The Medina Journal Register, the newspaper in the village where I grew up, ran a great article on Champlain and the Silent One today, including a lengthy Q and A that I did with the reporter. You can read it here.
Month: October 2008
Request for ideas on historical fiction & revision tips!
I’m giving two presentations at the NYS English Council’s annual conference later this month, and I wanted to ask my LJ author friends for some input.
My presentation called Historical Fiction as a Bridge to Content Area Literacy focuses on high interest historical fiction with solid historical content as well as nonfiction picture books and middle grade books that teachers can use to teach Social Studies content as well as English Language Arts. I’m in the process of adding new titles to my presentation to mix in with my regular favorites. I’ve added Laurie Halse Anderson’s historical novel CHAINS and her picture book INDEPENDENT DAMES, M.T. Anderson’s new OCTAVIAN NOTHING book, Tanya Lee Stone’s ELIZABETH LEADS THE WAY, and Jenny Moss’s WINNIE’S WAR, set during the 1918 flu epidemic.
What other NEW 2008 historical titles have you read and loved? Do any of you have new titles coming out in 2009 that would fit the bill? If so, I’d love to include them in my presentation!
My second presentation is called Walking the Walk: How Teacher-Writers Encourage Student Revision. In it, I share the ways in which my own writing has helped me to be a better (and more understanding) mentor to my students when it comes to revision. I talk about my strategies and my experiences with critique partners and editors, and I discuss how those concepts and strategies can be adapted to the classroom. Part of this workshop is a PowerPoint presentation that gives examples of how different authors like to revise.
Do you have a favorite revision strategy that you’d like to share with kids & teachers? I’d be happy to include your idea with an image of your book cover in my slide show. (Some of you were kind enough to share thoughts with me last year. Thank you! With your permission, I’ll use the same advice/slide for you unless you have a new book out that you’d like me to feature.)
Thanks, everyone, for any thoughts you choose to share!
My Fall ’09 middle grade novel has a title!!
I’m awaiting copy edits right now on my next book, a funny, contemporary middle grade novel about a Vermont girl, her quirky family, and the school leaf collection project that’s ruining her life. It’s due out with Walker Books for Young Readers in Fall 2009. The title has changed a few times, as titles sometimes do, and it’s been up in the air for a few months. Today, my delightful editor emailed to let me know we have a title!
From now on, instead of blogging about "the-novel-that-used-to-be-called-Maple-Girl," I’ll be talking about…
THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z!
Thanks to all the friends who suggested ideas and offered input. I love the new title, though I also still like my agent’s suggestion… GIANNA AND THE NO-GOOD, HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, VERY BAD TITLE.
Maybe that can be the sequel.
Book Signing this Weekend!
Happy Friday!
This is Educators Weekend at Borders Books & Music, which means a 25% discount for current & retired teachers. It also means that I’ll be signing copies of my new book, CHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE, at the Borders at Champlain Center in Plattsburgh on Saturday from 12-4.
I was at the mall yesterday to pick up shoelaces and swim goggles for the boy and peeked into Borders, you know, just to see if they had my book in stock yet. There was a GINORMOUS display of them — a table and two big racks full, to the tune about 200 books. Yikes!
The thought of hanging out all by myself with 200 books is making me a little wobbly-kneed. If you live in Northern NY, would you please stop by Borders on Saturday and say hello so it’s not just me hiding behind a big pile of historical fiction?
Thankful Thursday…a little early
I have discovered that they never, ever, ever call off middle school soccer games. Even if it’s pouring rain, cold, and windy. Even if the mom of the guy playing right defense is fighting a head cold. And so I was grumbling a little about this as I cranked the heat in the car on the way home. Then I pulled into the driveway and saw this…
…and this…
…and suddenly I’m not feeling grumbly any more.
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
I often feel sorry for people who don’t read good books;
they are missing a chance to lead an extra life.
~ Scott Corbett ~
When I think about why my favorite books are my favorites, Scott Corbett’s sentiments ring true. So many of them involve real-life places I’ve never been or fantasy worlds that I long to visit. And some introduce me to worlds that I haven’t known well but suddenly find myself wanting to explore. Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass (Little, Brown, October 1, 2008) is one of those books.
The book is set at the Moon Shadow Campground in the days surrounding a total solar eclipse, and three narrators tell the story of how their paths converge there, just as the moon’s shadow crosses the sun. There’s Ally, a self-confident, home-schooled kid who has grown up at the Moon Shadow, spending her time searching for alien signals and arranging rocks in the campground labyrinth. There’s Bree, firmly entrenched in the life of an urban middle school social butterfly until her parents drop the bomb that she’s moving to the middle of nowhere so they can work on a research project. And there’s Jack, who flunked science class and is sentenced to a summer project at the Moon Shadow with his teacher. Often, when I read a novel with multiple narrators I end up liking one better than the others and wishing the whole book were written in that voice, but that wasn’t the case here; every voice was distinct and every character so well-developed that I loved them as individuals and felt like I cared about each of their stories.
As a middle school teacher, I always get extra excited about titles that connect to the curriculum and still maintain the rich characters, plot twists, humor, and tension that keep kids reading on their own. Every Soul a Star is loaded with astronomy, presented in a way that’s accessible and compelling. It made me want to spend more time looking up at the night sky, and I found myself googling the time and location of the next total solar eclipse because this book convinced me this is something I need to see. Every Soul a Star is a perfect choice for middle school teams connecting English and Science classes, but it’s also a terrific character-driven journey to the stars that kids will enjoy on their own.