Two friends meet for lunch and say,
What if? What if we have a writing festival for the girls of Little Flower Catholic High? What if we invite 20 authors, offer the girls a chance to learn and workshop , have Kate Walton give the keynote, invite Children's Book World to sell books, and (simply, but never simply) bring this whole publishing thing back to where it belongs: readers connecting with writers connecting with readers.
Book joy.
This, above, is the day that was at the Little Flower Teen Writing Festival. Kate Walton giving the keynote and thanking the tremendous Sister Kim (whose vision this was). Girls in the gym cradling newly bought books as if they were gemstones. The uber talented and radiantly positive girls of my two workshops; some of the props that got us writing; Judy Schachner and me; campus blossoms.
I began this day writing
this poem for the girls as they adopt Going Over as a summer read. I spent the rest of it smiling. This, my friends, is what writing is about. Creating stories for, and spending time with, readers who have been given a love for books by a teacher whose heart is huge.
In just a few hours, I will at long last meet the girls of Little Flower Catholic High School. These girls who are led by the endearing, catalytic, life-changing Sister Kim. These girls who read
Undercover and
House of Dance with such love in their hearts. These girls with whom I will sit and write a little memoir, sit and talk a little Berlin, sit and then maybe stand and dance.
This summer, the girls will be reading
Going Over and writing a poem somehow evoked or provoked by this story about love on either side of the Berlin Wall 1983.
This morning, I give this poem to them:
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I Wanted
I wanted you near I wanted
you now I wanted you
loving like I live
loving, which is to say:
the quince that crawls along the stone,
the glass that shatters sun,
the rupture calm of the hymn I found
just yesterday,
waiting on you.
We play our music like freedom here.
We leave our hearts close to our skin.
We say that we areto whatever color we choose
which is to say: neon lavender lime
the silver of smoke
the yellow of the star in the eye of the scope,
the pink of my hair.
Choose.
Live what love is.
Love the color you are.
Good morning, Sister Kim, Kate Walton, my fellow authors, and all the Little Flowers. This poem is for you. And here, thanks to kind Serena Agusto-Cox, is another poem, written on another day, about
the lit-up glass of others' stories.The world, my girls, is your oyster.
How much do any of us need to know about a book before we decide to make it our own? I cannot predict myself. I'll buy a book on a whim, or because I like the cover. I'll buy it because a blogger I respect suggested that maybe I should, or because it got a rave review, or because someone I know is on the fence and I want to know how I'd decide. I buy books in an instant, and I've been known to take my time. But eventually I get around to buying books.
Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley's book, has been on my radar screen for a very long time. It won the 2012 Printz Award and the William C. Morris YA Award. My friend Ruta Sepetys loved it, and she doesn't go wrong.
Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, called it a "taut and well-constructed thriller."
I need to read more thrillers.
And so this weekend, while at the Chester County Book and Music Company
with my friends Kate Walton, Amy King, and Joanne Fritz, I asked Joanne (who happens to work at CCBM) if she could locate a copy of Whaley's famous book. There are more than 28,000 square feet at CCBM, but Joanne, being a whiz, returned in a second, book in hand. Yesterday I lay on a couch and read.
Everyone knows how happy I am when authors take risk. When they write outside category, defy logic, or dare to craft something we have not quite seen before.
Where Things Come Back is one of those books—nearly uncategorize-able (I'm not sure I'd call it a thriller), never super eager to broadcast its ambitions, willing to take some time and to confuse readers, even, so that it can eventually make its point and (this is important) have its fun. This is a story in which many seemingly disparate parts do ultimately make a whole. A brand of religion is involved, a probably extinct bird, a kidnapping, some insanity, best friends, young divorce, misdirected prosleytizing, and the angel Gabriel. Gabriel is also the kid brother of our narrator. Some people (in the novel) get the two confused.
I admire the time Whaley takes with this book, the no-hurry he is in to explain all these parts, or to promise us cohesion. His narrator is so likable that we're going for this ride. The story is so unusual that we stay. The suspense here—the thrill—is seeing if Whaley is actually going to full this off.
No spoiler here: he does.
There are words today, for all of us. I quote them here. Then I encourage you to go to my friend Kate Walton's blog and read
her plea for greater kindness, for less aloneness. We should all print her piece and keep it near.
From Whaley:
... I wanted to be offered help from people because they cared about me, not because they felt some strange social obligation to do so. I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling.
Thank you so much, Beth, both for the eloquence of your post, and for that kind nod. I've yet to read this book myself, but I have a copy sitting on my TBR pile.
This sounds like an exciting book to read. I love when authors write outside the norm. Thanks for the review. Another great book that is very well written is called, "The Masada Protocol" by author Lee Broad. This a fiction thriller novel based in Israel in which a former black ops officer has taken on an intelligence assignment that takes him into a Middle East conspiracy that he must solve along with the help of a beautiful under cover agent from the Mossad. http:///www.leebroad.com/
I would love to know what you think of it!
Wow, Beth. What can I say? I'm humbled by your kind words. My ego may never survive posts like this. Thank you so much.
-Corey