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Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. Please leave any comments there.

Hello, Boothers!

I just read Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now—a party I know I am late to, but one I am so glad to have joined.  I loved this book like I haven’t loved a book in a long time, by which I mean I was entirely immersed in the world of the book, entirely invested in its characters, and entirely in love with the author’s writing.  And, most importantly, in awe of the book’s loving heart.

And, indeed, in doing a mental rummage of books-I-love, books I adore so much I’d sleep with them tucked under my pillow, I realized that, for me, this loving heart is almost always the thing that sets apart a book I love and ache for and think about over and over again from the books I love or admire in a regular sort of way.  Alison McGhee’s Rainlight, for example, a novel told from the points of view of multiple characters who are dealing with the death of a man each of them loved, is a book so full of sadness and depth it could only have been written because McGhee was willing to love her way into the heart of each character and make their feelings come alive in ours.

Similarly, Jane Gardam’s A Long Way from Verona—her whole oeuvre, actually—is deepened by the same intense compassion and understanding of her characters.  We feel the anguish and lovesickness and grief of teenaged Jessica Vye as deeply as she feels it, simply because Gardam must have been willing to love her, too, all the way from the inside out.

What’s to be learned from this?  A lot, it turns out.  For me, it’s been the key to what is the hardest part of writing for me—coming up with a plot.     And the only way that works for me to figure out what can actually happen in a book in is to try to live up to the example of writers like McGhee and Gardam and Schmidt by working very hard to have a loving heart that understands my characters and feels what they feel, loving them wholly from the inside.  Because how they feel drives what they do, and what they do is what turns into a plot.   So, loving hearts ahoy!  And thank you, Gary Schmidt, for such a gorgeous example.

Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. Please leave any comments there.

Hello, Boothers!

I just read Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now—a party I know I am late to, but one I am so glad to have joined.  I loved this book like I haven’t loved a book in a long time, by which I mean I was entirely immersed in the world of the book, entirely invested in its characters, and entirely in love with the author’s writing.  And, most importantly, in awe of the book’s loving heart.

And, indeed, in doing a mental rummage of books-I-love, books I adore so much I’d sleep with them tucked under my pillow, I realized that, for me, this loving heart is almost always the thing that sets apart a book I love and ache for and think about over and over again from the books I love or admire in a regular sort of way.  Alison McGhee’s Rainlight, for example, a novel told from the points of view of multiple characters who are dealing with the death of a man each of them loved, is a book so full of sadness and depth it could only have been written because McGhee was willing to love her way into the heart of each character and make their feelings come alive in ours.

Similarly, Jane Gardam’s A Long Way from Verona—her whole oeuvre, actually—is deepened by the same intense compassion and understanding of her characters.  We feel the anguish and lovesickness and grief of teenaged Jessica Vye as deeply as she feels it, simply because Gardam must have been willing to love her, too, all the way from the inside out.

What’s to be learned from this?  A lot, it turns out.  For me, it’s been the key to what is the hardest part of writing for me—coming up with a plot.     And the only way that works for me to figure out what can actually happen in a book in is to try to live up to the example of writers like McGhee and Gardam and Schmidt by working very hard to have a loving heart that understands my characters and feels what they feel, loving them wholly from the inside.  Because how they feel drives what they do, and what they do is what turns into a plot.   So, loving hearts ahoy!  And thank you, Gary Schmidt, for such a gorgeous example.

Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. Please leave any comments there.

As we continue our discussion about self-marketing, I want to talk a bit (well, more than a bit) about discussion, activity, and teaching guides. Should you have one? And how can a guide help you market your book? To give us a bit of insight, I welcome to the Tollbooth today Debbie Gonzales. Debbie is the author of eight “transitional” readers for New Zealand publisher, Giltedge. A Montessori teacher, former school administrator, and curriculum consultant specializing in academic standards annotation, Debbie now devotes her time to various freelance projects as well as serving the Austin SCBWI community as Regional Advisor. She earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

First, Debbie, welcome to the Tollbooth! Can you tell us a little about the business you run creating discussion and teachers’ guides for authors?

You’re familiar with the adage “Write what you know,” right? Well, that’s what I’m doing. I pull from my years and years of teaching and curriculum development experience and pour it all into these cross-curricular book guides. I make guides like the ones I wish I would’ve had when teaching. Science, math, crafts, creative writing, analysis, games – you name it, I put it in. They’re becoming so popular; I’m having a hard time keeping up with the demand. That’s a good problem, right?

When did you decide to start cross-curricular book guides?

I got started making these when a friend and YA author was told by a librarian that she needed a book guide made to compliment her latest book, one that met the Texas educational standards. She and I got to chatting about it and I told her I’d be glad to make one for her. Soon after, her book found its way to be listed by the International Reading Association. (I’m not saying that my guide got her on the list, but it sure didn’t hurt anything.) The rest is history.

What types of guides do you create?

Picture books, chapter, middle grade and YA, you name it. I’ll do it. I create three basic types of guides for any and all genres. One is an Activity Guide, which is packed with lots of manipulative learning games applicable to all areas of the curriculum. I just finished a really cool Research Activity Guide for two non-fiction books about dogs and horses that were such fun to make! The guide features activities focusing on anatomy, map skills, research skills, poetry writing and a bunch of other things.

Another type of guide is the basic Discussion Guide. This one works quite well for YA novels. I document quotes that, I think, resonate with meaning, and then imagine kids thumbing through the pages to find the selected phrases, reading them aloud over and over again. I like to not only create questions that are inspired by the text, but those that cause the reader to consider their own emotional response to the story.

Lastly, I make longer, more in-depth guides that are a combination activities and discussion that typically end with a special art project or a Reader’s Theatre script. These guides are designed to provide discussion and activities that will span over a 6 week period of time – a teacher’s gold mine!

A collection of guides I’ve created are posted on my

Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. Please leave any comments there.

Hello, Tollboothers!

I am sorry this post is coming up so late in the week! Blame life! Blame the holidays! Oh, heck, don’t do that. Blame me for not having my act together enough to balance both those things. I really do apologize.

So I recently turned in my final (let’s hope! I think it’s my final. It’s supposed to be the final. Let’s hope Other People thinks it’s my final) draft of my YA novel. And as I was biffing and banging through the ten billion mistakes in the manuscript, I realized that the book itself was full of ghosts. And that I was going to have to perform a series of Exorcisms.

Now, I was pleased about this, because I enjoy wearing black voluminous garments and also chanting menacingly. And while I would also have liked one of those incense-flinging thuribles and maybe also some kind of bell to wave, sadly, all that really proved useful were a pencil and my fingers, for typing.
I’m sure you all know what I mean by ghosts. Ghosts are parts of the book that are holdovers from drafts past. And some of those ghosts are friendly, some are disruptive, and some just hover disturbingly about. I had all those kinds of ghosts in my book. And a person has to be merciless in getting rid of the ones that mess things up.

Friendly ghosts are wonderful. For me, a friendly ghost is one left by a murdered scene (killed like a darling! Scalpeled right out!)—that is, a scene that used to be in the book and played out in its entirety but has become, in this later draft, just a shorthand referenced memory between two characters, a reference that now (hopefully) adds an impression of depth to their relationship without a reader having to have been there herself to witness that growth.
But too many ghosts in my ms were the disruptive kind, like the time I forgot I changed where a character lived and then had everybody showing up where his house used to be. WHOOPS! Or the time I cut out a character but then up he popped in that one part I forgot he was in and startled everyone considerably.
The disruptive are fairly easy to fix, though, if dull. The ghosts that really irritate me are the ones that do the hovering, grinning ingratiatingly, trying to hide behind the furniture, yet unwilling to Go to the Light. By this I mean the ghosts of changes in pacing, timing or sequence, things that, in this draft, happen at different times of day than they used to, so that now the reader is left with the upsetting impression that the characters eat breakfast and then go straight to bed for the night, or the characters seem to talk psychically about thing they haven’t….done yet. These are hard because by the time a writer is at her a billionth draft of a thing, it’s hard to see a single word in the book for what it is, much less all the small logistical problems. Because the ghosts of all the drafts are crowded in our heads, too, and so every word in the book is so familiar you can read it before your eyes do.

This is why we need friends who are brainy. Friends who are willing to reread your first thirty pages twice in two days (hey, Jessica Leader! You look pretty today!) and can help you see where you thumped a note twice and skipped three more. You need an exorcising sidekick, someone whose thurible you can borrow and who doesn’t mind holding the spellbook open for you to do your menacing chanting properly. Just make sure the black robe you provide for her is very flattering.

Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. You can comment here or there.

Of course, for now, we read both books AND electronic book-like objects with our children. It’s not an either-or question. But as I’ve explored in this week’s posts, different media have different effects. When I began blogging on the Tollbooth, I intended to write about the picture book walls in children’s sections of bookstores. I didn’t follow through with that plan for a couple of reasons, and one relates to the new media issue. I don’t like to have to drive to malls to look at books, and malls are where the big book stores are in my upstate New York area. (Well, as of recently, where THE big bookstore is, since Borders is closing.) Instead, in addition to going to the local library, I buy books online.

I learned about visiting the picture book walls of major stores from an editor at an SCBWI conference, who told participants that she visits the walls regularly to get a sense of the market and where her own titles might fit in. She suggested that we picture book authors/illustrators do the same. I decided I would go to a wall for this post, and it was worth doing. The editor was right. (She’s the editor of the Ladybug Girl books.)

I liked several books enough to bring them home and read them with my six-year-old daughter. My daughter can read, but she prefers me to read to her. These days, she also prefers text-only books, which may be a reason she wants me to be the reader. The books she likes are a little too hard for her to read herself.

Anyway, one of the books I bought at Barnes & Noble is called “How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?” by Margaret McNamara and illustrated by G. Brian Karas. My daughter and I settled cozily on the bed to read it. I started flipping past the front matter when my daughter grabbed my arm and cried, “I want to read all the names in here!” She was talking about names on the front endpaper, which shows children sitting at school tables, each with a name card on top. The writing on the name cards is very small and hard to make out. (I so wish I could insert a scan for you to see, but I’m afraid of copyright laws.)

My daughter leaned over the endpaper and carefully read each child’s name card, all the while, by the way, working on getting a loose tooth out.

Finally, I began to read the story. The opening spread shows the class lined up, biggest to smallest, outside the entrance to their school. That picture afforded my daughter a larger view of the children she’d seen on the endpaper, and she flipped the page back and forth to compare the pictures.

Children were named throughout the story. For example, on one early page, I read, “‘The tiny [pumpkin] has twenty-two [seeds],’ said Anna.” Anna is shown in a group of children.

My daughter grabbed the book and flipped back to the endpaper. She studied the endpaper to figure out which girl was Anna.

On a later page, a girl named Alex is mentioned. Back to the endpaper we went as well as to the picture of the children lined up. “I forgot who was Alex,” said my daughter, as she studied the pictures and wiggled her tooth.

“How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?” tells how the smallest child learns that the smallest pumpkin can have the most seeds. It’s wonderfully written and illustrated. The children scoop the seeds out of three pumpkins – big, medium, and small – and count them. For counting, the children break into three groups. The big-pumpkin group counts the seeds by twos, the medium-pumpkin group counts by fives, and the smallest boy counts the seeds from the small pumpkin. He counts by ten. The illustrations are great because they show how the children arranged th

Originally published at Through the Tollbooth. You can comment here or there.

I recently read Tuck Everlasting for the first time—blasphemous for an author of books for children, I know—and let me tell you, I was absolutely blown away by Natalie Babbitt’s gift for description in each and every scene. And almost instantly depressed at my inability to do the same, as evidenced by my use seconds ago of the overused term “blown away.” How would Natalie Babbitt describe the emotion of being blown away? Well, I’ll tell you:

Into it all came Winnie, eyes wide, and very much amazed. It was a whole new idea to her that people could live in such a disarray, but at the same time she was charmed. It was . . . comfortable. Climbing behind Mae up the stairs to see the loft, she thought to herself: “Maybe it’s because they think they have forever to clean it up.” And this was followed by another thought, far more revolutionary: “Maybe they just don’t care!”

Natalie Babbitt on cleaning house.

Winnie had grown up with order. She was used to it. Under the pitiless double assaults of her mother and grandmother, the cottage where she lived was always squeaking clean, mopped and swept and scoured into limp submission. There was no room for carelessness, no putting things off until later. The Foster women had made a fortress out of duty. Within it, they were indomitable. And Winnie was in training.

On a road. And cows:

The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow.

What I would give to be able to write descriptions like these. Oh, what I would do! Since I can’t sell my soul (can I?), I settled for the next best thing: I read as many craft books as my schedule would allow, in search of the best exercise on creating descriptions I could find. And that exercise comes from Michael Seidman’s book simply titled, Fiction.

This is an exercise designed to make you as a writer use all five of your senses to craft one description. First think of a scene, any scene. Then—and brace yourself for this—write it six times. The first five times, write it using only one of the five senses each time: smell, taste, touch, sight, sound. Then, the sixth time, pull the strongest lines from each of the five one-sense descriptions and lace them together into one lush quilt of narrative beauty. It’s that easy!

No, it’s not, but it’s a step for any writer who struggles with description like I do. And, honestly, what writer doesn’t? Of course, I’m not going to write each description in my novel six times—nor should you. But let’s just say we use this exercise once in a while, and maybe the descriptions we create will be those that remain with our readers long after the last page is turned.

–Teresa Harris