Category Archives: General

General subjects of interest.

Deadly Thyme, by R.L. Nolen

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rlnolen

Kudos to this local Houston writer! Her psychological thriller, Deadly Thyme has won a five-star rating from Readers’ Favorite, a Best Book award and the Clue Award in its category from Chanticleer—with good reason.  It’s a great read.

Set against the rich panorama of Cornwall, cornwall

our hero is Detective Inspector Jon Graham. He’s been sent out from London to take over surveillance of the local constabulary in a sleepy little village where everyone seems to have secrets. A questionable amount of money has suddenly appeared in the bank account of local Detective Chief Inspector Trewe. A day or two and Jon should be back in London. But things quickly become more complicated.

A 10-year old girl disappears from the beach while gathering seashells with a friend. Her mother, Ruth Butler, is a somewhat mysterious American woman who turned up in Cornwall a few years back. She lives quietly with her daughter, Annie. They have only recently integrated into the local community. The scenes from her numb and desperate point of view are heartbreaking.

Contributing to the reader’s sense of urgency are brief glimpses of Annie’s captivity.

When Jon, quite by accident, discovers the decaying body of a young girl on the rocks below a cliff, it looks as though Ruth’s daughter has been killed. But when they discover the body is not Annie’s, it only adds to the terror and complications. This young girl was held captive for weeks if not months and actually died of exsanguination—she was deliberately bled to death.

Jon finds his covert investigation compromised now that he is a witness in the kidnapping case and comes under the suspicious eye of DCI Trewe. His empathy with the lost child and her mother increasingly conflicts with his duty and his objectivity, especially as he starts falling in love with a woman who may be a suspect in her own child’s death.

Jon helps Trewe unearth several seemingly related kidnappings and deaths over recent years, each body discovered with a bit of a flower or herb attached that offers a clue to the killer’s state of mind. Various possible suspects are introduced with traits that seem to match the villain, whose dark and twisted nature we glimpse in brief POV scenes.

Things escalate to a climactic end as the killer’s ultimate target is revealed to be not Annie, but her mother. Ruth bears a striking resemblance to the killer’s own mother and becomes an avenue to reconcile his hatred and compulsion. A tortuous chase ensues where everyone’s life is at stake at one point or another. But the case is resolved positively and we are given an explanation of Trewe’s sudden wealth, the dark secret that brought Ruth and Annie to obscurity in Cornwall, and the end of a series of brutal deaths. We are also left to wonder if Jon’s relationship with Ruth may not blossom to figure in Nolen’s next book.

Available from Amazon.com in hard-copy and as a Kindle e-book.

The Secrets of Flight, by Maggie Leffler

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This 2016 novel is appealing both as women’s fiction and potentially as a YA novel. The two main characters are Mary Browning, an eight-seven year old facilitator of a senior citizen writer’s group and Elyse Strickler, the fifteen-year old aspiring writer who stumbles into the group by mistake.

Both characters tell lies and live with secrets. Mary has come to her position through a random remark made to one of the other tenants of the building where she moved after her doctor husband’s death. She was never an editor at a publishing house. But she was a flyer for the Women Air Service Pilots corps in Texas during World War II. A fact she has kept a secret for over sixty years, not out of shame, but because she gave up her life, her family, and her ethnic/religious heritage when the man she loved decided to hide his Jewish identity to get into medical school.

Because Elyse reminds her of her dead sister, Mary chooses her to help write a memoir that will give her some closure and a new relationship begins. Coincidentally, Elyse is inspired to be a writer because her grandmother wrote a book about a relative, tragically killed when she flew as a WASP in the 1940s.

Attracted to a popular boy at school, Elyse ditches her best friend and lies to her parents to be around him, begging her teacher to assign them as ‘marriage’ partners in life studies. He of course turns out to be nothing like her fantasy and she is at risk of failing two classes because of him.

Finding herself unwittingly privy to information about her parents crumbling marriage, Elyse feels betrayed by both. Her dour attorney mother has pushed Elyse’s father to the brink of adultery, and is estranged from her own mother as a punishment for Elyse’s grandmother moving to Florida. Now the grandmother is dying of cancer and Mom refuses to acknowledge the fact.  

On impulse, Mary offers to pay for Elyse’s air fare to visit her grandmother. Elyse lies to her mother about who bought the ticket and is reunited with Margot, a perky positive woman, full of life but in a downhill spiral. The visit is timely, because within a week the grandmother is dead. That event sets in motion a series of forced reunions that reconcile not only Elyse’s mom and aunt, but lead to the discovery of connections with the real Mary—Miriam Lichtenstein.

I found this book engaging in both points of view, and in the present and the past. It is seasoned with wonderful accounts of flight and the challenges faced by early women fliers, their clandestine heroism, their betrayal by their superiors and Congress, and their ultimate recognition with the Congressional Medal of Honor. Early women flyers are a favorite subject for me, but even I learned a lot about these extraordinary women. For instance, did you know that even though their existence was hush-hush, their uniforms were designed and created by Neiman Marcus?

The characters are engagingly and lovingly drawn. Woven throughout the story are issues of religious and ethnic identity and freedom and how perceptions and values change over time, no matter what we do to preserve or conceal them. Ironically, the decision Mary/Miriam made to assimilate to avoid cultural stigmas caused her to be ostracized by her family and cost her cultural heritage. In the present, those all important traditions and cultural identity have become only negligibly important and are marginally observed by the very family that shunned her. 

My only complaint would be that the number of parallel characters, alternate names and identities, and the occasional difficulty of telling what is a lie and what is true not only built suspense but occasionally created confusion. Still, it was an excellent read and an interesting glimpse of present-day high school, forgotten history, as well as past and present Jewish culture.

 

Gooney Bird and All Her Charms, by Lois Lowry

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Gooney Bird and All Her Charms by Lois Lowry (illustrated by Middy Thomas) – This chapter book is part of an award-winning series. Gooney Bird is an eccentrically dressed second-grader with a Type A personality . She is surrounded by a number of outspoken prankster classmates and an infinitely patient teacher. Think Pippi Longstocking in Kindergarten Cop.

In this book, Gooney Bird’s great-uncle, Dr. Oglethorpe, happens to be a prominent professor of anatomy. He visits when her class is studying the human body, surprising everyone by bringing a ‘gift’. He loans the class the human skeleton from his own classroom for a month, to be used in their studies. The kids name it Napoleon. It causes quite a stir among the student body and some of the parents.

The class sets out to involve everyone by setting it up in different locales with different accessories to emphasize the part of the body being studied. All goes well until someone makes off with Napoleon.

Maybe it was because chapter books are not my genre, but this book seemed contrived and self-consciously cute. There was educational value in the content, but it was disguised in outrageous behavior and coincidence. Even Gooney Bird’s charm bracelet of the title, bought at a garage sale, seems pasted on to tie everything together. But the illustrations are highly imaginative and entertaining.

YA Reads for January

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This month for the SCBWI meeting, I’m reviewing three really engaging and well-written Young Adult books. They have a number of things in common besides their reading group.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart – This National Book Award Finalist (nominated the same year as Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath) is a YA novel set in an upscale boarding school. Frankie is a legacy. She is privileged, smart, and ambitious. Previously a bit of a geek, she blossomed over the summer and comes to the attention of the charming, handsome, and somewhat self-effacing leader of the inner circle at school. As Matthew’s girlfriend she gains entre to the seniors’ table. Matthew is leader by default of wealth and position, and because the more exotic Alpha was expelled the previous year. Frankie recognizes Alpha from an encounter at the beach. But perhaps because she is with Matthew, he pretends not to know her. Nevertheless, the two have more in common than she has with Matthew. He is born to privilege, whereas she and Alpha are outsiders.

Frankie quickly discovers the guys are co-leaders of the secret society known as the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, ‘known mostly for silly pranks and a history of male-only membership’. Frankie is aware of the Bassets because her father and his friends were members, teasingly referring to it but never revealing its secrets. Frankie, intellectually their equal if not their superior, becomes fixated on the fact that she can never be included. While Alpha is away, she creates an email address. Posing as him, she sends out detailed instructions for a Basset Hound prank. It is so successful that upon his return, Alpha takes the credit.

Matthew fails to confide in her. This only pushes her to bigger and riskier pranks, manipulating the boys of the group until she almost gets Alpha expelled. When she steps forward and takes responsibility to save him, Matthew drops her and freezes her out of the inner circle. She pays the price, but is triumphant rather than apologetic. She will never settle for being the leader’s girlfriend.

This book is well-written with multi-layered characters and relationships. It uses stereotypical personas at times to challenge the status quo. The threat of her own disgrace and expulsion is introduced at the beginning and the rest of the book is a flashback, with that danger ever present.

Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher—This 2007 international bestselling YA novel is an emotional rollercoaster. The two main POV characters of this book, Hannah Baker and Clay Jensen are teenagers in the same high school. Hannah, the victim of a series of seemingly unrelated slights, snubs, cruel lies, vicious gossip, bullying and rape has committed suicide. But she has left a series of audio tapes that accuse her tormenters and explain the events that drove her to take her own life. Thirteen people will receive the tapes and spend a tortured evening listening to the criminal behavior and thoughtless cruelty perpetrated on their classmate—and recognize their part in it. As each finishes, he/she must forward the tapes to the next person on the list or risk another set of tapes being sent to the newspaper.

Popular Clay Jensen liked Hannah very much, but allowed rumors of promiscuity to prevent him from acknowledging his feelings until a fateful party shortly before her death. Quietly mourning her, he is uncertain why he’s received the tapes or how he fits into the story, but he follows the map and listens to the painful details of Hannah’s account only to discover the girl he fantasized about was half in love with him. At the end of the night, Hannah is still dead and Clay will never be the same. He must forward the tapes and go back to school, seeing some of his classmates in a whole new light.

Masterfully written and gut-wrenching, this book will keep you up all night, just as the tapes keep Clay wandering the streets of his town into the pre-dawn hours.

Getting Over Garrett Delaney, by Abby McDonald—Published 2012, this novel follows young Sadie through a love crisis. At fifteen she met Garret Delaney, a new kid in town, and she was mesmerized by his good looks, easy charm and intellectual take on all things artistic and literary. Over the last two years she has lost contact with her previous BFF and become a permanent appendage to the dazzling young man she considers her soul mate and best friend. Supporting him in all things and propping him up every time he thinks he’s fallen in and out of love—she keeps hoping against all odds that he will wake up and fall in love with her. Think Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts in the John Hughes film Some Kind of Wonderful.

Scheduled to go to writer’s summer camp together, Sadie hopes a summer in the country, living the literary life will seal their fate as lovers. But her mother started her in school a year late and although seventeen, as a sophomore going into her junior year she is rejected at the last minute. Garrett blithely goes off to camp and leaves Abby to pine.

Forced to look for a summer job by her life counselor mother, Abby falls into a job at her favorite coffee house. There she meets new friends who are older and more experienced, if not necessarily wiser. She very nearly loses the job she loves after a public melt-down precipitated by a call from the blissfully ignorant Garrett. Her humiliation was witnessed not only by her co-workers but by her former friend, Kayla. Instead of abandoning her to her misery, they help her take a leaf from her mother’s playbook and devise a project plan to ‘get over’ her obsession for Garrett Delaney and discover who she is without him over the summer. It’s cold-turkey withdrawal of all things Garrett, but it forces her to try new experiences, haircuts, and clothes. She explores other options in an effort to find out what she thinks, feels and likes, uncolored by Garrett’s rather snobbish viewpoint.

It’s a struggle but she succeeds admirably in discovering herself, until Garrett returns early. He seems ready to fall for her now that she no longer needs him. She is sorely tested and momentarily weakens. But from her new perspective, Sadie becomes painfully aware of Garrett’s self-absorption, condescension, and arrogance. Not only does she manage to save herself from more years of abject servitude to a mythical Garrett, but her journey helps her friends to recognize their own weaknesses and pursue their dreams as well.

All three of these novels are engaging, well-written and have characters of a similar age, social group, who need to be loved or admired for themselves. Each deals with peer pressure to some extent and the unspoken social structure in high schools, whether public or private. They are all about self-realization, the perception of others, and how our relationships define us. I would recommend each of them.

 

YA Reads for December

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My book report for December is over four great Young Adult novels.

Babe in Boyland by Jody Gehrman – Natalie is Dr. Aphrodite, the love guru of the school paper. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much first-hand knowledge of love and her column is turning into a joke. The boys in her school won’t give her a straight answer about anything, so her solution is to disguise herself as a guy and spend a week at Underwood Academy, an up-scale private boys boarding school.

This is a riff on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and could be likened to another take-off on that theme, “She’s the Man.” Just as Viola does in both of those stories, Natalie ends up learning a lot more than she thought she would about guys and girls and how they feel about love, while falling in love with her boarding school roommate. Shakespeare wrote his comedy in 1601, which was revamped as the movie in 2003. Jody Gehrman’s book came out in 2011. Just goes to show what a great story-teller Shakespeare was.

Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo – This 2014 YA novel was a VOYA Perfect Tens Pick, an Indies Introduces New Voices Pick, and Best YA Debut of the Year on Bustle.com. Leigh’s father is a would-be real estate speculator who buys a cemetery and moves his artist wife and the chronically depressed teenage curmudgeon Leigh away from the ocean they both love. Leigh longs for her impish best friend and the confidences they shared. To make matters worse, Leigh’s mother keeps disappearing to go back and paint at the beach, her father runs around wheeling and dealing with everything but the business, and both leave her running the cemetery office. Unfortunately, she rarely gets anyone who is interested in buying pre-need. So on a daily basis this emotionally frozen teenager must deal with people in crisis and overcome by tragedy. She hates her life, her parents, and just about everything. Gradually, we learn this is tied directly to a mystery involving her best friend.

The young Hispanic grave-digger, Dario, that comes into her life teaches her a great deal about his philosophy of life, how to love (he’s saving to bring his fiancé to this country) and how to serve people in their darkest moment. When the time comes, she finds “the courage to fight for him and save herself along the way.”

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (illustrated by Ellen Forney) – Among the many awards this book won in 2007 were the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, Book Sense #1 Pick, NYPL Book for Teens, New York Times Bestseller, Kirkus Review Best YA Book of the Year, Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, Best Book of the Year for both American Library Association and the New York Public Library. It was also the most widely banned book that year.

This book is about being an Indian (or Native American if you are trying to be politically correct, which Alexie is not) living on a reservation, where he absolutely does not fit in. Junior is an aspiring cartoonist with an assortment of physical and health issues. He has grown up being picked on by everyone except his best friend and defender. But when he makes the decision to find a way to go to the all-white school in a neighboring farm town, he becomes an outsider not only at his new school but a pariah on the reservation and his former best friend becomes his sworn enemy. This is a true-life story of overcoming adversity, finding your own path to your best self, and learning to reconcile that with your family and your culture.

eleanor & park by Rainbow Rowell – This 2013 novel was a Printz Award-winning book. This story also deals with a girl dealing with her parent’s bad decisions and living through terrible harassment and isolation. Eleanor has moved to a new town with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and their blended family. The stepfather is a jerk and treats her alternately as a trouble-maker and a possible object of his scorn and lust. She affects a bizarre mode of dress that marks her as a kind of out-there eccentric, but it is because her mother barely has enough money to feed the kids and nothing left over for her school clothes.

Bullied on her first day on the bus, she meets Park who begrudgingly allows her to share his seat. His mother is a savvy and successful Korean hairdresser who is always pushing him to excel. At school he manages to stay on the good side of the popular sharks that roam the hallways while doing his own thing, but he still falls victim to all the usual pre-conceived notions about Asians and mixed-race kids. Eleanor and Park share advanced placement classes and start to become friends and to explore their attraction. His family is different but ‘normal’ by almost any standard. She is gradually integrated into a core loving family who understands part of her family life and accepts her.

Just as they are becoming comfortable with being a couple and in love, her stepfather becomes more violent and threatening. As her living situation reaches critical mass, she plans to run away to her uncle in Minnesota. Park, the most careful driver in the world, offers to drive her—to give her up in order to save her. His father discovers the plan and insists that he take his Dad’s truck. Eleanor insists that he leave her on the doorstep because she doesn’t think she can say goodbye. Her uncle and aunt listen to her horror stories and intervene to rescue Eleanor’s mom and siblings as well.

Park writes to her every day. When she never responds, he stops mailing the letters. Eleanor suffers in her self-imposed silence until finally she writes him a single postcard with the three words he always wanted her to say.

***

Remember, books are great gifts and can make indelible memories.

Middle Grade Reads

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Last month I volunteered to do a handful of book reports for our Houston Regional SCBWI meeting. I’m hoping someone else will step up to do picture books as I’m woefully under-read in that area. These were four recommendations that I made to our membership, not all recent, but all delightful.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler (illustrations by Sarah Gibb) – Series began with this book in 2003 and continues through 2015. Think Princess Diaries meets Splash with a lot of Ariel.  Emily has never known her father.  She lives on a boat with her mother who oddly enough has taught her to fear the water. She’s never been immersed in water in her life. She takes showers instead of baths. Then, in seventh grade she takes a swim class and learns that after a few minutes in the water she morphs into a mermaid.  It’s a bit terrifying and embarrassing.  She manages to hide her secret by spazzing out and skipping swim class, but starts secretly swimming in the ocean at night while her mother works.  She meets and befriends another adolescent mermaid who reveals another world and community below the sea. They meet secretly because it is apparent that Emily is an illegal mermaid, the product of a marriage between a merman and a human woman.  Eventually she confides in her school friend and the three of them plot to free her father from Neptune’s prison. This is a very successful and slightly Disney-like series.

Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate (author of The One and Only Ivan) – Jackson is a in the 5th grade when the imaginary friend he had as a little kid returns. A giant cat that surfs and carries an umbrella, Crenshaw is about six feet tall but no once else can see him. Think Harvey as a cat. He’s come back, because Jackson needs him. His father is unemployed, his mother is a waitress working extra shifts. Since losing their house, they live in a motel on the brink of homelessness. His parents try to put a good face on things, but Jackson understands all too well what is happening. Crenshaw becomes his confidant and only outlet. He has assumed a lot of responsibility for his baby sister and even his parents’ happiness. He tries to act normal at school to hide this secret. But he’s depressed because he loves his school and his best friend, Marisol and knows that soon they will have to move again. When his father sells their television to Marisol’s father, the ‘cat’ is out of the bag. Once she knows his situation, Jackson imagines her pity and feels humiliated. Eventually, he confides his secret and tells her about Crenshaw as well. He’s fears she will think he’s crazy, instead she says, “Jackson, just enjoy the magic while you can, okay.”

Jackson is planning to run away and relieve the pressure on his parents, he’s even written a note. But he decides against it because his sister needs him. In the end, his parents find the note and realize the pressure he’s been under and that he deserves the truth and their confidence. In the end, their situation is resolved realistically so they can stay together and he can stay in his school. Before he leaves, Crenshaw explains that imaginary friends never really leave. They’re on call and they can come back whenever we need them. This book deals with very real issues in a soft and magical way.

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo – Raymie is in middle school when her father runs off with a dental hygienist. She decides that if she wins the Little Miss Central Florida contest that her father will see it on the news and come home. So she signs up for twirling lessons and starts looking for good deeds that she can do to win the contest. Her twirling teacher is an eccentric at best, but she meets two other oddball children in the classes: Louisiana, a tiny southern belle who faints at the drop of a hat and Beverly, who is a bellicose tomboy who comes to class with bruises.  They become an odd but inseparable trio and work through their separate but equally traumatizing abandonment issues. More than anything else this book reminded me of the play The Miss Firecracker Contest by Beth Henley.

Footer Davis Might Be Probably Is Crazy by Susan Vaught – Footer is a middle grader with a bipolar mother who has been in and out of the looney bin a few times. Her mother is home now, but maybe not for long. She’s taken to using a gun to explode snakes in the yard. Footer is more than a little afraid that her mother’s illness is hereditary and that she is going crazy. She’s been dreaming about her mother shooting someone and burning down a building. Then she finds out that two kids from her school were probably killed in a fire and their father was shot.

With her best friend and confidant Peavine, Footer has to work through her mother’s issues and play detective to figure out what happened at the farm and whether her mother killed that family. She discovers her mother’s correspondence with the kids’ father in prison. Eventually, we learn that these other children are alive and have a terrible secret. Their grandfather was abusing them on a regular basis and Footer’s mom was trying to help them get away.

Each of these middle-grade books deals with increasingly real-life situations and tragedies and the coping skills of children.

 

Murder on a Summer’s Day by Frances Brody

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The fifth in the Kate Shackleton Mystery series, Murder on a Summer’s Day offers an evocative picture of both post-WWI England and the splendor of the Raj.

Professional female detectives are rare, but this one has made enough of a name for herself that she is brought onto the scene at Bolton Abbey when an errant Maharaja goes missing in Cornwall while making plans to take a beautiful chorus girl as his second wife. It is a potential scandal that the India Office, the Duke of Devonshire, and the government wish handled with discretion. What better person to locate the missing Maharaja and defuse a delicate situation than the distinctly upper class young widow of a war hero.

Unfortunately, Kate finds the vital young Prince after he has been murdered. The India Office and government (both local and Empire) seem bent on hushing it up and calling it a tragic accident. The parade of Indian royalty, the pomp and circumstance,  class distinctions, the excitement of political intrigue, and a missing priceless jewel are all here. Even the hint of a future romance between Kate and a local doctor (and I mean only a hint).

Two cultures are well researched and accurately portrayed. Several historical characters appear, the inspiration for the unsuitable lover was the real-life Folies Bergère dancer Stella Mudge. But somehow the story is not as exciting a romp as I would expect. The plot is full of twists and turns and imminent threat, but even the cobra placed in Kate’s room does not cover the somewhat scattered and disjointed plotlines. The big payoff never seems to come. The villain is insufficiently punished for two murders and multiple attempts, the jewel disappears into a vague Swiss bank, and the only real romance is at third-hand. It is all a little too formal and proper. Personally, I much prefer the impish misadventures of Lady Georgiana in Rhys Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness series. It is equally well researched, but a lot more fun. But then I prefer a little humor mixed into my murder and mayhem.

Sometimes a series is extended a little beyond its natural virtues or takes a dip in the middle. Before discounting this successful series, I would recommend going back and checking out one of the early books, such as Dying in the Wool, A Medal for Murder, Murder in the Afternoon, or A Woman Unknown (shortlisted for the MWA Mary Higgins Clark award).

News of the World, by Paulette Jiles

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I came back from two conferences with bags full of books, but this novel was a gift from a friend, and so I moved it to the top of the pile. I’m glad I did. In a year of historic political division and growing national misogyny, on November 16th the National Book Award failed to honor a single nominated woman, but instead focused on divisions along racial lines. So, let me talk about this beguiling and poetic novel written by a woman that deals with race and the position of women in a historical moment defined by rampant violence, tyranny, martial law, huge political and economic differences, government corruption, and the vulnerability of the disenfranchised.

Paulette Jiles lives in Austin, Texas. She is an author who writes lyrically of real events and people fictionalized in a vivid and epic narrative that never loses its sense of the personal and the mundane events of this journey story. The book was one of the worthy nominees for the National Book Award for best novel.

The tale begins in the winter of 1870 in north Texas. The state is still under martial law, the US troops of occupation guard public meetings of any kind. Despite raids from the Indian Territories across the Red River, roving bandits, and sex traffickers, private citizens are prohibited from carrying handguns. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a 71 year-old veteran of two wars and a survivor of a third, the Civil War, is a former printer plying his trade as a itinerant purveyor of news. He travels from town to town through Reconstruction Texas setting up public events where he reads from Eastern and international newspapers of exotic and romantic places and events, he hopes to broaden his audience’s understanding of the world. He carefully avoids articles about the corrupt and warring political factions in power in Texas.

Into his precarious vagabond life comes a 10-year old girl recently recovered from the Kiowa. Taken when she was six during a raid that killed the rest of her family, her aunt and uncle have offered a $50 gold piece for her return. The negro teamsters transporting her know and trust Kidd and see him as a reliable escort, whereas their conveying a young white girl offers all kinds of complications. Kidd’s sense of honor and the vulnerability of this young wild child persuade him more than the money. From the beginning, the trip is a struggle, fraught with peril and unsavory characters. But the old man’s kindness, the girl’s courage, their shared danger, and their growing interdependency forge a bond between the two.

When at last Kidd delivers her to her remaining family, she has begun to relearn her original language, accepted the necessity of wearing the constrictive white clothing, and begun to feel safe in his company. But the dour German couple he meets are looking for someone to share the labor of their farm, without any consideration for the kindness required to fully reclaim a young girl who will forever consider herself a Kiowa, ripped from her family not once but twice. The ultimate choice of what is right and wrong and what constitutes honor, responsibility, and family is at the heart of this story, brilliantly and mesmerizingly told through the day to day decisions of life and death.

A recurrent theme of the book is evident in the title, News of the World. Kidd began adulthood as a 16-year old courier in the War of 1812. He has continued to bring messages and news of things beyond and outside as a printer and reader. In the epilogue of the story we learn “the Captain asked to be buried with his runner’s badge. He kept it since 1814. He said he had a message to deliver, contents unknown.” How nice it would be to have a Captain Kidd to see us through this current moment in history.

SCBWI Houston Conference – 2016

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Another great SCBWI conference for the record books on October 22, 2016. A new venue for SCBWI, the Hess Club (5430 Westheimer) was not difficult to find and the parking was free. I missed ducking out to a coffee shop as we did at the Memorial City Marriott in 2014 and 2015, but the food was good, the company congenial, and the speakers were great.

The proceedings opened with our illustrious Regional Advisor, Vicki Sansum and Charles Trevino. Then we were treated to a keynote address by our own Crystal Allen. If you see her ask her to explain ‘genre’, you’ll get a laugh.

A panel discussion included local success stories Lynne Kelly, Joy Preble, Bruce Foster, Kathy Duval, Sherry Garland, Kim Morris, and Sandra Howatt. Each touched on his/her path and the things they learned along the way, and how much SCBWI contributed to that journey. I’m sorry to say I missed part of this presentation for my first of three critiques.

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Katherine Jacobs

 

Our first guest speaker was Katherine Jacobs, who is a senior editor at Roaring Brook Press. Her talk was entitled “The Body Electric: Creating Characters that Spark With Life.” She spoke effectively about bringing your characters alive using their physical characteristics and mannerisms, and incorporating active verbs to describe them. She suggested, “If your character seems boring or cliché, it’s because you didn’t go deep enough. Listen to your character.” Contrasting Flat and Round characters, she used specific writers and their work to make her point, recommending being willing to take your characters to a ‘dark place.’ Summing it up, she said, “Your characters are the soul of your work.”

Maria Middleton is the Art Director at Random House Children’s Books and is responsible for the overall look and feel of all their Middle Grade books. As you might expect, she talked about visual storytelling, using slides to illustrate her points to great effect. Like many people, I’m in a great hurry to get published, so it hit home when she said, “Give yourself time to be great.”

Kelly Sonnack (one or my critiquers) compared Story to a journey, where the writer is the travel guide. She encouraged us to see the story as a path, where you leave a series of breadcrumbs. But you must trust the reader to understand and follow those directions. You promise them a destination, and you need to deliver. She also spoke about character and making the reader root for yours. Likeability plays a big part, but even unreliable or less than admirable characters must allow the reader to connect on some level to be successful. Some things she recommended:

  • Look at how you introduce the character.
  • Identify their flaws.
  • Is every character necessary to the story?
  • What does the villain ‘offer’ the protagonist?

She also discussed Plot and examining what the character really wants. This rang true for me, because this is how an actor approaches a character and what he/she does. She gave some very specific recommendations on Voice and Dialog, which feed into each other. Both contributing to Pacing, in that the rhythm and length of your sentences can quicken the pace and build to the climax or completely derail the forward movement.

Susan Dobinick is an editor at Bloomsbury Children’s Books. At her previous publishing job she was one of the editors on Lynne Kelly’s Chained.  She tried to help us understand the difference between the ‘moral’ of the story and the broader themes, or the Big Idea. As an exercise, she had each table work together to write a paragraph for a story using three words suggested by the audience: peach, cloud, and robot.  I think our table’s story was very promising!

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Brianne Johnson

 

I missed the beginning of Brianne Johnson’s talk about first pages because I was in my second critique. She is a senior agent with Writer’s House. But I don’t think I missed many minutes because what I heard made perfect sense, was very lively and filled with examples. She suggested introducing a mystery or conflict from page one of your manuscript and planting lots of scraps of mystery and conflict as part of character development, tone, setting, and action. “Little mysteries can hook you.”

Ginger Clark was a delightfully spirited and funny speaker. A senior agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd., she is particularly interested in MG and YA historical or fantasy and its world building. We had several things in common, actually:

  • Her love of historical YA and MG fiction, I’m writing an MG novel set in 1965 during integration.
  • She loves Eleanor of Aquitaine, I played her in Lion in Winter.
  • She was in drama and band when she was younger, as was I (and my heroine is a band nerd)
  • She is looking for a manuscript about Queen Boadicea, which she pronounced correctly but I knew how to spell.

Ginger compared writing a historical to packing the luggage for the characters. You have to do the research and know what fills their day and what are their habits, clothing, and environment. She encouraged us to use primary sources. Road trip! She also cautioned that you don’t do a historical just to avoid technology or on a whim; let the setting suit the story.  She used examples from published texts to show how strategic use of period terms or objects can immediately tell the reader what sort of story he/she is reading and when it occurs. “Give us a place name a kid would know—transportation, clothing, are all world-building. Choose wisely.”

The day was rounded out with a First Look panel discussion of selected first pages and art. I’m happy to say they picked my first page as one of the ones to discuss and it got some very favorable and constructive comments.

Finally, award nominees were announced and everyone found out how many of the silent auction items they’d actually won. I bid on everything! Fortunately, I only won three items, but it was great fun.

Of the two out of three critiques I received (the email one is still outstanding), I was lucky to have generally glowing comments from the lovely Crystal Allen and equally encouraging but constructive criticism from Kelly Sonnack. Yea!

The day concluded with a congenial dinner at Los Cucos. Lots of discussion and impressions from the day and generally good fun.  Congrats to the conference planning committee on a job well done.