Author: hatfield13

STOLEN by Lucy Christopher

Never get into bed thinking you’ll read "just another page or two" of a psychological thriller, especially when you’re within a hundred pages of the end.  Here is the reason I’m a bit bleary-eyed this morning…

…and I’m not sorry. Not one bit.  Lucy Christopher’s YA novel STOLEN is just magnificent.

16-year-old Gemma is kidnapped from the Bangkok airport when a handsome stranger (but he looks familiar…he is a stranger, right?) buys her coffee, drugs it, and hurries her away from the gate where her parents are waiting for her for a family trip to Vietnam. She finds herself waking up hours later in a landscape so harsh and stark it might as well be the moon.  Her captor, Ty, is a young man with a haunted past of his own. He promises he doesn’t intend to hurt her physically but says that he needs her, that he always has, and holds her captive in a complex of buildings in the Australian outback that seem to have been built for the purpose of keeping her here.

The desert and the animals and plants that have adapted to survive its rugged conditions mirror the antagonist in the way they both hold Gemma captive and eventually enthrall her. Like Ty himself, the desert fascinates Gemma, and she finds herself acclimating and becoming drawn to its mix of danger and beauty. So how, in the midst of those hopeless conditions and her own psychological changes, can she ever hope to find her way home to London again?

STOLEN is written in second person, as a letter from Gemma to her captor in a voice that is believable and raw without ever feeling forced. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was so beautiful and so creepy all at once. Even though the kidnapper in this book had done something I’d consider unforgivable, even though he drugged a teenager and stole her away from her parents, I couldn’t hate him or even think of him as evil.  And perhaps that’s what made the book the most chilling of all. It’s a great, great read.

Here’s my teacher-note – This book will have wide appeal to older middle school and high school students, and it’ll be a great literature circles choice – so much to talk about. While I’m dying to share it, I’m going to wait just a bit before I put it out for my 7th graders, since some of the language & situations are intense and it’s a book I’ll feel more comfortable recommending to individual kids after I’ve had longer to get to know them and their reading tastes.  And one more teaching thought…for a high school English class, this would be amazing paired with Ann Patchett’s BEL CANTO.

Friday Five: Back to School Edition

1. This was back-to-school week, for me as a 7th grade English teacher and for my two kids. It kicked off with a bang, as I realized Wednesday night that I was supposed to be at a cross country meet and two parent orientation meetings simultaneously.  Have we mastered that cloning technology yet?  Thankfully, my daughter’s teacher served these amazing peppermint patty brownies at her meeting – hello, dinner.

2. Today, we’ll start our first read-aloud of the year in my classroom.  It’s Sharon Draper’s OUT OF MY MIND. I have my Kleenex ready…

3. I’m reading Lucy Christopher’s STOLEN, which is written by a kidnapped teen as a letter to her captor. It’s delightfully creepy so far, with a beautifully drawn sparse setting that’s almost a character in itself.

4. I gave my students a quick technology survey yesterday so that I can try to do a better job integrating the kinds of technology that they actually use at home and like. It was interesting. I teach in a district where about a third of the students get free or reduced price lunch, but of 64 students, all but two have computer/Internet at home, and those two have access at a community center nearby. Twenty have uploaded videos to YouTube, and more than half are on Facebook.  We’re going to try edmodo this year — it’s an educational version of social networking with forums and such — to see if it’s a good way to continue our classroom conversations and booktalk after the bell rings.  I’m also wondering if it might make sense to set up a class Facebook Group for our kids who are there, so they can help one another with assignments & book suggestions, but I’m still noodling on that one.

5. I handed out books from my classroom library hand-over-fist yesterday but came up short on one request. Hockey books for middle school kids.  Any thoughts on that one?  Chris Lynch has ICEMAN, but I’ve heard that’s more older YA, as it WAITING TO SCORE. 

Hope those of you who are teachers and parents and back-to-school kids are having a great start to the year, too. Enjoy the weekend!

Need a Calculator for your iPad? I know just the guy…

You may have noticed that even though I have two kids, they don’t often make appearances here. I don’t post photos or even mention them without their permission because, you know, they’re not the ones writing a blog and they have the right to some privacy even though Mom’s an author.  But today I’ve been given rare clearance to blog about something cool in the life of my 14-year-old son.  After months of teaching himself how to write code for iPhone and iPad applications, one of his apps has been approved by Apple and is for sale now in the iTunes app store!

If you know anything about writing apps, you know it’s kind of complicated. As a matter of fact, I looked into it a while ago, thinking I’d write a quick application to go along with my skating book, Sugar and Ice. I looked into it…for about ten minutes, discovered there is no such thing as "a quick application," and promptly suggested to my son that he learn to write apps so I could hire him to write one.  He did. (He’s working on it, so the Sugar and Ice app will be forthcoming, with fun stuff for skaters, a book excerpt, and an audio file of me reading Chapter 1!)

Watching the boy go through this process has been fascinating and not entirely unlike the process of writing a book. There have been false starts, times when he thought he had everything figured out, only to load code onto a test device and have it crash, and times when he submitted an app and had it rejected. He’s learned not only how to write code, but also how to try, fail, and try again. He’s turned to the Apple Developer Forum online for help and had conversations with fellow developers, most of whom are adults and had no idea they were talking with an 8th grader at the time.  We were amused by one response he got that included the line "…and then the rest is pretty straightforward. I mean, a 15-year-old could probably figure it out."  He attended a week-long tech camp on writing apps at MIT this summer, and most recently, he’s learned about reading multi-page legal documents and deciphering international tax codes, since Apple only handles taxes for countries that have tax treaties with the U.S.

Yesterday,  his first app went on sale in the app store. It’s a full-screen calculator he developed for the iPad (which doesn’t come with one like the iPhone does) with a customizable background. He wrote code that allows a user to choose any image from his or her photo library to use as the background.

Pretty cool, huh?  And yes…this is one of those proud-mom posts.

So…if you are in need of a 99-cent calculator for your iPad, you can follow this link to the boy’s app page online and then click "view in iTunes" or just search the app store for "calculator with custom background" on your device, and you’ll find it.  But you won’t be the first download…

The boy woke up yesterday and reported to my husband that he’d had one download, before the app was even listed in the "Newly released" section. Suspicious, he checked my iPad and confirmed his suspicions. "It was Mom."  I couldn’t resist being his first sale.

Writing Advice, Sugar and Ice Giveaway, & My Classroom Library

Two quick things today…

First, I’m guest-blogging over at   today on the topic of making time to write. Whenever I give workshops for writers or teachers, the number one question I get is, "You teach full time and have a family? How do you find time to write?"  This blog post answers that question in detail with some thoughts on making time for some things and letting other things go.

Second, there’s a SUGAR AND ICE giveaway going on over at GoodReads.  If you’re a member of GoodReads (and I hope you are because it’s great fun to share book suggestions!) you can click here and scroll down to enter the drawing, which runs now through September 30th.

That’s all for tonight because today was the first day of school for teachers where I live, and I have lots to do to get ready for the kids. But first, here’s a photograph of my classroom library, just because I love it.

It’s still missing big piles of titles my kids from last year took home over the summer, including everything Carrie Jones & Lisa Schroeder have ever written, but this is still the most complete it will be all year. On Thursday, I get to start putting books in hands again, and I can’t wait.

Hope those of you who are starting classes along with me have a great beginning to your school year!

SUGAR AND ICE Updates!

It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged about my upcoming figure skating novel, SUGAR AND ICE (due out from Walker/Bloomsbury December 7, 2010!) and there’s some very cool news to share!

My editor recently sent me the first of the journal reviews from  Booklist, and it was a great one!

"Messner is awfully good at individualizing what might otherwise be stock characters, especially Claire, whose eagerness and apprehension come in equal measure. Of course, the (sometimes) glamorous world of figure skating doesn’t hurt for drawing readers, and even those who don’t know their double toe loops from their single salchows will enjoy reading about what it takes to make it on the ice… Satisfying and likely to have wide appeal."—Booklist

Oh, I hope they’re right about that wide appeal.  Also…that note about individualizing characters?  It made me smile in a big way, since I spent many hours of revision, making sure all those skaters felt real.

I also learned that SUGAR AND ICE will be a Junior Library Guild selection!  I’m so excited about all the copies that will be available to kids in schools as a result of that.

Plans are taking shape for a snow-sparkled book launch event at Lake Placid’s fantastic indie, The Bookstore Plus, perfect because the book is set in Lake Placid, with much of the action taking place at the Olympic Center.  If you live in the Adirondacks, I’d love it if you’d put December 11th on your calendar!  More to come on that soon…

And finally, SUGAR AND ICE has its own Facebook page now. You can click here and "Like" it if you’d like updates on an ARC giveaway (coming soon!), launch events ,and more.

There’s a final cover now, too, which I just love-love-love. 

I just love the colors and the way Joe Cepeda, who did the cover art for THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. as well, captured Claire’s spirit just perfectly.  December 7th can’t come soon enough!

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain

I took a very quick research trip to Oklahoma this week, to take photographs and talk with an expert on tornadic storms as I revise my upcoming dystopian novel, currently titled EYE OF THE STORM.

When I say quick trip, I mean quick.  My 14-year-old son came along, and we were in Oklahoma for all of 18 hours before flying back home.  But it was long enough to see some pretty amazing things at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

This building houses not only the University’s meteorology department, but also the National Weather Service office in Norman, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, and NOAA’s storm prediction center,where forecasters were busy watching the approach of Hurricane Earl.

We also toured the vehicle bay and saw some of the equipment used to gather data from tornadic storms in the VORTEX2 project this spring.


The mobil mesonet is a set of weather sensors that can be mounted on vehicles for storm chasing.


Radar dishes are often mounted on trucks & vans as well.


This balloon was launched into the heart of a thunderstorm with a long string of sensors attached to it. It’s hanging here because it was badly damaged by a lightning strike!

Not all the researchers’ equipment is so high-tech. Some is simply practical.

And do you remember the movie Twister?  Remember the scenes where Helen Hunt and her costar were driving around in the red pickup truck trying to place their sensor equipment, nicknamed "Dorothy," in the path of a tornado?

The Dorothy movie prop is on display at the University…

…along with a second prop (their rival stormchasers’ device, called "DOT") and the actual meteorological tool that inspired this part of the film.

 The real version, the one on the right, is much heavier — over 400 pounds — and was nicknamed Toto. The idea was indeed to put it into the path of a tornado so it could take a direct hit and gather data.  But alas, real life is not the movies, and it never worked out perfectly, so eventually, this piece of equipment was put on display as storm chasers looked to other tools (unmanned drone planes are the latest!) in their quest to gather the data that will help them figure out how tornadoes work.

There is so much fascinating work being done by brilliant, passionate scientists at this site in Oklahoma — it was fantastic to spend an afternoon with them, and I can’t wait to share more with readers when the book comes out in 2012.  (I started working on the author’s note on the plane ride home!)

I arrived home from the airport to find my meteorologist husband packing up his rain gear.  His TV station sent him to Cape Cod late last night to cover Hurricane Earl.  In addition to doing live shots for the evening news in Burlington/Plattsburgh, he’s posting updates through WPTZ here if you’d like to check it out – and he’s @tommessner on Twitter if you’d like to follow his adventures in the rain & wind of Earl.

Volcanoes, Bridges, and Waterfalls: More from Costa Rica

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a quick research trip to Oklahoma for my dystopian storm book.  (No, I don’t know what I was thinking scheduling two research trip so close together. My hiking boots aren’t even dry yet.)  But thought I’d share a few more Costa Rica photos before I go.


Morning spider web at Selva Verde Lodge

A few people have asked where we stayed. In the Sarapiqui region, it was a place called Selva Verde Lodge.  The rooms are in buildings, raised up on stilts in the rain forest, and covered walkways lead all over the property so you don’t get drenched going to dinner during the afternoon rains.


And it rains a lot.

Here’s the  hanging bridge that leads from the main property of Selva Verde, over the Sarapiqui River to the primary rain forest. 

And here’s one of the less exotic birds we saw on our morning bird walk around the area.


Chicken with Chili Peppers!

While most of the week was spent in Sarapiqui, we also stayed a couple nights at the Arenal Observatory Lodge near La Fortuna. This was the view from the room.

Arenal is an active volcano, and it was quite active while we were there. We were lucky to have some great views of the cone, since it’s almost always shrouded in clouds.  Every few hours, we’d hear what sounded like very loud, sudden thunder, and then see this.

At night, we could actually see red-hot boulders glowing as they rolled down the side of the mountain – something I’ll never forget.

The property at Arenal Observatory Lodge was lovely, too, and there was a great hike to a waterfall.

My friend Loree Griffin Burns, who was in Costa Rica earlier this year, told me that I absolutely had to go zip-lining while I was there.  I like and respect Loree a lot, so I signed up for the zip-lining thing.  What Loree neglected to mention was that this would involve taking a tram up the side of a mountain…

…and then flying back and forth, down said mountain at 40+ miles per hour on cables that were up to half a mile long and 600 feet above the ground. 

But there is something about Costa Rica, the beauty of the land and the friendliness of the people, that somehow makes this seem like a perfectly good idea. So off I went!


Can you see me? I am that tiny, scared speck zooming along in the middle of the cable.

Tomorrow, I’m off on a different sort of adventure — a quick trip to interview an incredible storm scientist and tornado chaser and to tour the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.  No tornado chasing on this trip, though…at least it’s not in the plans!

Morning Wake-Up Call: The Birds of Costa Rica

The Sarapiqui region of Costa Rica is incredibly quiet and incredibly loud, all at once. At Selva Verde Lodge, where we stayed, the buildings are on stilts in the middle of the forest, and there are no windows — only screens — so all night long, frogs chirp, insects buzz, and critters rustle in the underbrush below.  There was no sleeping in, for a couple reasons. First, the rains came each afternoon at around three or four, so we didn’t want to miss any  of the dry daylight hours. And even if we had wanted to sleep past dawn, there were the birds.  They were LOUD. 

And they were stunning.


Crested Guan near Arenal Observatory Lodge


Montezuma Oropendola – This was one of my favorite birds, with its long yellow tail, and it made the loudest warbling call in the morning.

Here’s a tree full of oropendola nests close to our room at one of the lodges (which explains why the birds were so loud that last morning!)

Here’s a keel billed toucan…and over in the next tree…

…a chestnut mandibled toucan.


Mangrove swallow on the Sarapiqui River


An anhinga dries its wings along the river bank.


Blue crowned motmot.  That’s fun to say, isn’t it?  Motmot.  This one sat on a branch near the deck where we were having breakfast our last morning in Costa Rica, up in the hills of Heredia.

I’ll share more photos later on, and if you’d like to see some of the other wildlife I photographed on the trip, you can check out this post.

Home from Costa Rica: Thoughts and a whole lot of wildlife photos

My blog has been mighty quiet this past week or so because I’ve been in Costa Rica, researching one (and possibly two!) future books set in part in the rain forest.  This is an ecosystem that’s fascinated me since I was in third grade, so getting the chance to spend a few days in the Sarapiqui River area of Costa Rica was just amazing.  I spent most of my days hiking in the forest and staring either up into the trees or down at the ground. Here’s some of what came into focus through the camera lens…

We spotted two kinds of poison dart frogs (and heard them, too! They make a loud chick-chick-chick! sound in the rain.) 

Here’s a blue jean poison dart frog, so named for his denim-colored legs.

Giant iguanas were draped over limbs above our heads, sometimes sharing trees with sloths or monkeys.


A two-toed sloth in a tree near the swimming pool…


A white-faced monkey eats breakfast.

There were also lots and lots of bats, swooping in and out of the restaurant when we ate dinner and hanging around in and on trees during the day.


Long-nosed bats on a tree along the Sarapiqui River.

There were caimans all along the river, too — they’re like crocodiles only a bit smaller.

Until this trip, I thought a basilisk was just a mythical Harry Potter snake that could turn you to stone.  But this is a basilisk, too.

It’s an emerald basilisk – Sometimes, they’re also called Jesus Christ lizards because they can run across the water.  I loved the colors in these creatures.

Some of my favorite wildlife sightings happened on our longer hikes, after we’d crossed a hanging bridge over the river to go deeper into the primary rain forest. At one point, our guide, Alex, motioned for us to follow him off the trail and into a stream, where he turned over leaves until he found this.

It’s a glass frog – Isn’t it incredible the way he blends in with both the foliage and the eggs?

There were also leaf-cutter ants, marching in huge armies through the forest and up and down trees.

And there were some rain forest residents that we needed a zoom lens to photograph, like this one…

We actually just hiked around this hognose viper at the edge of the trail.  Alex marked the spot with some sticks so other hikers wouldn’t step on it by accident, since it blends in with the leaf cover. 

This snake, though, was a different story. 

Alex stopped us several yards back and warned us that it was a Fer-de-lance…more venomous, more aggressive, and right in the middle of the trail.  After we snapped a few pictures (this is the only clear one I have….my hands were shaking, so the rest are all blurry), he coaxed it off the trail with a long stick.  We watched as it slithered up onto a tree limb, and then passed by, giving it plenty of space.

After our hike, the rains came as they did each day, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hammock outside our lodge room, writing and outlining.  But there was one last visitor from the forest…

This slender anole sat quietly next to me on the hammock for over an hour.  I’ve decided that he must be my muse for this new book.

GIANNA Z. in the September Scholastic Book Clubs!

I just got the coolest note from my talented and kind friend,   –  "Did you see that one of the Scholastic Book Clubs has your book in it for September?"

No!!!  I hadn’t seen that!  I knew that Scholastic had picked up The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. as a book clubs & book fairs selection for this fall, but I didn’t realize that it was actually out.  So I raced over to the Scholastic site and found the Arrow flyer for September.  And then I got a little bit teary.

I’ve always been a big reader.  The youngest of four kids by a long shot, I spent a lot of time with my parents and my books when everyone else was off at school. And I grew up in a small town – Medina, NY.  It has a great indie bookstore now, but The Book Shoppe wasn’t around yet when I was a kid, and so the nearest place to buy books was a chain store at the mall half an hour away.  But every month, my teachers would pass out the Scholastic Book Club flyers, and I’d take them home and circle the books I wanted.  I’d use magic marker, even though I knew it would bleed through those thin pages, and sometimes I couldn’t even tell which book I meant to circle.

So the thought of kids taking home this flyer…

…and maybe drawing a fat magic marker circle around my book?

Pretty amazing.