A visit with Linda Urban

My middle school students had a fabulous day with guest author Linda Urban (

[info]lurban

), talking about A Crooked Kind of Perfect, writing, setting goals, and having the courage to follow dreams.  If you ever — ever — have an opportunity to host Linda at your school, sign on the dotted line without delay.  She’s an amazing presenter who left kids laughing as well as feeling inspired and appreciated.  I took lots of photos, but I think this one might be my favorite –

Linda  spent our after school  period signing books in the school library, answering questions from kids, and listening — really, really listening — to their ideas about her book and their own goals and dreams.  Thanks, Linda, for a fantastic day!

 Tomorrow, I’ll be on the other side of the author visit, sharing Spitfire and presenting my Revolution program to middle school kids in Colchester and students in the after-school program in Brandon, Vermont.  I’ll post on our 18th century adventures later this week!

Studying Spitfire

Julia Miller, a teacher in Peru, NY, has put together a phenomenal web page to go along with her unit on my historical novel Spitfire.  And — better yet — she gave me permission to share it so other teachers can use the resources she’s pulled together. Click here to check it out!

Most teachers who have written to tell me they’re using Spitfire in the classroom are working with students in Grades 4-8, but Miss Miller’s students are in high school. They’re taking a class that I wish had been around when I was in school — Local History and Literature — and I promised a special shout-out to them on my blog. So…

Hi there, Peru High School students!  Miss Miller tells me that you have a list of questions to ask about Spitfire, the history surrounding it, and how I researched and wrote it.  Ask away!  To post a question, click on “Leave a Comment” and type your question in the comments box. You can sign it with your initials if you’d like, but please don’t include your full name for Internet safety reasons.  Give me a day or two to reply to your questions, and then check back here for my responses.  I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Guess who’s coming to lunch…

My middle school students are getting a dream team of visiting authors this month. 

This Wednesday, Linda Urban (

[info]lurban

) will spend the day with us, talking about A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT and her writing life.

And on March 31, Loree Griffin Burns (

[info]lgburns

) will visit to talk trash — TRACKING TRASH — with our middle school kids.

Are you jealous yet?

Meanwhile, HUGE congratulations are in order for both Linda and Loree today!   Both of their books have been selected as finalists for Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award.  Kids in Vermont will read as many books from the list as possible, and then they’ll vote to choose the winner next spring.  For the full list of 2008-2009 DCF titles, visit the blog of Steve Madden, librarian extraordinaire at Camels Hump Middle School.   It’s a fantastic, fantastic  list — one that will make you want to be a Vermont student, too. 

Friday Five

Five things I did this week…

  1. Wrote another 6150 words on my new MG novel – I broke the 27,000 mark tonight, and I love where the story is going. 
  2. Met the illustrator of Spitfire for the first time.  Her name is Martha Gulley, and she’s not only talented but so, so nice.  She’s doing chapter illustrations for my new book, Champlain & the Silent One, right now. Waiting to see what she does with it is like waiting for Christmas.
  3. Talked with librarians and teachers about some school visits I have coming up this spring and cooked up a brand new historical writing workshop to fit one of the school’s requests.  I’m pulling together diaries, artifacts, images, period food and games, and it’s going to be so much fun!
  4. Read Love and Other Uses for Duct Tape by 
    [info]carriejones

     and felt like I was in high school again.  It was funny and sad and wonderful.  And I was reminded that the tiniest sensory details can make a book shine.  The rip in the vinyl seat of a pickup truck.  A crack in the sidewalk that looks like New Hampshire.  I loved this book.  It’s the kind of YA novel that most of my middle school readers aren’t ready for just yet — more of a high school title — but it will be well worth the wait.  Thanks, Carrie!!

  5. Picked up tickets for the family to see The King and I at Chazy Music Theater.  My friend Andrew is directing this play, and you should go, too.  Unless you live in California or Iceland or something. Then I understand.  But you’ll still miss an amazing show.  

Have a great weekend, everyone!

I’m baking tonight…

Nope – not chocolate chip cookies, even though I love them.  Not brownies or cupcakes. 

My oven is loaded with hardtack!

Hardtack, also called ship’s bread, is a very hard, dry cracker or biscuit that was a staple of the Revolutionary War sailor’s diet.  Made with just flour, water, and sometimes salt, it’s incredibly cheap, and it lasts forever as long as it doesn’t get wet. 

I have two school visits coming up next week, and I always like to let kids taste some of the food that the characters eat in my historical novel Spitfire.  Most students take a tiny piece of hardtack, bite down on it, discover it’s like eating petrified wood, and grimace.  A few always end up liking it, though – hanging around for extra samples when the presentation is over.  These kids, I figure, probably would have made the best sailors.  They probably like sleeping on the floor, too.

Many sailors and soldiers got into the habit of tapping their hardtack before they bit into it.  This was to knock the weevils out of it because the bread often became infested with bugs.  Other men preferred to soak the bread in their soup or coffee and then pick the bugs out with a spoon.   But wait!  Kids in South Burlington and Brandon… I don’t want you to worry if you’re reading this. Even though my hardtack can’t compete with chocolate chip cookies, I guarantee it will be insect-free.

Nonfiction Monday – Steel Drumming at the Apollo

As an English teacher, I’m always looking for ways to bring nonfiction to my reluctant readers.  These are kids who haven’t discovered reading for pleasure, and many of them are boys.  If I’m lucky, I can sell them on a novel by Walter Dean Myers, Joseph Bruchac,  David Lubar, or Jack Gantos…but nonfiction?  Good luck.

That’s why I was so excited to see a review copy of Steel Drumming at the Apollo from Lee & Low Books.  It’s nonfiction, in the form of a photo essay that follows a group of high school musicians from Schenectady, NY as they compete in a series of Amateur Nights at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem.  As soon as I read the premise of this book, I was hooked — a group of city high school kids who get to play at a place so rich in history and so symbolic of the Harlem Renaissance.   Text by Trish Marx and photographs by Ellen B. Sinisi tell the story in vivid color, featuring details of the competition and the kids’ preparation for it, profiles of the young artists, and backstage snapshots at the Apollo.  The photographs and text bring the young musicians’ steel drumming to life.

The book even includes a cd of the band’s music, tucked in a pocket inside the back cover. And these kids can play!  Their story will be an inspiration to other city kids who dream of making it big.  Steel Drumming at the Apollo is a terrific choice for kids who need a fun, accessible introduction to nonfiction.  They’ll be singing its praises and dancing along as they read.

First Light by Rebecca Stead


I’ve had Rebecca Stead’s debut novel First Light in my pile of books to read since November, when I met her at the Rochester Children’s Book Festival.  But then the Cybils came along, and I discovered that being a panelist for middle grade fiction meant reading nothing BUT middle grade fiction from October through the end of the year.  (First Light was actually nominated in the Fantasy & Science Fiction category, so it was in someone else’s pile.)

Once I finally started this book, it was hard to put down.  Peter Solemn’s world is rocked in the very first chapter when his father, a glaciologist, announces the family is going on a research trip to Greenland.  Two chapters later, we meet a second main character, Thea, who lives under the arctic ice in a society created generations ago by a group of people fleeing persecution in Europe.

What I loved most about this book was that it plunged me into not just one, but two fascinating new worlds.  Greenland itself really qualifies as an alien landscape of sorts, and Stead’s rich details bring it to life.  (Is there really a Volkswagon Road there where the company tests new models?  So cool!) Thea’s world beneath the ice is painted vividly as well with terrific  techno-details about the innovations of that new society called Gracehope.  I’ve added Gracehope to the list of imaginary places (along with Hogwarts and Narnia) that I long to visit some day.

I’m not giving too much away if I share that Peter and Thea  cross paths along the way.  Their stories intertwine in ways that are surprising but perfect and believable at the same time.  First Light is a great read — a fantastic mix of science fiction and adventure with plenty of real science mixed in, too.  Teachers looking for titles to integrate with earth science and environmental units will especially love this one.

Iditarod Dreams

We had plans to ski last Sunday, but high winds kept the chairlifts  at Whiteface Mountain grounded for the first part of the morning.  Instead of waiting it out, we headed into Lake Placid for some pancakes and a dogsled ride.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Iditarod, the 1150-mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.  A few years ago, my husband and I visited Iditarod headquarters and got to meet some of the amazing dogs that make that journey.  But it was summer, so we couldn’t  actually ride on a dogsled.

That’s why we jumped at the chance to take a ride with these gorgeous dogs on Lake Placid’s Mirror Lake.

The dogs were excited to find out they had some business.

The ride around a frozen Mirror Lake was brisk but spectacular!

This is our musher, whose name has escaped me, but he was very, very cool and friendly.  Interestingly enough, he never actually hollered “Mush!”  He hollered “Hike!” instead.  We were slightly disappointed but got over it.

While we circled the lake, other winter weather lovers were skating or riding toboggans down an icy chute set  up along the shore.

This is Lightning.  He likes to run in the back of the pack and was the friendliest of the sled dogs — the only one the kids could pet after our ride.  The rest of them couldn’t wait to pull us around on the sled but wanted nothing to do with us when the ride was over.  You can see in their eyes that these dogs still have a lot of the wild left in them — one of the reasons they do so well in the actual race in Alaska.

The real Iditarod is going on right now.  Here’s a great website where you can follow the progress of the teams.

Marching on…

The ice on Lake Champlain is floating north in giant puzzle pieces today.

Some of these ice slabs are enormous — maybe 30 feet long.

There is a tiny part of me that thinks it would be fun to put on a big orange survival suit, climb onto one of them, flop down on my belly, and float all the way to Canada. 

But all the other parts of me get cold easily and have vetoed that idea. 

“Beside,” my 11-year-old said, “Waves slosh over those ice chunks all the time, and I think they’d wash you off before you got to the border.”

Instead, I’ll be in the big chair by the window, watching the ice float north without me while I read Eric Larson’s Thunderstruck with a cup of hot chocolate.


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