Last weekend, for Mother's Day, I treated myself to a download of Lynda Mullaly Hunt's debut middle-grade novel at the recommendation of a teacher, Franki Sibberson ("The Reading Year"), who loved it. I finished it in a day--I could barely put it down, except when I had to. It's a great book for fourth- through sixth-graders, but also for anyone who loves either middle-grade or young adult contemporary fiction.
"One for the Murphys" is a riveting story of a girl who feels trapped by circumstance—even when things seem to change for the better.
A fight with her step-father lands 12-year-old Carley in the hospital, and when she’s released, it’s not to her mother, who is lying in a hospital bed in another wing. Instead, a woman from social services arrives to take Carley to a foster home.
“You know, you’re very lucky, Carley,” the social worker tells her. “It’s a nice home. A good placement.” But after what her step-father has done to her, the only thing Carley feels is fear. She’s terrified of what could happen to her in a foster home—and she wonders how long it will be before she has a mother of her own again.
When Carley is brought to the home of the Murphys and meets sweet Mrs. Murphy, her firefighter husband and the three sons they clearly cherish, the sheer goodness of their home and family is almost too much for Carley to take. Watching Mrs. Murphy with her youngest boys reminds Carley of all that she’s never had.
“My stomach has such a longing in it that I want to throw up,” Carley thinks as she watches Mrs. Murphy with her 6-year-old son, Adam. “The tone, the look on her face and the look on his, a gentle brush of his hair. A kiss on top of the head. I struggle to decipher a foreign language.”
“One for the Murphys” is a story told with honesty and heart, with a tough-girl main character who has only ever cried once in her life—the day her mother told her that she and her boyfriend were getting married—but who feels as if her heart is being shredded when she witnesses the tenderness the Murphys have for one another. And when they show that tenderness to Carley, too, it’s nearly too much for Carley to bear.
Read the full review: http://exm.nr/Klzc1z.
I also loved this interview with Lynda Mullaly Hunt http://bit.ly/JwQRd9, which was published by a college sophomore. In it, she shares advice for published authors. "Believe me. If can do this, so can you," she says.
You know what else I'm loving this Friday? Red licorice shaped like Scottie dogs, which I found in the candy aisle at Target.
They're made by The Candy Shop in San Francisco, but Target began selling jars of the shop's candies in a line that it is promoting as "The Shops." I also love the label on the back of the jar, that tells how the owners weren't allowed to eat candy as children. Now, they own a shop with jars and jars of candy stacked on top of each other.
A pretty sweet story, indeed.
And finally, I love this story about Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood, one of my all-time favorite pitchers and all-time favorite Cubbie: http://on-msn.com/JDls6U. His historic 20-strikeout game was on my son's second birthday, and at one of the first Cubs games I ever took my son to, we won an autographed Kerry Wood ball. It's in my son's room today. My favorite moments as a Cub fan were the games I watched him play in 2003. I've had a soft spot in my heart for him since that year. I'll miss seeing him in a Cubs uniform and on the mound.
Happy Friday! Jeni
"I got one of the five golden tickets to be a writer, and I take that seriously."--Anne Lamott http://bit.ly/yl4u38
Happy weekend! Jeni
“My mom said she named me Fern because she knew I was going to be a good friend. That I was the kind of person who would save anyone in trouble. But she was wrong. I couldn’t save anyone. I didn’t even try.”
Twelve-year-old Fern has spent most of her life feeling invisible in her big, raucous family. Her father is so absorbed in the family’s restaurant, Harry’s, that all he can think about are ways to drive up profits—including filming a commercial featuring Fern, her three siblings and her mom and dad, wearing neon yellow t-shirts and a badly drawn dinosaur eating an ice cream cone. “I am already imagining how this will play out at school. It is not a good scenario,” Fern says as she prepares for middle school. Meanwhile, her mother is so overwhelmed with taking care of the restaurant and Fern’s little brother, 3-year-old Charlie, that she finds ways to escape—daily—by locking herself inside an office at the restaurant and meditating.
There’s Fern’s older sister, Sara, who sports dreadlocks like she’s a devoted “Grateful Dead” groupie. Sara couldn’t get into a good college, so she’s spending a year at home, working at the restaurant and feeling lonely and miserable. Her older brother, Holden, is the one she adores, the one she can hide out with when things at home are crazy stressful, but he’s carrying a secret that Fern is just beginning to discover, one that could change the way some people perceive him. “For the first time, I feel something floating between us, a question I’m sure I know the answer to. I feel the weight of the answer separating us for some reason I don’t understand,” she says. And then there’s eternally messy, impossibly annoying Charlie, who is always shoving his naked, plastic baby doll—the doll that used to be hers—in her face and who is the center of her mother’s world. His “I love you, Ferny” feels more gross than sweet when it comes from his sticky mouth pressed to her ear.
The only person she can count on is her best friend, Ran—but even their friendship is changing. Back in elementary school, Ran was the boy who was always sick with “some Random thing,” the boy with the sticky face and stinky hair who never had any lunch because his father was so caught up in caring for his mother, who had cancer, that he’d forget to pack him one. Fern befriended him, sharing her lunch with him every day, and ever since, they’ve been inseparable. Now that Ran’s mother is well, he’s transformed from a sticky mess into a “cool, very cute, and mysteriously-odd-but-in-an-acceptable-wa
Sometimes, Fern feels as if her family is held together by a tiny clasp. And when that clasp breaks—when tragedy tears them apart—Fern is sure that she’s to blame. She wishes—knows—that things would be better if only she were the one who was hurt in an accident outside the restaurant: “Me being gone wouldn’t really feel all that different, since no one really notices me anyway. It would have been so much better if it had been me instead.” And she wishes she could turn back time and be the hero, like Fern in “Charlotte’s Web,” the character her mother named her after. And she knows, even though no one is saying it, that what happened is all her fault, and that her family blames her, too. “Now we’re all walking around with a missing piece,” Fern says—and “Nothing will ever be right again. Nothing.”
“See You at Harry’s,” author Jo Knowles’ first middle-grade novel, does the almost impossible: It takes readers to a place that is devoid of hope and finds a way to take them back to a state where “All will be well,” as Fern’s friend Ran used to tell her before the accident. It’s a journey that author Jo Knowles guides readers along with her hand tucked inside theirs, exploring the darker depths of the toll that this tragedy has had on Fern’s family and showing them how the family manages to survive what no one should ever have to go through.
I wrote a review of "See You at Harry's" for the Chicago Examiner: http://exm.nr/KZAy5h.
What about "See You at Harry's" makes you want to read this book?
Happy Tuesday! Happy writing!
Jeni
Chicago-area native Veronica Roth--whose follow-up to her bestseller 'Divergent,' called 'Insurgent,' releases tomorrow--did an interview with "Windy City Live" this morning, and one of the benefits of working from home a few days a week is that I got to watch it. I love the reactions of local schoolchildren in meeting Veronica and sharing their love for the book, like what faction they'd choose if they were in Tris' world.
What I loved most about this interview were the kids' questions about the Chicago setting in the book, like the locations of various compounds in the story. She also talks about how she developed the world for the book--and why it taught her that she would be "terrible at running the world."
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I didn't have to tell him twice.
"More Team Umizoomi," my youngest just said. And then she pushed a button on my laptop that made this screen disappear and made me think I'd lost this post.
So as I plot out ways to work on a revision tonight--likely after the girls go to bed--I thought I'd share links to a couple of posts that resonated with me as a parent today.
The first is an essay on what it's like to be a writer and a new parent by author Cheryl Strayed, which I found via a tweet from Jennifer Weiner. It's called "Baby Weight" (http://bit.ly/mKyUaD). It is both heartbreakingly beautiful and down-to-earth, as when she describes the way her soon looked at her at four months old, as she explained that if she didn't finish the revision of the novel she'd completed nearly a year before, she wouldn't feel complete, and that would keep her from being the mother she wanted to be for him: "It seemed to me both that he'd been born yesterday and also that he'd been with me forever."
And then there was this blog post by agent Rachelle Gardner that I found via YA Highway, "How to Train Your Muse Like a Puppy" (http://bit.ly/I7XtNy), which reminded me of this:
If I were going to compare "training your muse like a puppy" to, say, "training your muse like you'd toilet train your child," I would add one thing: Know whether your muse requires daily motivational treats or the promise of a reward at the end of a longer stretch of work to keep you on track. When my husband and I began our tough-love, "you really must be potty trained now" approach to potty training with our 3 year old last week, we received advice like, "Find out what toy she really wants and tell her that if she goes 7 days without an accident, you'll get it for her." But that approach wasn't going to work with our daughter, because she can't comprehend what a week is, and there isn't a single toy that she desires more than anything right now. So for the first time in my nearly 16 years of parenting, I have become a "poster board and stickers" mom. And it's worked: Each one of those stickers represents success of some sort. She is excited to get those stickers, and the promise of that reward, and getting to pick out her favorite from the stacks of sticker sheets I bought, was exactly the motivation she needed to be almost completely potty trained within about four days. Maybe I should give myself a sticker after I revise this evening.
Happy weekend! Happy writing.
Jeni
The photo above was taken Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, where I taught classes on newsletter writing and editing as part of my full-time job. It's Thankful Thursday, and I'm thankful for a job in which I can travel four times a year and see parts of the country I've never been to before, and where, like on Sunday, I can dip my toes into the ocean in between working. I'm also thankful that most of these trips are fairly short; I missed my family while I was gone. Missed the pups who are sleeping at my feet now, too.
While I was away, there were a few things that caught my eye that I wanted to share with you.
Have you noticed that there's been a surge of interest in Pinterest, an online bulletin board, by YA writers as well as libraries that are using Pinterest to promote YA books and discussions among their readers? It's an especially good tool for debut authors to use in connecting readers with their stories before their novels are published. I wrote an article about it for the Chicago Examiner, in which I interviewed Kimberly Sabatini, whose novel, 'Touching the Surface,' will be released in October. I also included quotes from executive editor Tara Weikum of HarperCollins, who spoke on the importance of social media for young adult and middle-grade writers who are seeking to become published at SCBWI NY this past January. Here's the link: http://exm.nr/Jmt3pF
While I was writing the article, I also came across this great list from YA Highway of young adult authors who are using Pinterest: http://bit.ly/HTuDwN. This is a list that YA Highway plans to update over time, which is great, because there is no other list like this: When I Googled for information on this topic, I found lots of library Pinterest pages devoted to YA novels before I found pages created by YA authors themselves. I wonder if Pinterest will also become a popular tool among middle-grade authors?
Do you use Pinterest? Do you have a favorite Pinterest page created by an author?
While I was at the airport on Saturday and eating a quiet meal by myself on Saturday evening, I really enjoyed reading Tweets from those who attended three SCBWI conferences this past weekend: one in eastern Pennsylvania, one in New England, and one in Washington. For example, did you know that Matt de la Pena revised his first novel 104 times, according to Martha Brockenbrough of Seattle, who attended the conference? 104. How do you even keep track by that point? Martha shared this quote from a presentation Matt gave at SCBWI Washington via Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/mbrockenbrough
The hashtag "#SCBWIPA" on Twitter also will take you to loads of great quotes and tips from the eastern Pennsylvania conference. Here's a link to the search page: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23SCBWIP
Happy Thursday!
Jeni
A couple of weeks ago, he put a unique twist on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," testing it out on Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal.
Turns out that's the song "No Doubt" plays in the studio whenever they're writing a new album.
"That's the song you wish you wrote," Kanal told Dixon. It's one of the greatest songs of all time, he and Stefani said, and they play it before they begin writing, to both get them in the mood and remind them of what they'd like to achieve.
That got me thinking about writing, and the books that we go to, as writers, for inspiration and to remind us of what we'd like to achieve with our own writing.
When I first began writing middle-grade fiction, 'Durable Goods' by Elizabeth Berg was the book I kept returning to. 'Durable Goods’ was Berg’s first novel, and her gift for description and for conveying the emotions that are universal to girls in upper elementary or middle school pulled me into the story from the very first pages. It’s a story that shines for many of the reasons Berg’s bestselling adult novels have captured so many fans: for its voice, a first-person narrative written as if the main character, Katie, is telling the story to you alone; for its rich characterization; for its vivid description, breathtaking at times for its beauty and for the way in which it conveys simple truths; and for its humor, even in the midst of tragedy.
'Because of Winn Dixie' by Kate DiCamillo taught me that every chapter could be a story unto itself. It's also a lesson in voice, and has one of the best first lines that I've ever read in a middle-grade novel ("My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes, and I came back with a dog"). And anything by Jo Knowles--most especially her upcoming book 'See You at Harry's,' which is nothing short of stunning--is a lesson in how to peel back the layers to reach the emotional truth of the story.
What are your go-to books?
“What if everyone got another chance after making a big mistake?” 16-year-old Deanna Lambert asks in ‘Story of a Girl.’
When Deanna was 13, her father caught her in the backseat of a car with her brother’s friend, Tommy, who was 17. Now, more than two years later, her father still cannot look Deanna in the eye. Tommy’s blabbermouthing gave her the reputation of “school slut” at her high school before she’d even graduated middle school; every day, his friends torture her with their pointed jabs (“Why pretend you’re not a skank when you know you are?” one of the jock-wannabes tells her. “We know you are. You know you are. And your Dad knows you are, so …”). And because Deanna lives in the small town of Pacifica, Calif., where everyone knows everyone else’s business, her reputation even makes it tough for her to get a part-time job.
By the time her sophomore year has ended, Deanna appears almost resigned to her fate: “I was Deanna Lambert, eighth-grade slut forever; Tommy’s funny story; my dad’s biggest embarrassment.”
But when Deanna applies for a job at a local pizzeria—where, unbeknownst to her, Tommy works the night shift—it sparks a chain of events that ultimately helps Deanna forgive Tommy, her father and herself, and that teaches her about faith: faith in her family, faith in the goodness of others, and faith in a higher power.
For author Sara Zarr—the daughter of a church secretary and a former church secretary herself, whose faith has always been an important part of her life—the intersection of religious themes in her stories isn’t always intentional, as was the case with ‘Story of a Girl.’
“My faith is so ingrained, it really is the filter through which I experience the world, and it can’t help but also be the filter through which I write,” Zarr said in an interview with The Williams Telos, a publication of Williams College in Massachusetts (http://williamstelos.wordpress.com/sar
Finding a Way Past Her Mistakes
It seems as if the only person who doesn’t view Deanna through the lens of what happened with Tommy is her best friend Lee, who moved to Deanna’s hometown of Pacifica, Calif., months after Deanna’s father found her with Tommy. When Deanna opens up to Lee about what happened with Tommy and why her reputation is shot, Lee simply shrugs: “Well, everyone has stuff they wish they could change, right?” The way in which Lee accepts Deanna unconditionally is both refreshing and foreign to Deanna: Sometimes, she wishes that she and others around her had the capacity to forgive and forget that she senses in Lee. Sometimes, she wishes she understood the faith that Lee has that keeps her so grounded.
Lee doesn’t talk in detail about her faith, but “Sometimes I wish she would talk about it, because I’m curious,” Deanna says. “Like, what does she say when she prays, and does she ever get mad at God? But I feel funny asking that kind of stuff; it seems so personal.”
There are times when Deanna is almost jealous of the faith that Lee has, in the same way that she’s jealous of the relationship Lee has with Deanna’s other best friend, Jason, now Lee’s boyfriend. Jason knows Deanna perhaps better than anyone, and reminds Deanna that she’s better than the image that everyone else at school has about her: “You’re not what Tommy says or what Bruce and Tucker say. Or what your dad says,” Jason tells her when two boys from school mock her at the food court. But the sweetness in his words, and the way that Jason always knows what to say to her, hurts a little, too: She can’t move past the mistake she’s made, and she can’t imagine how Jason can look past it, either. And knowing that as much as she cares about Jason, she can’t be with him, because of Lee, is almost too much to bear.
Those feelings nearly wreck her relationship with both Lee and Jason. When Lee comes to Deanna for advice about her relationship with Jason, Deanna “It wasn’t fair, Lee getting to think about losing her virginity with a nice guy like Jason, someone who spent his last two bucks on her favorite cookie, someone who didn’t get her stoned so he could feel her up, someone who didn’t drive her to deserted parking lots without at least taking her out to a movie first. Someone who made a declaration for her, and not just in the backseat of a car,” Deanna admits.
Finding Faith in Her Family
Meanwhile, her father can’t bear to look at her, even more than two years later, because nearly every time he does, he’s reminded of the night he found her with Tommy. “It’s hard for him, honey,” her mother tries to explain. “It always has been … But it’s no excuse, is it. It’s no excuse.”
Deanna and her father dance around each other at home, avoiding each other so they won’t have to be reminded of that night and the relationship they once shared. She remembers the father who used to buy her pink bricks of popcorn, just because, and who brought home long sheets of paper from work for her to draw on, before he lost his job from the paper company: “The small declaration it made, having the surplus from National Paper, paper that traveled from Dad’s office to our house to my room, from his hands and into mine: We are each other’s.”
It takes an ugly confrontation with her father before she’ll realize that not only does her father not hate her for something she did when she was 13—“That’s what you think,” Dad asked, looking like he could cry, too. “You think I hate you?” “What was she supposed to think, Dad?” her brother Darren says—but also that he can’t forgive himself, for losing his job at the paper company. He also can’t forgive the company that let him go, or Darren and Stacy, for limiting their choices in life by having a baby straight out of high school. “He can’t get past any of it,” Darren tells her. And when Deanna sees how much it hurts her father to know that she thinks he hates her, she realizes how much her mistake with Tommy affected not only her, but also everyone she was close to.
“We all looked at him and I flashed on something, I understood that this wasn’t only about me and Dad, or me and Tommy,” Deanna says. “Mom and Darren, even Stacy, even April, Lee, Jason, and now Michael [her boss] … we were all part of this thing that had happened, two people in the back seat of a classic Buick, doing something private, only not private, because there was a crowd on this train that had in fact been in motion for a long time now.”
Together, they find their way back to a state of normalcy or something close to it, at least for their family. “I thought of something Lee said once when she was talking about church, that sometimes there was no reason to believe in God and you’d look at your life and know it was crazy to feel peaceful but you did anyway, and that was faith,” Deanna says. “I know that having faith in your family isn’t the same as God or religion or whatever, but I could kind of get what Lee meant about believing in something when it made more sense not to.”
Have you read 'Story of a Girl' yet? What did you love most about the book?
Happy Easter! Happy Passover!
Jeni
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