The Creature Stirs and Blinks Its Bleary Eyes

Yes, well. See. I've been sick. And in Chicago. And revising.

The dreaded Brooklin Cold turned out to be a real horror. Two weeks in, I had stopped sneezing and snorting but had a totally blocked ear and felt like hell. A month in, I'm finally feeling like myself, have almost stopped coughing and my blocked ear is crackling, which seems like a good sign.



I mean, Futureland or what?



A plane flight probably wasn't what the doctor ordered for the ol' ear drum, but other than that I had a great time at the Printers Row Lit Fest. Penguin's travel arrangements were perfection, the hotel was great, and Chicago, in case you've never been there, is GORGEOUS. Also very, very hot, but right now--sitting in Brooklin, Maine, in four layers plus a fleece vest--hot seems like a good thing.

In addition to skylines and the comparatively cool lakefront and Millennium Park, there were human beings. First, my fellow panelists Ilene Cooper, Brenda Ferber, Kristina Springer, and C. Alexander London, and our fearless moderator, Amy Alessio. And our audience, who stayed with us even though it was a million degrees in our tent and the fan was directed only at the panel. I love meeting fellow kidlit writers--makes me proud to be one. They are funny, sharp, heartfelt, and great at words, and their ethics are in the right place. Did I say funny? (I'm talking about you, C. Alexander London.)

After the panel, I got to hang out with some of the Marauders, , my online friends who are funny, sharp, heartfelt, and great at words. They're quite ethical, too. Meg, Sandi, and Sue came to the panel discussion with a couple of friends and Sandi's daughter, Kathryn. Sandy and Kathryn had flown in from Nashville to spend the weekend with Meg, who lives in Wisconsin, and Sue took the train from Detroit. After the panel we wandered down to the waterfront then over to Millennium Park, ducking into the art museum and a coffee shop when the clouds opened. I'd only met Meg online, and as usual it seemed as if we'd known each other for years. Which we have. It's just that we'd never met in person.

Here we are cooling off in genteel fashion at Crown Fountain (from left, Sandi, Meg, me, Sue).

Here's the correct behavior at Crown Fountain:

Since I got home I've been revising, revising, and revising. Also, Brooklin Youth Corps starts Monday and the garden needed attention. Also, I've been revising. Two days ago I plugged a massive plot hole, and was feeling very cocky about it until yesterday morning, when I discovered that filling the plot hole had created a plot chasm. Today I wiped out three days of theorizing and started over. I think I've got it this time. Or, anyway, I think that until tomorrow morning.

I told my editor I'd have this to her "the end of June." What month is this again?

Book Review Club: June

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@Barrie Summy

I've been sick as three dogs for the past week and a half, a last tail-lashing by The Brooklin Cold (or plague) before it leaves town for the summer. On the plus side, I've finally made a dent in my To Be Read pile--in this case, that meant revisiting my childhood, also a good thing.

While I've got your attention, a shameless plug: If you're near Chicago Saturday, drop by the Printers Row Lit Fest, where I'll be on a panel called "Elementary, Dear Watson" at 12:30 pm on the Mash Stage. I'll join Ilene Cooper, Brenda Ferber, Kristina Springer, and C. Alexander London to talk about writing for teens.

Don't forget to click the icon for more reviews!

The Good Master
By Kate Seredy
Doubleday, 1935
Scholastic paperback, 1991

To enjoy The Good Master is to question everything you think you know about what makes a good novel for children.

For example, it’s a given these days that we keep the reader with us by increasing the dramatic tension any way we can. Make Harry Potter an orphan and set a murderous wizard after him, then kill off every father figure he’s got. Make Harry feel the deaths are at least partly his fault. Violate the reader’s trust so many times that finally the reader really, truly believes that Harry might get killed off, too.

Another given: Characters must have faults.

So here’s this book, a Newbery honoree in 1936. Its author, Kate Seredy, was born and educated in Hungary, served as a nurse in World War I, then emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 to seek work as an illustrator. She wrote The Good Master after an editor at Doubleday suggested that children might be interested in tales set in the Hungary of her childhood. It won the Newbery honor; her next book, The White Stag, won the Newbery medal in 1938. The Singing Tree, a sequel to The Good Master, won another Newbery honor in 1940. Seredy wrote nine other books and illustrated countless others before her death in 1975.

One of the author's illustrations for The Good Master

I can attest that children were interested in Seredy’s Hungarian tales, because I enjoyed them myself when I was 8 or 9. I had only vague memories of them, however, and when somebody handed me The Good Master a week or so ago, I wasn’t even sure this was the same book I’d loved as a kid. Until I googled her, I had no idea that Seredy also was the author of The Chestry Oak, which I must have taken out of the library sixteen times in fourth grade.

So I re-read The Good Master as an adult—an adult who is in the middle of revising a novel, pumping up the dramatic tension every chance I get.

I became reacquainted with Jancsi, the young son of a prosperous rancher on the Hungarian plains, and his madcap city cousin, Kate, who comes to live with his family. I revisited Jancsi’s perfect parents and their salt-of-the-earth shepherds, horsemen, and farmhands, riding out on the plains with them and listening to folk tales by the fire. We celebrated Easter. We went to a country fair. Not exactly tense.

Kate is the only major character with real flaws, and they are attractive ones: “She’s the most impossible, incredible, disobedient, headstrong little imp,” her father writes, pleading with his brother to give her some fresh air and discipline. Minutes after we meet her, she’s running off with a wagon and a team of horses.

Kate quickly settles into farm life, however. She and Jansci have a couple of adventures with rampaging horses and river currents. Kate exposes a charlatan at the fair. The major incident, a potentially stirring one, is Kate’s kidnapping by a band of stereotypically swarthy, good-for-nothing gypsies.


The original cover

 We hear most of that tale from Kate herself, after the fact when she’s already been rescued. It’s a bit of a wet firecracker, causing me to spend several fruitless minutes imagining what might have been and wondering if Seredy's editor thought kids couldn't take the pressure. (She'd faint today.)

An hour later, the book ended with a couple of cloyingly sentimental “surprises” that had been telegraphed for pages. I set it down, sighed … and realized to my surprise that I was a completely satisfied, blissful reader.



Huh? How on earth did Seredy do that?

Heart, that’s how. Seredy didn’t just write this book, she felt it. So what if Jansci’s father—the “good master” of the title—has no faults. That’s how Seredy remembers men of his type. She’s not cynical about it, she’s not giving us what she thinks we want and will pay for. She’s giving us everything she’s got in her heart.

It’s interesting that the one vision that stuck with me all these years—a moment when Jansci’s father stands there getting soaked in a drought-ending rain, arm outstretched, face to heaven—turns out to be a minor incident in the book. The drought and attendant fears take up about four pages of text. But it struck me hard as a kid—I was so involved with these people that Seredy didn’t need to go on for pages to tell me how fragile their lives could be.

I was in Hungary at that moment, transported out of my eight-year-old self. That’s the power of a good book, and I guess I’ll trade it for dramatic tension any day.

If I can't have both, that is.

An Urban Sojourn

Hooray for mind over matter. Rob had a terrible cold last week, and I ran around obsessively washing my hands in hopes of getting through the weekend without hacking and snorting and snuffling. I made it--the cold felled me the instant I got home Monday night. I spent yesterday in bed feeling sorry for myself, but thrilled that I hadn't sneezed all over Tatnuck Booksellers, various South Bostonians (Southies?) and my friend Larry, who gamely put me up in Cambridge even though he's madly preparing for graduation. (He administers Quincy House at Harvard.)

Health issues aside, I had a wonderful weekend. The highlight was Monday's visit to the Oliver Hazard Perry School in South Boston, where I sat in on seventh-grade classes (researching my dear Conor and his banshee) and then led workshops with some of the most delightful fourth and fifth graders I've ever met.

We did the Character Chase, an exercise in which we ask and answer 20 questions about a character, then chart his/her life so far, looking for a story. It gets very noisy, but it's a total hoot. The fourth graders' character was born in Spain and came to Boston in a shipment of garbage --who knew Spain was dumping its refuse here? He ended up being adopted and becoming a ballet dancer, so it all ended well.

The fifth graders' character almost shot his father and came down with AIDS, but they had pity on him in the end. He did jack a car, but he didn't get caught.

Here are the fourth graders:

And here are the fifth graders:

The young woman at right is holding the edited manuscript for THE UNNAMEABLES, exhibit A when talking about the importance of revision.

Speaking of which,  I spent Friday and Sunday evenings chatting with South Boston natives to make sure I'm not misrepresenting Southie too badly in Conor's tale. I was suprised at the number of things I have right, but I do have some alterations to make. My major mistake is that I forgot all about busing and the school lottery (amazing for someone who lived in Boston when Louise Day Hicks was in the headlines). Everyone was very generous with time and insights, and I'm tremendously grateful to them and to Kim Simonian for organizing it all.

The original idea for the weekend, of course, was the Five Fantasy Authors appearance at Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough. The sun came out Saturday for one friggin' day in a long stretch of clouds and rain, so we spoke to a select group. But we had a great time anyway, and got to be on hand when Dawn Metcalf caught her first sight of LUMINOUS, her debut novel. It publishes June 30, so she hadn't expected any copies to be there and in fact hadn't received any herself.

Here she is, in the first flush of romance:

And here we all are (from left: Dawn, me, Marissa Doyle, Kate Milford, Deva Fagan).

Good times, good times.

Now I just have to get over this cold before I go to Chicago the weekend after next. Nothing like a panel discussion when you're deaf as a post from cold-ridden plane flight. I now know what my Printers Row Lit Fest gig will be, by the way: I'll be in a panel discussion called "Elementary, My Dear Watson" with fellow teen-lit authors Ilene Cooper, Brenda Ferber, Kristina Springer, and C. Alexander London. We'll be at The Mash Stage (the venue devoted to teenagers) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, June 4.If you're in the Chicago area we'd love to see you!

The Revision Report: I know what I have to do. Now it's just a matter of doing it.

The Knitting Report: You're kidding, right? But I did wear my newest cotton socks (purple!) to Boston. I felt very glamorous. (Not really. I mean, they are purple cotton and I was wearing them with sandals.)

The Sound of One Mouth Flapping

I'm going to be hearing the sound of my own voice a fair amount over the next two or three weeks, not always a good thing. Fortunately, the first Sound of Ellen's Voice Event (SOEVE?) was one town over at Blue Hill Consolidated School, where the readers are brilliant.

Here they are:

They even look smart, don't they? Librarian Beth Jackson and teacher Maryanne Lewandowski host an after-school book group every spring, and this year they read THE UNNAMEABLES, mostly in its shiny new paperback edition although some had the hardcover.  (That's Beth in the photo above, wearing red. Her husband used to be my dentist, until he retired. Such is life on the Blue Hill Peninsula.)

These kids were fantastic--lots and lots of varied and intelligent questions, ranging from "why a Goatman" (answer: chaos and humor) to "do you have anything to do with the cover" (answer: no, but I've been lucky with the ones I've gotten).

Maryanne even made nutcakes! (That's Goatman food.) And they served Red Keeping Fruit (apple) pie and tea, Medford's drink of choice. The mother of one of the kids made nutcakes, too. Here's Maryanne (right) dispensing the goodies:

Thanks for the good time, BHCS!

Next stop, also in Blue Hill, is the George Stevens Academy arts week. GSA is a private school that functions as a public high school for area towns, mine among them. Arts Week is a venerable and AMAZING institution--an entire week devoted to workshops taught by local artists and craftspeople. I'll be doing a writing workshop Wednesday morning: "Lightning Round for Writers," focusing on five or ten-minute exercises to get your ideas flowing and introduce you to your characters.

On Saturday (meaning May 21) I'm joining four other Inkies (fantasy authors involved in The Enchanted Inkpot blog) at Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough, MA, to discuss "How to Build a Fantasy." Marissa Doyle, Deva Fagan, Dawn Metcalf, and Kate Milford will join me in discussing the various components of a fantasy as well as our experiences in publishing. ETA: forgot to say, it starts at 2:30 p.m. And--duh--I've added a link for the bookstore so you can get directions.

Also next weekend, I'll be hanging around South Boston doing research for CONNOR'S BANSHEE, The amazing Kim Simonian, who lives in Dorchester, has arranged drinks Friday night and Sunday dinner with various South Bostonians. Kim's the niece of Ann Logan, who's in my writers group, and obviously is a formidible organizer.

I'll spend Monday at Oliver Hazard Perry Elementary School in South Boston, sitting in on classes and eating lunch with any kids who will let me ask searching questions such as "What's your favorite candy? Do you ride a bike?" Then I'll do a couple of workshops with fourth and fifth graders.

Then I'll drive home for six hours. Then I suspect I'll crash. But not forever, because the first weekend in June I'll be doing some unspecified something at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago. No word  yet on when or what, but I'll post it as soon as I know.

The Knitting Report: I'm one toe away from another pair of cotton socks. This one I knitted on circular needles so the cuff looks MUCH neater. I'm going to go down a needle size for the next pair and see what happens. Life on the edge.

The Revision Report: I may be able to finish this round before I go to Boston, which would be great because that means I'll have a few built-in days off before I print it out, read it, and fine tune. At least I hope fine-tuning will be all it'll need. *shivers*

We Visit the Sunrise County

On Monday, my friend Alice hijacked me for a trip Downeast to Lubec, which is as far east as you can go in the U.S. Lubec does not let you forget this fact: There are signs everywhere telling you that this is the easternmost place where you can do whatever it is that you're doing and still remain on U.S. soil. I was expecting a sign like that in the outhouse at West Quoddy Head Light, but was disappointed.

Alice pulled off a particularly skillful hijacking, since I drove. I like driving. I especially like driving Downeast, where there is practically no traffic and therefore no one to mind if you slow down and gawk. (Not the case around here, especially at Blue Hill Falls, where we regularly shake our fists at summertime visitors who slow down to 5 mph just when we are late for the dentist.) (I hasten to add that I did try to speed up or get out of the way if someone came up behind me.)

Washington County, where Lubec is located, is a large and relatively empty place, often billed as the Maine county most in need of jobs and economic development. It includes two Passamoquoddy reservations, at Pleasant Point and Indian Island, plus a University of Maine campus in Machias.

It's called the Sunrise County, but it's gorgeous even in the rain. Good thing, because yesterday couldn't decide whether to rain or rain like hell.

I'd seen tons of pictures of West Quoddy Head--many of them exactly like the one I took at right--but had never been there. It is spectacular, and I plan to return, possibly in better weather. There's an amazing trail from the lighthouse along the cliffs:

And another that takes you to a lovely little boardwalk over a bog full of pitcher plants. (Easternmost open bog in the U.S., the sign says.)

I've never seen so many pitcher plants in one place. (Click on the photo to appreciate close-up)

Eager for foreign travel, we crossed the bridge to Campobello Island, Canada. We drove past the Roosevelt homestead, but our main goal -- Alice being a foodie AND an anglophile -- was a grocery store so we could gape at all the British stuff labeled in French. Alice bought candy bars, and the guy at the register said she had to have a Coffee Crisp, which Nestle makes only in Canada. Apparently they're much in demand, because when we drove back into the U.S. and told the customs guy we'd bought candy bars but didn't open the bag, he said knowledgeably,  "Oh. Coffee Crisp."

Frankly, they were a bit sweet for my taste. But they were satisfyingly crisp, so one out of two ain't bad.

Here's the bridge, with a little bit of typical Lubec next to it. (Lubec really is not thriving.)

Here's the place on Campobello which thrilled us most, discovered by mistake after we got lost heading out of the grocery store. (Well, not exactly lost. We were exploring and got turned around funny, not having a map and not understanding how the coastline worked.) Anyway, this is Head Harbor, a busy fishing port, which means the island economy doesn't rely on tourists and retirees, which is all to the good.

And here are the intrepid travelers. I'm on the West Quoddy Head trail, Alice at the lighthouse with its distinctive red stripes.

May Book Review Club

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@Barrie Summy

It's spring! My eyes are itching like crazy and yesterday I met a black fly. I'm revising my first draft, alternately singing and sighing. And yet, I read. It's a sickness.

Don't forget to click the icon to find the rest of the May reviews!

Chime
By Franny Billingsley
Penguin/Dial Books for Young Readers
2011
I had no intention of ever reviewing this book, nor do I have any business reviewing it now. Franny Billingsley and I have the same editor, the miraculous Kathy Dawson at Dial Books for Young Readers. Kathy’s assistant, Claire Evans, sent CHIME to me out of the blue when I innocently (really! I swear!) said I was looking forward to reading it.

I'm totally prejudiced, but I can’t help myself. This book is marvelous. So sue me, FCC.

YA fantasy is choked with stories of girls coming to grips with their powers and fighting off evil. The one big difference here is the narrator’s voice—well, everyone’s voice. Oh, and the utterly original collection of supernatural elements. And the characters, who are quirky yet human, plus the setting, which is eerie and gorgeous.

“Rich” was the word that kept coming to mind as I read. Also “sepia.” Atmosphere is everything in this book. If you don’t count voice and characters and story and setting and supernatural elements.

Okay, let’s just say it’s the writing.

“The wind smacked at everything. It smacked the river into froth. It smacked the willow branches into whips. It smacked the villagers into streamers of hair and shawls and shirttails. The wind didn’t smack us up, though, not the Larkin family. We were buttoned and braided and buckled and still.”

The narrator is Briony, one of the lovely twin daughters of a village clergyman at a time when railroads are laying claim to the English countryside. She’s funny, depressed, smart, self-deprecating, honest and totally deluded.

“Adults tend to view me as being mature beyond my years. I think it has partly to do with being a clergyman’s daughter, partly to do with looking after Rose, and partly to do with being rather clever. But I can’t take any credit; I’m stuck with all of it.”

Briony hates herself. She believes she is a witch, evil enough to have damaged her beloved twin’s brain and enabled her beloved stepmother’s death. At seventeen, she has sentenced herself to a lifetime of taking care of Rose, her gently addled sister, and never, ever being happy.

“Rose hates any bit of clothing that constricts, but I say, Chin up and bear it. Life is just one big constriction.”

Briony lives in the town of Swampsea, next to a swamp governed by the Old Ones: spirits who, like nature itself, can kill you if you cross them. There are Horrors and Reed Spirits and the Dead Hand, all intent on dragging the foolish wanderer under the muck. There are Dark Muses, who feed on a man’s talents until he’s drained to death. There’s the Boggy Mun, whose anger at the railroad’s plans to drain his swamp has inflicted the town with “swamp cough.”

Into this dank life comes Eldric, a failed college student whose father plants him at the parsonage to settle him down. Eldric is lively, funny, and fashionable, not the irascible Briony’s type at all. And yet she is drawn to him, and apparently he to her. Their relationship, with its humor and shocks and life-changing effects, is a bright thread in the darkness.

“If I could love anything, I’d love the swamp,” Briony says. She stays away from it because she alone can hear the Old Ones, and letting anyone know about that gift could get her hanged as the witch she knows she is. But she’s compelled to return when Rose contracts the swamp cough, making a perilous bargain with the Boggy Mun that could end up at the gallows.

The plot twists off from there, and by the end it’s the characters and the reader who are drained, not the swamp. I don’t have time to read it again but I’m going to. I’d suggest you read it, too.

A word on the cover: Gorgeous design, perfect model. Too much make-up and hair product, though. Briony spent her childhood tramping the swamp, earning the nickname “wolfgirl.” She would not wear eye-liner. And I can tell you from personal experience: Hair product is murder in a buggy swamp.

This and That, Here and There

Good news:

I love maple buds this time of year--they rival the fuschia for color and lavish shape. They're just starting to pop--right on schedule, unlike last year's early spring. My sinuses hate it, but the rest of me is dancing.

When we moved to Maine was the first time I was aware of red maples--growing up, the abundant maples around our house in Massachusetts were sugar maples or Norway maples, and budded out in yellowish-green. My first spring in Brooklin was a revelation--the maple flowers were crimson, other trees bronze, still others various shades of yellow and green. I'd had no idea that spring could be as colorful as autumn.

And don't talk to me about the gold and purple finches. They're so bright they could blind you right now. Anything to attract the ladies, hey guys?

Even better news:



I went to Belfast (the one in Maine, not involving plane flight) earlier this week, where I met with the public library's middle-school reading group organized by children's services director Jane Thompson (that's her, standing up). They'd read SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS, so I got to talk about where the idea for Durindana came from and all that. I was delighted that the two boys in the group (one had to leave before I took the picture), apparently had no objection to reading a book with a girl protagonist and a bunch of Small Persons with Wings--contrary to the accepted wisdom.

I talked to Jane's middle-grade group a couple of years ago when THE UNNAMEABLES came out, and now those kids are in a separate group reading young-adult books. It's a credit to Jane and the library that this is how Belfast kids choose to spend their afternoons.

Jane also gives the kids healthy snacks of fruit and pretzels. I'm ashamed to say that I took cookies.

The knitting report: Socks, still. I went to Bangor and loaded up on cotton yarn, so eventually I'll be able to throw out my worn-out cotton socks and replace them with lovely handmade ones. Or maybe not so lovely. But functional. 

The writing report: I'm still revising. Some unspecifiable something is wrong with one section--I keep thinking I've figured it out, then it turns out that some mysterious Something Else is still wrong. I plan to finish this first pass-through in about a week, set it aside for a few days, then print it out and start over. Tra-la, tra-la. Still dancing.

The fashion report: If you watched the royal wedding, didn't you love the young royal with the Belgian waffle/pretzel/flying buttress/godknowswhat growing out of her forehead? I vacillate between admiring her courage and wondering what on earth her family was thinking to let her go out in public like that. And wondering why she wasn't cross-eyed.

Guess I've forgotten the Seventies. Just as well.

Edited to add: This is the one I mean.