Outstanding International Books 2013 on Google Maps

Here is the cover of ISLAND by Marije and Ronald Tolman
from Germany, one book you'll find on the Outstanding International
Books Google Map

Here is a very fun display of IBBY's list of Outstanding International  Books  for 2013 on Google Maps where you can travel from country to country as you place the book in the world.  These are books published outside the U.S. by international publishers and available in the U.S.

Next Big Thing - "Madhu's Seeds"

I'm happy to tell you that my next big thing is a story I wrote for New Hampshire Home.  Children's book writer Joyce Ray invited me to tell about this project in her post about her next big thing, her new book, Feathers and Trumpets. I had no idea what I was going to write for New Hampshire Home. I was honored to be invited to write the closing back page essay, but hoped no one would attempt to photograph the writerly kind of home I keep.  The theme, though, was sustainability. And that led me to gardens. And that led me to community gardens.  And that led me to the stories I'd heard and read about refugees and immigrants recreating recipes from their homelands after they got a plot of land in a community garden in their urban American neighborhood. And that led me to Sycamore Community Garden in Concord, New Hampshire. And then to one gardener: Madhu Bhandari from Bhutan, and her daughter-in-law. I also met her granddaughter who may be old enough this spring to come to the garden and help.  Madhu told me a story about mustard seeds.  The story, "Madhu's Seeds"  (p. 90)  appears in the March/April issue of New Hampshire Home.  It also planted a seed in my mind for the novel I am secretly working on this cold February night.
Please meet writer, Tammi Truax.
Tammi Truax will be posting at www.aintiawriter.blogspot.com about her debut novel Holy Buckets.

CBC "Best Of" Diversity List

The Children's Book Council has created a list that recognizes award-winning books with protagonists representing diverse cultures.  Here's a link to their Diversifying the "Best-of"List.  CBC Diversity advocates for "an inclusive and representative children's publishing industry." Patricia McCormic's NEVER FALL DOWN is the next book on my list to read.  I know it takes us back to the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in a novel based on the life of Arn Chorn-Pond.  My novel, THE GOOD BRAIDER, about a girl from South Sudan is included.  There's more than war here. Fiction and nonfiction are intertwined.  I like that.  The list takes readers to Cuba, the Congo, and the diverse communities we live in.

Braiding the Verse Novel: Margarita Engle

“Braiding the Verse Novel”  is a series of interviews I did with writers of novels –  and one biography  - in verse.  We had our conversations over the summer of 2012. I’ve written articles about verse novels for School Library Journal and NH Writer which draw on these conversations in different ways.  Here, I’m posting the generous responses from each of the writers who allowed me to ask them questions.

 Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of The Surrender Tree, recipient of the first Newbery Honor granted to a Latino writer.  Her other young adult novels in verse include The Poet Slave of Cuba, Tropical Secrets, The Firefly Letters, Hurricane Dancers, and The Wild Book.  The Lightning Dreamer is forthcoming from Harcourt in March, 2013.  Engle has received two Pura Belpré Awards, two Pura Belpré Honors, three Américas Awards, an International Reading Association Award, and the Jane Addams Award. She lives in central California, where she enjoys helping her husband with his volunteer work for wilderness search and rescue dog training programs.  Her next picture book is When You Wander, a Search and Rescue Dog Story, forthcoming from Holt in March, 2013.

Terry: Would you select a few lines from your novel and tell about a choice you made in the craft of those lines?  How did you shape them to achieve something key to the story?  (This is a wide open question.  Maybe you used or created a formal structure and would describe that. Maybe rhythm was key to you. I look forward to hearing wherever this question takes you.)

Margarita: Writing a historical novel in verse is a process of exploration.  In the opening poem of The Surrender Tree, I imagined what it would feel like to be a young, enslaved, self-taught wilderness nurse, whose gift of healing is misunderstood as something dangerous and malevolent. In the voice of Rosa la Bayamesa, I explored her point of view:

Some people call me a child-witch,
but I’m just a girl who likes to watch
the hands of the women
as they gather wild herbs and flowers
to heal the sick.

I am learning the names of the cures
and how much to use,
and which part of the plant,
petal or stem, root, leaf, pollen, nectar.

Sometimes I feel like a bee making honey,
a bee, feared by all, even though the wild bees
of these mountains in Cuba
are stingless, harmless, the source
of nothing but sweet, golden food.

I imagine only a Cuban would notice that the part of this poem that refers to the names of cures is an echo of one of José Martí’s Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses) about finding comfort in knowing the names of wildflowers.  However, I believe that everything else in this poem is universal. All young people experience times when they feel misunderstood. Nature, healing, and hope are also aspects of life shared by all cultures, and all ages.  Rosa la Bayamesa healed soldiers from both sides during thirty years of warfare, so I knew I had to carry her character into adulthood.  I also knew that later in the book, there would be a scene with children saving her hideout by placing beehives in the path of enemy soldiers.  It was an incident I had read about, one too important to omit, but I can’t say that I consciously used the bees in this first poem to foreshadow the later scene.  I spent so much time immersing myself in the research that real events floated around in my head, searching for places to land. Throughout the imaginary thoughts in this novel, documented historical events wove themselves into the poems. 

Volunteers for Peace Takes Me to Kakuma

Thank you, Volunteers for Peace!  For nearly a year, I've  been researching ways to visit Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya.  After finishing The Good Braider that opens in Juba, Sudan, I began  a small chapter book about a boy who lives in Kakuma when the story opens.  I've watched dozens of documentaries and been on YouTube tours of the camp to write with accuracy.  Now I am able to go in person.  Volunteers for Peace is in Burlington, Vermont and is an international partner with organizations throughout the world. I'll be working with volunteers from many countries in Kakuma School, Turkana.

Braiding the Verse Novel: Carol Fisher Saller

“Braiding the Verse Novel”  is a series of interviews I did with writers of novels –  and one biography  - in verse.  We had our conversations over the summer of 2012. I’ve written articles about verse novels for School Library Journal and NH Writer which draw on these conversations in different ways.  Here, I’m posting the full responses from each of the writers who allowed me to ask them questions.  Nearly everyone who has read my novel, The Good Braider, asked me why I wrote in the spare lines of verse.  My readers’ questions have caused me to explore my own craft and then to explore the question with these articulate, generous writers. Each week I will feature a new novelist.  Many writers I talked with represent different cultures or different periods in history. I begin with Carol Fisher Saller. 

Edide’s War by Carol Fisher Saller is a novel in poems.  Each of Carol’s poems could  stand alone as a character portrait or vignette.  ”A poignant look at boyhood before and during the long years of World War II,” writes Kirkus in a starred review.

1. Would you select a few lines from a verse and tell about a choice you made in the craft of those lines?  How did you shape them to achieve something essential to the story?

There were two difficult choices I had to make in writing Eddie’s War: first, whether to write in straight prose paragraphs or in the more stark, short lines that were calling to me, and second, whether to write in first or third person. More than one reader told me I’d be better off with third-person paragraphs. But compare these two versions of the same passage:

(Before)

One summer when Eddie was helping Thomas cut thistles in the bottoms, they heard snuffles and whines and followed the sounds. On his knees, Thomas dug into the side of the hill, into the den, and handed them out, one by one, little foxes, small and soft and wriggling. The boys used their shirttails to hold the kits, four in all.

(After)

When the Hindenburg caught fire

and fell out of the sky,

I saw the pictures

in the paper.

“I seen ’em, Tom,” I was saying,

out south cutting thistles,

“people jumping out

an’ it still up in the air”—

But Thomas looked up,

said hush.

There was whining

somewhere in the grass.

We followed the sounds.

On his knees Thomas dug with his hands

into the hill

into the den,

handed them out one by one,

little foxes.

To me, the first passage just plops along: This. Then. That. The second passage puts us right there with Eddie, looks through his eyes, gives him a voice, a personality, then makes us wait along with him—the short lines delay and build—to see what will come out of the hill. We wait for Thomas to turn and hand us . . . what? I finally thought, what the heck, who cares if this sells, and I wrote it the way I wanted to.

CBC Diversity

My agent sent me a link to CBC Diversity, a section of the Children's Book Council that advocates for diversity in children's book publishing, both of creators of books, and the characters in books. They sponsor CBC Diversity's Books, a reading list on GoodReads and offer resources and, interesting to all of us in the trade, a link to a "myriad of news clippings,"  events, controversies, opinion  about diversity in children's lit.  The blog with essays by children's book editors is fascinating for all of us writing in the field, no matter what our  race is.