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Book Club Nirvana!
Our middle school faculty & staff book club choice for May was The Double Bind by Vermont author Chris Bohjalian. He was gracious enough to meet with our group in Burlington tonight to talk about the book and his writing process.  Life would be perfect if every time you finished reading an incredible novel, you could sit down with the author and talk with him about his research, revisions, and thoughts while writing the book.  (Chris is the literary-looking guy in the middle.)

If you haven’t read The Double Bind, it’s a literary psychological thriller — the kind of book where you make prediction after prediction and smile smugly to yourself, only to fall on the floor when you find out the real deal.  As soon as I finished reading, I was compelled to look back at about five different parts of the book. 

It was fabulous to talk with Chris about our thoughts and connections with his novel — and even greater to hear how this amazing book came to life.  Chris told us about the eight drafts and four different points of view that he worked through before putting this book to bed.  It was worth every minute of revision. 

We’re planning our next field trip — to hear Chris read from his current work-in-progress at the Burlington Book Festival on September 15th.  (I’m reading from my middle grades historical novel Spitfire  and presenting a families workshop the next day as part of the children’s strand of the festival, and I still can’t quite get over the fact that my name will be on the same  program!) 

On top of his gift for writing, Chris is one of the most interesting, down-to-earth, and genuine people I’ve ever met.   What a terrific night.  I’m convinced the world would be a happier, more peaceful place if we’d all sit around and talk about books more often. 

Today was a perfect hiking day in the Adirondacks.  Nice and cool.  No bugs yet. And not too muddy.  We climbed Rattlesnake Mountain, in Willsboro — one of our favorites because the summit has a great view of Lake Champlain.  The woods are so new right now, full of baby plants and wildflowers that only last a couple weeks.  What a gift to have spent time with them today.

I love these tiny fern plants.  They remind me of newborn babies — all alien-looking and new.



These pictures just captures the spirit of the Adirondacks — flowers growing on a rock! 

We saw these gorgeous dark red Trillium plants all over.

There were a couple other cars at the trailhead, but we ended up having the summit to ourselves.

Check out the colors in these clouds!

On a hike around the summit, we found another rocky clearing where someone had created a garden of rock sculptures.  It reminded me of a trip my husband and I took to Vancouver, BC.  When we were biking around Stanley Park, we turned a corner and saw an incredible inuksuk (We didn’t know what it was called at the time; we thought it was just a big fancy pile of rocks.)  It’s an Inuit tradition used as a directional marker.  Sometimes today, we were told, they ‘re built for spiritual reasons, too, to remember and honor people. 

Cool, huh?  We added a few stones to these and left them to surprise another group of hikers.

Missing horn still missing.

Horns on roof still all gunky.

Babysitter pulled out of the driveway yesterday, stopped, rolled down her car window and and said, “Umm… Are those horns on your roof?”  She thought maybe they were some sort of primitive good luck charm.

If you drive by my house any time soon, you may notice that there are cow horns on my roof.  It’s okay. I know about them.  They’re not some rural prank or satanic threat. I put them there.

I’m preparing a school presentation for my MG historical novel Spitfire, which is set during the American Revolution.  The main character carries her father’s powder horn throughout the story. It’s etched with his drawings and maps and is an important symbol in the book, so I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I made a real powder horn to show kids?”  I mentioned this to the life science teacher at my school, who also raises heifers in her spare time.  Last week, she showed up at my classroom door with a bag of bloody (and still quite hairy) cow horns that she had just removed from some of “her girls.”  (I thought only bulls had horns, but it turns out that’s not true.)  She put them in my little refrigerator (“Don’t worry, they’re triple bagged,” she said.) until I could take them home to boil them, which she thought would probably take care of all the gunk still inside.

I boiled them in a big pot on my grill burner for two hours, but the gunk showed no signs of releasing its grip on my horns.  Thank God for online reenactor groups, because from their bulletin boards, I learned that boiling was not the answer.  I needed to leave the horns outside for several weeks, maybe months, until insects and things ate away the gunk so that I could remove the core (a bit of bone inside the actual horn) and get to work making my powder horn.  So I left my four horns outside in my back yard and went in to put the kids to bed.

The next morning, there were only two horns left.  I’m terribly worried that one of the older women in my neighborhood is going to have a coronary when she sees her dog chewing something and says, “What’s that you have, Buddy?” only to find a bloody cow horn with sinister looking black hair all around it.  But wait – there’s more. 

That morning, I put the remaining horns on the roof (another suggestion from the online reenactors, to prevent animals from carrying them off…. If only I’d read that post the first time.).  The next day, one of the missing horns appeared on my back deck.  No one knows who or what decided to return it.  I added it to the group on the roof, which seem to be doing just fine now.  My husband was putting away clothes in the bedroom when I climbed out the window to put the third one out there.  He just shook his head, probably wondering why he didn’t marry that nice Mary Beth who baked such good cookies. 
Stay tuned.  I’ll let you know how the powder horns are coming along and if the fourth one ever shows up.

I’m a huge believer in positive peer pressure, so joining

with the Summer Shape-up was just what I needed to get moving on my current middle grades work in progress.  It’s working wonders.  I’ve written just over 11,000 words in the past week.  What a great idea and a great gift to fellow writers!  Thanks!

Working has made me a little less impatient for the release my MG historical novel, Spitfire, this fall.  The last time I hated waiting this much was when I was a week overdue for the birth of my daughter.  On a happy note, though, Art Cohn from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum sent me a lovely note about the book’s release.  LCMM does an amazing job promoting Lake Champlain heritage and reaches out to school groups with the most lively, innovative museum programs I’ve ever seen.  Museum educators there were a huge help when I was researching Spitfire.  I’m on my own now with the waiting, though…

My favorite place to write!

   I’m starting my writing night late again because of the gorgeous weather.  Lake Champlain is incredibly high, so much so that a lovely, marshy state park near my house is almost flooded.  On the plus side, it made for great wildlife viewing on an impromptu photo-walk with the kids this evening.  We watched two juvenile muskrats (I think they were muskrats. I kept listening for them to make those high-pitched noises from the end of that song “Muskrat Love,” but it never happened, so I’m unsure…) and a beautiful osprey.

Lots on my calendar right now….  I’m excited about the New England SCBWI Conference next weekend and looking forward to meeting some writing friends there, as well as some folks whose work I’ve admired but haven’t met yet.  And, I just penciled in the Burlington Book Festival for September 16th – the day set aside for Children’s Literature.  It’s an amazing event that does so much to promote literacy in the Champlain Valley.  I’ll be doing a presentation and workshop for kids and families, based on my book Spitfire (North Country Books, September 2007).  If you live nearby, you should check it out. (Even if you don’t live nearby, it’s a great time to visit Vermont!)

The Double Bind
Chris Bohjalian

Water for Elephants
Sarah Gruen

Rules
Cynthia Lord

Crossing the Wire
Will Hobbs

Bird by Bird (which should be on EVERY writer’s nightstand)
Anne Lamott

Letters in the Attic
Binnie Shimko

The Weather Makers
Tim Flannery

I know there have been other signs of spring….  Robins and purple crocus flowers and even a few warm days here and there. But this is the real deal.

               

Rasputin the evil groundhog showed up on my deck today.  He burrows underneath (and in fact lives down there all winter, I think) until he decides I’ve probably started planting in my garden.  Then he pokes up that pointy little nose and sniffs out whatever succulent shoots can can scarf up while no one is watching.  He’s early this time; nothing is in the ground yet.  Last year he nipped off every single broccoli plant except one.  There was just that single lonely head of broccoli when the plant grew up, staring around wondering why none of its friends made it to adulthood. 

I just finished Cynthia Lord’s book Rules (

) , and I can’t say I’ve read too many books that are more deserving of the Newberry Honor.  What a beautifully crafted book.  It’s amazing and fresh to read an author whose voice is so honest and just plain real. 

Rules is about a girl whose eight-year-old brother is autistic.  He runs the family, in a sense — something that parents and siblings of autistic children understand all too well.  My niece Emily wrote an essay about her autistic younger brother Danny recently. “Welcome to the Jungle” was her theme, and she, too, understood that her family was subject to a certain set of rules due to Danny’s disability.  In Cynthia Lord’s story, the main character, Catherine, makes rules to help her brother through life.  “No taking off your pants in public” may sound strange to those of us who have never lived with an autistic child, but I know that Emily would nod her head knowingly at this one.

At the same time Catherine (Cat) is dealing with the struggles of babysitting her brother, she gets to know another boy who attends the same clinic for therapy.  Jason is in a wheelchair and can’t speak, but the two develop a relationship through the communication cards to which he points to express his thoughts.  Cat ends up crafting more cards for him — brighter ones with pictures and snazzier language.

Beyond the issue of autism, Cat has to deal with the same feelings and angst that all middle school kids face:  Am I going to make friends?  Do I fit in?  This book is sweet and funny and clever (I love the references to Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad).  As a teacher, I kept imagining all the great activities that kids would enjoy to go along with the text.  I’m dying to make communication cards of my own and try talking without my voice for a day.  What an interesting concept.  And what a great book. Thanks, Cynthia!