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By: James Preller,
on 10/14/2015
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I’m excited to discuss my brand new book, THE FALL. “A heartbreaking and beautiful story about friendship, bullying, and the aftermath of all of it.” — Expresso Reads.
Middle school and high school students can connect a wide range of popular middle-grade and YA authors at the Second Annual Teen Reader Con on Saturday, October 17th, in Albany.
It will be a day-long celebration of teens and literacy designed to inspire and share a love of reading and writing — and it’s all free, sponsored by Capital Region BOCES. The event will run from 9:00 to 4:00 at the University at Albany Downtown Campus.
Featured authors:
* Jennifer Armstrong
* SA Bodeen
* Eric Devine
* Helen Frost
* David Levithan
* Jackie Morse Kessler
* James Preller
* Eliot Schrefer
* Todd Strasser
It’s a pretty spectacular list, filled with accomplished, popular writers (and me). I’m bummed out that I will be giving three presentations, because what I really want to do is sit in the audience to listen to and learn from some of my friends (SA Bodeen, Todd Strasser), while making new discoveries.
Each author will sign books in addition to giving several presentations throughout the day. They work us like dogs at this thing. This is a very cool, inspiring event for readers 11 and up, and a really worthwhile way for teenagers to spend the day or just a few hours.
I’m honored to be invited.
Advanced registration is encouraged, but not required. Go here for that.
For most people, the holidays have staggered off into storage until next Christmas. However, may I remind you that today, January 5, is actually Twelfth Night? The twelve days of Christmas (so tediously!) recounted each December conclude today with the twelve drummers drumming in the feast of the Epiphany with a loud bang. So don't put away the wrapping paper yet, folks, it's Three Kings Day!
I have selected three books for the occasion:
1. Shakespeare's Globe: An Interactive Pop-up Theatre, published by Candlewick. Okay, it's not so much a book, but it is book-like. For those who wish to carry the "Twelfth Night" theme in dramatic fashion.
2. Three Kings Day: A Celebration at Christmastime by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith and Lawrence Migdale, for those who want to note the day in an ecclesiastical fashion.
and lastly
3. Martin's Big Words, by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier, for those who want to celebrate the whole month, and not just today!
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 12/3/2008
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Given our website’s current focus on war, peace and social justice in children’s books, the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai have made me keenly aware that our challenges are many on the path to a more peaceful world. Kids and young adults are cognizant of the two wars America has been fighting against terrorism since 9/11 and of the latest terrorist attacks in India. Understandably, they have a lot to try to make sense of and get to grips with. Clearly, they can’t do it on their own.
Kids ask lots of tough questions in general, but their questions about terrorism and war are especially hard to answer. As parents, teachers and responsible adults, should we protect our children from war- and terrorism-related news, and if not, how should we explore the topics with them?
What to say and how to say it to children clearly depend on their age and maturity level, but however we choose to handle their questions, we must be thoughtful, as times of war and conflict are fertile breeding grounds for prejudice through stereotyping. We adults must reconcile the dilemma of explaining terrorism, and why nations have enemies, armies and go to war, while also promoting non-violence.
An article on Dr. Spock’s website, on how to talk to older children and teens about acts of terrorism and war encourages parents and teachers to ask them questions: “Are those who commit acts of terrorism fundamentally different from the rest of us? Are there circumstances under which we could imagine ourselves acting as the terrorists have? Has our government ever taken actions that might appear, from the point of view of others around the world, to be terribly wrong? Can we understand terrorism without accepting it? Is it important for us to try?”
There are no simple right and wrong answers, of course. What is important is the attempt to understand—a very difficult challenge that books can help make less daunting.The Flame Tree by Richard Lewis, for instance, is a wonderful post 9/11 story, set in Java, that tries to show us the true Islam instead of the extreme version the media often presents.
On the more general topic of war, we have the example of Jennifer Armstrong, “historyteller” and author, who edited Shattered: Stories of Children and War, a collection of twelve stories written by young adult authors examining war’s implications in young people’s lives. She has written a beautiful piece in praise of war books for children—and I conclude this post with her thought-provoking reasoning:
Being a writer, I must acknowledge the richness of war as a subject for fiction. Great stories arise from conflict, and there can be no greater conflict than war. To whom do you owe greater loyalty? To your family, your friend, your religion, your ideals, your country? For what would you die? For what would you kill? These are soul-baring questions, and I think they are as important for children to consider as they are for adults… If you really want to teach young readers about peace, give them books about war.
Children are naturally idealistic and righteous. They have a fine-tuned sense of justice. Literature about war gives young readers the chance to think of what is just and unjust, to develop the capacity for philosophic inquiring doubt. It gives them the chance to contemplate the alternative to peace. When they read Faithful Elephants: A True story of Animals, People and War [by Yukio Tsuchiya] and cry out in dismay, ‘But it’s not right!’, they are absolutely correct. It’s not. This, it seems to me, is the preferable attitude with which to greet war, not, ‘It’s inevitable!’.
For more book suggestions and resources related to the theme of war and peace in children’ books, check out these reviews, as well as our reading lists and resource pages.
Quantum mechanics. Yes, that's right. I should sell tickets to this show: I read, I scratch my head, I reread the same paragraph. My head drops forward onto my chest: a sign that my brain is on the run. I am watching, for the second time, a twenty-four lecture series on Einstein and the quantum revolution. I'm okay with Newton, and a clockwork universe. I can handle Gallileo. I can even manage to wrap my head around special relativity and curved space-time.
But the statistical probability of matter just freaks me out. Before observation, contradictory possibilities exist simultaneously; the act of observation forces one possibility into existence, and eliminates the other. So I am forced to consider that while I'm sitting at my desk, the black kitten named Mimi is behind me, watching me, and at the same time, upstairs asleep on my daughter's bed. Both possibilities (and more besides!) are real. It's not just that both are possible. Both are equally real until I check. It gives me the creeps -- should I turn around and check, or just sit here, wondering, trying to trick quantum physics by looking -- really fast! -- and then turning back and hoping the universe didn't see me peek?
One of the attractions of nonfiction (for me, at least) is the comfort of knowing that things are real. Either a historical event happened or it didn't. Either a bat is a mammal or it isn't. The maybe-ness of quantum mechanics has thrown a big monkey wrench into my Weltanschauung. I have the sensation of moving inside a bubble that consists of the possibilities I drove into existence by my observation; my bubble is floating through a gray, multi-dimensional miasma of contradictory possibilities which are all co-existent because I haven't observed them yet. What is this sensation, this head-spinning, stomach-lurching sensation? Oh, I remember now: this sensation is poetry. Or something like that.
Strange, isn't it?
Remember the disgusting, voracious insectile aliens from the "Alien" movies -- and how their blood was a kind of corrosive slime that burned holes into whatever it touched? Turns out that -- well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me answer the question in my title. What I'm researching right now: Caves.
Here's the wildest info I've come across. Just within the last two decades, speleologists (cave scientists) have discovered a new form of life in some very unusual caves. There are a few caves with a highly sulfuric ecosystem -- the sulfuric acid is so concentrated, in fact, that it's close to battery acid. Cavers have to wear protective clothing to keep from being burned, and respirators so they aren't killed by poisonous sulfur gas. (What nervous twitches the families of these scientists must have!)
So, we have a highly toxic environment in these caves, too toxic for most known life forms. And yet there are microbes that dwell and thrive in these conditions. Generically they are called extremophiles. Some of these microbes form a kind of slimy matrix to live in, and threads of this slime hang like rubbery stalactites from the walls and ceilings. Called "snotties" (for obvious reasons) these microbes are giving scientists some new clues to possible life
beyond our earthly boundary. Talk about thinking outside the box.
So, what am I doing with this information? I don't know yet. That's the great thing about being a writer. I'm just following an intriguing trail to see where it takes me. At the moment my trail is leading me deep into a rather terrifying cave. If I don't make it back out ... send help!
Drama (or we may say an invented story, i.e. fiction) is superior to history (a narrative of true events, i.e. nonfiction) because drama tells us what may happen, whereas history only tells us what has happened. Thus proposes the central thesis of A's Poetics. Back when I was primarily a fiction writer, I gloated when I was first treated to an exegesis of this foundation of literary criticism. "Aha!" I cried in triumph. "If Mr. Aristotle says so, it must be so!"
But then I found myself writing more and more nonfiction, and I was forced to pick a fight with the great Greek. Hmm. How very reckless of me, trying to go head to head with him! But I do have an argument, and it is this: perhaps this central claim of the Poetics is true if our field of enquiry is limited to human experience. (I say perhaps.) But if we are interested not only in what can happen among people but also in what can and does happen among stars and starfish, we can explore the physical world via nonfiction, and not be second-class literary citizens.
Aristotle was mainly discussing tragedy as the most noble literary expression because of its ability to produce katharsis, the cleansing esthetic experience of pity and fear. We can debate whether the ability to produce katharsis is the pinnacle of literary achievement. If we bend the definition a bit to suggest a profoundly moving emotional response, rather than just pity and fear, I think we can easily say that nonfiction can achieve this. I know I have often been moved to the point of tears when reading astronomy and physics and biology because -- because some of this stuff is just so amazing, so much more amazing than human imagination can invent. Oh, if only Aristotle could read contemporary science -- he might just change his mind.
Being book-oriented means I have always preferred doing my research at the library. Or in an easy chair in front of the fire. Sometimes, however, there is no substitute for direct experience. Depending on the topic of the research, however, there may not be an opportunity for direct research. Not many of us get to go into space, for example, so writing a book about space travel will have some unavoidable physical limits on the kind of research you can do.
I can think of two examples of opportunities for direct experience that came my way after the book was written -- written, published, and on the library shelves. The first was my trip to Antarctica, which I made well after my two books about Shackleton's Endurance adventure were in print. (Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, and Spirit of Endurance both published by Crown.) Of all the direct experience of Antarctica that I had, the one that I wished I had known before writing about it was....... silence. I have never experienced such profound silence as I encountered in Antarctica. I remember clearly the day I wandered through an expanse of volcanic debris on Ross Island, with no sound at all but the crunching of grit under my feet. No animal sounds, no wind through trees. No mechanical noises. Yes, there are other places in the world to experience deep silence; that is true. But without a trip to Antarctica while I was writing about it, I overlooked that silence as a meaningful part of the story.
The second example is from a class in wet-plate collodion photography that I was able to take after I wrote a book about Civil War photographs (Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War, published by Atheneum.) During the three-day workshop I was relieved to discover that I had, in fact, described the process accurately. Whew! But one little thing had escaped my researches at the time, and I think it is because it was so commonplace for wet-plate photographers that none of them had mentioned it. The silver nitrate solution, which is what turns jet black when exposed to light, thus creating the image on filmed glass, gets on the photographer, too! It's unavoidable, especially in rough, outdoor conditions. In the darkroom the clear silver nitrate might splash on the photographer's hands or clothes; the moment that photographer steps out into the light, those splashes turn black! I left that three-day workshop stained everywhere -- on my feet (I'd worn flip-flops), on my hands, on my jeans, even a smudge on my cheek where I'd scratched an itch with a silver-nitrate-dipped finger. And it didn't wash off, it just had to wear off after several days. There is no way a field operator in the Civil War could have avoided tell-tale drips, drops, and splashes of black on his skin and clothes. I wish I had known that when I was writing.
Sometimes this kind of direct experience is not available to the researcher. But this is why my recommendation is to experience as many things as possible. Some day you may be writing about that subject and you'll remember the silence and the stains. These are the things you won't find in the library stacks.
Here I will give another example from my book, Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War. In doing research with photographs and other primary sources, one must always consider the source. This famous photograph (in the National Archives) is entitled "Brady Under Fire." On your screen it may be hard to make him out, but the celebrity photographer, Mathew B. Brady, is indeed in this picture, standing by the wheel of an artillery piece, wearing his distinctive straw boater. "Wow," the viewer exclaims. "That Brady risked life and limb to get his pictures of the war."
Excuse me. Just a moment, please. Consider the source! This photograph was produced and published by the Brady studio. Brady was careful to include himself in many of his famous war images -- it helped solidify his reputation as the war photographer. He created the title for the image. It could just have easily been titled "Look at Me! I'm the Dauntless Photographer Staring Into the Eyes of the Enemy!" Okay, fair enough, you might think, if he did make this image under fire why not say so? For decades this image was taken on faith as just what it was called.
However, photographic historians have debunked the photo and they did so without breaking a sweat. The technological constraints of photography in this period were such that figures were required to stay motionless for several seconds -- as much as thirty seconds depending on light conditions. Although you probably can't make it out on your screen, the U.S. flag in the background is blurred, showing that it was flapping in the wind during the exposure of the picture. And yet all the men are clear and unblurred, meaning that they held still for the picture.
Now think about it: can you imagine a crowd of some two dozen men standing perfectly still for the period of time required to compose the image and make the exposure -- during an artillery bombardment? Oh, Mr. Brady, you humbug! This picture is a publicity stunt worthy of your friend, P.T. Barnum.
Reading between the lines becomes easier with practice, and it also becomes easier with more specialized knowledge. Without knowing how photographs were made in the Civil War you might not be able to deconstruct this picture. But if you have the facts and you consider the source -- aha! You discover you have a document that is interesting in a very different way than what you thought you had at first. Facts and logic are two indispensable tools for writing nonfiction. Consider the source!
Using primary sources in the research process can be both rewarding and frustrating. Reading a letter or a diary can be exciting, but so often I find myself thinking "Why didn't he explain X?" -- or Y or Z? So much is left out that the original audience was expected to know without being told! My job is to figure out what went without saying, and to decide what the missing pieces might be. This requires a certain amount of confidence, and the willingness to make logical inferences.
Let me give you an example. While doing research for a book about the Civil War (Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War), I ran across a fascinating battlefield tidbit (of course, I ran across dozens, but I'm just going to use one right now.) The tidbit was the information that at the end of a battle, sodiers' faces would be black around the mouth from gunpowder, because they had to bite off the ends of their paper cartridges, and in the frenzy of battle the biting and tearing got a little messy with gunpowder splashing and spilling.
Okay, what can we extrapolate from that? I like to consider all the senses when I have to flesh out details. "Faces black with gunpowder" is a vivid visual detail, but it also suggests other sensations: the gritty feel of gunpowder between the teeth, not to mention the taste of it in the back of the throat for hours at a time. (Full disclosure: I have not tasted gunpowder so I don't know how to describe it.) It suggests the sting of gunpowder in the eyes or up the nose; I can imagine spitting black spit and blowing black mucous into a hanky. Does everything smell of gunpowder when it coats the inside of your nose? Do you spend the first hour after battle spitting and rinsing out your mouth, provided you can get water? The gunpowder must also be in the ears, the hair, down the shirt collar -- everywhere. If you've been sweating no doubt you are smeared with black sweat, and the creases of your skin will be etched with black powder. Chances are that a right-handed soldier will have more powder on the right side of his face and head, and vice versa for a lefty.
Thus with one sensory detail, I can extrapolate a whole panoply of contingent information. It takes some practice, but anyone can do it. I find many kids are unaccustomed to making logical inferences, so when I demonstrate this process to young readers it looks a little like a magic trick, or like I'm just "making stuff up." But trust me, it's not really pulling a rabbit out of a hat -- you just have to look carefully inside the hat and see what's in there.
A large part of what I do while researching historical documents or images is read between the lines, or draw logical inferences. Making historical information feel immediate and alive to readers means feeling my way into the material. This photograph from the Library of Congress website collection of Civil War photographs provides a good illustration. (Some details may be hard to see on your screen, so just bear with me. ) At first glance this photograph seems rather mute. Most kids seldom look at black and white images, and this picture might say nothing to a contemporary student. But with a little practice we can infer a great deal about the circumstances of this photograph, and paint a more colorful picture.
We can infer, to begin with, that the time of year is not winter -- we see leaves on the trees. Okay. Can we pin it down further? Yes, I think so. You notice how dusty the road looks -- the wheel tracks are deep but dry. I don't think it has rained for several weeks. This suggests late summer, right? And the shadows are crisp and sharp, so it's a bright sunny day, and probably hot. All at once I can bring all of my experience of "hot bright late summer day" to this photograph, and I can hear the cicadas buzzing in the trees, and see the swallows swooping for mosquitoes over the creek, and smell the damp stones in the arches of the bridge. I don't need direct, documentary evidence of the cicadas or the mosquitoes or the swallows; indirect evidence abounds. In doing historical research the writer (of fiction as well as nonfiction) can safely extrapolate a great deal from available evidence.
René Colato Laínez
April is the month of Easter or “la Semana Santa” as we call it in Latin America. There are many processions, the most beautiful ones take place in Antigua, Guatemala.
Here is my poem for Semana Santa
La iglesia en Semana Santa
La iglesia en Semana Santa
es un coro de oraciones
recordando a Jesucristo y sus bendiciones
Yo llevo ramos de flores, palmas y peticiones.
La iglesia en Semana Santa
es una linea de procesiones
Jesús lleva en la cruz, la salvación
y yo todo su amor en mi corazón.
La iglesia en Semana Santa
es una fuente de celebraciones.
Jesús ha resucitado, ya no hay frustraciones.
Doy gracias al cielo entre oraciones y canciones.
La iglesia en Semana Santa
se llena de mil cascarones
que busco en los jardines
entre flores y conejos de colores.
Take a look at these books about Semana Santa/ Easter:
Sawdust Carpets by Amelia Lau Carling
Alfombras de aserrín por Amelia Lau Carling
Story of Easter / La Historia de la Pascua by Patricia A. Pingry
La Historia De La Pascua por Patricia A. Pingry
The Very First Easter by Paul L. Maier
La Flor De Pascua / The Passover Flower by Gwen Ellis Petook: An
Easter Story by Caryll Houselander
Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco
Benjamin's Box by Melody Carlson
Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco
Peter's First Easter by Walter Wangerin
Science often uses contstructs to explain phenomena that are not truth (or reality) as we know it. What is light? That depends on what you want to do with it. It can be thought of as a stream of particles or a as wave but not both at the same time. Einstein said it best: "Physical concepts are the creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world." My advice is just to dance with the mystery.
Honestly, I think I understand quantum physics better now than I did before I read your post!