Friday, May 8, 2015
5 to 1 by Holly Bodger
Bodger – 5 to 1
The glowing cover of this novel is a better indicator of the content than the title: a pair of intricately painted hands hold a pair of fish. Bodger builds a dystopian world set half a century into the future where a long-standing preference for boy babies has resulted in a 5 to 1 ratio which leaves very few brides for young men. The system has gone from people in the past (our times) disposing of unwanted girl babies to a virtual captivity to breed more girls now. The men must compete, and win; the alternative is hard labor or death. A young man’s disability or injury can result in death. A kill or be killed barrier surrounds Koyanagar protecting the prized girl children in a gilded prison.
The book is told in alternating points of view with Sudasa’s poems and Contestant Five writing in prose. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I would have understood what was going on at the beginning without a helpful description. Sudasa, which means “obedience,” writes in a restrained voice without giving us a great deal of information. Oh, but when we meet Contestant Five the reader is drawn into this complex story. The rulers of Koyanagar don’t play by the rules, including Sudasa’s own grandmother who works the system to get Sudasa’s smarmy arrogant cousin in the competition. By the time we are halfway through the book, the reader is compelled to follow both Sudasa and Contestant Five as we want them both to win, but win want? This is a competition where winning is really losing and the reader is pulled into this battle to the end. Nothing is quite as it seems and who can we trust? What is fair?
Sudasa does not want the life her grandmother has chosen for her. For his own reasons Contestant Five does not want to win Sudasa. Both young people are fighting against this government which was meant to right a dreadful wrong, but now has tipped too far the other way into a different corruption and prejudice. Laced with the soul of poetry, this novel paints a path for the future for Sudasa and Contestant Five. This review would be incomplete without recognition for the lovely cover design by Jennifer Heuer and the chapter openings reminding us of the speaker. The fish motif illuminates the design and the story.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Melancholy:Episode One by Charlotte McConaghy
“Never stop questioning.” This quote from one of the characters we don’t even meet is the perfect profile for this novel. Set 50 years in the future, the human race is fragmented among the drones who live in the city drugged to avoid sadness; the barbaric and violent furies who hunt other humans; and those of the resistance. Josephine manages to get Luke far away to the resistance but he is unconscious and she must conceal her true identity. The novel slips back and forth in time and from various points of view, but it never gets confusing or slacks in the driving force of the plot. Many things are not told, not revealed in this novel but that only enhances the tension as we move among the various points of view.
The title is a spoiler alert in that this is “episode one” and the novel ends on a cliffhanger but this one is so worth the ride. With minimal details McConaghy creates a ravaged world of the future and makes us care about these young people. The author, and the characters, play with the age-old question of freedoms. If you could erase pain and sadness, would you? Is passion the other side of melancholy? Would you give up passion and joy to avoid sorrow and despair? What if you didn’t have the choice?
“It seems like madness, this blanket belief that everyone has to be happy all the time . . . . If we have the right to pursue happiness then we also need to have a right to frustration – to understanding what we’re deprived of.” Melancholy: Episode One is a thoughtful provoking dystopian novel that forces you to think about what you would choose. When does Episode Two come out!
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Inherit the Stars by Tessa Elwood
Inherit the Stars begins in the middle of the action which creates a bit of confusion amid the chaos. Once I got engaged with the main character, Asa, I was hooked. I was a bit confused in the beginning about Asa, as I have only heard of males with that name but she is indeed an intrepid young woman, one of three sisters of the House of Fane who are integral to the story. Elwood does a decent job of world building without burdening the plot with the details of scientific elements. This is more fantasy than sci-fi and scientific elements are important but this is essentially a story about relationships: between sisters, between parents and children, and between a man and woman. Sustainable fuel and fuel shortages are at the root of the plot but it is character that drives this story.
The beginning of the novel is a bit slow as we get to know the players, but stay with this one. There is much potential here. Of the three planet systems involved, the readers learn the least about Galton which becomes significant at the end of the novel leading one to expect a series. Inherit the Stars does finish with a satisfying ending but all is not resolved.
My biggest reservations about the novel I hope will be improved before going to publication. The e-book I read was provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review. There were numerous formatting issues in the book; broken paragraphs, lack of clarity about the speaker since there are not new paragraphs for dialogue, and dangling first letters on the chapters that may be a design element that still needs tweaking. These were quite annoying at the beginning of the book and continued throughout but I am giving 4 stars since the story and Asa are worth reading in spite of these errors. The title I fear may cause some confusion among readers as there are so many “stars” books out there but I think fans of Anne McCaffrey and Tamora Pierce, who are both known for their strong female characters, would enjoy Inherit the Stars.
Secret Coders - a new series by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
This new series by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes is a great introductory mash-up of mystery and math. I could see this book being a hit in a gifted and talented math class or for any aspiring math geek. The book seems designed to appeal to both boys and girls. The main character is Hopper, a girl reluctantly entering a new school. Her new found friend is Eni, a whiz at mathematics, computer coding, and basketball. What a team!
Secret Coders ends on a cliffhanger and lets the reader know that the mystery continues in the soon to come Secret Coders: Paths & Portals. So it seems there will be more mystery and decoding in store for this series. Hopper and Eni solve some of the mystery only to uncover deeper secrets. The book even begins with a mystery in the chapter numbers which are signified by very odd birds with multiple eyes, some open and some closed; a binary intrigue. Robots, strange birds, along with crabby and secretive school personnel abound at Hopper’s new school Stately Academy. The book pauses several times to give the reader an opportunity to solve the puzzles while Hopper and Eni are working too. This is a very different style from Yang’s previous graphic novels, but once again there is an almost magical mysterious element, although for a younger reader.
This series looks like a fun read for any child who loves math puzzles and secret codes, or who is curious about how a computer really works. I could see it being a great way to liven up a math class beyond problem drills. The main characters, Hopper and Eni, are in seventh grade but I think math whizzes from fourth grade up through possibly middle school or junior high would enjoy the new Secret Coders series. It actually seems like it would appeal more to the younger end of that range. One element I enjoyed at the end was Gene Luen Yang’s short explanation of his introduction to computers and coding as a fifth grader. This personal note on the inspiration and idea for the book added authenticity and interest for an adult reader. The e-book I read was provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The History of Love is a stunning book; stunning in its complexity and in the detailed delineation of the simple, plain people who inhabit its pages. One of the ever-present characters of the book is the book within the book, The History of Love, purportedly written by one of the characters. Krauss slips back and forth between two points of view, that of an aging Jew, Leopold Gursky, in the twilight of his life and that of Alma Singer, a fourteen year old child-woman on the brink of becoming an adult.
The story opens with a self-written obituary because Leo Gursky’s own death is never far from his mind. He keeps an index card in his wallet that states: “MY NAME IS LEO GURSKY I HAVE NO FAMILY PLEASE CALL PINELAWN CEMETARY I HAVE A PLOT THERE IN THE JEWISH PART THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.”
Leo always wanted to be a writer but this is not your typical book where the writer is writing about writers writing. It is about watching over the ones you love even if, especially if, they will never know. It is about searching. It is indeed a history of a love.
In the book Leo has written, Krauss takes us to that dreaded place of the blank page in the typewriter as Leo carefully picks out and rejects various titles. Alma is writing a notebook of survival. Her guide is a book about edible plants. Her mission is to find a companion for her mother.
Leo reveals that he spent much of his life angry and picking fights with any and everyone. When we meet him he has long since left his anger behind him. Early in the book, Leo applies for a job as a nude model for a life drawing class. Our eyes smart with embarrassment and dismay at a tired old man’s initial disrobing for a circle of disinterested young artists. Does nude really mean no underwear?
Although the point of view flips back and forth between Leo and Alma, Leo, then Alma, never is the reader in any doubt of whose voice is speaking. Both Leo and Alma are so sharply drawn, there is no mistaking one for the other. Flitting among their chapters are scattered thoughts of Bird, Alma’s brother who believes that he is one of the chosen ones, perhaps even the Messiah. Will his delusion work to bring the threads that bind Alma and Leo together, or will he be the cause of them passing one another never knowing the other was right there? Occasionally the narrator shifts to a minor, but key, player in the drama that unfolds. Alma’s mother is always on her mind but we only hear her sadness through Alma.
Writer Dorothy Gilman Butters has spoken of the cosmic playfulness of fate and how the threads and webs of the universe somehow pull and push themselves so that lives cross and are forever transformed. In the beginning of The History of Love, there is no connection between Leo Gursky and Alma Singer except, we learn, the connection of the book The History of Love. The book was originally published in Spanish. We only see it as the English translation passes from Alma’s mother through Alma to the man who commissioned the translation. The History of Love was a gift from Alma Singer’s father to her mother Alma Singer was named for all the women in The History of Love.
Chapters and fragments of an interior book, The History of Love, are scattered throughout. “The Age of String,” and “The Age of Glass” chapters provide a glimpse in the writer’s view of the poignancy and power of young love when young lovers see their love lasting forever and conquering every obstacle that comes. It also lets us see the universality of human relationships. How do we show each other or tell each other how we really feel?
The Age of Silence, the opening chapter from the interior History of Love says that, “The first language humans had was gestures.” It goes on to explain what happens at a large gathering of people when “your hands hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms--if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them.” The Age of Silence believes in the power of gestures. “It’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less.”
Ultimately the book is about love; love in the here and now, love found and lost, but most importantly, love. If there had been more time, or less time. If fate had not twisted and torn lives with death and separation. The events of war have touched these people’s lives but they have survived. They have survived and continued. This book is not about war but about the very power of love and survival and the connectedness we have with each other.
The pace increases in the final portion of the book where the points of view of Leo and Alma are juxtaposed on opposite pages. We travel through both their minds wanting them to succeed and willing them to find each other. What really matters in life? What really lasts beyond our death? As Krauss says we begin to die the day we are born. What makes us human, what makes us keep going is the journey, our connection with one another, and the lives we touch on the way.
The serendipity of life and love shines in The History of Love.
16 March 2008
The story opens with a self-written obituary because Leo Gursky’s own death is never far from his mind. He keeps an index card in his wallet that states: “MY NAME IS LEO GURSKY I HAVE NO FAMILY PLEASE CALL PINELAWN CEMETARY I HAVE A PLOT THERE IN THE JEWISH PART THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.”
Leo always wanted to be a writer but this is not your typical book where the writer is writing about writers writing. It is about watching over the ones you love even if, especially if, they will never know. It is about searching. It is indeed a history of a love.
In the book Leo has written, Krauss takes us to that dreaded place of the blank page in the typewriter as Leo carefully picks out and rejects various titles. Alma is writing a notebook of survival. Her guide is a book about edible plants. Her mission is to find a companion for her mother.
Leo reveals that he spent much of his life angry and picking fights with any and everyone. When we meet him he has long since left his anger behind him. Early in the book, Leo applies for a job as a nude model for a life drawing class. Our eyes smart with embarrassment and dismay at a tired old man’s initial disrobing for a circle of disinterested young artists. Does nude really mean no underwear?
Although the point of view flips back and forth between Leo and Alma, Leo, then Alma, never is the reader in any doubt of whose voice is speaking. Both Leo and Alma are so sharply drawn, there is no mistaking one for the other. Flitting among their chapters are scattered thoughts of Bird, Alma’s brother who believes that he is one of the chosen ones, perhaps even the Messiah. Will his delusion work to bring the threads that bind Alma and Leo together, or will he be the cause of them passing one another never knowing the other was right there? Occasionally the narrator shifts to a minor, but key, player in the drama that unfolds. Alma’s mother is always on her mind but we only hear her sadness through Alma.
Writer Dorothy Gilman Butters has spoken of the cosmic playfulness of fate and how the threads and webs of the universe somehow pull and push themselves so that lives cross and are forever transformed. In the beginning of The History of Love, there is no connection between Leo Gursky and Alma Singer except, we learn, the connection of the book The History of Love. The book was originally published in Spanish. We only see it as the English translation passes from Alma’s mother through Alma to the man who commissioned the translation. The History of Love was a gift from Alma Singer’s father to her mother Alma Singer was named for all the women in The History of Love.
Chapters and fragments of an interior book, The History of Love, are scattered throughout. “The Age of String,” and “The Age of Glass” chapters provide a glimpse in the writer’s view of the poignancy and power of young love when young lovers see their love lasting forever and conquering every obstacle that comes. It also lets us see the universality of human relationships. How do we show each other or tell each other how we really feel?
The Age of Silence, the opening chapter from the interior History of Love says that, “The first language humans had was gestures.” It goes on to explain what happens at a large gathering of people when “your hands hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms--if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them.” The Age of Silence believes in the power of gestures. “It’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less.”
Ultimately the book is about love; love in the here and now, love found and lost, but most importantly, love. If there had been more time, or less time. If fate had not twisted and torn lives with death and separation. The events of war have touched these people’s lives but they have survived. They have survived and continued. This book is not about war but about the very power of love and survival and the connectedness we have with each other.
The pace increases in the final portion of the book where the points of view of Leo and Alma are juxtaposed on opposite pages. We travel through both their minds wanting them to succeed and willing them to find each other. What really matters in life? What really lasts beyond our death? As Krauss says we begin to die the day we are born. What makes us human, what makes us keep going is the journey, our connection with one another, and the lives we touch on the way.
The serendipity of life and love shines in The History of Love.
16 March 2008
Gates of Excellence by Katherine Paterson
One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book was Katherine Paterson’s ability to find exactly the right quote from a panoply of writers to reinforce her own thoughts and opinions. The book is comprised of various lectures and acceptance speeches mixed with reviews of other writers’ books and personal essays.
At the beginning of the book, when Paterson is asked when she wanted to be a writer, she explains that it was her love of reading that made her want to “get inside the process (Paterson, p. 2)” not that she ever wanted to be a writer at all. In this opening essay, she shares two items in her office that apparently protect her from her “terror of mediocrity.” One is a Greek quote borrowed from Edith Hamilton which also provides the title for this collection:
Before the gates of excellence
The high gods have placed sweat (Ibid, p. 3).
The other is a mounted Charles Schultz cartoon of Snoopy typing, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Snoopy then remarks, “Good writing is hard work.” I’m not sure the Greeks actually said “sweat” but the point is both remind her that she is a worker, not a part of some gifted group bestowing their words on “less fortunate mortals (Ibid p.3).”
In her Velma Varner lecture from 1979, she compares words to water. They are just as precious and necessary to life, but when both are plentiful, we have a tendency to waste them or not appreciate them. She gives the example of visiting Japan and being so frustrated at not being able to make herself understood because she did not have the words in that language. She wanted the people to know her as she was in her own language. She found a strong identification with Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker when she was “starving for words (Ibid p.7).”
Paterson personifies the dilemma of those of us caught between two cultures. She felt misunderstood in Japan but when she returned to the United States, she found that Americans did not understand or appreciate who she had become. Being entwined in two cultures changes us and makes us belong to both and neither at the same time. I thought about the many times I have been in a room full of people letting the music of Chinese wash over me, understanding words here and there, belonging and being other, or different, in the same moment.
In this same lecture on “Words,” she tries to define why humans have a need, a compulsion, for language and she quotes from Jacob Bronowski’s The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination:
The world is totally connected. Whatever explanation we invent at any moment is a partial connection and its richness derives from the richness of such connections that we are able to make. . . . The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections (Ibid p.11).
This could be a watchword for all of us who consider ourselves to be writers. It seems especially a propos for travel writers. Isn’t travel writing all about the connectedness among us all?
In the same essay, Paterson shares a story about how her book The Great Gilly Hopkins provided a connection for a young student named Eddie. A teacher had read the book aloud to her special reading class and when Paterson visited the school, Eddie bean questioning her about the book and the characters. Her point is that someone had to make that connection for Eddie. According to Paterson “Someone had to first give him the words.” Eddie’s “teacher believed that Eddie had a right to the words-- had a need for the words, even if no one else, not even Eddie did (Ibid p.16).”
Paterson also believes in the power of good stories and great writing. She had never read Homer’s Odyssey until she was 46 years old even though for many years she had been told she should read it. Now she was wondering did any of those people who recommended it ever read it? She says the reason Odyssey lasted for three thousand years is “because it is a simply marvelous story (Ibid, p.17).” That makes me think of the hatred most students have for Shakespeare, which can be attributed to poor or uninspired, uninformed teaching of Shakespeare, who was a marvelous story teller, at high school level.
Her article, “Dog Day Wonder” has the flavor of nature writing. She describes in delicate detail every step of a cicada shedding its skin. She quotes Rachel Carson from her book, A Sense of Wonder, where Carson says she would ask the good fairy that every child be given “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. . . (Ibid, p.20).” I would hope as writers we all cultivate and keep that “sense of wonder” in all of our work.
Paterson speaks about sentimentality and creativity. She attempts to identify the difference between cheap sentimentality that deliberately plays on our emotions and a deeper response that can be life changing. As a writer she admits that she doesn’t get “a perfect pearl every time (Ibid p.26)” but she strives for that sense of true characters in her writing.
She sent me to my beloved Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary published in 1953 because she says the word “creativity” doesn’t even appear in her 1971 Oxford (Ibid, p. 32). I think the word has just gone through some evolution because certainly I found “creativeness” and what really is the difference? The point is she is talking about concepts that are difficult to pin down or define, like creativity and freedom. What do they really mean? She freely admits to borrowing form her family and friends for her plots and characters even when it is unintentional.
She believes that the age range and length recommendations for her novels and others are rather arbitrary. A reading level test was applied to The Master Puppeteer and it was found to be two grade levels higher that Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying which was determined to be sixth grade level. She uses this to illustrate that she find very little limitations in her writing. Her subject matter has included death, prostitution, illegitimate birth, suicide and more, all for young readers (Ibid pp.33-34).
In the essay “A Song of Innocence and Experience,” she explains that, “Art has the power to change life (Ibid p.44).” She further says that, “this is what my intent has been and must continue to be.” She finds this to be a terrifying concept. When she has been asked who she writes for, she has often explained that she writes for herself. What she means is that she has inside of her the “weird little kid (Ibid p.100)” she once was. Apparently she has the gift of remembering that child inside her and gives us a little bit of that child in every book she writes. She is qualified to write for children because she still carries the child that she was inside.
She is kind and generous when she reviews other writers’ books such as All Together Now by Sue Ellen Bridger, Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary, The Disappearance by Rosa Guy, Children of the Fox by Jill Paton Walsh and Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell. Maybe I am in the wrong time frame but I was not familiar with any of these books and her critique made me want to explore them. But of much greater interest to me was her evaluation of her own books that I have become familiar with including Bridge to Terebithia, Jacob Have I Loved, The Master Puppeteer and Lyddie. I felt that I knew her characters even better and that I knew Katherine Paterson much better.
Much in this collection of personal essays carried me back to my own childhood when I was also a “weird little kid” who lived in the library and devoured every book that came my way. Even her inspiration for writing The Master Puppeteer crossed over my past. She mentions Bunraku puppetry coming to the Kennedy Center (Ibid, p. 83). I thought that can only be a magical production they did years ago of The Tale of Peter Rabbit where Peter was played by a man on pointe and Farmer MacGregor was a giant towering to the top of the proscenium arch.
We cannot always identify that moment in time that inspires a new story in us but how wonderful it is when that spark comes and delivers a new idea, or as Paterson explains it, a seed that germinates and we hope will grow to be a full plant.
Paterson was asked by a child, “Is your story true?” and she replied, “I hope so. I meant for it to be true (Ibid, pp. 56-57).” I hope that is so for all of us who aspire to write for children. Every book that begins with “once upon a time . . .” or a hand clapping griot who gives us “a story, a story” is opening a door for children and it should be meant for true.
At the beginning of the book, when Paterson is asked when she wanted to be a writer, she explains that it was her love of reading that made her want to “get inside the process (Paterson, p. 2)” not that she ever wanted to be a writer at all. In this opening essay, she shares two items in her office that apparently protect her from her “terror of mediocrity.” One is a Greek quote borrowed from Edith Hamilton which also provides the title for this collection:
Before the gates of excellence
The high gods have placed sweat (Ibid, p. 3).
The other is a mounted Charles Schultz cartoon of Snoopy typing, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Snoopy then remarks, “Good writing is hard work.” I’m not sure the Greeks actually said “sweat” but the point is both remind her that she is a worker, not a part of some gifted group bestowing their words on “less fortunate mortals (Ibid p.3).”
In her Velma Varner lecture from 1979, she compares words to water. They are just as precious and necessary to life, but when both are plentiful, we have a tendency to waste them or not appreciate them. She gives the example of visiting Japan and being so frustrated at not being able to make herself understood because she did not have the words in that language. She wanted the people to know her as she was in her own language. She found a strong identification with Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker when she was “starving for words (Ibid p.7).”
Paterson personifies the dilemma of those of us caught between two cultures. She felt misunderstood in Japan but when she returned to the United States, she found that Americans did not understand or appreciate who she had become. Being entwined in two cultures changes us and makes us belong to both and neither at the same time. I thought about the many times I have been in a room full of people letting the music of Chinese wash over me, understanding words here and there, belonging and being other, or different, in the same moment.
In this same lecture on “Words,” she tries to define why humans have a need, a compulsion, for language and she quotes from Jacob Bronowski’s The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination:
The world is totally connected. Whatever explanation we invent at any moment is a partial connection and its richness derives from the richness of such connections that we are able to make. . . . The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections (Ibid p.11).
This could be a watchword for all of us who consider ourselves to be writers. It seems especially a propos for travel writers. Isn’t travel writing all about the connectedness among us all?
In the same essay, Paterson shares a story about how her book The Great Gilly Hopkins provided a connection for a young student named Eddie. A teacher had read the book aloud to her special reading class and when Paterson visited the school, Eddie bean questioning her about the book and the characters. Her point is that someone had to make that connection for Eddie. According to Paterson “Someone had to first give him the words.” Eddie’s “teacher believed that Eddie had a right to the words-- had a need for the words, even if no one else, not even Eddie did (Ibid p.16).”
Paterson also believes in the power of good stories and great writing. She had never read Homer’s Odyssey until she was 46 years old even though for many years she had been told she should read it. Now she was wondering did any of those people who recommended it ever read it? She says the reason Odyssey lasted for three thousand years is “because it is a simply marvelous story (Ibid, p.17).” That makes me think of the hatred most students have for Shakespeare, which can be attributed to poor or uninspired, uninformed teaching of Shakespeare, who was a marvelous story teller, at high school level.
Her article, “Dog Day Wonder” has the flavor of nature writing. She describes in delicate detail every step of a cicada shedding its skin. She quotes Rachel Carson from her book, A Sense of Wonder, where Carson says she would ask the good fairy that every child be given “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. . . (Ibid, p.20).” I would hope as writers we all cultivate and keep that “sense of wonder” in all of our work.
Paterson speaks about sentimentality and creativity. She attempts to identify the difference between cheap sentimentality that deliberately plays on our emotions and a deeper response that can be life changing. As a writer she admits that she doesn’t get “a perfect pearl every time (Ibid p.26)” but she strives for that sense of true characters in her writing.
She sent me to my beloved Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary published in 1953 because she says the word “creativity” doesn’t even appear in her 1971 Oxford (Ibid, p. 32). I think the word has just gone through some evolution because certainly I found “creativeness” and what really is the difference? The point is she is talking about concepts that are difficult to pin down or define, like creativity and freedom. What do they really mean? She freely admits to borrowing form her family and friends for her plots and characters even when it is unintentional.
She believes that the age range and length recommendations for her novels and others are rather arbitrary. A reading level test was applied to The Master Puppeteer and it was found to be two grade levels higher that Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying which was determined to be sixth grade level. She uses this to illustrate that she find very little limitations in her writing. Her subject matter has included death, prostitution, illegitimate birth, suicide and more, all for young readers (Ibid pp.33-34).
In the essay “A Song of Innocence and Experience,” she explains that, “Art has the power to change life (Ibid p.44).” She further says that, “this is what my intent has been and must continue to be.” She finds this to be a terrifying concept. When she has been asked who she writes for, she has often explained that she writes for herself. What she means is that she has inside of her the “weird little kid (Ibid p.100)” she once was. Apparently she has the gift of remembering that child inside her and gives us a little bit of that child in every book she writes. She is qualified to write for children because she still carries the child that she was inside.
She is kind and generous when she reviews other writers’ books such as All Together Now by Sue Ellen Bridger, Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary, The Disappearance by Rosa Guy, Children of the Fox by Jill Paton Walsh and Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell. Maybe I am in the wrong time frame but I was not familiar with any of these books and her critique made me want to explore them. But of much greater interest to me was her evaluation of her own books that I have become familiar with including Bridge to Terebithia, Jacob Have I Loved, The Master Puppeteer and Lyddie. I felt that I knew her characters even better and that I knew Katherine Paterson much better.
Much in this collection of personal essays carried me back to my own childhood when I was also a “weird little kid” who lived in the library and devoured every book that came my way. Even her inspiration for writing The Master Puppeteer crossed over my past. She mentions Bunraku puppetry coming to the Kennedy Center (Ibid, p. 83). I thought that can only be a magical production they did years ago of The Tale of Peter Rabbit where Peter was played by a man on pointe and Farmer MacGregor was a giant towering to the top of the proscenium arch.
We cannot always identify that moment in time that inspires a new story in us but how wonderful it is when that spark comes and delivers a new idea, or as Paterson explains it, a seed that germinates and we hope will grow to be a full plant.
Paterson was asked by a child, “Is your story true?” and she replied, “I hope so. I meant for it to be true (Ibid, pp. 56-57).” I hope that is so for all of us who aspire to write for children. Every book that begins with “once upon a time . . .” or a hand clapping griot who gives us “a story, a story” is opening a door for children and it should be meant for true.
China Homecoming by Jean Fritz
China Homecoming by Jean Fritz amazed me with its impact. I had not realized that Fritz was the author of several books about American history on my son’s shelf. I had been familiar with her books for years and am embarrassed to admit that I paid no attention to the author’s name. I was extremely moved by this autobiographical book and I feel an affinity and connection with Jean Fritz now.
The most remarkable thing for me was her feeling of “otherness.” She worked so hard from adolescence on to feel like a “real American” (Fritz, p. 7), but always behind her was the connection with China. It is unbelievable that she waited fifty-five years to travel back to the country that had been her home. I cannot imagine going to China as a senior citizen after a lifetime in the United States. It took bravery and courage for her to fight for this trip to China, especially at a time when China was not really open to foreign visitors.
I have a similar feeling of otherness. Our household is more Chinese than American, ethnically and by choice. We eat with chopsticks. Our first choice for travel is China, not so much for vacations, but to visit family. But my son and I look white, so we don’t fit the norm that other people expect of us.
Fritz finished her first autobiographical book, Homesick: My Own Story, after the death of her father who had kept the memory of China alive for her. Her family had practiced what they remembered by speaking the language regularly. His death was a painful loss but it also meant the loss of a last connection with China and her memories. She found she could not write “The End” as usual (Ibid, p. 19). I loved the transition from her time in China being a “closed book” (Ibid, p. 13) to, “I knew now I had to go back to China . . . . to find out if at last I could call it my hometown (Ibid, p. 19).” So her trip back to China became a search for her beginnings.
China for me is a homecoming, too, but from the other end. I grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky. Now past age fifty, I have places in China that are more home to me than the places of my childhood. Reading about her homecoming brought my own homecoming into sharp focus. I wanted to call her on the phone and say, yes, I know!
Mao Zedong is a difficult and complex figure to understand. I found it fascinating that as an American in the 1980’s Fritz recognized the good in him and his good intentions toward China. John Acton first said, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Mao is a perfect example of this, but Fritz is generous in acknowledging his vision for a new China and what he tried to accomplish (Ibid, p.33). She has extensive knowledge of this time and a sensitive perception of both Mao and the evils of his Cultural Revolution. This must be unique in American writers, especially from this era.
Fritz does an excellent job of sprinkling valuable information about Chinese history without sounding pedantic. Most Americans are not familiar with Chinese emperors and eras. She obviously wants her readers to understand and appreciate China. I thought it interesting that although she had sympathy and understanding for Mao, she had none for Mao’s wife and the so-called Gang of Four after Mao‘s death (Ibid, p. 35). Perhaps this was the influence of her friends who lived through this time. She sounded like a true Han who had experienced the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.
I loved the section where one of her Chinese friends informs her that she is a Hubei-lao (Ibid, p 37) and explains the old Chinese joke about people born in Hubei Province. It is a wonderful set-up for when she later arrives in her hometown and identifies herself as a Hubei-lao to the locals (Ibid, p. 53).
Her excitement when she recognizes the Chinese characters in Hankou, her hometown, mirrored my own. My knowledge of written Chinese is very limited and I too am thrilled when I can read something without a translator. The “kou” that means mouth is one that I know, so it seemed just as wonderful to me (Ibid, p. 44).
My favorite section was when she accidentally discovers her old house after a particularly discouraging day. Meeting the people who lived there was a gift. I listened to them meeting like old friends. As she looks at her very own staircase and hiding place from her childhood, she brought tears to my eyes (Ibid, p. 98). To be given this opportunity to reclaim a lost part of her childhood and to be able to share her life with the lives of the current residents was beautiful. There was a profound feeling of completion, an unbreakable link with her own past, her parents and their past and future of her new acquaintances.
As Fritz and her husband explored the streets of China, I felt like I was waking with them. Even when she visited schools, I found myself calculating and realized that we have friends from Wuhan who might have been students in those same schools while Fritz was there (Ibid, p. 65). This only enhanced my feeling of identification with her experiences. She remembered lace antimacassars on the train seats and wanted to tell a neighbor who had wondered how she could possibly recognize anything after so long a time, “Fifty-five years and the antimacassars are still here (Ibid, p.41)!” I thought of our train trip this summer and wanted to call Jean Fritz to tell her that twenty-three more years have passed and the antimacassars are still there!
Near the close, she visits a pavilion built in the fifth century to celebrate a friendship. Next they go to a museum in Wuchang where she sees a cannon she remembers hearing in her childhood during the siege of 1926. Touching the cannon, the memory brings her to tears and she realizes, “China was not only, as it had always been, part of me. I was part of China (author’s italics) (Ibid, p. 128).“
At a banquet for her, she was given her own personal “chop,” a stone seal with her name engraved, and she was made an honorary citizen of Wuhan (Ibid, p. 132). Chinese tradition is that women retain their surname so the chop is a Chinese rendition of her maiden name, Guttery. An ink stamp from her seal ends China Homecoming “just as any Chinese would do at the end of a story (Ibid, p. 133).” China Homecoming appears on the spine but her “chop” is the only title on the cover of the book. It also decorates the end papers front and back of the book.
Before her mother passed away, Jean asked her if she had gone to China “out of a sense of duty” to her husband or did she “go for the adventure.” Her mother’s answer was, “Oh, I went for the adventure (Ibid, p. 40).” I am thankful that Jean Guttery Fritz also had the sense of adventure to return to China and the generosity to share her adventure with us. Her own daughter, Andrea, asked Jean long before the trip to China, “Do you miss the Yangtze, Mom?” She answers, “Yes, I miss the Yangtze (Ibid, p.13).”
I do, too, Jean. I miss the Yangtze, too.
24 October 2008
The most remarkable thing for me was her feeling of “otherness.” She worked so hard from adolescence on to feel like a “real American” (Fritz, p. 7), but always behind her was the connection with China. It is unbelievable that she waited fifty-five years to travel back to the country that had been her home. I cannot imagine going to China as a senior citizen after a lifetime in the United States. It took bravery and courage for her to fight for this trip to China, especially at a time when China was not really open to foreign visitors.
I have a similar feeling of otherness. Our household is more Chinese than American, ethnically and by choice. We eat with chopsticks. Our first choice for travel is China, not so much for vacations, but to visit family. But my son and I look white, so we don’t fit the norm that other people expect of us.
Fritz finished her first autobiographical book, Homesick: My Own Story, after the death of her father who had kept the memory of China alive for her. Her family had practiced what they remembered by speaking the language regularly. His death was a painful loss but it also meant the loss of a last connection with China and her memories. She found she could not write “The End” as usual (Ibid, p. 19). I loved the transition from her time in China being a “closed book” (Ibid, p. 13) to, “I knew now I had to go back to China . . . . to find out if at last I could call it my hometown (Ibid, p. 19).” So her trip back to China became a search for her beginnings.
China for me is a homecoming, too, but from the other end. I grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky. Now past age fifty, I have places in China that are more home to me than the places of my childhood. Reading about her homecoming brought my own homecoming into sharp focus. I wanted to call her on the phone and say, yes, I know!
Mao Zedong is a difficult and complex figure to understand. I found it fascinating that as an American in the 1980’s Fritz recognized the good in him and his good intentions toward China. John Acton first said, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Mao is a perfect example of this, but Fritz is generous in acknowledging his vision for a new China and what he tried to accomplish (Ibid, p.33). She has extensive knowledge of this time and a sensitive perception of both Mao and the evils of his Cultural Revolution. This must be unique in American writers, especially from this era.
Fritz does an excellent job of sprinkling valuable information about Chinese history without sounding pedantic. Most Americans are not familiar with Chinese emperors and eras. She obviously wants her readers to understand and appreciate China. I thought it interesting that although she had sympathy and understanding for Mao, she had none for Mao’s wife and the so-called Gang of Four after Mao‘s death (Ibid, p. 35). Perhaps this was the influence of her friends who lived through this time. She sounded like a true Han who had experienced the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.
I loved the section where one of her Chinese friends informs her that she is a Hubei-lao (Ibid, p 37) and explains the old Chinese joke about people born in Hubei Province. It is a wonderful set-up for when she later arrives in her hometown and identifies herself as a Hubei-lao to the locals (Ibid, p. 53).
Her excitement when she recognizes the Chinese characters in Hankou, her hometown, mirrored my own. My knowledge of written Chinese is very limited and I too am thrilled when I can read something without a translator. The “kou” that means mouth is one that I know, so it seemed just as wonderful to me (Ibid, p. 44).
My favorite section was when she accidentally discovers her old house after a particularly discouraging day. Meeting the people who lived there was a gift. I listened to them meeting like old friends. As she looks at her very own staircase and hiding place from her childhood, she brought tears to my eyes (Ibid, p. 98). To be given this opportunity to reclaim a lost part of her childhood and to be able to share her life with the lives of the current residents was beautiful. There was a profound feeling of completion, an unbreakable link with her own past, her parents and their past and future of her new acquaintances.
As Fritz and her husband explored the streets of China, I felt like I was waking with them. Even when she visited schools, I found myself calculating and realized that we have friends from Wuhan who might have been students in those same schools while Fritz was there (Ibid, p. 65). This only enhanced my feeling of identification with her experiences. She remembered lace antimacassars on the train seats and wanted to tell a neighbor who had wondered how she could possibly recognize anything after so long a time, “Fifty-five years and the antimacassars are still here (Ibid, p.41)!” I thought of our train trip this summer and wanted to call Jean Fritz to tell her that twenty-three more years have passed and the antimacassars are still there!
Near the close, she visits a pavilion built in the fifth century to celebrate a friendship. Next they go to a museum in Wuchang where she sees a cannon she remembers hearing in her childhood during the siege of 1926. Touching the cannon, the memory brings her to tears and she realizes, “China was not only, as it had always been, part of me. I was part of China (author’s italics) (Ibid, p. 128).“
At a banquet for her, she was given her own personal “chop,” a stone seal with her name engraved, and she was made an honorary citizen of Wuhan (Ibid, p. 132). Chinese tradition is that women retain their surname so the chop is a Chinese rendition of her maiden name, Guttery. An ink stamp from her seal ends China Homecoming “just as any Chinese would do at the end of a story (Ibid, p. 133).” China Homecoming appears on the spine but her “chop” is the only title on the cover of the book. It also decorates the end papers front and back of the book.
Before her mother passed away, Jean asked her if she had gone to China “out of a sense of duty” to her husband or did she “go for the adventure.” Her mother’s answer was, “Oh, I went for the adventure (Ibid, p. 40).” I am thankful that Jean Guttery Fritz also had the sense of adventure to return to China and the generosity to share her adventure with us. Her own daughter, Andrea, asked Jean long before the trip to China, “Do you miss the Yangtze, Mom?” She answers, “Yes, I miss the Yangtze (Ibid, p.13).”
I do, too, Jean. I miss the Yangtze, too.
24 October 2008
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