Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam

Certain books should come with a warning label:  Do not read in a room full of 7th graders (unless they’re already used to seeing you sob your way through middle grade novels). Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam is one of those books.

I know what a gifted writer Cynthia Kadohata is, but I still wasn’t expecting to fall in love with this book the way I did.  I’m…er…not exactly a dog person.  There are certain dogs I really like, but I don’t like it when strange dogs come bounding up and jump on me during my morning run.  Anyway, I thought this might be a book for dog people, but it’s much more than that.

Cynthia Kadohata does a remarkable job letting us inside the minds of Rick, an angry young man who is sent off to Vietnam as a new dog handler and his dog, Cracker.  When  the narrative slips into Cracker’s point of view, it does so seamlessly and convincingly.  Not surprisingly, Rick is changed dramatically by his experiences in Vietnam and by the relationship he forges with Cracker.  Cracker, too, becomes a different kind of dog – more in tune with her instincts and committed to the job she has been given.

Cracker’s story is compelling and eye-opening, and this novel provides a realistic look at what went on in Vietnam while remaining appropriate for older middle grade readers.  This is probably one for the 10-14 crowd, and it’s not a book that’s just for boys.  The 7th grade girl I loaned it to this week returned it with a glowing review the next day.

Meanwhile, I’m still wiping my eyes, but in a good way.  Cracker, Rick, and Cynthia Kadohata won my heart with this one – a historical novel and dog story that’s not just for dog lovers and history buffs, but for all of us.

Something to think about…

Did you know that the average American will consume more energy between New Year’s Eve and midnight on January 2nd than the average person from Tanzania consumes in a full year?

(Turning off the upstairs lights now…)

I’m borrowing this stat from environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben, who spoke in my community today.  McKibben, author of The End of Nature,  is an amazing leader promoting action on global climate change.  I didn’t even know he was in town until I saw a tiny little blurb in the newspaper while I was having my coffee.  I threw on my jeans and flew out of the house at 8:50 to catch his 9:00 presentation.

His talk came just hours after the United Nations Conference reached its agreement on a global warming plan.  McKibben discussed the earlier disagreements between the United States and the European Union over the worldwide response to climate change.  Why the tension?  The average European (we’re not talking about Tanzania here)  uses HALF as much energy as the average American each year.  Seriously…something to think about.

McKibben also wrote the introduction and annotations for a 2004 release of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.  (I’m re-reading Thoreau right  now because he’s involved in a new historical novel that’s taking shape in the dark corners of my brain.)  McKibben makes some great points, suggesting that Thoreau was a conservationist, if an accidental one, because he consumed so little, much like people in third world nations like Tanzania today.  McKibben suggests there may be answers to our modern crisis in Thoreau’s 19th century reflections on getting by with less.

We have more than a foot of snow expected in the Champlain Valley, thanks to a big nor’easter arriving early tomorrow morning.  I think it’s time to power down the computer and stereo.  The idea of lighting a candle,  sipping hot tea, and reading Walden sounds just about perfect.

Thankful Thursday

I’ve been waiting.   I started checking out the back window every morning as soon as it got cold this week.

Today, the sea smoke showed up.

On the first really, really cold, calm morning of  winter, plumes of cloud rise up from the surface of the lake and drift in the pink light of sunrise.  

Sea smoke (lake smoke, I guess, in this case) forms when very cold air passes over warmer water.  The air right at the water’s surface is warmer, so it rises in a plume.  As soon as it gets away from the water, though, that air cools, and the moisture in it forms condensation that we see as fog.  Icy wisps of fog in the morning sun.

That’s what the meteorologists say.  But really, I think it’s the ghosts.  Lake Champlain has ghosts.  You can only see them in these cold, quiet moments, and only if you remember to look. Pretty soon, the wind comes and chases them away.  I am thankful that I wasn’t too busy to greet them this morning when they came.

We Have a Winner…. (Actually, 7 of them!)

This fall, my middle school students and I had the pleasure of featuring five amazing children’s book illustrators who created snowflakes for the Robert’s Snow for Cancer’s Cure fund raiser for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  The fund raiser wrapped up last week, and even if you weren’t lucky enough to have the winning bid in an auction, you may still be a winner!  Each of our illustrators signed a book and/or print of her work as a prize for one of our readers, and this afternoon, students in the Writers Club drew the contest winners:

[info]lindabudz

won Judy Schachner‘s signed book and Skippyjon Jones doll.

[info]cynthialord

won a signed Belinda book from Amy Young.

Jules herself, from 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast, was the winning name for Cecily Lang‘s signed print.

[info]jamarattigan

won a signed book from Shawna Tenney.

And three winners will receive signed books and prints from Sara Kahn:

Charlotte from Charlotte’s Library
Gail Maki Wilson
and Kris Bordessa from Paradise Found

Congratulations…and here’s one last prize for everyone else.  A snowflake of your very own.

Okay, really this one is mine.  But you can make your own at the Make-a-Flake website, a virtual version of the snowflakes you fold and clip and snip into being.  (This one doesn’t leave all those tiny little bits of paper on the floor.)

If all this winning has put you in a contest kind of mood, never fear….   There are two fantastic new contests this week on LJ.  

[info]lisa_schroeder

is giving away 12 YA books for the 12 days of Christmas, and

[info]jbknowles

is giving away her fantastic YA novel LESSONS FROM A DEAD GIRL.  Head on over to their blogs to enter!

Friday Five (and one of them is a big one)

1.  I did two cartwheels in the hallway at school today.  It was part of a shameless bribe to get my 7th graders to hand in homework on time. It worked.  And I’ve been practicing, so it wasn’t too painful.

2.  If I read one more amazing MG novel this month, I’m going to have to quit the Cybils panel because I can’t possibly choose a short list.  My short list is a long list.

3. I’m talking to kids about history and writing and signing books at the Kent Delord House Museum Holiday Open House in Plattsburgh, NY this Saturday from 11-12.  If you live in the area, please stop by and say hello!

4.  After that, we’re going here to get our Christmas tree.  They have a wood stove and apples and warm cinnamon sugar donuts.  Yay!

I saved the big one for last. 

Before I became a teacher and children’s writer, I worked  for seven years as a tv news reporter and producer. 

In my old business, what I’m about to do  is called burying the lead, and it’s a no-no. 

Now it’s called building suspense, and it’s fine.

5. There’s a new book contract on my desk! 

North Country Books, which published Spitfire, has bought American rights to my new middle grade historical novel, Champlain & the Silent One.  It’s about a Montagnais Indian boy who guides Samuel de Champlain on his journey from Quebec to Lake Champlain to encounter the Iroquois.  It’s scheduled for release next fall, in anticipation of the Champlain Quadricentennial — the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s voyage to the lake outside my window.  I’m thankful and excited and very, very happy.

The Wild Girls

The Wild Girls is a book for writers.  It’s a book for girls who don’t always follow the rules and for girls who play with spotted newts.  As a girl who enjoys writing, newts, and occasional rule-breaking, I fell in love immediately.

 Pat Murphy tells the story of two girls — the rule-following Joan (aka Newt), who just moved to California from Connecticut and has always written the kinds of stories she thought her teacher would like, and Sarah (aka Fox), who hangs out throwing rocks in the woods near the run-down house where she lives with her dad, a motorcycle-writer-guy who doesn’t fit the image of any dad Joan has ever known. Fox and Newt form the kind of bond that can only be forged in secret clearings and treehouses, and together, they weather the storms of family trauma and trying (or not) to fit in among their peers.  More than anything, though, they learn about writing and about the power of story to help us see truth — especially when truth is different from the story that the grownups are dishing out.

Joan and Sarah call themselves the Wild Girls — thus the title — and through this new sense of self, they’re able to confront questions that always lurked in the shadows before.  This book reminds me of Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.  Women Who Run With the Wolves is non-fiction aimed at adult readers, but the spirit of the two books feels the same.

There are so many fantastic moments in The Wild Girls.  My copy is riddled with Post-It notes marking my favorite passages.  One of them comes when Azalea, a colorful character Joan meets during a writing class on the Berkeley campus, offers her a chance to try walking on stilts.

I hesitated, thinking about it. “I don’t know. I’d probably fall.”

Azalea frowned fiercely, shaking her head.  “That is the wrong attitude.  That’s a Failure of the Imagination.”  When she said that, I heard it in capital letters.  By her tone, I knew that a Failure of the Imagination was a terrible and contemptible thing.  “All it takes to walk on stilts is imagination. If you believe that you can walk on stilts, then you can.”  She looked at me.  “What do you think?”

What do I think?  I think I after reading this book, I could walk on stilts…or finish my WIP…or jump across a stream…or…or….just about anything.  It’s empowering in that way, and that makes it a perfect choice for kids, especially girls who love to read and write. 

Leepike Ridge

The used book gods were smiling on me last weekend.  Somehow,  a copy of Leepike Ridge ended up in the Barnes & Noble bargain room for three dollars.  I scarfed it up and read it in two sittings that would have been one sitting if people around here hadn’t started getting hungry on Sunday.  It was that good.

I read a review (I think it  might have been from Fuse #8, but I’m too lazy to go hunting for it right now) that made comparisons between this book and Louis Sachar’s Holes.  This kind of comparison always makes me skeptical.  “We’ll just see about that,” I thought.  I read it.  I saw. And I get it now.  This one is worthy of that comparison — and then some.

Leepike Ridge is a book for every kid (and every grown kid) who played in refrigerator boxes, caught critters in the woods, and floated down creeks on homemade rafts.  It’s a fantastic story with a grand adventure, a heroic boy, bad guys that you love to hate, a loyal dog, and a hidden treasure.  The fact that it’s beautifully written with magical, transporting descriptions is gravy.

If you know and like a boy between the ages of, let’s say 9 and 13, you really ought to pick up Leepike Ridge for him this holiday season. 

Snow Day!

When the guy on the radio made that announcement at 6:15 this morning, it was like having someone knock on the door with a batch of cookies, eight hours, a pile of books, and a warm blanket all wrapped up in a bow.

Snow Day Reading:
Me: LEEPIKE RIDGE and THE WILD GIRLS.
E: ME AND THE PUMPKIN QUEEN
J: LIFE AS WE KNEW IT

DH: Working because meteorologists don’t get snow days  :^(

Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree

This story begins Emma Jean Lazarus opens a door.  Literally, it’s the door to the girls’ bathroom at school, where she finds Colleen Pomerantz (a kind, sensitive girl and not one of the usual 7th grade criers) sobbing over a problem with a friend.  Figuratively, it’s the door we all open when we make the sometimes scary decision to reach out to another human being.  This is a big deal for all of us, but especially for Emma Jean, who’s one of those brilliant, wise-beyond-her-years kids who seems to watch everything from the sidelines.  She reminds me a lot of Lisa Yee’s Millicent Min, Girl Genius.  Because Emma Jean is brilliant at math and logic, just like her father who died two years ago, she uses logic to find solutions to her classmates’ problems, with results that are hilarious and heartwarming.

There’s a lot to love about this book.  If you’re a writer, you should read it because it’s a fantastic example of how to pull off changing points of view in third person narrative.  If you spend any time in a middle school, you’ll love it because the characters are so real.  As a middle school English teacher, I recognized these kids.  I’ve seen Emma Jean watching the other kids at lunch.   I’ve comforted Colleen when one of her friends was mad at her.  And I’ve seen them all in their specially picked outfits at that first middle school dance.  Author Lauren Tarshis has nailed middle school to a tee; she even understands one of the great secrets of school hallways: that the custodians are the real heroes.

Emma Jean Lazarus goes out on a limb in this middle grade novel (and yes, she really does fall out of a tree).  Her journey is one that manages to be funny and sad and uplifting and true, all at once.  You’ll love this book.