Shutta Crum's Blog, page 15
December 2, 2013
2014: Shutta’s Scholarship to NY for MI–SCBWI Members
Shutta’s Scholarship Solution to the (upcoming) Winter Doldrums is Here Again!
If you are interested in attending the annual SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City but feel you can’t afford it—think again! With a little help you might find yourself at the Grand Hyatt in NY on a blustery wintry day. (Provided you are a member of the Michigan Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.)
For the fourth year in row, I am renewing my offer to pay the full early-bird registration fee for a Michigan SCBWI member to attend. The qualifying rules are listed on the application form which is posted on the MichKids SCBWI website and is now at my site off the “For Writer’s” page and on the sidebar.
The conference is Feb. 21-23, 2014. See the national SCBWI site at: http://www.scbwi.org for details about the conference. But start getting your chicks in line, now, to apply. You never know what magical thing might happen to you there!
Kelly Barson, a past winner said: “Ever since I joined SCBWI, I’ve wanted to attend a national conference. The timing seemed perfect for 2012, but my bank account disagreed. Shutta’s generous scholarship made my dream trip a reality.”
Any questions, feel free to contact me (below by replying to this post), or at my Contact Me page.
Dream Big!
Shutta
August 21, 2013
Debbie Gonzales’ Core Curriculum State Standards Teacher Guide for DOZENS OF COUSINS
I’m head over heels in love with the new CCSS annotated teacher/reader guide that Debbie Gonzales did for DOZENS OF COUSINS (Clarion). At 23 pages (Almost as long as the book!) it is chock full of activities, questions, and hands-on projects. Also included is a matrix that matches the book to the CCSS for teachers.
In addition to being a wonderful writer, Debbie Gonzales was a teacher, a school administrator, an educational consultant, a curriculum designer, a former adjunct professor, and a writing workshop instructor. She has even taught PBS’s Barney kids in a one-room off-set Montessori classroom. She earned her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults and was a Montessori teacher and a curriculm coordinator in Texas. Her forte is in finding educational and fun, supplemenetal activities to expand the use of books in the classroom.
DOZENS OF COUSINS deals with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, as well as brothers and sisters–all at a family reunion. So Debbie has come up with age-appropriate activites that deal with genealogy for my latest book. My editor at Clarion (HMH) was also thrilled by the guide she created for us.
When Debbie gets a book to work with–stand back! The ideas are gonna come thundering out! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Enjoy Debbie’s guide for Dozens of Cousins here.
Ciao!
Shutta
Shutta
July 29, 2013
Our Two-Faced Friend: Intention
Here’s an article I wrote for the Writing Barn blog (out of Austin, TX) about the two faces of intention–how important it is in writing, and in the end how it doesn’t really matter at all.
Enjoy!
Shutta
Shutta
Mini-Lesson: Cornering Your Characters
Join me at Kate Messner’s site: Teachers Write for a lesson on getting your characters to the point that they must make the final fateful decision that will move your story forward to its climax.
Enjoy!
Shutta
(p.s.–If you want to stay up-to-date on my articles, and what I’m doing…please subscribe to this site! Thanks.)
Shutta
July 2, 2013
Welcome to My Newest “Baby!”
She’s a healthy 8 1/4 X 10 1/4 inches and weighs in at 11 ounces.
DOZENS OF COUSINS came out today. It is illustrated by the wildly talented David Catrow and published by Clarion Books. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)
And here’s the newly written teacher’s guide: CCSS Annotated Guide for Dozens of Cousins (2).pdf It was designed and written by Debbie Gonzales, Montessori teacher and curriculum specialist extraordinaire!
In it you’ll find all sorts of hands-on activities as well as fun discussion questions.
And—just in case you missed the earlier posting of it—here’s the book trailer. Enjoy!!
Preview DOZENS OF COUSINS here!
Shutta
Shutta
June 16, 2013
A Poem for My Father
(Dad, Uncle James L., Uncle Junior)
Father’s Cupboard
My father’s cupboard—built by hand
held baby food jars and Prince Albert Tobacco cans
full of nails or screws.
And always, oily boxes with torn labels
too heavy for me to tip and peek into.
These were the secret things my father used
to hold the world together.
Committed these past fifty years to the basement,
bracing the house I grew up in,
it was once Mom’s kitchen cupboard.
Dad painted it smiling-teeth white and Kool-aid red.
It sat near-to-bursting in the kitchen
until banished in favor of Danish modern throughout.
This morning in the basement,
jacking up the kitchen floor above,
it takes four of us to extract the cupboard
from the embrace of floor joists.
For the house is sagging now,
despite the stoic Danes, despite Dad.
I brush away cobwebs, check all its porcelain knobs.
It is dripped with spilled paint—pink on the red.
Perhaps the pink he used making my own
small table and chairs? Or the pink
of my sister’s dollhouse—almost forgotten.
And sky blue. Perhaps a birdhouse,
or a project of my brother’s? Maybe it is the blue
of the metal chair that sat in the yard
idly reflecting on the sky while I attended school,
met boys, and fell in love.
My father’s cupboard is scarred and anointed with color.
Until the very end we left it to its labors, and only now
wrest it from the grieving house.
©Shutta Crum 2005
Dad’s cupboard. I still have it.
And here’s A POEM FOR MY MOTHER
Enjoy!
Shutta
Shutta
June 12, 2013
More Dawes Arboretum Photos
June 10, 2013
Swept Along the Storytrail: Dawes Arboretum
I really need to post about the wonderful experience I had at the Dawes Arboretum in May. This was a first for me—having one of my books chosen as the title used in a storytrail. That is, the book was reproduced in two-page spreads (with permissions) on vinyl signs that were then placed along a quarter mile trail that wound through the Arboretum. Families and kids walk the trail and read the book as they go (May through October). What a fantastic idea!!! The program combines reading with exercise and the great outdoors—what more could anyone want? (Perhaps another 1600 acres of beautiful grounds—which the Dawes has.)
BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE page (Knopf) was the title chosen as it deals with night-time animals in the woods. And on Saturday, May 18th, an opening reception was held at which I spoke. It drizzled—still, families came out with umbrellas and wearing rain boots. I spoke about writing BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE and then we walked the trail as a group and I read the book. It was so much fun!
As I finished reading each sign the kids raced to the next one—impatiently waiting for the adults to catch up so we could read. (You can see a second sign in the distance in the photo above.) One family included a father who signed for his child. So as I read, he signed and the whole audience had this added experience. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was so much enthusiasm in the racing kids, the laughing adults, the beautiful surroundings—the trail loops along the top of rolling hills from which one can see for miles over a valley.
The Dawes Arboretum is about 35 miles east of Columbus, Ohio in rolling river valley country. The azaleas were in bloom. And with the spring rains, the world was deeply green.
BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE will grace the storytrail for the summer as kids walk and read. The museum in the Arboretum will sell my book and I will continue to cherish the wonderful memory of such an unusual, fun, and healthy book event!
I hope other parks, libraries with trails and arboretums will take notice. This was a fun, innovative program and easily replicable by other institutions.
Here’s to reading!
Shutta
Shutta
May 20, 2013
DOZENS OF COUSINS (Cover, Trailer & 1st Review!)
Dozens of Cousins (Published by Clarion HMH, and illustrated by the talented David Catrow.) is slated to be released July 1, but the first review is in already—and it’s a star. YAY!
Publisher’s Weekly says: “An annual family reunion brings together a passel of carefree cousins in this joyful pairing of Crum’s (Mine!) comically heroic verse with Catrow’s (Have Fun, Molly Lou Mellon) equally rollicking pictures . . . A triumphant ode to family in all of its messy, quirky glory.” See the full review here: http://publishersweekly.com/978-0-618-15874-4 .
In celebration we’ve created a book trailer for those of you who want a closer peek. Enjoy!
COMING! July 2013 . . . published by Clarion.
Shutta
May 12, 2013
A Poem for My Mother
My sister and I giving Mom a big kiss . . . miss her!
My Mother Taught Me to Quilt
(for Evelyn Crum, master quilter, 1933-2008)
My mother taught me to quilt—
how to measure width and length,
how to find shades of a rainy day,
or the hue of a child’s trust.
I watched as she patched each day’s pieces
into a kaleidoscopic whole.
And she always saved the scraps.
She taught me to ease dissonance
into harmonies of pattern, and to blind stitch.
She tugged, and I saw, that the straight grain was strong.
But she said I must learn to work with bias,
for there are days when fabric needs to stretch.
I studied how she smoothed the layers—
how she rocked her needle, hand-stitching
it all to a strong back. And finally,
how she held me bundled in her patchwork.
Now, on rainy days
I walk out into the wet grass and collect
my colors–the impatient greens, the heart-deep browns,
the glistening grays, and the fresh-washed blue of a forget-me-not.
I measure. I cut. I rock my needle.
I bind my raw edges.
Shutta, revised 2013 (First published; AACR2, 2010)
Shutta
