparent reading it either together or separately and then discussing the pros and cons of their own ages and the consequences of never growing older.  

The book comes out tomorrow, August 26. I recommend it to people of either of Melvin’s ages.

Just Right

A retreat means different things to different people. I’m a bit like Goldilocks with her “too hot” and “too cold” – looking for “just right.” I see references to anticipated trips to the beach and think, “How boring.” At the opposite end are those who go to theme parks, and I think, “Over stimulation.” I am away this week at the one that, for me, is “just right.”

I am at the Carolyn Yoder Alumni Retreat put on by The Highlights Foundation. Yes, they are the ones who publish Highlights for Children that you loved as a child and still find in your doctor’s office. She is their nonfiction editor for the magazine and the book publishing arm. As you might guess, you can come to an Alumni Retreat if you have been to one of her workshops before.

At the moment, I’m sitting alone on the front screened-in porch of the family home in the Pocono Mountains where Highlights began, watching the sun come out after a summer shower. Surrounded by pens, paper, and computer that spread across their old dining table, I have no calls except to write words.

For a solid week, the only scheduled time has been three and a half hours of one-on-one fine tuning time with Carolyn, three chef prepared meals a day, and nightly critiques. My fellow attendees are serious about writing. On the few occasions when someone has shared this dining table, she gave brief friendly greetings before beginning her own writing in companionable silence.

The closest I’ve come to being distracted from writing has been watching a chipmunk eat his breakfast, a spell in the tree swing down the hill, and a short daily walk to watch Calkins Creek babble its way under the bridge.
I’ve found the retreat that’s “just right” for me:
    A week away
        At Calkins Creek
    With words to write
        But few to speak.

Lisette's List

If you read Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, you will know why I jumped at the chance for an advance reading copy of Lisette’s List. (If you didn’t you might want to rush out and find a copy to read while you wait for the release date of Lisette’s List on August 26.)

I have a great partiality for well-researched historical fiction in the hands of a good story-teller. This book fits both parts of that description. Parisienne Lisette reluctantly leaves the city she loves with her husband Andre to follow the call of her husband’s dying grandfather Pascal in the rural village of Roussillon.

Neither of them could have predicted what the reader anticipates in the 1937 date at the beginning of chapter one about the war that is ahead and what it might do to their lives. Part of Lisette’s coping with change is list-making. As a habitual list-maker, I empathize.

Lisette becomes a ready listener to Pascal’s stories and his lessons in art. His lessons lead her to add Item 4 to her list, “Learn what makes a painting great.” Early foreshadowing of things to come are in Pascal’s words, “When something changes your life, Lisette, you remember everything. Someday you’ll see.”

Well-rounded fictional characters populate the worlds of Paris and the rural village of Roussillon. Real world political and art figures from World War II add realistic background along with a mystery about where Andre hid his grandfather’s cherished paintings before he went off to war.

The reader sees Lisette’s appreciation of her new world as she remains in the village learning to live the rural life and knows she can soon check off item 12, “Learn how to be self-sufficient.” One of my favorite glimpses of her spirit is her wonder at her own good fortune in the midst of difficulty as she receives a painting done expressly for her. I’ll not spoil the story by telling what internationally know artist painted it. I found the way this part of the story unfolded and its lingering presence for the rest of the book intriguing.

I liked this book for much more than her frequent mention of my favorite pastry when we lived in France - pain au chocolat. In fact, that part just made me hungry. There may be a stop at  C’est la Vie, our authentic French bakery right here in Hattiesburg, in my near future. I recommend the book, perhaps read with a cup of coffee and bit of French pastry at hand. 

The Braid Connection

Blame this blog on Margarita Engle. I responded to her Facebook posting of a picture of herself in her youth on the back of a horse with long braids hanging behind her with a claim of kinship since I had a set of my own. She challenged me to post my pigtail picture.

Margarita and I illustrate friendship that reaches across attitudes and cultures. Her braids belonged to a horse-loving girl riding a generous neighbor’s animal with Havana in the background. Mine belonged to a North Mississippi girl, fearful of any large animal, who did her very best to avoid the horses on her grandfather’s farm.

She draws on her rich Cuban-American heritage for much of her work just as I extract stories from my legacy among the rural people in the foothills of the Appalachians. Both of us wore clothes lovingly crafted by our mothers. We both grew up with more wealth handed down in lore and values than in anything that could be taken to a bank.

As adults, we share some likeness and near-likenesses. The best I can recall, our friendship began when I responded to one of her verse novels. She likes to write poetry. I like to read it. We share a passion for diversity in children’s books. We believe that young readers should find children both like and different from themselves in books and magazines.

I am enjoying our new connection with the braids that I knew nothing about until she posted her picture. Her mother used braids to tame too much curl. I had terminally straight hair in a curly-headed world. Curls never seem to come in the right amount – just in too much or too little.

Mama and I were both relieved when she stopped the home permanents that singed the ends of my hair before the curl set in. I don’t know how Margarita felt about her pigtails, but mine were a great relief. However, I did hate the bangs that accompanied those braids. Most of the time, sweat held them standing straight up or swiped to the side where I sent them to curb the Mississippi summer heat on my brow.

Feel free to thank or blame Margarita for this excursion into childhood hair styles. And if you haven’t discovered her wonderful novels in verse, what are you waiting for?

Miss Nelson Is Missing!

As school buses pass this time of year, I experience a tinge of the annual excitement I felt first as a student and then as a teacher. For the occasion, I’ve pulled out an old favorite book for both my second grade students and their teacher. My well-worn copy was my first day read aloud, and then was regularly “borrowed” by students for the rest of the year.

Miss Nelson Is Missing by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall has the inept Detective McSmogg trying to find out what happened to the pleasant teacher Miss Nelson who has disappeared. Her school children join the search since she has been replaced by the evil substitute Miss Viola Swamp. Neither the detective nor Miss Nelson’s students ever solve the mystery, but my clever second-graders understood why Miss Viola Swamp’s attire hung in Miss Nelson’s closet.

Like many teachers, some of Miss Viola Swamp came out in me the first day of school as rules were laid down and who’s in charge in this classroom was established. My goal was to get that taken care of so my Miss Nelson could spend the rest of the year in the class.

One of my most memorable students took the word home at the end of the first day. “Dad,” he said. “Mrs. Butler is mean.”

His wise father asked, “Is she mean or is she strict?”

“What’s the difference?”

His father explained, “Mean is when the teacher doesn’t tell you what to expect and then when you do something she doesn’t like, she punishes you. Strict is when the teacher tells you all the rules and consequences up front and then does what she said she would do.”

R. J. said, “She’s strict.”

I don’t think R. J.’s dad had read the book, but he understood the concept. As you might guess, with that kind of parental backup, R. J. saw my Miss Nelson with only rare glimpses of Miss Viola Swamp during his tenure in second grade.

As I watch those buses roll again, my desire is for schools with parents like R. J.’s dad and his mother who became an outstanding volunteer, teachers like Miss Nelson, and classes with students like R.  J. and the reformed children who had met Miss Viola Swamp.

Anticipation

People have sometimes said I was like my mother – when they were intending both compliments and insults. Often, they were right, but sometimes I’m vastly different.

Trips and special events were fairly scarce in our growing up years so I tried to get the most out of them by anticipating ahead of time. I counted weeks, days, hours, and minutes. I loved dreaming about looming excitement. Mama’s reluctance to join my exuberance baffled me. She answered my questions about her lack of glee by saying, “Something could go wrong and the trip/event might not occur. Then we would be disappointed.”

Was she right? Well, technically. In my view if something went wrong, I would wind up just as disappointed, and I would have missed all the anticipation fun as well. I made up my mind early in life to enjoy the expectation and take my chances on a letdown. That decision has led to a life filled with anticipation, special events, and an occasional disappointment. Which brings me to my current state of mind – chock full of anticipation.

I began to count months in early March when I made a credit card deposit, moved to weeks the first of July, and am now down to eight days! The big event is Carolyn Yoder’s Alumni Retreat put on by the Highlights Foundation in the area where Highlights for Children claims its roots. They do many workshops and retreats. This one is for those who have been in one of Carolyn’s retreats before, hence “alumni.” My anticipation fun has included visions of:
•    walking trails in the Pocono Mountains
•    quiet writing time away from the daily calls on my time
•    cooler August temperatures in Pennsylvania than in Mississippi
•    personal writing critiques from history/historical fiction editor extraordinaire Carolyn Yoder
•    sunrises over the mountains
•    great meals by an excellent chef with fresh local produce
•    making new friends who are also crazy about playing with words
•    batches of time not ruled by a clock to read, write, or do nothing at all

Mama was right when she said something could go wrong, and I could wind up disappointed. Nevertheless, my glass remains half full as I picture my week of retreat. Even if disappointment shows up, I have had five and a half months of wonderful anticipation. Not tomorrow, but the next Saturday morning I move to counting hours.

Eliminating Rocks

Don’t you just hate it when someone begins with “to make a long story short” and then doesn’t?

I just found this quote in my stash.
          A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

This week my Southern Miss friends have been understandably proud and basked in the reflected glory as Ray Guy became the first true punter to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Among his USM accomplishments is a 61-yard field goal in a snowstorm. To my chagrin, he also kicked a 91-yard field goal against Ole Miss. “What has all of this got to do with wordiness?” you ask. I’ll tell you.

My friend Mike, devoted enough to watch the entire Hall of Fame presentation show and listen to all the speeches, said, “Ray Guy stuck to the script. Those other guys seemed to wander all over the place.” His carefully planned speech took aim as accurately as his kicking foot.

This whole concept has been center front in my mind this week as I have cut words from a story under construction. Every writer has her (or his) own system. Mine includes writing the whole thing – call it picking up a whole bucketful instead of a handful of stones – and then throwing out the ones that don’t fit.

An early version of this story came in at 1407 words and got a positive review along with a few suggestions from my Louisiana/Mississippi SCBWI critique group. A second improved version got better comments at 1039 words. The current version, with probably another 25 words yet to toss, boasts only 876 words. It’s crazy how throwing out those extra rocks has lightened the load and made for a better story. Cutting surprises me with its improvements almost every time.

Now if I could just get people, including myself, to keep the promise of, “To make a long story short.”

[I had written this before I watched the New York Giants win the Hall of Fame game last night. Ray Guy, sporting his Southern Miss black and gold tie to go with his new gold jacket had a sideline interview with a reporter. He actually said, “To make a long story . . . “]

Keeper and the Blue Moon

In case you were asleep in that part of science class, a blue moon is a second full moon in a calendar month. Since the moon is full approximately every 29.5 days, the possibilities are limited. Central to Kathi Appelt’s middle grade novel, Keeper, and almost a character in the book is the blue moon. I intended to wait for the next blue moon before I wrote about the book. When I discovered that will be a year from now, I changed my mind.

In Keeper, many things await the full moon. Keeper watches as Signe stirs up her crab gumbo for the night of the blue moon. Mr. Beauchamp’s night-blooming cyrus waits for the moon before it unfolds its beauty. And Dogie has plans to sing his two word song on the night of the blue moon. He’s delayed this song too long, but now he is practiced and ready. In music, he can lose his stutter and sing the two words clearly, “Marry me, marry me.”

Even the two dogs, the cat, and the seagull with a disability seem caught up to have a good time when the blue moon shows its face. But all that ends when Keeper hears the crabs begging to be set free. Abetted in her lapse of judgment by the animals, she ruins the hopes of gumbo, the flower, and the song. Then as good authors do, Kathi Appelt turns up the heat, increasing the danger for Keeper as she sets out to find her mermaid mother who she believes will set things straight.

Touches of fantasy weave through the novel like a golden thread. Skillfully woven flashbacks portray the longing for relationships in each of the main characters. Not to spoil the ending, part of the solution will come from another source awaiting the full moon.

A story this good only comes along once in a blue moon, so even if you are not a middle grader, help yourself to a good read.

Freedom Summer

Hattiesburg has been filled with newspaper headlines, special events, and even sermons commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer. The Hub City was a center for Freedom Schools and voter registration drives.

In my own commemoration, I am revisiting the story I’ve told previously in this blog of my own introduction to the inequities of segregation and adding an extra spin.

Mama believed in rules. She had lots, and she found them in many places. There were house rules, school rules, Bible rules, traffic rules… I thought Mama believed in all rules until one day when I was eight years old.

Mama, my sisters, and I were getting on a Trailways bus to return home after a visit with my grandfather. I noticed some strange panels hanging down on either side, dividing the front section of the bus from the back. I asked her what they were for.

I don’t remember her words, but I distinctly remember my two reactions. The first was that I might prefer to sit in the back rather than the front. I was smart enough to know that a rule preventing one group of people from sitting in the front prevented me from sitting in the back.

The second reaction was even more startling. Somehow I knew, even as she explained it, that Mama did not believe in the rule. The great rule-maker, rule-teacher, rule-follower thought this rule was wrong.

I couldn’t get over being amazed that there was a rule Mama didn’t believe in. I thought of this episode in later years when I heard the line from South Pacific,
       “You've got to be taught before it's too late,
       Before you are six or seven or eight,
       To hate all the people your relatives hate,
       You've got to be carefully taught!”

Mama failed to teach me to hate. I was eight years old, and now it was too late. I’ve seen the truth in those lyrics again as military kids that I’ve raised and taught chose their friends with no more attention to skin color than to eye color.

But there is something different I would like to see carefully taught. My current soapbox is for reading and using multicultural children’s books. All children need to read about people both like and different from themselves. I’d like to propose a rule that we use those books to teach children how to celebrate the wonderful variety in the diverse cultures in our world along with appreciation for the things all human beings have in common. I think Mama would like that rule.

Lucky Us

Amy Bloom begins her novel, Lucky Us, “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”

I had just read Jean Kwok’s novel Mambo in Chinatown. (See July 11 blog.) She begins, “My name is Charlie Wong and I’m the daughter of a dance and a noodle-maker. My mother was once a star ballerina at the famed Beijing Dance Academy before she ran off to marry my father.” Since I read them so close together, I found a curious coincidence that both begin with an older and younger sister making sense of life after the death of a mother. At least in the beginning, both older sisters take some responsibility for the younger.

The first line of Lucky Us hints at the situation that will become quickly more complicated as Eva’s mother abandons her to the father who appears to have money and the half-sister who surprisingly takes her under her wing.

Set in the 1940s, the adventures are told with a mix of narrative and letters, some sent and some not. Iris, with Eva for an accomplice and cook, seeks her place in show business by fair means and foul. In a poignant line in one of her letters, Iris writes, “Someone once said: God gave us memory, so we could have roses in December. Someone did not add, so we could have blizzards in June and food poisoning when there was nothing to eat.”

Eva  knows her father’s indifference to his daughters. Still, she says, “I wrote him once a month, and saved the pieces until my feelings passed, and then I threw the pieces away.”

The girls’ father and quirky characters bounce in and out of their lives as they bounce in and out of locations in Ohio, Hollywood, Long Island, Brooklyn, and London, all in the context of World War II and its aftermath.

Reading these two books near the same time was accidental for me, but you might just want to try it to see how two writers starting with a similar premise wind up with very different books.

Late, but with a Good Alibi

Like the White Rabbit, I’m running late, but I have an excellent alibi. For those who watch for my blog regularly on Mondays and Fridays, I’ll explain. I’m just back from joining our associate pastor as a chaperone for PassportKids church camp with five grade school girls.

Folk wisdom sometimes says getting there is half the fun. Well, maybe. We had three Google maps that couldn’t agree on the route, one cell phone taking us to an obviously wrong place, advice when we stopped at Subway for lunch leaving out pertinent details from another group leader who had been there eight times. Finally, a different cell phone loaded with a bit more information got us to a beautiful mountain location for camp. Even our lostness was not wasted. It provided fodder for discussions with our campers on the theme for the week – Follow the Road.

Glimpses of the week include:
•    A camper with a Care package awaiting her arrival turning cries of envy into companionship as she said, “Oh, I’m going to share.” She quickly began to pass out finger flashlights. Her mom had thoughtfully packed enough for the others in her group.
•    Being a bit lost, like the kids, without my computer. They had been told to leave electronics behind, and adults followed suit with the exception of cell phones just in case we needed to be in touch with each other or the girls’ parents.
•    Sharing my scarce time alone (only because I get up about five o’clock) with a jogger and a horsefly.
•    Girls who remembered the rule not to go into the cabin without an adult even when the chaperone forgot.
•    Kids in a rap drama during worship that concluded,
            “If you can love the God you call,
            Then you can love your neighbor, y’all.”
•    Rounding up five girls to go to the next appointed place becoming a guessing game about which one needed to go back for a towel, pencil and paper, or their Passport Guide.
•    Being last in line for almost every meal – see previous entry.
•    Five girls who were barely more than strangers when we set out who are now friends that I miss this morning.

So there you have my alibi. I think you will agree that it’s a good one. I plan to be back on schedule by Friday.

Hand-Me-Ups?

Hand-me-downs have sometimes taken a bad rap. My sisters knew more about them than I did since I was the oldest, and they might give you a different slant on this idea. Often it seemed that Mama made a dress for one sister and the next in line kept watch for it to get too small so she could have it. My hand-me-downs were more likely to come from older girls in the rural churches where Daddy was pastor. I have several good memories of clothes that might normally have been saved for a favorite younger cousin that came instead to their pastor’s daughter. I wore them with honor.

This all came back recently in a package from my younger sister. She sent some books for my husband from a series she had finished and thought he would like and a jigsaw puzzle for me. I got to puzzling about things that you had finished and passed to older siblings. Would you call those hand-me-ups?

I knew immediately why Ruth sent me the puzzle. The picture has more than fifty book titles. Since I am nine years older than she is, by the time she was old enough to need stories read to her or told to her, I was Ruth’s primary baby-sitter. Because of Daddy’s visual challenges, Mama served as his chauffeur and partner in ministry. When they were gone, I kept us both happy by entertaining Ruth with “The Three Little Pigs” and “How the Elephant Got His Trunk.” (When she caused me trouble, there were occasional times when she had to sit in the green chair, but I won’t mention that.)

The puzzle added an additional layer to the enjoyment as I put together titles we enjoyed during those days like The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Little Red Hen. It has childhood books she learned to read independently as she caught the passion – Black Beauty, Heidi, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. There are mysteries that we both love – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason – and classics – A Tale of Two Cities and To Kill a Mockingbird.

In the very center of the puzzle is the slogan, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” I think Ruth and I would agree, which is why we get right to it and open our books to begin.

The hand-me-up, if I may call it that, brought back good memories of good stories as I completed the picture of each book – well, not Moby Dick – and good memories of turning a little sister on to reading.