Category: Uncategorized

What’s the Big Deal about Electricity?

Sometimes, we don’t recognize a gift when we receive it.

My husband has been ill.  It’s canning season.  I’m managing to get the essential things done, but there’s no down time and little writing time. I’m not getting enough sleep.

Today, I received a gift. The electricity went out about 6:00 this morning.  I couldn’t make hot coffee.  But I did scrabble together a pretty good breakfast of cottage cheese and my freshly-canned peaches.  It’s cooler than it has been, so I didn’t miss the air conditioning too much.

Then, the gift! The skylight near my rocking chair lets in enough light for me to sit and read.  No television.  No background music.  Just me and a book.

Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham is a brilliantly-simple graphic novel about young Shannon’s elementary school days and her struggle to fit in and find friends.  Shannon’s story is honest, and the art and color strike just the right tone.

I finished the book about 11:00 with a sense of accomplishment and a satisfied sigh. Still, no electricity.  By this time, my husband had moved a chair beneath the skylight to read.  I interrupted his reading to say, “This book belongs in every school library.”

“Get it there,” he said.

“We all struggle to fit in, to find friends.”

He looks up from his book and nods.  We’re both artists.  We know the struggle.

“I’m taking it to the school library,” I said, “as soon as I write a review.”

Read this book, please. Think about that kid who struggles most to fit in.  Chances are he or she is witty, perceptive, creative, and unsure.  Give them this book.  They deserve real friends.  They are not alone.

A Visit to see THE Artist in Residence

Enjoy a road trip with some friends of mine.

valerie r lawson

A few weeks ago some writer friends and I took a road trip from Tulsa to Oklahoma City for the express purpose of visiting the Artist in Residence at the Skirvin Hotel, our fellow SCBWI OK pal and supremely talented THE Jerry Bennett! He kindly set aside his day just for us.

Found him! It’s THE Jerry!

Always happy to see you!

Jerry gave us a tour of his artist’s space, talked to us about comic design – explaining the difference between a penciler, inker, and colorist among other things. And what each job brings to the story.

And white space. He said that was very important. Who knew?

Gathered around Jerry’s workspace as he shows us some of the projects he’s been working on.

All of the artwork that you see in the background is Jerry’s work. Besides giving him this wonderful space to create in and a…

View original post 200 more words

Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, like Eve Bunting, does not need my recommendations.  I give them, anyway.  I have never read anything by either of these authors that didn’t set my mind to spinning.

Finding Baba Yaga is pure poetry.  That’s not a metaphor.  It is a novella in verse with lines that soar: “The hallelujah chorus of birds,” and “Living well lasts longer than love.”  As lovely as the writing is, read it for the story. Storytelling is what makes Yolen exceptional.

Finding Baba Yaga  follows a runaway into the woods.  It’s about  questioned beliefs and finding ones own way.  You’ll probably want to read it in one sitting.  I did.  This update of an old Russian fairy tale might also make you want to go back and revisit the original tales.

Yolen and Penfold: Two Welcome Songs

I signed up for Jane Yolen’s Poem a Day.

Not only does her craft seem effortless…and true craft never is…she always has something important to say. In exchange for her daily dose of good medicine, I promise to buy or check out of the library one of her books each month.  I already have a sizeable Jane Yolen collection, but this month I added two more books—the Kindle version of Mapping the Bones, set in Poland in 1942, and a picture book, A Bear Sat on My Porch Today (illustrated by Rilla Alexander).

I like three-dimensional books, the feel of the paper, the heft, but I carry the Kindle when I’m traveling, read from it when I’m on the treadmill, and just know there is always a library at my fingertips.  I prefer my picture books solid so I can share them.  I like the illustrations big and in my face.

I picked up A Bear Sat on My Porch Today along with another picture book I’ve been wanting, All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold (illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman).  What a revelation when I read the two books back to back!

Yolen and Penfold don’t preach their message of welcome, they sing it.  Children will love the cadence and the rhyme, and you will enjoy reading them aloud, even if you have to read them many times.

Froggy Bottom Blues on Kindle!

I am proud to be a Doodle and Peck author.  As the editor of a small, regional press, Marla Jones has worked hard to expand markets for her authors.

She does her part.  We do ours.  Not only are we working on our next books, we are available to speak, to sign, and to visit schools.

This is Marla’s latest expansion.  Fourteen Doodle and Peck books have now been uploaded to Amazon/Kindle, including Froggy Bottom Blues.  Check us out.  Contact us.

 

 

Fiction Matters

I will never vote for a candidate who isn’t an avid reader, and not just a reader of law books and technical manuals.  We need public servants who read fiction.  Why?  Because being a public servant requires empathy.

Reading fiction allows one to get into the minds of characters unlike us.  It allows us to understand their reasoning…or lack thereof. Reading fiction makes us empathetic, allows us to walk in another person’s footsteps.

I would like to add two books I’ve read recently to my Stories-to-Build-Empathy list: Far from the Tree by Robin Benway and Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh.

Those of us in so-called traditional families sometimes don’t understand the choices other people have made.  Far from the Tree starts with an adopted girl who gets pregnant in high school and chooses to give up her daughter for adoption.  She is devastated by the decision.  And that is just one twist in this story.

If you’ve never been afraid for your life, you might question why any family would risk death, why they would risk the lives of their children, to become refugees.  You wouldn’t do that unless you had no other options. Right?  Still, people question.  Nowhere Boy might help young readers understand the why.  It might help the reader believe that he or she, in fact, all of us, can dig down to find what it takes to be kind and courageous.

And three’s a charm!  Read Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel Jose’ Older because it is history with a twist—science fiction set in the Civil War era—and a book that can open eyes about what life was really like for people of color in the 1860s.  What’s more, it is elegantly written.  I can’t wait for the second book in the series, coming in May.

What are you waiting for?  Add these three books to your TBR List!

 

 

Reading and Writing Out the Old Year

I was visiting one of my fifty-plus first cousins a couple of summers ago.

“We’d all be out there playing,” Glenda said, reminiscing,  “and Sharon would be in the corner reading.”

This year I kept track of the books I read, more than 120 of them, ranging from picture books to doorstop-sized tomes for adults with longer attention spans than mine. If it’s that thick, it had better be good.

This week, the last week of the year, I read two books.

An Ignorance of Means is the debut novel of Oklahoma author Jennifer Oakley Denslow.  It is set in 17th-Century France.  The story has a feminist slant by dint of its educated female protagonist, but it isn’t about feminism or romance but survival.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida is nonfiction, written in question and answer form, separated by lovely pieces of literary fiction.  The author has been diagnosed with severe autism, and he struggles with spoken language. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of his mother, he can spell out words to communicate.  The writing is beautiful.  You feel this book.

What the two books have in common is their ability to enlighten.  One teaches you about the plight of cast-off women in 17th-Century France.  The other lets you in on Naoki’s struggles to control his own responses to stimuli.  Both books help your brain and your understanding heart grow.

Connections. Empathy.  Enlightenment.  The sheer joy of experiencing something new!  These are just some of the reasons why I read.  And write!

I’m canning black-eyed peas tomorrow, just in time for the new year.  I plan to read Dactyl Hill Squad once the pint jars of yummy goodness are in the pressure canner. I can’t think of a better way to see out the old year and welcome in the new.