Gail Gauthier's Blog: Gail Gauthier Reads, page 2

#MGReadathon Results

I finished last weekend's 48-hour #MGReadathon on Sunday afternoon having completed 4 books. Since I only read 7 back in 2006 for the original 48-Hour Book Challenge, I was pretty satisfied, because I didn't read as intently this time as I did then. While there definitely are some negatives to have taken part of this in terms of using my time (which you can be sure I'll be discussing here at some point), I interacted with some new people both here and on Twitter, got one book off my TBR shelf that had been there for years, will be updating my Goodreads blog with this post, and will be a few books ahead on my Goodreads goal for this year. So those are all pluses. Right?

Books Read

I Survived The Nazi Invasion, 1944 by Lauren Tarshis

If you grew up on old WWII movies and have read a lot of WWII books over the years, this is a pretty traditional WWII story. It's a pretty traditional short WWII story with plenty of narrative drive and a main character who comes out of his nightmarish experience as well as anyone possibly could. This is the book from my TBR shelf and the first in the I Survived series that I've read. I'll be holding onto it for my personal library I maintain for young readers in the family.

Nature Girl by Jane Kelley

Years ago I started reading a book that began the same way Nature Girl does--a girl in Vermont with some conflict with her family accidentally ends up on the Appalachian Trail. I stopped reading it, because I didn't like it. How likely is it that I've stumbled upon a totally different book in which the same thing happens? If the book I didn't like back in the day was Nature Girl, it has improved a lot over the years.

I am not a long-haul hiker by any means. Fourteen miles is my top hike, on a relatively flat rail trail, and we took a break in the middle to go to a local library to use the bathroom. Nonetheless, I very much liked this tale of a totally unprepared eleven-year-old girl who gets lost near her family's southern Vermont rental and stumbles onto the Appalachian Trail. She learns from a passing hiker that Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts, near where her best friend is spending time with her grandmother and sick mother, is just 30 miles that-a-way and decides, what the hell, she's having a lousy time vacationing in Vermont. She's going to get to Mt. Greylock and call her friend.

Now, if this is the book I gave up on years ago, I might have been turned off early on by the talk of the Appalachian Trail in Vermont. Because I knew that the Long Trail is Vermont's trail. However, a little research this time showed that the Appalachian Trail does, indeed, run west northeast through Vermont while the Long Trail runs north and south. And the two of them join for a while. I mention this in case among my hordes of readers there is someone else thinking, Wait. No. That's wrong. It's the Long Trail in Vermont. They're both there!

Once I knew that, I totally bought in to Megan's experience. The pieces of the Long Trail I've been on were similar to what Megan was seeing. (That shelter!) The people she ran into were similar to people I've read about in hiking articles. Yes, it does push the envelope to think this kid could make it and didn't throw in the towel and seek help. But we believe kids in books catch criminals and fight magical monsters, so why not this?

Also, this book actually is funny. Lots of times with middle grade books we're told they are funny, and I get the feeling that at various points something is supposed to be funny, but it isn't. In this one the humor works.

A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus

I've been hearing good things about this book, and they're well-deserved. If you've spent twenty years reading children's books about the evacuation of children from London during World War II, a lot of what happens here will be familiar. However, they won't be familiar to today's child readers and that material is put together very well. This is a very well-written book with a cozy vibe in spite of its war setting.

Just Be Cool, Jenna Sakai by Debbi Michiko Florence

I chose this book because Debbi Michiko Florence and I are Facebook friends. It's a middle school romance with a bit of a Pride and Prejudice thing going on. Romance isn't the best genre for me to be reading and reacting to. As a general rule, I need my romance integrated with something else, mystery or scifi, for instance. Just Be Cool does have a student journalism thread that I appreciated.

The book will be sticking with me, though, because it left me with two things to ponder:

1. This tween age is bizarre. These kids are old enough to have boyfriends but not old enough to use the stove when they're alone in the house. They have boyfriends, but they spend their evenings hanging with their boyfriend and groups of friends at somebody's house with their parents. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of that, but what does having a boyfriend even mean at this point in life? Does just being able to say you have a boyfriend (or girlfriend) provide some kind of validation? (Of course, it does, Gail! What's wrong with you?)

2. This is not the first book I've read recently in which the main character had a close friend or more than one. These protagonists had to worry about whether or not they were spending enough time with their friends and what should they be doing with their friends and is their friend upset with them? This seems like so much effort. You read a lot about how difficult it is for adults to make friends. Maybe it's because nobody past middle school has time for all the work that's involved.

That last thought is going into something I've been working on, in my head, anyway. So thank you, Debbi and Jenna.

Originally published at Original Content.

Uni the Unicorn Is A Thing

Once again, my writers' group colleagues are being all creative. At Christmas one of them made several pocket pillows for children in her family. Basically, they are pillows with a pocket for carrying things, primarily books. I thought, Hey, I can do that. I should be able to do that. Can I do that?

It turns out, I can. In two and a half months, I've made one pocket pillow, purchased three more pillow forms, and material for one more pillow. If you do the math, you might be able to figure out that I plan to make four pillows. And I want to have them done by the end of the summer. That's another five and a half months. In two and a half months, I've only made one. If you do the math, well...don't.

Why Are You Telling Us About This, Gail? Oh! A Book Connection!

Anyway, the first pillow was for a very young woman who is fond of unicorns. Being an extremely open-minded person who doesn't impose her will on others, I went looking on-line for unicorn fabric instead of using some of the little girl scientist fabric I'd bought just to have on hand, for sewing emergencies, I guess. I found some material at my go-to-fabric spot, and it was called Uni the Unicorn. What's more, the site had other Uni the Unicorn fabric that coordinated with the first item I wanted. So I bought a yard of three different types.

Thus I knew I was buying Uni the Unicorn material, I just didn't know what it meant until I was pressing it after washing it. (Always wash your material before sewing, people.) That's when I noticed that the border was stamped with a 2020 copyright "Estate of Amy Krouse Rosenthal Art/Illustrations c 2020 Brigette Barrager" Also "Published by Random House Children's Books."

Well, it didn't take much sleuthing to find that Uni the Unicorn is a character in a series of books written by the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Brigette Barrager
I got very excited when I found out about this, because that meant my pocket pillow was going in my blog!

The Results

The pocket pillow wasn't that difficult or time-consuming to make, once I had a Saturday to do it. Finding the material, the pillow form, and iron-on interfacing actually took more effort.
I'm including two books with each of these pillow gifts. For this one I chose A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, because I'd read it with another family member and liked it.

I also took a look at the first Uni the Unicorn book. Though I'm not a fan of those fantasy creatures, this story had a twist I liked, so that book will be part of this gift, as well.
I have the material for the next pillow (theme--cats) and am still looking for rainbow material for the third one. Don't have a clue what the fourth pillow theme will be.

If it's related to a book, you'll hear about it.

This post originally appeared at Original Content

Sickbed Reading

Well, I lost an entire week of my life to an illness that wasn't Covid. I was out of commission for four days, though, and the following two days were up and down. I imagine I'll be napping this afternoon, too. I was sick enough that I even had to give up tweeting virtual author appearances, because I tagged a random guy with the same name as an author involved. I was able to read, but I kept moving back and forth between books. Not a lot of concentration.

Though maybe I do that, anyway.

I did, however, finish some interesting things.

The Best American Essays 2012 I've had this thing on my Kindle for, I don't know, seven or eight years? Whenever it became available as a deal. I'd read a few of the essays, but it wasn't something I looked forward to getting back to, obviously.

Recently, I've been reading essays on Medium, where I've wondered if essays aren't just a bit different. I find them longer than I'd prefer. Rambling. Not staying on subject. Sometimes more personally focused than I'm interested in reading.

The essays in 2012 were also longer than I'm interested in reading. Sometimes authors will write about something, then relate it to books they've read, which should be enlightening, but... There was one essay about boredom that put me to sleep at least twice one morning on a particularly sick day. I woke up in the night, couldn't get back to sleep, thought, I'll try some more of that boredom essay. Knocked me right out. It was great.

Another essay was of interest to me, because it was about the author's friend who was beautiful. Doesn't sound as if the guy was someone you'd want to know, though. The author veered off into discussions of beauty. I didn't love the essay, but it made me think that maybe I'm not all that interested in beauty as a subject. That's significant because there is a character in 143 Canterbury Road whose beauty is remarked upon. I need to think about that.

Two essays I particularly liked: Killing My Body to Save My Mind by Lauren Slater and Outlaw by Jose Antonio Vargas. Both these essays are very personal. But they stay on task, making them on the short side for these kinds of volumes, and they deal with subjects that I am aware of, but haven't read about over and over again.

I walked away from this book--metaphorically, because I wasn't doing much walking last week--with a question--How do you go about choosing subjects for essays? Things like boredom and beauty or things much more from personal experience?

Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater's Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic I started this a couple of months ago, because we have a few truly picky eaters in our family, and it does have a big impact on their lives. My response to this book is interesting, because while with the essays I preferred the ones that were personal, I found this too memoirish for my taste. I was hoping for more help. Maybe there just isn't any.

I'm mentioning this here, because Lucianovic now writes children's books, and next month she has one coming out called The League of Picky Eaters. I don't think I've ever seen this subject in a children's book, though there may be some out there. This one sounds very clever. I've sent a request to NetGalley, though I'm behind on posting about other NetGalley books, so I don't know how this will turn out.

Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake with illustrations by Jon Klassen. This is an example of social media marketing working. Amy Timberlake ended up in my September Virtual Opportunities post, because she has a new Skunk and Badger book out right now, Egg Marks the Spot. While scrolling through available e-books from my library, I recognized her name on the first Skunk and Badger book and borrowed it. So the author and her book series got a reader, because of social media marketing, and now it is getting more social media marketing by way of this blog.

Somehow I got the impression Skunk and Badger was going to be like Frog and Toad. I wouldn't make the comparison, myself, because I think it's for a much older age group, and is much more sophisticated. Which is not a bad thing. Not bad at all.

Skunk and Badger are two loners who definitely need each other, though they're not at all alike. The reclusive and studious Badger struggles with coming to grips with the much more outgoing and somewhat chaotic Skunk. They inhabit a world with a village populated by other animals, and they have mail! Also, there are lots of chickens.

A really lovely book.

Where Are The Blustering Dads In Childlit?

I recently finished reading Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood's memoir about her experience growing up with a father who is a Catholic priest. If you want to find out how that happened, read the book, which
is very good. Lockwood is a poet with a sense of humor. It makes a great combination. Plus, she grew up in an unusual situation, so she provides us with something unique to read about.

I discovered this book while checking out the Thurber Prize winners. I think there is something Thurberesque about it in a My Life and Hard Times sort of way. Though Lockwood is Thurberesque in her own way. Does anyone even know what Thurberesque means, anymore?

Lockwood's father is complex in the sense that the father at home is extremely over-the-top, shall we say, and dramatically different from what one expects a Catholic Father at work to be. As a family man, he comes across as somewhat self-involved. Since this book is very much about his daughter's experience with him, we don't see that much of him at work in church.

I'm Looking For A Childlit Connection

Well into the book, Lockwood writes about bluster in relation to her father.

"I recognize this as bluster, because my father is a blusterer. If you have a blusterer in your house, you must treat him as the weather, capable of gathering himself in a second and storming...This is more a feature of fathers, I have found."

Early on while reading Priestdaddy I was reminded of Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, another memoirish story of an over-the-top dad who works in the kind of job (medicine) where one expects something else. Then I recalled what might be the granddaddy of blustering dad books, Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. This book revolves around Frank and Lillian Gilbreth who had twelve children in the early twentieth century while both worked as management consultants/industrial engineers. The book features another over-the-top father, so much so that few readers realize that Lillian, his wife and the mother of his many, many children, is far more significant historically as a pioneering professional woman in management and engineering. In both Sh*t My Dad Says and Cheaper by the Dozen the blustering fathers are portrayed in a more obviously positive way than in Priestdaddy.

So I'm thinking the blustering dad is a thing, at least in adult memoir.

But Do Blustering Dads Exist In Children's Books?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any blustering dad stories in children's books. Of course, you don't get a lot of memoir in children's literature, and that's where I recall seeing this kind of father portrayed in adult books.

But why not use this character in fiction?

One reason may be that children's fiction is very problem oriented and not situation oriented, which is something that is more common in adult memoir. Therefore, fathers are often absent in contemporary children's fiction in order to create a problem for child characters to deal with. Or there is something dangerous or tragic about father characters, again to create a problem for child characters to overcome. Examples would be two middle grade novels I read recently, 365 Days to Alaska, in which the father is irresponsible and absent, and All You Knead is Love, in which the dangerous father never even appears.

A second reason may be that with adult memoir with blustering fathers authors have grown up and away from their childhood and now recognize the blusterer in their lives as a blusterer rather than something else. With children's fiction, the main characters are children who probably shouldn't have the maturity (because they are supposed to be children) to recognize a benign or even loving blusterer versus someone who is loud and demanding or negative in some way.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see a children's book with a blustering dad. Or how about a blustering mom? Now that I think of it, I have an unsold middle grade manuscript with a blustering older brother.


This post originally appeared at Original Content

I Had a #BreadLoaf2021 Experience. Sort of

What a long time since I've posted here. Well, I had what passes as an exciting experience for me last weekend, and I want to share it far and wide.

I stumbled upon a tweet last week that tipped me off that the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference was under way. It was on-line this year, as, I believe, a workshop series, for obvious reasons. I'd heard that for a few years now the Conference was offering lectures that were open to the public. And guess what? Those were on-line, too! In fact, for $25 a pop I could watch recordings of ones I'd missed. Which ended up being all of them, because we were getting toward the end of the second week of the Conference.

My History With Bread Loaf

My rabid followers are aware that I'm not a major fan of conferences, so why would I care about this one? Well, back in my college days, I spent three summers working in the Bread Loaf kitchen, during the English graduate school and the writers' conference. I was the Pastry Assistant, as I always put it, because even then I didn't allow anyone to call me girl, so I refused to use the official Pastry Girl title. It was a great time, particularly the first summer, what I imagine going to summer camp is like. If you actually like summer camp.

My time at Bread Loaf probably is what ruined me for writers' conferences, not because the Bread Loaf Conference is so superior to all others, but because, as I explain in My Bread Loaf, I now expect writers' conferences to be fun in a 'let's go hiking and swimming and crashing events' sort of way. And in my experience, they just aren't. Ya just have to accept that there's not going to be any of that.

My #BreadLoaf2021

In an odd twist of fate, I learned that the Conference was happening just a few days before I was going to Middlebury, Vermont, which is sort of at the foot of the mountain Bread Loaf is on. I had no plans for going up to the Bread Loaf campus, but while we were in Middlebury last Saturday we had a few hours between a 4-mile walk downtown and a family dinner in the evening, and my husband was sure he'd be bored if he had to spend all that time in our hotel room. So we drove up to Ripton, the mountain town where Bread Loaf is located.

The campus was absolutely empty, though it was supposedly the last day of the Conference, because, remember, it was on-line. So that means that of all the people involved with this year's Conference, I may be the only person who was actually there on-site. For a three- or four-minute drive-thru.

Just What Was Your Bread Loaf Involvement, Gail?

Okay, you will recall that I mentioned in the first paragraph that the Conference offers lectures that are open to the public. That was foreshadowing, folks! Because on Monday, the day after I raced Hurricane Henri home, only to have him turn up his nose at Connecticut, I enjoyed one of those lectures out in my sun room surrounded by what my be described as leftover rain.

I watched Dean Bakopoulus's Creatures of Impulse: What Fiction Writers Can Learn From TV, because, well, TV, right? It was a very decent presentation that functioned on two levels--one dealing with how fiction writers could use techniques from TV writing and the other dealing with his life during the pandemic. I thought I'd heard as much as I'd ever want to about what people were doing during the pandemic, but I was wrong. If I had been Dean last Thanksgiving, I would have roasted a turkey, too.

Also, I now have a reading list, which makes me feel very intellectually stimulated.

Bakopoulus was the perfect Bread Loaf speaker for me. First, well, TV, right? But, second, he had been at Bread Loaf years ago as a conference attendant who was working as a waiter. That means that sometimes he was in the kitchen! Like me! And this year was his first time back at Bread Loaf, and he was an instructor. And this year was my first time back at Bread Loaf, and I was a watcher of an instructor's lecture. So that was sort of the same, too.

Of course, Bakopoulus was at Bread Loaf well after I was. (Notice I say 'well' after and not 'long' after. There is a subtle difference. A little usage lesson for you.) And the waitstaff was considered a step up from the kitchen staff, though they had to pay to be there while we were paid to be there, and they were presumably working all the time while we most definitely were not. (Here's another opportunity to check out My Bread Loaf, if you didn't take advantage of the one I gave you earlier.)

After I started publishing, I sometimes thought about applying to the Bread Loaf Conference, just to see if I could get accepted. It would have been a way of feeling I had made it. I didn't really want to go. The thing lasts two weeks. I prefer my professional development along the lines of three hours.

Or, better yet, one hour, like the lecture I watched on Monday.

Post originally published at Original Content

The David Sedaris Lesson Plan

Ah, so long, so very long, since I've updated this blog.

Today, just now, in fact, an old post from my Original Content blog turned up in my stats. No, I do not know how. But I just tweeted a link to it, and now I'm sharing it here, because I so loved David Sedaris back then. I need to catch up with him.

From 2009

Earlier this month, I was doing an on-line connection thing with some creative writing students in a high school in Vermont. One of the students asked me about my favorite writers. The only name I can recall giving her was David Sedaris's, in large part because the young woman responded that she liked him, too. I recommended reading his essays to another student, who also said she was already familiar with him.

Then I started reading his most recent book When You Are Engulfed In Flames while I was on vacation, and I began to wonder if I wanted to be the one to tip the young off to the many wonders of Sedaris. The guy writes about getting high. Regularly. For decades. He writes about getting drunk. Nightly. For decades. He writes about hitchhiking! And, then, of course, what would a David Sedaris anthology be without frequent mentions of demon nicotine?

I eat all this stuff up, myself, but I had some anxious moments while I was reading this latest book. Could I get into trouble for recommending him to the impressionable young?

Then I realized that Sedaris has given up weed, alcohol, and Kools, and he has never cheated on a boyfriend. The guy's a flipping role model!

That being the case, I came up with some David Sedaris writing assignments:

1. David Sedaris writes about his experiences taking foreign language classes in France and Japan. Write an essay about your experience taking foreign language classes in your school. Seriously, do you think your instructor has a clue what s/he's saying to you? Does s/he really know anything about the language s/he's teaching or is s/he just onto a really sweet thing standing in front of a bunch of kids and spouting gibberish?

2. In one of his essays Sedaris writes about a somewhat odd woman who lived next door to him. Write an essay about an odd person who lives next door to you. The neighbor may be male or female. You'll get extra credit for including details about the neighbor's unpleasant health problems.

3. Sedaris wrote an essay about giving his companion a skeleton for Christmas. Write an essay about a really good present you've given someone.

4. Sedaris describes catching flies to feed his spider, April, in one of his pieces. Write an essay about your pet. Does it have any unusual dietary needs?

5. In one essay David Sedaris tells us that while visiting a doctor's office in Paris, he didn't understand a French nurse's instructions about what to do after he disrobed. So, naturally, he ended up sitting in the waiting room in his underwear. Write an essay about something embarrassing that you've done. Not something embarrassing that happened to you. Something embarrassing you've done.

An On-line Opportunity During The Covid Era

Last weekend I took part in a virtual literary salon organized by author Patricia Ann McNair in Chicago. Patty (Yes! I can call her Patty!) held the salon for students in two on-line workshops she led this summer through the Connecticut Literary Festival. I took her flash forms workshop, which was wonderful and which I will gush about here sometime in the future.

Two other writers from Connecticut took part in last weekend's event, but there were also two from Michigan and one from Seattle. Another person may have been from the Chicago area. Never would I have been part of a group this widely dispersed under normal circumstances. For that matter, a salon would have had to be very nearby for me to consider leaving the house for one at all. Because you all know how I am.

Once again, for all the true chaos this flipping pandemic has caused, it continues to create some types of opportunities, opportunities that I hope will continue when we come out of the other side of this thing.

This salon fell at 5 o'clock in my time zone, so I provided myself with a little charcuterie plate and white wine to create a serious literary experience in my cellar office. Turns out, though, no one else was eating at this thing.

Of course, that didn't stop me.

Post appeared in a slightly different form at Original Content.

An On-line Opportunity Durng The Covid Era

Last weekend I took part in a virtual literary salon organized by author Patricia Ann McNair in Chicago. Patty (Yes! I can call her Patty!) held the salon for students in two on-line workshops she led this summer through the Connecticut Literary Festival. I took her flash forms workshop, which was wonderful and which I will gush about here sometime in the future.

Two other writers from Connecticut took part in last weekend's event, but there were also two from Michigan and one from Seattle. Another person may have been from the Chicago area. Never would I have been part of a group this widely dispersed under normal circumstances. For that matter, a salon would have had to be very nearby for me to consider leaving the house for one at all. Because you all know how I am.

Once again, for all the true chaos this flipping pandemic has caused, it continues to create some types of opportunities, opportunities that I hope will continue when we come out of the other side of this thing.

This salon fell at 5 o'clock in my time zone, so I provided myself with a little charcuterie plate and white wine to create a serious literary experience in my cellar office. Turns out, though, no one else was eating at this thing.

Of course, that didn't stop me.

Post appeared in a slightly different form at Original Content.

Tomie dePaola In Connecticut

Monday afternoon, the news that author and illustrator Tomie dePaola had died at the age of 85 after falling earlier in the week quickly took over my Facebook page. I know an impressive number of people who had their picture taken with dePaola and/or have a Tomie story.

Tomie dePaola was born in Meriden, Connecticut and maintained connections with that city and this state. Beginning in 2001 he wrote a series of seven autobiographical books about growing up at 26 Fairmount Avenue in Meriden immediately before and during World War II. In 2011 the Meriden Public Library renamed its children's wing for him, and in 2018 it had to turn people away when he made an appearance there.

In 1999 dePaola donated professional materials to the Northeast Children's Literature Collection at The University of Connecticut. The University celebrated with a day-long symposium-type event. It was probably for educators. Around that time, I managed to attend a number of teacher literary events at UConn, because I had somehow gotten onto a teacher mailing list through a parent/teacher reading group I took part in at my sons' high school. So, yes, I crashed the Tomie party. That fall the William Benton Museum on UConn's Storrs campus also ran an exhibit of his work, The Heart of the Whitebird: The Art of Tomie dePaola. In October of that year, UConn awarded dePaola an honorary doctorate, one of nine he received.

And, finally, dePaola frequently was a featured author/illustrator at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair, most recently in 2018. I saw him signing there one year. The Fair had placed him on the far wall of the ballroom. The line of people waiting to speak to him went through the room, almost to the door. All the other writers signing just sat there and watched.

There was no Connecticut Children's Book Fair last year, and, personally, I have my doubts about whether it will come back, even if the U.S. is back to some kind of normal this fall. If it does, it will probably be a very long time before before the Fair finds as big a draw as Tomie dePaola willing to come out to a remote state university campus to support it.

The Connecticut children's literature world will surely miss his presence.

Edited to Add: Billie M. Levy interviews Tomie dePaola regarding the UConn event in 1999 held in honor of his donation of his archives to the University.

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content.

I Read Canadian Day

Today is I Read Canadian Day. I know because I saw it on Twitter this morning, and a Facebook friend posted about it. So, as so often happens, I am way behind the curve on this. But over the years I have paid a little attention to what's going on, childlit-wise, in Grandpa and Grandma Gauthier's home country. So here are some links from the Original Content archive on Canadian authors.

Susan Juby Susan Juby and more Susan Juby

Kenneth Opel

Ben Philippe

Cheryl Rainfield

Mordecai Richler

Tim Wynne-Jones

I am not a big Anne of Green Gables fan, yet I have three posts on that book:

Another Day
The Land of Anne
Loving Anne Shirley, Too, in which I also get to write about Margaret Atwood

It appears that except for Ben Philippe's book, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, I've done little Canadian reading recently. What's that about?

This post originally appeared at Original Content.