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I ran an earlier version of this post right after selling my first book. Because it’s one of my favorites, and because I so often need to hear these words myself, I’m sharing them again today.
It was 2004. While driving to meet my writing group, I happened to catch an interview on NPR with Adrienne Young, a folksinger just starting out. She talked about her first album, inspired by some advice she’d gotten while struggling to make it as a musician:
If you want to do this with your life, stay focused and see this through. You’ve got to plow to the end of the row, girl.
That simple phrase – plow to the end of the row – was enough to push Adrienne to continue. It became the title of both her album and lead song. I can’t quite explain what that interview meant to me, hearing an artist choose to create despite the struggle, to push against fear and sensibility and make it “to the end of the row.”
I’ve carried this image with me for years, the plant metaphor standing in for artistic endeavor, the plow the unglamorous slog needed to dig deep and make it to the end. Sometimes I find it funny I’d choose a profession so bent on forcing me to wait, so full of uncertainty and disappointment. An almost foolish optimism has kept me working, trusting that the next editor or the next agent or the next story would be the one to launch my career. I’ve haunted mailboxes and inboxes, waiting for something positive to come through. I’ve ceremoniously sent off manuscripts, chanting, “Don’t come back!” (entertaining postal workers, for sure). I’ve journaled again and again “this next editor is a perfect match!”, managing somehow to keep on plowing in midst of little validation.
After twelve years of writing and hundreds of rejections, I sold my first book, May B., a historical verse novel about a girl with her own challenging row to hoe. May’s determination carried me through a rocky publication experience: losing my first editor; the closing of my Random House imprint, Tricycle Press; the weeks when my book was orphaned, with no publishing house to claim it and its future uncertain; the swooping in of Radom House imprint, Schwartz and Wade; edit rounds seven, eight, and nine with editor number two; and finally, May B.’s birth into the world only three months behind its original release date.
I made it to the end of a very long, mostly lonely row, one that wasn’t very straight and was loaded with stones. But the soil got better as I worked it, and each little sprout was stronger than the last. The beauty of the writing life is I got to transplant the hardiest seedling and start again, this time working alongside others who nurtured it into something better than I could have ever created alone.
What is the dream of the artist-gardener? That our art will sprout and grow one day stand apart from us to thrive on its own.
But first we must reach the end of the row. Keep plowing, friends.
The post Plowing, Planting, Hoping, Dreaming originally appeared on Caroline Starr Rose
The post Happy Author originally appeared on Caroline Starr Rose
Sometimes I meet characters in books who feel like friends. And other times I meet characters I’m sure would be friends with my characters, if only they’d had a chance to meet somehow.
Mimi Yoshiko Oliver from Marilyn Hilton’s beautiful verse novel, Full Cicada Moon
, reminds me of my Kimi and Alis. It’s Mimi’s passion and her “raindrops are stronger than hammers” approach to the world that feels familiar and true.
In case you’re curious, here are some characters I know would be friends with Mavis Betterly:
Lydia Hawkins from Child of the Mountains
Francie Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 
Mattie Gokey from A Northern Light
Elisa Cantor from Undercover
The post A New Friend for Kimi and Alis appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
Part of my month-long writing-free vacation was spent with these lovelies.* Like I did with May B., I collected addresses in dribs and drabs over the last year, waiting until I had a stretch of time to devote to stamping, labeling, and writing.
On 699 postcards. For real.
While it isn’t the 1,662 I sent out for May B., it was still a pretty big commitment, one that I found surprisingly satisfying.
You’ve probably heard the rate of return on direct mailings falls somewhere between 1/2 and 2 percent. Pretty dismal and probably not worth the effort, right? For me, the process has become a ritual where I can exert the tiniest bit of control over the unwieldy and unpredictable experience of releasing a book into the world.
Because the books I write are largely sold to the school and library market, that’s where I focus. I had graphic designer Sierra Fong create two postcards for my mailings this time around, one meant to introduce Over in the Wetlands to the schools and libraries of the Gulf Coast, and another to share both Wetlands and Blue Birds with New Mexico schools and libraries.
Here’s what’s happened since the postcards went out: I have had a handful of teachers email me after receiving the card. My sales for both of these books have increased slightly in the last few weeks.** I’ve gotten more website hits from the areas I’ve targeted. And I’ve been invited to speak at Mosquero Elementary School, a K-6 school of 22 students in Mosquero, NM (population 93). Seeing young readers in corners of my state I’ve never visited is pretty much the best thing out there.
While I’ll never know the actual results of the mailing, every postcard was a chance to directly tell a teacher or librarian about something I believe in, and in this age of quick and impersonal blasts of information, it felt significant, important even. However small the return, my efforts to match books with readers has left a mark, perhaps in ways I’ll never know.
Which is exactly how this publication thing works, anyway.
*Points to the person who catches the typo. My son spotted it immediately!
**Penguin Random House has a website called Author Portal where sales can be tracked, using numbers from Nieslen BookScan. Many, many bookstores don’t report sales, and few, if any, schools or libraries do. Until statements come in months from now, it’s really impossible to know true numbers, but the BookScan stats are a start.
The post Postcard Marketing in the Age of the Internet appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
One of the best parts about speaking to young readers is the totally goofy, fun, original things they say. This is one of the many things I miss about teaching. Good thing every author visit offers a couple gems.
Last week while I was in Chicago, a boy told me he’s building a sod house in his backyard (!). I’m not so sure his parents are aware of this fact. I got him to agree to send me a picture.
A brother and sister team decided they wanted me to write my favorite line from May B. in their copy of the book. My line is pretty weird and kinda foolish on May’s part, but oh so very brave. They still wanted it when I told them, right above my signature. Those two went home with a book that says “Wolf, show your face.”
(This isn’t the oddest thing a child has asked me to write. Last year a boy here in Albuquerque wanted me to sign the front of his notebook not as Caroline but as…King Kong. You better believe I did it.)
Another Illinois kid asked if I could sign my name and also leave her a message in secret code. She didn’t seem concerned that I don’t know any sort of codes, let alone secret ones. In the end, I used my typical May B. tagline with an special twist — Courage and hope and “secret code”.
On a more serious note, a lovely young lady told me she could relate to May because she’s been an outsider, too. She’s new to the US, having grown up in Korea, and says like May, she’s struggled with reading because she’s working with a new language. And guess what? Her mom is using May as a way to learn English herself.
What an absolute privilege (and a hoot!) it is to work with kids.
The post Off-the-Cuff Conversations with Kids appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
I’ve been a fan of Tsh Oxenreider since 2009 (which is pretty much forever on the Internet). Back then, I was just about ready to jump into this thing called blogging, but I wasn’t sure how to begin. My dear friend Jamie Martin sent me a “how to” link that led me to Tsh’s blog, The Art of Simple. I’ve been faithfully reading ever since.
About four years ago, Tsh started a podcast called The Simple Show, which has kept me company through numerous runs and cleaning days and afternoons walking the dog. And perhaps last summer, as I listened while taking the dog on one more lap around the block, I cooked up some things I’d say to Tsh if I were ever on her show. Which was utterly ridiculous. Tsh and I had interacted some in her blog’s comment section and a few times on Twitter, but that was pretty much it.
So imagine my surprise when September brought an email with a podcast request. “No worries,” Tsh said, “if you’re not interested.”
I was most definitely very over-the-top interested. I hope you’ll listen in!
The post So Wow. The Simple Show Podcast appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
Summer’s almost over, but that doesn’t mean the fun has to end. Here are some great links to keep you reading and writing far into the fall.
Summer Notebooking :: Amy Ludwig Vanderwater
Summer Road Trip! Five More Books Set in Connecticut, Louisiana, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Kansas :: Barnes and Noble (lovely to find Miss May here!)
Fifty Great Books for Kids to Read This Summer :: The Washington Post
31 Great Summer Books :: Real Simple
The post Links to Stretch Your Summer Reading and Writing appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
The talented Sierra Fong designed these gorgeous Over in the Wetlands and Blue Birds bookmarks for me, and I’d love to send you a set! I also have stickers of both covers. If you’d like one of each, simply drop me an email with your mailing address (caroline starr AT yahoo) and I’ll send them along. I’m happy to give you any combination you’d like: four Wetlands stickers, two Blue Birds stickers and two Wetlands bookmarks — whatever you choose.
Teachers, librarians, homeschool families, book club folks, I’m also offering a class set (for lack of a better term) to the first ten people who contact me. This would be up to thirty bookmarks and stickers of your choosing. Again, tell me what would best serve your group, and that’s what you’ll get, whether it’s a Blue Birds pack, a Wetlands pack, or some combo in between.
And now for the request I have of you. I’m not one who feels especially comfortable asking for this, but fair or not, I’ve learned how vital this thing can be to a book’s life and success. The thing I’m talking about is the Amazon review. I have to admit I’ve never liked being asked directly for a review. There’s pressure and expectation and a bit of ickiness all rolled into one. So if you feel as I have, you are utterly free to ignore this. But if you’ve read any of my books and enjoyed them, I’d be super grateful if you took a moment or two to write a quick note on Amazon.
Here are quick and easy links to find my books there:
May B.
Blue Birds
Over in the Wetlands
Thank you, friends, for your faithful support and enthusiasm. I look forward to sending out oodles of bookmarks and stickers.
The post Free Bookmarks for Readers…and a Review Request appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
The subject line says We Loved May B!
Hello, Ms. Rose.
I am sitting at my computer at school. A lovely group of my fifth grade girl students and I JUST FINISHED reading May B! We plan to write you “old-fashioned letters”, but just had to visit your web site and tell you how much we loved the book.
“ I liked how May was a very persistent girl.” ~ V.
“ I liked how she was brave enough to dig out a hole and try to walk home. “ ~ M.
“I like how she took care of herself by herself in the soddy.” ~ M.
“ I like how she was brave with the wolf.” ~M.
We loved it!!!! Thank you!
I pretty much have the best job in the world.
The post The Kind of Email that Warms My Heart appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
This weekend I’m speaking at the Southwest Branch of the International Dyslexia Association. I’m amazed that three years later, my book is still connecting with readers — especially young people with learning disabilities.
Here’s an interview I did a few months ago that ran in the SWIDA newsletter:
What inspired you to choose a girl with dyslexia as your main character?
In order for a book to work, an author must not give their characters what they want (at least not straight away), but must make them face their fears and weaknesses. Without these things, there is no change. Without change, there is no story.
May’s name came to me before her story did. I liked the way May Betterly could become May B. and how “maybe” could speak to her perception of herself (maybe is such a wishy-washy word. It makes me think of mediocre or so-so). I knew early on that May wanted to be a teacher, and decided the most direct way to challenge her would be to make this dream virtually impossible. Pulling her out of school and giving her dyslexia (in an era where this would have been completely misunderstood) fit the bill.
What special challenges did this choice create?
The first is obvious: I am not an expert on dyslexia in the least. At first, I wasn’t sure exactly what her challenge was — anxiety? Fear? A learning disability? Because the book doesn’t spell out exactly what is going on, I thought I could get by with not addressing things: If May and her teachers didn’t know, why would we, as readers, need to?
My editor wasn’t impressed with my line of thinking. She told me (and rightly so!) that if I left readers hanging, they’d feel frustrated. She suggested I weave more clues that pointed toward dyslexia in the text and that I define May’s disability in the author’s note.
This terrified me. I was sure as soon as I used a technical word I’d be claiming some sort of expertise. The more I researched, though, the more I was reminded that dyslexia is not a one-size-fits-all struggle. I tried to convey in the author’s note general similarities those with dyslexia commonly share (issues with fluency, word recognition, and comprehension; the omission of words and anxiety stemming from reading aloud, for example) and techniques that some find helpful (repetition, reading in unison with one or more people). I also had a writing friend who is a literacy expert read the manuscript.
More than once a person has asked me on what authority I’ve written this book. I’ve come to the conclusion I am qualified to tell May’s story because it is one of identity and self-worth — something all of us must face at some point, something that becomes very real to young people as they become aware of their place in this world.
Before you were a writer, you were a classroom teacher. How did working with students with reading disabilities shape your perspective of May B.?
I’m going to turn this question on its head a little. It wasn’t working with students with reading disabilities that shaped my perspective so much as examining my own time in the classroom — my attitudes, my efforts, and if I’m honest, my shortcomings. In forcing myself to sit with this character and her two very different teachers, I found myself reflecting again and again on my teaching. What I learned wasn’t always attractive. It’s easy to love the hard worker, the kid who wants to do well. It’s not so easy to get behind the child who isn’t as winsome. I have to confess there are kids I put more effort into because I enjoyed them more. There are others I didn’t try as hard with, sometimes because I wasn’t qualified, sometimes because I didn’t fully understand their needs. And sometimes I didn’t put as much work in because I didn’t want to.
If I was going to tell the most honest story I could, I couldn’t hide from these unattractive qualities I found in myself. Instead, I needed to mine them to make the story real, to make it work.
Do you have any words of wisdom you would like to offer students with dyslexia?
I hesitate when taking about the traditional ideas behind character development — the need for flaws and weakness — when talking about May Betterly. I don’t ever want children who have learning disabilities to see themselves as flawed or weak. It was very important to me that May not be “cured” of her dyslexia, first, because it’s an untrue way to look at disability, and second because it sends a damaging message, one that says you are only whole without disability.
Part of my reason in writing the book was to examine the concept of worth — how so often who we are becomes based on what others tell us about ourselves or on what we’re able to do. Like May, I think all of us in some way feel we don’t measure up. Struggles, like dyslexia, don’t define us. They are not shameful. They might be seen as “character flaws” in a book (ways a character is made real and relatable), but such real-life struggles never, ever make a person somehow worth less.
Last year I got an email that thanked me for writing May B. It directed me to a blog post that literally took my breath away:
At the end of May B., I am crying. I am crying at the ways she is so strong and capable.
…I feel like Caroline Starr Rose wrote this book in part for me.
It was as if she were writing to encourage me on behalf of all my teachers in and outside of the classroom who for years didn’t see that all the misspelled words and run-ons as a red flag. It was as if she were writing right into the places of my heart where those accusations of being careless and not good enough had settled. And she whispered that like May, I could overcome. I could hope for the good things even when they are hard. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, May.
I hope readers of all sorts will be able to relate to — and find confidence and courage in — May’s story.
The post Dyslexia and MAY B. appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
I’m so excited to share with you a recent conversation I had with Sarah MacKenzie of the Read Aloud Revival Podcast. We talked poetry, how I stumbled into writing verse novels, and what three books I would take to a desert island.
Swing by and have a listen!
The post A Conversation with Sarah MacKenzie of the Read Aloud Revival Podcast appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
It was so, so lovely to talk a few weeks ago with Sarah and Beth Anne of Brilliant Business Moms. They sought me out after reading this guest post at Modern Mrs. Darcy. Here are a few of the things you can expect in the podcast:
01:15 – Roald Dahl, the Oregon Trail, and My Journey
04:24 – The Most Honest Thing I’ve Ever Written
07:48 – What about Mr. Chapman?
09:59 – The Apprentice Stage
13:34 – Maniacal Optimism
16:54 – Why a Traditional Publisher?
19:29 – How to Get Published
22:50 – Finding an Agent
24:59 – Advice for Apprentice Authors
29:31 – Does a Web Presence Matter?
31:02 – A Day in the Life
34:34 – How Much Does an Author Make?
38:56 – Resources for Aspiring Authors
44:30 – What My Boys Think About Having an Author for a Mom
The podcast is live! Click through to have a listen.
The post A Podcast with Brilliant Business Moms appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
July’s the month I take a blogging sabbath. Throughout the course of the month, I’ll re-run some oldies but goodies. Enjoy!
Thank you for writing May B., the email said, and sent me to
this blog post.
At the end of May B., I am crying. I am crying at the ways she is so strong and capable.
I remember that intimate dedication and I feel like Caroline Starr Rose wrote this book in part for me.
It was as if she were writing to encourage me on behalf of all my teachers in and outside of the classroom who for years didn’t see that all the misspelled words and run-ons as a red flag. It was as if she were writing right into the places of my heart where those accusations of being careless and not good enough had settled. And she whispered that like May, I could overcome. I could hope for the good things even when they are hard. Thank you Caroline. Thank you May.
I am deeply moved and grateful Amy reached out to share this with me. I’m again reminded that what we create is always bigger than anything we could ever imagine. Please click through to Stories and Thyme to read the rest.
The post Sometimes You Get an Email That Takes Your Breath Away appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
In the last six weeks I’ve done seventeen presentations in six different schools. Here’s a glimpse into this very busy, very rewarding time.
April 3 – Literacy Night: Truman Middle School, Albuquerque, NM
At Truman I talked to both kids and parents about the writing life: how long it had taken me to sell my first book, the inspiration behind May B., and finding satisfaction in the things we love. The evening ended with students sharing odes. My favorite? Ode to My Running Shoes.
April 15,16 – School visit: Dexter Elementary School, Dexter, NM
I’d never been to Dexter, NM — a community southeast of Roswell and 1,200 people strong. Let me tell you, I was incredibly impressed with everything happening there. Librarian Nancy Miles has brought thirteen authors to Dexter in the last fourteen years, all funded by proceeds from the school’s Scholastic Book Fair.
On the fist day, I spoke to K-2, doing a new presentation called The Poet’s Toolbox: Rhythm, Rhyme, and Repetition. On the second I pulled out my tried and true hands-on frontier activity called Buckboards, Bloomers, and Buffalo Chips. Dexter’s Elementary Battle of the Books team hosted a special luncheon for the thirteen “BoB” readers. Check out the gorgeous table display which included May’s apple barrel and tinned peaches. Nancy printed “The Voice of the Wind” poem as bookmarks and called it courage and hope — the phrase I use when signing May. And speaking of signing… those eager kiddos had me sign those cans of peaches!
As they were leaving the library, a girl shouted, “I love you!” and a boy said, “This is the best day of my life!”
17 – School visit: Dexter Middle School, Dexter, NM
Day three in Dexter took me to the middle school, where I ate burgers with the BoB readers and discussed the many things that might have happened to Mrs. Oblinger after she left May. Let’s just say Dexter middle schoolers are very, very creative. I was also informed middle schoolers are definitely not too old for stickers (they gladly took the May B. ones I’d brought along). I once again presented Buckboards, Bloomers, and Buffalo Chips. For one session a BoB team from Roswell came to join the fun.
April 24 – School visit: Chaparral Elementary School, Santa Fe, NM
At Santa Fe’s Chaparral Elementary I led a Poetry 101 writing workshop for fifth graders and met with the BoB kids after school. Here’s a priceless exchange I overheard while setting up for the second presentation:
Student #1: I thought she’d have black hair.
Student #2: I thought she would be sixty.
April 29 and May 6 – School visit: Dennis Chavez Elementary School, Albuquerque, NM
I stopped at Dennis Chavez on two separate occasions, one day to talk about the writing process and another another to talk about the frontier. My favorite part? Several kids asking if I could pull strings to make more copies of May B. show up in the school library.
May 1 – School visit: Holy Ghost Catholic School, Albuquerque, NM
This little school reminded me of my beloved St. Matthew’s Episcopal School where I taught in Houma, Louisiana. Along with authors Kimberley Griffiths Little and Stephen McCranie I talked with kids K-8 at the school’s annual Author’s Day. The day began with an assembly celebrating books the children had written. It was a lovely thing.
For those of you interested in some nuts and bolts posts I’ve written about school visits, you can find them here:
School Visits: Seeking Them Out and Setting Them Up
Tis the Season to Skype!
Planning, Preparing, and “Performing” School Visits
The post School Visits Galore appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
I ran an earlier version of this post right after selling my first book. Because it’s one of my favorites, and because I so often need to hear these words myself, I share them again today. Keep plowing, friends.
It was 2004. While driving to meet my writing group, I happened to catch an interview on NPR with Adrienne Young, a folksinger just starting out. She talked about her first album, inspired by some advice she’d gotten while struggling to make it as a musician:
If you want to do this with your life, stay focused and see this through. You’ve got to plow to the end of the row, girl. That simple phrase – plow to the end of the row – was enough to push Adrienne to continue. It became the title of both her album and lead song. I can’t quite explain what that interview meant to me, hearing an artist choose to create despite the struggle, to push against fear and sensibility and make it “to the end of the row.” I’ve carried this image with me for years, the plant metaphor standing in for artistic endeavor, the plow the unglamorous slog needed to dig deep and make it to the end. Sometimes I find it funny I’d choose a profession so bent on forcing me to wait, so full of uncertainty and disappointment. An almost foolish optimism has kept me working, trusting that the next editor or the next agent or the next story would be the one to launch my career. I’ve haunted mailboxes and inboxes, waiting for something positive to come through. I’ve ceremoniously sent off manuscripts, chanting, “Don’t come back!” (entertaining postal workers, for sure). I’ve journaled again and again “this next editor is a perfect match!”, managing somehow to keep on plowing in midst of little validation. After twelve years of writing and hundreds of rejections, I sold my first book, May B., a historical verse novel about a girl with her own challenging row to hoe. May’s determination carried me through a rocky publication experience: losing my first editor; the closing of my Random House imprint, Tricycle Press; the weeks when my book was orphaned, with no publishing house to claim it and its future uncertain; the swooping in of Radom House imprint, Schwartz and Wade; edit rounds seven, eight, and nine with editor number two; and finally, May B.’s birth into the world only three months behind its original release date. Though each row’s length varies, they’re still mostly lonely, not very straight and loaded with stones. But the soil has gotten better as I’ve worked it, and each little sprout I’ve planted has been stronger than the last. And I keep at it — plowing, planting, hoping, dreaming — because I’m made for this. And knowing this is enough to continue, enough for my work to thrive.
The post Plowing, Planting, Hoping, Dreaming appeared first on Caroline Starr Rose.
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 3/22/2013
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Author Megan Spooner is featuring my writing space at her blog this week. Stop by to have a look and enter to win a copy of MAY B. The winner will also receive a copy of my Navigating a Debut Year mini-poster (in the turquoise frame below).
Librarian Mr. Schu along with teacher Mr. Sharp of the #SharpSchu Book Club, have just announced the books they'll discuss for National Poetry Month : Sharon Creech's LOVE THAT DOG and MAY B.! Mr. Schu is giving away copies of both books at his blog,
Watch. Connect. Read.
Enter to win and
please consider joining us on Twitter April 24 at 8:00 EST, hashtag #SharpSchu.
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/13/2013
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As I mentioned in the previous post, sod walls were typically two-feet thick. If you compare the exterior window pictures to this one, you'll see a generous ledge on both sides. Also notice the plastered walls. In MAY B. I make mention of this nicety through a conversation with Mrs. Oblinger, the new bride from the city, and May, the frontier girl.
from poem 29:
"I hate this place," she whispers.
Before I think better, I say,
"He's left a shade tree out front,
he's plastered the walls,
and he's putting in a proper floor."
"What'd you say?"
Does she even remember I'm here?
"Mr. Oblinger's a good man," I try again.
"He wants to make this home for you."
She stands over me now.
"You think plaster makes a difference in this place?
Look at this."
She holds out her mud-caked skirt.
"It's filthy here!
The ceiling leaks.
Sometimes snakes get through!"
The cool sod's where they like to nest.
"They help with mice," I offer.
She glares.
Sod houses were one room with little to no privacy. Here you see a bed right up against the stove, a tree trunk meant to support the roof also used to hang clothing.
These benches are made from hewed logs and are a great example of the wood used for puncheon floors (the proper flooring May mentions above -- many lived with packed earth underfoot) : the smooth side of a log faced up, the curved side down.
One way families kept dirt from falling from the sod above was to cover the ceiling in muslin.
How would you fare living this way?
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/11/2013
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In the years I've been blogging, no topic has drawn more visitors here than sod houses. I hope this post, showing the exterior of a Kansas soddy, and the next, its interior, will satisfy the curious!
My mother took these pictures while on an Elderhostel tour in 2009, just as I was putting some finishing touches on MAY B.
This sod house is located outside Gaithersburg, Kansas. You can see the family had access to enough wood -- perhaps a sawmill nearby? -- to build a door, frame out several windows, and lay lumber for a roof (though they still chose to place sod on top).
A pitched roof would have made rainstorms more comfortable, as it was typical for water to seep through flat-roofed sod houses, where it would continue to "rain" inside well after a storm.
Sod bricks were typically 1' x 2' x 4". They weighed roughly fifty pounds and were stacked, grass-side down, so that walls were two-feet thick. These sturdy homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Structurally, they weren't especially neat and tidy. This poor wall looks like it's melting.
While researching for MAY B., I'd read about women who'd left comfortable lives determined to make this new world as familiar and lovely as possible. My mother included a note with this picture, the words of her tour guide:
Bird cages were kept to show some gentility or civility attesting to their previous lifestyle.
I included a stanza in MAY B.'s poem 80 that was inspired by this bird cage picture:
I button Ma's fine boots.
I wish I had insisted on keeping Hiram's old ones,
but I know Ma gave me hers
for herself as much as me,
a message to Mrs. Oblinger,
fresh from the city,
showing that women out here still have some grace.
My feet will hurt, I reckon,
before I make it far.
Come back Wednesday for views of the interior.
What an honor. Thank you, American Library Association and Association for Library Service to Children.
Want to see what other books are included?
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When Facebook rolled out its new promote button a few months back, it also quietly changed a part of the Pages features. In the past, every Page you "liked" was guaranteed to show up in your Newsfeed.
Not any more.
According to Facebook, if you'd like to receive all new posts in your Newsfeed, you'll need to alter your settings in each Page you like.
Here's what you need to do:
- Open a Page (May B.'s Facebook page is a great place to start!).
- Hover over the like button until the pull-down menu appears.
- Click Get Notifications.
- Voila! You'll never miss another post from your favorite Pages.
Couldn't resist posting this review author Lissa Price just shared with me. I've highlighted my favorite parts -- just because I can! Love it when someone truly understands what I've tried to do with a character and story.
Rose, Caroline Starr. (2012). May B. New York: Random House/Schwartz & Wade.
In this novel in verse, because of her family’s financial needs, twelve-year-old May Betterly is sent to work for a newlywed couple on the Kansas frontier. But the Oblingers are having trouble from the start. Try as he might, Mr. Oblinger just can't please his bride who longs for the civilized life in Ohio. When she flees, he, in turn, goes after her but doesn't return. May is left to fend for herself with a limited amount of food and no one nearby to help. At first conscientious about doing her chores, May becomes less and less concerned with them until a blizzard traps her inside the house. The likeable, sympathetic May contends with hunger, boredom, a hungry wolf, and her own personal demons about her inability to read, having been encouraged by one teacher and shamed by another. When she finally makes her way out of the soddy, she knows that she can do anything and has become determined to live—or die—on her own terms. The book’s poetic lines evoke a strong sense of place, allowing readers to savor the prairie’s beauty and feel the bitter cold of the ever-present snow while pausing to admire the pioneer spirit of those who moved westward. By the time May finally opens that can of peaches she's been saving for so long, she knows that she has earned their sweetness. Readers will be forced to put themselves in May’s shoes while imagining what they would have done in her situation.
- Barbara A. Ward, Washington State University Pullman
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 12/5/2012
Blog:
Caroline by line
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4:00 - "Poetry lingers on": defining the verse novel
7:30 - A January book release: advantage or disadvantage?
25:50 - Satisfaction, contentment, and keeping writing and publishing separate
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We also have a giveaway this week: Enter at Pen and Ink to win a copy of Sariah Wilson’s The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back. I love this quirky YA story. I think you will too. http://thepenandinkblog.blogspot.com/