Archive for February 10, 2020

How Does a Book Survive?

I was pleased to spy my newest book, Blood Mountain, displayed with multiple copies in my local Bethlehem Public Library in Delmar, NY. I’m grateful they’ve embraced their role of supporting local writers. It’s so important for our survival.

Artists in our society struggle to earn a living and it’s getting harder than ever. People make assumptions about fame and wealth, but for the overwhelming majority of us, we’re barely clinging to our careers. 

The hardest part is the silence. Books take years and they come out and . . . the world just shrugs its shoulders. How can you make a difference? Little things. Request a book at your library. Order a copy from your local independent bookstore. Gift a copy to a favorite classroom teacher. We know they don’t have the financial resources to fill their rooms with as many books as they’d like. If you enjoyed the book, yes, please write a quick review on Amazon or GoodReads. Spread the word, suggest it to a friend. It doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg and simply your words makes such a difference.

Thank you, kind staff at the Bethlehem Public Library; thanks to everyone who has given this book, which I am so proud of, a chance to survive.

 

BLOOD MOUNTAIN IS A 2019 JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION.

Thought for Teachers (and Parents!) on a Friday

This meme speaks to a feeling that I experience on school visits every time I make a presentation, or even speak one-on-one with a child. And with that feeling comes an immediate identification with teachers, because I recognize that they must feel it, too, every single day.

As a parent, I’ve experienced it constantly

To the point where it must speak to the essence of what it is to be a teacher, to be a parent.

Scattering seeds to the wind.

On visits, I’ll have 45-50 minutes with, say, a group of 200 students. I’ll joke, tell stories, read something, explain my writing process, show photos of my dog, try to pass along my love of literacy, answer questions, maybe even impart bits of wisdom gained in 34 years as a published author. Then time’s up and they dutifully file out of the big room, shuffling off to what comes next.

And I wonder: Did I connect? Did my words make a difference?

Again, I could be talking about my four-mile walk yesterday with my son, Gavin, age 20. Did he hear me? Did I say anything of value? And also, along with that: What did I learn? Was my heart open?

In the end, we have to keep faith that our efforts have meaning. Yes, many the seeds will not thrive. In busy schools, the days are packed. There’s always the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. A flowing river of next things. But we also know that sometimes, for certain kids, those experiences miraculously do stick. A thought, a feeling, an idea clicks. Maybe not today. Maybe in five years it resonates anew.

And maybe the memory of that experience lingers for a lifetime.

Imagine that.

Imagine making that kind of impact on a life.

It’s what teachers do every single day.

The seed finds fertile soil. The rain comes down, the sun shines warmly. And one day a green sprouts lifts its head, says “I am,” and starts to grow. 

All we can do is keep scattering those seeds, doing what we can, hoping for ears that listen, hearts and minds that are open.

Every time I am invited to a school, I am grateful for that opportunity.

Look for All Welcome Here, by James Preller, illustrated by Mary GrandPre, coming this June.

 

On Emotional Literacy, Community & Quilting: A Conversation with Author Lizzy Rockwell

There is not a single person in all of children’s literature who I admire more than Lizzy Rockwell. She is everything a children’s book artist, and citizen of the world, should be. Lizzy has not only dedicated a lifetime to making books, she connects with readers and community members and quietly makes a difference in the universe. She does it without fanfare or ego; Lizzy simply puts her head down and goes to work. I invited her over to chat about her latest book, How Do You Feel?

Hey, Lizzy. I’ve been thinking about your book, How Do You Feel? It features a repetitive structure, with just four words on a spread. “Deceptively simple” would be one way to describe it. And maybe that’s true of a lot of your work. There’s much more at play than immediately meets the eye.

Hi Jimmy! Happy winter. How are you? No, I mean it, tell me, how do you feel? Deceptively simple question, right?

I’m fine, thanks. But, actually, now that you ask –- hey, I see what you did there!

I guess the whole point of the book is to take a moment to just ask the question, “How do you feel?” with sincerity, and then really listen to the answer. I think so often we ask questions in a way that suggests what we want the answer to be, not necessarily what the answer actually is.

There’s a subcategory of books I like to think of as “talking books.” That is, the book, in the right hands, serves as the starting point for valuable conversations. How Do You Feel is very much that kind of book.

Yes, the whole point of art is to elicit a reaction or a connection with the viewer or reader or listener or watcher. So I do like works of art that are very open-ended and ask more questions than they answer. I write a lot of non-fiction, and even there I don’t feel my job is to just provide information and facts, as much as to spark curiosity and exploration. I often use question marks somewhere in my non-fiction texts. This is the first book where I use only question marks.

 

As adults, we assume we’re supposed to be the suppliers of the answers. We dispense the info. We’re big and we know stuff. But a better gift is to help readers learn the right questions.

Yes, I totally agree.

One of the reasons why I love your books –- why I have so much respect for your work –- is that you have a clear sense of who your books are for. You work with intention and purpose. It strikes me that you know these young children, and you know exactly what you are attempting to do with this book. How do you stay in touch with your audience?

I think young kids are just the most interesting people in the world. No offense Jimmy, you are very interesting too, especially for a grown-up.

It feels like there’s going to be a “but” in this.

But —

I knew it!

— three-year old kids absolutely fascinate me because they give great insight to the human condition. They are emotionally honest and very insightful. Even though they can’t easily regulate emotions or even name them, they feel them and notice them in others much more readily than we do. And the world is wide and fresh, and language is this new superpower, so they have a knack for articulating big existential truths and questions. I find them quite philosophical. I think some of these powers will be diminished and replaced by new ones as they become more verbal, and more social. I just feel it’s a privilege to chat or play with these little people and get a window into that profound point of view. I have some young friends, I have a vivid memory of being a mother to young children, and I spend a lot of time as visiting reader and workshop leader in preschools.

Tell me about that role, visiting preschools. How does that work? 

I volunteer to read at preschools in my community, whenever I can. For three years, 2015-18, I was hired as an artist-in-residence to teach literacy workshops with three and four-year-olds in the Head Start preschools in Bridgeport, CT. I ran about twenty-four sessions a year. On a given day I would visit two classrooms and work with the kids, with staff support, for 40-minute sessions. I would read a book of mine, model a drawing on the easel, then they would “write” and illustrate their own little booklet which I made from folded and stapled copier paper. Each booklet had brightly colored card stock for the cover, and stickers for writing the book title and author name.

What have you learned about emotional literacy? Are young children confused about their feelings?

I think that kids are searching for the words to name their feelings, because words are powerful, and being listened to is powerful. But I think they are better at actually feeling emotion and expressing it than we are, or they will be by the time they get to middle school. But they do need to be equipped with the language and strategies for managing feelings. I read Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel, and it gives excellent actionable guidelines for making schools, homes and businesses more emotionally supportive, and filled with more serene and connected people. I love that this is becoming a high priority in public schools. By focusing on the emotional lives of these little people, we give them lifetime skills at a crucial moment of their development. While doing so, we learn how to be better and more emotionally aware people.

Was your manuscript always this sparse? Did you have that vision from the beginning?

I had tried writing emotional wellness books in the past. They were all terrible. Since being a mother of young kids, and writing books about physical wellness (Good Enough to Eat: A Kid’s Guide to Food and Nutrition, and The Very Busy Body Book: A Kid’s Guide to Fitness), I wanted to write a book promoting emotional health. And, like those books, I wanted to write in a tone that made this self-care stuff seem like the reader’s idea, not mine. But my texts for the emotion books just kept sounding like greeting card copy. I finally realized, when I saw these great Level A, four-words-on-a-spread books from the Holiday House I Like to Read series, that I could approach this theme best, by saying almost nothing at all.

  

Yes, the writer clears out of the way for the illustrator to tell the story.

Most of our emotions are expressed not so much with words, but with body language, facial expression and tone of voice. And most emotions are triggered by events outside of our control. So by focusing on the visual narrative, I could show the most variety and nuance. By capturing a crucial moment in time, I could provide the opportunity for my reader to step back, study the clues and act as emotion detective. By leaving the explanatory language out, I kind of demand that someone else fill in that missing piece, which gets kids talking.

In improvisation, in music or comedy, that’s called leaving space. You aren’t filling in every gap, thereby giving your creative partner — in this case, the reader — more room to enter.

Oh, I like that term! 

David Bromberg, the musician, talks about that. He’s widely considered a gifted and generous accompanist. He says that the key is to know when not to play. In other words, to leave space. That resembles your process, which is often a stripping away, trying to get down to the essence?

Oh yes definitely. But I think this is true of most of the art I love. What’s there is precisely what needs to be there. What’s left out, in between the spaces, is up to me to ponder.

I appreciate the way you are connected with your community. Tell us a little bit about your quilting projects.

For the past twelve years I have been making community quilts with a bunch of wonderful people in Norwalk, CT, where I lived when I started the project in 2008. (Now I live a couple of towns over in Bridgeport.) We are an intergenerational group of senior citizens, adults, and kids (elementary school to high school). We meet in the community room of public housing complex for seniors, and almost every Friday after school till dinner time, we roll sewing machines, cutting mats, boxes of unfinished projects, snacks and a quilting frame out of a tiny closet and set to work. We make quilted objects for personal use and as teaching samplers, and simply as an excuse to get together and have fun.

We have also made seven, to date, quilts that hang in public places. For these installation quilts, I design them on a theme, with areas of the quilt which will showcase fabric art made by a variety of individuals. Once on the quilting frame we sit around and hand quilt them at our meetings, and they go on tour for pop-up quilting bees in public places like schools, libraries, and festivals. I have two public quilts in the sketch stage right now which will be unveiled in the fall (yikes!). We are a big family. We are called Peace by Piece: The Norwalk Community Quilt Project.

Any new books coming out in 2020?

The All-Together Quilt is being published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2020. A labor of love all about a labor of love.

Fun fact: Lizzy is the extremely proud daughter of Anne Rockwell, author of more than 100 titles and a pioneer in nonfiction for very young children. Anne passed away in 2018. Lizzy Rockwell lives in Bridgeport, CT, and can be found on the web at lizzyrockwell.com. She’s kind of my hero.

Random Author Photo: “Pointing at Book” File

And here we go . . .

 

CARRY ON!

Killer Review from SLJ for BLOOD MOUNTAIN

“A thrilling purchase

for middle grade collections;

perfect for fans of adventure novels

by Jean Craighead George,

Peg Kehret, and Gary Paulsen.”

Gr 4-6–A simple family hike unexpectedly becomes a six-day struggle for survival for two children and their dog. Carter, 11, his sister Grace, 13, and their dog Sitka become separated from their father, who lags behind and suffers a heart attack at the trailhead. The siblings’ situation becomes dire when they realize they’re lost and Grace cannot walk after being severely injured in a fall. Carter sets out on his own to seek help, leaving Grace and Sitka in the forest. Preller, best known for his “Jigsaw Jones” series, ratchets up the urgency, crafting additional threats that shadow the separated children, including a cougar on the prowl and a mysterious mountain man. The result is a page-turning adventure, skillfully using alternating points of view to give readers a direct line to each character’s heartbeat. Readers walk in characters’ footsteps thanks to the vividly realized setting. While both children experience an epiphany regarding their place in the natural world, it’s the strong supporting characters who round out the novel. D.E.C. Ranger Makayla provides fascinating survival facts and mountain man John embodies the novel’s themes of non-materialism and finding oneself. Occasionally graphic, consistently suspenseful, this title will make a lasting impression with an emotionally stirring and complex conclusion. VERDICT A thrilling purchase for middle grade collections; perfect for fans of adventure novels by Jean Craighead George, Peg Kehret, and Gary Paulsen.