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While you were away binging Marvel’s Jessica Jones last night, the publishing division announced a brand new ongoing series for a character who has never received the honor before: Mockingbird. Chelsea Cain (Mockingbird: S.H.I.E.L.D. 50th Anniversary #1) is writing the first ongoing comic with Mockingbird and artist Kate Niemczyk is creating the interiors. Cain explained to Marvel.com […]

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I have written here of the extraordinary kindness and straight-through goodness of the people of Philomel—Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jill Santopolo, and, last night, the dearest note from Colleen Conway.  I have written of how lucky I am to find myself in their company with the forthcoming release of Small Damages.  I have written, too, about the important and hugely acclaimed novels that Tamra has edited, and of the writers she has brought into her fold.

But have I told you how kind those writers are?  How generous both Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) and Kathryn Erskine (Mockingbird) have been with me?  Perhaps I simply haven't had the words.

I still don't have the words. But this morning I invite you to visit with Ruta Sepetys by way of her remarkable, whimsical, internationally seasoned web world.  It's like being in Manhattan in the snow, Christmas season.  Like finding yourself inside a kaleidoscope.  Like talking to a friend.

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Mockingbird
Kathryn Erskine
middle grade/ya

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

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

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

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

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

Read it.

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

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The question sometimes is:  What divides us, one from the other?  Is it our ability to see, or listen? Does it come down to empathy, or empathy's archenemy, preconception?

With her National Book Award winning young adult novel, Mockingbird, Kathryn Erskine brings us into the heart and mind of a fifth-grader named Caitlin, whose mom is deceased, whose brother has been killed by an act of school violence, and whose dad is nearly paralyzed with sadness.  This would be too much for any of us, but it's particularly overwhelming for a little girl who has Asperger's syndrome—a girl who is bound to a most literal understanding of words, a girl who must study a book of expressions to understand the meaning of faces, a girl for whom making friends is not only difficult but not, at least a first, a top priority.  Caitlin's older brother, Devon, meant the world to her; he was, in fact, the one who best understood how to crack open the world on her behalf.  With Devon gone, all the tricky negotiations are now Caitlin's responsibility—Caitlin and the school counselor and a boy named Michael who help untangle some of life's knottiest threads.

Readers look for momentum in plot, the what-is-going-to-happen-next?. Erskine's great literary achievement with this beautifully written book is how deeply she invests her readers in caring whether or not Caitlin will make a true friend, or agree to lend color to her immaculate black and white drawings, or, mostly, help her dad finish an Eagle Scout project that her brother had started before his death. Perhaps that might not seem like much to those who line up at midnight to find out whether Katniss Everdeen will survive the battering of District 12 in the year's other major Mocking book (Mockingjay), but I would argue that what Erskine creates here is bigger, more essential—a powerful look at one who is "special" and a loving portrait of a community reeling in the aftermath of a terrible act of violence.    

Mockingbird can be read in one sitting.  It absolutely should be.

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

“Nae man can tether time or tide,” said Robert Burns in Tam o’Shanter. Over the 200 years since the Scottish Bard’s death in July 1796 his poetry has been celebrated the world over through a network of Burns Clubs. Since tomorrow is Burns Night, I though today would be the ideal time to post this entry from The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, which tells us all about Burns Clubs and how they came into being.

Burns clubs are societies devoted to the life and work of Robert Burns. The earliest meeting of devotees of Burns took place in the summer of 1801, only five years after the poet’s death. Nine gentlemen of Ayr, friends and admirers of Burns, held a dinner in the poet’s birthplace (then a tavern). Haggis formed a part of the fare and Burns’s Address to a Haggis was recited. The Revd Hamilton Paul delivered the toast to the ‘Immortal Memory’ of Burns in verses of his own composition. Thus was established the essential form of the Burns supper. Before breaking up, the company resolved to celebrate the birthday of Burns the following January. Out of these informal gatherings the Alloway Club developed, later dinners being held at the King’s Arms, Ayr, in midsummer. This early club ceased to exist in 1819 and was not revived until 1908.

The Greenock Burns Club owed its genesis to a much older body called the Greenock Ayrshire Society, which appears to have held Burns suppers from 1802 and by 1811 had metamorphosed into the Greenock Burns Club. Greenock have had a continuous existence down to the present day, whereas the rival Paisley Burns Club (1805) was in abeyance from 1836 till 1874.

The Kilmarnock Burns Club first met at the Angel Inn (formerly Begbie’s Tavern) in January 1808, but was dormant from 1814 to 1841. The Dunfermline United Burns Club (1812) likewise had a lengthy period of suspended animation, being revived in 1870. Though a relative latecomer, the Dumfries Burns Club (1820) has flourished ever since its foundation. It arose out of the campaign (1813–19) to erect a mausoleum over the poet’s grave.

By 1810 Burns suppers were being held on an ad hoc basis in many parts of the country. The first in England was held at Oxford in 1806 and Burns Night celebrations were taking place in London by 1810. The idea spread to India in 1812, and thereafter to Canada, the USA and the Australian colonies. The Burns movement received enormous stimulus from the celebrations of the centenary of the poet’s birth in January 1859; out of the many hundreds of dinners and concerts around the world developed some of the oldest clubs in existence today. Nothing was done to bring them together until February 1885, when Burnsians met in London for the unveiling of the monument in the Thames Embankment Gardens. A meeting in Kilmarnock on 17 July formally instituted the Burns Federation, with its international headquarters in the town where the poet’s works first saw the light of day in printed form.

In its inaugural year the Federation had ten members: eight clubs in Scotland and two in England. A further 23 joined in 1886, including ten in Scotland, six in England, one in Ireland, two each in Australia and the USA, and one each in Canada and New Zealand. Progress was slow in the early years, but the launch of the Burns Chronicle in September 1891 gave the Federation fresh impetus and in the run-up to the centenary of the poet’s death in 1896 it grew dramatically.

By 1925 the number of affiliated clubs had grown to 350, at which level it has remained remarkably constant ever since, although many of the older clubs have disappeared and new ones continually take their place. Annual conferences were confined to Kilmarnock until 1894 when Glasgow was the venue. In 1907 it went south of the Border for the first time, to Sunderland. By the 1930s, the custom of holding the conference alternately in Scotland and England was well established. Since 1978, when London, Ontario, was the venue, the conference has taken place in Canada or the USA on several occasions. The current number of members affiliated to active clubs worldwide is estimated at 80,000.

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