Beth Kanell's Blog, page 28

A Universe of Books at The Galaxy Bookshop

Hold on, let me catch my breath -- it's been a whirlwind of wonderful events with readers, librarians, teachers, students, bookshop staff  ... actually all of those are readers! ... all over the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and in gracious Littleton, New Hampshire. Tuesday evening's visit to The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, VT, capped the delights, with an Underground Railroad game created by owner Linda Ramsdell, and the presence of a little angel of a bookseller, baby Ivy, keeping her mom Sandy company.

Handouts included secret codes (solved right away by Adrienne, who should receive her historic postcard from the author -- me -- in tomorrow's mail) and a researcher's "code sheet" of 19th-century abbreviations for names and accounts, often found in record books. Four historians added extra details from the audience, too!

My one regret was not being able to slip away into the children's book room, where I always find good books to bring home. But I'll be back, to browse!

What a wonderful evening; thank you, Linda and Sandy and guests. One of the bookstore cats came out to say goodbye.

Jem the cat, at The GalaxyTomorrow: How you can check whether your favorite "hiding place" or 1850s activist in Vermont was involved in helping fugitives on the road north to freedom. What's the difference between "story" and "history"? Huge. Shawna and Thea in The Secret Room are after the truth. You can be, too.

It's Finally Time -- THE SECRET ROOM Debuts This Week!!

Yes, that's why I've been a little quiet online lately, with a LOT to do to get ready. The brand new novel is coming out at the end of this week. It's THE SECRET ROOM, a Vermont adventure set in a fictionalized version of North Danville. Here's the scoop:

Shawna and Thea are working together on a math project for their eighth-grade class. But the numbers don't add up, and they make a startling discovery: a secret room in the basement of Thea's house, an old Vermont inn. The code on the walls makes the girls and everyone in town wonder why there was a secret room. Was it part of the Underground Railroad, or perhaps something less, well, heroic? Discovering the truth is harder than they would have thought, especially when the truth is not what some people want to hear.

The first review for the book came from New England novelist Howard Frank Mosher, whose books Disappearances, Where the Rivers Flow North, and A Stranger in the Kingdom are much-appreciated classics on our shelves. Mr. Mosher wrote:

American history, friendship, family ties, nature, community. These are some of the themes that Beth Kanell explores in this beautifully written and ever-so-timely novel. The Secret Room is at once a superb, young-adult suspense story, and one of the best, and most realistic, literary mystery novels I've ever read. At its heart are two wonderful young friends and not-so-amateur detectives, Thea and Shawna. What they learn about themselves, their community, and their state and country, past and present, will astonish and delight you. The Secret Room is a masterwork in which every sentence is lovingly crafted and written straight from the heart.

And as you can tell, this is an author who quickly recognizes work "straight from the heart" because that's what he does in his own novels. Thank you again, Howard!

If you're a Goodreads fan, you can find teacher Tim Averill's appraisal of the book online there; if you like Amazon, you'll see what MamaBear wrote.

Best of all, find an independent and order the book there. Or, in New England, come to one of the celebrations that begin this week:

New North Danville Adventure Story!
THE SECRET ROOMby Beth Kanell
Meet the author:Fri. 9/9, Open Party, St. J. Athenaeum, 4 p.m.Sat. 9/10, Cobleigh Library, Lyndonville, 11 a.m. (sponsored by Green Mountain Books)Sat. 9/10, Boxcar & Caboose, St. J., 2 p.m.Mon. 9/12, Danville Inn, Danville, 9:30 a.m., with coffee and donuts provided by Steve Cobb, who appears in the book!Sat. 9/17, Davies Memorial Library, Waterford, 10 a.m.Sat. 9/17, Littleton (N.H.) Library, 2 p.m.Tues. 9/20, Galaxy Books, Hardwick, 7 p.m.
Books can also be ordered at www.thesecretroombook.comfrom the publisher, Voyage/Brigantine, St. Johnsbury, VT

Autumn in the Air! Research on the Desk ...

After a sweaty day yesterday, and a warm bright start to the morning today, the wind has shifted and it's now a sweater day. The robins nesting under my window finally persuaded their second brood to fly last week. I suspect the small-ish ones still pecking their way across the backyard are the newly grown flyers, feeding up before heading south next month.

Life's been wildly busy. Three more writers in my "circle" are celebrating plans for Voyage -- the Brigantine Media fiction imprint that's published The Secret Room -- to publish their books next year. It's exciting to see fiction taking off for press owners Neil and Janis.

Meanwhile, we're just 18 days from the launch party for The Secret Room (at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on Friday Sept. 9, at 4 p.m. -- come if you can!), and lots of other events are lining up. The Amazon page for the book is "live" and I've started a discussion there; there's a review button, too, for those of you with advance copies. So far, the page has some small frustrations, including how long Amazon claims it would take for a copy of the book to ship. Neil will try to straighten that out, but meanwhile, if timing matters, please take advantage of the "Buy the Book" button in the right-hand top corner of this page, and Neil and Janis's team will get your copy right out to you, directly from the publishing house.

More busy-ness: F.D. (my collaborator on this summer's novel) and I are probably in the last stretch of the first draft of Opal of the Mountains. And I'm using some careful study of other authors' choices around character depiction, to polish Cold Midnight (that's the novel set in 1921).

Most important of all, I've found online the journal of an African American man who lived in Vermont in the 1700s, and whose experience of "freedom" here was mixed, to say the least. It's an important baseline for The Secret Room and other books that deal with the Underground Railroad in Vermont, because it sheds a vivid light on the declaration heard so often here, "Vermont was against slavery from the start. In fact, Vermont's state Constitution even banned slavery."

Well, yeah -- it did. But you know about fine print, right? Vermont's fine print was, "no adult slavery." Look at what that meant for Boyrereau Brinch when he settled down in Vermont with his wife and had children ... http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brinch/brinch.html -- oh, my aching heart. There's a lot of injustice in the world, even in the places we think are most fair and free.

Three Moons of Summer

Photo taken in Finland by rosipaw -- thank you for letting this photo be reused!
Last month, for a poetry reading north of here, I wrote a poem in the voice of Thea, Shawna's best friend in The Secret Room. The poem "takes place" in the summer after the year described in the book; it will be part of how the sequel opens up. (Yes, that's the real writing life -- The Secret Room will finally be available for purchase on 9-10-11, and if the sequel's going to come out appropriately, it has to get written this fall!) I'm sharing the poem today because it fits into some discussion we're having on the Facebook teacher group for the book, but it's a bit too long to place in a Facebook post (smile!). Here it is:


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The Three Moons of Summer
There are more than three, of course: one for tonight,its faint sorrow hanging over the cornfield,one for the next night, slim and pale, as though throwing up dinner made her intoa waxed princess, faint but glowing. Thea knowsthere are more than three moons in summer.  Summer lasts almost forever.

Across the road, close enough to hear if she yelled from her window, her best friend sleeps.It's so unfair. Shouldn't your best friend knowwhen you're crying? With wet eyes, the moon doubles.Great. Now there are two moons in one night.And the stars blur, and Thea's chest aches,her nose is dripping from crying.
What can you do when nobody comesto hold you when you cry? Thea blows her nose.Wipes her eyes. Counts, the way her friend sayssome people count their blessings.
One moon for June, the strawberry moon,when school ended. The moon tide pulled the peepfrogs into song, pulled summer into place.One moon for hope and swimming in the lake.
The second moon is July: round and golden,heavy, thick, like something you eat for dessertthat lingers in your stomach all night. Thea sits straightat the windowsill, pinches her arm, silver with moonlight,pinches the places he didn't kiss. Another tearleaks down her cheek. Ignore it.
One more moon, the one for August. Corn on the cob,and clothes for school. Everyone comes backfrom their vacations. So will that boy.  Dry now,Thea takes a long breath. Decision settleslight as moonshadow in her hands. She'll tell.She'll tell her best friend what happened.
But only when the night is dark, when rain-clouds coverthe way-too-beautiful stars and moons of summer.
Beth Kanell2011

Fiction and History in the Classroom

An unusual view of Stamford, New York.
While I'm revising The Long Shadow and Cold Midnight, and writing a first draft of another book, I'm also counting down the days until THE SECRET ROOM is released, on 9-10-11 (I love that date! perfect for number lovers everywhere).

Because Shawna and Thea explore a mystery with roots in their town's history, the publisher (Janis and Neil at Voyage) and I have been corresponding with teachers about using this book in the classroom.

Here's a Middle Grades suggestion from Candice Gockel in Stamford, NY, a 5th/6th grade teacher: "I see this novel as a great jumping off point for a local history project. I think my students would be swept up in the excitement of possibly uncovering local mysteries, as well as providing great hands-on research and learning opportunities for my students."

I took a quick look and found a history of Stamford -- whose early settlers had ties to Stamford, Connecticut.  There are some intriguing gaps in the history I found: enlistment for the Civil War, but what was happening in town during the Underground Railroad years? Why was the first newspaper founded in 1851? I can imagine a mystery taking place that relied on who was publishing the paper and what his motives were! And another that takes into account the villages of the town, the differences between them, the way families settled. Plus, because the town is in the Catskills, there must be stories of the tourists and summer residents, including some from various ethnic groups that could be surprising. Wow!

If you're looking for possible "local mysteries" for your class to investigate, let me know where you are and I'll suggest some possible "mysteries in history" for your students.  Same offer for book groups -- tell me where you are, and I'll "investigate" and report!

Beyond the Myths, Beyond the Assumptions

When I wrote The Secret Room (it will be released on Sept. 9, 2011 -- hurrah!) and its sister volume, The Long Shadow, I was following a trail marked out by scholar and museum director Jane Williamson at Rokeby. Ms. Williamson uses real letters and diaries to show that the Underground Railroad in Vermont was very different from the myths of heroes, victims, and rescues that commonly occur to people when you say the words "Underground Railroad." Vermont's history and its independence created a Green Mountains world where black people -- often called Africans -- formed communities early in America. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, another dedicated researcher, gives us a vivid picture of Africans as Vermont immigrants and settlers in the 1700s, in her book Mr. and Mrs. Prince.

Fergus Bordewich's book Bound for Canaan gives a broad-brush picture of American's Underground Railroad years, the lead-up to the Civil War. But it's the details that Williamson, Gerzina, and others bring forward that shows us the reality of, say, 1750 or 1850 in Vermont.

One reason this is so important is that "myths" continue to flourish. I often hear people around me describe Vermont as a "white-bread place," a place where people have "always" been white-skinned, of Protestant faith, and of English and Scottish heritage. But that's about as far from the truth as possible. Still, it gets woven into the eyes and ears with which people meet this landscape and its heritage.

For instance, the photos here show an "open house" at the 100-year-old barn labeled "Locust Grove Farm" that took place yesterday. We say that "the camera doesn't lie" and it is easy to assume the people at the farm are of that "New England" image from the myth. Actually, many of them are relatives of people who built the barn (one great-great-grandson and his wife and son were there), or settled the farm -- Charles Johnston Wark, born in 1866, with both his father and mother born in Ireland, and his wife Lizzie Ellen Owen  --  or those who worked it most recently, the Patenaude family, whose ancestors came from Quebec (Patenaude may be a later-day version of Patenotre). Neighbors include many of Native American descent, especially among those whose roots are French Canadian. And through this town passed people from Syria, Russia, and China -- and by this, I mean "passed through" in the 1800s. Some stayed, like Sam Wah, born in northern China, whose stone in a nearby cemetery marks his death at age 75, in 1921.

By all means, let's celebrate summer in New England. The real New England -- with all its diversity of heritage and thought. We can only be richer for seeking and valuing the truth.

An Endless Summer ...

One reason that I write novels called "young adult" -- novels in the voice and view of someone around thirteen to sixteen years old -- is the magic of that time for me. Summers were endless, a long stretch of time until the next schoolday. From the throngs of peepfrogs chanting in the damp hollows, to the flurry of nearly identical robins rising up from the lawn, to the nights sparkling with uncountable stars, summer wrapped me in amazement. And there were "people things" in summer that delighted me: savoring the movement from "new girl" to "here I am again" at a summer camp; taking the bus into a city with a girlfriend, to walk the bustling sidewalks, explore museums, discover startling green parks and waterfalls tucked between tall buildings; riding with my family (even when they didn't understand me!) to the distant lake with its swimming beach and old rowboat with the creaky oars.

Endless.

Today, summer is three moons long. I try to pay attention to each of them. The golden luminous full moon last night, rising above the crest of the hill, stopped my breath for a moment.

In The Secret Room the story unfolds through Shawna's eyes. But in this start of a poem, it nestles in the words and thoughts of Shawna's best friend Thea, also in eighth grade:

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There are more than three, of course: one for tonight,its faint sorrow hanging over the cornfield,one for the next night, slim and pale as though throwing up dinner made her intoa waxed princess, faintly glowing. Thea knowsthere are more than three moons.  Especially now.Summer lasts almost forever.

Across the road, close enough to hear if she yelled from her window, her best friend sleeps.It's so unfair. 

Want to hear more? I'll be reading the finished poem tomorrow in Brownington, Vermont, as part of the "Kingdom Perspectives" poetry gathering at the Congregational Church, sponsored by the Old Stone House Museum and the Orleans County Historical Society. 

Classroom Use of THE SECRET ROOM

Sorry to have been so quiet lately; the garden of ideas has been so active that I've been weeding, trimming, even harvesting, but not talking much! Here's a sample of what I've been up to, as requested by VOYAGE, the imprint publishing The Secret Room this September:

As a kid who "hated" history and nonfiction, but who woke up to the excitements of "detection" in history thanks to a gifted Advanced Placement high school teacher, I've envisioned all of my YA novels as potential classroom tools to engage students in the flow of history and in critical thinking, through their hunger for narrative. Here are some of the threads for classroom learning woven into The Secret Room.

HISTORY DETECTIVE WORK

What is the history problem that Shawna and Thea investigate? Why does it interest them?

What are the tools they use to probe what really happened in their town during the Underground Railroad years? Are some tools better than others?

How can you find out what the Underground Railroad looked like and what it meant to the Civil War?

How can you find out what the Underground Railroad was like where you live now?

Many "history" moments focus on important people, like a President or a hero. The Underground Railroad was different: It depended on the courage and planning of many ordinary people. What evidence is there for this in The Secret Room? Do you think it could be harder to find out what "ordinary people" did a hundred and fifty years ago, than finding out what a President did? How could you find out more?


MATH IS FUN

Not everybody thinks math is fun, but Shawna and Thea do! Why is it fun for them?

Here are some of the math ideas that Shawna and Thea explore: measuring rooms and recording their perimeters; finding out areas and adding them; looking for multiples of numbers like 2, 6, and 12; what prime numbers are; creating scale drawings; creating timelines; exploring how the ages and birth years in a family fit together; and squaring numbers. Can you find each of these in the book? What would they look like if they were imagined in your own life, or your best friend's life?

ISSUES AROUND THE CIVIL WAR

Shawna and Thea discover that people in different parts of the country react in different ways to "current events" in politics and to their history. Some of the issues that led to the Civil War included enslavement of people who were captured in other places, like African countries; expecting people who look different (skin color) to be and act differently; whether the states of America needed to handle things the same way; and how people's beliefs about human dignity and faith affect their decisions to take a stand and help others.

FAMILIES ARE DIFFERENT -- AND MAYBE THAT'S GOOD!

Families differ in terms of what they think is most important in life; how they show love to each other; how they get enough money to support each other; and what they think kids should do and be. List the differences between Shawna's family and Thea's family, and add columns for your family and your best friend's family.

How do Shawna and Thea find ways to feel OK about being different from each other? How do they choose to be more similar to each other?

Who is Shawna's real mother? Why? Who loves Shawna? How can you tell?

BEING FRIENDS TAKES WORK

(I don't have time to write this part today, but ... you know where this is going!)

FOOD IS SOMETHING WE ALL ENJOY -- AND IN DIFFERENT WAYS

What decisions have Shawna and Thea made, before they met, about food? What habits do they have about food? How can you tell what their favorite foods are? Do Shawna and Thea talk about food? Do their ideas and actions change in terms of what and how they eat during the story?

PROJECTS and CLASSROOM EXERCISES

(This will have to wait for another day for me to start the list, but there are a LOT that spring out of what Shawna and Thea do.)

Research Never Ends -- Thank Goodness, Because It's Fascinating!

Here's the invitation that's taking me across the state on Sunday:

Opening Day – The War Before the War
Sunday, May 22, 2 pm
We begin our commemoration of the Civil War 150th anniversary with a talk by Museum Director Jane Williamson on the abolitionist movement. Americans argued bitterly about slavery for 30 years before the union broke and war began. She will share abolitionist treasures from the collection.

Find out more about Vermont's best documented Underground Railroad site at http://www.rokeby.org. I'm looking forward to learning more about the time, the people, and the artifacts that Rokeby and its director present.

You might ask: Why go to learn more when the book's already written? (See www.thesecretroombook.com for details.) Answer: Partly, I am always hungry to know more. Second, it's vital to keep adding historically verified details to the picture of a time period. Third, aren't you curious about the Robinson family members of Rokeby -- how they managed their roles during the Underground Railroad years, what they believed as a result of being part of the Society of Friends (the Quakers), who stayed with them when and why? For sure, I am!

Hope to see you there.

Cover Design: Graphic Artist Jacob Grant

The Secret Room will release on September 10, with lots of events on and around that date. Publishers Janis Raye and Neil Raphel of VOYAGE (an imprint of Brigantine) are clearly enjoying planning the fun (even if it is hard work sometimes!). Janis is an amazing organizer, and Neil keeps the focus.

Adrienne Raphel is the editor for VOYAGE, and she's top-notch -- clear-eyed, demanding, and creative. She's now working with the next two books of fiction coming out this year under this new imprint: one by Vermont teacher and author Jenny Land, and the other by nationally known (but living in Vermont) poet and novelist F. D. Reeve.

And the other person in the publishing office is Jacob Grant, a graphic designer who's also co-author of a series of fantasy novels. Recently Jake raced to the rescue of a young local author bringing her first book rapidly to publication: Caleigh Cross. I'm putting the cover for her book here, along with the cover for mine. Clearly they're very different -- but what similarities can you find?