Beth Kephart's Blog, page 285

The smell of rain,

the yaw of an old birch branch,

the scattering sky.

When the review teaches

Thoughtful reviews teach a writer, and I learn, always, from those who have sat with a story and wondered about its shape or proclivity.  Write Meg's review of Dangerous Neighbors is one such instance.  I loved reading and learning from what she had to say.  Meg is not the first reader hoping to hear more about William and his travels, and as I wrote to Meg yesterday after discovering her review, I am grateful that she suggests the possibility, for William does live boldly in my imagination. ...

Dangerous Neighbors: The Teacher's Guide

It comes full circle, at one point—the reading and research one does, the teaching one loves, the books one writes.  Dangerous Neighbors may be my twelfth book, but it is the first book for which I've ever created a teacher's guide.  The behind-the-scenes history of the Centennial can be found in these pages.  So can the irreducible Mrs. Gillespie and perhaps my favorite Philadelphian of all, George Childs.  But mostly this teacher's guide offers a range of classroom exercises—from team proje...

Excerpting Dangerous Neighbors

Sometimes a reader finds a story's heart, isolates it, and returns it, enriched, to the world, and that is what happened when Laurie of Reader Girls read Dangerous Neighbors and put forward her "favorite excerpt."  The lines she identifies were the hardest to write, because they were, to me, the most important.



Thank you, Laurie.

Boot Talk

I was thinking about Caroline Leavitt when I found these boots in a Lambertville store. But I've been also thinking, lately, about the un-anticipate-able nature of the writer journey, how little we know when we journal our first free sentences or write our first poems or say to someone, I'll be a writer.  I knew nothing; I knew no one; I know but a few things; I love who I know.  I couldn't see it coming, all the way back then, could not imagine now.



I only knew:  I cannot live without the s...

Sun catching wheel

I can't wholly explain my fascination with old spinning wheels, for I don't sew, I don't weave, I don't know fabrics.  I do like what hands can do, what they promise, and I like the shadows that spokes convey to the wall.  Some say there should be more chairs in this house, and certainly (judging from the piles) there should be more bookshelves.  But I'm giving my wheels their room to spin, to catch the light and fold it.

I Cannot

Tree, tree, house, tree, tree, on the opposite side of a wall.  The big growing things, and the solid, built thing, and none of it safe, nor certain.



There will be weather.



There will be cancer.



There will be news.



Sometimes all we have is our naked empathy.  We want more for our friends than we can give them.



I want to say I'm sorry.  I want to change the news.

Father of the Rain/Lily King: Reflections

I had been wanting to read a Lily King book—The Pleasing Hour or The English Teacher, say—but life got in the way until this summer, when I decided to begin at the now in King's career, with Father of the Rain.  I read no description of the book, and no reviews.  Father was a Lily King book, and it was time. 



Bloggers, not long ago, were debating the value and promise of stories told in the first-person present —a conversation that I, who has at times leaned in that direction, followed with...

Long August

I've never been a fan of summer—have never had that kick-back, turn-it-off, do-nothing personality.  I'm not knocking the carefree, believe you me.  I see what kick-back does for others.  I know how calm they can be.



This summer—when the heat locked us down (an impenetrable cloud), when the economy wheezed,  when I had far more unknowns in my life than knowns—has seemed especially long.  Books have kept me company; dance; the ladies of Zumba; some new friends; some stalwart ones; all of you....

What is Beauty? This is.

I found her at the Devon Horse Show earlier this summer, before the heat had swept in, before I understood that this summer would be a slow walk through time, when I would have to learn to measure the days differently.



But I thought her beautiful—radiant was the word—and that is how I feel today, reading these two reviews of Dangerous Neighbors.  I had been trying to explain to my son what it meant to be on the verge of releasing a book like this one—the hopes one has, the fears, the gratitu...