Book Review: Raymie Nightingale

I recently read "Raymie Nightingale" by Kate DiCamillo. Young readers looking for something to read are likely to find something written by DiCamillo, who has penned, "Because of Winn Dixie," "The Tale of Desperaux," "Flora and Ulysses," and "The Mysterious Journey of Edward Tulane," among others.

Raymie Clarke is a 10 year old with a plan to win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire to get her picture in the paper and lure her father to come back home after he ran off with a dental hygienist. She meets her competition at baton twirling lessons, Louisiana Elephante, who is an orphaned daughter of performers, and Beverly Tapinski, who plans on sabotaging the contest. The three of them, dubbed "The Three Rancheros," do a series of tasks to heal their individual wounds and bond them as friends. 

The details are the delight in this story, as each piece has a place, from a drowning dummy doll to multiplying bunny barrettes in Louisiana's hair. This imaginative journey comes to a satisfying end for each of these kids dealing with the serious issues. It is about dealing with loss, friendship, and our ever growing souls.

And the story makes me want to say, "Pfffffffft" far more often.

The Wooden Giraffe

These have been strange times, as if we are in the midst of change, and not the good kind. Doubt and anxiety grip my creative life, and I know those emotions have overshadowed my passion for the work, and for some time. My day job, which has been a blessing in keeping me busy and getting steady paychecks appears to be coming to an end. I am seeing relationships end and friends in crisis. I am watching age and its cruelty affect loved ones. And then there is Britain.

Something finally snaps, in the form of several bones in my son's wrist, four days before we were scheduled to leave for a very active vacation. With surgery pending on his wrist and a useless right arm, we have to change our plans. All the sights and activities I had carefully planned for those seven days have to change, and I don't know what it will look like. Just like I don't know what a lot of our lives are going to look like in a month, a year, five years.

Then I see this wooden giraffe, sitting quietly under a tree, and I felt better.

This giraffe was carved with remarkable detail from a rather large log or stump, the base of the giraffe revealing a glimpse of its former self. Few things have more sense of permanence than a tree. They stand in the same spot for hundreds of years. They can become a reference point for other things around it, a meeting place, an important part of memories. Yet they change all the time. They grow, the leaves change color and drop in fall, new leaves form in spring. The tree is constantly in flux.

But you may have not imagined a tree would become a giraffe. For that to happen, the tree had to face the ultimate change. It had to die. The tree lost everything, its leaves, its growth, the place where it put down roots. I can't imagine a more bleak place than that, but if that didn't happen to this tree, it never would have become a charming giraffe that made me smile today and fear change and the unknown a little bit less. Because as scary as it is to march forward into the unknown, as hard as it can be leave behind everything we thought we needed in this life, it can lead us on a path to become something unexpectedly beautiful.

Book Review: The Five Flavors of Dumb

I kicked off my summer with a rocking YA novel, "The Five Flavors of Dumb," by Antony John. The premise of the story is the reason I had to read it. High school senior Piper Vaughn finds herself as manager for a rock band. Piper is a good high school student, who steers clear of trouble, does well in her classes, has few friends, and she is deaf. Before opening page one, I am wondering how she is going to manage a rock band when she can't hear the music.

The book does not disappoint. I can't say it had me on the edge of my seat, but it was a fun read with some nods to the rich music history of Seattle, including Jimi Hendrix and the grunge era Nirvana. It also shows that you don't have to hear the music to feel its power. Now I want to listen to "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Gardening Takes Over

My vocation is that of a writer or editor, which is a dream come true, but this time of year becomes a challenge, because this is the start of the planting season. In addition to being an author, I am a Master Gardener, and there is a lot going on in that world this time of year.

Something new I am trying this year is Straw Bale Gardening. You probably heard of this, or maybe you didn't. It is a movement started by Joel Karsten that has taken off as a new way to garden that has minimal weeds and can make some plants very happy. I have quite a history of weeds in my garden, along with voles who live in the stone wall borders. I am hoping straw bale gardening is the answer for me.

This is a picture of my garden pre-planted. "They" recommend you lay landscape cloth or corrugated cardboard over the soil to smother the weeds. I had neither, so I used paper grocery bags. We have a vole problem, so we needed some hardware cloth. My spouse got a little wild about wrapping that first bale with hardware cloth. It took him two hours to do that. I am not kidding. He refuses to admit it took that long. I refused to let him continue with that, which he didn't complain. He thought the rest of them should be unprotected (because he didn't want to spend two hours on each bale and create a hazard for me working with that bale). For the rest of the bales, we rolled out the hardware cloth underneath, but over the paper bags. It is a simple, easy solution, and so far, the voles are there, but not inside the bales.

The bales need to be conditioned over the course of two weeks. You add fertilizer and water to break them down and make them habitable environments for plants. After two weeks of conditioning, you cover the top of the bales with potting mix and shove your plants in.

I have two bales conditioned and planted with strawberry plants. I shoved a mint plant into the side (with was no small feat, my bales didn't seem to "break down" that much. I heard they look nasty in the meantime, but mine look the same. But the strawberry plants have been there for a week now and haven't died. The mint shoved into the side looks amazing. Mint does well anywhere, though, right?

We'll see how this goes. I promise I am writing as well, but my creative projects shift a bit during the growing season:)

Book Review: Finding Winnie

I don't usually do reviews on picture books, but Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear, by Lindsay Mattick (author) and Sophie Blackall (illustrator) took me by surprise and deserves to be read by young and old alike, especially the old. There is a nostalgia factor going on in this book that kids may miss out on, but the story is incredible enough that they will enjoy having this read aloud without the long memories.

The set up feels very amateurish with a mother telling a son a bedtime story, and I could do without the interjections from the child, but they make sense in the end. Once the story gets rolling, it gets better and better. Just when I think it is over, there is another part of the story, as if I am not already blown away by a military bear.

I did not read what this story was about before cracking it open, and I am not going to tell you what it is about either. You can choose to read the blurb inside the front cover, or not.  The discovery is half the fun, and I will save you that, "Aha," moment.

First Drafts Are Almost Always Bad

Writers have a picture in their heads on how their story is going to look, but it doesn't always come out that way. Sometimes...maybe most of the time, it doesn't look like that for awhile. Maybe a long while. The first draft probably doesn't look like it belongs in the same room.

And that's ok.

I recently gave a talk about writing to a group of teens and tweens during which I encouraged them to write their stories, and finish their stories, even if they are very, very bad. Almost every first draft is bad, I said. Even Rick Riordan writes bad first drafts (my apologies to Rick Riordan for using him as an example. I have no idea of his writing process. I am just guessing and knew there were some fans of his in the crowd).

The first draft only needs to exist. It doesn't have to be anything but a complete story with a beginning, middle and an end. Everything else can be fixed.

I wondered if this was good advice, and what I heard from my writing cohorts is that is something they learned later in their writing life, and the realization that what you produce does not have to be good can be life changing. It allows the freedom to write badly. You can fix it later, make the prose shine, work on the elements of your story, but you can't revise a blank page.

It seems writing badly is part of the process. Even the best of the planners, the ones with outlines of every chapter, probably have a lot to work on once the work is complete. Writing a novel is a journey, and things come up, sometimes for the better, sometimes down a rambling path of who knows what. 

I had to take a dose of my own advice recently, as I am currently writing a first draft and I am in the unfortunate position where this is all I have to bring to my critique group. Accepting your own limitations to write a terrible first draft is one thing, it is terrifying to bring pieces of this pile to be critiqued. My critique partners are knowledgeable, honest and kind, and I know their notes will help a ton during revisions, which is another big process that seems to have no definitive guide.

Book Review: Inside Out & Back Again

This semi autobiographical tale by Thanhha Lai is about a young girl's experience fleeing Saigon under siege. Her father is missing, and the family makes the heartbreaking decision to leave without him.

Ha's thoughts about her home do not include the bombs and war, but of papayas and the flowers her father grew. Her new home in Alabama challenges her as she struggles to fit in and deals with teasing from classmates and distrust from neighbors.

The details in this National Book Award winning novel are terrific and appropriate for middle school readers. It is written in verse, which makes it an easy, lyrical read. The main character charms with a heart big enough to let go her only possession to make her brother feel better about losing his. I am rooting for that girl, and it sometimes hurts to see what happens to her. Yet there is always a spring of hope, like the flower seeds saved from her father's garden.