Nancy E. Shaw's Blog, page 4

Indies First Story Time on Saturday, May 17

Author Kate DiCamillo has started a nationwide storyfest, happening this Saturday to celebrate independent bookstores during Children's Book Week. In my part of Michigan, Shanda Trent and Shutta Crum will be reading at Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor, and the Book Beat in Oak Park will have a star-studded cast, including Christopher Paul Curtis, Gloria Whelan, Wong Herbert Yee, Jean Alicia Elster, Kathryn Madeline Allen, Matt Faulkner, and Tracy Gallup. 

Check out the story time at your local bookseller here.

Claire's Day

This Saturday I will be at Claire's Day, "a celebration of life, authors, illustrators and reading excellence" in Maumee, Ohio. This children's book festival honors the memory of Claire Lynsey Rubini, who was 10 when she died, but lives on as books are shared with children from the Toledo area. I'm looking forward to the activities.

The Healing Arts of Nature

Poster copyright University of MichiganThe University of Michigan's C. S. Mott Children's Hospital and its Nichols Arboretum tried something new this week--celebrating how nature can help healing. The "Arb" is across the street from the hospital and welcomes hospital visitors and the general public to explore its varied terrain and plantings. Two programs, first in the Mott Family Center, then in the 19th-century house that greets people at the Arb's Washington Heights entrance, focused on children's books that draw upon nature, as well as soundscapes made by U-M Residential College students depicting walks in the Arb.
      Tracy Gallup read from her lyrical books about fascination with natural objects and brought some remarkable stones for children to handle. Hope Vestergaard read her Hillside Lullaby , in which animals settle down to sleep. I read Sheep Take a Hike and Raccoon Tune . Julie Piazza of Mott and Elizabeth Goodenough of the Residential College spoke about the collaboration of the hospital and arboretum. Cultural geographer Anja Bieri explained how Soundscapes of Childhood, digital audio walks, were produced in Goodenough's 2012 course, Landscapes of Childhood. Arboretum Director Bob Grese invited families to come and use their imaginations in the Arb.
      Kids got to make their own books at the Family Center, and a young lady who came to the Arb program gave us her own creations, each made of a glossy green leaf, a stem, and tiny blossoms. I'll be back to take a hike--the Peony Garden lies just beyond this gate.

Maryland!

Greetings & Readings staff
GayleTime got away from me (taxes! computers! and visiting the beautiful countryside of Maryland), but I want to celebrate the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council Conference held earlier this month, where I had the honor to meet educators from all over the state. I loved listening to other authors and illustrators tell about themselves, too. Hats off to conference chair Gayle Glick, who worked for well over a year to put it together, and to the many people who worked with her.
     It's great to meet independent booksellers, too--here's a picture of the folks from Greetings & Readings, who furnished books at the conference.

Start Your Engines!

Cover reproduced with permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Curious George Takes a Train, Farmer Dale's Red Pickup Truck, Katy and the Big Snow--these are great company for Sheep in a Jeep in the recently-released collection Start Your Engines: 5-Minute Stories . The stories range from a realistic portrait to zany fantasies, and features lots of rhythmic language (plus truck jokes). If trucks, trains, and construction gear rev your kids up, treat them to this book. The sheep are tickled to hang out with monster trucks and train-riding dinosaurs--though based on their previous driving performance, someone should probably hide the keys from my flock.

The Winter of Our Discontent

...is about to be over, after a record-breaking number of days with below-zero temps, and head-high heaps of snow.

Frozen in place by solidified slush,
pelted by snow and the harsh polar vortex,
can a muse come awake from a hibernal hush,
and thaw out a verse from a half-gelid cortex?

It's time for March Madness in the poetry tournament at thinkkidthink.

Writers on the River 2013

The Monroe County Library System hosted its annual Writers on the River book sale on November 10. I enjoyed meeting area writers, and talked to several writer friends about their new works.

Jean Alicia Elster said, "My recently released book, The Colored Car, is based on real events in my maternal family’s history. My grandparents came to Detroit in 1922 and my grandfather started a wood business, the Douglas Ford Wood Company. My grandmother was an integral part of that business—taking orders, keeping the books—but she also managed the household with canning food, sewing and caring for their five children. 

"My grandparents were also central to the stability of their neighborhood. This story explores their relationship within the community during the summer of 1937 while we witness their oldest daughter, twelve-year-old Patsy, as she experiences events foreign to the world as she knows it.

"I enjoy transporting readers to another era and helping them connect with a way of life that may seem foreign to them now. This form of 'time travel' offers an important historical backdrop to many of the social issues we face today."
Shanda Trent was there with Farmer's Market Day. She told me, "Because I worked on this piece for the SCBWI mentorship contest, I worked relentlessly. I liked working with a deadline because it forced me to sit down and polish...Having a critique group makes the book so much better. The story was just a leisurely trip through the farmers' market. The group said, 'Where's the tension? Where's the story arc?' I could have self-published it, but it wouldn't have been nearly as good. The illustrator brought so much to the story that it makes the book."

Cynthia Furlong Reynolds brought a wide variety of books--alphabet books and other stories for young people; a history of Chelsea, Michigan and the Jiffy Company; and her latest offerings, a manual and workbook on writing. Several people stopped to talk about their writing aspirations. "I have always felt that my role was to help people tell their stories," said Cindy. "I write life stories. I write oral histories. My children's books reflect stories from my family as well as my friends. For my MFA in creative writing, I produced a manual called Writing S'mores, because I get so many questions from would-be writers about how to choose a topic and structure a story.

"I took two and a half years to do the MFA and I dropped out of everything but writing. Now I'm  back to the action--signings, school visits, and helping others write. The world of publishing children's books is a very different place than when I started in 2001. I think it's ever more important to have a group these days to help you critique and study the craft, telling a story the most effective way."

Jean Alicia Elster and her new novel for young people

Shanda Trent's debut picture book celebrates the farmers' market.

Cynthia Furlong Reynolds with her books for all ages

Bridges to Somewhere

Wind warnings were in effect at the Mackinac Bridge when we started north on Friday morning--20 m.p.h. and escorts for certain vehicles--but by the time we crossed the straits, it was a breeze. We made for Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, just short of another important bridge, to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. We were able to see that international crossing from Lake Superior State University Saturday, home to the Superior Children's Book Festival.

The Bayliss Public Library and numerous other community groups brought activities for the families, including a book giveaway and a tall tales contest. (I got to sample the food groups that The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate as he got ready to become a butterfly.) Chillers author Johnathan Rand told the audience about getting a radio job, and writing. I told stories of sheep, raccoons, and humans. Festival coordinator Janice Repka, Carrie Pearson, and Gretchen Preston shared their experiences as authors in a panel on children's-book publishing. Michigan writers--with an emphasis on Upper Peninsula writers--displayed their books. The festival was a bridge to somewhere--to connections with stories, and with the place we call Up North.

 Carrie Pearson, author of A Warm Winter Tail
Chillers author Johnathan Rand

Festival and Book Fair Coming Up

I'm heading over the mighty Mackinac Bridge to Michigan's storied Upper Peninsula for the Superior Children's Book Festival at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie. It's this Saturday, with kids' activities, a panel discussion on publishing, Michigan Chillers, my stories, and more.

In southeastern Michigan, on Sunday, November 10, the Monroe County Library System will put on its 15th annual festive pre-holiday book sale, Writers on the River, at the Ellis Center. Shanda Trent, author of Farmer's Market Day, and Jean Alicia Elster, with The Colored Car, will be signing these new releases, along with quite a variety of other area authors. I'll be there with Elena's Story and sheep books.

You're invited.

"I have traveled a good deal in Concord..."

My high school English teacher loved Walden, and her admiration for the phrase, "I have traveled a good deal in Concord..." has stayed with me. Thoreau went on to say, "and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways." Since Concord, MA was home to the Alcott Family, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as Thoreau, traveling in Concord is the opposite of penance, and our recent visit took us to places where that literary richness lives on: the Concord Free Public Library with its marble statue of Emerson and its Thoreau Room, and the Concord Bookshop, an independent store where I loved shopping, meeting booksellers, and signing a few books. 

We had seen Walden Pond; the Concord Museum; the Old Manse, with Mrs. Hawthorne's enchanting windowpane inscriptions ("Una Hawthorne stood on this window sill January 22d 1845 while the trees were all glass chandeliers -- a goodly show which she liked much tho’ only ten months old"); and the 1775 battlefield site on an earlier trip. (That was fortunate, because this time the Congressional snit had closed the National Parks). It was time for a pilgrimage to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the writers are neighbors on Authors Ridge. Readers bring pine cones and stones to honor their favorites. Louisa May Alcott had pennies on her grave as well--but Henry David Thoreau also received written messages, and a Thank-You mint. View from the top of Authors Ridge

The author of Little Women received stones, cones, and pennies.
Henry David Thoreau's grave had a personal Thank-You.