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The Good Dog Series: The Good Dog, #1 Written by Todd Kessler Illustrated by Jennifer Gray Olson Coralstone Press      10/26/2015 978-0-9898085-0-7 96 pages     Ages 3—10 “When little Ricky Lee finds a puppy on the side of the road, he takes him home and names him Tako. Ricky’s parents say that they …

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Stay Where You Are & Then Leave will appeal to middle grade readers interested in twentieth century history, life in England during World War I; also anyone who has had to deal with a parent changed by trauma.

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I can’t resist filling your screen (and mine) with this gorgeous front cover:

The Crow’s Tale by Naomi Howarth (@nhillustrator) is a visually spectacular retelling of a Lenni Lenape Native American legend about how the crow came to have black feathers, and about what counts as real beauty: not how you look, but how you behave.

Deep in the middle of a snowy winter, the animals are all cold and hungry. Crow volunteers to bring back some warmth from the sun, but in doing so he is changed forever. Will his friends still love him?

You see, Crow used to have breathtakingly brilliant feathers in ever colour under the sun. But where there’s fire, there’s soot, and Crow despairs at how his outward appearance is transformed, when all he wanted to do was help his friends.

What this dazzling story tells us all, however, is that “your beauty inside” is what really matters and shines through. Selfless, brave and still beautiful, Crow learns that what his friends really value is his kindness, generosity and courage, not whether his feathers are black or shot through with rainbows.

Howarth’s picture book début is a feast for the eyes, and not least in the way the black crow feathers are reproduced (I can’t show them here because the special printing techniques just don’t show up on a computer screen). Her use of colours reminds me at times of a favourite illustrator of mine – Karin Littlewood – and Howarth’s use of varied perspective keeps page turns surprising.

The fluency of the rhyming text doesn’t quite match the sumptuous heights of the illustration, but the sentiment is heart-warming, encouraging and just right for boosting confidence and encouraging consideration of what we value in ourselves and others.

Inspired by the stunning array of Crow’s original feathers we set about making our own rainbow plumage. We decorated lots of white feathers using slightly watered-down acrylic paint (the acrylic paint “sticks” nicely to the feathers – much more easily and/or brightly than watercolour or poster paint does – and by watering it down it is easier to apply):

Once our feathers were dry we turned them into a piece of art, positioning them in a circle (we used a plate to guide us) on a piece of black card.

It’s now one of the first things you see when you enter our front door (along with obligatory piles of books):

Whilst painting feathers we listened to:

Beauty Inside by Mister Marc. This is rather catchy and just a perfect match to the sentiment in The Crow’s Tale.

Crow by Joe’s Backyard Band.

The Carrion Crow by Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger. We love the nonsense words in this song.

Other activities which might work well alongside reading The Crow’s Tale include:

Finding out more about the Lenni Lenape Tribal Nation. You could also see if you can find a copy of When The Shadbush Blooms by Carla Messinger, Susan Katz and David Kanietakeron Fadden, a picture book including lots of detail on the Lenni Lenape culture and language, past and present.

Crow spotting! Eight species breed in the UK and many are easy to spot even in cities (apologies to readers in the very North-West of Scotland where it will be much harder to spot any members of the crow family). Why not go on a walk and see how many different members of the crow family you can spot. Here’s the RSPB page on the crow family.

Painting with nail polish. This sounds crazy, but if you want to get the iridescent sheen on the crow’s black feathers you can use pearly nail polish over black paint. Alternatively try collaging with iridescent cellophane on top of your black paint.

If you liked this post you might like these other posts by me:

Making colourful wings out of tissue paper

The Iridescence of Birds (or: Painting with eye-shadow)

Creating a guinea fowl collage

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

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Hi folks, I am starting my new series about what gets me off the ground and in to the creative flow. I call this series UPLIFT. I hope this blog  helps you reach your stratosphere.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9

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If you’re anything like me you’ll love a good dog story, especially those feel-good ones of friendship, courage and love. Typically known as our best mates, the canine variety so often teach us about loyalty, responsibility and maintaining a zest for life, and these three picture books certainly contain these elements in their own gorgeous […]

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I'm continuing my Chicken by Chicken series. I am writing about my real challenges in hopes that my story will help you find your way.

This week I will chat about a glitch in the software of my brain. Along with the whole blind-in-one-eye thing, the anxiety thing, the depression thing, daily, I face dyslexia.

What is that like?

I have a hard time distinguishing left from right. I leave articles out of sentences.  I repeat letters in words. I leave letters out of words. I skip words. I don't put words in the right order. I flip bs, ds, ps, and qs. I love lists, but I really hate numbered lists. I thank God that we don't have to look up stuff in dictionaries manually any more! Also, I'm am freaking brilliant with math as long as calculation is not necessary.

I think you get it--glitch in that brain. .

I have hundreds of "work arounds" for this problem. I read my writing backwards. (Ah, yes, reading backwards or forward, right side up or upside down makes little difference to me.) I change fonts. I change the size of fonts. I change the color of fonts.  I only copy edit 5 or 6 words at a time. For math, I'm horrible at calculation but amazing at estimation. I solve every problem until I get the same answer three times.

ADVICE: If you are older, be sure to find some expert on dyslexia to offer you new ideas to deal with your glitches.

Dyslexia makes some easy things very difficult to me.  I have found it is useful to work with the problem and not against it. I am full of stories. Here are some facts. My stories have to be stronger than the average story because I have to get readers to look past the fact this writing needs "more editing than most." So be it. I'd pit my imagination against, the best grammar any day. I also am one tenacious soul.

In the end, dylexia has brought me some wonderful gifts. The best one is empathy. I love chatting to kids with reading and writing problems. Reading is not about the AR points you can rack up. Writing isn't about the grammar.  Reading is about finding a secret door into new worlds. And writing is about expressing ideas that only you can express.  I can seriously say, "Don't let a string of teachers slapping Fs on your papers stop you from opening secret doors or sharing your ideas."

A deep truth--we are all hopelessly flawed.  Everyone has glitches in their software.  We are having to deal with "work arounds."  If you are full of stories, do your best work and know that is enough regardless of the challenges you face.

For fun check out my Chickens video.  If you would like the book, CHICKENS DO NOT TAKE OVER HALLOWEEN, check it out here.
And now a doodle:

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Hi folks, storytelling is a courageous act. All art is courageous. This makes me think of all the waters we face in life. It takes a lot of courage to live. We experience droughts, floods, storms, and more. It takes vast courage to translate those experiences into art that will lend courage to others. Shock value. Sentimentality. Satire. Succor. Self. Our response to many waters shows up in our art.

We have all been in deep waters. There are days when life is just over our heads. We can't breathe or find ground. We sink or swim. These places are where everything we want is just beyond our reach. The deep waters test our mettle. It's also the place we learn to float. The deep waters are where friendships are forged. This is where we learn. Is your work shallow?  Bring in your deep water experiences.

At other times, we wander into in stagnant waters. In these brackish places time seems to slow. Will anything ever change? Will we ever find our way?  Oh, if we could be someone else. Oh, if we only we could be in the middle of it all. How does anything great come out of this unchanging suburbia? Stagnant waters are full of questions and doubt. They birth tenacity in us and bring us gifts of patience, reinvention, and courageousness. Ask your questions and dig deeper. See what happens to your art.

Sometimes, the waters rage and we must bail the boat. We are tossed around and have no idea if we will survive. We can't see clearly. We can't hear anything but the roar. We don't have control in the raging storm. We are helpless,often injured within and without. Raging waters brings us to new places against our wills. These storms stay very present with us long after they are gone. Our survival after theses storms is our story. Don't be frightened by upheaval. Raging waters bring evolution. Evolve.

Here is a quote from the Song of Solomon in the Bible: Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. I think great writing is about giving words to the many waters that have not quenched the love in our hearts. Think about the waters you have gone through. Let those experiences guide your work.

Here is a doodle.

Water is the driving force of all nature. Leonardo Di Vinci

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When a father is sent overseas to fight during WWII, he tells his young son to be brave.  This idea of war is scary for the boy, but so are some of the daily things in his life, like the air raid sirens, and thinking about bombs and guns.  The young boy is  especially afraid of the trade horses who come down his street.

First, there is the ragman's large horse Josephina.  When the ragman comes around to collect rags, paper and even metal for the war effort, the boy shies away from the horse.  Seeing that, the ragman asks if he would like to feed the horse a carrot and make friends with it, but the boy is too scared to do it.

He feels the same way about the milkman's horse Nell when they come down the street pulling the milk cart.  He has the same reaction to the garbage man's horse when they come to collect the trash.  But all the while, the young boy remembers the story his father told him about the time he had been bitten on the shoulder by one of the horses on his father's farm as a boy.  He, too, developed a fear of horses, but his father needed his help on the farm.  The boy's father told him that sometimes, if it's important enough, you just have to do things even if you are scared.

Meanwhile, the young boy is trying to think of a wonderful birthday present he could get his dad with his jar of saved pennies.  One day, the pony man shows up and asks the boy if he would like his picture taken on the pony.  But the boy, who has been remembering all the horse stories his dad had told him, declines the offer.

Suddenly, remembering his father's words about being brave, the boy knows just what would be the perfect gift to send his dad - a photo of him bravely sitting on the pony.  A gift for his father is important to the boy, but, can he, like his father, put aside he fear long enough to have the photo taken?

Pennies in a Jar is such an inspirational story for young readers.  All children have fears, some rational, some irrational, but finding the courage to overcome what they are afraid of is an important step, especially when they are separated from a parent fighting in a war and worried about them.  In that respect, even though this story takes place in WWII, and we know longer have trade horses coming down our streets on a regular basis, this is a book that will still resonate with many kids today.  After all, it's not about the horses, it's about being brave.

Ted Lewin's realistically detailed watercolor illustrations add depth and expressiveness to the story by creating the world of a small town during WWII.  They will remind you of the paintings done by Norman Rockwell in the 1940s, who also liked to capture life's small important moments in small town daily life.

There is a Note from the Author at the back of the book describing what life was like during the war -games kids played, how people passed the time, rationing and kids doing what they could for the war effort.  And, of course, being brave during difficult times.

This is an excellent book for starting many different kinds of conversations and would make a wonderful addition to any classroom or home school library.

This book is recommended for readers age 4+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

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Hiroki Sugihara, the son of a Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania in 1940, tells how his father suddenly found himself confronted with a terrible dilemma.

Hundreds of Jewish refugees, driven out of Poland by the Nazis after they had invaded and then occupied that country, began to show up at the gates of the Sugihara home, which doubled as the Japanese embassy.  The Sugihara's, Hiroki, his younger brothers Chiaki and Haruki, his Auntie Setsuko, and his parents lived upstairs, and his father, Chiune Sugihara, worked downstairs.

Men, women and children, dressed in layers of clothing despite the July heat, were seeking visas that would enable them to travel through Russia to find asylum in Japan.  Sugihara knew he had to do something, so he asked the crowd to choose five people to come inside and talk with him.

The next day, Sugihara cabled the Japanese government asking if he might be allowed to issue visas to the desperate refugees.  His country refused his request, leaving Sugihara with a tough moral decision - turn away the people outside his gate and leave them to certain death at the hands of the Nazis or disobey his government.

Sugihara chose to issue visas to each and every person outside his gates, disregarding Japan's order.  Day after day, from early morning to late in the evening, Sugihara hand wrote about 300 visas per day.  Even after the Nazis and Soviets began to close in on Lithuania, visas were written, right up until the family was ordered by Japan to leave when Sugihara was reassigned to Berlin.

In telling his father's story, Hiroki writes in the Afterward that it is a story that he believes "will inspire [readers] to care for all people and to respect life. It is a story that proves that one person can make a difference."  His father remained a diplomat for many years after the war, eventually leaving the Foreign Service.  In the 1960s, Chiune Sugihara began to hear from some of the people to whom he had given visas, and who referred to themselves a Sugihara survivors.  He ultimately received the Righteous Among Nations award from Yad Vashem in Israel.

Dom Lee's sepia-toned illustrations provide close detail and give a feeling of dimension and authenticity to the story being told, seemingly based on old photographs of the July 1940 events.  They are done by an very unusual method.  Lee applied encaustic beeswax to paper, scratched out the image he wanted and then added oil paint and colored pencil.

Passage to Freedom is indeed an inspiring story and one that should be shared with young readers.  Sugihara was a real hero, a man who put human life above politics,  even at a time when Japan was at war with China and relations were already contentious with Great Britain and the United States.  One thing that did amaze me was that his government didn't call him back to Japan to censure him.

An extensive PDF Classroom Guide for Passage to Freedom is available from the publisher, Lee & Low books.

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

This 11 minute video recounts the life of Chiune Sugihara at the time he was writing so many visas, it includes Sugihara survivors and his wife's recollections.


Today is Nonfiction Monday:

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Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust

Written by Jennifer Roy
Illustrated by Meg Owenson
Capstone Press          8/01/2015
978-1-62370-425-4
32 pages         Age 9—12

“Amid the horrors of World War II, Polish social worker Irena Sendler worked in the Warsaw Ghetto for Jews. When the Nazis began shipping Jews out of the ghetto in cattle cars, Irena started smuggling out babies and children to give them a chance to live. She hid babies in places like laundry piles, a carpenter’s toolbox, or a potato sack, and she helped older children escape through underground sewer tunnels. After the children were out of the ghetto, Irena found safe places for them with foster families or in convents. Irena kept records of the children she helped smuggle away and when she feared her work might be discovered, she buried her lists in jars, hoping to someday reunite the children with their parents.” [publisher]

Review
Irena Sendler is one of the unsung heroes of World War II. She is not in history books and few know about her work. Jars of Hope begins with Irena as a young child, hearing words from her father that would stay with her forever. She asked her father,

“Are some people really better than others?”

Irena’s father replied,

“There are two kinds of people in this world, good and bad.
It doesn’t matter if they are rich or poor, what religion or race.
What matters is if they are good or bad.”

In World War II, the Jews were not the bad guys and Irena decided to help those that were suffering the most . . . children. With the help of some trusted friends, the group smuggled 2500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. One good example was Antoni, who was allowed to drive his truck in an out of the ghetto. Together, he and Irena smuggled babies out in the back of the truck. Many cried. Antoni had a unique solution: Shepsi. Shepsi, Antoni’s talented sidekick, rode along in the front seat of the truck. With one touch of his paw by Antoni, Shepsi began barking, drowning out the baby’s cries. Eventually Irena joined Zegota, a secret group of Polish adults who helped the Jews with aid and rescue. Zegota helped Irena place children in foster homes and convents, but that association also got her arrested.

The illustrations are emotional and stark, a reflection of the time, and yet beautiful. The images immerse readers into the 1940s and the realities of Irena’s work. I especially like the image of children climbing out of the sewer with only a flashlight shining down upon them as a guide. The young girl hoisting herself up onto the ground struck home, making the era come alive for me. The author includes an Afterword adding more about Irena’s life, a glossary, and an Author’s Note explaining why she wrote Jars of Hope.
What Irena Sendler went through to save so many others is beyond heroic. She put her life in danger every day, but thought nothing of it because others needed her help. Such a selfless spirit is rare. Irena dangerously kept a list of the children she rescued, believing every child deserves to know their real name—many received new, Catholic names upon rescue—and she wanted to reunite as many families as possible. The lists went into jars, and buried for safety.

Jars of Hope, and other books like it, should be in classrooms. Irena Sendler, her selfless aid of so many Jewish children is worth remembering. She is a hero, but much more than that, if there were just an appropriate word. Jars of Hope is a beautiful, dangerous story of hope at a time when all hope seemed lost, and of courage, in a time and place where courage barely survived. Jars of Hope is a must read for older children and adults. Jars of Hope also belongs in every school library.

JARS OF HOPE. Text copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Roy. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Meg Owenson. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Capstone Press, North Mankato, MN.

Pre-order Jars of Hope at Amazon—Book Depository— Capstone Press.

Learn more about Jars of Hope HERE.
Meet the author, Jennifer Roy, at her website:  http://jenniferroy.com/
Meet the illustrator, Meg Owenson, at her website:  https://meganowenson.wordpress.com/
Find more picture books at the Capstone Press website:  http://www.capstonepub.com/

Capstone Press is an imprint of Capstone.

Copyright © 2015 by Sue Morris/Kid Lit Reviews. All Rights Reserved

Review section word count = 502

DON’T LEAVE JUST YET!
We have WINNERS!!

Children’s Book Week Winners

Monday – The Luck Uglies (Book #1) by Paul Durham & Pétur Antonsson
Winner:  Robin Newman

Tuesday – Butterfly Park by Elly MacKay
Winner:  Lauren Tolbert Miller

Wednesday – Dress Me! by Sarah Frances Hardy
Winner:  Susanna Leonard Hill

Thursday – Fork-Tongue Charmers (Luck Uglies #2) by Paul Durham
Winner:  Erik Weibel

Friday – FRED by Kaila Eunhye
Winners:  C. L. Murphy & Mike Allegra

Congratulations to all the winners!

Filed under: 5stars, Favorites, Library Donated Books, Middle Grade, Picture Book Tagged: Capstone, Capstone Press, courage, heroes, Jars of Hope, Jennifer Ray, Jewish children, Meg Owenson, selflessness, Warsaw Ghetto, World War II, Zegota

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Category #6 is up today, and while Brown Girl Dreaming was one of my favorite reads of last year, I have opted to review the young reader’s edition of Malala’s story, which is co-written by the talented YA author (and … Continue reading →

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Title: Wolfie The Bunny Written by: Ame Dyckman Illustrated by: Zachariah OHora Published by: Hatchette Book Group Inc, 2015 Themes/Topics: wolves, bunnies, sibling rivalry Suitable for ages: 4-8 Opening: The bunny family came home to find a                 … Continue reading →

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Courage...

Definition:

noun

To me it's like releasing my children to school for the first time. It's heart wrenching watching our children go off on their own for the first time. Our writing is much like our "babies" being released into the world. Self doubt often creeps in, but don't let it wash away your courage. 

For without courage, your words will never be published. 

Wishing you much courage and success on the roller coaster ride of publishing! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Best wishes,
Donna M. McDine
Multi Award-winning Children's Author

Ignite curiosity in your child through reading!

Connect with Donna McDine on Google+

A Sandy Grave ~ January 2014 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2014 Purple Dragonfly 1st Place Picture Books 6+, Story Monster Approved, Beach Book Festival Honorable Mention 2014, Reader's Favorite Five Star Review

Powder Monkey ~ May 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ Story Monster Approved and Reader's Favorite Five Star Review

Hockey Agony ~ January 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ New England Book Festival Honorable Mention 2014, Story Monster Approved and Reader's Favorite Five Star Review

The Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ Literary Classics Silver Award and Seal of Approval, Readers Favorite 2012 International Book Awards Honorable Mention and Dan Poynter's Global e-Book Awards Finalist

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Last week I sent the opening pages of my third middle grade novel to my critique group. My accompanying email read:

Here are the first measly, tender baby words of my new middle grade novel. Now, I will be completely transparent and say I’m really looking for encouragement here, but not the fake kind where you’re just making stuff up to make me feel good. I want you to be honest, but mostly focus on what’s going right (if anything no matter how small), so I can do more of that. You will be welcome to be much, much tougher once I’m further along.

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my new baby. Remember to support her head, and for Gerber’s sake, keep your dang thumb away from that soft spot on her head would ya? (And I apologize in advance if she smells like poopy.)

Is it just me? You’ve been there, right? I was so vulnerable and needy (one of my all-time favorite states of being for sure). I knew my critique group would be fair and kind, but I was not prepared for the first comments I got back.

I got dark chocolate covered, name in neon lights, to Neptune and back, crazy ENCOURAGEMENT!!!

How did that make me feel?

Hopeful!

Energized!

Confident to push ahead!

As I see it, encouragement is more than good cheer or offering support. It’s fortifying a friend who is afraid–afraid to act, afraid to take a risk, afraid to speak up or afraid to ask. In other words, encouragement provides courage (See there? It’s right in the word itself. How ’bout that?) And that’s what my group gave me.

Encouragement is like . . .

• Jumping through the sprinkler on an August scorcher.
• Finding $20 tucked in your wallet.
• Scoring a gorgeous pair of shoes (at 75% off).
• Savoring a well-timed cup of tea (with a scone, of course).
• Receiving an unexpected hug (or a wink).
• Admiring December’s first snow.

Encouragement makes your soul say, ahhhhhh. You feel full, different, better and ready to take the next step. Little wonder Frog on a Dime‘s primary goal is to provide encouragement to writers.

Who’s been your biggest encourager lately? Who will you encourage today?

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up. ~  John C. Maxwell

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In Mother’s Love Can Conquer Any Fear!, author Subhash Kommuru and illustrator Sujata Kommuru have combined animals, storytelling, and expressive illustrations to successfully share the core values of family, community, and courage with young readers.

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Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a poor town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do.

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I just did something that was not objectively scary at all. No rational person would think so.

Yet for me it was slightly terrifying. I’ve been putting it off for years because I knew it would scare me.

But I’m not into being limited by my fears, so today I did the thing.

And the whole time, I repeated a line in my head that I heard last weekend in a movie called The Internship, written by and starring Vince Vaughn. It was a sweet and funny film and I ended up watching it twice over two days. Obviously I recommend it.

The plot of the movie revolves around Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson entering a summer internship program at Google. When they first arrive on campus, they’re a little lost, and Vince suggests they ask for directions from the person in this car going by. Only there’s no one in the car. It’s self-driving.

For a brief moment, both men stand there in shock. But then Vince turns to Owen, slaps him on the back, and says, “It’s only scary because it’s new.”

And isn’t that true? About so many of the things we’re afraid of? Until we’ve done it once and can see what it’s about, we put it off and fear it and avoid it. At least I do.

Or at least I did. I’m actively working to let go of that habit.

So thanks, Vince. I needed that. I needed it over and over this morning on a loop inside my head.

Maybe some of you out there could use it, too. Because maybe this is the summer you do whatever that thing is for you.

Be brave! It’s the most fun way to be!

And remember, you can always decide to do the thing now and schedule your fear for sometime later when it’s more convenient.

Come on, gang. Let’s do this.

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Here are the categories I’m dealing with lately: planning a new backpacking adventure. Planning a new book series. Planning another new series in a whole new genre. Which right now equals about 15 new books. I’m not even kidding.

And this morning it was starting to feel a little . . . daunting. As in, Can’t do any of them, just have to sit here and think about what I want to do.

That kind of stupor that could easily go on for days.

But I’m going to approach it a different way this time. Because recently I heard a great talk from outdoor adventurer (and mother and wife and owner of my favorite outdoor store Summit Hut) Dana Davis.

Dana has hiked up Mount Rainier. That right there qualifies her as badass. But she’s accomplished many other physical feats, and is currently training for her first Ironman triathlon, even though as she tells it she has bad knees, bad ankles, can’t run, isn’t so hot at either biking or swimming (I can’t remember which)–clearly not ideal when you’re going to be doing all three for miles and miles in one day.

But somehow that sounds fun to Dana.

And that fun is infectious. While it’s possible that some of the people in the crowd the other night might have thought to themselves, “Dang! I’m going to Ironman it, too!” I have the feeling they reacted the same way I did, which was to take Dana’s lessons about training for something hard and think about how we might apply them to some of the upcoming challenges in our own lives.

I think my favorite piece of her advice was this: Embrace the suck. Recognize that somewhere along the way you’re going to have to deal with a certain amount of discomfort, pain, and unhappiness. But if you recognize that ahead of time, really reconcile yourself to it, then when it shows up you can calmly tell yourself, “Yep, here it is. I knew it was coming. Here’s the suck. Let’s keep going.”

What’s “the suck” for me? There are times in every single backpacking trip when it’s as if I turn to myself and ask, “Did you really think this was fun? Are you really doing this on purpose?” Because mountains are high, trails are long, lightning storms scare the crap out of me, mosquitos bite, dogs roll in human feces (don’t get me started on people not properly disposing of their turds), and things just plain go wrong. That is the nature of outdoor adventures. Of any adventure, really.

I see it with my book adventures, too. When I set out to write something new, I know the time will come when my hands will feel like claws from typing for so many hours at a time, my brain will feel completely exhausted and empty, and yet the drill sergeant in me will try to force me to keep going even though all I really want to do is take the day off and watch Pixar movies. There’s a reason why The Incredibles exists. It is there to restore the worn-out brains of adults all over the world.

In a few days I’ll be posting Dana’s full list for psyching yourself up and preparing for something big, but for now I just wanted to whet your appetite for the whole thing.

Until then, you might want to reread a few earlier posts (that’s right, to psyche yourself up for the next big post. See how it works?):

How To Know When It’s Time To Make a Change In Your Life

Becoming the Possible You

The 100 Things You Keep Meaning To Do

Deciding To Worry About That Tomorrow

Stay tuned!

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Title: Flight School By Lita Judge Published by Athenium Books for Young Readers, April 2014 Ages: 3-7 Themes: penguins, flight, courage, dreams Opening Lines: “I was hatched to fly’” said Penguin,                   … Continue reading →

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You’ll just have to trust me that there’s a story behind this. Mine isn’t as interesting as the one that taught me this lesson:

One of my favorite women adventurers is Helen Thayer. She’s a New Zealander by birth, now living in Washington State, and I first heard of her when I read her book Polar Dream.  Here’s the description:

In 1988, at the age of 50, Helen Thayer became the first woman in the world to travel on foot to the magnetic North Pole, one of the world’s most remote and dangerous regions. Her only companion was Charlie, her loyal husky, who was integral to her survival. Polar Dream is the story of their heroic trek and extraordinary relationship as they faced polar bears, unimaginable cold, and a storm that destroyed most of their supplies and food.

So yeah, super burly. I’ve referenced that adventure in a few books of mine–Doggirl and Parallelogram 3: Seize the Parallel–because I remain so thoroughly inspired and impressed by what Ms. Thayer accomplished despite the incredible danger and hardships. And that wasn’t her only big adventure. She and her husband and the dog from Polar Dream lived among wolves for a year (see her book Three Among the Wolves) and later, when she was in her 60s and her husband was in his 70s, they both trekked across the Gobi Desert, just the two of them and a few camels (see Walking the Gobi: A 1600 Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair). You can understand why she’s a hero of mine.

And one of her lessons that has always stuck with me is the one about being too polite.

Here’s the situation: On her last morning in civilization before Helen set off for the magnetic North Pole, the Inuit villagers who had graciously hosted her the night before took their hospitality one step further by helping Helen pack up her sled for the journey. Helen had a particular packing system in mind, but she didn’t have the heart to tell the villagers she didn’t want their help. They were so happy and enthusiastic about it, she didn’t want to hurt their feelings. So she just smiled and said thank you as she watched them stuff her gear and clothing every which way into various pockets and pouches. She figured she’d fix it all later once she was alone in camp that night.

Big mistake.

Because when she finally stopped skiing across the ice that first night and began setting up her camp, she could feel the cold beginning to affect her fingers. She understood the dangers of frostbite. She needed to put on her pair of heavy, insulated mittens, but where were they? As she frantically searched for them, she could feel the dry cold and the wind chill of minus 100 quickly taking their toll. By the time she finally found the mittens, her fingers already felt like hard wooden blocks. The damage was done.

When she woke up the next morning, her hands were swollen and covered with blisters. And they felt incredibly, horribly painful. They stayed that way for the whole first week, making everything so much harder: lighting her stove, dressing herself, setting up and breaking down her camp–anything that required manual dexterity and ended up leaving her fingers throbbing with agonizing pain.

All because she’d been afraid to say, “No. No, thank you. I need to do this myself.”

What’s amazing is you’d think someone as brave as Helen Thayer would have no trouble telling people no. But it just shows you hard it can be sometimes to retrain ourselves to do what might seem impolite.

Years ago I saw an Oprah episode where she interviewed Gavin de Becker, the guy who wrote The Gift of Fear. Does anybody else remember that episode? He talked about how predators sometimes test their prey by insisting on “helping.” “Oh, here, let me bring this to your car. You dropped this, I’ll just bring it upstairs for you.” And when you say, “No,” the predator still insists. Because he’s testing whether he can dominate you.

De Becker and Oprah discussed how it wasn’t just dangerous criminals doing that, it could also be friends or family members. De Becker said, “Anyone who won’t hear your ‘no’ is trying to control you.” When you think of it that way, you can probably see it all around you: in your bossy co-worker, your critical mother-in-law, even your well-meaning sister or friend. Here you are taking a stand and actually using your “no,” and the person refuses to accept it.

Annoying, and, as de Becker points out, also potentially dangerous. People practice on us. We need to practice, too.

This is all a way of saying the same thing someone once told me: “It’s only fair if it’s fair to you, too.” How’s that again? You get a vote. If it’s nice for someone else, is it also nice for you? Or are you going to end up exhausted/broke/angry/resentful/out of time to watch your favorite show if you do “just this one more” favor?

Don’t get me wrong–it feels good to be nice. No doubt about it. But it feels less good to always be the one giving and giving, while your own store of personal energy and good will feels like it’s slowly draining away. Then, if you’re like me, one day it’s finally enough, and the answer for everybody is “No, no, and NO,” even if a few of those would have been yesses if they’d caught you on a better day. And maybe that grumpy, surly no-ness lasts for a lot longer than you meant it to–*cough* three years–and you realize when you come out of it that you could have had a much easier life and been much happier if you’d only moderated your yesses one by one instead of letting them all pile up in such an unbalanced way.

See where I’m going with this?

As my best friend sometimes has to remind us both, “We don’t have to act nice, we are nice.” And if you look closely at your own behavior, you can see the times when you’re just performing–wanting to appear nice–as opposed to genuinely wanting to do something out of love or friendship or simple human kindness. There is a difference. One of them drains you, the other fills you up. It’s very noticeable once you really start looking at it.

Sometimes you need to work the problem backwards. How will you feel afterward if you say no here versus yes? Forget how hard it might feel in the moment to tell someone no–think about how you want to feel afterward. If you really, really want to go home tonight and slip into something slouchy and treat yourself to an evening of quiet and Call the Midwife, then why are you saying yes to anything else? Don’t you get a vote, too? Don’t you ever get the yes?

Or, like I’m doing today, you work out a balance: ten nice things for other people, ten nice things for yourself. That seems like the best recipe for me lately to be able to handle all of my obligations cheerfully. I know at the end of a long stream of yesses today I’ll get to sit down and binge watch season 2 of The Mindy Project.

Now that’s my kind of balance.

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Two posts about fear and worry in the past few weeks? Yeah, you bet. Because I’ve been skiing for the past few weeks, and that always reactivates all the fear cells in my body and makes me think about my safety in ways I don’t normally have to in my everyday life.

I like the ground. I like dirt. I love to run and hike and backpack–all at my own bodily speed.

But when you’re at the mercy of gravity and two slick planks speeding over slippery snow, that’s not normal. Even Olympic downhill racers will tell you so.

The problem is, I love it. Love leaving my southwest desert town where it’s already in the mid-80s (sorry, east-coasters) and going to the mountains where it’s still winter. Love being out in the snowy wilderness with husband and dogs, cross-country skiing for hours at a time while our year-old black Labrador, Moose, rolls in every snowbank he can find and the older Lab, Bear, trots along beside us hoping he won’t have to run too much because really, this is fun and all, but isn’t it time for a nap?

So to reconcile those two things, I’ve had to adopt the Worry About That Tomorrow schedule.

It’s something I read about years ago, and thought was ridiculous–until I tried it.

The idea is to schedule your worry. Decide, “Okay, at 3:00 PM every Thursday, I’m going to sit down for an hour and really cut loose. Remind myself of everything I’ve been afraid of all week–maybe even keep a list of worries for just that reason–and then sit down and go through each of them and really feel the fear. No shame, no holds barred. Steep in it. Go.”

Sure, some weeks by the time Thursday afternoon came around I was already over the anxiety I’d felt about something on Monday. But there were also times when I really looked forward to giving myself permission to flip out if I wanted to. It feels good to be your own best friend and say, “Okay, let’s hear it. Tell me everything.”

Once I got used to putting off fear until a specific day of the week, I learned to extend it for weeks at a time. And eventually to months. Here’s what I’m talking about:

It was the beginning of summer. Sweltering hot (see March temperature above and add 30 degrees to it). I was reading Outside Magazine and came across an article about outdoor summer adventures in Iceland.

Ice-land. YESSSSS.

Luckily, I have the kind of husband who, when I send him an e-mail asking, “Want to go to Iceland in a few weeks?” writes back succinctly, “Sure.”

So I started planning and reserving, and put together an awesome adventure trip. One that included staying on an Icelandic horse farm for a week, then kayaking in the North Atlantic, then backpacking on this very remote, rugged, isolated spot of land.

And to do all that, we’d have to (1) ride on big horses, (2) ride in small boats, and (3) ride in small planes. All of which have a history of activating my fear cells.

But I really wanted to do it. Really wanted the adventure, all those experiences, and especially really wanted to get the heck out of the hell temperatures we were experiencing.

So I just scheduled my fears. Picked a date on the calendar that was a few days after our trip was over, and made myself the solemn promise that I would completely freak out then about all of the dangers I had to face.

And I’m telling you, it worked.

Every time my heart started to beat a little faster during the trip, I’d remind myself, “Not now. Later.” And because I was so used to keeping my promise about fully feeling the fear at scheduled times, I knew that promise was real. So I immediately settled down.

We did crazy things for those two and a half weeks. Scary, dangerous things that I didn’t even know we’d be doing when I planned the trip. And I was completely serene about all of them.

And ever since then, because of that, I know I can flip the switch on and off. That was a really important experiment for me. And it’s a skill I’ve taught friends and family, and a lot of them have had similar successes.  It’s doable, people, I promise you. You can put your fears under your own control. I urge you to try the experiment for yourself.

I’ve also learned to apply it to my writing life. I always have dual reactions when a new book of mine comes out. On the one hand, I’m all, “Look! I made this for you! I hope you all read it and love it!” But there’s an equally strong part of me that says, “No! Don’t read that! It’s full of my feelings and opinions! It’s too personal! Look away!”

It reminds me of a friend of mine whose little 3-year-old boy stood with her in the checkout lane at a grocery store, and had his hands down the front of his pants. The customer behind him kept looking at him and smiling, and finally the little boy blurted out, “Stop looking at me!”

Sorry, little dude, but if you’re going to stand in public with your hands down your pants, people are going to look.

That’s right, launching a new book is like standing around with your hands down your pants. You heard it here first.

I definitely had that reaction to my new book THE GOOD LIE coming out last month. I’d been sitting on it for a while, but then when that Woody Allen-Dylan Farrow controversy broke in January of this year, I knew I had some of my own feelings and opinions about the topic that I wanted to share. So I released the book, but definitely felt both “Read it!” and “Don’t read it!” at the same time.

So as with all of my books, I’ve had to pick a date in the future–four months seems about right–when I’m allowed to worry about it. On June 5 I will sit down and have a whole long session about it. But until then, nope, sorry, it’s all just perfectly fine.

Which makes this seem like a good spot to include this button you can push to enter to win a free signed copy of the book later next month. Go ahead. I’m not afraid. How can I be? It’s not even close to June 5 yet.

But I’m telling you, on that day, whew. Look out.

Good luck with your own experiments. Feel free to report back.

 

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I’m a big fan of adventurer Roz Savage, who has rowed across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, by herself, for months at a time in a rowboat. I loved her first book, Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, and highly recommend it if you’re like me and enjoy sitting in a cozy chair, sipping something warm and delicious while reading about someone else doing scary, uncomfortable things. The scary, uncomfortable things I do myself never feel nearly as much fun at the time.

It was Roz’s solo row across the Atlantic that inspired me to write a similar kind of adventure–along with a pretty serious disaster–for Halli and her grandmother Ginny in PARALLELOGRAM, Book 3: Seize the Parallel. Obviously I recommend that book, too.

Roz was recently interviewed by Cloris Kylie, and that led me to this great post by Ms. Kylie about how to know when it’s time to make a change in your life. Having made huge changes in my own life throughout the years–from leaving my career as a trial lawyer to starting my own business to finally becoming a full-time writer just like I always dreamed of doing when I was a little girl–I agree with what she says in her post.

I’m passing it along because some of you might recognize your own situation in some of the items on her list. Just yesterday I had a long brainstorming session with a friend of mine who has decided to leave her current career and start out on something completely new. She, too, is a big adventurer–an outdoor guide, ski instructor, sailor, travel guide, climber, mountain biker, backpacker, former competitive gymnast–but even with all those brave accomplishments to her credit, she still feels a little intimidated by taking such a big leap. But as Cloris Kylie and Roz Savage and so many others understand, when it’s time it’s time, and you just have to do it. Otherwise you’re living someone else’s idea of your life instead of your own.

So brew yourself up something warm and delicious, settle in for a quick read, and enjoy!

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I’m afraid of a nice variety of things:  Sharks.  Going too fast on skis.  Vomiting in public. You know, the usual.

That’s why I enjoyed hearing from this astronaut, Chris Hadfield, about the difference between danger and fear, and some strategies for changing your brain’s habitual reaction to your habitual fears.  It might involve walking through a hundred spider webs, or in my case, pointing my skis downhill a little more often instead of defaulting to the snowplow. I don’t know what to say about the vomiting fear, since I don’t plan on doing it in public more often just to reassure myself it’s okay. Because I’m pretty sure it’s not.

Anyway, here’s a fascinating talk by Astronaut Hadfield that includes some beautiful images of space and earth and a very relaxing tune at the end.  And in between, some very solid ideas about becoming braver.  Enjoy!

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