Archive for jimmy

ALL WELCOME HERE Among 3 Titles Featured in This Back-to-School Roundup

July 7, 2020 / / No comments

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“James Preller pays tribute

to all the big feelings

that bubble to the surface when

a new school year begins.”

 

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I was delighted to come across this article in The Virginian-Pilot. My thanks to Caroline Luzzatto for the kind words and excellent recommendations. I’m looking forward to reading the other two books mentioned, especially The Word for Friend by Aidan Cassie. Esperanto, anyone? Good luck with your books, Selina and Aidan!

 

As a strange school year comes to a strange end, it’s easy to see the long summer ahead as a welcome break from worksheet packets or Zoom class meetings. But it’s a bittersweet feeling for so many students — including my own, who said, as we met for the last time, that they missed school and were looking forward to returning to class in a way they never had before. June seems like an odd time to page through a stack of back-to-school books — but they are landing in bookstores this month, in anticipation of a summer filled with longing and a fall that children and parents alike hope is full of promise.

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“All Welcome Here” by James Preller, illustrated by Mary GrandPre.(Ages 4 to 7. Feiwel & Friends. $18.99.) In haiku form, James Preller pays tribute to all the big feelings that bubble to the surface when a new school year begins, from “all the bright new things” in the backpack to the end of the day, when “One question remains: ‘May we/ come back tomorrow?’ ” Mary GrandPre’s exuberant mixed-media illustrations show a diverse group of students at desks, rugs and library bookshelves, in a school that welcomes them as they ponder lunch, recess, name tags, and belonging: “At every desk,/A chair with tennis-ball feet,/A place just for you.”

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“One Golden Rule at School: A Counting Book” by Selina Alko. (Ages 2 to 6. Henry Holt and Co. $17.99.) Selina Alko’s dynamic mixed-media illustrations give young readers so much to look at in this warm and welcoming book that offers not just a chance to count but also a message of community. The book counts up through the beginning of the day, then back down as the school day ends, offering a reassuring look at “ONE great day at school,” complete with “ONE golden rule” that encourages students to treat others as they wish to be treated.

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“The Word for Friend” by Aidan Cassie. (Ages 4 to 8. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $18.99.) Kemala is a high-spirited, talkative newcomer (and, incidentally, an adorable pangolin) ready to find her way when she comes to a new country with her mother. She gazes out the window: “Somewhere in her new town was her new school. It was filled with new friends.” And perhaps it is — but Kemala, unable to speak her classmates’ language, doesn’t know how to connect with them. Mortified by her future friends’ reaction to her own language, she curls into an armored ball (as pangolins do). But Kemala is too bold and energetic to be discouraged for long — and using the universal language of play, she finds one friend, and then many. Cassie’s tale is encouraging and warm, offering a peek inside the mind of a language-learner who doesn’t yet have the words to express herself. (An extra bonus for language fans: To make the experience universal, rather than particular to any country, the new language Kemala is learning is Esperanto, which is discussed in an endnote.)

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Category: All Welcome Here / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

True Support, and a Beautiful Idea

July 6, 2020 / / No comments

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Two friends in TN sent me this shot. They are huge book people who make it a point to support the arts: they buy books. Recently they purchased a copy of my book All Welcome Here and placed it in a nearby Little Free Library. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Thanks, Lance and Jeannette!

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Category: All Welcome Here / Tags: , , ,

Star Trek Landing Party

July 2, 2020 / / No comments

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If you are a devotee of the show, you well know that the guy in the red shirt is doomed.

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Category: Around the Web / Tags: , , ,

A Dog Leads With Its Nose

June 26, 2020 / / No comments

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Maggie, my daughter, has an eye for photos. Especially when it comes to our sweet Echo.

This remarkable perspective, his glorious snout, brought to mind the dog Sitka in my recent wilderness adventure novel, Blood Mountain. 

To write about that character, a mutt lost in the mountains with two human siblings, Grace and Carter, I did some research. Though I’ve owned many dogs and have observed them closely over the years, I didn’t feel ready to write about them. I knew that I didn’t want to humanize Sitka, do a Disney treatment; instead, I wanted to honor the sheer dogginess of the creature. And when it comes to dogs, I learned, it all begins with the nose.

What follows are two brief excerpts from the book that hone close to Sitka’s own glorious snout. 

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from Chapter 23 . . .

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After a time, the dog moves away, climbs down off the rock face, down into the sun-stippled understory beneath the great shade-cooled umbrella of leaves. A hunger gnaws at Sitka’s belly like a twisting, tightening coil of wire. Imagine if everything a human sees — every color, shape, and texture — arrived with a specific odor. The red of that flower’s petals, the deep-rutted bark of a poplar, the light brown of a wren’s chest, the dropped acorns, the pale underside of a leaf, the shimmering sky itself: every pixel that an eye apprehends, for a dog those details come with singular odor, as different as green from red, blue from yellow. When Sitka sniffs, it is the same as Grace opening her eyes. Sitka inhales and her tail sweeps and she knows a man has passed near here some time ago, moving in an easterly direction. A mosaic of smells, each one a discovery. The creatures of this world announce themselves to her nose: I am. The dog goes to the slow-trickling stream. Movement among the ferns. Sitka stealthily moves to investigate, prodded by the ache in her belly. Plunges her nose deep into the living green world, inhales the data points, sniffs out the whiskered, stout rodent. Pounces with front paws outstretched, and again — there! success! — bites down, gulps, gone.

A huntress!

Sweet vole!

And even in that instant, the dog attends to one who lies restless in half sleep; a soft moan, she wakes. Meal in belly — hair and tail and skull — Sitka will be at Grace’s side by the time she opens her eyes. 

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And from Chapter 34 . . . 

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The dog smells everything, recent past and the acute present, for a mile in all directions, depending on air currents. The data overload is immense. Mind-boggling to process. But one odor comes clearest. Though Sitka has no direct experience of “mountain lion,” that named thing, something in her DNA recognizes the lurking danger, the predator prowling in the dark, unseen and unheard.

But not unsmelled.

Therefore: known.

An old enemy.

Sitka vacuums in the odors, sifts through the information. The creatures with names she cannot know: squirrel, vole, owl, mole, mouse, rabbit, hawk, raccoon. Another faint whiff troubles the dog: man. A desperate man has recently moved through this area, the aroma of stealth and haste.

And another thing: the trees themselves, hosts to so much life. Tree limbs and tree fingers, tree thoughts and tree intentions. The interconnected roots, thirsty and entangled, talking in their ancient tongues, passing along what they know to each other. This is the wild place, the space of time-before, and now the dog forgets recents pleasures of soft cushions and screen doors, fresh water bowls and proffered treats, long drives with the windows down.

Dog recalls wolf.

The time-before.

The snaggletooth. The vicious bite and muzzle shake. The primal memory of ripped flesh and the warm taste of red blood. The fresh kill.

“What do you smell?” Grace asks.

How does the dog answer?

Sitka sits alert, rumbles low, hackles raised, muscles taut. Danger, her body replies.

She senses danger. 

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Category: Blood Mountain, Family / Tags: , , , , ,

A Letter to Educators, Summer Hours, & Zoom Thoughts

June 22, 2020 / / One comment

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In the best of times, my creativity ebbs and flows. This past month, I’ve found it difficult to put a post together. Part of that is my own distracted, short-circuited mind; another aspect is a nagging sense that few people care anyway. I guess a lot of writers feel that way from time to time, though my case has been acute of late. Strangely, I’ve still been actively writing manuscripts. Good ones, too, I think. But I am a little disheartened about my place the industry; I’m just not confident that my recent stories will see the light of day. What’s a writer to do? A strange place to find myself after spending the past 35 years in the children’s book world. On the positive side, I completed a prequel/sequel to my middle grade novel Bystander, titled Upstander, which should come out sometime next year. No cover yet, still waiting to see what that will look like.

So if you are here now, reading this — thanks for that. I hope to never take you for granted. 

SUMMER HOURS

I generally cut back on ye olde blog posts in the summer, since a lot of my traffic seems to revolve around the school year. I’ll still post when I’m moved to do so, or if something spectacular comes up, though for the most time it’ll be quiet. But before we all pitch tents in our backyards, I wanted to share with you a publicity letter I wrote to “select” educators who expressed interest in my new book, All Welcome Here, illustrated by the legendary Mary GrandPre. 

ALL WELCOME HERE: A LETTER TO EDUCATORS

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Dear Educator,

As an author who has worked in children’s books for more than half my life, I’ve visited hundreds of schools across the country. I always come away with a good feeling in my heart, not only because of the students, who are amazing, but also because of the vibrancy and intimacy of the classroom. I’m moved by the good work that people like you are doing, day after day, year after year, sometimes under extremely challenging circumstances. Online learning anyone?

Teachers can be counted on to open their hearts and their classrooms to every child who comes through that door. All those values we hold close to our core -– empathy, inclusion, kindness, community –- become a living reality in your classroom. This is the great promise of the American Experiment played out before our eyes. It truly works, you’ve seen it, and it’s beautiful.

I was inspired to write All Welcome Here early in 2016. The world as I knew it felt fractured and divided. Today, four years later, it seems all but shattered. But together we’re picking up the pieces, working to cobble together a better, brighter, more loving and ethical land of the free.

Please think of this book as my thank you for that great effort. I know you work hard to foster those values in your school community. Hopefully this book, so gorgeously illustrated by Mary GrandPre, will serve as a springboard for positive conversations between you and your students. Also, I hope that you find it to be entertaining, and funny, and joyful. Jon-Kim spilling his crayons, Chloe’s laughter, and the way a shy girl tentatively makes a new friend. Even the shaving cream behind Principal K’s ear. This book is my tribute to those everyday moments that happen in your school lives, day after day, year after year. Thank you for your valuable work.

Be safe, stay healthy, and good luck!

James Preller

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ZOOM VISITS

I’ve enjoyed several Zoom and Google Meets Visits over the past few weeks. Some have been particularly meaningful, I think, making me a true convert to the value and impact of a properly structured Zoom Visit.

To me, the key figure in an online visit is the teacher. It is the teacher who inspires, who prepares, who builds anticipation, and who actively moderates (thank you, “mute button!”) an online visit. A Zoom Visit with one class can be a profoundly (and surprisingly) intimate experience. It is very much like stepping into a classroom for a loose, easy-going conversation between students and author.

And guess what? In normal times, that never happens. There’s no time for a visiting author to move from classroom to classroom; instead, we present to entire grades or multiple grades: hundreds of students at one time. That’s awesome and powerful, too. But a Zoom Visit can be inspirational in its own unique way. A standard in-person presentation is a broadcast with a short Q & A tagged on at the end; a Zoom Visit is more interactive, featuring more of a direct one-on-one connection.

I recently heard from an enthusiastic teacher on Long Island who wrote to me after a visit with her class. She said:

“I had to share some more feedback I have received from parents . . . you truly have influenced many of my students. I realize the technology was a bit of a pain, but the outcomes are so worth it! I cannot thank you enough for your time and inspiring words!!”

She included some follow-up emails from parents:  

“Danny was so jazzed up after this he wants our whole family to write a book. He has assigned us all jobs to do and he is the author. I never would’ve thought that he’d be so into this. Thank you again. I haven’t seen him this excited about something in a while.”

Here’s another:

“Super inspirational!!! And so so patient. Like when they asked the author similar questions he just patiently answered! It’s inspiring us (at home) to maybe build a mini library!”

Illustration by R.W. Alley from THE CASE FROM OUTER SPACE.

Note: I believe I talked about my love of Little Free Libraries, which I featured in Jigsaw Jones: The Case from Outer Space. Pretty cool if a family reads my book and turns around to build one of their own. That’s the literacy connection, how books bring us together and help build communities.

My point here is not to toot my own horn (though, obviously, I’m doing that), but to express again that I AM SOLD ON ZOOM VISITS.

I think we’ve still got to figure out the money — it has to be very affordable, but at the same time “more than free.” We can individualize visits, or even create recurring visits, around concrete themes. For example: haiku poems. We could talk about them, share them, learn together. Or writing mysteries. Last week I enjoyed a visit with a Texas librarian that centered around dialogue. 

In short, I think it’s more productive to think of a Zoom Visit not as “the James Preller show” but more of a unique way to bring an author into your classroom to directly connect with and inspire your students. 

Feel free to write to me at jamespreller@aol.com to discuss it. I’m open and flexible and eager to meet your students.

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THANKS AGAIN FOR STOPPING BY!

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-Z

 

Category: All Welcome Here, Jigsaw Jones, School Visits / Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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