2008 Cuffies

How can you resist categories like these?

Book You Couldn't Shut Up About
Savvy

Book You Wish Everyone Would Shut Up About
Twilight

Great, great list.

January Reading Log

Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angel's Den, by Janet & Geoff Benge
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
Savvy, by Ingrid Law
The Story Girl, by L.M. Montgomery
Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy Sayers
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
The Reluctant Widow, by Georgette Heyer
The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery
KJ Bible: 2&3 John, Jude, Revelation

Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Story Girl

Unlike The Blue Castle, which I’ve read over and over until I can almost quote it backwards, it’s been a while since I’ve perused The Story Girl. The experience was pure, unadulterated delight.

You probably remember Disney’s Tales from Avonlea series—Sara Stanley, the various King cousins, all running around the beautiful farms of Prince Edward Island. They are the characters of The Story Girl.

There are divergences, of course, but the main flavor is the same. I absolutely adore the flavor. The Kings are a tightly-knit family, but their branches span a broad kingdom. Aunt Olivia, Uncle Roger, Uncle Alec, who tell stories of Uncle Edward, the celebrated minister, Aunt Julia, the world-famous singer, Uncle Stephen, Uncle Felix, Aunt Felicity, now gone, Uncle Alan in South America … the young cousins are wrapped in the warm, belonging arms of a large family’s tales and memories.

I think that aspect really stood out to me, as I thought of my own six siblings, and what our descendants will think of each other. No doubt we’ll swarm with cousins, as well. And I hope they’ll echo Sara’s sentiments: “I’ve often thought what a dreadful thing it would have been if Grandfather and Grandmother King had never got married to each other. I don’t suppose there would have been a single one of us children here at all; or if we were, we would be part somebody else and that would be almost as bad.”

The novel is episodic, and episodically perfect. I still remember the first time I read of all the aunts and uncles and cousins trickling into the orchard at the end of a long day, when their work was finally done, sitting in the grass telling bygone stories, singing old songs, and then Uncle Alec breaking out into the 90th psalm. My since-favorite psalm. Gives me the shivers.

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.... For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.... For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength, labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away.... So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.... Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.... And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it."

The Story Girl is an ideal read-aloud book. A new story in each chapter, with brilliantly funny scrapes and exchanges between siblings and cousins. It never ceases to amaze me what a genius Maud Montgomery was.

(Note: The photo was taken in PEI, of the real Rachel Ward’s blue chest.)

Read for the L.M. Montgomery Challenge

Now That I'm Not Writing ...

... creative energy is practically dripping down my back.

Ergo, I've taken up sewing.

I abhorred sewing for seven long years in 4-H. But this month, for some strange, unfathomable reason, I'm adoring it. Perhaps because of my fabric:

Main fabric for quilt #1:











Main fabric for quilt #2:










That's right. TWO quilts. I already have the first one pieced. Since last week. And as soon as I'm done with the matryoshka quilt, I'll haul out The Jonah Bottle again. But this sewing break is absolutely wonderful. How weird.

I'm Up at Novel Journey Today

My thoughts on the Newbery.

ALA Youth Media Awards!!!!

Me sitting in front of my computer watching twitter updates was like my dad sitting in front of the TV watching the Superbowl (more on that tomorrow).

Shrieks of joy:

JELLICOE ROAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And yelling at the officials:

WHAT?!? Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom?!?! Nation?? ARE YOU CRAZY?

It was so much fun.

And then the long-drumrolled Newbery revelation:

The Graveyard Book.

Huh.

Interesting. A "fun" Newbery.

Veeerrrry interesting, after all the talk about inaccessible winners. I'm buying it today, then.

Honors: The Underneath. I got that one right, at least.

And Savvy!!!!!!!

I stayed up late reading Savvy JUST LAST NIGHT!! I LOVED it!!! How cool. As I was reading it, I thought, wouldn't it be funny if this got something? And it did!!

I've never liked the Printz much, so it was weird to have read 4 of the 5 selections (Nation, Tender Morsals, Frankie, and JELLICOE ROAD!!!) and to ADORE the winner.

The Morris winner, also: A Curse Dark as Gold. So cool to have interviewed the author before she was officially hot ticket.

My faith in humanity (at least, the ALA committee) has been restored.

Prince Edward Island

Since reading The Blue Castle and The Story Girl for the L.M. Montgomery Challenge, I've gone back and looked at all my PEI photos ...

Journal excerpts:

Dreaming of Prince Edward Island, age 14:

When I grow up, one of my Blue Castles is to live in a little cottage in England or Prince Edward Island and write, all by myself. A little stone cottage, with lovely flowers and stepping stones up to the door and a little round window above the door.

Visiting Prince Edward Island, age 18:

I cannot believe I am sitting on steps that overlook the sea and pines and copper-red dunes. I cannot believe I'm on Prince Edward Island. The wind is chilly and trailing light fingers over the water, but I just saw a rainbow stretched overhead, so I'm reconciled to a little shivering. No wonder Montgomery wrote so much nature into her books … looking around, nature's all I want to describe. The spiky sea grass is emerald against the blue, blue water and red sand, even redder in its wetness, I think. Clouds out over the pines, far down the bay, are piling themselves into white mountains. Two crows are getting saucy in the pines above me … my toes are itching to explore the bend in the shore.

When I stood at Maud's grave, it gave me a queer jolt to realize she was real, and was below my feet. And to think of the legacy she left … a legacy to writers, teaching them to see lives as valuable … single existences as having worth and meaning, small things as mattering greatly. She teaches through her heroines to watch for little events and discover their great beauty.

The sun is peeking through the pines above me, landing a bright topaz pattern on a bit of sand. Each time the waves lap, they seem to be saying "last … day … last … day…" But I'm not as sad as I thought I would be. I'm not desolate. For, deep down inside, I know I'll be back. Someday I'll stand here again, listening to crows bickering and water swaying and watching scallops glide past ruby cliffs. The trees will still be here, whispering. And the water will never have stopped breaking shore. My island will wait for me. Goodbye until then.

All in a Day's Work

Overheard two guys writing a resume on the library computers ... one was an honorably-discharged Marine, about 25.

"We're fighting in Iraq because we finally got a president who was ready to kick some butt. Now we got one who's probly gonna let the world fall apart."

Anon.

On the library's magnetic poetry board:

my boy friend is not in love with me

Bookshelf Meme

Tagged by Sarah M.
.
The Rules:
Hang the rules
.
.
Bookshelf Meme

Tell me about the book that has been on your shelf the longest.

I don't know which ones my mother bought first, but we still have all the stories she gathered around me as a child. A New Coat for Anna, The Maggie B., Fritz and the Wild Horses, The Big Alfie and Annie Rose Storybook, Blueberries for Sal, Catch Me and Kiss Me and Say it Again, Sloppy Kisses, Stone Soup (Marcia Brown), Caps for Sale, Thunder Cake, Hazel's Amazing Mother, Much Bigger Than Martin, Dogger, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Clown of God, The Paper Bag Princess, Make Way for Ducklings ... did I say "gathered" around me? Perhaps I should have said "stacked."

Tell me about a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (i.e. a person, a place, a time, etc.)

Sometimes I remember exactly where I was when I was reading a certain book, and when I revisit that place, the memory of the book comes flooding back. Sitting in a second cousin's closet on Christmas Eve, reading An Acceptable Time, in the bathtub with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (before I dropped it), at my aunt's old house with The Blue Castle ... and there's a certain patch of woods that I pinned as a visual when I was reading Trixie Belden's Happy Valley Mystery. Every time I drive past those woods, I think of Trixie.

Tell me about a book you acquired in some interesting way (gift, serendipity in a used book store, prize, etc.)

I won $50 in my very first story contest when I was 16 or 17, and decided to spend it on books, because that was what Emily Starr did with her first earnings. I bought The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and inscribed this quote inside:

"Emily has those Parkmans yet–somewhat faded and frayed now, but dearer to her than all the other volumes in her library." ~Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery

Tell me about the most recent addition to your shelves.

My birthday was in December, and my dad was going to take me shopping at Macys. But knowing how painful that would be for both of us, I said, "Why don't you take me to Barnes and Noble instead?" The result was Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, and a new copy of A Countess Below Stairs, by Eva Ibbotson (I'd given my old copy away).

Tell me about a book that has been with you to the most places...

I don't know about most places ... but I took Millions, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, when I went to Kiev. So that's the book that's traveled farthest with me.

Tell me about a bonus book that doesn't fit any of the above questions.

How about, what's on my to-be-read bookshelf now? Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, Savvy, by Ingrid Law, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, and Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens.

Quote from Orthodoxy

Read this book. Seriously. Don't make me quote the whole thing at you.

"But imagine what it would be like to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be the living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before."

The Side That Wins the Battle Writes the History

As Hitler's power grew in 1933, the first Jews to lose their jobs were teachers and writers. Not surprising. The hands that hold the pencils rule the world.

And those same hands, on the winning side of a war, write--or should I say, rewrite--history for their descendants.

I find it interesting that the incoming political team is turning to Abraham Lincoln to set the stage for the Obama presidency.

The LA Times writes, "Before boarding the train for his "whistle-stop'' journey to the capital, Obama delivered a brief but inspirational address that evoked not only the fathers of American independence, but also the emancipator of slaves and protector of the American union whose model he will invoke all day and into his inaugural celebration, Abraham Lincoln...

With an official theme for the festivities taken from the Gettysburg Address, Obama will appear at the martyred president's memorial for a televised concert on Sunday and take the oath of office on Tuesday on a Bible used by Lincoln – and even attend an official inaugural luncheon featuring favorite Lincoln foods."

If the Times writer--if Obama's political team!--had been raised on textbooks written by Southern, rather than Northern writers, they might view Lincoln in a different light. They might not be so eager to bring up our 16th president, who was sometimes found saying things you never read in grade school:

"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."

—4th Lincoln-Douglas debate, September 18th, 1858; Collected Works Vol. 3, pp. 145-146

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: “It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!”

Ah, but it is also within their power to create the lie.

"Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil." Ephesians 5:15, 16

The Hand That Holds the Pencil Rules the World

I've been reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy this month, underlining nearly every page and shaking my head in amazement. There are too many stupendous quotes to share, but a great visual popped into my head when I read this one. You've probably seen the images compared before, but it just goes to show what a wise man Chesterton was, way back in 1908.

"It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press."

Write Back Soon

Some people have boyfriend lists. I keep track of pen pals.

I got my first at the age of nine. Young as I am, e-mail barely existed back then, so I launched into a steady diet of pencil, paper and hand-cramps. On the credit side, though, I had a new friend. It was good.

Years passed, and instead of moving on to new hobbies, I acquired more pen pals, both foreign—“a girl, from a different state, who likes horses”—and familiar—“You’re moving?!? I’ll write you every day!!!”

There was Rachel, who introduced me to The Scarlet Pimpernel, Madison, who sent me an Eiffel Tower from Paris, Kelly, who co-wrote the novel we began at age twelve, and Brittney, best friend forever. There was Alicia, who came to visit once, and Hope, who wrote me just last week.

I’ve had one eye on the mailbox for thirteen years, but the labor has not been in vain. My writing skills evolved constantly as I juggled three or four conversations a month, long, juicy dialogues full of health and weather and piffle.

“Nothing,” says Jean Webster, in her novel, Daddy-Long Legs, “so fosters facility in literary expression as letter writing.”

Edith Schaeffer agrees. “It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person’s eyes alone!” She continues, in The Hidden Art of Homemaking, “The person who is feeling frustrated because he cannot have a writing career, yet is not writing a profusion of letters, is really putting his personality in [a] restrictive cast….”

Many authors have found this to be true. L.M. Montgomery, famed author of Anne of Green Gables, carried on a forty-year correspondence with Ephraim Weber, a man she never met, but whose friendship became an intellectual mainstay during her literary development.

C.S. Lewis also kept up a prolific correspondence, with friends and admirers alike. Volumes of his letters have been published, including Letters to Children, which contains this very important piece of advice: “If you are only interested in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about.”

Authors who burrow into their stories, shooting brief e-mails to critique partners when they want to detail (or bemoan) progress—these authors will eventually find it difficult to share the full wonder of joy and pain they see in the world around them, because they will not be in the habit of sharing.

True, thoughtful letter-writing inevitably improves prose. And occasionally, it pays off in more tangible forms. Once upon a time, a middle-aged woman sent an illustrated letter to the five-year-old son of a former governess, in which she told the story of a naughty little rabbit. That woman was Beatrix Potter, and that story became The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

“This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me,” scribbled Emily Dickinson, in 1862. For eighty-three years, those words remained private, heard only by a minuscule circle of friends. Today, they’re heard by millions.

Speak to one person … then another … and another ….

Someday, you will speak to the World.

My Favorite Writing Advice

From none other than C.S. Lewis. I came across this list several years ago, in a letter to a schoolgirl in America, and it continues to delight and instruct.

(1) Turn off the Radio.

(2) Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.

(3) Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You sh[ou]d. hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.

(4) Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are only interested in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about. . . .)

(5) Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn't, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know - the whole picture is so clear in your mind that you forget that it isn't the same in his.

(6) When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

(7) Don't use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.

(8) Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.

Because I'm a Girl, That's Why

My Library, by L.M. Montgomery

My Library

It is small and dim and shabby -- just one old, low-corniced room,

With the plaster stained and broken and the corners lost in gloom:
And one square, uncurtained window, where a sea-born sunset shines
In a glow of chastened splendor though grand cathedral pines.
But 'tis dear and sacred to me, plain and dusky tho' it be,
For the best of friends and comrades hither come to meet with me.
And I welcome them right gladly when the lingering daylight falls
On the old, familiar faces of my books along the walls.

Matchless tales of lands far distant; ballads of an olden day,
Full of fire and faith and fervor that no time can steal away:
Songs of many gracious poets: rare old essays richly blent
With the legendary lore of orient and occident:
Tales of wonderful adventures in the merry years of yore,
And of half-forgotten battles lost and won by sea and shore;
Classic myth and stately epic, born of earth-old joy or pain --
All the centuries have left us, I may gather here again.

Here with hosts of friends I revel who can never change or chill;
Through the fleeting years and seasons they are fair and faithful still!
Kings and courtiers, knights and jesters, belles and beaux of far away,
Meet and mingle with the beauties and the heroes of to-day.
All the lore of ancient sages, all the light of souls divine,
All the music, wit and wisdom of the gray old world is mine,
Garnered here where fall the shadows of the mystic pineland's gloom!
And I sway an airy kingdom from my little book-lined room.

.

.

I discovered this poem years ago, and have loved it ever since. It was the fifth item I posted on this blog, way back in 2007. Still gives me the shivers when I read, "Here with hosts of friends I revel who can never change or chill; Through the fleeting years and seasons they are fair and faithful still!"

.

Today is the last day to join the L.M. Montgomery challenge.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Blue Castle

I was 14 the first time I read The Blue Castle. I was spending the night with my aunt, a rare treat, reveling in her full attention and an enormous bed all to myself. Being a typical teenager, I chucked my own cleanser for the apricot scrub on her bathroom shelf, and then snuggled down under the sheets with my new Montgomery book. To this day, I cannot smell apricot scrub without thinking of The Blue Castle.

It’s so easy to visualize each scene as you read this story. They unfold before your eyes. I believe there were plans to make it into a movie, fifty years ago, but nothing came of it. I’d cry at a modern attempt, though, because filmmakers would certainly tweak the plot until it was unrecognizable. But to write the screenplay myself, if only for my own enjoyment—that is one of my dreams.

Dialogue would sparkle. Valancy is a 29-year-old girl still living under the thumb of her mother, and the scenes around the breakfast table are delicious. “Doss,” rebuked Mrs. Frederick, “you haven’t eaten your crusts.”

When Valancy throws caution to the wind and does and says whatever she likes, audiences won’t be able to keep from smiling. “Where did the dog bite you?” asked Uncle James. “Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta. Valancy laughed. “Is that a vital part?”

The situations Valancy encounters ... befriending poor Cissy Gay, being rescued from the up-back dance, asking Barney Snaith to marry her, transforming from an incurable old maid to a deeply happy woman whose face even Tierney would paint … is this not the stuff of a delectable film?

John Foster’s books, Doc Redfern’s pills, the whole enormous Stirling clan, the cozy, contented Mistawis evenings, the fatal moment on the railway tracks … truly, The Blue Castle is a book to be seen with the inward eye again and again and again.


Note: read for the L.M. Montgomery challenge.

L.M. Montgomery: Excerpts from my Journals

Since joining the L.M. Montgomery challenge, I've been leafing through my old journals, culling mentions of her work and influence. My entries grew pathetically mellifluous when Maud was around, but her writing most certainly shaped the girl—and author—I am today.

After finishing the Pat books, age 14:

"I finished Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat. I don’t think I will ever outgrow Maud’s books, however old and wise I grow. Every time I read (and reread) one of them, something is stirred in myself, something that makes me want to do better and be better in all I do. Those are the kinds of books I aspire to write someday."

.

After re-rereading Emily of New Moon, age 14:

"I’ll probably refer to you as my Jimmy-Book instead of my journal for a few days because I just read Emily of New Moon again, and I may even write more frequently, being enthused for the moment..."

Thumbing through Emily a year later:

"I flipped through Emily the other day … and instantly rediscovered that beauty, so deep it disturbs my soul, and I can’t forget it for days and days. Even though I only glanced through two or three pages, its status raised to “Chosen One” once more."

.

While reading Maud's journals, age 16:

“I can’t decide whether I am blessed or cursed to have access to so many books. Maud longed for them, and relished them as a “book drunkard” when she chanced upon them, but when she could have none, she spent hours writing, which is precisely what I should do. Except that I have novels galore, each vying for the attention that should be fixed on writing … So many of my [journal] entries make me shudder and groan, “was it I who wrote that mush?” Maud’s journals are filled with sense. She had sense enough to write of things relevant even when emotion-swayed, which was often...”

“...There is something wholly depressing in reading Montgomery’s journals—her existence seemed so dark and bleak, one intermittently interrupted by golden days attempting a parley with life, when it should—could—have been the other way around … joyous days, weeks, months, brimming with content[ment] and ambition, with an expected “white night” slipping in between cracks, as is its custom with all lives. But not with the cruelness she so vividly portrays in her entries, her very aching soul laid bare in its misery and pain. And how horrible to have rejected the one hope offered her—the only true hope that could save her—and yet still search for reason and meaning in this weary world.”

Debating a favorite Montgomery novel, age 16:

"I don’t think I like Anne of Green Gables more than Emily of New Moon, or vice versa, but I look upon Anne with fonder memories, as I read it first, when I was young and it seemed the most wondrous novel written—though I’m not sure that idea has changed at all since! But Emily speaks to my writer’s soul, echoes my feelings, and puts to print the hazy, floating thoughts I can’t quite capture."

Why is it that ...

... all the movies I want to see take ages and ages to get to theaters? Penelope dawdled for a year, and now The Brothers Bloom has been pushed back, again, to May. May! That's like, spring.

.

ALA Morris Award

There's a new sticker in town--the William C. Morris YA Debut Award.

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award celebrates the achievement of a previously unpublished author, or authors, who have made a strong literary debut in writing for young adult readers. The work cited will illuminate the teen experience and enrich the lives of its readers through its excellence, demonstrated by:

Compelling, high quality writing and/or illustration
The integrity of the work as a whole
Its proven or potential appeal to a wide range of teen readers

An award for debut authors. I like this.

Also: we get a shortlist. Yes! The Carnegie had it right all along.

And the 2008 shortlist is:

A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne
Madapple by Christina Meldrum
Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine

Follow the buzz at Librarian by Day. Winner announced January 26th.

Visions of Sugarplums: Looking Forward to in 2009

On shelves nowFeb. 24th

May 26th

May 28th

Strawberry Hill, by Mary Ann Hoberman, July 1st

To be continued. And does anyone know what this is? It's says 12, by Suzanne Collins, with a release date of May 2009. Now, Catching Fire (unofficial name), the sequel to The Hunger Games, is supposed to be released in September. But there are 12 districts in The Hunger Games. Intrigued?

Happy New Year!

Greetings, Year of the New Novel!

(I've so excited to work with fresh characters!)

2008 Cybils Finalists

Finalists have been announced for the reader-nominated Cybils award.

I posted my hopes back in October.

I'm SUPER excited to see that Jellicoe Road finaled. Two of my personal runners-up did, too: The Hunger Games and Sweethearts.

But I've very sad that none of my middle grade favorites made the cut. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Cosmic, and Masterpiece are such the best!

However, there's still the Newbery. Here's hoping!