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Okay, here we go with reviews and interviews from the other side of the world!

Little Willow has an interview with Autumn Cornwall, author of the Carpe Diem, a YA novel about a backpack trip through....SE Asia! Here's a bit: "My trip journals are also jam-packed with labels off bottles, boat tickets, sketches, flowers, money, and even candy wrappers (I still have the box from a chocolate Crunky bar picked up in Japan years ago). I love the tactile effect. It triggers memories just like photos - and sometimes even more so. Because, for me, it conjures up a whole scene instantly. (Like a certain coaster instantly evokes the entire month I spent writing Carpe Diem at a 1950s era guesthouse in Bangkok: the conversations I had with fellow writers, the humidity, the swing music, and the thom kha khai soup and lime juice atop the coaster on the table in front of me . . . )"

Autumn also recommends some very cool sounding books (and she loves Dodie Smith - which makes me love her even more!).

Paper Tigers chimes in with a post that includes links to multiple titles set in the region including a Malaysian tale: "The Bee Tree, written by Stephen Buchmann and Diana Cohn, illustrated by Paul Mirocha (Cinco Puntos), is a coming-of-age story that blends “myth, geography, and harvest and Islamic rituals to create a rich tapestry of multicultural experiences”."

Over at Teens Read and Write, there are three books discussed, including, Song of the Buffalo Boy, Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam and The Killing Sea. Here's a bit from the Buffalo Boy review: "All and all, a great book that keeps a steady pace and your interest. It's a quiet story with depth and meaning, that touches on prejudice, cultural beliefs, family loyalty, acceptance, forgiveness and of course love. It's a novel with a lot to offer." (All three posts are linked to in one post by Alyssa for handing reading.)

The Seven Imps chime in with an interview with Jan Reynolds, author of Cycle of Rice, Cycle of Lifeset in Bali: "Because I shoot my own illustrations with a camera, I begin books visually, even while I’m in the field shooting. I travel to my site, and I have a vague idea of what my subject will be — and start looking for general photos to illustrate my idea. Then I see soooooo much more than my research taught me, and I shoot a ton more. When I get home, I lay out my photos in a story line, {and} then I write it."

Carol Rasco at RIF looked at Cinderella stories from the region: "It would be interesting in a classroom to have children discuss what these covers alone might predict about the story of Cinderella in the countries as well as whether there are any hints as to how the stories might be the same as and/or different from the story of Cinderella as we know it in America."

Tarie reviewed a Filipino YA novel in English, Playing it Safe: "I could not stop smiling while reading. I even had to stop every few pages because I would hunch over laughing. I was so amused and so entertained by Jon's story, and I found Jon and Sheila, their lives, and their relationship so interesting and so refreshing. (There aren't many Filipino YA novels in English about sports, university life, and relationships!)"

And my own entry at Chasing Ray, When the War Was Over by Elizabeth Becker: "The horror of the Tuol Sleng prison is covered at length and if you have never read about it then it will break your heart. It is the pictures from Tuol Sleng that always get me - and that nearly all of those people are dead for reasons that escape any sane person. I don't think there are enough tears in the world for what happened to the men, women and children of Tuol Sleng."

[Post pics: Bangkok, Thailand; an island village in the Philippines courtesy National Geographic, Photograph by Paul Chesley/Getty Images; Bike Ride in Cambodia, Nat Geo photograph]

One of the things about teaching is that you find yourself scrambling a lot to stay ahead of your class and find answers to their questions. I felt pretty confident when I started but the only way I could provide all the answers was if I ignored some of the questions (or told my students they wouldn't be covered in the class). When it became obvious that there were huge segments of American history that none of us had learned much about and we all wanted to discuss I chucked the textbook (this was around year 1 of my 5 years) and started building notes. Finding out some things was easy (Korean War, Vietnam War, break up of Yugoslavia, etc) but my students always surprised me. One of the places they wanted to know more about was Cambodia. This was partly due to the face that several of them were born in Cambodia or the children of former Cambodian refugees. Back then, in the mid-90s, researching Cambodia pretty much didn't extend beyond watching The Killing Fields. I was thrilled when I discovered Elizabeth Becker's When the War Was Over and was able to finally get a comprehensive handle on what happened there leading to Pol Pot's takeover and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.

Just a reminder that next Wednesday, August 12th, I will be hosting a One Shot highlighting books and authors from SE Asia. You can read all about it in the announcement post but the basic rules are simple - you post at your site on a book either set in SE Asia or written by a SE Asian author and send me the url. I'll post a master list with links and quotes here on Wednesday. (Interviews are also welcome!)

Can't wait to see what everyone has to share!

A bunch of us have been talking about doing another One Shot and decided to go way outside our reading comfort zones this time with Southeast Asia. For those of you not familiar with the One Shot idea, a group of bloggers (and its open to everybody with a blog) all agree to read a book by an author from a certain region or a book set in that region and then blog about it on a specified day. You can also interview an author from there if you prefer. To make it easy for readers to follow the project, everyone emails their exact url to me and I post a master list with links and quotes on the One Shot day. In the end we manage to hopefully discover new authors, new books, and a little bit different perspective then we receive from reading primarily American works.

For the purposes of this project, here are the countries we have settled on to comprise Southeast Asia:

Thailand
Laos
Cambodia
Vietnam
Singapore
Malaysia
Indonesia
Philippines

The date is August 12th which should give everyone plenty of time to find and read a book. Keep in mind that the books can be any genre, any age, fiction or nonfiction. This is as wide open as it gets. And don't worry if multiple people end up writing about the same book - that just gives everyone more opinions to consider!

I hope lots of folks join in - and will repost on this again next month as a reminder.

Okay, here we go with thoughts on voting from across the lit blogosphere. This list will be continuously updated through Election Day.

Jone at Deo Writer frames the question of which way to go in a personal historical way: "My ancestor, Benjamin Rush, his strong conservative views and his deep faith makes me wonder if he would have voted Republican. He also was a strong abolitionist and advocated for the education of women, so what would he think about this year???s political offerings?"

From last week, Little Willow writes about using books in political ads: "We are given so many freedoms in America, freedoms that other countries and people do not have, freedoms that so many people have died for, freedoms which are remarkable and wonderful. We ought to celebrate and appreciate these freedoms."

Nancy at Bees Knees Reads shows some love for Nicki McClure's voting art and a link to NPR: "More than wealth, more than nutrition, literacy is predictive of a healthy, happy life."

At the Reading Tub Terry reminds us about how voting even can affect children: "My first memories of elections and voting came in 1972, when who our parents were voting for determined who would pick us for their dodge ball team. It was the summer I turned nine. Did I understand the issues? Not really. Did I pay more attention to discussions at the dinner table? Oh, yeah. I needed to know if I would have any friends to play with!"

Author Michele Thornton gives us some historical perspective: "One thing Richard Nixon taught me was that each person in this country is held accountable for his or her actions, even those who hold the highest office.

And so, if you are going to live in a place that holds you accountable, then be accountable."

Ellen Datlow recalls a friend who never voted: "And for anyone who does not vote I say don't you EVER complain about where our country is heading or that so and so got in."

I became a history teacher in 1997 after answering an ad in the Fairbanks newspaper. I had just graduated with my second degree, this time in American History, and one of the community colleges that offered classes on Ft Wainwright was in a bind. They had a history class scheduled but the teacher had dropped out. The class was all set to go in a week so I was hired on the spot. Basically I was the only one even remotely qualified.

So I started teaching soldiers about America.

My students were primarily active duty although there were also a few dependents and retired NCOs. In the beginning I was not a very good teacher - I stressed dates and people far too much and spent far too little time in discussions about why things happened. After the first year (and I apologize to all the students I had that year) I backed off of tests (requiring short papers instead) and stopped using the book entirely. My course became built around maps, film clips and long class discussions. This was how I discovered what my students wanted to know (the pilgrims and Revolutionary War were low on the list) and the many things they had never learned. It was also a huge learning process for me as I saw a slice of America that had never been part of my life before.

I grew up in the south and attended schools that all had black and white populations. In elementary school we were entirely mixed but in junior high, for reasons I've never understood, the black students were gone from every class I was in and started sitting on separate benches in the common areas and separate tables in the cafeteria. To a certain extent everyone split up at that point - rich kids in one direction, rednecks another, jocks another, etc. but the color line was stronger than all others and it stayed through high school. Kids I had known since the first grade became someone I only nodded to in the hallways (if that). In college, again in Florida, I majored in aviation and as it was the late 1980s, there were a ton of international students in my classes. Most of them were from the Middle East - Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and quite a few from Iraq. Not a single African American student - but then again I was only one of twenty or so female students there too. By the time I got to Alaska, I had become insulated into my own industry and while I worked every day with Native Alaskans, there were very few other minorities I interacted with.

Then I walked into my first class.

At Ft Wainwright I taught classes that were always at least 50% African American. Beyond that, there were Hispanic students, Asian Americans, students from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, all over the Caribbean and on and on. I always had several Native American students and some from Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. They were white, black and brown, between the ages of 19 and 55 and deadly serious about their education or drifting into my classes as part of some larger drift that seemed to be taking them nowhere or somewhere depending on how lucky they might get.

In other words, I had a true microcosm of all of middle class America in front of me every week and my job was to teach them what it meant historically to be an American. I loved the job and I did teach them a lot but ultimately, they taught me far far more.

My white students knew more about the Pilgrims than anyone while my black students could quote chapter and verse of the Civil Rights Movement. My white students saw Martin Luther King as a black hero while my black students saw him as an American hero. My Asian students knew about the fall of Cambodia and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII while my Native American students spoke about the reservation system in ways that left all of us speechless. My Caribbean students lectured us on US foreign policy in their national politics while my Hispanic students were shocked when anyone did not know about Cesar Chavez. I introduced the big topics: the Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc and then we spun and swirled around each other with what some people knew and what others did not. Few students could explain WWI on any level which was one of the few things they all had in common. They also had a single voice when they asked about current events. But the most startling thing about them was how powerless they all felt. They were in the military largely because they had personal hopes and dreams for something more, something they could not find on their own. They wanted to find a job that would give them security, a house near a decent school, a nice car, a chance for the occasional vacation. They wanted the classic white picket fence American dream. College was seen as a step in that direction although far too many of them were not sure how college would really get them there. School was all too often a foreign country for my students (with the exception of a few who came from states that paid for college in return for enlistment) and they weren't sure at all how to navigate it or what to do once they left. They wanted more, but they didn't know how to get it.

These were adults who had never spoken to school counselors, who came from families that never attended college, who had never made up a resume or paged through a course catalog. One of my Native American students told us how he had used the same books as his parents (literally - his mother's name was written in the books assigned to him) in his reservation school and several of my African American students told us they had never sat in classrooms with white students before. They all had grown up with the big issue of getting by and now they were supposed to figure out what comes next and didn't know how to do that. They were working their butts off, doing everything anyone told them to do, but they weren't getting ahead and they wanted me to tell them why; they wanted someone to tell them just what they were supposed to do next to make it better for their own kids. All I could do was talk about Roosevelt and Malcolm X and Operation Desert Storm. But in every class I also found that history was a great jumping off point for how we lived and in every single class I was reminded of how many different lives there are in America - how many different stories. And I was reminded that sometimes working hard was not enough; that you could work harder than hell forever and it still might not get you much of anywhere.

I was reminded that for a lot of Americans the American dream seemed to be very distant indeed.

One of my sergeants had been stopped three times, on three different military bases for what he termed "jogging while black". We asked an MP in the class how this could happen and he said he didn't know - but he knew it did. One of my white students had been passed over for a promotion and was told by his supervisor that it had to go to a black soldier. He now questioned the worth and value of every single black soldier he worked with. One of my black sergeants told him the wrong thing had been done to him - but judging others based on that was wrong as well. They were frustrated over skin color meaning more than anything else, over not getting paid what they were promised, over being sent away more often then they were promised, over the difficulty of getting along in circumstance that seemed to reward those who played along and challenged those who questioned others. What can we do to change anything they asked me. What can we do to change our own lives?

We talked about politics, about voting, about writing letters to senators and congressmen. There are plenty of examples in American history when groups changed the country in a variety of ways and we talked about those things a lot. But no one in my classes was going to march on Washington to demand career counseling and we all knew it. What they wanted was mostly for the situation to change for their kids so that when they were in school they would be directed on a path that made college and a career something other than a pipe dream; something that was expected rather than hoped for.

Something that was theirs and would make all the rest of it, all the crap, somehow worth it.

We have heard a lot about the middle class in this election, a lot about working families and blue collars. That was the kind of family I grew up in, but my parents knew to point us in the direction of college from the beginning - they knew to introduce the idea from a very young age. (This was not the case for either of them when they were growing up however.) They not only told us we could be anything but also figured out how we could get there. This was what my students were lacking - the tools for achievement. Their frustration over this lack of information was constant and I often spoke with them during breaks and after class about making plans for the future; about crafting a map to the success they wanted. I tried to do what I could but honestly, I don't think it was ever enough.

I have always thought that voting was important, largely because I come from late 19th and early 20th century immigrants all of whom suffered from prejudice and discrimination and fought long and hard to get decent jobs and equal pay. But now when I vote it is with my former students in mind. I know that this country is full of people who have not had a fair shake. I know that the schools in this country are not equal. I know that you can work hard and still not get ahead. I know that not all poor people are stupid or lazy. (And I know that sounds harsh but we've all seen it suggested in the last six months.) I know being American still counts for something, but I also know that for many Americans it doesn't count for as much as others.

I've been thinking about my former students a lot in the last few weeks because while everyone seems to be talking about them in this election, I question how much they are truly valued. From what I know, once an election is over they are all too often casually left behind. I hope that is not the case this year by whichever candidate wins but regardless, I will be voting for those soldiers and their families yet again. Because I know how important they are to this country and what an uphill climb so many of them face.

We all vote for something; I vote for someone. And wherever they are, I hope that many of them have made it and are finally living the dreams they wanted so very much and were working so hard to achieve.

Here's the graphic - feel free to use it on your own post and to read more about the event, see my earlier post.

Is Sarah Stevenson awesome or what?!

When we came up with the idea to salute Canadian authors there were several I immediately thought of. I'm a huge fan of Charles de Lint (see my interview with him) and especially delighted with how he brought urban fantasy into the mainstream. I was very impressed last year with William Bell's YA novel about a UN peacekeeper who struggles when he returns home and the teen who befriends him, The Blue Helmet. (This is also one of the best novels I've read about teens and violence.) Someone really needs to explain to me why that book isn't available in the US because it is far far better than a lot of the titles that I've read in recent months.

I also wanted to write about Thomas Wharton whose book The Logogryph is impossible to describe but an absolute delight, especially for those who like books about books and literary puzzles. It's really well done and utterly unique. (And lovely to look at and hold to boot!)

But in the end, I decided to go with Pierre Berton, the Canadian historian who renewed my faith in all things Canada after the nightmare that was my college course in Canadian History. Berton's book, The Arctic Grail, was the textbook for one of my first graduate courses in Northern Studies, The History of Polar Exploration. I knew nothing about this subject before I signed up for the course and to say it changed my life would not be an overstatement.

The Arctic Grail is the history of the search of the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, the period from 1818 -1909. The subject is not what makes the book so great though; it is the positively stirring way in which Berton wrote about the explorers that elevates far above (as in miles above) the standard textbook. He writes history as a novelist, meaning he writes as if we don't know how the story will end or what will happen next. This is not to suggest that he plays with fact, it's just that he makes it all so damn exciting that you are on the edge of your seat, even when you already know how the whole thing is going to turn out.

It was in the Grail that I first learned about the doomed Franklin expedition and how it spawned dozens of other expeditions in the years that followed it's disappearance and resulted in the Arctic being mapped and explored to an extent never before realized. (Dan Simmons' recent blockbuster The Terror is yet another exploration of what happened to Franklin and the crews of his two ships.) I also learned about Lady Jane Franklin who was relentless in urging the world to find her husband, even years after he was gone. She was an unstoppable force in a time when British ladies were not known to be so forthright (we're talking the mid 19th century) and somebody really needs to write a series of novels about her as an international British spy or something. Seriously - the woman was unbelievable.

Beyond the Franklins there was Charles Francis Hall, the American explorer who was likely poisoned by his own men, The Greely expedition which exposed the horrors of what men will do when starving in the Arctic, the folly of Salomon Andree who's balloon vanished into the polar night in 1897 leaving behind another mystery - until the crew's skeletons were found in 1930 (with undeveloped film still intact). Robert Peary, Frederick Cook and Roald Amundsen are front and center in the book of course - as they rightfully claim (both good and bad) so much polar history for their own. Berton gives each his respective due, following their careers from the moments they first looked north and through to their ultimate achievements (and failures).

Berton knew better than most why so many men died in the north in search of something intangible (the pole) or marginally useful (the Northwest Passage). In his final chapter he writes the following:

"There is nothing worth living for but to have one's name inscribed on the Arctic chart," Tennyson wrote during the search for Franklin. For those who sought to live forever, the poet was right. In his day it was the certain way to ensure immortality. the chart itself makes that obvious; the place names provide a roster of those who might otherwise have been forgotten.

And also:

But the Arctic chart memorializes more than men of rank, power, blood or property. The real immortals, whose names are sprinkled throughout the Arctic on bays and bights, capes and channels, are those who dared and sometimes died so that the map might take form.

He concludes though that the maps are missing one vital component: the names of the original people, the ones who "...cheerfully extended their hospitality to Parry and Lyon at Repulse Bay and Igloolik, who taught Rae, Hall and Peary how to exist under polar conditions, [who] gave no thought to such white concepts as fame, ambition or immortality...It is not their loss that the map ignores them; it is our own."

Upon his death in 2004 Philip Marchand wrote:

“It was not so much the subject matter of these volumes that made them significant, as Berton’s triumph in claiming the attention of readers across the country. More than the political struggles of Canadian nationalists, this triumph made the idea of a Canadian culture a convincing reality. The books made Canadians believe they shared a historical narrative with depth and drama”

Berton captured the "idea of a Canadian culture", something I found sadly lacking in every history course I ever took and in every subject that included the slightest bit of Western Civilization. Canada is given far too little attention in American schools and far too little respect. Berton's books are so readable, so fascinating and exciting and truly well written, that we could do a lot worse then highlight his great contribution and use some of his more than 40 books to actually learn about Canada. He makes history come alive and because of The Arctic Grail, I decided to stay in a graduate course of study that I was previously uncertain about and because of that, I am now completing my second manuscript about Alaska aviation. Not a bad return for the investment of one book. Pierre Berton is, without a doubt, one of my literary heroes.

Other entries saluting Canada Day:

Betsy talks to graphic novelist Kean Soo at Fuse Number 8. He explains:"I've found that I tend to gravitate towards stories about loyalty and friendship, and on the flip side, loneliness and isolation, and how people cope with it. Having moved around a lot earlier in life, I've found it quite difficult to build any lasting friendships over the years, and it's a condition that has fascinated me for quite some time now. Those themes have even cropped up in the newer projects that I've been tinkering with on the side, and it just doesn't seem to be something that I can escape from just yet."

The Seven Imps look at the work of illustrator Jessica Meserve and author Martha Brooks.

On Meserve, Jules writes: "Best of all, the book closes with a glowinggorgeousLOVELY chapter in which Daisy, just beginning to think about coming-of-age, comes to accept what Meadowsweet calls the magic inside her (otherwise known as her very active imagination) after a grumpy farmer, whose inner child checked out a long time ago, tries to squelch her delight and radiant Daisy-ness (”Reckon you should be in school learning something useful, young ‘un . . . Not wastin’ your time talkin’ to dumb animals”). “It’s part of who you are, Daisy Dawson,” Meadowsweet tells her, “and that is a very rare thing.”

Meserve’s black-and-white ink-and-pencil sketches here are sweetly-rendered and capture the joy and wonder of Daisy’s world, never overpowering the text but, instead, perfectly complementing it. I hope the Daisy Dawson saga continues and that Meserve continues to bring them to life. (In fact, if you are familiar with Small Sister, Meserve’s debut picture book, you’ll see a great likeness between Daisy and Small). "

And Eisha weighs in on Brooks:

"This is a languid, melancholy reverie; switching narrators between Odella, Jimmy and Gloria as it examines all the ways the characters are interconnected, and how the secrets that some carry become unbearably burdensome as those characters try to keep them from the next generation. This is also a very adult-oriented novel for the YA label, which might be off-putting to some. But the issues that the adults are dealing with all have roots in their youth, which is often revealed through a sort of timeline of memories for each character.

All this to say: this is not the novel you hand to a reluctant twelve-year-old reader hoping to hook that short attention span. This is definitely an older-teen novel (Did I mention the sex? Actually, that part might get a reluctant reader’s attention…) for an experienced and patient reader. But that reader will be rewarded with fully-fledged characters, emotional depth, an unusually broad scope for a teen novel, and an incredibly romantic love story that will make you wish you had a Jimmy Tomasson of your very own. "

Jocelyn at Teen Book Review considers the work of Carol Matas: "Doing this post makes me want to re-read a lot of her books! Seriously, I loved them, the WWII books in particular. There’s the adventure, the history, the exoticism of a time and place I was unfamiliar with, just everything. And, of course, the tragedy of the Holocaust. I read these when I was a little obsessed with tragedy. I think I found her books first before September 11, 2001, but read most of them right after that time, because after that, my reaction was to read about all sorts of tragedy and watch the news all the time. I’m not really sure why, and it probably wasn’t the most mentally healthy thing to do, but, hey, at least I learned some history and compassion."

Sheila interviews Canadian citizen (but American born) Dennis Foons at Wands and Worlds. He says: "I studied the phenomonology of religious experience. The Longlight Legacy is one of my first developed attempts at exploring some of my mystical obsessions. But those early, intense studies most certainly filter through the rest of my work."

Okay - that answer alone makes me want to read his books!

[Post pics of the Montreal Canadians logo, and Pierre Berton. Full disclosure: I am one-half French Canadian and my father was the first member of his family born in the US. I grew up worshiping at an altar of Guy Lafleur and Maurice Richard; may they live forever.]

Just wanted to give a heads-up to everyone that the group who organized the One Shot World Tour stop in Australia last August has decided to salute Canadian authors on March 26th. If anyone wants to participate you are more than welcome - this is 100% NOT a YA only event, so please feel free to post about your favorite Canadian author of fiction/nonfiction/picture books/comic books/whatever. I"ll run the master schedule here so just send me an email the night before with the url for your post - or drop it in a comment that day - and I'll be sure to include you in the list of links.

Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Sheesh. I spy on a SCBWI discussion list one day and think I get a scoop. A new cool children's editorial blog? I'm in! Then the next thing you know everyone and their brother already knows about it. *sigh*

Why promote Editorial Anonymous? Because whoever this person is (I will find you!) they update regularly. Really regularly. I'm a sucker for a good regular writer too. The posts are top notch and in one of them the editor laments the same old, same old. Trends that we've seen over and over in fantasy kidlit. Silly me, I was unaware that sinister YA fairies were a trend. Though now that I think about it . . .

Coincidentally enough, there was a Guardian article (found via Bookninja) that laments the same thing (sans fairies). Two great tastes, and so on, and such.