Marcia Thornton Jones's Blog, page 109

All Hail Barbara O'Connor

When I first started chasing the dream of becoming a published author of children's books, I did it quietly -- with books, and reading, and research, as is the usual m.o. for an introverted person like me. And there was one middle grade author I returned to again and again -- both through her work and through her blog/online presence: Barbara O'Connor.

To me, Barbara O'Connor writes the epitome of middle grade literature. Her books hit the sweet spot of flavor and spunk and heart -- and writing done right. Plus: dogs! Lots of dogs. :) How these books have not garnered every critical starred review and award known to man, I do not know (yes, they are sometimes recognized, but not nearly enough!) .... though they have been widely recognized and cherished by readers. Kids LOVE Barbara's books. And I do, too!

As I watched Barbara, from my little writing desk in Alabama, I learned. I particularly remember the inspiration and encouragement I got from reading her year-end blog posts found at Greetings from Nowhere (name after a book that if you haven't read yet, please go fix that RIGHT NOW). Here's her year-end musings for 2007 -- which was probably the first year I read Barb's blog, because it's the year she started her blog... and the year I landed an agent and sold my first book. (!)

Go ahead, read it. I'll wait right here...

Isn't that brilliant? So funny and honest -- just like Barb's books. And it inspired me. It helped me know what was possible. It encouraged me to keep going. THANK YOU, BARB!

Now I am off to read WONDERLAND, which is waiting so patiently on my nightstand...

 ------
Irene Latham is an Alabama author of more than a dozen current and forthcoming poetry, fiction and picture books for children and adults, including Leaving Gee's Bend, 2011 ALLA Children's Book of the Year and Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship (with Charles Waters). Winner of the 2016 ILA Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, she also serves as poetry editor for the Birmingham Arts Journal. 

GIRLS, STEM AND GEORGE JONES' RHINESTONES (GUEST POST BY CARA BARTEK)

George Jones, rhinestone studded and hair like a fresh dollop of sour cream, said it best: “I’ve had choices since the day that I was born.” While most of us might correctly believe the Possum was referring to his less than private relationship with the whiskey bottle, a keener observer will notice how subtle and stirring those lyrics actually are. Our lives are a cluster of choices. Everything we are and what we experience is connected to and dictated by choice. 
Nearly everyone who has survived being struck by lightning tells how their lives flashed before their eyes. Weddings, graduations, the birth of children, homes, jobs, vacations, lovers, and friends. All of these things come about as a result of choice: choices made by you and by others. To distill life is to reveal the crossroads we stand at every moment of every day.
Just because children are the smaller and non-voting members of the human race does not mean their choices have any less impact on their lives. Put simply, the choices kids make today stand to impact their lives and the paths they will take as they grow older. 
Girls and STEM is a hot topic now. Especially for middle school-ers during those very difficult in-between years. These are the years when “the crud” can creep in … when STEM subjects become increasingly difficult, when peers start to pressure, when social norms and expectations for what is appropriate for “female-kind” begin to form. All of these factors come together to create very difficult choices for girls.
The STEM Choice
I had a friend just the other day ask if I was trying to make everyone into a “nerdy scientist”. So I responded, “Hey! I’m just trying to make science happen. And rock these amazing yellow taco socks I’m wearing.” Okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way. Maybe my friend had a point. While making everyone into a “nerdy scientist” certainly seems like a perfect world to me, I can understand her perspective.
She was recognizing the fact that not everyone, including not all girls, is going to be made for science. She revealed to me that STEM can be about preference, what we like and what we don’t like. Preference drives what we are attracted to. Much like the charge of an atom! We are naturally drawn to the things that we like and will over time become more skilled in those areas. So why encourage STEM for all girls?
As old George Jones would probably say, “It’s about the choice”. The issue with STEM and girls is not about the preference of science versus math versus history versus reading. The issue is the choice.Very often as teachers, parents, and people who love those short people who don’t vote, we spend time developing their preferences. We make slime, we cut up frogs, we go to museums, and aquariums, and conservatories, and generally work our tails off ensuring interests are nourished and fed. Hey, I’m not knocking this. What I am saying is that there is a ceiling on preference. We all have our hardwired likes and dislikes. These things are dictated by deeply embedded components of the human body, like our DNA and brains and guts. Choice is another matter.
Choices are made, but their very nature is created by our greater world. In my experience in the STEM world, there were far fewer women in my field, there were far fewer female leaders, maternity leave was pretty stinky, and I often felt alone. My choices were all colored by these facts.With my series, Serafina Loves Science!, I have chosen to work at the level of the little girls to expand choice. I have attempted to create stories about a little girl who is “making nerdy happen”. Serafina goes about her everyday life with a singular passion: science! She uses theory and construct and noxious chemicals to navigate her own life.
About Serafina Loves Science! The series is middle grade fiction that focuses on an eleven-year-old girl named Serafina Sterling. Serafina is just like all other eleven-year-olds who have to deal with issues like annoying older brothers, cliques at school, and parents who restrict her use of noxious chemicals. Serafina is trying to figure it out, much like all of her friends. But she has a little secret… Serafina loves science! Her passion for all things scientific helps her make new friends and figure the old ones out, understand her family, invent new devices for space travel, and appreciate the basic principles of the universe.
About me: I live in Texas with my husband and two daughters. The Serafina Loves Science! series was inspired in part by my own career path. The other part of my inspiration is my two little girls. I hope to make this world a more equitable and opportune place for my daughters one silly story at a time!
You can find me at:
www.CaraBartek.com
www.facebook.com/CaraBartekAuthor
www.instagram.com/carabartek
https://twitter.com/CaraBartek

A Villain After My Own Heart

by Charlotte Bennardo

Ah, villains. We love to hate them. Here is my list of the 5 best villains: (due to copyright issues, I can't put certain pics in...)

1. Hannibal Lector. I mean, if you look at him the wrong way, you're the main meal. And he's so smart you have no hopes of outwitting him. The scariest part? There could be people like that, serial killers, out there...

2. Severus Snape. Until the last book, he was the villain. And nobody was cheering in his corner. He was mean to Harry! He still has to be considered a villain, but a 'restored to humanity' one.

3. That creature from the movie Aliens.  Geez, I had nightmares for years! Freddy Krueger and Jason could take creep lessons from this pure evil character. *shivers

4. The unseen spirit in the Paranormal movies. I mean, you can't see it coming for you, dragging you down the hall! Maybe even the Alien would be scared.

5.  Dracula, played by Frank Langella. Yes, he's a vampire, but he's alluring, pulling you in until it's too late. Any villain can be horrific and no way would you be tempted to do anything for him, except stake him. In this movie version (1975!) he's handsome and charming; when he turns those big brown eyes on his victim, and recites poetry about lonely wolves singing in the night... Who could resist?

There are so many villains; some we want forever gone, some we take through our childhood, and some who are a little too close to real... Who scares you the most?

Photo by Toni Cuenca from Pexels

Writing in Silence?

I wish I could find the quotation and who said it, but of course, now that I’m looking for it, I can’t. But it was something to the effect of, “When I write, I don’t want anyone else in the room. Not even me.” And to that I say, PREACH!
You hear a lot about how professional writers don’t wait for inspiration, how they write for a certain number of hours every day, no matter what. Once, an accomplished writer recommended to a group of us budding writers that we get up early in the morning and “just be in the silence” when we write. I think my children were still little then, and I wondered, “Silence? What is this ‘silence’ of which you speak?”
But indeed, silence is golden. Especially for writers. I grab that silence whenever I can.
You see, I require a house devoid of distractions when I’m writing. Sure, I’ve seen people with laptops at coffee houses, supposedly working on the Great American Novel. Maybe they’re killing it, but how? How can anyone hear a character’s voice when other voices are drowning him out? How can you believe you’re in another place when you can hear your husband and kids in the next room?
Oh, I’m not saying this is the way to do it. My productivity suffers as a result of this need for silence. If only I could learn to drown out distractions, I could accomplish a lot more every day.
I’ve tried earplugs. They help some. But I’ve decided that plugs in the ears of a writer are like phones in the hands of mothers with young children: the second you use them, everyone suddenly wants your attention. No sooner do I put my earplugs in than someone HAS to ask me a question RIGHT THEN.
So I generally just wait until the kids are at school and my husband is at work, and then I get to work myself.
Of course, even when the house is empty, my kitchen office isn’t exactly distraction free. It always seems that the second I really get into a story, the dryer buzzes, the dog whines, the oven timer beeps, the mailman knocks at the door, and someone calls or texts.
Sometimes I dream of those fabled lake houses or cabins in the woods where novelists go for a week or a month to work on a manuscript. I don’t personally know any novelists wealthy enough to afford such a getaway. Maybe if they had a getaway and could write the novel in such wonderful, sustained peace and quiet, they’d make enough money to afford the cabin or the lake house?
Ah, the catch-22s of writing….

WHEN FRIENDS ARE VILLAINS (HOLLY SCHINDLER)

I was a big Judy Blume fan growing up. Big. Huge. To a great extent, THE PAIN AND THE GREAT ONE was the book that made me a reader. But I think JUST AS LONG AS WE'RE TOGETHER may have made the biggest impact.

This is the cover I had. I owned my copy until it disintegrated.Basically, it's about losing your best friend to someone else. At least, that's how I remember it. I was going through something similar at the time, and the book hurt and it comforted me all at the same time.
We've talked a lot about making villains real this month. I think the most painful, cruelest villains--the villains who can do the most damage--are the people your main character loves. 
The friend who does you wrong (or dumps you or ghosts you, etc.) is exactly the character who can rip your protagonist in two. It's a character your protagonist would know thoroughly--and would never depict as some two-dimensional bad guy. It's also the last person on earth the protagonist wants to think of as a villain. 
But isn't that just like real life? How many of your own personal villains were once your favorite people on the planet?

What does it mean to be a “Creative Professional?” Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun

What does the combination of the  words “Creative Professional” mean to you writers and artists everywhere? What is the synthesis of creativity and professional? First thought typically—a professional is someone who makes money from her work. So, then the immediate question is…well, how much money? Am I a professional if I earn $5,000 for a literary novel? $100,000 for a best seller? A copy of the printed poetry journal for a poem? Money is one of the bottom lines of value in our culture.

However, some writers who win National Book Awards, especially in poetry, never make much money at all from their work. They certainly don’t earn their living from it, but likely from adjunct teaching or speaking. Perhaps then there’s a link between being a creative professional and reputation/credibility?
 Is seriousness a more useful word? Emily Dickinson was certainly serious about the poetry she threw in a drawer, but she certainly didn't make money from it. Does professional imply seriousness about making your work? One of the original uses of the word professional was for religious people who “professed” their vows. (I don’t think they do that for money!) A professional religious person, then, is a nun or monk. Perhaps creative professional might turn more toward ideas of commitment, dedication, or even consecration? 
Ultimately, I think all creative professionals will benefit from thinking through their own definition of this. For me the bottom line for calling myself a creative professional is not money or reputation. You can be a” serious artist” without making a cent or having any reputation at all. Dedication and consecration are more operative words for me. But, ultimately being a creative professional means somehow sharing my art, whether a book, sculpture, or poem, with the world. 

Everybody's Had a Teacher Like "Old Hawk"

For this month's topic about favorite villains, I've decided to blog about a villain in one of my own middle grade books.  In my novel, Always, Abigail , the main character finds herself in a homeroom without her two best friends, which makes her first year of middle school seem somewhat doomed from the very beginning; but worse than that, her homeroom teacher is Miss Henrick aka "Old Hawk."

Here's an excerpt that will give you a glimpse of the "villain" she is:

Three Reasons She's Called "Hendrick-the-Horrible-Hundred-Year-Old Hawk"
1. She's horrible. You just have to know her; no explanation needed.
2. She's got to be at least one hundred years old by now.  (My mom had her when she was in sixth grade.)
3. She sees EVERYTHING that goes on - that's why she's called the Hawk.  She doesn't just have eyes in the back of her head.  She's got eyes in the hallway and on the playground.  No one knows how she does it.

Abigail goes on to describe her as the toughest, strictest teacher in the whole school.  But those are the very reasons Abigail's mom says that she'll come to appreciate Ms. Hendrick someday.


Old Hawk is one my favorite villains because I think everyone, young and old, can remember having a teacher like Old Hawk.  The difference between the young and old here is that usually as we grow into adulthood, we really do come to appreciate those teachers we had who seemed to be strict just for the sake of being strict.  As we mature, we realize all that strictness was there for a reason, and we end up appreciating them.  Why?  Because those strict, teachers, with those horrible nicknames, not only teach us things about math and reading and science, but they also teach us things about life.  Things that end up helping us to be better people than we would've have been had we not had them for a teacher.

So, this blog post is dedicated to those teachers.  The ones who may not have always been our favorite teacher while we were in their classes.  Ones who, maybe in some ways, were even seen as villains, but who, through their villainous strictness, taught us life lessons that just might make all the difference in the world.

Here's to all the Old Hawks we all know and, hopefully, have come to love,
Nancy  

Best Monsters and Villains and How it Inspires a Hero

It’s true. I enjoy a good villain.

Lord Voldemort. The Wicked Queen.

Loki.

A haunted house.

The very best villains and monsters, in my opinion, are those that have a rich backstory. A thick history of what led them to their evil ways and devious deeds. Characteristics that make them human, sympathetic, even relatable.

With Lord Voldemort, we see a childhood of abandonment, abuse, loss and grief. The inability to fit in, make friends and identify with a family. These issues are paralleled in the series hero, Harry Potter. Despite the comparisons, the two make very different choices in life. Choices which result in building of character, love, compassion and family for one – and ultimate defeat for the other.

Loki also found himself at a crisis of identity when he realizes his father is not his biological father, his brother, not his biological brother. He feels inferior, and turns to anarchy to make up for his anger and hurt.

Haunted houses, like Hill House or the hotel in The Shining, are malevolent forces, basically mysteries that we cannot solve or even pinpoint. We only know they are working against our heroes in the story, that something terrible must have happened many years ago within those walls.

I think it is human nature to want to know what makes a person or entity go bad. What I write, especially in middle grade fiction, includes villains like crooks or misbehaving house-pets. A cat who feels mistreated and lashes out, a rat who has felt ostracized and unloved so he wreaks havoc, a pack of dogs who enjoy terrorizing the smaller of the food chain for fun and power. It is up to the heroes in my novels to deal and cope with these villains, not just in the opposing forces of animals they meet, but also that of general evil in the world. The events we cannot control. Sickness, job loss, changes in a community or in a family situation.

I think if readers, especially young readers, can see how a hero in a novel deals with wrongdoing and evil, they can apply it to their own lives. And, in turn, see how they themselves can be the hero in their own life. They may not all be Harry Potter, or Ace the Cat, but they are the main characters in their very own life story. If they see their favorite characters succeed, I think it inspires them to also aim for that goal. Stories have power. Stories have relation.

Stories are human.

Even monsters.

Happy Reading!

Antagonists as Protagonists by Claudia Mills

One very small moment in my third-grade year became a life-long touchstone for me.

I sang in our church's Crusader Choir, and a girl from another town named Claire Hatfield sat next to me each week at choir practice and shared my hymnal. One day, the thought suddenly popped into my head that while, to me, Claire Hatfield was just the girl who shared my hymnal in choir, to Claire Hatfield, I was just the girl who shared her hymnal in choir. In the same way that she was a bit player in the story of my life, I was a bit player in her life story, too.

The same is true, I've come to think, of protagonists and antagonists, both in fiction and in life. The antagonist in one character's story is the protagonist in the same story, told now from their point of view.

In my West Creek Middle School series, published much earlier in my career, each of the five books in the series features a different viewpoint character. And the two final books in the series - Alex Ryan, Stop That! and Makeovers by Marcia - star kids who weren't, well, so kind or empathetic to Ethan in Losers, Inc., or Julius in You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman, or Lizzie, in Lizzie at Last. But when I gave Alex and Marcia their turn in the spotlight, I could see, for the first time, the hurts in their own hearts that led them to act as they had. I ended up loving them just as much as I had loved the characters they treated badly.

So many of the books that most broke my heart as a reader portray kids who act badly out of their own pain: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson, There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar, and the achingly beautiful Home from Far by Jean Little. Thanks to the artistic skill of Paterson, Sachar, and Little, the worse the characters act, the more we ache for them.

Down deep I don't believe in the existence of villains or monsters, at least not child villains or child monsters. Children can act thoughtlessly. Children can act cruelly. But inside each antagonistic child is a child who yearns to be the star of his or her own story. How fortunate we are as authors that these stories are given to us to tell.

Historical Fiction and All That Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff

Especially during these times when facts can be alternative and history can be revised, the ongoing argument on what is historical fiction, how and why it is relevant, and by extension why history is important, seems perplexing. As a writer, one of the most stinging rejections that I get too many times is that, despite an interesting plot and engaging characters, “historical fiction is a hard sell.”

History often carries the stigma of being dry and irrelevant, says Y.S. Lee (The Agency 1: Spy in the House, 2010), but “the freedom of fiction is one way of exploring a subject that may seem intimating or remote. After all, it’s a kind of fantasy, a parallel world in which people act with recognizable human impulses and ideals but abide by very different rules.”

The genre of historical fiction is very broad, one that Mary Burns (1995) labels a “hybrid and a shape-shifter,” combining history with fiction. Or, as Trevor Cairney (2009) suggests, historical fiction is where “literature meets history.” Avi, an award-winning master of the genre, offers that some historical fiction stays close to the known facts, while others are little more than costume drama. “Ultimately, what is most important is the story, and the characters.” Facts, according to Avi, do not make a story. “Believable people do…Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth less a stranger.”

Historical fiction defies easy explanation. The controversy is grounded in conveying the ‘truth’ of history. Other popular genres have distinct rules that govern basic premises. Dystopian fiction, for example, features a futuristic universe in which the illusion of a perfect society is maintained through corporate, technologic, or totalitarian control. Using an exaggerate worse-case scenario, the dystopian story becomes a commentary about social norms and trends.

Many condemn the blending of invention with well-known and accepted facts, and consider the historical fiction genre a betrayal. Perhaps a better way to understand historical fiction is to take a lesson from The Doctor. Yes, that Doctor: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect…but actually, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.”

It seems to me the same thing can be said of historical fiction.
In historical fiction, setting is usually considered ‘historical’ if it is at fifty or more years in the past. As such, the author writes from research rather than personal experience. But as an old turnip, my personal history dates back to the years prior to Korean War. The Civil Rights Movement, the Freedom Riders, the Bay of Pigs, the JFK Assassination, the Landing on the Moon, and the first Dr. Who episode are not some fixed points in history but a function of my experience. Yet, for these last generations, these are often just dates in a textbook. And the plot is a linear expression that begins on a certain date. The award-winning book, The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis (1995), depicting the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing of 1963, is often listed as historical fiction. Yet I remember vividly watching the events unfold on my parents’ black and white television.

Still, nothing about history is obvious, and facts are often open to interpretation. Once upon a time, it was considered factual that blood-letting was the proper way of treating disease, that women were emotionally and physically incapable of rational thought. It was illegal for women to be soldiers, and to vote. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he didn’t discover America. In fact, some would say he was less an explorer and more of a conqueror. History tends to be written by those who survived it. As such, no history is without its bias.
The meaning of history, just as it is for the novel, lays “not in the chain of events themselves, but on the historian’s [and writer’s] interpretation of it,” as Jill Paton Walsh once noted.

Some facts, such as dates of specific events, are fixed points in time. We know, for example, that the Battle of Gettysburg occurred July 1 to July 3, in 1863. The interpretations of what happened over those three days remains a favorite in historical fiction. My interpretation of the battle, in Girls of Gettysburg (Holiday House, August 2014), featured three perspectives that are rare in these historical fiction depictions: the daughter of a free black living seven miles north from the Mason-Dixon line, the daughter of the well-to-do local merchant, and a girl disguised as a Confederate soldier. The plot weaves together the fates of these girls, a tapestry that reflects their humanity, heartache and heroism in a battle that ultimately defined a nation.

In other words, history is more than dates. History is people, too. In the best of historical fiction, as with any story, a child becomes a hero who gains power over her situation, a theme that contemporary readers appreciate.

Historical fiction introduces readers to different points of view. Writer Kathi Appelt offers that one of the most provocative books to achieve this goal is M. T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (2006). “It broke my stereotypical assumptions about the period and events of the time,” says Kathi. And in so doing, “it broke my heart.” Reading different perspectives can build a reader’s “emotional sensitivity.” As Amy von Heyking (Scholastic Canada) says, “their moral and social awareness grows as they consider reasons for people’s behavior in other times, other places or specific situations.” Such stories provide the “insider’s perspective,” allowing readers to reach a new, deeper understanding of the other’s experience.

“Historical fiction helps young readers develop a feeling for a living past, illustrating the continuity of life,” says Karen Cushman, another master writer of historical fiction. Historical fiction, “like all good history, demonstrates how history is made up of the decisions and actions of individuals and that the future will be made up of our decisions and actions.”

Defining the ‘historical’ in 'historical fiction' is a bit wobbly, depending upon the age of the critics and researchers can be unrelenting in their quest for accuracy. The process of writing historical fiction, like researching history itself, is neither straightforward nor a risk-free process. But I am reminded what Pulitzer Prize winning writer David McCullough once said, “We are raising a generation of young Americans who are by-and-large historically illiterate…The textbooks are dreary, they’re done by committee, they’re often hilariously politically correct and they’re not doing any good. [But] there are wonderful books, past and present. There is literature in history.”

As the Doctor tells  her  companions, and in so doing reminding everyone, through those doors...

“… we might see anything. We could find new worlds, terrifying monsters, impossible things. And if you come with me... nothing will ever be the same again!” 
--Bobbi Miller