Goes Without Sayin'

The information on the back of the bill from the lawn service tickled my funny bone.

“WILD ONION/GARLIC WAS FOUND IN YOUR LAWN. This weed is difficult to control. . . Weeds were found. . . ”

Some statements are foregone conclusions and don’t need to be said:
•    The lengthiest miles of a journey are the last fifteen.
•    Santa Claus wears a beard.
•    Our daughter dislikes cockroaches.
•    Squirrels can outsmart any idea or contraption humans devise to keep them out of bird feeders.
•    Hummingbirds will fight over the feeder even though there are plenty of drinking slots to go around.
•    At any writing conference, a presenter will say, “Show, don’t tell.”
•    Weeds were found.

Really, now. This is South Mississippi. It is springtime! I could have told the lawn service the wild onions were also in my flower beds where they know all kinds of tricks. After I dig up entire bulbs with my trusty spade, more appear in their place or pop up somewhere nearby.

Truthfully, these are not the only weeds in my flower beds. I’ve had a busy spring filled with book events, and the beds have been neglected. Multiple weeds have burst into bloom. My calendar appears to finally have time to get after them this week. In the meantime, I’m hoping my neighbors across the street take them for flowers. 

Edible Book Festival

Celebration of National Library Week took a tasty turn with the Edible Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Cook Library this week. Librarians, students, and patrons turned out appetizing (well, mostly) takes on favorite books. With honor to the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words, this blog will major on entry pictures of winners and one participant (me).

Winner of Most Creative was Claire Thompson’s “Moveable Feast or The Pun Also Rises.”

  Winner of Best in Show was “The Walking Dead” by J J Crawley and Amanda Myers.

 Winner of “Most Nutritious” was Rachel Calhoun’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

 My entry, which comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me, was “The Snowy Day.”

My creation did not win a prize, but I think I can speak for all participants and observers that the event was great fun and demonstrated just how creative book people can be.

Beware This Book!

As is my custom, I picked up a new book and headed to bed, thinking I would read until sleep called. Better than sleeping pills, this practice almost always induces a good night’s sleep. Be forewarned – not with this book.

I’d seen periodic enticements on Kimberly Willis Holt’s Facebook page about her upcoming middle grade novel Dear Hank Williams to be released tomorrow (April 14). The title alone filled me with anticipation so I was thrilled to get an autographed advance reader’s copy in the mail. Since I'm a one-book-at-a-time reader and had a couple of must-read-now books ahead of it, it had to wait. Now the time had come, and I was eager.

The book, a series of pen pal letters from Tate P. Ellerbee of Rippling Creek in Rapides Parish, Louisiana to her idol Hank Williams, let me know right away that the effect would not be soporific. (I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that word.) I laughed out loud twice before I finished the first letter. Soon I was having arguments with myself that involved one more chapter versus the need to wake up the next morning.

The story, set in 1948 in the parish next to Vernon Parish where I lived for nineteen years, has entertaining characters that ring true to their time and place. I wondered early about Tate’s reliability as she tells Hank her story in the letters. I felt Tate’s hero worship and Mrs. Kipler’s frustration as the teacher whose pen pal project goes awry. I knew Tate’s relatives and neighbors but had called them by different names. The ending took me by surprise and made me want to go back and reread Tate’s letters with the truth in mind.

In the author’s note, Kimberly says a trip back to her grandfather’s house when she thought she’d lost her love for writing brought her to this book. I’m glad she went. You will be, too, and so will any middle grade school girl for whom you buy the book. Just don’t expect it to help you sleep.

Coming Soon - National Library Week

I’ve been mistaken for a librarian several times – really! Since next week is National Library Week, I’ll admit I take the error as a compliment. Many of my friends and my favorite daughter are librarians.

To celebrate the week, I’m remembering some libraries I’ve known. As kids, my sisters and I were thrilled to see the approach of the bookmobile. Truthfully, the selection wasn’t large, and I completed reading my choices and often my sisters’ long before it returned. When life was good, the books were worth repeat readings.

In the tiny rural high school I attended, study hall for one period every day met in the approximately 100 square foot library. With no librarian, my English teacher drew study hall duty and made it her business to hand me books, especially selected for my reading pleasure. As you might guess, there were no new books, just well-worn classics. I was soon a Bronte-Austen-Dickens fan.

My children fared better with well-stocked post libraries wherever Uncle Sam decided was home. The weekly library trip with preschoolers gave them time to test out which books were coming home and allowed me a few minutes to make my own choices while they were busy.

Their favorite school librarian kept the latest titles in stock and plied my children and my students, since I taught in the same school, with both old and new books that fit the personalities of her readers. The coveted reward for good behavior or test scores in that school was extra time in the library.

Small wonder that I find myself a member of two Friends of the Library groups – one at my community Oak Grove Public Library and the other at The University of Southern Mississippi Libraries. Nor is it a surprise that I have sought out an annual book festival where I rub elbows with librarians from all over the country.

I like a Ray Bradbury quote passed along in a Facebook post by poet Rebecca Kai Dotlich,  “When I graduated from high school . . . I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for ten years.” It evidently worked for him. And if you should mistake me for a librarian, that’s quite all right.

Before and After

Workshops put on by Highlights Foundation in the Pocono Mountains promise and deliver expert advice, beautiful surroundings, excellent food, and quiet writing time. Sometimes, there’s a surprise as well, like the one that turned up at our August 2014 Carolyn Yoder Alumni Workshop.

Our editor/instructor Carolyn used the galley of Like a River by Kathy Cannon Wiechman as an example of forthcoming works published by Calkins Creek. The next morning, one of the attendees brought a copy of an entry in her cabin’s guestbook – written by Kathy in March 2011 BEFORE she had a published book. One of her back-to-back workshops was “Life in the Spotlight” with Peter Jacobi.

Her comment about the workshop reads in part, “It seems as though I’ve put the cart before the horse. When an opportunity comes along to fill your cart with valuable stuff, sometimes you just have to do it and hope you’ll get that horse soon. Or maybe I’ll have to buy a mule.”

Four years and one month later, almost to the day, we get to AFTER. Like a River has a release date of April 7. I’ve read that galley of an intriguing novel of two Union soldiers who should not be in the Army – Leander who is underage and Polly (AKA Paul) who manages to keep it secret that she is a girl. Kathy takes the reader through hunger and thirst, death, and Andersonville Prison compelling the reader for “just one more chapter” in hopes of finding some relief for Leander and Polly/Paul. The satisfying conclusion leaves the reader thinking of where they proceed from here, not quite wanting to let them go.

I’d say Kathy doesn’t need to buy that mule. She already has a thoroughbred heading into the home stretch of the Derby.

Is It Here Yet?

The last day of the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival of 2014 brought feelings of fatigue and regret. The fatigue came from three days of twelve or so hours packed with adoration of books for children and young adults, their writers and illustrators, and their pushers (AKA librarians). The book festival staff, aided and abetted by the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection and the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, put on a party! The regret came from having to wait a whole year for the next one, with the Medallion recipient for the this year already named. (Paul Zelinsky.)  

Like a kid with a birthday, I tried to relish all the memories and not start counting time at least until the new year rolled around. In January, after all, I was down to a three month wait, and the new brochure had turned up in my mailbox with the first listing of special guest authors and illustrators. For the next few months, additions appeared on the email list, Facebook, and other publications. They included a few personal friends, a number of authors and illustrators whose work I’ve taught or admired, and some new ones I’ve been anxious to read. Toward the end of the wait, the winners of the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Awards that will be presented at the festival were named. By now I began counting weeks and days!

As I am writing this blog, I’m ready. The festival begins at 9 AM on April 8. My list of books to buy for autographing is complete, at least until I hear the speakers which always entices me to add some more. My car is filled with gas to transport festival guests from their hotels to the Thad Cochran Center. I’ve moved up in this bookish world. For five years, I was an “attendee” before I graduated to “volunteer.” My new title, recently assigned by the Assistant Curator of the de Grummond Collection just before my fourteen festival, is “Unofficial Official de Grummond Ambassador.”  I’ll take it.

By now, it’s too late to register on line but you can register on site. If you love children’s literature old and new, I’ll borrow a line from Robert Frost and say, “You come, too.” You can learn all about it at www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival. Well, not quite all. The site doesn’t begin to tell about all the friends you’ll make and see on returning years nor just how much fun you’re going to have.

Coleen Salley – children’s literature professor, writer, and loveable character – summed it up nicely in an interview. “When my friends go on vacation, they go to places like Palm Springs or Acapulco. I come to Hattiesburg!”

As I post this blog, I think I’m close enough to be edging in on the “Is it here yet?” question. I have five days, two hours, and forty-one minutes before the fun begins.

Justice?

If writing is the heads on the coin of my life, purposeful reading has to be tails. Some of my significant reasons for reading are:
•    To learn my craft
•    To keep up with children’s and young adult literature
•    To see and understand people and cultures that are not my own
•    To see models of good writing – and why other writing does not work, at least for me
•    To be informed about issues
•    To question my own opinions
•    To be inspired

Truthfully, I enjoy all of these much like I enjoy a good pot roast with potatoes and carrots. But now and then one needs a bit of dessert.

On a recent spring day with a gentle breeze and my porch swing beckoning, I spent the afternoon with Justice for Sara by Erica Spindler – a bit of key lime pie, if you will. Katherine McCall returns to her hometown after ten years away to find her sister’s killer and to clear her own name in the minds of the public, although she had been acquitted for the murder. I thought the book was every bit as good and of as little value as that pie.

Ironically, the next book in my stack was Until You Are Dead Dead Dead by Jim Bradshaw and Danielle Miller, a nonfiction book published by University Press of Mississippi. Properly outraged by the murder of six members of the Earll family in 1902 in Louisiana, community opinion supported what appears in hindsight to have been a rushed judgment on insufficient evidence by a jury, selected because they believed in capital punishment, who may have had their minds made up before the case went to trial. Protesting his innocence until the end, Ed Batson was hanged on August 14, 1903. Looking back, people have called it a classical case of circumstantial evidence or a case of mistaken identity. Some have sung the ballad of more than thirty-five verses that arose from the story.

It seems I ate dessert first, but both books have me thinking of the unreliability of public opinion, especially in the midst of justifiable outrage, and of our continuing need for real justice – not just for the fictional Sara. Fallible decisions are hard to take back after the hanging is done.

Watch Out!

Yanking the wheelbarrow full of pinecones and sweet gum balls to a stop, I adjusted my aim before I dumped it into the bank of garden debris. Right in the middle of the pile I’d made of prunings, weeds, and dead flowers, a daffodil poked up its royal yellow head.

As one who sees herself in Shakespeare’s quote from As You Like It and
    “Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
    Sermons in stones, and good in everything,”
I knew there was an analogy here.

I skipped the cliché of “Bloom where you are planted” since the likelihood that this bulb was planted hardly existed. Most likely, it had come in a previous wheelbarrow load, accidentally pulled up with some weeds on a previous spring.

Instead, I thought of children living in circumstances much like that mess of rubbish. I saw them too often in my classroom, but like that daffodil, they were determined to bloom no matter what. Their rubbish might be dealing with poverty, a dysfunctional family, substance abuse, or parents who cared but spent so much energy trying to make ends meet there was little left for their children. I called those determined children “survivors.”

In a perfect world, all children would add their own beauty to a mixture like an English country garden – larkspurs, daffodils, roses, ornamental grasses, forget-me-nots. They would have adequate sunshine and water and admiration for their beauty. This is not a perfect world.

In this imperfection, I also thought of those who adjust the aim of their wheelbarrows so they don’t add to the debris and those who take the time to clear the biggest area possible for those children to bloom and grow or who find a way to transplant the bulb to a better place – the teachers, social workers, foster and adoptive parents, and those who just know how to be a friend.

If you’ve adjusted your wheelbarrow for a child or children who needed you, even if it was just to ply them with milk and cookies, this blog and this daffodil is for you. Thanks!

Inside the O'Briens

To know or not to know? This question about Huntington’s Disease is at the center of the novel Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova [release date April 7]. With genetic markers that forewarn of its inevitable onset, this lethal neurodegenerative disease, passed along from parent to child at a rate of 50%, has no treatment or cure.

This novel follows Joe O’Brien’s escalating symptoms with his loss of job, personality, and dignity. His four grown children struggle, not only with seeing their strong father figure deteriorate before their eyes, but with the quandary of deciding if they want to know whether they carry the gene and its ultimate death sentence. As his symptoms increase, Joe reevaluates the image of his mother as someone whose alcoholism led to her being locked up with her two children abandoned. The reader is way ahead of him in figuring out that she did not drink herself to death as everyone said, but was a victim of Huntington’s Disease.

The disease lays a heavy hand on Rosie, the devout Catholic wife and mother, trying to hold her family together, and creates a crisis for oldest son JJ and his wife Colleen when her pregnancy announcement coincides with Joe’s diagnosis followed by JJ’s positive test for the gene. Second son Patrick, who has been freeloading off his parents for some time avoids dealing with the problem but behaves in ways that are symptomatic of the disease. Dancer daughter Meghan tests positive for the gene, but copes by throwing herself into getting all she can from her art before it becomes too late.

The central figure is the youngest daughter Katie who struggles with the decision of whether or not she wants to know. She copes by writing quotations on her walls with a Sharpie and gives her father a reason for going on as she tells him, “We’re going to learn how to live or die with HD from you, Dad.”  

The story pulls the reader in to the accurately portrayed disease, but even more to the relationships of its people. One of the most touching moments was Joe’s realization as he lurches down the hallway with Rosie that the “best anyone can hope for in life was someone you love to stagger through the hard times with.”

The characters drew me in and I pondered the question with each – to know or not to know? I think I’ll add Still Alice to my reading list, Lisa’s previous book that became a motion picture. It’s Alzheimer’s Disease has a strong thread in my own heritage. Would I want to know? Truthfully, I am no closer to an answer than when I began. 

Clerihew Contest

Some competitions, especially those with athletic intent, have me eliminated before they start. However, when A-Word-a-Day explained the Clerihew Contest, I could immediately feel an entry coming on.

AWAD is the longest running daily feed to my computer, going back at least fifteen years. I love the words they post each day with the derivations and examples. The words for last week were types of poems, and subscribers were invited to submit samples for a contest that ran during the week with winners to be chosen in each category. The list included clerihew, epigram, cento, limerick, and doggerel. Only one brought out the contestant in me.

The first day’s poem was a clerihew, named for the writer who originated it, Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). The earliest documented use was 1928. The AWAD definition was: noun: A humorous, pseudo-biographical verse of four lines of uneven length, with the rhyming scheme AABB, and the first line containing the name of the subject.

When the weekly summary AWAD Issue 663 came out over the weekend, declaring more than a thousand entries, there was one winner and eleven honorable mentions on the page. Mine was not there – but don’t quit yet. There was a sentence between the winner and those honorable mentions that said, “Read on for honorable mentions below (and more on our website)” with a link. Naturally, I followed the link, and there was my clerihew. Well, not exactly there at the top, but number forty-two down the list.

Now I could tell you how to navigate the trail to find my clerihew in the proverbial haystack, but I’ll save you the trouble and put it here:

Author Illustrator Ezra Jack Keats,
With collage and paint forming his beats,
Received a Caldecott Medal on his way
For his picture book The Snowy Day.

I included the explanation, “Coincidentally, the subject of this clerihew would have been 99 years old on March 11. He broke a boundary in children’s literature by writing the first full color picture book to feature a Black child as the protagonist – The Snowy Day.”

You may be curious about what I get for my honorable mention. The answer is – a story for my blog.

Words with Wings

While any month is good for poetry, the powers that be have designated April to honor this form of literature. You have time to get Words with Wings by Nikki Grimes so you will be ready to celebrate.

The world of children’s books seems to be in a welcome trend of book length poetry. You may have noticed my fascination with Margarita Engel’s novels in verse. Mastering the telling of a good story is an accomplishment. To do it with good rhythm and verse stretches my comprehension. This year both the National Book Award (Brown Girl Dreaming) and the Newbery Award (The Crossover) are done in verse.

In Words with Wings, in a similar vein to Brown Girl Dreaming, Nikki Grimes sticks with the day-dreaming aspect of her character to write a small memoir in verse. I related to each of her main characters in different ways.

Her mother dreads yet another call from the school. Why will her obviously bright daughter not stay on task and finish her work? Been there – except in my case it was a son – and wondered how I could make that son finish and turn in work he knew how to do while I was busy teaching in a different classroom.

I understood Nikki’s distraction when a word caught her attention and took her down a rabbit hole, although it usually took a phrase or sentence instead of a word to send me chasing that hare down a more interesting trail than the one the teacher was pursuing.

As I watched Mr. Spicer pick up on the real value of Nikki’s daydreams, I remembered a kid in my class sketching away in a desk at the back while I taught. I hope I was a Spicer kind of teacher who didn’t allow her students to miss the important things they needed to learn but who valued and encouraged the gifts that made them special. (My sketching student in adult life excels at his art from which he makes his living. I can only hope he remembers a thing or two that I taught.) I loved that she tells in the author’s note that she used her teacher’s real name in her book.

Nikki’s book is short but needs to be read slowly, savoring every word. I’ll give just a taste from my favorite line toward the end as her three main characters have come to terms:
    . . . silver-tipped pen in hand,
    swirling “Best Wishes”
    across the front pages
    of dozens of books
    with my name printed on them.
    I sign hundreds
    round the clock
    for a line of happy fans
    that stretch a city block.
    And there is Mom, beaming
    right beside me.

In a happy coincidence, Nikki will speak at the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival in April. I plan to get that “Best Wishes” and her name swirled in the front of my copy.

What Dining Table?

My friend went into shock as she came into my dining room. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the top of this table.” The view was temporary. The top does show up in a couple of instances. Family or friends coming for dinner in numbers higher than five will get it cleared with each stack moved to a vacant bed until the guests leave. Five and under are seated at the kitchen counter.

What my friend saw was the second instance. I’d finished a writing deadline for church children’s curriculum. The day before her visit there had been separate stacks for research, teacher helps, story lines, and children’s learning activities. To the casual observer, it just looked like a mess. I actually knew what was in each stack and about how far down to find it. If she had come back the next week, the table would have been covered again with the next project.

I found myself in good company. In the March 2015 issue of The Writer. Novelist Ann Hood says, “. . . here I am all these years later walking around the dining room table looking at all these stories, rearranging and deleting and making notes to connect them.”

I’ll confess this method of organizing by stacks did not begin when I retired from teaching to write. While I was grade level chair at South Polk Elementary School for many years, the principal had a habit of placing young teachers on my hall. They found amusement in asking me for something and watching me pull it from the right stack on my desk. One of them placed a poster she found on the front of my desk, “Neat people never make the wonderful discoveries I do.” Chuckles and comments from my students, other teachers, and the principal rewarded her for her find.

I’ve seen a quote recently that I believe to be more accurate, “You can be neat or you can be a writer, but not both.”

In any case, we like having friends and family to come eat. Just know if you are coming in groups greater than five, you’ll need to give me time to find an empty bed to hold my stacks while we have dinner.

Spaghetti Fingers

The neighbors didn’t think much of the premature baby when Benjamin Katz brought his son Ezra home after his release from the hospital incubator. Comments were made about how skinny he was. Seeing how frail he looked, someone finally asked the big question, “Do you think he’ll make it?”

Ben held his fingers above Ezra’s head and said, “Watch.” After the baby grabbed hold, his father said, “See that rascal with the spaghetti fingers is pulling himself up. See how strong he is!”

The date was March 11, 1916, and even Benjamin Katz could not have guessed what those fingers would do. In time, anti-Semitism would cause the grownup Jacob Ezra Katz to change his name to the more acceptable Ezra Jack Keats. If you love children’s books at all, you can anticipate where this is going.

‘Tis the season for lists of books children should read from all sorts of groups. I don’t remember seeing one that did not include The Snowy Day, and quite often it leads the list. A marker in children’s literature as the first full color picture book to feature a Black child in a non-stereotypical manner, its real appeal is to the everychild. Peter goes out and does the things any kid does in the snow. The wonder when his snowball melts in his pocket seems familiar. That book was just the beginning for Keats. I have a basketful of his works that followed. And Keats’ influence is not over.  

In a month, the 2015 Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Awards and Honor Books will be presented at the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival. [www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival] If these new writers and illustrators follow the path of those who have been selected before them, more books and more recognitions are on the way. Maybe they will even return to the festival in a different capacity as presenters Don Tate and Deborah Wiles are doing this year.

I haven’t read these new books yet, [www.ezra-jack-keats.org/ezra-jack-keats-award-winners] but I will after I buy them for a couple of really cute redheads. Look for that blog after the April festival.

Did that rascal with the spaghetti fingers make it? He did, and the awards in his honor are pointing us to still more writers and illustrators who are following his foot tracks in the snow.

Fatal Fever

Books are colored by what the reader brings to them. Seldom has this been more true for me than with Fatal Fever by Gail Jarrow. Fascinated by the story of Typhoid Mary as a child, I wondered how they zeroed in on her as the culprit for the spread of the disease. I also heard Mama’s story of taking turns with my grandfather sitting up at night with her younger teenaged sister in the throes of typhoid fever. Her mother, already in poor health, needed whatever rest she could get to take care of the other four children. Aunt Dee was so ill that word got out that she had died, and neighbors began showing up with obligatory Southern funeral food. Thankfully, that report was untrue, and she recovered.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance when Calkins Creek offered an advance reading copy. (Release date – March 10) In great detail, Gail Jarrow satisfied my curiosity. The subtitle, “Tracking Down Typhoid Mary” presages the detective work involved in finding her. Not wanting to be found and slippery as black ice, she led scientists and doctors on a not-so-merry chase.

Gail leads the reader in a fascinating mystery with many twists and turns. Reader sympathy lies with Mary, her victims, and the heroes of the story – scientist George Soper, physician Josephine Baker, and health department officials. The sympathy is tempered with wondering if all of them could have handled this bad situation with more compassion. Along with the resolution of the mystery, the cautionary tale of the importance of hand-washing will remain with me for a very long time!

The book is riddled with questions. What causes typhoid fever and how is it spread? Why do mysterious pockets of the disease suddenly show up in areas away from any known cases? How can a person showing no symptoms be a carrier for the disease? Where do Mary’s rights end and those of the community begin? Why was she singled out when other equally dangerous carriers were allowed to go free? What is the status of the disease in today’s world? The author answers the questions for which there are answers and leaves the rest for the reader to ponder.

The book is designed for middle schoolers, but as is my custom, I would suggest that we not let them have all the fun. I did put myself in their place when I read the first line of the last chapter, “Mary Mallon despised her nickname . . .”

Like any normal middle-schooler, I responded, “Y’think?”

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

I thought the young woman in front of me in checkout must have been a teacher with her stack of poster board sheets so I started a conversation. She was not. It turns out she was buying them to make large striped hats for a birthday party for her friend’s four-year-old. He shares a birthday today with Dr. Seuss. Cats in hats will be in attendance.

A wonderment began in my head as I considered what his whimsical books have brought to the children’s book world and to mine. I began with connections that started with my mother’s children’s literature course at Ole Miss when she brought home And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. This one still gives me comfort as the stories of how many times it was rejected vary from twenty to twenty-seven. (More on this story @ http://childrensbookalmanac.com/…/and-to-think-that-i-saw-) Let’s just say the rejections, and hopefully my persistence, give me something in common with Dr. Seuss.

Moving to my offspring and theirs, I follow with the oldest son tagging along with Bartholomew Cubbins up the turret stairs snatching off the 500 hats and wonder why few people place my quote “. . . just happened to happen and was not very likely to happen again.” Then his two siblings learned to read with the series of Dr. Seuss’s ABC, Hop on Pop, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Naturally the grandson named Sam got a Sam-I-am mug to drink from as he read (and sometimes ate) Green Eggs and Ham. All of them were readied for bed with Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book. As you can see in the picture, they lovingly wore the covers right off the books.

My kindergarteners and second graders followed suit, and as time went on we even wound up with a book for older children and adults. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! makes a great gift for graduation or retirement.

I only know one caveat in this bit of admiration. Editors have been known to turn down manuscripts as “too Seussian.” Looking at his work, he does a lot of simple rhyming of cup and up, Sam and ham, cat and hat. But somehow, he also figures out how to turn that rhyme on a funny ear – “Every whale in the ocean has turned off its spout. Every light between here and Far Foodle is out.”

How appropriate that the National Education Association has named his birthday, March 2, as Read Across America Day in his honor. (http://www.readacrossamerica.org) 

Although Dr. Seuss himself has been gone from us for twenty-five years, my birthday wish remains, “Many happy returns in the lives of children and in adults who dredge up their inner child.”

Dilemma

A common parental dilemma arose in my son’s recent periodic phone call to report on how the grandchildren are doing. After telling me how much his oldest son (our oldest grandson) was enjoying the extra art classes that will turn his Bachelor of Arts into a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, he finished with a rueful, “I don’t know how he plans to make a living.”

I’m thinking the grandson could look to his older cousin for a model. She fed her passion for photography through the last part of high school and college as he has done with his art. It has yet to feed her.

Like most graduates in the arts, making a living becomes a bit iffy. In the writing world, the advice is “Don’t quit your day job.” If you are really lucky as I was, the day job feeds a different passion. In her case, it’s “Don’t quit your night job.”  Since she was in high school, she’s known how to approach a table with, “My name is Lauren, and I’ll be your server.” She graduated almost two years ago with a degree in photo journalism and is still waiting tables while she earns enough for her next trip to an exotic location to take more pictures.

I’m guessing it will be a while before she sells enough of her photographic art to put a roof over her head and food on the table, but she’s working at it with an exhibit of her work with other young artists at a recent RAWartist exhibition in Phoenix. According to my unbiased son and daughter-in-law, hers was by far the best. Although I did not see it for myself, I feel sure I would have agreed.

Both of these grandchildren have produced work fine enough to grace my living room wall, but that doesn’t keep me from sharing their parents’ concern for the roof and food. What is my answer to the dilemma in case either of the grandchildren ever asks? Find a day job you can at least tolerate while you pursue the dream that gives you life. Perhaps, it will also eventually also give you a living.

FYI

Perhaps you wonder how closely you can rely on my book reviews. I thought I’d give a few principles I live by when I use my blog for these – more or less weekly.

1. I don’t do negative reviews. If I would not rate a book at least four out of five stars for its category, I pass on doing the review.
•    I know how hard writers work and bashing them does not fit my idea of fairness.
•    My review reflects only my opinion and someone else might like the book much better. I don’t want to be the one throwing a book under the bus.
•    Okay, for just a few, I might go to three stars if it is a subject that really needs to be out there or if it’s just a pleasant afternoon diversion.

2. I review books for all ages.
•    I like books for all ages.
•    I figure, though I assume my readers are adults, they either buy or borrow books from the library for children – kids, grands, nieces, nephews, friends, slight acquaintances.

3. Usually these books are ARCs (Advance Reading Copies).
•    Most of these come from Net Galley which connects writers and publishers with book-reviewing bloggers and offers books before their official release date.
•    I don’t have to review Net Galley books on my blog just because they kindly let me read them. This leaves me free to blog about those that I think will appeal to my audience.
•    I keep a card showing release dates with these Kindle downloads so my reviews will be timely.
•    Others ARCs come from writer friends who send me a copy, but I don’t blog about a book simply because it came from a friend. I still have to have those stars!
•    Just because I didn’t blog about a book doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I may not have had time to read it yet or I may have liked more books than I have time and blog space.
•    I try to time these ARC blogs close to the release date so my readers don’t have to wait too long for them. (I can’t wait for you to get a couple of the upcoming April releases!)

4. No book is for everybody.
•    This means I can’t guarantee that you will love a book just because I did.
•    It also means I try to give enough about the genre and story line so that you will know whether you want to try it or not. I’ll even note what I see as small flaws in otherwise good books. So many books, so little time – I don’t want you to waste yours.

5. Do I get a reward for these reviews? Yes – a feeling of satisfaction on those occasions when blog readers let me know my recommended book has been just right for them or their gift recipients!

Under the Influence

A recent challenge making the rounds on Facebook has been to name a book that has had a lifetime influence. Like many writers, I could have gone the obvious route and made an honest case for Little Women, picturing myself as Jo, but I’m not going there. Instead, I’m choosing Heidi.

Books were as much a part of my growing up as cornbread – and I grew up in North Mississippi. They came from the limited school library or the bookmobile or were traded about among friends. I don’t recall owning one of my own until my tenth birthday. With a span of only three and a half years among the first three McGee girls, bought books were community property.

On that birthday, Aunt Ruth gave me Heidi for a present. How I loved that book with its curmudgeon grandfather, Swiss scenery, and miracle cure! Another whole layer came from the feeling that this book belonged to me. I might lend it to a friend or share it with a sister, but it came back to me to be read again. And again. And again.

Little did I dream growing up in that rural community that I would someday visit Switzerland more than once or that I would have a grandson who was born there. Nor did I know that Heidi’s influence would be so strong that I would catch myself in the Alps, as an adult who should have known better, keeping a sharp eye out for grandfather’s hut or his mountain goats.

The lifetime influence? Perhaps this joy of ownership is why there’s hardly a room in my house without overstocked bookshelves (with my name in them, often signed by the author) and for sure why none of my ten grandchildren have finished their first year in the family without books of their very own – also frequently signed by the author.

The Sound of Music Story

No book is for everyone – a piece of advice that editors sometimes give to writers who are trying to get their books published. What editors want to know in the query letter is who they can expect to get excited about reading their proposed book.

The Sound of Music Story by Tom Santopietro, to be released on February 17, is a book with a title that probably answers this question. This is a book for fans of the movie – and really big fans, at that. The book begins with a look at the original von Trapp family and the original German movie versions of their story in Die Trapp-Familie and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika which had previously been combined into an English version called The Trapp Family in 1961.

The book goes on into the Broadway production, the casting of the characters and discussion of the also-rans, the weather problems in production, the reactions of the original Trapp family to the movie, controversy and panning by the movie critics, the afterwards for all the characters in the movie as well as each of the Trapp family. What is fact and what is fiction is a strong thread in the narrative.

It was a book for me since I had good memories of going with Al to see the original English version of The Trapp Family in the Joy Theater in Pontotoc, Mississippi and a few years later to The Sound of Music in London, England shortly after it came out. I know – go to London and see an American movie – but we were on a short vacation from the Army’s current selection of a home for us in Belgium, and we wanted to see what all the hoopla was about.

The first movie had more traditional folk music and none of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but much more of the Trapp story after they escaped. In fact, I found myself just a bit disappointed the first time I saw the second movie end with the escape. The second became a family favorite and one I continue to watch even without children.

If you like The Sound of Music and want every detail of the real and the make believe, this book is for you. If you don’t necessarily want to see every facet of the story, you can skim and skip through parts and still enjoy it. If you don’t like The Sound of Music, we may need to talk, but you can skip this book.  

Backtracking

Seems to be the season for making erroneous claims followed by backtracking, so I’ll take my turn just in time for Valentine’s Day. I’ve told myself, if not the rest of the world, that the reason I could never make the Nashville/folk music circuit was because I’d never been dumped. Growing up in the South, one would have a hard time avoiding the “done-me-wrong” songs. My personal favorite lonesome artist didn’t come from Nashville, but has been Karen Carpenter and her minor music with standards like “Hurting Each Other” or “Want You Back in My Life Again.” In recent days, our church’s Backdoor Coffeehouse had hosted a number of modern folk artists with the same theme.

The most recent performers at the coffeehouse were a couple who’d been married for twenty-one years. She put holes in my excuse by writing a song based on a friend’s “done-me-wrong” story. She’d offered the friend a shoulder to cry on and then “borrowed” the friend’s story to write a song. Apparently the dumping story doesn’t have to be your own.

Nor does it have to be limited to the present day and music. While I was putting this blog together, I took a detour to the USM Cook Library to see their display of antique Valentines. The front of one proclaimed:
    You thought that a selfish lovely life
    Was better than a loving wife
    But now too late the truth you see
    Don’t dream that old fogies are loved by me.
Evidently “done-me-wrong” goes back a ways.

My story goes back to a pastor father (mine) and a deacon father (Al’s) who introduced their high school senior children in the deacon’s country store. I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but it was pretty close and has involved no dumping. Little did we know how far we would travel together from that small North Mississippi community or “the places we’d go” to borrow a phrase from Dr. Seuss. Al has a little less hair and a few more pounds, but he’s worn well and has remained my valentine!

Now that I know that I could have borrowed a story, I’m backtracking and coming clean. My reasons for not making the Nashville/folk music circuit are that I have no guitar, no banjo, and scant musical talent.