I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

Heading for Hamline University - my flight takes off at 10am - for their MFA in writing for children and young adults. Ten days of lectures and workshops and notes and campus dining hall food. It'll be like walking back in time ten years to those stressful blissful college days, but with WiFi.

More later. Must eat breakfast.

Timeless Girl Survival Story

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George. 1972.

One of the first books I read in my 6th grade accelerated reading program, I reread it in college and read it again for this program. My first time through I fell in love with the wolves and the adventure-story elements of the book. My second time through I realized Julie was married! Oh my word! And ran away because her husband tried to rape her! My third time through, I noted much more:

• Plotting: George starts us off after much of the story’s action has taken place. Julie has run away, is lost, is starving, desperately needs these wolves. Although there are brief hints of the trouble Julie fled, there are no sustained flashbacks until deep into the book (in Part II). 
• Setting: The amount of research that went into this book is amazing. Wolf-speak, Julie’s dialect, culturally specific attitudes and views. George is not native Eskimo, but if you told me she was, I wouldn’t doubt it for an instant. 
• A conflict between showing and telling. Often Julie’s fears are told outright. Fear runs up her spine, she questions things internally. But the larger themes of the book are shown. She notices the gussak decorations of her father’s woman; he says he owns a plane. The author never connects her father’s plane with Amaroq’s death because it’s unnecessary. Or is it? The ending was a confusing muddle to me the first time I read this book. She found her father? But left him? Huh? Why? An adult reader will connect the dots in the beautifully laid gestalt, but a young reader might not. 
• The final line bugs me as much as The Giver’s does: so does Miyax point her boots toward Kapugen her father or Kapugen her wolf? And does “point her boots” mean that’s where she’s headed? The age of the Eskimo is over, she’s giving up, she’s returning to her wolf-murdering, sold-out father? This is horrifying to me, as horrifying as the thought that the boy in The Giver stumbles upon “an echo” of civilization and freezes to death in the wilderness. What did the author intend? How can an author end a book well, leave room for interpretation, yet satisfy readers? Or is this particular reader especially thick? Could be.

Absolutely Nothing To Say

I'm typing this on a little wee mini computer (netbook, technically). Mostly to see if the clickly computer keys are going to start sending shockwaves of pain up through my fingertips. So what should I type while I try to figure out if my fingers will explode? Hmmm. I don't know.

unrelated, but pretty

We got rid of our dog. He was insane. No, seriously, he was. See, way back last Christmas we went off to church and came home to poor Fisher barking away in the office. I went in to see that he'd knocked over a bookshelf and torn up the carpet. Yes, a little doggie remodeling. Well, since then we had a flood and got the carpet replaced, so that was nice enough. But imagine my horror when, after leaving the dog for half hour after supper (forgetting to let him out - my bad) I came home to find Lake Pisser on the boy's newly-carpeted bedroom floor? We'd already had the carpet cleaners out to clean up an, ahem, accident on that floor, and now we had them out again. $100. JOY! Another brief without-dog outing and we returned to find Fish's favorite (new) stuffed toy chewed to bits; and another Maggie's met the same sad fate. And then we started tying crazy dog when we left home. Until he ate through the leash.

portrait of our x-dog's soul - sort of Dorian Gray

Now all of this could be considered funny in a Marley and Me sort of way. But Fisher was also growing more bizarre. Skittery, fearful. Not so unusual - he's a skittery, fearful dog (of everything from toy cars to wicker baskets). He no longer greeted Dr. D with happy doggie wag, rather he'd slink up to him, bowing and fawning. This did not go over well with anyone, particularly Dr. D, who doesn't appreciate fawning and bowing. At all. Especially in a dog big enough to rip his arms off.

So, Fisher is gone. Interestingly, when we asked the kids what they'd feel if we got rid of Fisher, they all said, "Yeah! Get rid of Fisher!" Hmmm. That should be telling me something, shouldn't it.

Hmm. And my thumb hurts a little from clicking the space bar, but is this going to be a problem? Is it any harder of a punch than my regular computer? It's not at all like the desktop with the keyboard of death that felt like my fingertips were pounding burning spikes. Or maybe the problem is not so much with the keyboard as it is with my fingers. That sounds ... painful, and expensive to fix.

But will I be able to type reliably on this little bugger? Will this be able to replace my glorious ThinkPad for writing tasks? Oy. I am too nervous about my upcoming trip to decide. And what's with the lack of spellcheck anyway?

Fire and Brimstone (Journals)

The Brimstone Journals by Ron Koertge. 2001.

A novel in verse. First person with various voices and stories that weave in and out of one another all culminating in one hate-filled young man’s desire to blow away everyone on his sh@t list. Brilliant, beautiful.

Ok, this is horrible to say, but Columbine sort of ruined it. This story is so much better as fiction. Well, that’s not so horrible. Columbine would be better as fiction. I’m sure the families involved wish it were too. But these poems are moving and amazing. I only wished for a little more. More of everyone and all their lives and stories.

I thought the anorexic, in particular, was thinly drawn. (*groan*) 

Racial Harmony in Picture Book Form

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson. Putnum, 2001.

Beautiful, moving, inspiring. Woodson writes with a lovely, authentic voice and tells a story of hope for racial reconciliation by showing instead of telling. The fence is an obvious metaphor, but the symbolism could easily transcend race and encourage harmony and healing in other areas as well.

Delightful, timeless illustrations take the book from the here and now which, somehow, makes it all the easier to apply the lesson to our current circumstances. In the end the girls don’t break the rules of segregation, they just find a way around them, all to the mother’s wonder at their ingenuity. Lesson learned: creativity and persistence can overcome any obstacle.

Little Girls in Two Straight Lines

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. 1939.

Sweet Matisse-like illustrations with a strong plot. Madeline is characterized as being fearless, but she cries at her pain (her appendix!), so the severity of her illness is obvious. Everyone’s concern for her is touching and makes boarding school a little less lonely.

The rhyme is more organic than sing-song, which greatly enhancing read-aloud pleasure. 

The commentary on cultural expectations for girls brought out in Inside Picture Books (Yale Nota Bene) (Spitz) was interesting, however. I too had noted the slight phallic nature of the nuns, but I thought it was just me.

I'm so Frankweilerely Mixed Up!

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by EL Koningsburg. Aladdin, 1967.

The story of a girl (and her brother) running away to find herself. The plot is not as tidy as Because of Winn Dixie, which was wonderful. The story is told in Mrs. BEF’s voice and her telling, so smooth and easy, is the perfect way to get inside both children’s heads and facilitates perfectly this mystery set-up. And since Mrs. BEF is an adult, every detail is believable. Also her sharp (sardonic?) voice, which is similar to Claudia’s, perhaps provides early foreshadowing, a mirroring of theme. Some other thoughts:

• I loved the theme of finding oneself.
• The mother in me was tormented by the thought of children missing for a full week, and the letter that never made it home? Why not? This is never answered.
• It all comes together (minus the letter) for an emotionally and logically satisfying solution.
• It strikes me that the story is ahead of its time for the 1960s and is oddly timeless despite the solid setting. It reminded me, too, quite a lot of The Westing Game (which is a unique and fascinating puzzle book for the same reading level).