MMGM: Sway
I’m really excited to join in the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday fun, hosted every Monday by Shannon Messenger. Today I want to talk about Amber McRee Turner’s fantastic debut, Sway.
From the publisher (Disney*Hyperion):
ten-year-old Cass has been dreaming of the day her mom, Toodi, will come
home. But when Toodi’s welcome back party takes a turn for the
disastrous, Cass finds herself stuck alone with her dull-as-dirt dad,
who insists that they set off for the summer on a mysterious
adventure—just the two of them.
big-time surprises up his sleeve. Once they hit the road in an old RV
named The Roast, he introduces her to the amazing power of “Sway,” a
seemingly magical force that can bring inspiration and joy to people in
major need of help.
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| Adorable cover! |
she could convince her mom to come home. But with the help of a little
home-spun magic, Cass realizes that the things she needs most have
always been within her reach.
Way back when I was a middle-grader, I read Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons, and I think part of me has been trying to recapture that reading experience ever since. Reading Sway, I finally did. Like Walk Two Moons, Sway is about a journey, both emotional and literal, in search of a mom and in search of something to believe in.
But I don’t mean to simply gush about Sway in terms of some similarities to one of my favorite books from my childhood. I loved Amber McRee’s limber use of language (reading this book, you’ll want to stop and read lines aloud to fully appreciate the wordplay), her richly drawn characters, and the playful humor that compliments the occasionally heartstrings-tugging plot. As someone who loves to read and write historical fiction, I loved the tidbits about historical figures worked into the story, too.
I can’t pick up a sliver of soap now without smiling and thinking of Cass.
OneFour interview!
Happy Monday! I spent my weekend holed up indoors–despite being a Wisconsin native, I’ve gotten used to the milder weather in the Northeast and the sub-20s temperatures this past week are killing me. Okay, not killing me–but I do have a cold. It was the perfect excuse to stay inside and read and revise.
Anyway, today my OneFour KidLit interview is up on the blog! You can check it out here:
Rebecca Behrens: WHEN AUDREY MET ALICE
How was your weekend?
What I read in 2012
State of Wonder ~ Revolution ~ The Fault in Our Stars ~ The
Disenchantments ~ The Handmaid’s Tale ~ True Grit ~ Love? Maybe ~ The
Future of Us ~ Rebecca ~ The Snow Child ~ All These Lives ~ The
Thirteenth Tale ~ Hemlock ~ Enchanted Ivy ~ A Young Wife ~ The Guernsey
Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society ~ Wanderlove ~ The Art of
Fielding ~ The Espressologist ~ Dear American Airlines ~ American Born
Chinese ~ The Book Thief ~ Promise the Night ~ Amelia Anne is Dead and
Gone ~ The Time it Snowed in Puerto Rico ~ The Wilding ~ Jellicoe Road ~
Insurgent ~ The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer ~ How Should a Person Be? ~
Laura Rider’s Masterpiece ~ Audrey, Wait! ~ Skinny ~ So Much Closer ~
Monstrous Beauty ~ The Conscious Bride ~ Moloka’i ~ The Bungalow ~ MWF
Seeking BFF ~ Between Shades of Gray ~ Prairie Evers ~ Laura Lamont’s
Life in Pictures ~ Liar & Spy ~ Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony ~ Gone
Girl ~ Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands ~
Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony ~ The Butterfly Clues ~
The Age of Miracles ~ Beautiful Ruins ~ Life As We Knew It ~ The Raven
Boys ~ The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy ~ Samantha Sutton and
the Labyrinth of Lies ~ Frost ~ Ask the Passengers ~ Rules of Civility ~
My Very UnFairytale Life ~ Catching Jordan ~ The Year We Left Home ~
Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings ~ Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris ~
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of Universe
That’s 62 books!
27 were YA, and 8 MG. I think 17 of those were 2012 releases.
How did I do on some of my reading goals?
1. Read more books than in 2011: Achieved! I read 52 books in 2011.
2. Catch up on classics: Not much progress here, although I did finally read Rebecca, and I read some obscure Mark Twain.
3. Read some YA Nonfiction: I did! I read The Pregnancy Project.
4. More genres: I read fewer scifi/fantasy books than in 2011, but more thrillers and more historical fiction.
5. Reread old favorites: Total fail. I didn’t reread anything. Can you blame me, though, when there are so many wonderful books to read?
This year, I want to keep up my book-a-week pace, read more debuts, and even out my MG-YA reading ratio.
White House Holidays
My own apartment is pathetically decorated, so I am living vicariously through the White House’s decorations this year. It’s the People’s House, after all!
At Holidays 2012 | The White House you can get all of the following:
- A recipe for Ginger Crinkle cookies from The White House Pastry Kitchen [I’ll be baking them next week!]
- A download of the official 2012 Holiday Bookmark [It features Bo!]
- Instructions on how to make your own holiday snow globe, one of the featured decorations in the White House this year [Yay for arts & crafts time!]
You can also look at pictures of the holiday decorations through the years (I love that the Kennedy family took a sleigh ride on the South Lawn), and watch a video of the First Family turning on the Christmas lights.
And, finally, there’s this video with BO! (Thanks to Sarah for first sharing it)
(Thanks to Sarah for o
Best of Blog Spam
I switched the settings for comments a while back, mainly so people could link to their URLs in their names. It was a good tweak to make, but it has resulted in an impressive influx of comment spam. Whatever, Blogger generally does a good job of weeding out spam comments automatically, so I’m not going to change back to the “registered users only” setting.
The only annoying part is getting all the notification emails about faux comments, typically from “Anonymous.” Usually Anonymous is trying to get me to visit web sites about tribal tattoos, which is kind of random, or treat acne, which sadly is already a routine part of my post-teenage life. However, reading the comments has taught me a lot about a bot’s strange grasp of grammar and syntax. Behold, some of my favorite spam comments, with their original weird formatting, along with my imagined replies:
The entire glance of your web site is fantastic, as neatly as the content!
I appreciate that you took the time for an entire glance.
I wish to read more things approximately it! I hope to provide more things approximately it!
That is very attention-grabbing, You are an overly professional blogger.
I’ve
joined your feed and sit up for in the hunt for more of your
magnificent post. Additionally, I’ve shared your web site in my social
networks. That’s me: a true overly professional.
It’s amazing to go to see this website and reading the views of all
friends regarding this post, while I am also zealous of getting
know-how. It’s a good thing to be zealous of getting know-how.
An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a coworker who
was conducting a little homework on this. And he actually bought me dinner simply because
I found it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this.
… Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to discuss this matter here on your web site. Hey, any time a post gets a reader free dinner is a win, as far as I’m concerned.
Hi to every one, the contents existing at this website
are actually amazing for people knowledge, well, keep up the nice
work fellows. The “fellows” and I thank you, and are happy to provide “people knowledge.” As opposed to robot knowledge, I guess.
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something.
I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message
home a little bit, but instead of that, this is excellent blog.
A great read. I’ll definitely be back. Thanks for the unsolicited advice. I’m glad that despite the lack of pics, you will definitely be back. (Ironically this was on a post about the White House, and I did sort of write a “book in it.”)
Fortunate me I found your website accidentally, and I am stunned why this twist of
fate did not took place earlier! I bookmarked it. I am also stunned why this twist of fate did not take place earlier for fortunate you!
bear grylls bear grylls bear grylls Dude: anyone who knows me knows that I watch I Shouldn’t Be Alive, not the Bear Grylls show.
On First Daughters and Fandom
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| Kennedy Family at Camp David (source: Wikimedia Commons) |
It’s not surprising that I wound up writing a story about a pair of first daughters; I am a First Kid superfan. My interest in children in the White House has been lifelong–I remember seeing old photographs of the Kennedy children in the Oval Office when I was a kid and being fascinated by them. Same for ones of Amy Carter. Chelsea Clinton is not much older than me, and when President Clinton was in office, I soaked up every tidbit I could (harder to do, in the pre-Internet era) about her tweenage life at 1600.
I also have strong memories of some of the media scrutiny Chelsea faced as a first daughter. There were SNL skits that meanly mocked her, and snide comments from journalists like this tone deaf essay from Frank Rich at the NYT, “The Chelsea Show.” Yes, a grown man publicly called out her “gawkiness, frizzy hair, and orthodontically transitional smile.” It appears he was trying to be sympathetic to Chelsea’s plight in his “humorous” essay, but dude: what an ass.
Margaret Truman Daniel, a former first daughter herself, wrote a famous Letter to the Editor to chastise him. It was part of the reason why the media generally stopped reporting on the children of presidents. (The NYT describes that as an “informal pact” between the press and the White House in their article on how Malia Obama’s spring break trip almost became news. It clarifies that unless the girls are with their parents, they are considered off-limits by much of the media.)
I’ve had a lot of impulses over the past couple of years to blog about the Obama girls, for obvious reasons (they are first kids, and they also seem like very cool kids). I’ve tried to hold back. The thing is, it’s a different situation to write about historical first daughters (those that are now deceased), former first daughters (those who are now adults), and the current two. It’s clear that the information released about the Obama girls is closely guarded, as it should be. Administration officials must work very hard to protect a little privacy for the first family, and that is an admirable thing. Perpetuating public interest in the Obama girls–even simply through linking to photos or articles on other sites on my humble blog–doesn’t seem fair. The smidge of privacy they maintain has been hard-won, and it’s important to respect that.
I hope to start sharing more of the information I’ve learned about life at the White House and famous first kids over the next TK-many months until When Audrey Met Alice comes out. Only the fun stuff, though–I promise not to bore you! But one thing you won’t read about here are the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, unless it’s a link to or sourced by some kind of official information.
What do you find interesting about First Kids*?
*A nerdy little grammar note: So far as I can tell, it is not grammatically correct to capitalize unofficial titles such as first daughter and first kid. Even First Lady is not an official title, although it is commonly treated as such and therefore capitalization is accepted. Sometimes I do capitalize first daughter or first kid, though, as a stylistic choice to highlight the title. The copy editor part of me is annoyed by this. I should probably start being consistent.
Guest Post: MG Author Jordan Jacobs
Just Another Day at the Office
The movies don’t get everything wrong when it comes to archaeology. Even in real life, there’s plenty of adventure to be found.
As an archaeologist, I’ve gotten to work high in the Andes at Chavin de Huantar—crawling through unexplored tunnels full of bats and rubble and scattered human bones. I’ve excavated Crustumerium, just north of Rome, where Bronze Age peoples lie at rest in a sprawling city of the dead. I’ve worked in the United States as well, clearing cemeteries in advance of major construction projects, excavating cliff dwellings, and digging the toilet of a California governor from the wreckage of his earthquake-totalled mansion.
But of course, this sort of adventure is only part of the job.
An archaeologist’s task is to study past cultures through what they’ve left behind. These pieces of evidence—or “artifacts”—can be as big as an Egyptian pyramid or as small as a speck of pollen, stuck to an ancient cooking pot. But the information they contain can be surprising. Archaeologists can use these artifacts to reconstruct how people once lived—from the food they ate, to the way they fought, to the religions that they practiced and their views of the world around them.
The archaeologist’s “typical day” takes a variety of forms. Some work mostly in the field–surveying the land, digging precise excavation units into the earth, looking for patterns, making comparisons, and drawing careful conclusions from whatever pieces of the past still remain. Others work in laboratories, using the tools of science to discover how old an object is, exactly what it’s made of, or precisely where it came from. Still others spend their days in museum storerooms, re-examining the evidence recovered by their predecessors. And some archaeologists work with governments and companies in order to protect sites from destruction through development, looting, neglect, or war.
But archaeology also carries a lot of responsibility. One awkward truth is that excavation destroys sites, meaning that each particular discovery can be made only once. It’s up to the archaeologist to record everything he or she can–otherwise, that information is lost forever. Just as importantly, archaeologists have a responsibility to the people who live nearby the site, or who claim it as their ancestors’.
At its best, archaeology is a little like time travel. Holding an artifact in your hand can make you feel a connection to someone who lived centuries or millennia before. It’s intimate. It’s humbling. Seeing the fingerprint of a potter on the surface of a plain and broken pot is a reminder of the humanity all people share–no matter where, or when, we live.
*Full disclosure: I share a publisher, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, with Jordan Jacobs. I purchased my own copy of Samantha Sutton, however, and any opinions are my own.*
Seeing your Settings
The White House Social Fall Garden Tour was an incredible experience for a lot of reasons: meeting the very cool and accomplished other attendees; hearing White House administration staff and officials speak on a variety of topics; viewing the beautiful gardens; and, you know, getting to explore the White House, or at least its grounds! But it was also a very special day for me because I got to visit one of my settings in person (and it was a setting I thought it would be unlikely for me to ever experience firsthand).
Writing When Audrey Met Alice and revising it (many times), I spent hours researching the White House: poring over every photo I could find; reading books and websites and blogs; watching films and TV shows set and filmed there; studying maps and floor plans. Although I hope the WH I created in my story is authentic, it’s definitely a fictional place. Despite all that research, I still had to make tons of stuff up. Sometimes that was because I just didn’t have access to information and other times it was in the interest of good storytelling.
My brief visit to the White House grounds gave me some of the firsthand knowledge I couldn’t get from my research: How the area smells; what the ambient sounds are like; how open or closed the outdoor spaces feel when you’re in them. I got a taste of the oxymoronic atmosphere: the White House is serene at the same time it’s bustling. There are people everywhere working (administration officials, secret service agents, landscapers and groundskeepers, etc.), but it feels very calm and controlled (at least to a visitor). I witnessed the security procedures for guests, from the info you disclose prior to your visit to the metal detectors to scanning a badge to let you leave.
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| One of my characters has a joyride in a golf cart at the WH. I saw the vehicle in this photo and pictured her on it. Awesome! |
I also uncovered some details more directly related to my writing about a fictional and a historical first girl. When asked a (pretty benign) question about the habits of Sasha and Malia, the administration staff politely declined to answer–they maintain the privacy of the girls, even when it comes to matters like “do they like eating their vegetables from the garden.” I have to admit that I was really pleased at that response–it’s great that the WH staff are so protective of the rightful privacy of first kids! (I know my characters would have appreciated that.)
Some settings are easier to visit than others and some downright impossible–a fictional planet, the 16th century, the inside of a volcano. But whenever possible, it’s important to visit the places that inspire our stories. Not only for the authenticity it can give one’s writing, but for the way it can energize and reinvigorate. Looking ahead to edits on my book, I can’t wait to incorporate some of what I experienced last Friday into the book. I’ve totally reconnected with my setting, and that’s a wonderful thing.
WH Garden Tour in Pictures
Last Friday I attended the White House Fall Social Garden Tour. In short, it was awesome. You can read more about how I lucked into the Social here, and you can see a wrap-up from the White House here: A Fall Social in the #WHGarden. (Excuse me while I freak out that my name/tweets/photos are on the White House’s web site.) My twitter feed from Friday is also chock full of observations and photos.
I’ll be posting some of my thoughts about visiting the setting of my book later in the week. But first, here are some of my favorite photos from the day:
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| The quiet before the public tour starts |
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| The view from the South Lawn |
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| The White House Beehive. Best quote of the day, from Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses: They didn’t add a second hive because then the bees might fight each other for territory and, “we didn’t want any more conflict in Washington.” |
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| Veggies growing in the Kitchen Garden |
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| The swing set. How badly did I want to go for a swing? (Badly!) See the Oval Office behind it. |
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| The Oval Office. Guess who was inside working? |
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| Me, thrilled to be in the Rose Garden and standing in front of the West Wing (Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the background, too) |
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| Crowds of people outside |
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| Who knew there were so many grills at the White House? |
ETA: Thanks for all of the compliments on my dress! It was nice to fold up my writerly pajama pants for a day. 🙂 That dress was a gift from my mother in law, and she made it!
White House Garden Tour!
Tonight I’m heading down to D.C. so I can attend the White House Social Fall Garden Tour tomorrow!
(Which is a special Tweetup tour of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, Rose Garden, and the South Lawn, including the White House Kitchen Garden and beehive.)
How did I get to do this? I follow White House social media accounts on Twitter, and I applied through the White House Social website.
Needless to say, I’m really excited about seeing the grounds and being in a place that I have spent so much time imagining (particularly for fiction purposes).
I’ll be tweeting throughout the tour tomorrow, so if you’d like to follow along find me on Twitter (or check out the hashtag #WHGarden). The events start at 7:30 am EST, so look for WH tweets from me starting around that time. We are having a question and answer session with Administration officials around 10:00 am EST, so tweet me any questions you’d like to ask! Or leave them in the comments below.
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