Category: Uncategorized

I have worms!

Blog readers who said “Eewww!” about my baby spiders and giant slug photos might want to skip this one.

But if you like dirt and squishy things and organic gardening, read on…

See this bin?

Two thousand redworms (Eisenia Foetida) are buried in the mulchy stuff and shredded newspaper right now, eating yesterday’s kitchen scraps. And there may actually be more than two thousand by now because I hear they reproduce quickly.

That’s right…. The Messner family basement is now a vermicomposting center. The kids helped me set up the bin last week, and the worms arrived three days ago.

Kinda cute, aren’t they?  In a wormy sort of way?

The worm bin has three tiers. You fill the bottom layer with bedding and worms and then start adding kitchen scraps. (They’re eating cucumber peels at the moment.)  When it’s full, you add the next layer and start burying your scraps in that one. The layers are separated by a screen through which the worms can crawl.  When they’re finished eating all the garbage in the bottom layer, they mosey on up to the next layer, leaving behind the worm castings that are so good for my giant pumpkin plants. You dump out the castings, refill that tier with bedding, and put it back on the top of the worm bin. Cool, huh? 

I’ll keep you posted on their progress, and if you want to learn more about vermicomposting, Mary Appelhof’s terrrific book Worms Eat My Garbage has all kinds of juicy details on the process and how it works.

Powerful Stories

When I read, I read not only as a lover of story, but also as a writer and a teacher.  Some books really speak to the writer in me…the one who loves a beautifully turned phrase, a well-placed detail.  Some books speak to the teacher…the one who loves the historical details, believes in “the truth inside the lie,” as Stephen King described fiction, and takes frequent breaks from reading to fantasize about how much fun it will be to share the text with students.  And some books…well…some books speak to the story lover and carry her away on wings of words.

Once in a while, I read a truly unique book that speaks powerfully to all three.  In the past few weeks, I’ve read advance reader copies of two of those amazing books, both by writers named Anderson, coincidentally, and both about the choices faced by slaves during the American Revolution.

CHAINS by Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story of Isabel, a slave trapped in New York City in the early days of the Revolution.  Sold to Loyalists when her former owner dies, she’s offered the chance to spy for the Patriots.  But does their talk of liberty really include her?  What about the British, who promise freedom to slaves who join their fight against the rebels? 

This book is impeccably researched in a way that not only convinced me I was getting “the real deal” as far as the historical details are concerned but also transported me straight back into the 18th century.  Some historical novels that have tackled this issue in the past  have made it overly simple, but CHAINS is different.  The historical context isn’t simplified, the Patriot cause isn’t glorified, and the characters are flawed, complex, and rich.  As a reader and as a teacher, I am in serious book-love, and I already have plans to use this novel in my 7th grade classroom next year.  CHAINS is a well-researched look at choices made by individuals during the Revolution, a coming-of-age story for a girl and a nation, and an absolute page-turner.  It’s everything that historical fiction ought to be.

While I read CHAINS in two days, it took me several weeks to get through M.T. Anderson’s THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME II: THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES.  Not because it wasn’t good.  It was amazing.  But it was a difficult book to read on a few levels.  M.T. Anderson is right up near the top on the list of the smartest people I’ve ever encountered, and his prose is dense.  The 18th century language of this series occasionally requires a dictionary.  More than that, though, Octavian’s story is difficult to read because it feels so, so raw. 

Like CHAINS, this book looks at the experience of slaves in the American Revolution through the eyes of an individual – in this case, Octavian Nothing, who grew up as the subject of scientific and philosophical experiments by a group of elite Boston men and in this latest volume, joins Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment to fight the Rebels.  Octavian’s life and his choices are based on the experiences of many slaves during this time period.  Anderson tells his story with a detachment that is somehow analytical and yet deeply personal and emotional all at once.  It’s an amazing, amazing book.   And I especially love the way it ends – with an author’s note that challenges us to consider not only the past but the present.

If you have any interest at all in American history, read both of these books when they come out this fall.  You’ll be transported by the masterful storytelling.  You’ll come away with a deeper sense of our history as a nation — for better or for worse. And you’ll be thinking abut Isabel and Octavian for a long, long time.

Happy book news!


best tracker


I’ve been sitting on a secret for a while…but the cat is out of the bag at Publishers Marketplace today.

 
July 28, 2008
   
  Children’s:
Middle grade  		 
Kate Messner’s untitled book about a 12-year-old girl who has until the end of the week to finish her huge 7th grade leaf project, but she faces comic catastrophes (and real drama) at every turn to Walker Children’s, for publication in Fall 2009, by Jennifer Laughran at Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
 

 
I *heart* my new editor at Walker and am so excited to be working with her. 

A little background, for those interested in nitty-gritty writing details…

Editorial Letters

There’s an interesting thread over at Verla Kay’s discussion boards for children’s writers and illustrators right now.  It’s about the editorial letter — the letter that shows up from your editor a few weeks or months after your book has been sold.  Editorial letters can be anywhere from a few lines to many pages, and they talk about what your editor would like to see in revisions before your book goes to copy editing.

I’m in the middle of two revisions with two different editors right now, and I completely understand the feeling of being overwhelmed (especially when someone is, you know, expecting to see a new draft by a certain date – yikes!).  With both, I found that I read the editorial letter and then left it on a corner of my desk for a few days, stealing glances at it like it was some wild animal that had gotten into the house that I wasn’t sure how to deal with.  Kind of like the time I opened our garage door and found a raccoon up on the shelf next to the sidewalk chalk, gnawing on a corn cob from the garbage and staring at me with red alien eyes. I crept away quietly and went inside to think about it for a while. 

The raccoon wandered away on its own.  My editorial letters don’t do that, though, so it helps me a lot to take a letter and turn it into a very simple, bulleted, to-do list on a single sheet of paper.  That allows me to sit down and pick ONE JOB each night, crossing it off when I’m done. It makes the whole thing feel much more manageable.  Right now, my to-do list looks like this:

New beginning – add classroom scene
Make time frame clear
VG – change so she’s not new at school
KB – add character trait
Annie- develop idea of 2 worlds
Add conversation w/ teacher
Add scene w/ James
More scenes w/ Sparky
New ending

Does anyone else have tips/tricks/words of wisdom for digging into a revision after the editorial letter arrives?

Sample hardtack at your own risk

I visited with a great group of kids at the South Burlington Community Library today — a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon.  I read from Spitfire as well as my upcoming release, Champlain and the Silent One.  We imagined ourselves as French and Native fur traders in the early 17th century, and we worked our way through an 18th century sailor’s haversack to see what kinds of things they carried during the Battle of Valcour Island in the American Revolution.

As part of my Spitfire presentation, I often pass out samples of hardtack so kids can see what kinds of rations the sailors had in the weeks leading up to battle.  I always pass the basket around with a warning….  “Be careful not to bite down quickly because it’s really, really hard.”

Well, today it finally happened.  If you look closely at the right side of Alaina’s mouth, you can see the hole where her tooth used to be before she sampled my hardtack.

Actually, the tooth fell out a little while after the presentation.  Alaina and her mom drove back to the library to show me.  She even let me take her picture so she can be the “be-careful-eating-hardtack” poster girl forever more.  Thankfully, the tooth was already very loose before today’s author visit, so I don’t think there will be legal action.

Thanks to librarian Marje Von Ohlsen for inviting me today, to Alaina for being such a good sport, and to all the South Burlington kids and parents who made my rainy Thursday afternoon so much fun.

Thanks!!

Thank you SO much for chiming in with opinions and ideas for title help on what will now be known as “that leaf collection book” until there’s a final title.
I just pressed the send button to fire off my completed revisions to WNE, along with all of the wonderful title ideas and feedback you gave me.  Yet another reason to love the LJ community – thanks!

Title help? Pleeeeaase?

This post is friends-locked because asking for help involves spilling some beans that aren’t really supposed to be spilled just yet.

I have this MG novel.  It used to be called SWINGER OF BIRCHES, and then it was called MAPLE GIRL.  I revised it and revised it and revised it.  And then…a wonderful but still nameless editor bought my book, and it’s going to be a Fall 2009 release, so I’ve been revising and revising and revising some more.  And one of the revisions involves brainstorming a new title.

That’s why Wonderful Nameless Editor (hereafter referred to as WNE) gave me the okay to post some details here to get ideas.

So…if you’re still reading, I hope it’s because you’re a brilliant-title-generating kind of person.   Here’s the essence of the story…

12-year-old Gianna Zales can handle her grandmother’s tendency to leave false teeth in the refrigerator.  She can handle a little brother who thinks he’s a member of the paparazzi and a stand-up comic.  She can even handle a health-food nut mother who equates Oreos with arsenic.  But her 7th grade leaf collection might just be the end of her. 

It’s a monster project — 25 leaves, collected, identified, and organized by Friday.  If Gianna can’t get it done on time, she’ll miss cross country sectionals, and her alternate — a girl who wears makeup and princess shirts to track practice — gets to go in her place. But no matter how hard Gianna tries to work on the project, comic catastrophes face her at every turn, and to make matters worse, her beloved Nonna is showing signs of Alzheimer’s Disease more serious than dentures in the fridge.

Other tidbits —

    Gianna has trouble paying attention to things. Art  (painting, drawing with bright colored pencils, and creating collages) focuses her. So does running through her home town in Vermont.

   Gianna and her best friend Zig play “The Leaf Game,” where they decide what kind of tree people would be if they were trees.  Zig is an oak.  Gianna is a sugar maple because she’s bright and fluttery.

   The book has threads of Robert Frost woven through it, particularly the poem “Swinger of Birches.”

Thoughts on titles from my agent and WNE…

    The title should include leaves and/or fall somehow, since it’s set in Vermont in October and is a Fall release.
    Even though it sounds kind of emotional, the book is really funny and quirky, and it would be great if the title captured that.
    It can’t be sappy.  (No pun intended)

Here are some titles that WNE and I have tossed around…

25 LEAVES BY FRIDAY
CATCH A FALLING LEAF
THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z
PICASSO, PAPARAZZI, AND 25 LEAVES
THE FINE ART OF CATCHING LEAVES
GIANNA Z NEEDS 25 LEAVES BY FRIDAY

My agent also suggested GIANNA AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD TITLE, but she was kidding.  I think.

So…

Do you like any of those titles?  Do MG readers who live with you like any of them?

Do you have other ideas for titles?

Thanks in advance for any help!  WNE and I will be forever grateful for any ideas you share.

I’m headed back to my revision nook (I don’t have a whole cave) until the kids get home from their respective dance/soccer camps.

Rainy Sunday Photo Memories

Waking up in my own bed today, listening to the rain on the roof was absolute heaven.  Especially since Friday night involved sleeping three hours on an airplane and another two hours on the floor at the  Cleveland airport. Today will be a day of unpacking from our trip to the Pacific Northwest, laundry, grocery shopping, and reliving the trip through our photos.  We put over a thousand miles on the rental car and managed to hit the top spots on everyone’s wish list for sights…

Mount St. Helens from the Johnston Ridge Observatory

I was ten when Mount St. Helens erupted and remember saving my money for weeks to buy a big book about the eruption at our local bookstore. The photos in the book were great; in person, the mountain is absolutely spectacular.


If you stand amid these trees very quietly and listen, you can hear elk bugling.

The Quinault Rainforest is a mossy, magical place with enormous spruce and maple trees and fabulous giant slugs.


(E just walked into the room and said, “Hey! What’s my hand doing on your blog?”)

From the rainforest, we headed to Pacific Beach State Park.

But my favorite experience of the trip was our hike from the Paradise Visitor Center at Mount Rainier National Park.  On the way there, I told the kids, “We might even be able to hike on a little snow if we climb high enough.”   It was the understatement of the trip.  Here’s the family, at the beginning of our 2.5 mile hike…

With record snowfall this year, the meadows and trails were still under 4-8 feet of snow.  On the trail to Glacier Vista, though, we still managed to find some wildflowers emerging where the snow had melted.

It took us over an hour to climb to this viewpoint.  Getting down was much faster.

Who knew that sledding without a sled could be so much fun?

Notes from the Road

1. Who knew that ALL of the hiking trails at Paradise in Mount Rainier National Park are still under 4-8 feet of snow?  It made for a stunning and fabulously soggy adventure. (Watch for photos of me sliding down a snowy cliff on my bottom when I get home.)

2. On the way to Mount Rainier, we saw a snack bar that looked like a covered wagon, advertising “Malibu Barbie Latte – $3.95.”  We didn’t stop, but what could this be?

3. Thank you for the Portland suggestions!  The original Powells Books is truly awesome.

4.  So is the gelato shop across the street.  Chocolate-coffee – Mmmmm…..

5.. We’re off to the Quinault Rainforest when the kids wake up this morning.  Hoping to see mossy wonderlands and maybe an elk or two…

Bliss

Shhh…. The kids are still in bed, sleeping off jet leg from our trip out to Olympia, Washington.  I worked on my MG novel revisions the whole plane ride here, and I’m this close (I’m holding up two fingers that are just millimeters apart) to finishing.

I’m having coffee with marshmallow mocha creamer, sitting at the kitchen table in just about the most charming little rental house in the universe. There’s a dartboard on the porch, golden raspberries in the garden, and a second growth cedar forest out back.  Also a piano and tambourines and bongo drums in the living room.  It was fabulously noisy and fun here last night.

When the kids get up, we’re getting in the car to go hiking at Mount Rainier. We’re still making plans for the rest of the week, but the Hoh Rainforest, Mount St. Helens, and a trip to Portland are all possibilities. We didn’t do much research on Portland.  Powells would definitely be on the agenda.  Does anyone have other suggestions if we go?