Cynthia Lord's Blog, page 63

Milo's Girl is Home

  Note the blur of his tail.  :-) 

Five Things on a Friday

Harpswell, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

1.  Thank you to the State of Illinois for putting Touch Blue on next year's Bluestem Award List!  This makes an even dozen state lists for Touch Blue, and this one is extra special because kids nominate the books. 


2.  I have a newspaper interview next week about my trip to Belarus.  I hope it's less intense than the TV interviews I did in Belarus!  :-)  The Belarusan TV interviewers were very nice, but they interviewed me as I was waiting to speak at the Minsk Book Fair.  Anyone who has done a conference speech knows how stressful those last few moments are when you're standing outside the room waiting for the previous speaker to finish and poised to rush in as soon as the door opens and start switching over equipment. 

I was chatting with some lovely middle-school-aged students who had come to meet me and had brought me a beautiful present: a traditional little set of shoes made of straw, when Olga touched my arm. "Belarusian TV would like to interview you."

"NOW?" I asked. 

But media is very important and plays a big part in creating goodwill, so I certainly wasn't going to say no.  We did the interview right there in the hallway!  The first question the interviewer asked was why did I choose such a crazy title.  In Russian, my book is called: Rules. Don't Take Your Pants Off in the Aquarium. 

So I explained what my book is about and that my Russian publisher had combined two rules from the book. And I had been very surprised by the title, but the goal of a cover and a title is to get a reader to wonder what the book is about and to open the book.  So on that level, it was very successful! 

He asked me more questions about autism and my impressions of Belarus.  And then when I got into the conference room, another TV crew was waiting for me!  So I passed off my flashdrive to my tech person and did another quick interview right there.

The next day, my translator, Olga told me she had seen me on TV that night, and they had used my clip about the title.  

I sighed. "Do you know the American expression to 'throw someone under the bus?'"

Olga said yes, she had heard that expression.

"I threw my Russian publisher under the bus," I said.  


3.  When I came home from my trip, Milo started whimpering and calling to me before I was even in the house.   He knows the sound of my car, so I could hear him as I stood in the driveway, getting my suitcase out of the trunk.  He was very excited to have me home.


4.  I get to pick up my daughter from college today for a week!  Milo will be very excited to see Julia, too!


5.  I saw sketches for our next Hamster book!  Very, very, very cute!  This one is bursting with kid appeal.  :-) 
 

Finding Ourselves

Marshall Point Light, Port Clyde, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

Yesterday, USA Today published a list of 100 Greatest Kids' Books.  I was honored to have Rules on that list (87 is now my favorite number), though any list like this is very subjective. 

But that is also true of the entire book industry:  awards, starred reviews, who gets published, whose book is deemed front-list and whose book isn't.  Writers control those things only up to a certain point and then it's the reader or the committee or the publisher who supplies that last leap  (or not).  I'm always grateful and honored when that happens, because it's a gift. 

But what I really live for are moments like this short, simple review by a fourth grade boy for Touch Blue that's running in a newspaper in CA today.

"My favorite part is when Aaron puts his head on Jacob’s (Tess’ dad’s) shoulder, because I like to do that with my GrandDad. I live with him and my Grandma, who adopted me and love me. I really liked this book because it reminded me of my life."

I often say in my speeches how powerful it is when we open a book, expecting a story, and instead, we find ourselves.

Baranovichi, Belarus

  Last Friday, I visited the city of Baranovichi, Belarus. 

It was a couple hours drive south of Minsk, and this is what I saw out the car window.

  

My view all the way south was of fields, farms, a few patches of woods--but mostly snow-covered field after field, on both sides of the road. The huge bison cut-out marks the entrance to the Brest Region of Belarus. There is a National Park where the bison still live. The fence is a snow fence to keep the wind from blowing the snow into the road.

The Embassy kindly supplied me with paperwork about each of the places I visited. On the drive south, I read about the city I was about to visit--and some parts of that history were very sobering.  During WWI this part of Belarus belonged to Poland. During WWII, Belarus was conquered by the Nazis. Baranovichi was the site of Stalag-337 a concentration camp where over 30,000 people died. And in one month in 1942, 3,000 Jews were taken to that camp from Czechia and shot.

So I looked around me with that history in mind.  And I saw an honoring of that difficult past, but also a testament to people's ability to go on.

  

We had lunch at the complex in the first photo, and the second photo shows a statue of Lenin.


  

In the cities, many people live in apartment buildings. The people in the front are ice fishing.  And the sign has the town name of Baranovichi in Russian.

  

Some lifestyle things are different than at home. Smoking is allowed in public buildings and restaurants. In one restaurant I visited, there was even a cigarette menu at the back of the food menu.  And I saw lots of real fur coats.  It's become unusual for me to see a real fur coat in America, but it's very common here.  

     

And a few things were quite familiar.  There aren't many American restaurant chains here, but I did see a TGIF Fridays in Minsk and a couple of McDonalds on my trip--including this one in Baranovichi. 

I spoke at the Baranovichi City Public Library to a wonderful group of students, librarians, teachers . . .and maybe some cats! 

    The library building has apartments on the upper floors and some of the apartments have cats as pets. Because the library keeps the door to the hall open, the cats come into the library. A few times on my tour, I saw a cat on one of the library windowsills and one darted out of the reference section as I got my tour! 

  What a beautiful room.  We were expecting about 35-40 people, and they had to get more chairs. I was honored how many people came!
At all of my talks, the American Embassy gave out a free copy of Rules in Russian to anyone who wanted one, and I signed them all. As the students were having their books signed and practicing their English with me, one woman came up, so excited.

"MAINE!" she said. "I know about Maine!"

I smiled at her. "You DO?"

And she nodded. "Maine was the home of Samantha Smith."

I'm not sure if the rest of the US remembers her as we do here in Maine, but just in case, here's a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith

  Me with the librarians. I walked over and stood beside them, but they said, "No! No!" and motioned to the chair. I felt like the queen.

 

Here I am with some of the children and teachers with their copies of Rules in Russian.  Olga, the Director of Libraries in Baranovichi is on the far left. She was lovely to me and gave me a tour of the library.  They gave me the gifts in the photo at the top of this blog entry, including the adorable little sheep that I'm holding in this photo. 

The people I met in Baranovichi could not have been kinder to me. The kids were delightful and the adults made me feel very welcomed.  It was a wonderful visit, and I was so glad I had the opportunity to go.

Polotsk, Belarus

A week ago, I went to the beautiful city of Polotsk, Belarus. 



Polotsk is a long drive from Minsk, and I had the opportunity to do a little sightseeing.  Tamara Grudnitskaya, The Director of Museums in Polotsk graciously gave up her morning to show me St. Sophia's Cathedral (above).

  

And the Polotsk Children's Museum.  The Children's Museum has fun exhibits and activities, including permanent exhibits on bells and time.  Tamara invited me to ring one of the bells, and I did!  I also had the honor of being the first person to sign in their newest guest book. 

  They had lots of wonderful exhibits, but I thought this one was extra special. The museum holds contests and the winning children get to create their own exhibits.  This is a child's exhibit about turtles.  They've also had exhibits about pens and Pokemon! 


  

The scale is strong enough to hold small children.  And I was charmed by this wall of photos of famous people from Polotsk.  The child visitor can look through the hole and have his/her photo taken as a person from Polotsk. This museum has a big heart.

I was grateful to have the chance to see both St. Sophia's Cathedral in all it's historic grandeur and The Children's Museum that celebrates Polotsk's future.   

  This is an historic stone near St. Sophia's Cathedral, and it's considered good luck to touch it.  As a writer, I need all the luck I can get. So I had to touch it!

  

Then it was off to the library!  I spoke to students and adults at the Polotsk Central City Public Library.



Here I am with librarians.  Polotsk has one library for adults and three libraries for children.

  The Library Director presented me with some beautiful books about the area.  Behind me is Olga, who translated for me and graciously answered all my questions.  This was the first time I'd ever done talks with a translator, but she made it all very easy. 

It was incredible to be in a city that was first mentioned in 862.  I felt very surrounded by its history.  

I loved the long drive, too, because I got to see the area between Minsk and Polotsk.  A lot of the route was through deep woods on both sides of the road.  Every now and then, there'd  be a village or a farm.  We even came upon this farmer on his sled, pulled by his horse. 


     

Our driver would speak to my hosts in Russian, and every so often, I'd hear a word that I'd understand because the word had been borrowed from English.  So it would sound to me like this . . .Russianrussianrussian. . .Mini Market. .  . Russianrussianrussian.

  

Familiar and yet different!

It was an amazing trip, and I'm so grateful I had the chance to experience Polotsk.  It's a place I won't ever forget. 

Masha and the Bear

This is a 7-minute episode of "Masha and The Bear," a cartoon show that children love in Belarus. It's as popular there as our "Dora the Explorer" is for children in the United States. If you click the link on the above video to "Watch on YouTube" and then click the little CC at the bottom of the screen, it will turn on the English subtitles.

And though these next two videos are not subtitled with English, you don't really need to know what the characters are saying to enjoy them.  Kids in America (and an author from Maine!) would love Masha and the Bear, too. 

This next one was my favorite. You get to see the forest animals they have in Belarus, as well: bears, hedgehogs, red squirrels with long tufted ears, wolves, and rabbits.
 



And just right for Valentine's Day:  


 
One of the lovely realizations you make with travel is that though people have surface differences from place to place, underneath it all, we are more similar than we are different. 

All over the world, whether they speak English or Russian or any other language, children are children. 

And making way too much pink porridge is funny no matter where you live.   :-)

Around the Hotel Minsk!

I'm home again in Maine now, but this was the view outside my hotel room in Minsk.



  Here I am organizing my money on the bed.  $1 US is a little over 8,000 Belarusian rubles. They have no coins, so it's all paper money. It has felt very strange seeing price tags with numbers like 35,000.

 One of my "cheat sheets."

  The restaurant where breakfast is served. I'm not used to sitting down with strangers, but it's how it works. The tables were all big.

  It took me a little while to figure out that in order to turn the electricity on in my hotel room, I had to put my room key in the slot next to the door and leave it there.

  The soap comes packaged in a little plastic case (which I brought home with me!). The air was very dry in the hotel, and the first morning I lathered up my hands with the white lotion. . .only to realize that I had just put hair conditioner all over my hands!

   And outside the hotel. The buidling at the far end of the park is a teachers' college.

Minsk International Book Fair

Me at the US Embassy Booth, right before they started giving away Rules in Russian


Some children's nonfiction in Russian. The squirrels here look like this one. 


Russian Picture Books


Every year, they choose a country to be the special guest. This year it was Venezuela.


There were big crowds. The book fair is a popular event in Minsk.


Olga, my translator, sat beside me as I signed and translated whenever needed.  The names are different than home, so we came up with a system where Olga wrote the name in my notebook and then I would copy it into Rules. 

It was so funny to me that it was exactly the same people I meet at a signing in America! Grandparents who want a book for a grandchild, librarians, parents of children with disabilities, kids, teachers, people who just want a free book, and other authors. One author wanted to know about how to have his book published in America, and another gave me a copy of his book.

Olga translated for me, "It's a book about building methods. Everything you want to know about concrete."

He handed it Olga and told her to write in English his inscription to me. "To my dear colleague, from the author of this book."

I smiled and said "thank you" in Russian, which sounds like this: Pah-SEE-ba.

At the Circus!

I've had a wonderful time in Belarus and met many lovely people.  Last night I had the chance to go to the circus!  Wow!


The circus has a permanent building and they have their own performers, as well as hosting circuses from around the world. Last night the Moscow Circus and the Cuban Circus were visiting. 



The have a live band that plays between the acts and for some of the performers. Others used recorded music. One even used Michael Jackson!



There were many incredible acts, but this one was my favorite!



I found a Youtube video that shows her in action with her little dogs.  http://youtu.be/gIo3KD8vgjw 

What do you think, Milo?  We need to get training!!!

I'm HERE!

Hooray!  This was my first sight of the Minsk airport through the airplane window.  It was flurrying and cold, but not as cold as it was last week.  Today, it's a balmy 10 F degrees! 

Minsk is a busy city, but most of the view I saw flying in was huge forests and fields and lakes. 



I asked my escort, Irina, what kinds of animals live in the forests. She mentioned several including, deer, elk, bears, and wolves.  It feels like a Grimm's Fairy Tale world.  I will do most of my posting about my trip when I'm home again, but I'll show you a few scenes every day that I can. 

Today, I have my first event. It's a library event with high school students, English teachers and library staff at the Polotsk Central City Library.  I was asked if I'd like to spend an hour visiting a museum or landmark in Polotsk and given a list to choose from. 

I chose St Sophia's Cathedral. Here's an interior photo.  "Originally built between 1044 and 1066, it was a rival for cathedrals of the same name in Kiev and Novgorod. Much of the cathedral has been destroyed and rebuilt, but the eastern elevation and some of the basement walls are original." 

Amazing.