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Often, loss is very difficult for children to process. Todd Parr’s The Goodbye Book walks young readers through feelings they may have while struggling with goodbyes; being upset, wanting to hide, or being confused. However, Parr reminds children things will get better. The author slyly gives them ideas about things they can do when the pain of loss subsides. Goodbyes can be done with love, without complete sadness, and while remembering many of the joys that person, pet, or thing brought to a child’s life.
KidLit TV’s Read Out Loud series is perfect for parents, teachers, and librarians. Use these readings for nap time, story time, bedtime … anytime!
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Did you like this episode of Read Out Loud? Have you used it at home, school, or the library? Let us know by dropping us a line in the comment section.
ABOUT ‘THE GOODBYE BOOK’
The Goodbye Book Written and illustrated by Todd Parr
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Todd Parr, author of It’s Okay to Be Different, has carved out a niche for himself as “the feelings man” of picture books, and it’s not hard to see why. In glossy, color-saturated pages, we’re introduced to a small fish who’s lost its companion. As the fish goes through many reactions to the loss, the text is directed straight at the reader, giving permission for all sorts of feelings: “You might be very sad. / You might be very mad.” The art is simple and naïve, as though Parr loaded up Paint on his computer and started clicking away. With its accessible style and kindhearted text, The Goodbye Book will serve kids as a sympathetic friend during trying times.
ABOUT TODD PARR
Todd Parr is the author and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books. Todd moved to San Francisco to pursue a career as an artist, then took a detour as a flight attendant, before becoming a full-time author and illustrator. Todd draws in a style that’s highly relatable to children.
Todd acknowledges his supportive family — including a grandma who introduced him to Dr. Seuss books — as being a strong influence in his work. He is able to write stories about kindness and love because of his upbringing. Todd’s books have been translated into more than 14 languages. In 2005 Todd received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his preschool television series ToddWorld.
Todd’s favorite color is blue, and he loves macaroni and cheese.
Todd loves hearing from fans of his books. Go ahead and contact him, here. You can send him a note and pictures too!
Bonus: Actress Sandra Bullock is a big fan of Todd’s Family Book. She reads it aloud to her children Louis and Laila before bedtime.
Teachers Rock! is the new picture book from New York Times best-selling author and illustrator Todd Parr. The book is a celebration of teachers and all the wonderful things they do for students. Children spend many of their waking hours in classrooms, so teachers have a huge impact on their lives. Teachers Rock! contains many real life scenarios; Parr shows teachers buying their own supplies, making sure children wipe their noses, and a few unexpected moments.
Parr grew up in Wyoming where he remembers having a wonderful classroom experience. While he was appreciative of many of his teachers he cites Mrs. Judson, his fourth grade teacher, with being the one who encouraged most of his creativity. As an adult Parr studied art; however, he didn’t do well because he preferred a style all his own. Todd Parr’s work is highly relatable to children because of the bright colors, imperfect lines, and simplicity. Parr told StoryMakers host Rocco Staino that his ultimate goal is to continue writing books that help children feel good about themselves, embrace their feelings, and understanding of others.
Do you have a favorite teacher? Let us know who that person is, and why they’re so special, in the comment section below.
We’re giving away three (3) bundles of Todd Parr’s picture books. Each bundle includes a copy of Teachers Rock!, It’s Okay to Make Mistakes and The Goodbye Book. The giveaway ends at 11:59 PM on May 3, 2016. Enter now!
Teachers Rock!
Written and illustrated by Todd Parr
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Teachers are amazing! They teach you new things, make you laugh, and help you meet new friends. They always encourage you to do your best. They make the classroom a great place to be!
From admiring the way teachers foster creativity in the classroom to how they ensure all children’s needs are met, Todd Parr offers an ode to everything teachers contribute to the world. Bursting with positivity about school and the people who make it special, this book is sure to become a classroom and at-home favorite.
ABOUT TODD PARR
Todd Parr is the author and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books. Todd moved to San Francisco to pursue a career as an artist, then took a detour as a flight attendant, before becoming a full-time author and illustrator. Todd draws in a style that’s highly relatable to children.
Todd acknowledges his supportive family — including a grandma who introduced him to Dr. Seuss books — as being a strong influence in his work. He is able to write stories about kindness and love because of his upbringing. Todd’s books have been translated into more than 14 languages. In 2005 Todd received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his preschool television series ToddWorld.
Todd’s favorite color is blue, and he loves macaroni and cheese.
Todd loves hearing from fans of his books. Go ahead and contact him, here. You can send him a note and pictures too!
Bonus: Actress Sandra Bullock is a big fan of Todd’s Family Book. She reads it aloud to her children Louis and Laila before bedtime.
I still have fond memories of my math teacher, Mr True, and “you yahoos”. He was great.
creslibrary said, on 4/19/2016 3:10:00 PM
I loved my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McClish. She actually wrote in cursive on my report card. I hope you go to college and become a teacher. I was the first one in my Mennonite family to go to college and become a teacher/librarian. Mrs. McClish believed in me and saw my career talents at such an early age.
Donna Rossman said, on 4/22/2016 8:34:00 PM
I have fond memories of many of my elementary school teachers. My husband is a retired teacher and it is so wonderful when his old students contact him on FB and tell him how he inspired them.
Findus goes Fishing by Sven Nordqvist, translated by Nathan Large is a book for anyone who’s ever got out of bed the wrong side and felt like nothing at all could improve their day, and also for all those who’ve spent time with someone they love who’s under a dark cloud. It’s a story of patience, love, empathy and one crazy cat.
It’s a gloomy autumn day and old farmer Pettson is down in the dumps. He doesn’t feel like doing any of the jobs he knows he needs to do. He’s blue and stuck in a funk. But his loyal and very dear friend, a kittenish cat called Findus is full of beans and just wants to play. Pettson is having none of it and snaps. “I AM IN A BAD MOOD AND I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!”
How can you bring a little happiness back to someone who is feeling unhappy and depressed? What can you do to bring them a small ray of sunshine when all they have above their heads is a dark cloud? Findus may want to have some fun, but he also really wants to make his good friend feel better and so with a little bit of patience, a lot of thoughtfulness and – because Findus is a bit of a rascal – a dash of mischief, Findus cleverly finds a way to help Pettson back on to his feet.
It’s not sugar coated. It’s not all sweetness and light. There is grunting and gloom aplenty. But there’s also a cat with a very big heart who’s not afraid of persevering even when he’s told to scram. Findus helps us all to find a bit of loyalty and kindness in the face of rejection.
This hugely reassuring story is a relatively quiet affair (certainly by the madcap standards of earlier Findus and Pettson escapades), with muted illustrations in browns and greys perfectly matching the moody atmosphere. But Findus goes Fishing is far from downbeat. There are still many moments to spark giggles (all I’ll say is: Who hasn’t known a child who loves to rock chairs onto their back legs?), and the detailed, rich illustrations are a full of cameos worthy of a spotlight on their own.
An excerpt from Findus Goes Fishing written and illustrated by Sven Nordqvist, translated by Nathan Large
I’m a strong contender for the the UK’s No. 1 Findus and Pettson fan, such is my love for these characters and the stories Sven Nordqvist writes. Findus goes Fishing is yet another wonderfully enjoyable, funny-yet-not-afraid-of-being-serious story really all about that most important of things: love and how we share it.
To celebrate the publication next week of Findus goes Fishing I interviewed the book’s UK English translator, Nathan Large and started by asking him a little about his background and how he became a translator. “I come from Gloucestershire and live in Stockholm, the home town of my partner, Emilie. I started translating while working as a linguist on a project developing machine translation tools. At first this was for research reasons, to explore patterns that our software could use. But gradually the translating branched out and found a life of its own.”
Having briefly worked as a translator myself many years ago I wondered what Nathan found particularly enjoyable about the work and his reply really resonated with me. “If you love language for its own sake, there’s always something to discover or enjoy in the work. If you are a curious person, translation also gives you the excuse to read about all sorts of subjects, making you among other things (un)popular at pub quizzes. Generally speaking, it is no bad thing to help people share their stories across languages.” I couldn’t agree more and this is certainly one of the reason’s I’m so grateful to translators, and publishing houses who seek out books in translation.
So how do the nuts and bolts of translation fit together for Nathan? Where does he begin? “It depends. Sven Nordqvist’s stories are pure fun. I read the book, then translate it the old-fashioned way, page by page. I check the draft against the original to see if I’ve missed anything, then put the Swedish to one side and focus on the English. Reading aloud is the best way to do this — the tongue trips over what the eye ignores.” This idea of reading aloud is really interesting – I’ve heard many authors use exactly the same technique, especially with picture book texts, and perhaps this shared approach is no surprise, as translators really are authors in disguise; translators, particularly literary translators, have to be great writers in their own language before sensitivity to a second language can come in to it.
Looking at the Findus and Pettson stories in particular, I love how they are universal – about deep friendship and kindness – but without losing their particular Swedish identity. What is it, however, that Nathan enjoys about these stories? “I like the interplay between words and images, but most of all I like the friendship between the two characters. This comes out particularly well in the latest book, which of course isn’t really about fishing at all but about Findus trying to get Pettson out from under his cloud.
Hawthorn Press wants to stay close to Nordqvist’s voice and the Swedish setting is largely left intact, lutefisk and all. However, observant readers may notice that Pettson and Findus drink tea in one of the books, I won’t say which one. Naturally it should have been coffee.
” At this point I rush off to gather all my Findus and Pettson stories to track down the missing coffee… It’s amazing how big a smile this puts on my face.
So occasionally there might be textual changes, and this leads me to wondering about changes made in the illustrations. At the moment I’m working with a colleague on a close comparison of a French book, which has been translated quite differently into US and UK Englishes. That different words are chosen (in essentially the same language) is interesting, but what has really startled us is that some of the illustrations have been significantly altered. I’m delighted to hear that this doesn’t happen with with Findus and Pettson stories, other than occasionally translating text that appears as part of a picture.
An excerpt from Findus Goes Fishing written and illustrated by Sven Nordqvist, translated by Nathan Large
Our experience with the French book makes me curious about other translations of the Findus and Pettson stories. Hawthorn Press (the UK publishers of Findus and Pettson) has a policy of letting the Swedish character shine threw their texts, but this isn’t the case with all versions of these stories. “It can be interesting to see what other people do with the same source material. The older US versions take quite a different approach, changing all the names and omitting much of the text. Hawthorn’s editions of Findus and the Fox and Pancakes for Findus are actually slightly edited Gecko translations, so there’s some continuity there.”
Ah! Changing names! This is a pet-hate of mine in translated stories, even if in theory I can understand the rationale that sometimes lies behind it (I can see why lovely – but typographically terrifying looking – Nijntje became Miffy for example) but why Findus and Pettson were renamed Mercury and Festus in the US I’d love to know. As to cutting the text, shortening the story, I wonder if this has something to do with different cultural expectations about illustrated books. Those who know different markets would probably agree with Charlotte Berry from the University of Edinburgh that “picture books on the continent tend to be aimed at older children than is generally accepted in the UK and the US and often contain a much higher proportion of text to image” and certainly Findus and Pettson do stand out here in the UK for looking like picture books in size and richness of illustration, but having the length of text at least sometimes associated with fiction for younger readers.
The idea about helping people share their stories across languages and cultures is still swirling in my head, so I can’t resist asking Nathan about Swedish children’s books which haven’t yet been translated into English but which he thinks would bring joy and delight to new readers. “Barbro Lindgren’s books about Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang: a young boy, his gleefully irresponsible father and a grandfather who lives in the woodshed. First published in 1969-70, the stories are based — give or take the occasional bed-eating giraffe — on Lindgren’s own experiences raising her young family. They are quite unlike anything I have read before. English readers might recognize in Loranga the very opposite of the helicopter parent. With their surreal humour, the books are perfect for reading aloud — to children and grown-ups alike.”
I love the sound of these stories… let’s hope a publisher is listening and gives Nathan a call!
My thanks go to Nathan for giving us an insight into how he works, and most especially for bringing us Sven Nordqvist’s brilliant, delightful, heartwarming big hugs which look like books, filled with Findus and Pettson stories. All power to translators and the publishing houses who support them!
Thank you for this interview! Great picture book translation conversation!
Avery Fischer Udagawa said, on 4/17/2016 10:07:00 PM
I love this! Thanks especially for your observation that “translators really are authors in disguise; translators, particularly literary translators, have to be great writers in their own language before sensitivity to a second language can come in to it.” Hear, hear. I am excited to read Findus Goes Fishing in Nathan Large’s rendering.
Chantal said, on 4/18/2016 2:44:00 AM
Such a delight to see the Scandanavian books translated! We have “A rumpus in the garden” By Sven Nordqvist. Such fun to look at all the pictures, there is so much happening, you see more every time you look. Also great to see an interview with a translator and see their perspective and insights.
Every now and then we make mistakes. Kids make mistakes and adults do the same thing too. Todd Parr’s It’s Okay to Make Mistakes reminds children they don’t need to be perfect. The best thing about making mistakes is that you can learn and grow from them, create new experiences, and more.
Todd reads It’s Okay to Make Mistakes in a tone that is warm, confident, and affirming.
KidLit TV’s Read Out Loud series is perfect for parents, teachers, and librarians. Use these readings for nap time, story time, bedtime … anytime!
LIKE IT? PIN IT!
ABOUT ‘IT’S OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES’
It’s Okay to Make Mistakes
Written and illustrated by Todd Parr
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Todd Parr’s bestselling books have reminded kids to embrace differences, to be thankful, to love one another, and to be themselves. It’s Okay to Make Mistakes embraces life’s happy accidents, the mistakes and mess-ups that can lead to self discovery. Todd Parr brings a timely theme to life with his signature bold, kid-friendly illustrations and a passion for making readers feel good about themselves, encouraging them to try new things, experiment, and dare to explore new paths.
From coloring outside the lines and creating a unique piece of art to forgetting an umbrella but making a new friend, each page offers a kid-friendly take on the importance of taking chances, trying new things, and embracing life, mistakes and all.
ABOUT TODD PARR
Todd Parr is the author and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books. Todd moved to San Francisco to pursue a career as an artist, then took a detour as a flight attendant, before becoming a full-time author and illustrator. Todd draws in a style that’s highly relatable to children.
Todd acknowledges his supportive family — including a grandma who introduced him to Dr. Seuss books — as being a strong influence in his work. He is able to write stories about kindness and love because of his upbringing. Todd’s books have been translated into more than 14 languages. In 2005 Todd received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his preschool television series ToddWorld.
Todd’s favorite color is blue, and he loves macaroni and cheese.
Todd loves hearing from fans of his books. Go ahead and contact him, here. You can send him a note and pictures too!
Bonus: Actress Sandra Bullock is a big fan of Todd’s Family Book. She reads it aloud to her children Louis and Laila before bedtime.
For many years, the prevailing view among both cognitive scientists and philosophers has been that the brain is sufficient for cognition, and that once we discover its secrets, we will be able to unravel the mysteries of the mind. Recently however, a growing number of thinkers have begun to challenge this prevailing view that mentality is a purely neural phenomenon.
Pass it On by Sophy Henn (@sophyhenn) will bring a brilliant burst of happiness to your bookshelves. A simple set of friendly reminders about how easy it is and how wonderful it feels to ‘pay it forward’ when something nice happens to you, Henn’s latest offering is pure unadulterated joy disguised as a stunning picture book.
The book’s enthusiasm and generosity of spirit are infectious. Its rainbow palette puts a spring in your step and a smile on your face. Yes, if you’re in need of a mood boost, share this book!
Some will enjoy this book simply as an upbeat encouragement and reminder that happiness needn’t be complicated. But this book also offers opportunities for talking about behaviour, kindness and unselfishness and its figurative language , expressing happiness in so many different ways, makes it a picture book you could delight in using with slightly older children to look at synonyms and creative writing.
Delightfully upbeat, this book makes the world a better place, spreading warmth and optimism all around. Buy two copies – one for yourself, and the second one? Pass it on!
Inspired by Sophy Henn’s vibrant illustrations of balloons we decided to try a new (to us) painting technique to explore how to achieve an appearance of “transparency”.
First the kids used a cardboard tube to trace overlapping circles onto a piece of watercolour paper.
Then they painted in a selection of non-overlapping circles before – and this is the crucial bit – stopping painting and going next door to play with a load of balloons.
Once the first circles were completely dry, the kids painted their next selection of circles in different colours. Again we stopped for balloon play, to give the paint time to dry before filling in the final rounds of colour.
Leaving the paint to dry is essential in order to create crisp lines and a new shade of paint when the overlapping areas are painted, so make sure you have a second activity set up to keep people happy whilst the paint dries (this only takes 10 or 15 minutes each time, but if you don’t leave it, the paint mixes, runs and doesn’t give the ‘transparent’ look we were after).
Once all the circles were dry the kids drew balloon strings on in pencil, to present a bunch in bouquet style as a gift to friends. These balloon bunches would make gorgeous illustrations on home made thank-you cards, don’t you think?
Adding in the magic ingredient of “time” to our painting experience made all the difference, and one we hadn’t previously considered. Now I’m thinking how else we can play with paint and time to create different effects… If you’ve any suggestions, do let us know!
Whilst making creating our balloon art we listened to these happy songs:
Other activities which might work well alongside reading Pass it On include:
Choosing your favourite ideas from these two great books, both by Bernadette Russell, packed with ideas for bringing smiles to the faces around you:
Reading Because Amelia Smiled by David Ezra Stein, a delightful picture book about how happiness spreads around the world as a result of just one child smiling at her neighbour.
So there’s this book that you think is award-winningly brilliant. That hits every button. That leaves you feeling whole and happy and now bonded in a quiet but lifelong way to the story.
Then along comes another book, with a very similar premise and it’s hard to give this second book the mental space you rationally know it could deserve. When a first book seems perfect in every way, even the optimist that I am finds it hard to have hopes for a second book that purports to cover similar ground.
It doesn’t help when that first book is exquisitely produced and illustrated, with rich, thick paper and fabulous illustration, the sort that rarely graces and enriches novels for young people. And the cover of second book is reminiscent of a hugely popular series, great for encouraging readers to gobble up books but which has no pretensions to being anything with any literary, philosophical or high aesthetic value (which is of course fine, but here I’m highlighting how two potentially very similar books appear to be very different).
Nevertheless, you sit down and make a stab at the second book. Then your 11 year old daughter steals the book mid-read and won’t give it back till she’s done. As it turns out, she really likes the book, and a swift, unbroken two hours later – she returns it to me saying that I really HAVE to read it. I complain that I was reading it. That it was her that stopped me (even thought deep down I know that my own expectations / hopes / fears for the book had been preventing me from really getting going with it).
But now, thoroughly chastised by my daughter, I give myself over to this second book.
And I fall down a rabbit hole.
And I find myself holding my breath with slightly anxious anticipation. Each page turn could yet prove my initial fears right, feeding disappointment I had almost become resigned to expect. And yet each step towards the end actually brings wonderful warmth, and a growing sense of doubly delicious delight because I really had not expected or allowed myself to hope for it.
This second book turns out to be exceptional.
Incredibly beautifully written, with wisdom and wit in equal measure, this book manages to be both highly philosophical and hugely funny at the same time. It works as a compass for its readers to discover something of who they are and how they (choose to) fit into the world. It revels in the power of the imagination. It asks lots of questions and delivers immense satisfaction without ever providing all the answers. A paradox, perhaps, but one which speaks of the huge skill and unpatronising attitude of its generous author.
So almost 500 words into my review I should tell you the book’s title and author I guess. Fortunately, it’s worth waiting for:
How do you work out precisely who you are? Or who you want to be? This is at the heart of Confessions of an Imaginary Friend, and applies equally to the real children in the novel as to the eponymous imaginary friend Jacques Papier (to say nothing of the living, breathing reader…). And this gently philosophical novel has a huge heart; it reminded me of R. J Palacio’s Wonder in its thoughtful, gentle exploration of kindness and (un)selfishness. Cuevas writes lightly but richly, with pace (lots of very short chapters help to create this) and a strong sense of style, not shying away from startling descriptions and evocative language, the beauty of which you don’t often find in novels for the pre-teen crowd. It delights me to see that just before Christmas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend was named the Big Issue’s Kids’ Book of 2015.
Teachers could do so much with this book. Its quick chapters and laugh out loud humour make it perfect for a class read-aloud. Its language and genre (a memoir) offer many opportunities for readers to enrich their own writing. The playfulness of the book ensures that younger children (say 7+) will have fun will it, whilst older children (say 10+) may equally enjoy chewing over what it means to be real vs imaginary, present vs invisible, and how the boundaries are not always as clear cut as we may think.
I’m not sure that there’s any such thing as a book which appeals to each and every possible reader. Certainly, the bittersweet contemplation of some of life’s bigger questions in Confessions of an Imaginary Friend won’t appeal to all in equal measure (though I do wonder if perhaps an attempt to reach a slightly different audience is behind the drastically different style of the UK cover as compared to the US edition) but my 11 year old and I really loved this book and hope it reaches many homes during 2016.
Inspired by Jacques Papier’s musings on words which don’t exist, M set about creating a list of her own new words to fill some of the lexical gaps she’s wishes didn’t exist. Together we designed a little dictionary cover for her to use:
(You can download it here – A4, and then fold it in half and half again to create a mini dictionary you and your kids could fill in with your own missing words.)
M set to creating the words she misses in her life, finessing their presentation by looking at OED dictionary entries for the format, and getting help from her Dad with phonetic transcriptions (he teaches these things to university students).
Whilst playing at being imaginary lexicologists we listened to:
Imaginary Friend by Secret Agent 23 Skidoo – the lyrics of this go so well with the early chapters of Confessions of an Imaginary Friend.
What words do you wish existed? What words have you adopted from other languages because they express something for which there is no word in English? What words have you / your kids / your parents made up over the years which are now firmly part of the family patter?
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This sounds like an amazing book which I’d like to get for my school library. Perfect too how your daughter’s reaction mirrored your own! And I love the dictionary you made – so impressive with the etymological details!
I thought I could begin this post by asking whether you want your kids to be happy.
But I figured that even as a rhetorical question, it seemed a little silly. Of course we want our kids to be happy. Perhaps a harder question to answer is “How do we help our kids to be happy?”
Everything I’ve seen on fostering happiness says one key component is nurturing gratitude: learning to see the good and great things around us, focussing on the good rather than that which makes us bitter.
Dear Bunny… written by Katie Cotton and illustrated by Blanca Gómez is a very quiet, gentle way into having that discussion with our kids. Just what does make them happy and what are they grateful for?
A young child’s friend – a stuffed bunny – asks “What’s your favourite thing in the world?“. The girl likes so many things she decides to write them all down, and over the course of the pages that follow we see how even simple delights such as swinging high or splashing in the bath are what make her happy. What gives her the greatest joy, however, is that she has a good friend to share all these moments with – her beloved bunny.
There’s a gentleness and lightness of touch to both text and illustration which ensures this charming book never veers towards the saccharine. It’s a tender, reflective book, ideal for reading at bedtime, a sort of secular prayer. Moments of honesty and innocence inject a dash of humour, bringing the real child back into focus.
Subdued earthy tones in Gómez’s illustrations add to a sense of warmth and peacefulness. An interesting mix of highly patterned detail with much plainer expanses creates a sense of space, perhaps just the sort that is needed to quietly contemplate what brings us joy.
Sometimes it is hard to tell a friend how grateful we are for them – how much easier it is to tell a toy! But this lovely book makes it easier for us all to talk about good and positive things, and a book which spreads happiness is a very good book indeed.
Inspired by the illustration on the book’s front cover the girls and I set about making butterflies. Although it is hard to see it in the image above, the butterflies have gold foil edges to their wings – a delightful detail in the book’s production – and so our butterflies too had to have a brush with gold. Here’s how we made them:
I rather think that a bouquet of butterflies works just as well as a bunch of flowers!
Now seeing as Dear Bunny… is all about our favourite things and what we’re grateful for, here are my seven favourite things in the world (at this precise moment in time):
The way my 10 year wears her happiness on her sleeves.
The way my 7 year old gets cross when I tell her it really IS time to leave for school and she HAS to put down the book she is reading RIGHT NOW!
Listening to my husband read a trilogy about the 100 years’ war to my kids at bed time and getting into long bilingual conversations with them about all the details.
Orkney. Orkney has my heart. Simply and utterly.
The taste of the first mouthful of coffee in the morning. I really love my coffee.
My daily bike ride along a river near where we live, watching the seasons change.
The knowledge that I have some apple crumble waiting for me for lunch….
What are your favourite things in the world right now?
Other activities which might work well alongside reading Dear Bunny… include:
Creating a gratitude paper chain. If you make paper chains this coming Christmas, why not write on each strip something you’re grateful for, or something which makes you happy. Then you can string happiness all around you!
Once you’ve heard what makes your kids happy, actually going out and doing some of those activities! Stomping through puddles? Throwing piles of autumn leaves? Running as fast as you can down a hill? Go on… you’ll love it!
If you liked this post you might like these other posts by me:
The international response to the photographs of the dead body of three year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, washed ashore on a Turkish beach on 2 September 2015, has prompted intense debate. That debate has been not only about the proper attitude of Britain and other countries to the refugee crisis, but also about the proper place of strong emotions in political life.
Hi folks, We all have our loads of baggage. It's rare for someone to reach the lofty age of 50 without some extra baggage for the load. Most people have baggage by age 10. It is painful to me when people act like their life has not happened. The idea that we must jump around and quote positive thinking statements, refusing to feel anything but good vibrations makes me cringe. Though I love good vibrations, I want to feel everything. Whatever I can feel, I want to feel.
I do not fear the depths of sorrow. This feeling is part of me. Sadness. Yep. Anger. Yep. Agony. Yep. Striated in with all that is pain and then happiness. Silliness. Peace. Joy. Love. A myriad of shades and colors of feeling are out there. My emotional story is just as complex as any rich soil. When you refuse your feelings, you are making yourself and arid or even worse sterile dirt. Embracing all of who you will help you share a better story. Don't expect anyone to exactly understand this need to experience your full range of emotions. This will be a private journey.
It is important to feel as an artist. Every time you shove something under the rug, you shove some of your story under that rug too. Live your life this way. Air things Scribble in your journal. Talk on tapes. Play that music. Head over to your psychologist. Try confessing to a minister. Whatever gets the stuff hidden out, do it. The best artists have to keep in touch with their white hot centers with all the contradictions and confusion. They also have to think deeply, So stick your head in those clouds and see what dreams may come. Our thoughts and our emotions are intertwined like the chemicals in DNA. Mix them them together.
Dig into your emotional story. Search out the shades of your emotions. Feel them, and they will bleed into your work.. Feelings just do that.
I will be back next week with more of the "Stuff" that makes good art happen.
Here is a doodle.
Quote for your pocket.
What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's response is always right. Ralph Waldo Emerson
0 Comments on A Private Journey as of 9/5/2015 8:23:00 PM
Imagine that today is Happiness Day. For the next 24 hours, you get to enjoy the day to the best of your ability. What would you do?' I asked some of my friends and family this same question. If you’re like many of the people I polled, you would probably plan to spend the day with family, indulge in a pleasurable activity, or aim to carve out a significant chunk of time with one of your favorite hobbies. But not everyone approaches happiness the same way.
“Griffin came into the Silk family after Scarlet, Indigo, Violet, Amber and Saffron. He came early in the morning on that uncommon day, the twenty-ninth of February. His father’s prediction, considering the date of Griffin’s birth, was that he would be an uncommon sort of boy.
Perhaps he was, thought Griffin ruefully. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d been born on the twenty-eighth day of February or even the first of March. Maybe then he would have been an ordinary boy instead. If he were an ordinary boy, maybe Mama wouldn’t have gone away. Maybe his secret thoughts wouldn’t have changed everything.
Griffin is a member of the somewhat unusual and perhaps slightly bohemian Silk family, who live on the outskirts of a small Australian town. Griffin carries a secret deep inside him, a huge worry that he finds hard to share until he meets Layla, instantly recognisable to him as a princess because she is wearing a daisy-chain crown. Thanks to the thoughtfulness shown by his new friend, Griffin’s courage grows and together they do something that heals the sorrow which all the family has felt after a terrible event no-one has been able to talk about for months.
Just like Griffin, this is a truly “uncommon” short novel, the first in a seven part series. From unexpected characters to profoundly moving themes threaded together with sometimes astonishingly lyrical writing, this book is something utterly different and incredibly beautiful. I have never before come across such delicate and yet powerful writing in a novel for children. Unique, breathtaking and full of fierce love and deep sorrow, The Naming of Tishkin Silk is the sort of book that changes you forever, the sort of book you are just so glad to have inside you, to enrich even the happiest of days and to sustain you on dark nights.
The dual aspect of this novel – intense sadness and intense happiness – reminded me of a passage in The Prophet by Khalil Gibran about joy and sorrow; “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.“. Whilst this book deals with some of the most difficult themes you’re likely to come across in books for its target age range (approximately 8-12), Millard does it with such quiet tenderness that it doesn’t overwhelm. Indeed, like the adult characters inside the book, Millard enters the world children inhabit without patronising them, but rather with immense respect, sincerity and creativity.
The stories we tell ourselves in an attempt to make sense of the world around us, adjusting to different family setups when new babies are born, sibling jealousy, and the value of having space and taking time to think form some of the varied threads woven throughout this precious book. Never once soppy or sentimental, Millard writes with honesty and integrity about deep and loving emotions. This is a tremendous book for exploring kindness and empathy.
It’s Australian setting is lightly but evocatively worn, grounding the somewhat enchanted story in a very real time and place. Yes, my praise for this book goes on and on! And yet, when this book first arrived in my home, I shelved it in a dusty corner. I judged the book by its cover, and the cover did not work for me at all (Caroline Magerl illustrated this first book in the series, but subsequent volumes have been illustrated by Stephen Michael King). It looked airy-fairy, hippy-dippy, saccharine and syrupy and not like something I would enjoy. Someone whose judgement I trust, however, kept telling me I should read the book. Pig-headedly, I kept ignoring this advice. But what a fool I was! Tishkin could have been part of me for two whole extra years if I had listened and not let my prejudices sway me.
For once I had read the book, I was utterly smitten. I could not get hold of the rest of the series quickly enough.
If, however, I still had a niggling doubt, it was about how children would respond to these books. Subtle and yet emotionally complex, featuring an unusual family, and dealing with issues as varied as death, illness, fostering, immigration and dementia over the course of the books now available in the UK (the 6th title in the series, The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk, is published next week on World Book Day, and the final will be available in September this year), I was very curious as to how young people, rather than adults would respond to these books.
I only have one child’s response to call upon, but M, my ten year old, has taken these stories to her heart as much as I have. She’s read each one in a single sitting, and whilst she agrees they are indeed full of sadness, they are also “really funny and playful”, “just the sort of family I want ours to be like”. She has SO many plans for implementing aspects of these stories into our lives, from making the recipes which feature throughout the series, to adopting the special breakfast rituals the Silk Family has into our own home, from making our own paper to consecrating an apple tree for tea parties, from collecting shiny foil to painting special poems on walls and doors. I think I shall be posting our activities, our Kingdom of silk playing by the book for a long time to come on the blog!
As it is, we’ve already got our own green rubber gloves with red nail polish…
…we’ve painted our toes like Layla…
… and we’ve started having hummingbird nectar and fairy bread when we come in from school.
Layla and Griffin and all the Kingdom of Silk clan are now part of our lives: We are all the richer for them. These books are alive with wonder and warmth and they’re some of the best I think my family has ever shared.
In the closing pages of The Naming of Tishkin Silk , this gently heart wrenching, heart-soaring short novel, Millard writes, “There are some days when heaven seems much closer to earth than others, and Friday the twenty-seventh of February was one of them.” By introducing you to this book today, also a Friday the twenty-seventh of February, I’ve tried to offer you a slice of such beauty, kindness and wonder as will indeed make today (or at least the day you start reading your own copy of The Naming of Tishkin Silk ) one of those days where heaven really does seem a little nearer by.
Photo: Tonya Staab
4 Comments on The Naming of Tishkin Silk: a book to reshape your heart, last added: 2/27/2015
One of the most challenging aspects of learning the writing craft, to me anyway, has been how to describe and depict the emotions a character feels. It's simple to just tell the reader: Elliot felt mad. Not good writing. How to make the reader feel the mad, the anger, the heat of it. Some of my best writing teachers have suggested using physical sensations to describe the emotion, since most of us feel emotions in our bodies. I find that advice useful, but it takes time to develop. When I'm writing an emotion, I stop and try to feel it in my own body and then try to get that feeling down on the page.
Recently, I came across this telling graphic depiction of the areas in the body where emotions are felt:
Wow. I think every writer should print this out and post it above your computer. Look at anger, for example. It's all in the upper body, especially in the jaw and hands. And in the heart area. That's why phrases like "harden the heart" are part of our lexicon. But of course, as writers, we don't want to rely on cliched expressions to do the work we should be doing.
I find this graphic so interesting. Disgust is mostly in the throat. Depression is a deep dark whole in the center of your body. Shame seems mostly expressed in the eyes. I wish there were many more of these images to fit more emotions.
However, we all have bodies and emotions, so start mapping out for yourself. Observe those around you. This is one of my favorite games: watch people interacting and try to predict what their emotional states are even without hearing what they're saying. You can do this with the TV muted as well, although I prefer watching real people in their real lives. Notice how other writers do this well. You may not want to steal their fabulous phrasing, but you can learn from their unique take on a time-worn description.
I am inclined to use every moment as writerly research, so use any situation you are in to track emotional responses. How are people at a funeral expressing their grief in their bodies? How about during a family quarrel? What about driving on a dangerous stretch of road in the winter--white knuckles, right? But that's cliche, so dig deeper.
I would really love to have some interaction in the comments section here. Submit your ideas for describing emotions through bodily sensations. We can all help and learn from each other.
by Neysa CM Jensen Boise, Idaho
0 Comments on Characters and Emotions as of 11/7/2014 6:15:00 PM
Where kissing is concerned, there is an entire categorization of this most human of impulses that necessitates taking into account setting, relationship health and the emotional context in which the kiss occurs. A relationship’s condition might be predicted and its trajectory timeline plotted by observing and understanding how the couple kiss. For instance, viewed through the lens of a couple’s dynamic, a peck on the cheek can convey cold, hard rejection or simply signify that a loving couple are pressed for time.
A kiss communicates a myriad of meanings, its reception and perception can alter dramatically depending on the couple’s state of mind. A wife suffering from depression may interpret her husband’s kiss entirely differently should her symptoms be alleviated. Similarly, a jealous, insecure lover may receive his girlfriend’s kiss of greeting utterly at odds to how she intends it to be perceived.
So if the mind can translate the meaning of a kiss to fit with its reading of the world, what can a kiss between a couple tell us? Does this intimate act mark out territory and ownership, a hands-off-he’s-mine nod to those around? Perhaps an unspoken negotiation of power between a couple that covers a whole range of feelings and intentions; how does a kiss-and-make-up kiss differ from a flirtatious kiss or an apologetic one? What of a furtive kiss; an adulterous kiss; a hungry kiss; a brutal kiss? How does a first kiss distinguish itself from a final kiss? When the husband complains to his wife that after 15 years of marriage, “we don’t kiss like we used to”, is he yearning for the adolescent ‘snog’ of his youth?
Engulfed by techno culture, where every text message ends with a ‘X’, couples must carve out space in their busy schedules to merely glimpse one another over the edge of their laptops. There isn’t psychic space for such an old-fashioned concept as a simple kiss. In a time-impoverished, stress-burdened world, we need our kisses to communicate more. Kisses should be able to multi-task. It would be an extravagance in the 21st-century for a kiss not to mean anything.
And there’s the cultural context of kissing to consider. Do you go French, Latin or Eskimo? Add to this each family’s own customs, classifications and codes around how to kiss. For a couple, these differences necessitate accepting the way that your parents embraced may strike your new partner as odd, even perverse. For the northern lass whose family offer to ‘brew up’ instead of a warm embrace, the European preamble of two or three kisses at the breakfast table between her southern softie of a husband and his family, can seem baffling.
The context of a kiss between a couple correlates to the store of positive feeling they have between them; the amount of love in the bank of their relationship. Take 1: a kiss on the way out in the morning can be a reminder of the intimacy that has just been. Take 2: in an acrimonious coupling, this same gesture perhaps signposts a dash for freedom, a “thank God I don’t have to see you for 11 hours”. The kiss on the way back in through the front door can be a chance to reconnect after a day spent operating in different spheres or, less benignly, to assuage and disguise feelings of guilt at not wanting to be back at all.
Couple, by Oleh Slobodeniuk. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
While on the subject of lip-to-lip contact, the place where a kiss lands expresses meaning. The peck on the forehead may herald a relationship where one partner distances themselves as a parental figure. A forensic ritualized pattern of kisses destined for the cheeks carries a different message to the gentle nip on the earlobe. Lips, cheek, neck, it seems all receptors convey significance to both kisser and ‘kissee’ and could indicate relationship dynamics such as a conservative-rebellious pairing or a babes-in-the-wood coupling.
Like Emperor Tiberius, who banned kissing because he thought it helped spread fungal disease, Bert Bacarach asks, ‘What do you get when you kiss a guy? You get enough germs to catch pneumonia…’ Conceivably the nature of kissing and the unhygienic potential it carries is the ultimate symbol of trust between two lovers and raises the question of whether kissing is a prelude or an end in itself, ergo the long-suffering wife who doesn’t like kissing anymore “because I know what it’ll lead to…”
The twenty-first century has witnessed the proliferation of orthodontistry with its penchant for full mental braces. Modern mouths are habitually adorned with lip and tongue piercings as fetish wear or armour. Is this straying away from what a kiss means or a consideration of how modern mores can begin to create a new language around this oldest of greetings? There is an entire generation maturing whose first kiss was accompanied by the clashing of metal, casting a distinct shadow over their ideas around later couple intimacy.
Throughout history, from Judas to Marilyn Monroe, a kiss has communicated submission, domination, status, sexual desire, affection, friendship, betrayal, sealed a pact of peace or the giving of life. There is public kissing and private kissing. Kissing signposts good or bad manners. It is both a conscious and unconscious coded communication and can betray the instigator’s character; from the inhibited introvert to the narcissistic exhibitionist. The 16th-century theologian Erasmus described kissing as ‘a most attractive custom’. Rodin immortalized doomed, illicit lovers in his marble sculpture, and Chekhov wrote of the transformative power of a mistaken kiss. The history and meaning of the kiss evolves and shifts and yet remains steadfastly the same: a distinctly human, intimate and complex gesture, instantly recognizable despite its infinite variety of uses. I’ve a feeling Sam’s ‘You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss’ may never sound quite the same again.
Headline image credit: Conquered with a kiss, by .craig. CC-BY-NC-2.0 via Flickr.
Elephant’s day doesn’t get off to a good start. He wakes up GRUMPY.
When the doorbell rings, it only annoys him. When he thumps downstairs to see who it is, there is a mystery present waiting for him and this unexpected gift – a most spectacular hat – turns his day around and puts a great big smile on his face.
Keen to share his good fortune Elephant visits his friends. They too have woken up out of sorts but Elephant knows a great way to spread his happiness: by sharing his present and giving each friend a fabulous hat to wear.
Hooray for Hat by Brian Won is a wonderfully up-beat and joyous ode to friendship, the good things that come from ‘paying it forward’ and teamwork. It perfectly captures the transformational magic of hats; a little bit of frivolity and exuberance bursting out of your head can indeed do wonders to how you feel!
From the deftly humorous grumpy facial expressions in a range of animals, to the appealing candy colour palette beautifully set off against stark white pages, Hooray for Hat‘s illustrations and design are a delight. The dapper carnival procession of animals are sure to make young readers giggle and banish any blues, helping us remember how little acts of kindness in life can make all the difference. A treat, pure and simple!
In response to Hooray for Hat we set up our own millinery studio, using old lampshades as bases for our hats (we were able to source lots of old lampshades from a local recycling centre).
Lampshades, ribbon, paper, hot clue, sequins and a whole lot of imagination and craziness later we had our hats:
As you can see, they made us feel very happy!
Whilst making our hats we listened to:
I Wanna Hat with Cherries played by the Glenn Miller Orchestra
Top Hat Ramble by Big Country Bluegrass – great for dancing to, but the only free recording I can find on YouTube isn’t great quality.
The Tinfoil Hat made both girls giggle
Other activities which would go well alongside reading Hooray for Hat include:
Playing with the activity sheet Brian Won has created to go with his book. You can download it from here and it includes bunting, different paper hats to make and colouring in.
Well, I want this book desperately! I am again so grateful for this lovely site. I remember the fun of the Easter Hat Parade, where hopefully not too long-suffering family members made hats for their young ones. Then we would delight in showing off the creation as we walked the parade, most likely with a little bewilderment of being the entertainment! Later, at the age of eleven years, we the students were enlisted to make hats for the infant children… This was a genuinely far more delightful experience.
SIMONE FRASER said, on 10/29/2014 4:57:00 AM
PS: The children’s hats above are glorious!
Sue Pearce said, on 10/29/2014 2:34:00 PM
Hi Zoe,
I’m going to put this post in my memory bank to recommend for our hat parades at Easter.Will have to get the book- sounds gorgeous ( and I am a hat lover myself anyway!)
Can you imagine a world without colour, where all you see is black, white or the shades of grey in between? As a self-confessed colour junkie such a world would sap my energies and leave my life (perhaps ironically), somewhat blue.
Thus when two new books came to my attention both titled ‘The Colour Thief’ I was very intrigued; not only did they look like their subject matter would appeal to me, it was funny and surprising to see two books, from different authors/illustrators/publishers with the same title.
In The Colour Thief by Gabriel Alborozo an alien looks longingly across space to planet earth, full of colours and brightness. He believes such a beautiful place must be full of joy, and so sets off to bring some of that happiness back to his home planet.
With just a few magic words the alien is able to suck up first all the reds, then the blues and the greens and before long planet earth is looking very grey and sad. But what of the alien? Can he really be happy when he sees the glumness he has caused?
Alborozo’s story about kindness, desire and what makes us joyous and content is full of appeal. There are lots of themes which can be explored; from the beauty around us which we might take for granted (requiring an outsider to alert us to us), to whether or not we can be happy if we’ve caused others distress, this book could be used to open up lots of discussion.
Click to see larger image
Although the alien’s actions could be frightening, this is mitigated by his cute appearance, just one of the book’s charms. I also think kids will love the apparent omnipotence of the alien: He wants something, and at his command he gets it, just like that, and this identification with the alien makes the story more interesting and unusual. The artwork is fun and energetic, seemingly filled with rainbow coloured confetti. I can easily imagine a wonderful animation of this story.
The Colour Thief by Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters, illustrated by Karin Littlewood is a very different sort of story. It draws on the authors’ own experience of parental depression, exploring from a child’s perspective what it can feel like to watch a parent withdraw as they suffer from this illness.
Father and son lead a comforting life “full of colour”, but when depression clouds the father’s mind he withdraws, and all the colours around the family seem to disappear. The child worries that he might somehow be the cause of this loss, but he is repeatedly reassured it is not his fault and gradually, with patience and love, colours start to seep back into the father’s life and he returns to his family.
Mental health is difficult to talk about when you’re 40, let alone when you are four, but this lyrical and moving book provides a thoughtful, gentle, and unsentimental way into introducing (and if desired, discussing) depression. If you were looking for “when a book might help” to reassure a child in a specific situation, I would wholeheartedly recommend this; it is honest, compassionate and soothing.
However, I definitely wouldn’t keep this book ONLY for those times when you find a child in a similar circumstances to those described in the book. It is far too lovely to be kept out of more general circulation. For a start, the language is very special; it’s perhaps no surprise when you discover that one of the author’s has more than 70 poetry books to his name. If you were looking for meaningful, tender use of figurative language, for example in a literacy lesson, this book provides some fabulous, examples.
Click to see larger image.
And then there are the illustrations. Karin Littlewood has long been one of my favourite illustrators for her use of colour, her graceful compositions, her quiet kindness in her images. And in The Colour Thief there are many examples of all these qualities. I particularly like her use of perspective first to embody the claustrophobia and fear one can feel with depression, with bare tree branches leaning in onto the page, or street lamps lowering overhead, and then finally the open, sky-facing view as parent and child reunite as they walk together again when colour returns.
*******************
Particularly inspired by the imagery in Alborozo’s The Colour Thief we made a trip to a DIY store to pick up a load of paint chips.
Wow. My kids went crazy in the paint section: Who knew paint chips could be just so much fun? They spent over an hour collecting to their hearts’ desire. A surprising, free and fun afternoon!
Once home we snipped up the paint chips to separate each colour. The colour names caused lots of merriment, and sparked lots of equally outlandish ideas for new colour names, such as Beetlejuice red, Patio grey, Spiderweb silver and Prawn Cocktail Pink.
We talked about shades and intensity of colours, and sorted our chips into three piles: Strong, bright colours, off-white colours, and middling colours. I then put a long strip of contact paper on the kitchen table, sticky side up, and the kids started making a mosaic with the chips, starting with the brightest colours in the middle, fading to the palest around the edge.
Apart for the soothing puzzle-like quality of this activity, the kids have loved using the end result as a computer keyboard, pressing the colours they want things to change to. I also think it makes for a rather lovely bit of art, now up in their bedroom.
Whilst making our colour mosaic we listened to:
My favourite ever, ever song about colours…. Kristin Andreassen – Crayola Doesn’t Make A Color For Your Eyes
Colors by Kira Willey. This song would go really well with ‘My Many Colored Days’ by Dr. Seuss.
Roy G Biv by They Might Be Giants
Other activities which might go well with either version of ‘The Colour Thief’ include:
The paint chips are such a great resource. I always keep some in my art and craft box, there are so many activities that you can use them for.
You’ve got me thinking about books with the same titles now, will see if I can come up with any more for your list
Choxbox said, on 10/14/2014 3:54:00 AM
Lovely artwork Zoe
Brigitte said, on 10/14/2014 2:08:00 PM
Fascinating topic and I’m so glad somebody thought of describing depression as the Colour thief! I couldn’t think of a better way to describe this condition especially to children.
Looking at the wonderful Dutch book I remembered Goethe’s Colour Theory and the poet’s remarkable activity in the field. I’d love to have a chat with him about the connection between poems and colour theory. Of course Newton would be invited too!
For the last 29 years, I have worked in the word business. I've been a staff editor at a diabetes center, a proofreader at a direct mail company, and I have done freelance work in every conceivable genre--magazines, newsletters, business communications, non-profit press releases, creative writing, poetry, web content, sports books, and more. Sometimes my work involves being mostly a writing coach, a cheerleader. Sometimes I have to tap into my inner mystic. Other times, it involves being a very nit-picky critic. Copyediting falls into the latter category. This is no time to be nice, just precise and thorough.
My current client is a copyediting project. And I thought I'd share with you some reasons we even care about seemingly stupid stuff like punctuation.
Let's look at exclamation points for now. Why do copyeditors always want to suck the life out of our writing by deleting exclamation points? Well, dear writer, because they are lazy writing and they make the reader feel like they're getting a sales pitch. How so? Time for an example. This one is a made-up piece of non-fiction:
In the 1950s, many women were frustrated by being expected to return to their more traditional roles as housewives, after having spent the war years immersed in the world of working to support our troops in the war effort! Some felt resentment and oppression! However, some were glad for the new, more technological home, complete with machines that washed dishes for them, vacuums that rid the home of nasty dirt in such a sanitary way, and machines that made light work of the stacks of laundry!
(None of this is factually true to my knowledge. I did no research. Let's just pretend I did, though, and look only at the paragraph for the purposes of examining punctuation.)
There are merely three exclamation points in this piece. Which in my opinion is three too many. But let's look at how they create lazy writing. The author is expecting the reader to look at the exclamation point and bring a level of emotion to the writing that isn't present in the words. That's lazy writing, when you expect the reader to fill in emotion or something else that you, the author, are too lazy to put into words.
In addition, exclamation points are all the same, but the emotion or feeling the reader is expected to bring to each sentence is not. What does the exclamation point at the end of the first sentence want us to infer? Perhaps that women found working during the war exciting. Or perhaps that women were mad about this freedom to earn money of their own being taken away. Those are very different expressions, and the writer should use words to convey exactly what he/she means to say, not leave it up to the reader to figure it out. What about the sentence after that--is the reader supposed to feel horrified that women felt oppressed? Or excited? Or perhaps the author wants the reader to really feel the oppression along with the women in the piece. Who knows? The reader certainly doesn't. This is lazy writing, expecting the punctuation to do something it cannot do.
Now, I realize I might be preaching to the choir, but this is why copyeditors pay such close attention to these seemingly little things.
There's another component that is a little harder to nail down, and that is a reader feels manipulated by so many exclamation points. Especially in fiction, you as the author want to make the reader work for it a little bit. We want to throw in clues that help the reader anticipate where we're going with a thread. We want to let the reader ponder what a character will do to get herself out of this seemingly impossible situation. But we don't want to manipulate the reader--at least I don't like being manipulated as a reader. When I see an exclamation point, it feels to me like I'm reading a sales letter. Maybe that's from my days in direct marketing in which every other sentence has an exclamation point. And it's used on purpose to manipulate the reader in buying whatever you're selling.
Let's look at an example in fiction:
"That's great!" exclaimed Peter. A short example, but it shows everything I need it to demonstrate. This is lazy writing in so many ways. First, it's pretty redundant to have an exclamation point and the word "exclaimed." Even more than that, it doesn't give the reader any satisfaction, any sensory experience to connect to, any way to relate to the character. How would this particular character express his emotions with his body? Maybe jump into the air and do a flip. Maybe pump his fist. Maybe it would be more subtle, like get teary eyed. Or maybe he is being saracastic, and he lets out a raspberry.
Another thing exclamation points can affect in a piece of writing is the tone and voice. Do you want your narrator to sound like a salesperson? (Or like a football highlights sportscast or a car commercial.) That's the effect of exclamation points. Of course, at times, maybe you do want a narrator or a character to come across this way, and that might be an appropriate time to use this particular punctuation. But use it purposefully for effect, not lazily because you aren't willing to work at your craft. If your exclamation point usage is aimed toward making the tone light and friendly, then look for ways to do that with your words rather than your punctuation. Use conversational language and structure. Don't use jargon and highly specialized vocabulary. Don't use formal punctuation like semi-colons and colons. Maybe use second person. These tactics will make your writing lighter without being lazy.
Copyeditors are not here to make your life miserable. We are here to make your writing precise and to help you do what you are attempting to do in the most effective way possible.
by Neysa CM Jensen Boise, Idaho
0 Comments on From the copyeditor's desk as of 9/19/2014 5:06:00 AM
I met him once on a popular social media. He was tall and lanky, his body covered in hair reminded me of my soft smooth night blanket. He wore a bright smile just like his eyes wore a coffee-colored medicated reading glasses.And when he smiled… eeiii pooh! his smile broke the chains lock around my heart just like that! We messaged hi’s and hello’s here and there, i looked up his pictures and i saw his swag! Darm the boy got it!
And then that lonely rainy day when GOD became so angry that he poured the whole heavens down like boom boom! I mastered courage and dialed his number…ring ring, he picked!
“HELLO?” his voice thundered above the sound of the rains. My heart skipped a beat and i nearly suffered a heart attack.
“hi, Ebo? ” i whispered , “are you okay? i mean i am…”
“who’s this?”
“the girl. No ,the woman you spoke to on. NO, i mean your facebook friend, we chatted about lions and and..”
“WHAT?” His voice roared.
“Sweetheart who’s that on the line?” I heard her clear and loud. i dreaded her smooth silky heavy british accent. You could tell she flown first class and wore victoria underwears and that she was the type that wore high heels even to the bathroom; the reason why i hated her the more.
“some crazy girl maybe,” i heard him said.
” Put that damn phone down! and let’s make some love!” it was an ordered, she just ordered him like that; my man. I slipped to the floor imagining what that wicked -mean girl was doing to my man, my man ooh!
I met him once on a popular social media. He was tall and lanky, his body covered in hair reminded me of my soft smooth night blanket. He wore a bright smile just like his eyes wore a coffee-colored medicated reading glasses.And when he smiled… eeiii pooh! his smile broke the chains lock around my heart just like that! We messaged hi’s and hello’s here and there, i looked up his pictures and i saw his swag! Darm the boy got it!
And then that lonely rainy day when GOD became so angry that he poured the whole heavens down like boom boom! I mastered courage and dialed his number…ring ring, he picked!
“HELLO?” his voice thundered above the sound of the rains. My heart skipped a beat and i nearly suffered a heart attack.
“hi, Ebo? ” i whispered , “are you okay? i mean i am…”
“who’s this?”
“the girl. No ,the woman you spoke to on. NO, i mean your facebook friend, we chatted about lions and and..”
“WHAT?” His voice roared.
“Sweetheart who’s that on the line?” I heard her clear and loud. i dreaded her smooth silky heavy british accent. You could tell she flown first class and wore victoria underwears and that she was the type that wore high heels even to the bathroom; the reason why i hated her the more.
“some crazy girl maybe,” i heard him said.
” Put that damn phone down! and let’s make some love!” it was an ordered, she just ordered him like that; my man. I slipped to the floor imagining what that wicked -mean girl was doing to my man, my man ooh!
Without conflict, there is no story. As you develop a plot, it’s helpful to think about what is the worst thing that could happen and then figure out if you can make that even worse?
The absolute worst thing–the thing your character fears most of all–MUST happen in the climax of the story. That’s good plotting and storytelling. Building up to that point, you should have a series of conflicts that deepen, that reach out into every aspect of your character’s life, that affects friends, family, or even the survival of the planet or the human species. The series should have a logical progression from bad to worse to worst.
Up the stakes. On way to escalate the conflict is to up the stakes by answering the “So-What?” question. This bad thing is going to happen. So what? Who cares? Who will it affect? How badly will it affect them? When the answer is that the worst thing will affect the most people, you have the stakes well in hand.
Up the emotions. However, even for stories with the fate of the world in the balance are boring if the reader doesn’t care. This means you must provide a wide range of emotions for your characters from the most ardent love to the deepest sorrow. How can I make my character laugh? What would wrench his/her heart? What is the deepest emotion possible in your story? Create that emotional impact. Then take it one level deeper.
Sacrifice. Characters who stupidly volunteer for kitchen duty aren’t sympathetic; they are stupid. However, a reluctant hero who only volunteers to save a loved one–that creates empathy. In HUNGER GAMES, Katniss volunteers to join the Hunger Games so that her younger sister won’t have to. This willingness to sacrifice herself for a loved one elevates here–and the ensuing conflict to new heights.
Jeopardy. When a character is in jeopardy–danger is looming and drawing nearer by the second–readers are on the edge of their seats. Violence, just for the sake of violence, does little to create the emotions needed. Instead, a character must be in danger and must stay in danger for a long time. When I first watched the movie, ALIEN, my stomach hurt because I was so scared. That’s jeopardy. The aliens were coming–and the movie drew out that suspense and jeopardy forever!
So when Made by Raffi written by Craig Pomranz, illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain (@madgiemadge) appeared in my hands for the first time I sat up and noticed; it’s about a boy who feels he doesn’t quite fit in, for instead of football, his passion is knitting and sewing.
Although he’s a curious and generous kid, he feels sidelined at school. Unlike most of his classmates, he doesn’t like noise and rough play. But thanks to a supportive teacher he discovers a new passion – making his own clothes. When it is time for the school play could this new skill help him gain the respect of his peers? Without giving the game away, the ending is upbeat, but also authentic. This isn’t a sugar-coated story. (For the really interesting background to the story, take a look at this article).
This book deserves to be in every school and read in every family for a whole plethora of reasons. It’s bold, tackling gender issues that many adults might skirt around: I love Pomranz daring to use the word “girly“, and it certainly helped us talk about how being a girl interested in ‘boys’ things’ is often more accepted by society than a boy interested in ‘girls’ things’. It’s big hearted; not just the warm, loving family Raffi is part of, but also his supportive school. It shows all sorts of children playing together, with different skin colours and different physical abilities, as well as different interests. It’s a joyously inclusive book, which tackles big themes gently and playfully.
Margaret Chamberlain’s illustrations are delightful. She uses colour very cleverly to portray moods and to mirror how much more interesting – indeed colourful – the world is for a diverse range of characters; wouldn’t the world be a dull grey place if we all liked only the same things?
A book about loneliness, respect, difference, and learning to trust your instincts even when it means you don’t follow the crowd, Made by Raffi is a vital, delightful and unusual book I urge you to share.
M and J were recently shown how to knit by their Grandma, and reading Made by Raffi offered the ideal opportunity to practice their recently acquired skills. (Here are some Youtube tutorials we found helpful to refresh our memories of what Granny had taught us: Casting on, knit stitch, casting off.
Having a ball of wool with lots of different colours on it was an effective tool in motivating the kids; each child would knit one or two colours and then hand the needles and ball over to the other. It gave them easy targets to aim for, and I’m sure this is partly why they completed a long scarf far more quickly than I was expecting.
Whilst knitting we’ve been listening to:
Lots of songs by Raffi (an Egyptian-born Canadian singer-songwriter who creates great kid-friendly music), – here’s a whole playlist on youtube.
Letting the kids embellish their own clothing. I found this the easiest/most satisfying way to let the kids have a go at making something themselves – they chose buttons they liked and sewed them onto a couple of pieces of clothing. Simple sewing but with a relatively big (and ‘real’) result.
Making a cloak as described in the story. Alternatively, if you can find a department store selling off curtain samples (eg in John Lewis or House of Fraser), you can pick up pretty much prepared cloaks – all you need to do is add something (eg a large hook and eye) so you can have the cloak safely stay on your shoulders as you zoom around wearing it.
If in a school or a library setting, making a display with images of clothes designed by men (Galliano, Versace, Gaultier for example, cut out from glossy magazines) and as the centre pieces place Made by Raffi and The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams. Whilst not for primary school kids, I’d also encourage you to read Boys Don’t Knit by T.S.Easton, a hilarious take on a teenage boy who loves to knit. Ben Fletcher and Raffi would definitely like to meet each other!
Other picture /illustrated books which feature knitting include:
Yay! We’re big fans of crochet round the shelf, but I never realised there were so many fiction books for littlies featuring knitting. Thanks for the heads-up!
Julie Grasso said, on 7/2/2014 12:19:00 AM
You know, I couldn’t think of one book. This looks wonderful, and that list of knitting books, my granny would have been so amazed by them. Thanks so much for sharing them with us.
Catherine said, on 7/2/2014 12:45:00 AM
What a great list of knitting books. One of our favourite knitting stories is The Best Jumper by Lynne Garner & Sarah Gill.
Mr Tibbles – a shy reporter on the local newspaper – has been threatened with the sack. It’s perhaps no surprise: Mr Tibbles is mad about cats, and all his stories end up revolving around felines one way or another. What his editor wants, however, is news!
Photo: Sarah
An act of kindness brings Mr Tibbles into contact with Minoe, a rather strange young woman who appears to be able to talk to cats. Through the town’s network of feline pets and strays Minoe starts starts to deliver interesting titbits of exclusive news to Mr Tibbles; cats across the city overhear all sorts of conversations often revealing juicy gossip and insider information, and when Minoe learns of these pieces of news from kitty comrades, she passes them on to her friend the reporter.
Mr Tibble’s job is looking up until he uncovers information which could lead to the downfall of a local powerful businessman. Will the reporter be brave enough to expose the evil goings on? Will he be believed, when his only witnesses are pussy cats?
A funny and yet quietly profound tale of courage, friendship and what it really means to be human, The Cat Who Came in off the Roof, by Annie M. G. Schmidt, translated by David Colmer is a gem of a story. Ideal for fans of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or cross-species tales of identity such as Stellaluna or Croc and Bird, this book would make an especially good class read-aloud, with lots of opportunities to discuss what life looks like from different perspectives, helping readers and listeners walk in another’s shoes, as well as perhaps learning a thing or to about overcoming shyness, and how to stand up for what you believe in.
From the mangy, feisty stray cat who you end up rooting for, to the hilarious school cat with a penchant for history lessons and a slight;y different (some might say out-dated) understanding of the term ‘news’, Schmidt has populated her story with a super array of characters. The narrative beautifully unfolds with unseen and fine tuning, climaxing with an exciting and rich ending which is deeply satisfying even though not everything is tied up neatly and not all strands end happily. Despite plenty of kittens and purring, this book never patronises its readership.
Knowing the original Dutch language version as we do as a family, I can also comment on the gorgeous translation. Colmer has wittily and cleverly translated linguistic and cultural jokes. His phrase ‘miaow-wow’ for when the cats meet up for a big parley is genius and has now entered our family parlance. If I nitpick I might personally have chosen -thorpe rather than -thorn for the Dutch -doorn, when translating the town’s name but I feel mean mentioning this as Colmer’s voice is pitch-perfect; at no point will you notice the text as a translation for it reads authentically and smoothly.
This must-read book will make you laugh out loud (whether you are a dog person or a cat fan). It will make you feel like for a brief moment you’ve witnessed and understood the best of humanity. It may also make you rather nervous next time you find a cat sitting ever so quietly next to you whilst you are having a private conversation!
I do so hope Pushkin Press are now thinking about translating Schmidt’s earlier work, Ibbeltje, which shares many characteristics with The Cat Who Came in off the Roof and has the added advantage of brilliant illustrations by another glittering star in the Dutch children’s literature firmament: Fiep Westendorp.
For reasons which will become clear upon reading this charming and magical book Minoe not only can speak the language of cats, she is also known to climb trees when dogs approach. It took about a nanosecond for M to decide she wanted to play-by-this-particular-book by climbing as many different trees as she could one afternoon at the weekend. So, armed with a local map (printed from http://www.openstreetmap.org/) we set off to map all the local trees good for climbing in.
Each tree we climbed we identified (it seems that around us oaks, ash and willow are the best climbing trees).
Reading more books in more trees. The very first I’d have to recommend are the Toby books by Timothee de Fombelle, about an entire world of miniature people having giant adventures in an oak tree.
Walking around your neighbourhood and greeting the cats you come across. Could you create a backstory for each one? What are they called? What do they get up to when you’re not there?
Writing a family newspaper. This is potentially a super project for the summer holidays – and you can get some great tips and downloadables to get you going from this post over on Playful Learning.
When did you last climb a tree? What secrets might your cat be able to tell me ?
And briefly…. thank you with all my heart to all of you who commented on my last post, or got in touch via email, phone, snail mail and more. Life goes on and plots are being hatched and plans being laid. As and when I can reveal more I’ll be sure to let you know the latest.
3 Comments on That Cat who came in off the Roof by Annie M. G. Schmidt, last added: 6/29/2014
Lovely post and that book sounds enchanting. I wish I had thought of that story! I am also v glad to read that plots are being hatched and plans being laid bout your future. I am positive something exciting will happen for you – you are eminently qualified to do something great in children’s books. And, as someone commented, you might think of writing one yourself too? Good Luck Zoe!
SIMONE FRASER said, on 6/29/2014 5:04:00 PM
Great to see you back, Zoe!
Jennifer said, on 6/29/2014 6:18:00 PM
I didn’t know it was a book! I was so pleased to get the movie, Miss Minoes, for my library when it came out in the US and for myself as well – it’s adorable!
Kittens and Cute. They go together like purple and prickles, tigers and teatime, picnics and lashings of ginger beer.
And in Max the Brave by Ed Vere (@ed_vere) we meet another very cute kitten. He’s small, and black and has big bright eyes.
But even though every reader who picks up this book will definitely find Max adorable and charming, Max himself definitely does not want to be called cute. He wants to be big, grown up and brave. And to prove his mettle he’s going to hunt down his nemesis… a mouse.
But therein lies a problem. Max does not know what a mouse looks like.
The kitten’s not-knowing-any-better does indeed result in displays of exuberant courage and kids every where will identify with Max’s desire to be be hailed a hero, his refusal to lose face and the simple joy and playfulness of the chase to say nothing of the everyday challenges which arise from simply having to learn how the world works and what it made up of.
This book is an example of storytelling – in both words and pictures – whittled down to the very purest. With only a word or two on many pages, plain typesetting, apparently simple, unadorned illustrations (where much of the impact comes from the page colour and large empty spaces rather than highly detailed or vast drawings). In its bareness there is a direct line to the story, the humour, the characters. There’s nowhere for this story to hide, no embellishments, no fancy details, and this clarity gives the storytelling a freshness that is bold and very exciting.
Restraint may be present in Vere’s brushstrokes (he captures moments of determination, puzzlement, fear poetically and precisely – just take a close look at Max’s eyes on each page to get a sense of what I mean), but this is vividly contrasted with an exuberant use of colour to fill the pages. From Meg and Mog to several fabulous books by Tim Hopgood and one of my most recent reviews, The Cake, there’s a great tradition in picture books of banishing white pages and using glorious swathes of intense colour to the very edge of the pages. One could do some fascinating research into background page colour and emotions at any given point in the story; here, for example, the pages are red when Max is annoyed, and blue with things are quieting down and Max is feeling soothed.
Readers and listeners to Max the Brave may hear echoes of the Gruffalo’s Child with its themes of bravery and danger as a result of not knowing what something looks like, but perhaps more satisfying will be the recognition of characters (or at least their close relatives) from other books by Vere. Is that Fingers McGraw being sneaky once again? Could that be the monster from Bedtime for Monsters making a guest appearance? And indeed, is Max related somehow to the Bungles in Too Noisy? How lovely to be able to imagine these characters having such an real, independent life that they can walk out of one book and into another.
Packed with so much laughter and sweet appeal this book will prove a hit with many, many families. It’s certainly one we’ve taken to our heart – so much so that the kids wanted to make their own Max and retell his story in their own inimitable style.
First J sewed a black kitty out of felt, with pipe cleaners for arms, legs (and one stuffed in Max’s tale so it could be posed.
M (pen name: Quenelda the Brave) then used our new Max to create montages for each page in Ed Vere’s gorgeous book. She modelled her scenes quite precisely, took a photo, and then (as a veteran of adding moustaches and more to photos in the newspaper) edited her photos in a graphics editor to add her own sprinkling of magic.
Here are a couple of pages showing Ed’s original work (reproduced with permission) and the corresponding scene M created:
“This is Max. Doesn’t he look sweet!”
“Max looks so sweet that sometimes people dress him up in ribbons.”
“Max does not like being dressed up in ribbons.
Because Max is a fearless kitten.
Max is a brave kitten.
Miax is a kitten who chases mice.”
Here are a couple more spreads created by M (with guest appearances by Elmer as the elephant in Vere’s book, and a Wild Thing who is mistaken for a mouse.)
M had enormous fun (and showed a lot of dedication!) with this – she’s recreated the entire book out of her love for Max. I wonder what Max will get you and your kids doing…
Here’s some of the music we listened to whilst making Max and our fan-fiction:
Kitty Fight Song by Joe McDermott. WARNING: this video contains lots of very cute kittens….
Monsters, Inc. by Randy Newman
Another theme tune – this time to the 1958 film Mighty Mouse
Other activities which would go well alongside reading Max the Brave include:
Dressing each other up in ribbons and super hero capes. Make Mum look silly by tying bows all over here! Make the kids look invincible by making capes for them (here’s a selection of tutorials)
Reading Max the Brave to a cat. Several ‘Kids Read to Animal’ programmes now exist around the word; these reading programmes are believed to help kids learn to read presumably by making the whole experience enjoyable and building the kids’ confidence. Here’s a newspaper article from earlier this year if you want to find out more.
This looks like Bagl’s kind of book, he loves kittens. In fact the cutest book we have read this week is also about kittens, a board book called Fur by Jan Mark and Charlotte Voake, very simple but gorgeous illustrations, I love her work.
Do you love to go to your writing cave and spend hours? Do you hate marketing, which means getting out in front of people? Why is is so easy to be alone for hours at a time while working on a project and so hard to be out among the crowds?
Our society encourages and rewards the extrovert in unique ways: leadership roles, better sales, more opportunities. Writers, on the other hand, are the people you overlook at a social gathering. And put a group of writers in the same room and it’s, well, quiet.
Cain says,
“. . . Extroverts are sociable because their brains are good at handling competing demands on their attention—which is just what dinner-party conversation involves. In contrast, introverts often feel repelled by social events that force them to attend to many people at once.”
In other words, as I tell my husband, I think slowly. It takes me a while to understand a joke, to catch an implied compliment or threat or insult.
While society rewards the extrovert, though, they need the introvert. We are the ones who think deeply about situations, who have insights into potential pitfalls (if they would only listen!), who can produce more verbiage than you ever wanted if you just leave us alone for a while.
I recently read a college entrance essay for a high school senior who bemoaned his social skills. Immediately, I told him to go and read this book because he needs to know that he is an introvert—and that’s a good thing. I’m telling my writer friends the same thing today: you’re an introvert, and that’s a good thing.
Strengths of Introverted Writers
Don’t rely on approval of others. Do you agonize over what someone thinks of your writing? Well, yes and no. While you’re writing that first draft, there’s only you to please. The only time we worry about others’ opinions is when it comes to publishing. Mostly, I work alone and I do what I like. I choose the projects; I choose the way I work with those projects; I decide what to send out. This is good. Writing shouldn’t be a committee affair, but the storytelling or insights of one person.
Able to spend large chunks of time with just yourself. Writing a novel or a long nonfiction project demands time, and that’s time spent largely alone. Even when my friend, Carla McClafferty goes to Mount Vernon for a week to research George Washington, that’s only a fraction other time spent on THE MANY FACES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: REMAKING A PRESIDENTIAL ICON. Personally, I couldn’t write that book because it would require me to go to Mount Vernon and actually tell people that I plan to write a book about Washington. Carla can do that and then come home and spend the time alone needed to actually write the project. And she’s doing it all over again, as she researches a future book on Martha Washington.
Concentrate on a long, detailed project. Books have been called the archive of our culture. They include information that needs long-term storage, as opposed to a daily newspaper, which is just a short-term conversation about events. Books are long, detailed, intricate pieces of writing that take a large chunk of time. The details of such a project can be overwhelming: organization of information, drafting multiple times, proofreading, fact-checking, etc. Do you think an extravert could manage something that unwieldy? Maybe. But it’s a natural fit for the introvert.
Think long and hard about something. Is it any surprise that introverts often come up with innovative ideas,whether that’s an invention or a fresh, new way of storytelling? A story that takes a year or two to tell—that’s a lot of thought.
Weaknesses of Introverted Writers
Please yourself first, and others only secondarily. Sometimes introverts stumble onto something so odd and idiosyncratic that only they will like it. Being out of society’s main stream can mean that your writing won’t find a ready audience. No one will buy your book because you’re just so weird. (Just saying.)
Marketing is HARD. Yes, introverts CAN teach and some do well on stage—but every public event takes extra energy and produces greater stress. My introvert daughter teaches high school math, where she is literally on stage every hour of a school day. It’s not that we can’t do this; it’s that it takes its toll. When I have days and days of just teaching and marketing, I get cranky. I actually love to teach and talk to groups of people (not so great one-on-one). But I need to gear up and for a couple days after, I’m more depressed until I get my equilibrium back.
The hardest thing I do is stand up and say, “See my book.” Well, no. The hardest thing is, “Buy my book.”
I can teach, speak to crowds, entertain 1000 kids at a time. But holding up my book means holding up a piece of myself that I care about so much that I can’t stand the possible criticism. Oh, I do it. You have to just get over it and do it. But it’s never easy.
Hard to open up and discuss your ideas and emotions. Communication is hard, but it’s the business of writers. We communicate through our written words, where we can carefully control the emotional content of what we say. That’s important.
When I first met the woman who would be my future mother-in-law, I was overwhelmed. She was an extrovert, who never met a stranger. Furthermore, nothing in her life was secret and she told the whole world about anything and everything. To my great dismay. I am still a very private person (read: introvert) and had never had such a person in my personal sphere. I never got used to her open attitude, though I did learn to appreciate it.
I’m an introvert and a writer. My emotional struggles will come out eventually. When I’ve had a long time to think about what happened and what I felt about that event of my life. And only disguised as a novel. I am learning to be more open, to imbue story events with emotional power. But it’s hard.
There are myriad muscles that control the brow, chin, eyes, jaw, nose, and mouth. Some people can wiggle their ears. Different cultures utilize different expressions. Looking away may be deceptive in America, but indicative of respect in Japan. The important part when revising for body language is to note when and how you relate facial expressions and to avoid repetition and purple prose. One should not wriggle one's eyebrows while leering.
A character cannot control fleeting micro-expressions, the initial emotional response, but he quickly recovers from them. Facial expressions reflect our feelings about what is done and said, sometimes more eloquently or more obviously than we intend. Someone told me that there were only two true emotions: fear and love (or pleasure and pain). All other expressions stem from those two. The micro-expression field of study acknowledges seven. Love isn't one of them.
Unless the character is a professional interrogator, he is not going to hook Dick up to a lie detector, register his body heat and pulse, or measure the dilation of his pupils. There are, however, emotional triggers and signs that humans register in the space of a second. Most of your characters aren’t trained to recognize them. There are several personality types that pick up on nonverbal cues exceptionally well. If you want your detective to be a natural lie detector, pick one of them.
If you pay attention to what is happening in the body when a heightened emotion is experienced, you can make your characters believable. Highlight the places in your manuscript where you discuss emotions. Take a careful look at the choreography and word choices.
Anger: The jaw clenches. The lips thin and lift in a snarl. The nostrils flare. The eyebrows draw together. Aggression is a response to fear or a response to boundary violations. When Dick is angry, he may puff himself up to appear larger and stare his opponent into submission. His brow furrows. His blood pressure rises. The stress triggers a neurochemical cocktail in response to the fight or flight instinct. He flushes and clenches his fists. His sweat glands kick in. His muscles are primed to strike. He may shake his fist or point his finger. He may drift forward slightly, or step forward deliberately, depending on how much of a threat the opponent represents. His tone either lowers in warning or rises, depending on the circumstances. His anger may continue to simmer after the altercation. He usually vents to other people or indulges in a physical action to release it.
Anger can be expressed passively. After the initial response of jaw, nose, and lips, Jane may turn silent and look away. She may mutter under her breath or fake smile. She has the same physiological response, but her conscious instinct is to hide it. Passive people who are angry often cry when furious. As her throat closes and her blood boils, she becomes incoherent. She goes into wait and watch mode. Her anger simmers but she holds onto it. She is more likely to gossip and indirectly sabotage the person she is angry with. Temperament plays a role in how anger is expressed.
Contempt: A corner of the lip tightens and lifts. Contempt is in response to an intellectual boundary violation. Dick may make scornful or sarcastic comments. He may consciously override his initial response in an attempt to hide his disdain. He could state his true feelings in the matter. Contempt is in response to something or someone he does not believe, agree with, or like. He may deny his contempt, but his face betrays him.
Disgust: The nostrils clench and upper lip lifts. Dick may frown and pull back. He may flinch or purse his lips. He may utter exclamations of disgust in response. His heart rate slows. Disgust is in response to something he fears or abhors at gut level. His body retracts. He may put out his hand or wave someone away.
Fear: The upper lids and eyebrows lift. The lips stretch wide and pupils dilate. Fear is in response to a physical or emotional violation. Dick can react with mild fear or outright terror, depending on the stimulus. His response is instantaneous and involuntary. Dick's senses go on high alert. His fight or flight response is triggered. He either freezes or retracts. He may gasp. His muscles prepare to escape or avoid. He sweats. He shivers. The hair shafts stiffen. His pulse rate increases. He may go into shock, depending on the stimulus. His flesh may feel cold as the blood rushes to prime the muscles in his hands and legs and fuels the brain. He may step back or turn to run. He may cover his face and head with his arms. The rush of neurochemicals leaves him feeling shaky after the stimulus is dealt with.
Happiness: The corners of the lips lift, the teeth may show. The cheeks plump. The muscles around the eyes are engaged and wrinkles appear. The eyes may widen, or narrow if the nose wrinkles. Jane's posture relaxes and expands. She moves toward someone or something. Her body language is expansive. Neurochemicals induce a high. She may laugh. She is verbal and inclined to touch. She may be mildly delighted or completely overjoyed. Her focus may broaden to take in others. She wants to share her feeling.
Sadness: Pupils narrow. Upper eyelids droop. Corners of lips turn down. Sadness is a response to loss or hurt feelings. Jane's body language closes in protectively. She may cross her arms, lower her head, or turn away. She may grow quiet and have trouble speaking. Her throat feels constricted. Her eyes and nose prickle and water. Her chest feels heavy. She may become more aware of her pulse and breathing. A strong stimulus can feel like a blow to the viscera. She may gasp, cover her abdomen, or bend over. She may transition to shock. Sadness may be followed quickly by anger. With extreme grief, she may scream or yell. Her body may crumple to the floor. She holds herself and rocks back and forth. Crying can be soft and silent or guttural and loud. It can pass quickly or go on for minutes. The initial blast may be followed by softer gushes as Jane calms down.
Surprise: The eyebrows lift and eyes open wide. The forehead furrows. Surprise can be a response to something positive, negative, or neutral. Jane can have a quick startle or a longer shock wave. The reaction can be followed immediately by fear, joy, or confusion. Depending on the stimulus, the jaw drops. Surprise is usually quick and over, but the stimulus sometimes makes Jane ruminate on it for some time. She may share her surprise with others in an attempt to understand it.
Next time, we will take a look at gestures.
0 Comments on Body Language: Facial Expressions as of 3/28/2014 2:53:00 PM
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The idea about helping people share their stories across languages and cultures is still swirling in my head, so I can’t resist asking Nathan about Swedish children’s books which haven’t yet been translated into English but which he thinks would bring joy and delight to new readers. “Barbro Lindgren’s books about Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang: a young boy, his gleefully irresponsible father and a grandfather who lives in the woodshed. First published in 1969-70, the stories are based — give or take the occasional bed-eating giraffe — on Lindgren’s own experiences raising her young family. They are quite unlike anything I have read before. English readers might recognize in Loranga the very opposite of the helicopter parent. With their surreal humour, the books are perfect for reading aloud — to children and grown-ups alike.”
With these words 
So when 
A funny and yet quietly profound tale of courage, friendship and what it really means to be human, 
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I still have fond memories of my math teacher, Mr True, and “you yahoos”. He was great.
I loved my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McClish. She actually wrote in cursive on my report card. I hope you go to college and become a teacher. I was the first one in my Mennonite family to go to college and become a teacher/librarian. Mrs. McClish believed in me and saw my career talents at such an early age.
I have fond memories of many of my elementary school teachers. My husband is a retired teacher and it is so wonderful when his old students contact him on FB and tell him how he inspired them.