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All of us at First Book have been heartbroken to learn ways recent floods in Louisiana have destroyed public libraries, school libraries, and home libraries across Baton Rouge and the surrounding areas.

Even before the flood waters started to recede in Baton Rouge, we knew what residents needed most urgently: clean water, a roof overhead, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing your next meal is not a gamble. But what comes afterwards? Where do we start to rebuild the foundation of a community?

“We lost everything in our library,” said Claire Clickingbeard, a teacher at Tanglewood Elementary in Baton Rouge. “As well as all teachers’ personal collections.”

Teachers from Baton Rouge and across the country wrote and told us where they needed to start.

“Our school lost its entire library, including all the books in individual classrooms, “said Sarah Batty, a teacher at Denham Springs High School in Livingston Parish. “As I was sorting through the books, I opened a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. This particular book had been handed down through three teaching generations. I saw the ink from the handwritten notes running down the pages…and I lost what little bit of composure I still had left. It was my favorite teacher possession, and there it was dripping in the remains of the river that ran through my school.”

First Book is raising funds to help restock school libraries across the region for Claire, Sarah and many other educators and their students. Funds raised will help us cover the shipping and handling costs of donated books, as well as the purchase of additional books from the First Book Marketplace.

We invite anyone passionate about the power of books, education, and the importance of community to make a donation. If you are an individual that would like to help, please visit our fundraising page to make a donation. Each $1 donated will be MATCHED with a new book from our publishing partners, up to $30,000.

We are working with our friends at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other publishers who have generously donated a range of new books to this effort. If you are a publisher interested in contributing books to schools and programs affected by the floods, please email First Book at [email protected].

If your school or program was affected by the recent floods and would like to request new books to restock shelves or to share with the children you serve, please enter your contact information here. Please note that completing this form will not guarantee that you will receive books, but it will be the first step in the process.  First Book will share books and resources with as many schools and programs as we are able.

Please join us in restoring the basic resources needed for a school.

The post Louisiana Book Relief: Help Restock Flooded Libraries appeared first on First Book Blog.

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The book everyone is talking about. The book no one thought they would ever see. Fifty Five years after To Kill A Mockingbird we have a sequel…. Firstly I think it is really important to remember the context of this book while reading it. This book was written before To Kill A Mockingbird. Before all […]

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In anticipation of the new Harper Lee novel, Go Set A Watchman, (out July 14) I decided it was the perfect time for a re-read of To Kill A Mockingbird. I don’t think I’ve read the book since high school and the movie is still so dominant in my mind so it was a great […]

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Mary Badham, the actress who portrayed young Scout Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, will celebrate the release of Go Set a Watchman at a reading event. She plans to read from both the first Harper Lee novel and the highly anticipated sequel.

This event is scheduled to take place on July 14 at the 92Y in New York. For those who can’t make it in-person, it will also be broadcast live on the organization’s website.

Badham gave this statement in the press release: “Of course at age 10 I wasn’t aware of the impact Mockingbird had at the time, or the impact the film would have later, but it has been a special part of my life ever since. Now I am really excited about Watchman and being able to share it with Miss Nelle’s loyal and passionate fans.”

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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, is the bestselling pre-order book that HarperCollins has ever seen.

Robert Thomson, chief executive of Harper Collins parent company News Corp., revealed this news to The Guardian. He would not reveal sales figures but did say that the book won’t have a ton of marketing. Here is an excerpt:

Thomson said: \"I’m not going to make a sales forecast, it’s inappropriate, but it’s going to be a big book. It won’t need a huge amount of marketing, it will have a certain amount of marketing. Most people in America have read To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee has revealed plans to publish a second book.

The To Kill a Mockingbird author revealed today that Harper would publish Go Set a Watchman this year. The book will be available on July 14th and is currently available for presale on Amazon.

The book is a kind of sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, however it was finished earlier. “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman,'” stated Lee. “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became `To Kill a Mockingbird’) from the point of view of the young Scout.  I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told.”

Will You Read Harper Lee’s New Book?

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When Harper Lee was asked what advice she’d give a young writer, she wrote: “Well, the first advice I would give is this: hope for the best and expect nothing. Then you won’t be disappointed.” And she went on to say: “You must come to terms with yourself about writing. You must not write “for” something, you must not write with definite hopes of reward. People who write for reward by way of

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I took O Level English Literature at a girls' grammar school in 1979. We studied three texts: Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford; E M Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Midsummer's

Night's Dream.  A play by the ultimate English writer, and two texts connected only by their utter Englishness.
I found the detailed social history contained in Flora Thompson's memoir of life in rural England completely tedious. Forster's examination of Edwardian snobbery and xenophobia in Forster's novel was somewhat baffling, sixteen-year-old girls not being best placed to appreciate a story about a middle-aged woman's lust for a younger man (Eeeuw, yuck, disgusting). Re-reading it, 35 years later I was surprised to find it laugh-out-loud funny.
 I didn't enjoy English Literature O level, but I was good at it, and that was why I continued on to A level, which I found much more rewarding, with its wider (but still 100% English...not even British) texts.
Around the same time my husband received a reading list from his school. It included 22 plays, including contemporary works (Arnold Wesker's Roots, Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey), four plays by George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and Sophocles' Antigone.  For W Shakespeare the list read 'Any Play'.
The list for prose was longer -  44 books. They included plenty of nineteenth century novels: Jane Austen, Brontes C and E, two novels by Dickens and one by Hardy.
There were many twentieth century texts, British, American and translated : Anne Frank's Diary; Of Mice and Men (and another Steinbeck), To Kill a Mocking Bird. George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984; Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice and The Pied Piper, Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, D H Lawrence Sons and Lovers.
The list covered many genres -  science fiction (Day of the Triffids); romance (Pride and Prejudice); historical fiction (Rosemay Sutcliff's Warrior Scarlet); memoir( Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals), dystopian fiction (Fahrenheit 451); mystery (Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair) a western (Shane by Jack Shaefer) and a thriller (Alistair McLean's The Guns of Navarone).  There were several true-life stories from the Second World War, one by a Polish writer, one by an Italian and Alan Burgess's novel A Small Woman about a British missionary in China.
This list was clearly designed to be as broad as possible, introducing pupils to classic works of literature and inviting them to find out what sort of book they enjoy. It was challenging, interesting, reflecting different social classes and nationalities, as well as ethnic minority groups.
Should schools find this extensive list too short, there was a note: 'Candidates from Schools whose extended lists have been approved by the Board may, of course, refer in addition to texts on these lists.'  My husband remembers that pupils were told to read at least five or six of the 66 texts on the list, but he read at least 20, some in class, some from the local library. The final examination at the end of the course asked generic questions such as: 'Write about strong characters in some of the books you have read.'
This list  fostered a love of  reading in my husband which eventually led him to read English Literature at Oxford University.
The really interesting thing is that he was taking CSE English at a Secondary Modern school, a school to which he had been condemned by failing the 11 plus. CSEs were widely seen as useless qualifications for thickies, but I would contend that anyone who was given that list and had a crack at reading six books on it, would find something  enjoyable and challenging to read which might inspire them to read more in the future.

Our daughter took GCSE English recently, studying anthologies of poetry and short stories, a few scenes from Macbeth and Of Mice and Men; a syllabus which seemed to be designed for kids with short concentration spans. Of Mice and Men was the only text she read that ran to any length at all - all 107 pages of it. I have nothing against Steinbeck's classic, and certainly nothing against Macbeth, I am sure that the anthologies contained good material, but I have to admit to a great deal of parental frustration as I watched my daughter thoroughly turned off by this thin fare, and irritated by being asked to compare World War One poetry with Macbeth, an exam question that she found pointless and off-putting. .
I am writing this, of course, because of the recent kerfuffle over GCSE English, a row in which facts got lost to prejudice (for and against Michael Gove, for and against American literature, for and against Dickens and other nineteenth century authors).
Depending on who you read, Gove had personally interfered to ban books, or had bravely intervened to widen the curriculum, or Gove had nothing to do with any of it. As the saying goes, fools rush in, where angels fear to tread: it seemed as though the way the changes to GCSE English were reported and discussed was designed to make everyone look foolish (a Machiavellian plot by Gove himself, perhaps?)
I watched the row develop with increasing frustration, as it had so little to do with the actual crisis facing British children's literacy. Libraries are closing! Schools are being designed without libraries! Reading is being re-defined as deciphering phonics! School library services are closing! Children are spending more and more time glued to screens and less and less time reading for pleasure! These are the real crises, not whether Of Mice and Men remains on the school syllabus.
 When I read that Bailey's Prize winner Eimear McBride wants to spend some of her £30,000 prize money buying copies of Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird to give free to teenagers, I want to scream. These books haven't been banned, Eimear! Schools have so many copies that they will, no doubt, find a way of using them, perhaps by teaching them to Y9 pupils.  Instead, please give your money to the Siobhan Dowd Trust which has the simple and essential aim of promoting the love of reading among disadvantaged children and young adults.
Yesterday the review section of The Guardian newspaper asked a select group of authors and academics to pick GCSE texts (no librarians, English teachers or children's writers among them). The choice that make me giggle the most was put forward by Linda Grant: Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. And the one with which I agreed  whole-heartedly was Hilary Mantel:
Should we play the Gove game, by setting up opposing lists? Or should we ask, which Gradgrind thought up the idea of set texts in the first place? Why should students be condemned to thrash to death a novel or a corpus of poetry, week after week, month after month? No novel was ever penned to puzzle and punish the young. Plays are meant to be played at. Poetry is not written for Paxmanites. Literature is a creative discipline, not just for writer but for reader. Is the exam hall its correct context? We educate our children not as if we love them but as if we need to control and coerce them, bullying them over obstacles and drilling them like squaddies; and even the most inspired and loving teachers have to serve the system. We have laws against physical abuse. We can try to legislate against emotional abuse. So why do we think it's fine to abuse the imagination, and on an industrial scale? What would serve children is a love of reading, and the habit of it. I wonder if the present system creates either.

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• ·          “I’m an athlete and in GT (Gifted and Talented – advanced level) classes. People think I suck at sports since they assume I’m a nerd.”
• ·         “Just because I’m white, people automatically assume I’m wealthy.”
• ·         “Some people think that all Muslims are terrorists. It upsets me because I wear the hijab, and some people judge us from that one thing.”
• ·         “My personal experience with discrimination has to do with my race. I am Mexican, but have light skin, freckles, and I don’t speak Spanish. Many of the Hispanic students (and adults, too) say that I’m not a ‘true Mexican.’”
• ·         “Some students think I’m the smartest person in class because I’m Asian, but I’m really not that smart.”
• ·          “I have been discriminated against based on my sexual identity, musical choices, intelligence level, and favorite hobbies.”
• ·         “I have been discriminated against when I went through a voice change in 6^th grade. People made fun of my high voice. Now I’m the choir manager for my Advanced Choir group.”

Follow @mrspiapulido

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Note: This was first posted over at The Nerdy Book Club, a great sight for fans of children’s books. Recommended.

EVERYBODY ELSE IS ALREADY TAKEN

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

After I wrote the book BYSTANDER (Macmillan, 2009), I began to receive invitations to speak at middle schools. I was wary at first of being perceived as anybody’s “anti-bullying program.”

I wrote a book. Not a pamphlet, not a list of discussion questions, not a nonfiction guide to bullying. I could not offer a handy list of ten ways to make your school a bully-proof zone. I didn’t even believe in it.

I wrote a story –- that was the tool at my disposal.

Stories are essential to our lives. How could we live without them? We watch television, go to movies, tell tales to our friends and neighbors, conjure dreams at night, play complex video games, read books. Humans are storytelling creatures. We seem to need stories. Something inside us craves stories, we hunger for them, ravenous.

Why is that?

Stories function differently than nonfiction. The characters have a way of worming inside our souls. Robert McKee, in his book, STORY, claims that “Stories are equipment for living.”

Equipment for living.

Our lives race past us, a frantic blur, and we move from the next thing, to the next, to the next, with barely a moment’s reflection.

Stories give us pause. They give our lives form and shape. And time. We turn a page. We consider. We piece together the meaning of our days through the stories we hear.

And we ask of these stories the same question, over and over again: What is a good life? How are we to conduct ourselves here on this earth?

Well-told stories, as Harper Lee so beautifully demonstrated in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, allow us to walk in someone’s else’s shoes. Remember that remarkable scene at the end of the book? When Scout walks Boo Radley home, climbs up to his porch, and for a moment turns and looks at the world from his perspective?

Scout concluded: “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”

That’s story.

It’s also called empathy, understanding, compassion.

Here’s McKee again: “A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling.”

Story isn’t an escape from reality. It is a light that shines upon the dark corners of our world, the secret places, the hidden fears and hopes and dreams.

It is why books matter, and why, I now know, some teachers have embraced BYSTANDER –- among other novels — as a way to explore this complex topic.

I’ve stood on a stage in auditoriums in front of 500, 600, 700 middle school-age children. Or as they refer to them in Ireland, “young people.” I like that. Young people. So much more intrinsically respectful than kids, little lambs eat ivy.

Despite my experience visiting places like Oklahoma and South Carolina, Illinois and Connecticut, Florida and Michigan, I’m still in the process of learning how to talk about bullying. Still growing into my own shoes. Still learning to speak above a whisper.

One of the central ideas embedded in the book – an idea I came to understand only through the passage of time – also happens to be one that’s incredibly difficult for me to directly convey to middle school students. So I don’t try to tell it, per say, so much as hope it leaks out over everything, like sunlight through the edges of a drawn blind. But I think it’s worth saying to you, here.

Research shows that bullying peaks in middle school. Why is that?

Let’s recall Emerson’s quote from up top, and agree that one of the greatest achievements in life is to become, simply, one’s true self. It sounds easy enough, but as we know, it is not. I’m a father, I have three children, including a 7th-grader and a 9th-grader. I watch their awkwardness and insecurities and struggles.

To be content in your own skin.

To not look to others for your cues.

To accept and trust who you are, to follow your own inner compass.

These are not easy things.

At no time in life is it tougher than in middle school, when peers begin to replace parents as prime influencers. How to dress, what to talk about, what to watch on television, how to act, where to sit, whom to befriend, whom to avoid. This is how we forge identity, hammering out our awareness of self (which is a created thing after all, the “self” we decide to become). At middle school, many of these daily details are powerfully influenced by the pack.

Yet a primary aspect to becoming a true individual is the casting off of those concerns. It’s a challenge for anybody to stand up against the crowd. For a middle schooler, it’s close to impossible. On a deep level, in terms of self-identity, they see themselves as the group. The group is them, the individual swallowed by the great whale. And we are all Pinocchio, trapped inside the dark belly, fumbling for a light, yearning to become a real boy.

This dynamic is how young people find their place in the world. We watch others to learn about ourselves. We tell stories. We listen. And then when it comes to bullying, the adults in their lives tell these young people to not worry what anybody else thinks.

“Who cares what anyone thinks!”

Well, they care. They care so much.

In my heart, I believe the lasting answer to bullying is to become a genuine, authentic, free-thinking, responsible individual. The best definition of responsibility I’ve heard is “the ability to respond,” to act according to the courage of your convictions.

People are good, I absolutely believe that. And the closer people hone into to their true selves, the better and more moral they become.

Be yourself. In doing so, we all become far more likely to allow others the freedom to be their selves.

Shakespeare: “This above all: To thine own self be true!”

Or, if you prefer, Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken.”

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50 Book Pledge | Book #29: Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore

I present a passage from HarperCollins‘ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

“This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

“Atticus, you must be wrong. . . .”

“How’s that?”

“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong. . . .”

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

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The facts are fuzzy. A while back I answered ten questions by somebody who was writing a piece to be published . . . somewhere. Hey, it seemed legit at the time.

I do know that my book, ALONG CAME SPIDER, was featured in Michigan — some 1,600 copies were distributed to 4th-graders in 34 public schools — and there was a contest to “win an author,” that prize being me. Which is why, oh wild wonders, I’m winging where I’m winging next week. Grand Rapids, better batten the hatches.

What follows are my answers to the aforementioned ten questions.

1. Where did you grow up? What college did you attend?

The youngest of seven children, I was born in a blizzard in 1961, and grew up in Wantagh, on the south shore of Long Island, NY. I was an indifferent, distracted student in high school. For college, I stayed within the SUNY system and went to Oneonta –- which I loved. That’s where I became a serious, committed student.

2. What/Who motivated you to become a writer?

Look, I wanted to pitch for the New York Mets. When that didn’t work out –- and it became clear very early on –- I had to move on to Plan B. As a teenager, I kept a journal, wrote poems, scribbled lyrics to imaginary songs. Maybe it was a product of being the youngest, but even though I was intensely social, I was always able to be alone. For writers, that’s essential. You have to be okay with solitude.

3. How many books have you written?

I first published in 1986, and my career has been a long journey of trying different things, making tons of compromises along the way. Let’s say that I didn’t hit my first one out of the park. I wrote for food, I wrote to pay the bills. I’ve done more than 80 books overall, I’ve lost count. There are 40 in the Jigsaw Jones series. I’ve learned something from each and every one. But instant success? That was not my path. And I’m okay with it. Really. No, really!

4. In your opinion, what is the major theme in “Along Came Spider?”

It’s a book about the struggle to find your place, about fitting in, and some of the roots and tender shoots of bullying. It’s about being a friend, hopefully a good one, and what those responsibilities might be, which is not always so easy or so clear.

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This week is Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating our freedom to read whatever we like. It’s not that we want to celebrate the banning of books, of course. What we celebrate is the power of books to convey ideas, even ideas that are shocking, controversial or unpopular.

Sponsored by the American Library Association and many others, Banned Books Week is an important way to shine a light on these books. Many of the books highlighted during Banned Books Week were only the target of attempted bans; a powerful reminder of the importance of staying vigilant about protecting our First Amendment right to read any books we like.

At First Book, we like to walk the walk, so we make a special effort to ensure that the schools and programs in our network have access to high-quality books – including many that have been banned, or the target of attempted bannings.

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.
• The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank.
• Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin
• The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
• Fighting Ground, by Avi
• The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
• Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
• Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

Check out these books (and more) on the First Book Marketplace, and make sure the kids you serve have the chance to read them all, and make up their own minds.

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As part of a late summer assignment, I received a terrific letter from Zander in Brooklyn, including his answer to the question, “What will happen to the characters in Bystander after the story?”

Here’s an excerpt from that letter . . .

Thanks so much for answering my questions. I really loved your book! I did a little writing about what I thought might happen to some of the characters in the future. I was wondering if you have ever thought about this? Do you think Griffin will continue to be a bully? What about the other characters? I also have to ask the obvious question — were you a bully or where you bullied in school? If not, why did you want to write this book? I’m really looking forward to your answers.

Zander

What I think will happen to the characters after the story:

I think Griffin will still be the bully, but he will be a lone bully with no clique by his side. About twenty pages before the book ended, Griffin’s gang separated from him; they were fed up with Griffin and his ways and felt bad for the people they hurt and picked on. Griffin may form a new clique, but I think the same thing will happen that happened to the original click, they will get fed up with Griffin’s ways. Eventually, Griffin will probably find out that this whole bully thing isn’t working out for him and turn over a new leaf, but I’m not so sure about that either; it’s not exactly Griffin’s way. The other problem is the relationship between Griffin and Griffin’s father. If the way Griffin’s father acts changes, Griffin will change with him. You see, Griffin mimics his father’s actions, and if those actions change, I have a good feeling that a new Griffin will be born. If they would go into therapy, this could be achieved. But since that didn’t happen in the story, it’s unlikely that it will happen now. Thus having Griffin stay the same.

I also think that Mary and Eric will still hang out a lot, they might be considered boyfriend and girlfriend, but I’m not sure. I also think that Griffin’s original clique will turn into Eric’s clique, or Griffin’s original clique will accept Eric as a member; either way, Mary will no longer be Eric’s only friend. Before I finished the story, I thought to myself that it would not be a “…and they all lived happily ever after” ending, and I was right. If the story continued on, I still think this would be true

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Readers have nominated Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as the book they would most like to see given away as part of next year's World Book Night.

During the past two months, more than 6,000 book lovers had been nominating the titles they would like to see included in next year's event with more than 8,000 individual titles put forward.

read more

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Filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy has created a new documentary about celebrated author Harper Lee entitled Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird.

According to Shelf Awareness, the film will feature interviews with Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, James McBride, James Patterson, Wally Lamb, and Oprah Winfrey. Some of those celebrities can be seen in the trailer embedded above.

Initially, the film will have a limited release in New York City and Los Angeles starting May 13th with a nationwide release to follow. Last year, Murphy published Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird for the book’s 50th anniversary.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Mockingbird
Kathryn Erskine
middle grade/ya

Every once in a while I run across one of those stories with a main character so beyond the bounds of my everyday existence I marvel at how anyone could create her/him and do so in such a believable way.

Erskine has done so with her character, Caitlin. A fifth-grader, Caitlin has Asperger's Syndrome. She's really smart but has a really tough time understanding and expressing emotion. Maneuvering through life means learning an exhausting list of facial expressions that decode what what people are thinking and/or what they really mean. Add to that that the the person who helped her maneuver the world, her older brother, has been killed in a school shooting.

Erskine bites off a huge chunk of storytelling with her character and the external event of a school shooting. She maneuvers both phenomenally. Caitlin is one of the best characters I've read lately. I had no idea what it's like inside the mind of a child with Asperger's. Erskine gives her readers a glance. It's a glance that doesn't pity. It doesn't minimize. It is. As such, I came to both empathize and understand Caitlin. It's a phenomenal bit of writing. Add to it weaving Caitlin's story seamlessly together with the affects of a school shooting on a community and exploring how to find "closure" and this work moves from phenomenal to unforgettable.

The one aspect of this novel that I was less impressed with was that it, like When You Reach Me, relies on an outside piece of art, in this instance To Kill a Mockingbird, to carry part of the story. One day I may do this myself and kick myself for not understanding or for finding fault with this particular writer's tool at present, but when a writer can weave as well as Erskine, story doesn't need outside art to support it, or deepen the emotional resonance. It's already there. And there in spades. For me, bringing in the outside world in this way detracts from the story being told. It pulls me outside Caitlin's story. It also expects a lot from that external art and the reader. I'd hazard a guess that not many children today have seen, To Kill a Mockingbird. Thus, what effect will the film really have on the reader? Wouldn't a fictional film do the job even better by staying within story by being a created part of it?

If you're looking for a deep story about school shootings, how they affect a community, what it must be like to "feel" and perceive the world as a person with Asperger's all wrapped into a story that pulls you toward it in a gentle but insistent way, read Mockingbird. There is so much here. Much to discuss. Critique. Enjoy. Ponder. And grow from.

Read it.

For other great Spring diversions, hop over to Barrie Summy's website. She's got temptations galore!

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I know, Dear Reader, I know.

You are getting tired of my slipshod approach, the endless excuses about how busy I am.

But!

Yesterday I coached two baseball practices, for two different teams. Threw batting practice to twenty-two different boys who are at a point, ages 11 and 12, where it’s no longer okay to just blob it over. They need the ball with a little heat. So my wing is sore.

Today I’m driving off to Geneseo with my oldest, Nick, for a second look-see. He’s a high school senior and we’re getting down to decision time for college. On Wednesday, my good wife Lisa flies down to Atlanta, where she’s going to learn how to perform minor surgery on a cervix — and frankly I do not want to know any more details than that. She comes home Sunday, the day I coach a doubleheader and drive down to Long Island for a week’s worth of school visits.

And, oh, yeah. There’s the job thing, too. Writing stuff.

So the blog suffers.

I wanted to share a few scans and photos. I recently visited a school down in Sicklerville, NJ, where the students filled the halls with creative responses to my book, Bystander. First, some beautiful faces . . .

There were posters and poems. Some students wrote journal entries from the perspective on a book character, and I thought those were particularly interesting and effective. Isn’t that the big lesson in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Scout stands on Boo Radley’s porch and sees the world from his perspective? When she stands in his shoes?

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” — Harper Lee.

So after my presentations were done, and the books signed, we walked around the halls and filled a big box with incredible artwork, posters, etc. I can’t show it all to you, but here’s a few samples:

Most posters were too big to scan. I loved the tagline that one boy came up with . . .

“DON’T BE A BULLY . . . DO THE NICE!”

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Kathryn Erskine (pictured, via), tackles tough subjects through children’s books.

Her debut novel, Quaking, responded to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Her second novel, Ibhubesi: The Lion, dealt with apartheid. Her third book, Mockingbird, featured a character with asperger’s syndrome–winning this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. We caught with her to learn about her writing process. Here are some highlights from the interview.

Q: Can you talk about the writing process you undertook for Mockingbird?
A: As in all my writing, I do a lot of research to put myself in the most authentic place. For Mockingbird, I researched how families deal with death and trauma, but focused on Asperger’s extensively, attending workshops and seminars, interviewing teachers and caretakers who interact daily with kids on the spectrum, in addition to living with a close family member who has Asperger’s.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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What am I reading now? The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by K. DiCamillo
 
On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Scholastic launched You Are What You Read, a new social networking site for readers. The main focus of You Are What You Read is to both “celebrate those books that helped us discover who we are and who we can become.”

Users can log on through existing social media accounts, namely Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, LinkedIn and MySpace. Once users have logged on they have the chance to not only share the five books that made a difference in their lives but also connect with readers around the world through shared “Bookprints.” Daniel Radcliffe, Taylor Swift and Venus Williams are just a few of the more than 130 “Names You Know” who have shared their Bookprints.

In addition, You Are What You Read provides users with the opportunity to:

Discover new books through an interactive web that shows how users’ Bookprints are connected

Find and connect with users across generations and from around the world to see the books in their Bookprints

Compare their Bookprints to those of the participating “Names You Know,” and find out if they share a book in their Bookprint with famous athletes, award-winning entertainers, world-renowned scientists or iconic business leaders

“Favorite” other books they like and check out what similar users enjoy reading

See which books have been chosen as Favorites from around the world

Share a book in the real word through Pass It On, which encourages users to give a favorite book to a family member, a friend or even a complete stranger

In the spirit of You Are What You Read and to get the ball rolling even further, here’s my Bookprint:

1. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

2. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

4. The Giver by Lois Lowry

5.

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princessdot said, on 11/10/2010 6:51:00 PM

My bookprint is: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, The Hitchhikers Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Trixie Belden and the Mysterious Visitor by Julie Campbell, Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I love the Bookprint idea! I wrote about this too! (http://princessdot.wordpress.com)

Inderjit Deogun said, on 11/11/2010 7:22:00 AM

princessdot, thanks for sharing! I, too, love the Bookprint idea. Scholastic has definitely struck gold once again.

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