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Elaine Howard Ecklund is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University, where she is also Director of the Program on Religion and Public Outreach, Institute for Urban Research. Her new book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, investigates the unexamined assumption of what scientists actually think and feel about religion.  Surprisingly she discovered that nearly 50 percent of the scientific community is religious.  In the excerpt below we learn how religious scientists incorporate their faith into teaching.

“My Faith is Simply Part of Who I Am”

About 39 percent of the nearly 1,700 scientists I surveyed considered their religious or spiritual beliefs influential on their interactions with students and colleagues.  Specifically, faith can create an ethos for teaching.  In other words, the faith of these scientists is a part of their everyday lives to the extent that they see it shaping the what, how, why of their teaching.

A Catholic chemist was especially forthcoming about his religious views after I turned off my tape recorder.  A recent immigrant, he thinks that academics (and Americans in general) should talk more openly about religion and integrate it into their lives.  He blames the present unwillingness to discuss religion on what he called the “political correctness” of the United States, which he contrasts with the religious discussions people have in his home country.  Although he clearly had outspoken views about public discussions of religion, this scientist explained that at work, his faith influences him primarily through the ethos it provides for teaching: “I would say religion itself doesn’t come up, rather the values I get through religion…As a teacher you have, for example, a little bit more regard toward weaker students and trying to help them out and also communicate to them the joy of studying science.”  Here, he explicitly contrasted himself with more secular colleagues who he thinks mainly spend time with the better students.

Similarly, a physicist said that his faith causes him to treat those who work in his lab compassionately, going out of his way to do things for them that do not necessarily benefit his own career.  In his words, “I’m at an age where I see mentoring as one of the most important things I can do,…trying to get [younger scientists] on paths that will get them to the jobs that they want.  And you know there’s no particular self-interest here.  I mean the majority of [other scientists] I don’t think do this.”  This physicist is also establishing a clear boundary between himself and his colleagues who, in his sense of things, care more about their own personal success than making sure that students are mentored well.  Obviously, nonreligious professors might also mentor students well.  The point is that religious scientists often mentioned this ethos of teaching as something that they believed separated them from their secular colleagues.

The Jewish economist…also said that his faith has a great impact on how he cares for students.  He remembers his mother lighting candles on Friday evenings, a ritual that left him with “very peaceful imprints.”  And this knowledge that he belongs to a broader faith community influences, for instance, how he thinks about promoting character development among his students, such as those who have failed a class.  These students might then meet him in his office to request a higher grade:

And I say, “Well close the door and let’s talk now.  Aren’t you ashamed to be here?  What do you want out of life when your parents are spending money to keep you here?  Are you really interes

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"Portulaca in pie pans was what they set along the front porch. And the mirror on the front of the house: I told you. In the yard, not a snap of grass -- an old auto tire with verbena growing inside of it ninety to nothing, all red. And a tin roof you could just imagine the chinaberries falling on -- ping! And now the hot rays of the sun."

From The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty.

This, my friends, is voice.

Every year, I plant portulaca in pie pans, on the front porch, in honor of Eudora Welty and this wonderful story of generous, rich and lonely Uncle Daniel Ponder, his brand-new -- surprise! -- 17-year-old wife Bonnie Dee Peacock (a little thing from the country who looked as though a good gust of wind could carry her off), and the crazy Peacock family, not to mention our narrator, Edna Earle Ponder, bless her little know-it-all heart.

The book was published in 1954, when I was a year old. I found a paperback copy of it in a used book store in Front Royal, Virginia, when I was in my thirties and trying to write for children. The book was pubished for adults, but I found this copy in the children's section -- lucky me.

I have read this book so many times, I have broken the spine. I have underlined passages and just about memorized stretches of this story. I took it apart, and learned from it, as I tried to write stories of my own. "How does she do that?"

Today, I am convinced that the June family, the family I have created in Hang The Moon, the second book in The Sixties Trilogy, owes a lot to the Peacock family in The Ponder Heart. They aren't the same, not by a long shot, but... they are, in their crazy southern way. I hear echoes today, and I recognize a legacy being passed down because Eudora Welty wrote and published this book, and I reached out and said yes, I love this, I want this, I want to learn; teach me.

I didn't see this as I wrote the draft, which I started in the mid-nineties. But I see it today. What an influence Welty has been on my work.

Influences. Do you know yours? Who and/or what are they? Can you see them in your work, whatever kind of work you do? Name them out loud today. It will give strength to your sword arm.

And maybe, portulaca in pie pans.  (I know; it's a cake pan. I revised. :>)

I'm headed to Knoxville, this minute. Tomorrow I work at the Knoxville Children's Festival of Reading at World's Fair Park. I speak at 11:30 and again at 2:00. Come see me! I'll be talking about influences, for sure, as I introduce Countdown to a brand-new audience in Tennessee.

I am doing the same thing Welty did, in my own way: I am releasing my book, my tender story, into the wide world, not knowing who may need it now, or who might, years after I am gone, come across a dusty old paperback in a used bookstore one day, and say... yes.

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I'm going to write about my biggest fear with Hang The Moon, the second book in the Sixties Trilogy, but I can't do it today. My friend and mentor died on Friday, and she is part of this Hang The Moon story, so first I want to tell you about her.

But I can't. I'm bereft and don't yet have the right words. So let me direct you to her website and her obituary, and let me say farewell in a most clumsy manner to Norma Fox Mazer today. I loved her and love her still. Her book When She Was Good knocked my socks off and was part of the reason I went to Vermont College to get my MFA in writing. Norma was my advisor for two semesters and became my friend. She loved me, too, with a fierce devotion that always surprised me. She demanded the best from me, and often I failed her miserably. And more than that, I cannot find the words to say.

I'll leave you instead with a piece I read this morning about a student and a teacher. It's Good Writing -- that phenomenon I love. Good Writing elevates the mind, and even life. And today I need a little elevating.

This piece is by novelist Alexander Chee, about his time studying with Annie Dillard. It will appear in the book Mentors, Muses & Monsters, edited by Elizabeth Benedict and published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster later this month.

Here's a tiny excerpt:

In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn't behave. She walked with a cowgirl's stride into the classroom, and from her bag withdrew her legal pad covered in notes, a thermos of coffee and a bag of Brach's singly wrapped caramels, and then sat down. She undid the top of the thermos with a swift twist, poured a cup of coffee into the cup that was also the thermos top, and sipped at it as she gave us a big smile and looked around the room.

Hi, she said, sort of through the smile.

My first meeting with Norma Mazer was very different. I'm writing about it for publication right now (I will post the link when it publishes) and I'm trying to get the words just-right. I want the tone, the detail, the feeling of it to come across... and -- once again -- I'm failing miserably. But I will continue to try.

This is what Norma would tell me to do -- write. Keep working. Try. I may be gone, but that is not an excuse for you not to do your job, not to meet your deadline. I know she is right. And I know I will find the words.

Norma was ever the teacher. So, in her honor, I will put on my teaching hat today, too:

Try. Open your notebook and sketch a scene about meeting one of your teachers -- a mentor, a muse, a monster. What was it like? Notice what works about the Alexander Chee paragraph above, and why it works. Take it apart and see how you can do the same in your own short piece about a teacher whose presence has stayed with you.

My wise husband says that some people leave a part of themselves within you when they die. I think he's right. Norma is still right here, right with me, in my mind and heart, as I write Hang The Moon. What a gift that is.

Thank you, Norma. Thank you for all you gave to your friends and family, to the world of children's literature, and to those of us who came to learn at your feet. How strange the world is without you. How lucky we are to have our memories... and your stories.

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When I was in my twenties, I wanted to write essays, so I went to the library and read my way through the 800s -- particularly the 814s -- and fell in love with White, Thurber, Perleman, Goodman, Didion, Trillin.

I particularly loved the essayists who wrote about home and family. Some were famous, and some obscure: Pat Leimbach, Erma Bombeck, John Gould, Robert Hastings, Annie Dillard, Gladys Taber, Gladys Ogden Dimock, William Childress... and that's what I remember without getting up from the couch to peruse the bookshelves where my used copies live.
Yesterday my friend Cyndi offered up a quote by Anais Nin: Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

I have met some of my most intimate friends between two book covers; living human beings whom I have never met in person, but know so well because they have shared their stories. They never knew me, but I have been changed by them. They have opened up worlds for me.
When I read all those essayists, when I studied them so thoroughly, I was learning to write -- attending a school of my own divising -- and I copied these writer's styles. Soon I developed a voice of my own, and I got a gig at the local paper, writing opinion pieces -- for free, at first -- and then a gig at a magazine, writing local color, and features.
Personal narrative was and remains my first love. I wrote hundreds of essays in those years -- decades. Nothing was wasted. If a piece wasn't published, I kept it with the published pieces -- I had documented my life and my family's growing up. And one summer when we went on our annual pilgrimage to Garrett County, Maryland, where we stayed in a cabin in the woods and hiked, fished, canoed, swam, ate and slept and did nothing electronic, I bought a book of essays at Yoder's Market by a woman I'd never heard of, Celestine Sibley. The Sweet Apple Gardening Book was the title, all about Ms. Sibley's gardening adventures in a restored 1842 cabin in the foothills of the north Georgia mountains.
These essays opened a world for me -- a world I had been hoping to inhabit for years. Celestine Sibley left the city and found a piece of rural property, restored a cabin and lived a sustainable life while supporting herself and three children with her writing. She planted and put by, hung her sheets on the line, plopped zinnias into Mason jars, snapped beans on the front porch, fed the neighbors and fought the squirrels and looked up at the black night sky and picked out the constellations, while the cicadas sang away summer.
I never inhabited that world. Or did I? Is it a matter of how you look at it? I have a screened in porch, I plop zinnias in the jar, dress the back yard with bedding so it can sun, gratefully feed the willing neighbors (and they feed me), lie on a blanket under the stars, and garden to my heart's content. I live not far from where Celestine (may we call her Celestine?) lived on Thirteenth Street in Midtown Atlanta before she made her trek to the country... the country that is no longer the country.

Roswell, Georgia is now a suburb of Atlanta. Celestine wrote prolifically about the bulldozers and the developers that were eating up her countryside. She wrote once that she loved a rainy day because it meant she didn't have to listen to the chain saws.

Roswell is a short drive from Atlanta, in fact, and is not what I'd call the foothills -- that's another hour up the road, near Dahlonega. But I got to thinking about Celestine last week, about how she supported her children working at the Atlanta Journal Constitution for over fifty years, how she wrote countless articles, several novels, and thousands of essays... and books about her beloved Sweet Apple in the foothills. I wanted to find this place that had opened up a world for me, a place that had existed only between the pages of a book.
Although Celestine died in 1999, an online search told me that Sweet Apple was still standing, still in the family, and one of the lone holdouts to the rabid and rapid development surrounding Atlanta. I clutched the directions I'd sleuthed out from several articles I'd found online, and with just a few missteps and wrong turns, Jim and I soon found ourselves on a dirt road that led to a mailbox that stood in front of a cabin. Sweet Apple.

There it was. It looked as if no one was home, and I didn't want to intrude even if someone was, so we took a few photos and were on our way. But not before I stood there for a long time, just looking at Sweet Apple. It represented home, family, simplicity, love, longing, and hope... to Celestine, and also to me. A world had been born for me, again, right there on that dusty dirt road in front of a house I never knew but knew all too well.
We drove away, back onto the pavement, past the Krogers and the Olive Gardens and the strip malls and the broad roofs of the huge homes in spanking-new subdivisions. We drove into the actual foothills, like we always do. The car found its winding way to Dahlonega, where we always go, to the Crimson Moon, where we always eat, to the music that we love to hear. The music that has, for so long, been my friend as well.

We -- all of us -- have so many friends, not all of them human, and there are lots of worlds being born, over and over again, in a myriad of ways... all represented by stories.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

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Back to work in a real way this morning. Last night I had several breakthroughs while on my walk (exercise is part of process!), which catapulted me out of bed this morning, eager to get to work.

Breakfast on the porch this morning while I contemplate my progress so far this month. It never fails to amaze me how the slog slog slog of days turns into a white-heat for me. I know it's different strokes for different folks. Some writers must write every day. Some go for weeks without writing a word, while soaking up whatever it is for the next story, or coaxing it to the surface.

I am more in the latter camp. Unless I am on deadline, I go for days without writing the actual story at my laptop, but I don't let a day go by without scribbling in my notebook. Of course, right now, during this white-heat, deadline time, I am writing/revising the story, at my laptop, every day.

I use my notebook daily -- even if it's for a to-do list or a grocery list and that's it -- even when I'm traveling (esp. when I'm traveling -- I write on airplanes this way, in the interminable waits on takeoffs and landings, and then I transcribe to my laptop). The physical act of writing in my notebook keeps my writing pump primed.

Here is some of what I have scribbled in my notebook about the novel in the past three days. I haven't corrected spelling or grammar, as this is stream of consciousness, and also quick-recording. Here it is, just as I wrote it.

You can see, there is lots of personal narrative in here -- I am taking my life -- my ten-year-old life -- and turning it into story, a totally made-up story.
----------------------------------

Fear
Drill
Note-taking ­ some of the letters, memos? Franny writes like that?

What about textbooks having incorrect information? Howard Zinn, the people’s history of the united states, etc.
JoEllen is a mentor. Magician, whatever.
Absolutely true diary ­ remember that novel. What I am writing is highly autobiographical.Just found out Franny is the new kid.
Guns of navarrone
Franny will be 11 and in fifth grade, and it will be 1962. I’ll start in Sept.
Oct. 9 2008
HALLOWEEEEEN! Was talking with meg at kudzu this afternoon about Halloween and our childhoods and I told stories about my children’s childhood and the fire at the end of the driveway and everything… what about Franny and Halloweeen might be impt. I have had this thought before but abandoned it. Now it feels just right.
GALE is not a bad girl, although Franny’s mother thinks she is… and Franny will find this out… hmmm… defy her mother? Gravel pit? What? So maybe franny and Margie don’t break up, but they have a tough time of it over gale and Margie growing up faster, gale already grown up a lot

Mom, can I sleep with you tonight? Dad’s out of town on a trip. Mom will pick him up at Friendship and JoEllen will babysit. What about uncle otts?
Drew wants to sleep with mom, too, but it’s franny’s turn. Does she hear him sniveling in bed and how does she feel about that? Does she go into his room and comfort him? Sleep with him in a twin bed? Army men are everywhere? They can still fight later.Oh, I should use those caterpillars! And locking drew out of the house/shed thingie! Can be little flashbacks… to first snow, and etc. the way I did Uncle Edisto and Aunt Florentine flashbacks. This can be a good story. New kid moves in across the street ­ woody with raccoon ­ goads drew? Gravel pit? Now drew has a friend his age in the neighborhood?
Finish notebook entry.

This is my process now. The story is revealing itself to me, bit by leap. I am scooping it up. My notebook goes with me everywhere, to record what is being revealed, to ask questions, to practice what-if, to capture tiny fragments as they present themselves.

And yes, this far into this novel (years worth!), I am still uncovering layers of meaning and structure. This is the way it is with every novel, for me. I've come to believe that I push a novel at my peril. In some ways, I don't believe I can push it to reveal to me its secrets. I just have to keep showing up at the page, whether it's the laptop or the notebook, the slog or the white-heat. (I like white-heats a lot better.... insert hollow laughter here.)

Nothing is too small to note. Nothing that doesn't work out is wasted. It is all necessary to the whole and to the finished project. This is why I tell my students, keep a notebook. Put everything in it. Everything. You never know when you may need it. Paste leaves in it and photographs. Clips recipes to it and letters. Draw pictures, scribble, pour your heart out, and you will see:

There it is, on the page: your voice.

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I used to think I was the only person in the world who had read, loved, and remembered MISTER DOG: THE DOG WHO BELONGED TO HIMSELF, by Margaret Wise Brown. I thought it must be a rare book, and I was content to know that I had discovered a treasure. It wasn't until the Internet began to bring us closer to one another that I found out so many readers adore MISTER DOG as much as I do.

When I was little, I didn't know what I responded to in this book, but it became important to me in a way other Golden Books did not, not even SAILOR DOG, which was also a favorite, and probably for some of the same reasons, but I would not list it in my personal canon. But today, I can look back on who I am as a person and know that I was probably resonating to the themes of independence and autonomy -- the dog who belonged to himself, and the boy who belonged to himself.

I have always needed stretches of time alone, even as much as I treasure community. I'm an introvert (although, not a conservative, as Crispin's Crispian is -- although, if we use MWB's definition, probably I am), and being with people -- as much delight as it brings me -- wears me out in short order, and I always need time to recover. The first time I went to ALA, in 1996, I was so overwhelmed by the lights! noise! people! movement! that I would take the shuttle back to my hotel room and have a little cry, sit in the dark for a while, and then try the exhibit floor again. Too much, too much! I've gotten better at that, today, but I still need recovery time after lots of people or lots happening. That needed recovery time has sometimes, over the years, been seen by others as anti-social, but it's not meant to be that way -- it's meant to fill me up and make me ready for people again.

Solitude feeds me in the way that it nurtures Comfort (in her closet and on Listening Rock) in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. So something in MISTER DOG -- even at an early age, when I already possessed these leanings -- made a deep connection with me. Crispin's Crispian and the Boy Who Belongs To Himself decide to live together in the end. I loved those two completely independent souls deciding that they could live independently with one another. And I loved Garth Williams's art.

I also credit this book with giving me my first written ideas about a safe and loving home:

"Crispin's Crispian lived in a two-story dog house in a garden... with a warm fire that crackled in the winter and went out in the summer. His house was always warm... and upstairs there was a little bedroom with a bed in it... and there was plenty of room in his house for the boy to live there with him."

That sounded perfect to me. Gentle. Kind. Compassionate. I would grow up one day, and that's the kind of home I wanted.

For more about this book, there are many sources to visit, including Leonard Marcus's biography of Margaret Wise Brown, AWAKENED BY THE MOON. Here's a nice essay on the blog "New York Wanderer" that includes photos of the house where MISTER DOG is set, in Brooklyn. And here's one more that says it better than I can, perhaps, about that lovely fictional world that Margaret Wise Brown created in MISTER DOG and how it spoke to readers.


One more Little Golden Book, and I'm done with Golden Books as personal canon. I received this book for my birthday one year: THE GOLDEN BOOK OF 365 STORIES by Kathryn Jackson, illustrated by the fabulous Richard Scarry, and it became a constant companion for me when I was probably 8 years old. This book was a precursor to the Junior Classics and the Book of Knowledge. I loved reading the daily entry for each date, and especially finding the important dates -- my birthday, my brother's birthday, even my parents' anniversary -- I remember marking all the important days with little pencilled stars -- my first intentional, informational marking in a book (I have gone on to copious mark-ups in books, but that's a story for another time).

Before I graduated to longer books, this book made me feel as if I was reading a great big book, and it helped me tremendously with my reading skills, as I read it over and over and, for such a long time, there was always something new in it to read -- and there were "genres" -- a short story, a song, a poem, a fable, etc.

There's a good overview of this book here, at the blog "Collecting Children's Books." I had forgotten the "infinity" cover, but I well remember thinking that my brother's birthday got a great story, and I got this puny little poem -- but it was a GOOD poem, I told myself. Ha.

Finally, don't miss Walter Mayes's comments (and mine in return) on First Influences, Friday's blog post. Thanks, Walter, for the great thoughts, especially about Dr. Seuss (Walter is directing SEUSSICAL: THE MUSICAL in San Francisco!) and thanks for listing your personal canon as well. Walter defines personal canon: "books that are, in one way or other essential to my image of who I am." Yes, that's what I'm after.

I love that one of Walter's picks is the Rand McNally World Atlas. I had forgotten about the atlases! Oh, yes, how wonderful they were. I fell in love with geography in fifth grade, thanks to an atlas (don't remember which one) and a teacher who made geography scintillating -- is it any wonder that Great-great Aunt Florentine in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS calls herself a geographer? (Which is shorthand for gossip, in Snapfinger, Mississippi.)

Did you love Crispin's Crispian, Sailor Dog, or Rand McNally? What early books are essential to your image of who you are today? I remember reading over and over again SAILOR DOG, just for the lyrical, rhythmical language. The very sentence structure awed me (although I wouldn't have been able to articulate that as a child -- I just knew I heard something special). Here's the first sentence: "Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name."

I'm deep, deep, deep into the Sixties this week. Hope you are deep, deep into something just as absorbing -- maybe it's vacation! It's hot here. It's August. The cicadas chorus outside my window at 8am -- time to get to work.

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Welcome to Books as Autobiography, or personal canon post #1. Welcome to several books in my canon, starting with THE CAT IN THE HAT by Dr. Seuss.

This is the first book I remember reading by myself. Not only do I remember reading it, I remember the moment I learned to read, the moment that letters formed themselves into words that I could understand on the page, sound out myself, say out loud -- read. It was magic, pure magic, and my life would never be the same. Learning to read was one of the pivotal events of my life; from this book flowed all others, so I must honor it and give it its number one place on my bookshelf.

THE CAT IN THE HAT was published in 1957, when I was four years old. It would have been a newly published book in my home, a book my parents bought for me and my brother. I don't remember my mother reading it to me, but she must have... yes? I don't remember my mother reading to me much at all, but I do remember always having books around the house, and I vividly remember my father with his nose in a book. I don't think my mother was much of a reader, although she came to mysteries at some point and devoured those.

I was a solo reader early. The very idea that words represented stories thrilled me, although I couldn't articulate that when I was young -- I just knew that something juicy was held within the pages of a book, and I wanted to read it. It was something I could do well when, all through the years of my growing up, I felt there were so many things I couldn't do.

I loved the rhyme in THE CAT IN THE HAT (it's still brilliant, to me, today, how 223 words, arranged in anapestic tetrameter, tell such an engaging, enduring story). I loved the sense of naughtiness that the Cat flounced around with, his devil-may-care attitude, and his sincere sadness at being sent away, unappreciated, at the end. I loved the humor -- I laughed out loud. I loved the absurd. I loved the independence of Sally and her brother, obviously latch-key kids, which in 1957 was unheard of... here came Mother through the door, in her heels and dress, home from work -- yes? That was my interpretation. I didn't realize until I was much older, how much that independence meant to me... but more on that later.

THE CAT IN THE HAT was radical, a breakthrough in children's books and a blessed balance to the Dick-and-Jane childhoods that passed for children's books at that time in schools, but all I really understood when I was five-years-old was that I could read this book.

I wouldn't have known that I was learning phonics in school, but that's how I learned to read, by learning the connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Wikipedia's entry on phonics states: "Phonics instruction requires the teacher to provide students with a core body of information about phonics rules, or patterns."

I clearly remember learning these patterns... along with the pattern of daily life in my family home, the patterns of morning-noon-night, the patterns of the seasons and more -- I was decoding the world I lived in, and I found it exhilarating. Reading was another method of decoding. There were patterns to figure out -- let me at 'em!


I stared at those letters, and they began to make sense to me. I couldn't, and then suddenly I could -- I could read. I also could learn... all by myself. I could begin at the beginning -- with anything -- and start to decode it. This knowledge, this desire, has stayed with me all my life, and it is how I have approached learning -- begin at the beginning. What is the foundation of what I want to learn? Go back and find out. You'll see me do this as I write about more of my personal canon. This is a skill I've learned to use in my life with anything new I want to learn.

And one more reason this book is part of my personal canon: I was there at my daughter Alisa's magic moment when she learned to read -- the book in her lap was THE CAT IN THE HAT.

As a child, I went on to read all the Dr. Seuss I could get my hands on, and I loved much of it, especially AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET and GREEN EGGS AND HAM (I thought HORTON HATCHES THE EGG was unbearably sad).

I loved, too, THE LORAX, and placed it in my canon because it is the first environmental picture book (or book) I read, and I read it aloud, over and over again, to my two oldest children, who especially loved it in the 1970s. It heavily influenced my thinking about the environment (so it changed my life) at a time when environmentalists (in a just-emerging field) were considered wackos by so many. I went back to the beginning, to see what I could see, and began to read the nature writers -- John Burroughs, John Muir, Edwin Way Teale (I loved THE COURAGE OF TURTLES), John McPhee, Hal Borland, Annie Dillard, Rachel Carson and more -- I have a collection of these books on my canon shelves, and I pull one to me now and then and read a section in it -- I am always transported to those days of intense nature reading. I can trace it back to THE LORAX and my curiosity. I can trace my interest in ecology and the environment to this book. To other things as well, of course... but we're talking books here.


I was a kid with an insatiable curiosity, so it's no surprise that I would gravitate to a set of encyclopedia-like books called THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE. These twenty books (with yearly updates in supplements) lined my father's office walls, and included a character education booklet and a "Graded Course of Study" that contained study outlines for every school subject -- geography, history, literature, biology and much more.



The index was in volume 20, so if I wanted to learn about, say, Pilgrims, I would look it up in volume 20, where I would be referred to all the articles on Pilgrims throughout the 20-volume set.

This set of books was a treasure trove for me. I spent hours just reading through it -- there was so much that was fascinating in those pages.



I'll end with another set of books that opened the world of literature to me as a child. These books also were in my father's "office," a book-lined room at home, where my dad payed bills and cut-and-spliced 8mm (or was it 16?) movie film from his home movies, and where he had a room of his own, full of the Time Life series of books on nature, and science -- all the Popular Mechanics series, and that BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE.

But the ones I'm remembering now as pivotal to my learning and becoming were big thick books of stories in THE JUNIOR CLASSICS, published by P.F. Collier in 1960. There were ten books, and I worked my way through most of them, reading "Stories About Boys and Girls," and "Stories of Wonder and Magic" and "Fairy Tales and Fables" and more... heroes, animals, sports, history, and an entire volume on poetry -- one of my earliest introductions to poetry. Every genre was there -- and I was steeped in story, Sunday after Sunday afternoon or summer day after summer day, lying on the bed reading from these volumes.

This was were I first saw Randolph Caldecott's work. He illustrated many of the stories in the "Fairy Tales and Fables" volume. I was struck by the color and detail and life in those paintings. This was were I began to really look at illustration, too -- the illustration of Prometheus bound to the rock in "Myths and Legends" was almost too much to bear (literally) -- he wore barely a loincloth and it blew in the wind. His muscles rippled. He reached out a hand in supplication. I wanted to help him. And something in me made me look away, too.

I got lost in the illustration in these books, in the line drawings in THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE, and in the Dr. Seuss as well -- I was getting an education in illustration and didn't know it. I was learning to appreciate different styles.


I was also developing my own voice, although I wouldn't have known that yet, either. I tell my students today that, in order to write well, one must READ. Read and read and read. Then read some more. Nothing prepared me for being a writer more than reading did.

And none of this was directed reading. I was reading for pure pleasure, and for knowledge because I wanted to KNOW -- it's one of Maslow's five basic human needs: to know and understand.

I wanted to be entertained, too. I was reading because it soothed me. And because, on a level I could not understand, reading was forming me -- it organized my mind and thoughts, it gave heft to my sensibilities, my desires, my personality, and my way of seeing. Reading would save my life -- I'll talk about this in future canon posts. Reading would dictate my future. It would refine what it meant to me, to be human in the world.

What are your first influences in books? Jerrod T. writes to say (after reading yesterday's post about canons), "Not everyone reads or is read to. Not everyone is a reader by nature. What about those people? Do they have personal canons?"

A canon in music, in nature, in food, in friends... there are many ways to define your life. For our purposes here, however, I'm interested in uncovering autobiography in books... why do you keep certain books on certain special shelves? What did they mean to you when you read them, and how have they informed your life and who you have become? Where have they taken you?

I hope you'll keep a notebook dedicated to these stories you uncover. They will spark all kinds of personal narrative, essays, memoir, fiction. Even if you never publish them, you will own your own story (no small feat)... and you can share your story with others.

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"From the dawn of man's imagination, place has enshrined the spirit." -- Eudora Welty

If you are of A Certain Age, you will recognize the title of this post as a song title as well. Sung by Petula Clark in 1965, it's one of the songs on my playlist for the Sixties Trilogy, and it's your notebook assignment for today.

"I know a place where we can go..." Where?

In 1995, I took a class from a fine poet named Nancy Johnson at Frederick Community College. I had been publishing essays -- personal narrative writing -- for years in newspapers and magazines, I had been writing magazine features and had even been a magazine editor, but now I wanted to turn my attention to fiction. Nancy taught me (among other things) that fiction grows naturally out of personal narrative -- the old "write what you know."







Now I tell my students that story comes from your head, your heart, and your gut: what you know and remember, what you feel, and what you can imagine.










It's hard to write fiction without first understanding your personal narrative -- who you are and where you are from. This is especially important to know when writing with children. It's hard for fourth-graders, say, or middle-schoolers (aren't they beautiful?) or seniors in high school to sustain a fictional world when they haven't explored their place in their own world, when they aren't telling their own stories and understanding that those stories have heft and meaning and importance.

One of the first assignments Nancy gave our class was to write about a place. She had us LIST places first -- places we had lived, visited -- every place we could remember, large (Mississippi), small (the fort I made under the stairs), it didn't matter -- but a physical place.







This is where notebooks come in handy. I listed and listed -- I brainstormed away -- nothing was off limits. This exercise was meant to get our memories flowing onto the page so that we could SEE them, physically, and choose one. One. You do the same. List... then choose one. Circle it. Choose one place you know, and write about it.


Don't skip the listing step. I still, to this day, begin writing by listing. When I listed for this exercise, "Mississippi" was the word I circled. It was the place I chose to write about. I narrowed it down to Jasper County, Mississippi, and all the summers I spent there with my grandmother (the real Miss Eula), surrounded by the smells of summer and people who would populate my dreams for years to come.

I wrote a poem (more on this Nancy Johnson exercise another day -- if I forget, remind me), and from that poem I began a picture book called MISS EULA GOES TO HAWAII. I sent that picture book manuscript to Liz Van Doren at Harcourt Brace in late 1995, and in February 1996, Liz called me and asked me if I'd be interested in working on this story with her.


Would I? Would I! From the beginnings of trying to write for children to the day of this phone call, ten years had passed. Ten years of rejections, nibbles, more rejections, reading what I wanted to write, practicing, giving up, beginning again, joining a writer's group, leaving a writer's group, finding online support, finding solid resources (including this class at FCC), finding like-minded souls to travel with, and just plain hanging-in-there and refusing to give up -- perseverance. I had stories to tell -- I knew I did. I just needed to figure out HOW to tell them. Listing in my notebook helped me get started.


Two years into working with Liz on this picture book, she still had not bought it, the story got longer and longer, and I found myself writing a novel instead of a picture book. Liz gave me good advice at this point: "Let go of your memories, and tell me a story." And I learned to do that, to make that fictional leap. But all my memories -- all those lists -- were trusses for my stories. Without them, I would have no stories to tell.

I left my day-job (freelancing everywhere) in 1997 in order to focus on what would become LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. All told, it took me three years to get it right, to make it sellable, and another two years of revision before the book was published in 2001. Along the way, I wrote FREEDOM SUMMER, my first picture book, and sold it to Anne Schwartz at Simon & Schuster. It, too, comes directly out of my life and those notebooks that help me capture my life so I can SEE it, in front of me, in words, images (photographs help), thoughts, doodles.


So.... what places do you know? And which one would you choose to write about today? It doesn't have to be a novel. Or even a picture book. How about a sketch? A poem? One paragraph of one moment in time you experienced in that place?

You can see some photos of Ruby's town, my Jasper County, here. I went back and took photos last summer. There are also some photos here, at my Life Notice on my website.


The places I'm showing you today were taken last week, during my scoot through Prince Georges County, Maryland, Frederick, D.C., and western Maryland. I've used my notebook to journal about each stop. I have photographs. And boy, do I have stories.

Any one of those memories I could mine for story. The present echoes the past... or does the past echo into the future? What I know is that my personal narrative -- my history -- informs my fiction.

RUBY is fiction, of course, pulled from personal narrative (as is LITTLE BIRD and ALL-STARS). RUBY narrates a place I knew, it remembers it in the golden light I loved to remember it in. FREEDOM SUMMER is also fiction, also pulled from personal narrative, and it narrates that same place in its not-so-shiny light. Both stories are true emotionally. And that's what I'm going for, in my fiction: emotional truth.

Fiction starts with discovering the emotional truth of your own life -- which can change, actually, with a deeper understanding of the people, places, and events that have defined you.

So pick that place. "You're gonna love this place I know." You can hear the song, sung by Petula Clark, here on YouTube. List, list, list. Pick your place. Pick one experience there. One clear moment in time. Circle it. Write short. Be true. Use telling details, and all your senses. If you need to write long at first, that's fine... you can cut later, and revise as your reason for writing about this particular place emerges... this is a gift of process.

Then write me -- share it with all of us -- what place do you know?

Place -- it's the backbone of story.

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Alexander R. Lucas, M.D., author of Demystifying Anorexia Nervosa is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and former Head of the Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic. For forty years he has been a recognized authority on anorexia, with a practice that drew patients from around the world. Demystifying Anorexia Nervosa defines anorexia, illustrates how it can evolve and how common it really is, and outlines every part of the treatment process, from the early warning signs that parents should watch out for, to the initial evaluation, to specific treatment plans. In the post below Dr. Lucas questions a French bill which would regulate the promotion of extreme thinness.

The French parliament’s lower house recently adopted a bill that would make it illegal for anyone to promote extreme thinness. The bill is aimed at magazines, advertisers, and particularly Web sites. Pro-anorexia Web sites (also known as pro-ana) glorify anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather than an illness. They are popular sites that advise teenagers and young women how to maintain extreme thinness. They are frequented by anorexics who share their experiences and advise one another about unhealthy practices.

This latest move by the French parliament comes after a Spanish fashion show banned models with a body mass index of less than 18, indicating waif-like abnormal thinness. This was a reaction to the 2006 death of the top Brazilian model Ana Caroline Reston. She weighed only 88 lb. at 5’ 8” and had suffered from anorexia and bulimia. In the U.S. the Council of Fashion Designers of America adopted guidelines for its models to be healthy, not anorexic or bulimic.

The French bill, if passed by the senate, would be the strongest of its kind, and would impose high financial penalties, even imprisonment, if an infraction caused the death of a victim. This raises several questions. Can the avoidance of extreme thinness be legislated? Are voluntary guidelines preferable? And, more crucially, to what extent do cultural influences as conveyed by the media cause anorexia nervosa?

There are many factors that lead to anorexia nervosa. First of all there is a biological predisposition with a genetic basis. Further, the individual developing anorexia nervosa has certain personality characteristics including willful determination and persistence. Individual psychological influences also play a role. Finally, there are the cultural influences, glamorizing extreme thinness. Thus, there is usually no single cause, but a combination of influences that lead to anorexia nervosa. Of these, the cultural influences would seem most easily to be altered, but would require a wholesale change in our society’s attitude, in advertising, and in the messages conveyed by the media.

It is naïve to think that a law will prevent anorexia nervosa. Any efforts, however, to establish healthy guidelines for models could protect them from excessive dieting. Healthier role models would also send the message to teenage girls that extreme thinness is not fashionable.

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