Constructions: joyce audy zarins

Three powerful books about kids dealing with major issues. Troubled kids, wise and compassionate kids. Be Someone’s Hero is the message on a sign that foster child Carley finds in her borrowed bedroom. She’s in need of a hero herself, having just been released from the hospital after being severely beaten by her mother’s boyfriend, and not only finds that in Julie Murphy, but manages her own gestures of heroism. In Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s One for the Murphy’s (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2012), Carley is welcomed into the complex family life of good people and comes out the other side with a dilemma, but a vision of who she will become.  Each character breathes with energy and verve, there are misunderstandings, snarky moments, humor and a kind of personal sharing that Carley craves. I spent some time with the author in New York during the SCBWI conference and when I read Carley’s voice, I heard and saw Lynda.

The moment I turned the last page I wanted to be a witness to Carley’s brave story again. So, I read it out loud to my husband. There are so many books to read that I don’t normally read them twice. Carley teaches us good things about dealing.

On Friday night, during the opening presentation of the Newburyport Literary Festival, Matthew Quick of Silver Linings Playbook fame introduced us to hopeful stories of those the world has inflicted with emotional trauma. In Sorta Like a Rock Star (Little, Brown and Co. 2010) Amber Appleton may be homeless, passing nights with her alcoholic Mom in a parked school bus, but she is in her own words a “hopeful misfit.” The ideosyncratic characters she befriends – from a haiku writing ‘Nam vet to Korean church-going immigrants, handicapped kids, and the depressed denizens of an old folk home – are all improved by knowing Amber. She cajoles them into doing more, being more, but when a shocking tragedy finally bowls her over and she succumbs to the debilitating power of hopelessness, they rally in a big way, bringing the story arc to a rousing denouement. She then defiantly faces her demon, paving the way for healing. Quick, who likes to be called Q, has played with format in ways that enhance the power of the drama in the lives of these richly depicted anomalous people. I am eager to delve into his Boy 21 next.

Months ago I was swept away by John Green’s duly revered The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton, 2012). Like the many layers of delicious filo pastry, this narrative interleaves human passions with wisdom from literary greats like Shakespeare (from whence the title comes) to the annoying, fictional Peter Van Houten, formed into a delicious story laced with humor, tragedy, and the ironies of life. From the onset when Hazel meets Augustus Waters, their terminal relationship soars impelled by sparkling dialogue, gallows humor, and the romance of following their dreams in spite of the Grim Reaper’s ugly shadow. Here are young people tackling some of the most profound and universal aspects of life and death and wringing every bit of joy, empathy and meaning out of their brief time on this planet. I savored it, then went on to other books that were piled up waiting…books that had been recommended to me by good people who know. I waded 70 pages into one contemporary realistic YA, put it down and started a humorous MG, put that aside and went for a realistic supposedly funny YA by the same author, but after 45 pages I went back to the first of these. Surely my bookstore friend must be right. Maybe I just had not given it a fair chance. But somehow, the journey was not there.

So I indulged myself and re-read The Fault in Our Stars, finding even more richness in it than I had seen before. Hazel and Augustus, Amber, and Carley are my heroes. No, they don’t need to wear capes.

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Incubators help things hatch. What emerges are success stories. At an SCBWI crit group in Andover, MA fifteen people sit around a table giving input to the five presenters each month. Marianne Knowles is the well-experienced coordinator who keeps everything moving in a productive, positive direction. With that many voices, good input on developing stories happens, and everyone’s work evolves based on the discussions. Everyone also shares information on the children’s literature publishing industry. One member, Carol Gordon Ekster, told the crew about Where Am I Sleeping Tonight: A Story About Divorce , published by Boulden Publishing and Ruth the Sleuth and the Messy Room, published by Character Publishing. Soon Kirsti Call had a signed contract with Character Publishing for her picturebook The Raindrop Who couldn’t Fall. That inspired another crit buddy, Paul Czajack to submit Monster Needs a Costume to Scarletta Kids, which he heard about through the group, and the book will be released this September and he has signed commitments for more in the series. Then another crit buddy, e-mailed to say that Simon and Schuster has just picked up her middle grade novel!  What will be next?

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Denizens of the night sky, nine foot children, a steampunk moth, eerie coincidences, and electric connections between people…

SCBWI New York this past weekend was surprisingly poignant and permeated by an encouraging optimism about children’s book publishing. But first was the getting there. Kristine Asselin, co-cordinator of the SCBWI conference in New England this May 3-5, arrived with me at Grand Central Station on its 100^th birthday. Choral groups sang, bands played, while hundreds of people lined up in queues around the terminal. Why? One line for free gelato, another for a free shoeshine, and so on. Above it all, the spectacular zodiac ceiling by Paul Helleu.

The Hyatt Grand Central, with its newly redesigned lobby graced with two serene resin sculptures by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, was an ideal entranceway for a children’s book conference. Awilda and Chloe are nearly ten feet tall and are attenuated reflections on the daughters of friends of the artist.

The program for the weekend was replete with the celestials of the children’s book world: proudly snarky Meg Rosoff, charming Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, witty Margaret Peterson Haddix and hilarious Mo Willems. Lyn Oliver excelled in conference coordinating banter while Stephen Mooser (one of whose books I had illustrated years ago) played well her straight man. Tomie dePaola and Jane Yolen gave their read more »

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Jennifer Malone one of my critique group buddies, has gone from being the New England Head of Publicity and Promotion for 20th Century Fox and Miramax Films to writing for YA and MG. Jen is fun, fabulous at networking, and her stories are contemporary tales full of humor. Right after Hurricane Sandy did its thing, Jen immediatelyset up a blog and organized a successful online auction of services for writers donated by a long list of editors and authors. She is a contributing member at YAtopia. She is agented by Holly Root at Waxman Leavell Literary Agency and recently had an exciting editorial door open, which she has just announced at www.jenmalone.blogspot.com. It couldn’t happen to a better person!

JAZ: Hi Jen. Congratulations on your new position as free-lance editor. How did this come about?

Thank you! I connected with another freelance editor, Jennifer Pooley, as a result of the Hurricane Sandy auction that I organized.  She happened to see my agent tweeting about it and immediately contacted me to donate her services.  Jennifer is a former acquisitions editor at Harper Collins, so you can imagine her donated critique was much sought after.   For some time now Jennifer has been offering her editorial services to writers looking for a read more »

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This charming book by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch, which I bought in Zurich, cleverly presents its theme on the cover as a title: “Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat” on the cover. Egils translates this as “From small Mole, who wanted to know who dropped this thing on his head.” It seems that our hero stuck his head above ground to feel the warmth of the sun when something brown and shaped like a sausage dropped onto his head from above. The little Mole was quite insulted and determined to discover who was responsible for inflicting this turd upon him.

When a dove flew over, he asked her if she was responsible and she replied “I? No, why? I do it so!” and then demonstrated her white, moist type of emanation, some of which splashed onto small Mole’s foot.  He then asked a horse, then a hare whether they had dropped this thing on his head and each repeated “I? No, why? I do it so!” then demonstrated their own droppings, complete with sound effects. When he read more »

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Like Dark Striker ((Nidhogg), the dragon who was an enormous force of evil in Norse mythology, Hurricane Sandy has left a broad swath of destruction and darkness in her path. Large areas of New York and New Jersey are swamped and disconnected to an extent never seen before. The fires that reduced acres of homes in Queens were heart-wrenching.

Hurricane impact two houses away from ours.
Egils Zarins photo

The breadth of this storm was stunning. My sister-in-law in Baltimore experienced torrential rains and forty degree temperatures while we, living in a small town 45 miles north of Boston, had no power overnight due to falling trees that yanked out wiring, yet the temperature was 59 degrees. My nephew Jeremy made his way from where he lives in Texas to New York City to help restore power.  He is part of a team where he works that is sent read more »

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John Flanagan’s strengths are dramatic action, innovative conflict, and complex male characters who breathe and sweat. This fantasy adventure trilogy with a Middle Ages setting combines humor, intelligent language and complex characters to propagate a fast-paced, engaging tale awash with daring plot twists. Although mostly promoting good morals, the level of violence over these first three volumes escalates beyond what some will feel is appropriate for ten-year-olds who will read all three. There are plans for four more books.

In The Outcasts, volume 1 of the trilogy, sixteen-year-old boys are divided into teams to train as Skandian warriors. Most are excited at the prospect, read more »

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As part of my research for a historical novel about Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, we went in search of one of the places she traveled to in the early 1,000s. It was more than intriguing.

Leif Eiriksson discovered something big around 1,000 A.D. You can still see the footprints of his longhouses at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, Canada. He and his men are thought to be the first Europeans to build in North America.

But scholars argue about exactly where his Vínland is, which is puzzling. Maybe they don’t have a GPS?

His sod longhouse at Leifsbudir, which means Leif’s booths (tents) – his ironic name for these buildings with six foot thick walls – was at least twice the size of his father’s house in Greenland. You know his father… Eirik the Red, pioneer of Greenland. Leif obviously inherited his father’s place-naming humor. Gudrid, the m.c. of my YA novel, was Leif’s sister-in-law and went to Leifsbudir a couple of years after he did. It is easy to imagine her there. The small spindle whorl found by archeologists might actually have been hers.

Clayton Colbourne

The nearby peat bog provided the blocks of sod stacked over a framework of timber from the nearby forest, which is the same form of construction in Iceland and Greenland at the time. Clayton Colbourne, who grew up in the contemporary village of L’Anse aux Meadows and as a kid played on what were thought to be Indian mounds until archeologists arrived, helped build the reconstructions. It was laborious.

Inside, Egill Egilsson (aka Wade Hillier) played a lyre based on one from a Víking site in Sutton Hoo, then a flute with a single hole that elicited a lovely, lively melody, and lastly a small whistle made from a pig or sheep bone. He also had a wooden panpipe for use in a pinch. A local woman meanwhile did some mending by the longfire on one of the sleeping benches that lined the two long walls.

The blacksmith whose shop is next door showed the type of iron ore that the Norse dug from the nearby bog and a bar of smelted iron, a piece of which he then forged into a nail. In true Viking fashion, he did not bother with gloves while working the metal. Perhaps the Norse uncovered the ore while cutting the peat blocks they used for construction? The process of smelting the small, surprisingly lightweight, lumps of ore into useable iron involves felling lots of trees to make the charcoal that was used for firing up the forge. The paired bellows keep the temperature high enough that the blacksmith can work the purified iron into a nail or other item. Leif’s men made 100-200 nails in this way to repair an accident with one of their boats.

The views the Norse saw surrounding Leifsbudir are reminiscent of places in Iceland and Greenland, only better. There is plenty of fog, rain and high winds at times, and yes there are icebergs; this one is 175 feet tall by 600 feet long and grounded in 420 feet of water. But there was longer daylight and warmer temperatures in winter, and millions of flowers – irises, harebells, pitcher plants, baked apple (cloudberries), partridgeberries and some cotton grass. Dense forests called tuckamore grew near the shore and more mixed deciduous and evergreens read more »

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On May 24th, after going to a magical book launch party on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston,  I did a post about the book Willow’s Walkabout: A Children’s Guide to Boston by Sheila S. Cunningham and illustrated by Kathie Kelleher. Kathie, who is an endlessly fascinating and read more »

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For a number of years I have been collecting children’s picturebooks from other countries when I travel or friends and relatives do. It is good to be aware of the visual voices from other lands, so now and then I will post images of a few. The first entry in this series was read more »

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