Portrait of Haiti

“It is different.  You can’t even imagine how different.  Just believe me.  It is different.” 

These were the words of a young Haitian man named Daniel.  I met him on Sunday when he came to our church to talk to a group of children about what his life was like growing up in Haiti.  And he was right, I couldn’t imagine the world he described.  But I did believe him.

“Even if you don’t have anything, you are happy,” he told the kids. ”Because there is no other choice.”  He described playing with his friends outdoors, with no toys or games to entertain them.  Only the ones of their own invention:  hand games, singing games, dancing games.  “If there is someone who is sitting apart, we ask them to join us.  Everyone can play.”  They were happy.  I believed him.

Daniel asked the children if they had ever been hungry before, and what it felt like.  “Imagine feeling that way for many days,” he said.  “For months.”    On Sundays his Mother would make food for her five children.  Fried chicken with rice and beans was Daniel’s favorite.  But before they could sit down and eat, his mother went from door to door, sharing what they had with their neighbors.  They had no choice.  But they were happy.  And I believed him.

He spoke of his love for books and reading.  At times there would be no electricity:  for a night or two, a week, a month.  But there was the moon.  So it was under the light of the moon that he studied and did his homework.  The children in the room breathed out sighs of wonder.  Homework by moonlight.  Astonishing.  Different.  And we believed him.

What he described was so different.  A world where all are welcome for who they are, not what they have.  A world where nobody has enough, and that is why everybody shares.  A world where a shaft of moonlight can be a bridge to knowledge. 

Maybe not everyone in Haiti lives that way, welcoming, sharing, and searching.  Maybe just Daniel and his family.  Maybe they were different.

Maybe I can be different, too. 

I hoped the children might see that, and believe it.  If nothing else, they learned that Haiti is more than a place of poverty to send their pennies.  It is a place of singing, warm moonlight, and meals that stretch, like loaves and fishes, to feed multitudes.

My Book Reviews: The 2010 ALA Awards and the Cybils Finalists

It’s that exciting time of year when the American Library Association presents a new round of award-winning books.  I’m always intrigued to see which titles will be chosen as examples of excellence in children’s literature.  Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why certain books are chosen, other years I love the selections and rush to buy copies for our family library.  This is a rush-to-the-bookstore kind of year, and I can’t wait to find these books and share them with my kids.

The Caldecott Award is given each year “to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.”  This year the medal goes to Jerry Pinkney for The Lion and the Mouse.  A wordless picture book that is just absolutely gorgeous.  It is one that made it to our home library earlier this year, and it was an instant hit with all my kids.  The illustrations fill every part of the page, inviting readers into the story in a way that is just too intimate for words.

Honors go to All the World by Marla Frazee and Liz Garton Scanlon and Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors  by Pamela Zagarenski and Joyce Sidman.  I haven’t read either one, but I am especially excited to find a copy of Red Sings.  The illustrations look so whimsical, and I love the idea exploring colors through nature.

The Newbery Medal, which goes “to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” was awarded to Rebecca Stead for, When You Reach Me.  I had heard great reviews about this book, some from friends of mine who write middle grade fiction, and so I bought a copy for my sister who teaches middle school for her birthday.  I actually tried reading it before sending it to her, but I felt a little guilty about using her gift before giving it to her!  The first chapter looked great, though!

The Newbery Honors all look interesting, too.  The Horn Book’s website is a great place to go for reviews (follow this link: Horn Book Magazine) or you can see my review of honor-winning The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick.  I really enjoyed reading it with my third-grader.

In addition to the ALA awards, there are also the Cybils.  The Cybils are a series of book awards given by children’s and young adult book bloggers.  What I love about the Cybils is the way they pair kid appeal with literary merit in the books they choose to honor and award.  The titles they highlight are fresh and fun, as well as thoughtful and profound, and categories are subdivided into limited genres that make it easy for a parent like me to find great book ideas for all of my little readers.  At the beginning of the month they announced their finalists, and now we just have to wait until Valentine’s Day to find out who the winners are.  In the meantime, I am super excited to track down Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom by Eric Wight for my third grader (from the Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novels category), and for everybody else, The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination by Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston (Poetry category).  I also want to read the Young Adult Fiction finalist, Blue Plate Special by Michelle D. Kwansney, and my five year old is so in love with our library’s copy of Non-fiction Picture Book finalist Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins, that we will either have to steal it, or buy our own copy.

If you’ve read one of these spotlighted books, or have another favorite you don’t see on the lists, I’d love to hear from you!

Portrait of twice newly new

In the birth of a flower, a feeling, a movement, a life, there is so much wide-awake wonder.  The recent arrival of my new niece and nephew has me turning to e.e. cummings to find a way of putting words to the celebration of it.  I find him using Spring as a metaphor, in phrases like ‘in Just-spring’ and ‘Spring is in the world’ and ’spring like a Hand in a window carefully moving New and Old.’   Trying to capture that just-born moment when the whole world changes.

And now I am here, myself trying to capture the shifting between old and new in this portrait of twice newly new.  Trying to comprehend the infinite perfection of two tiny, brand new lives newly arrived. 

I haven’t seen the babies yet.  Just poured over pictures sent across the channels of the internet.  I can’t wait to see and hold them, which means taking a trip to Idaho as soon as they are home from the hospital and can endure my little crew of crazies crashing down upon them with all their enthusiasm and affection.

As I’ve looked at the photos – the tiny hands, the perfect feet, I’m made painfully aware of how precious life is, in all its fragility, its sweetness, its smallness, and its strength.  And I think, maybe, that when I see a newborn baby – as newly new as Spring blowing through the tender branches of our magnolia, pulling the buds open as it passes – that I am seeing life broken down in infinitesimal portions.  That inside I am feeling how new and precious and fragile and small and full each moment of every day is.  So much is taken, so much is given, so much is offered, and I see it in the tiny fingers and toes and my heart is wrenched open and the newness I see is raw all around me and I am in awe and I ache.  That is the wide-awake wonder.  That is the celebration.  That is the newly, newly new.

Portrait of an angel

It’s a season of angels.  Of rushing and running from place to place, hitting three stores in one night to hunt down that last essential item, standing in line for twenty minutes just to buy your groceries, dragging screaming toddlers through the snow to get to the elementary school sing-a-long on time, and frantically rolling cookie dough for another Christmas party.  But in spite of all the frenetic holiday bustle, it is a season of angels.   And the encounters come unexpectedly, in moments that are brief, but brilliant.

Today it was the post office.  The post office and the gruyere for what better be some tasty potatoes au gratin, because that is some expensive cheese.  I decided to start with the gruyere and bustled my five and two year old into the grocery store through a flurry of soft, thick snowflakes.  We found the cheese.  Found snacks for the boys to keep them happy at the post office, and then hurried back out into the snow.

Pierce, my two year old, squinted up at me as the snow flew into his face.  “Hold me mommy.”  I scooped him up and headed for the car, calling after me for my five year old, Sawyer, to hurry up.  I hadn’t gotten far when my angel stopped me.  He was wearing a red grocer’s apron, his name, Glenn, printed on a tag on the side.  He left the cart he was pushing toward the store and called out to me.

“Ma’am.  I think your boy is slipping.”

I looked back.  Sawyer was making his way carefully across the icy pavement.  Without waiting for my response, Glenn reached his hand out to Sawyer to help him across the road.

Now when Glenn spoke to me, the first thing I noticed was the slightly slow speech.  A disability of some kind.  I saw that he wanted to help Sawyer.  He saw Sawyer struggling in the snow and he wanted to help him so badly.

“Sawyer,” I said.  “Hold Glenn’s hand.  He’s going to help you.”  And I prayed, quick and quiet, that my recalcitrant five year old would accept Glenn’s extended hand.  Sawyer looked up shyly, and then put his hand into Glenn’s.  I watched them for a moment, walking together, and then hurried to my car with Pierce, blinking away the snow and the tears that fell in my eyes.

When we got to the car, I turned to thank Glenn.  The snowflakes were sticking to his hair and his lashes, but he smiled and asked my boys what they wanted for Christmas.  “Playdough,” said Pierce.

Glenn’s smile turned up wide.  “Playdough?”  And I could feel from him an enthusiasm that was real.  He wasn’t humoring my child, he was completely and deeply sharing Pierce’s excitement for mallable, colored dough.  He was loving him.  Pierce felt it.  I felt it.  It was all I could do not to throw my arms around this young man and kiss him on the cheek. 

As I drove away, I thought about Glenn.  What does it take to be so truly caring, so loving?  Something anybody can have, if they want.  A kind heart.  Something I struggle to find, and hold onto.  For Glenn, it seemed so easy to do.  The disability I had first noticed when I saw him melted away as quickly as the snow that fell lightly against my windshield.   He was an individual with incredible ability.  A person with a great capacity to love.  And today, he was my angel.

My Book Reviews: The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins

The Secret Keeper is the story of sixteen-year old Asha, an Indian girl on the cusp of adulthood, who must move to her uncle’s home with her mother and her sister when her father leaves Calcutta to find work in New York. Asha feels acutely the injustice imposed on her by the cultural traditions that rule life in her Uncle‘s home. As a child she was given the freedom to pursue her own interests, whether they were viewed as masculine or feminine. Now she must accept her role as a traditional Indian woman. Her resistance makes her something of a feminist role model, and challenges the reader to consider complicated, but important, questions. How does one find an individual voice in a life defined by tradition? When does tradition empower the individual? When does it inhibit? What kind of sacrifices does it require? Is it worth those sacrifices?

For Asha, those questions come into focus when she meets a young man named Jay. His bedroom window is situated across from Asha’s roof top, where she often escapes to think and write in solitude. Jay is an artist, and at the beginning of their friendship, he tells Asha that he has an offer to go to New York to study and teach. Asha is excited for him, but he tells her that he doesn’t want to go. She cannot understand why he wouldn’t want to escape the strict pressure of Indian life, but for Jay, the traditions that Asha sees as inhibiting enrich his perspective and make him who he is, both as a person and as an artist.

Things get complicated after that, and soon everyone Asha loves is forced to make major sacrifices, out of loyalty to each other, and in honor of their traditions. For Jay, that means leaving India for the job in New York. Will he continue to find inspiration in the life and traditions he is leaving behind, or does his departure show a turning away from tradition in favor of greater freedom for individual expression and choice?

And what about Asha, who must abadon her own hopes of going to New York some day? We see Asha lose so much in this book – so much that she loves. But she manages to gain something that, maybe, is worth more than all that she says goodbye to — a measure of independence. A chance to pursue her dreams. All this she does while upholding the traditions that are so important to her mother and her father’s family.

In our modern American society, where tradition tends to be valued only inasmuch as it empowers the individual, Perkins story offers a valuable perspective about loyalty, family, and sacrifice. And also courage and hope. It opens the door to another culture, and a window into the lives of those who have made great sacrifices in order to have the choices that we take for granted every day.

Portrait of an Idea

I’m back.  And I have ten minutes before my kids get home from school.  But I’ll take it, because between Thanksgiving travels and upcoming Christmas travels things have been a little crazy around here.  Impossible, really.  Impossible because life is so busy, and impossible because my kids are so HYPER.  But it is snowing outside today, the world is beautiful, and I am cranking Christmas music nonstop.

While I’ve been absent from my blog, I have been working on my young adult novel (no – there are no vampires).  I’m so close to the end that it is both thrilling and terrifying.  Thrilling because it is turning out so much better than I ever could have planned.  Terrifying because I have so much hope and anguish tied up in it.  It is precious to me!

I started this book way too many years ago to honestly confess, but here is a clue:  The second semester of my senior year in college I was workshopping with Andre Dubus III.  He was trying to get us to open ourselves up to our own creative potential – to unlock the imagination and let it take our writing places we might never go without it.  I had been trying all semester to script flat stories where I made my characters say things or symbolize things that I wanted to communicate, and it wasn’t working.  By the time Spring Break arrived, I had nothing.

I was married my senior year of college, but my husband was busy at a high-intensity consulting boutique and couldn’t take any time off during my break, so I bought a ticket to Italy and went alone.  I spent the week quietly traversing the crooked, busy streets of Florence, hiking through the terraced hills of Cinque Terre, and eating tons of food with my friends in Padova.  On my return flight to Boston, I had nothing.

So I closed my eyes, used every effort to block out the very loud tour group seated around me, and tried to lose myself to my imagination.  In my mind a scene opened up.  It was an outdoor Italian market.  There was a fruit stand, full of ripe oranges.  And then a girl appeared.  She reached her hand out toward the oranges, took one, and ran out of the market, disappearing down the crooked alleys.  That was my idea.  I couldn’t believe it.  My imagination had given me a shop-lifter.  But I decided to trust it, and here I am, a decade later, finishing up a story that is just so beautiful to me I can hardly stand it.

Thinking about it on my way home from the preschool drop-off this morning I realized that there were three crucial components that initiated this long, laborious, rewarding process.  The first was the deadline.  I have come to be very grateful for deadlines.  The second was the imagination.  I had to take the risk of letting my creative side have precedence, even if just for a moment, before I could do anything real or resounding with my writing.  The third was the focus.  The willingness to trust the creative part of me and pursue it.   Years later I find the same three things to be absolutely necessary to me accomplishing anything: deadlines, imagination, and focus.

The kids are home now, looking for mom.  Which brings me to this admission:  my deadlines are always flexible, my imagination is most active in the shower, and my focus runs in short, madly sprinting spurts!

My Book Reviews: Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am always looking for the next book to read aloud with my children, and now that they are getting older it is especially fun for me to find that perfect book that will capture their interests and imagination.  For my six year old daughter, Hattie, that book was Little House on the Prairie.

Over the last few months, Hattie has developed a fascination with pioneer times.  I’m sure moving to our little pioneer-grown town here in Utah has a lot to do with it — like the active rail line through our last home town in Massachusetts helped develop our oldest son’s enthusiasm for trains when he was younger. 

Or maybe it’s just the exercise of the imagination that appeals to her — it isn’t hard for Hattie to picture a young girl sharing household jobs and responsibilites with an older sibling, or to feel the safety and warmth of family and home.  But to put herself into a situation where that home has to be built from hewn logs, a daily dinner of cornmeal is prepared over an open fire, and entertainment consists entirely of chasing prarie dogs and listening to Pa on his fiddle — now that requires a leap of imagination.  

I think it was good for Hattie to see that Laura and her family could live on very little and still be happy.  And to see that they were required to make do with the things they had, while working hard each day.  I think it was good for her to see how habits and customs have changed since pioneer times.  Pa was often enjoying a smoke on his pipe after dinner.  “They used to smoke a lot in pioneer times,” she told me in a very matter-of-fact way.  She was able to understand, in a way that I felt was significant, that over time habits and attitudes can change.

The one thing that concerned me about the book was its treatment of the white settlement of Native American lands.  Laura’s Pa purposely moves his family to what he calls “Indian Territory,” to homestead on the land there.  He is much more sympathetic to the Native Americans than other homesteaders we meet in the book, but he has moved onto their lands, nonetheless.  However, in spite of this attitude of entitlement, the book ends with a very poignant scene in which Laura and her family feel a profound sadness watching the Native Americans vacate the land, and then choose to leave it themselves.  Without making any political or social statements, Wilder captures a feeling of empathy that I felt was very valuable for my daughter to experience.

The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr

When we finished reading Little House on the Prarie, I decided to continue exploring Hattie’s interest in pioneers.  She is an emerging reader, and over the next few nights I listened while she read a pioneer-themed book to me:  The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr.  In it a young girl must help her family pack their belongings into a covered wagon for the long trek west to California territory.  She must leave many of her things behind, but there is one thing she is not willing to part with:  her pet hen, Josefina.  The story follows the family’s adventures along the wagon train, and tells how the girl, Faith, commemorates their journey in a quilt she pieces and sews on the way to California.

Hattie enjoyed the story.  Faith’s affection for her beloved hen was endearing to my little animal lover; the perils and adventures of the trek west were entertaining.  Hattie was also intrigued by the idea that Faith’s quilt was sewn with images that represented things she saw and experienced during her journey.

The Quilt-Block History of Pioneer Days

That led us to the book we are currently reading, The Quilt-Block History of Pioneer Days.  Each night I read Hattie an informative chapter that describes different aspects of pioneer life and how quilts figured into that — from the signature quilts that were sewn to say goodbye to friends and family, to the way quilts were used to protect fragile dishes that women hoped to bring safely to their new homes.  At the end of each chapter is an easy, quilt-themed craft project that Hattie works on the next day.  For example, after we learned about signature quilts, Hattie used the template in the book to make bookmarks for everyone in our family.  She signed her name on one end, and our names on the other.  It has been a fun way to extend her interests, and to learn a little more about the lives and history of the pioneers.

Portrait of a Tooth(less) Fairy

I have a drawer in my writing desk where I keep all that is most precious to me — my journals, letters, notes.  Drawings with misspelled words that say things like, ‘I love you like the jucises of fruits’ and ‘I love you becas yoor sil is bootefl.’  And all of the correspondence that has transpired between my daughter Hattie and the tooth fairy.  I knew she’d rifle through that drawer someday.  Why didn’t I move the evidence?  But I left the notes there, and I paid the price.

 

 Last week Hattie pulled one of her front teeth.  She couldn’t wait to write a note to the tooth fairy and went scrambling for writing materials while I was helping Hunter with some homework.  I knew exactly what had happened when she came downstairs to find me, her face crestfallen.

“Mom,” she said, in a sad and sorry voice, “I looked in your drawer.” 

This is what she found: The original note -

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I would like to know more about you.  Could you be my friend?  Don’t be shy.  I’m nice.

 Love, Hattie

The response:

Dear Hattie,

Thank you for your tooth.  It is a very nice tooth and I will put it in a special place in my collection.

I would love to be friends with a little girl like you.  I love the way your freckles dance across your face when you smile, and I know that you are always kind to all creatures, big or small.

Alas, the Fairy Code prohibits friendships between fairies and little girls.  I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because we fairies can be jealous and we worry that humans will steal our magic.

I’m not very big at all.  I have glittery wings the color of your eyes.  While you were sleeping, I covered your face with tiny fairy kisses. 

I will return when you lose your next tooth.

Love, the Tooth Fairy

Here is the next letter:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Can I have a picture of you? 

Love, Hattie

Here is the reply:

Dear Hattie,

Good job pulling your own tooth!  I don’t have a picture of myself.  Fairies are like hummingbirds — tiny and quick.  It is almost impossible to photograph us.  But this is a drawing that looks a lot like me.

I love you!  the Tooth Fairy

Can you see why these notes were so precious to me?  And now I was sure that I had ruined it all.

 ”Why did you write the notes?” Hattie wanted to know. 

I knelt down next to her and told her how much I loved pretending with her.  I told her that I had saved the notes because they were a treasure to me.

My husband had joined us.  I’m sure on one level he was enjoying this.  He had warned me all along about taking things too far.  But he loves his little girl and he put a hand on her shoulder and told her, “There still is a tooth fairy.”

Hattie looked at me and said, “It’s Mommy.”  And then, she understood.  She grinned until her freckles really did dance and she asked, “Can I be the tooth fairy, too?”

So now we have two tooth fairies at our house.  And if Sawyer and Pierce don’t start losing their teeth soon, they’d better watch out.  Their sister is going to be more than willing to get the wiggling started.

Oh, and one more thing.  Last night when I crept into Hattie’s room to take her tooth and leave behind my quarters, there was a note lying on her pillow.  The very best one of all:

Dear Mom,

I love you.  I hope you love me too.  Thanks for the money.

Love, Hattie

Portrait of the Mountains

Mt. Timpanogos

This is a guest post by my son, Hunter, who is 8:

Where I live the mountains are so close that I can ride my bike to trails without getting in the car.  I like to hike and bike in the mountains.  When I go there it feels like I’ve entered a new world.  One that changes in each season.

In spring I view glistening dew on the fresh green leaves.  I also smell the bitter scent of the sagebrush.  In summer I can look up as high as ever and see the sun as an eye-watering gold coin that I can’t resist.  In the evening I hear crickets chirping.  In autumn it is as if someone has spread out pure bronze, gold, and red as far as the eye can go.  The leaves rustle as they fall.  In winter I once biked in the mountains and saw the snow gleaming in the sunlight.  I was very cold as I finished the race.  There is not one season I like the best.  The mountains are always beautiful to me.  Even when I can’t go see them, I carry their memory in my mind.

My Book Reviews: The Truth about Forever

I have heard two different children’s book editors from two different publishing houses speaking at two different writing conferences, one in New Hampshire and the other in Utah, tell writers how excited they are by Sarah Dessen’s work.  They practically begged conference participants to write something like Sarah Dessen.

‘Sarah Dessen,’ I scribbled in my conference notes the first time I heard her name.  ‘Read Sarah Dessen.  Write Sarah Dessen.  Be Sarah Dessen.’

I didn’t know anything about her at the time.  I’m not sure how I could have been so obtuse.  Her books are enormously popular.  They are among the tiny selection of contemporary YA that get shelved at the giant superstores like Walmart and Target.  They even show up at my neighborhood grocery store.  So when I finally opened my eyes, here was my brilliant epiphany:  “Editors love her because she sells!  How mercenary of them.”  And though I picked up a copy of The Truth about Forever, I didn’t bother reading it.

Then last summer, one hundred pages into the book I am writing, I realized that the story I had spent months (actually years) working on was just backstory.  I needed to delve deeper into my protagonist’s life: her problems, her fears, her failures.  And unsure how to do this, I picked up The Truth about Forever, just while I let things percolate.

From the outset, protagonist Macy is struggling to deal with her Dad’s death, although it has been months since his passing.  He died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack during he and Macy’s routine morning run, and she hasn’t run since.  But this all happened before the book begins.  It is an event that influences Macy, has made her tender, self-aware, angry, and even somewhat fragile.  But it is not what the story about.  That is clear from the first page, where we see Macy helping her perfect, gifted, overachieving boyfriend, Jason, packing for his annual summer brain camp.   This is not a story about Macy’s dad dying.  This is a story about Macy, struggling to find her own identity — to know who she is and what she wants to be.

Dessen’s writing is crisp and clean throughout, and her characters incredibly vibrant and authentic.  The romance is not overpowering — just important to Macy’s process of self-discovery.  The relationship between Macy and her mother is difficult without becoming oppressive.

After reading The Truth about Forever, I found and read an interview Dessen did with Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine, in the May/June 2009 edition of The Horn Book, and this is what she says about her protagonists, and their problems:

“The thing that all my narrators have in common is that they are girls on the verge of a big change.  And how they deal with that change is where the story comes from.”

This approach to character and story really helped me re-think what was going on with my own writing.  It made me ask where my protagonist’s story is coming from — not the story of everything that is happening around her, in her family and where she lives, but the story that is her very own, independent of everyone else.

And finally, when Sutton asked Dessen about being a writer for girls, she answered with an honesty that is as direct and refreshing as her writing. 

“Now anything that isn’t Literature and has women in it is chick lit.  It seems like you’re one or the other, you’re “literary” or you’re “chick lit.”  And that’s unfortunate, because there are lots of shades in between.  But I’m not offended by it, because I am writing books for girls.  I like that my covers are kind of pink and cute.”

So I get it now.  I understand why Dessen is so popular among editors and readers alike.  She is a talented writer, expert at her craft.  She knows how to tell a story — the story.  The one that matters most.   And she knows who her readers are.  Knows them as well as she knows the engaging characters that fill the pages of her books.