Kelly Barnhill's Blog, page 30

Student Work!

This week, I've been a guest writer at Epiphany Catholic School which is located a fair hike from my house (as a city dweller who can walk to most things worth going to, I have to admit that I'm daunted and confused by interstate highways, and am utterly mystified why anyone would chose to drive on them every day. And yet. There they were. Millions of people in their cars. A stunning sight. Anyway.). And this residency has been marvelous.

It's been a bit of a departure from the normal set-up. Instead of working with four groups over the course of a week, seeing the same kids every day, in this residency I worked with each class only once, and therefore visited every classroom in the school. And let me tell you – I've felt like the most popular woman alive – a freaking rock star. And it's been nice, because I've been able to meet everyone, and write with them, and listen to them, and hear their stories.

A couple of kids have been kind enough to share their stories with me on this blog. They've written across genres, writing the kinds of stories that draw them in individually as readers. And it's been fun!

Here's the first story, titled "Those Hunted," by Rachel S., a seventh grader.

Seth could feel the fear wrapping around him, clutching at his chest, gnawing at his soul.  A car drove by, flooding the alleyway with a blinding light.  The vehicle drove by, kicking up dust.  The smell of must and rot filled Seth's nose.  He backed himself into the corner, feeling the darkness again surrounding him, a sure sign that the beast would be there soon.  Seth dared not breathe into the night.  His mother had named him after the mythical Egyptian god, Set, hoping it would grant him even the slightest of power.  Seth knew this would not be.

Seth knew he had disturbed the beast.  He closed his eyes, then blinked them open, seeing no difference.  He had been afraid.  It had been a simple mistake, just a fight he had gotten into.  To anybody who looked, Seth was just a beggar, though for some reason terrified out of his mind.  A street rat, a grimy boy with dark eyes that never stopped darting around.  That was the truth.  But there was more.  He had been in school.  In fact, that was where it all had started.

There was nothing, even though he waved his hand in front of his face.  The darkness bounced through Seth's head, like an echo that never truly ends.  The same darkness that had happened when Seth had cracked into a sarcophagus, caused by a hard shove received by a boy that had labeled Seth as a "weakling".  He had thrown a punch at the boy, even though he himself had started it.  Seth had heard the hard CRUNCH!!! and knew he had crushed the bones of a very ancient king, even considered a god to Egyptians.  He had felt something zap through his mind, tracking him down and vowing never to let him go.  Seth now had the guardian of a past pharaoh after him, a blood-thirsty sphinx the size of a bus.  He had pictured its cold eyes snap open in his mind, the cold reptilian glare it had given him.

All because Seth didn't look American, which he wasn't, the kids had pushed him around.  His father had left him, and his mother had recently been in an accident.  Or so he thought.  What she hadn't told him was how it had happened, or why he was living alone running from apparently nonexistent creatures.  Seth knew it existed, because it had been watching his every move for the past three years.  Now there was nowhere else to hide, and it would never let him escape.

Although all born in America, his family had been labeled aliens and shipped to Egypt.  They had never even been to Egypt.  Seth knew it was no mistake.  He had been caught between two battles at once.  The most important, between his life and reality.  Neither of which were winning.  He wondered where his family was, and if they knew where he was.  He had been in Egypt, and woken up in Miami, somehow.  Seth felt hot breath down the back of his neck, and knew why.  The sphinx had brought him here.

Seth stood up and turned around, glad that he could not see.  Then a bright light danced across his face, a flashlight shined in his eyes.  The sphinx was here.  It stood there, staring at him.  There was nothing human about it.  It's massive body was like a lion, including its face.  A serpent's tail lashed out behind it, green and scaly, about five feet long.  The sphinx opened its mouth, displaying a set of sharp, crooked, angled teeth.  The lion's face morphed into the face of the body who had shoved.  It screamed into the night, hot breath striking Seth in the face.

 

Seth woke up.  He stared at a white ceiling.  It was his own.  Seth was in his room, feeling weightless.  He thought to get up, but decided not to.  The only thing worth fighting was the temptation to fight back.

Fantastic work Rachel! I love the visceral details and the way you put the reader right in the body of the main character.

 

And here's another story from fourth grader Caitlin S. called "J.T Walker"

It seemed like any ordinary Monday afternoon. The teacher was reading from the book, "Shiloh". Then, it happened. The bell rang three times. I knew what this meant. A real lockdown, not the ones we do every month. We hurried to the back of the room and the teacher closed both the doors and the window shades. We waited for two minutes, but the intercom made not one little buzz. "Let me in!", called a sickening, raspy voice from the other side of the door.

We all screamed. Well, we couldn't help it! What would you do if some crazed maniac came to your school shouting at your door?

Suddenly, I had a great idea. I asked my teacher if it was okay, and it was. So, I first got a desk and a chair and pushed them to the door. Next, I grabbed our class' pet, a snapping turtle, and put him on the desk. Then, I grabbed a textbook and also put it on the desk. Finally, I got the keys from the teacher's desk. With Henry the turtle in my hands, I slowly unlocked the door.

Once he came in, I put Henry in the back of his shirt. He was jerking so much you couldn't see his face! But just at the right time, I whacked that jerk, J.T. Walker, on the head with the text book, and he got knocked out. My class jumped for joy! I was a hero!

 

I love stories by fourth graders! Their innate humor always combines with their innate need for heroism. Great story, Caitlin.

There's more work coming in, so stay tuned!

Filed under: Uncategorized

On Ruling the World (and other worthwhile endeavors)

About a year ago, I sat on the couch with my eleven year old. She had a book on her lap, I had a laptop upon which I was furiously typing the final chapter of my next book. All of a sudden she closed her book with a slap and chucked it – without comment – across the room. I looked over. Her face was set with exasperation and rage.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Why," she asked, "do evil villains insist on incessantly trying to rule the world? Can we have another plotline, please?"

"What about evil villains who try to rule the multiverse?" I asked, giving a surreptitious glance at my own work-in-progress, thinking more critically about the motivations of my own evil villain.

"Same thing," she said.

Drat, I thought.

"Is it just that writers themselves are power-hungry megalomaniacs? When writers write villains, is it just because they're living out their fantasies?" She gave me a sidelong glance. "Do writers secretly plot to rule the world?" She gulped. "Do you?"

I had to act fast.

"Let's have ice cream," I said, changing the subject. Next I knew, she'd be asking about my alter-ego, or my secret lair, or my army of steam-powered automons with laser-beam eyes that I have in the garage.

"No," she said. "I don't trust it. And I am so on to you." She narrowed her eyes. "Princess Barnhill." She flounced away (though, I noticed, she picked the book back up, and took it to her room to read.)

Yup.I thought. She's onto me all right.

Because it's true. I'm a total megalomaniac. And a power freak. That's why I write fiction. Incidentally, that's why I like teaching as well.  Now I've blogged before about my passion for corrupting the youth of America, and I stand by it. But what I haven't written about before is the rush I feel – both in teaching and in writing.

Take this picture for an example:

A classroom full of bright-eyed, fresh-faced minions! What's not to love?

Because it's true: In my classroom, it is my land, my kingdom, my realm. And I am Princess. When I was a classroom teacher, I had a hundred and twenty kids refer to me as Princess Barnhill. Now, every once in a while, I show up at a school to do a week-long residency wearing a crown.

Just because.

When I stand in front of a classroom – when I have every eye, every mind, every heart tuned to what I'm about to say – I'm creating a singular, insular, perfect world. I make the rules; I guide the thinking; I can make it wonderful or scary or boring or fun. And when I get a room full of kids thinking about stories, and talking about stories, and imagining new stories…..and THEN, preside over that same room with thirty kids bent over their desks, spinning stories on the page, when the only sound to be heard is the sound of pencils scratching and papers rustling and open-mouthed breathing…..

Honestly, there's nothing, nothing better.

I love teaching. I love pulling kids into the world of story-making. And I love, love, love being Princess for a little bit. It's not exactly ruling the world. But it's close enough.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Dr. Evil, Dr. Horrible, fiction is my job, princesses, ruling the world, Teaching

CURSE YOU, J.K. ROWLING!

Yeah, that's right. I said it. Do you realize, J.K. (if that's your real name) how much your books have hijacked the brains of my (I'll admit it) utterly addled children?

I know I've written about this before, and I've certainly thought about it often, but today was bloody ridiculous. It began when I asked my son to choose his breakfast.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" he cried, pointing at my chest with a chopstick.

"That's very nice," I said. "But what I want you to do is decide between Cheerios-"

"EXPELLIARMUS!" he yelled again, giving the chopstick a jaunty flick.

"or oatmeal," I continued.

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

"Or, if you want-"

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

"I could boil you an egg."

"EXPELLIARMUS! EXPELLIARMUS! EXPELLIARMUS!" He vaulted forward, somersaulting across the kitchen floor, zapping me with his magic spell over his shoulder, then from under his leg, then upside down. He shouted the disarming spell while leaping, lunging and flying through space. He was joyful, intent, and unbridled. He was magic personified.

My eight year old – always a cool customer – was not amused. She extracted her spoon from her cereal and licked it clean. Then, shutting one eye, she pointed her spoon squarely at her brother.

"STUPEFY!" she yelled. Leo froze in mid-air, his face a mask of shock and horror, and fell, senseless to the ground. Deedee humphed, twirled her spoon, blew the tip, and resumed eating.

"It's so easy," she said with her mouth full, "to be in charge of boys."

Leo still didn't move. "Will someone," he mumbled with frozen lips, "please un-stupefy me?" Deedee didn't budge.

"Hermione wouldn't've done, so I won't either." Deedee tucked into her breakfast and re-opened her book, a barely-concealed, un-uttered snicker uncurling across her lips.

I asked Leo later why he didn't just get up – why he waited for his sister to finish eating, brush her teeth, and then un-stupefy him. Leo looked at me like I was nuts.

"How could I have?" he asked. "It's not like I could just break the spell." And he sat down and ate his breakfast and no more magic occurred that day.

DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO US MS ROWLING? Granted, my kids are crazy, but I think the evidence clearly shows that you have made them crazier. And a bit of a challenge to parent.

Perhaps, it's time for me to return to my copy of Defensive Magical Theory and my Standard Book Of Spells (vol 1-7) just to brush up.

Filed under: Uncategorized

On Solidarity (and why it matters)

So here's the thing: I'll never, ever hide my political stripes. I'm a pinko-commie, education-loving, outdoors-protecting, tax-the-rich-and-give-it-to-the-poor kind of liberal. I think that the people who sweat and labor, the people who keep us safe, the people who heal us and who care for us when we are dying, the people who put their bodies and lives in harms way, the people who care for our most vulnerable populations – they ALL deserve a fair shake. And even more than that – they deserve to share in this country's wealth and prosperity JUST AS MUCH as the folks in Wall Street who do nothing more than move numbers around.

(and secretly, I think they deserve more)

I grew up listening to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and Pete Seeger and the rest of them. I read The Grapes of Wrath and Bound for Glory in sixth grade, and re-read it every year thereafter to calibrate my soul.

I believe in sweat-equity.

I believe that the folks doing the work know more about a business's operations than the folks who own the business – and that the two sides should listen to one another, and treat each other as equals.

Which is why I believe in unions.

I was a card-carrying union member for only a short time in my life – but the symbolism, the poetry of it was important to me. I grew up in a family that honored strike lines. I remember as a little girl going with my dad to the supermarket and passing by the place we normally shopped. When I asked about it, my dad said simply, "In this family, we don't cross strike lines."

It's a policy I've kept, even to this day.

I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the situation in Wisconsin. Thrilled because the forces on the Right (or, more specifically, the ridiculously rich backers of the media outlets that fuel the rage on the Right) have been working for the last four decades to slowly dismantle the power of unions and the protections they offer to working people.

I'm thrilled because the world can now see the impact that unions have – and the terrible price that thousands and thousands of people would pay if they were dismantled. I'm thrilled because people of all incomes, education levels and walks of life are coming together and standing as brothers and sisters. I'm thrilled because when people join their voices together they are great, they are powerful, and they are mighty.

But I'm scared of the power that the Koch brothers and the rest of the bozos funding the Tea Party and the Prosperity Foundation and the rest of the hysterical half-truth generators that have more money than they know what to do with and more media access than they deserve. And I'm worried about the virulence of lies.

In any case, I stand in solidarity with the Wisconsin workers – and with all workers around the world who have found it necessary to agitate for their rights, and to remind the owning classes of the wondrous and thrilling power of the people. To that end, I encourage all of you to visit Tom Tomorrow's blog for some ideas of what you can do to help the strikers.

I bought pizza. Because strikers gotta eat.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Incontrovertible Proof That My Kids Are Wierd (and awesome)

This morning, my son came downstairs, sat on my lap and breathed a reeky cloud of morning breath on my face. I coughed, gagged.

"Only the people we truly love ever get to smell our morning breath," he said hugging me. "And I LOVE YOU. You're the cutest mom." So, sweet, annoying, adorable and random all within about fifty seconds. Not a bad start to the day.

We walked into the kitchen. My son held up his hands.

"WAIT!" he said. I waited. "Before I have my breakfast, I have to do my push-ups." He dropped to the floor and did ten, his little muscles cording from his neck to his shoulders and down his arms. He stood.

"Just ten?" I said.

He nodded. "You're right." He did ten more.

"What would you like for breakfast," I asked.

He thought about it. "A black bean burrito," he said.

"For breakfast?"

"Duh," he was mystified that I would ask. "It's breakfast time."

"All right," I said. Who wants a black bean burrito for breakfast? I have no idea. But once I had heated the pan and assembled the various accoutrements for his breakfast, Leo came running back into the kitchen.

"WAIT!" he shouted."ONE MORE THING!" He held his hands in the "stop" position.

I waited.

"Chopped kale," he said.

"What?"

"In my burrito. Chopped kale. Mixed in with the beans."

I stood silently. The pan started to smoke.

"Please," he added.

"All right," I said. "One black bean and raw kale breakfast burrito coming right up."

Leo leaped into the air, punching his little fists towards the ceiling. "YESSSS!" he shouted. "Today is gonna be AWESOME!"

And he ate the whole thing. I'll let you know whether or not today was, indeed, awesome.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: raising vegetarian children

Incontrovertalbe Proof That My Kids Are Wierd (and awesome)

This morning, my son came downstairs, sat on my lap and breathed a reeky cloud of morning breath hard on my face. I coughed, gagged.

"Only the people we truly love ever get to smell our morning breath," he said hugging me. "And I LOVE YOU. You're the cutest mom." So, sweet, annoying, adorable and random all within about fifty seconds. Not a bad start to the day.

We walked into the kitchen. My son held up his hands.

"WAIT!" he said. I waited. "Before I have my breakfast, I have to do my push-ups." He dropped to the floor and did ten, his little muscles cording from his neck to his shoulders and down his arms. He stood.

"Just ten?" I said.

He nodded. "You're right." He did ten more.

"What would you like for breakfast," I asked.

He thought about it. "A black bean burrito," he said.

"For breakfast?"

"Duh," he was mystified that I would ask. "It's breakfast time."

"All right," I said. Who wants a black bean burrito for breakfast? I have no idea. But once I had heated the pan and assembled the various accoutrements for his breakfast, Leo came running back into the kitchen.

"WAIT!" he shouted."ONE MORE THING!" He held his hands in the "stop" position.

I waited.

"Chopped kale," he said.

"What?"

"In my burrito. Chopped kale. Mixed in with the beans."

I stood silently. The pan started to smoke.

"Please," he added.

"All right," I said. "One black bean and raw kale breakfast burrito coming right up."

Leo leaped into the air, punching his little fists towards the ceiling. "YESSSS!" he shouted. "Today is gonna be AWESOME!"

And he ate the whole thing. I'll let you know whether or not today was, indeed, awesome.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: raising vegetarian children

The Translation of Dr. Apelles

One other thing.

I'm reading this book:

and it is blowing my brains to bits.

Anyone else around here read it? His prose is so fantastic, I might die of it. If anyone has any perspective or insight into this novel, I'd love to discuss.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: David Treuer, Fantastic Books

On leaps of faith. (And falling.) (And flying.)

I read an article over at Salon.com about the financial perils of the Mommy-track. (It's called "Regrets of a Stay-At-Home Mom" , by one Katy Read, and it's absolutely worth the read. Then, if you happen to be – as I am – a stay-at-home mom, then get down on your knees and pray). Essentially, the author examines her own decision to remain at home with her two sons, now teenagers, and how that decision (in conjunction with her divorce) has landed her in a financial pit of despair. She's a freelance writer (which means that she makes close to nothing), and was out of the newspaper game for fourteen years, which means that she missed fourteen years worth of promotions, pay increases, seniority, 401k employer matches and what have you.

And her situation is bleak. (And not just for her. This economy really sucks for anyone who's been out of work. Still. She's paying for her choices and paying hard, and the comments on her piece have been anything but kind.)

I read that article, and I immediately called my husband.

Actually, that's not true. I didn't call him immediately. I cleaned my house and thought about leaps of faith. Because, in the end, that's what I did. I leaped – into love, into marriage, into motherhood, into stay-at-home parenting, and into the writing life. All of those decisions required tremendous faith in things that are not me. And I believed in them for no reason, except for hoping. I'm very, very good at hoping for the best.

As I got my house in order, I became incredibly appreciative of my husband. Look, I'll be honest: I'm not an easy person to be married to. I'm sensitive, needy and sometimes irrational. I'm a terrible money-manager. I make horrible financial decisions. I'm a rotten gardener. I'm a miserable housekeeper. And I have temper. And I'm sometimes loud.

And yet. Ted loves me anyway. We were so young when we married our fortunes together, and so young when we married for real, and so young when we brought a new person into the world. We had nothing. Just a little bit of hope that we'd keep eating and building and growing.

It's a little easier to leap when someone is holding your hand, but it's a leap all the same. We closed our eyes, bent our knees and jumped skyward.

So, after cleaning the house, I called him at the office. Ted, like me, is a do-it-yourself type when it comes to his job. A few years ago, he took his own kind of leap into business-ownership, starting a small architectural design firm with a partner, called Design 45.

"I just wanted to tell you that I recognize that I'm not an easy person to be married to," I said to him, "and I appreciate you and I really really really love you and I think you're marvelous."

Ted sighed – a slow, long-suffering sigh. "I think I've mentioned before that you really need to knock off the mushy phone calls when I'm trying to get work done," he said. I could hear him shaking his head. I could hear him smiling. "But I love you too. You dork." And he's right. I am a dork.

And just like that, I flew.

The thing is, though, when I made the decision to choose stay-at-home parenting instead of returning to the classroom, I was absolutely making a leap of faith in regards to my marriage. I was also making a HUGE leap of faith in regards to my potential as a writer. Because I knew – I knew! – that I wanted to be writing fiction. I knew that I did not want to be in the classroom full time. I knew that I wanted to be with my children every waking moment and writing stories when they were sleeping, and I wanted to be building books.

I never thought to really analyze the tremendous faith I was putting on the stability of my marriage to make that happen. It never even occurred to me. I trusted in my marriage in the same way I trusted that my next breath will have enough oxygen in it and that the ground beneath my feet won't give way to a sinkhole.

If we have faith without thinking, is it still faith? Or, conversely, if we calculate the risk, if we weigh the possibilities of failure, and then leap – if we leap after first making sure that the other side is stable enough to hold us – is that faith?

In any case, it doesn't matter. I leaped. I stayed home with my children. I was mostly good at it. And I loved it. I wrote books. Most of them I threw away. Some of them I sold – and by doing so, helped to keep my family financially afloat. My husband leaped too. He left the stability of a firm and struck out on his own. It worked. The one time when his business slowed thanks to the financial melt-down, I had sold the novel, and we were able to live on that exclusively for a while. And my kids – they have two parents who have built a life on their wits – and a combination of duct tape, twine, sticks, tissue paper and chewing gum. It's not for everyone, but it'll do for us just fine.

We closed our eyes, held hands, and flew.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: fiction is my job, fyi, Katy Read, leap of faith, Mommy-Track, Salon.com, this economy kinda sucks

On Forgiveness, Grief, and the Book I Cannot Write

There's a book (there's always a book), that I cannot commit to paper. I haven't scrawled a word of it on a notebook or a cereal box or a sheet of toilet paper or a bunch of wadded up receipts. And yet. It is written all the same. I know everything there is to know about this book: I know the shape of the narrative, the faces of its inhabitants, the dark, hidden places in the story. I know the texture of the language, the mournful cry of the wind through the trees, the rhythmic pulse of the trains that skirt past the scrubby bit of land at the stump of the dead-end street. I know the tragic inception of the story, how it winds around the hands and feet of my characters. How it pulls into tight, hard knots.

I know there is redemption too. And love. But the loss at the beginning – the grief. It stops my hands every time. And maybe it's because I'm superstitious (do I hesitate to write about the loss of a child because I fear losing my own children? Do I hesitate to examine the role of grief in realistic situations because I'm afraid to do so without the distance of fantasy? I honestly don't know. And I'm too scared to find out.)

This story is already written along the folds of my heart. I feel it on my skin, I hear it whisper in my ears in the moments before sleep and in the rush of waking up. It crowds my eyes while dreaming. But I have not written down.

I've refused to do it.

Because I'm afraid. And I left it at that.

But something happened this weekend that made me rethink it.

I went to church, and this woman spoke the congregation: Her name is Mary Johnson and she started an organization called From Death To Life – a group that brings the families of murder victims with the families of murderers, into circles of forgiveness, repentance and love. That woman there – and believe me, you have never met anyone so full of love, so full of the spirit as that dear, dear lady – is embracing the young man who, many years ago, took the life of her only son.

I'm just gonna let that sink in for a moment.

Okay, you with me? Good. His name is Oshea Israel. He was sixteen when he shot Laramiun Lamont Byrd, Mary Johnson's son. She said that in the aftermath of the murder, and then the trial, and then Israel's imprisonment, she felt only rage, hatred and hurt. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him caged. She said, "I didn't realize that anger and hurt are a cancer in the soul. I didn't realize that my rage was a prison worse than any prison that the boy who killed my boy could ever be thrown in. I was a prisoner. And I needed to be free."

The path to forgiveness wasn't an easy one, but one of the things that really got me in her story is that her path was incited by a poem – "Two Mothers", by an anonymous poet, which she read by accident after opening to a random page in a book. It arrested her, pinned her heart in place. She decided she needed to meet the boy – now a man – who killed her son. She decided she needed to meet his mother. She decided that she needed to love them both – to forgive the son and to grieve with the mother – and by doing that she would be free. And maybe they would be free too.

After a TON of restorative justice work – with the family, with social workers, with church members and community members and with all sorts of folks who involve themselves in the tough and important work of restorative justice – they met. She asked him to come and work with her when he left prison to heal their community. She told him that he had an opportunity to do something good and brave and beautiful that would help to heal the world. He believed her.

She said: "I took him in my arms and hugged him. And I felt something deep in my body – starting at my feet and moving upwards through my belly and my chest and the top of my head. And I felt it burst forth and fly away. I felt my hurt and my anger and my rage leave my body. And just like that it was gone. And only love remained."

I sat in the congregation. I shook. I wept. (Seriously, I made kind of an idiot of myself.) She said that the young man is now out of prison – has been for over a year. He lives next door to her and works with her. "I lost a son," she said. "And God gave me a son. And he gave me his mother, my sister. And then we got to work."

It was an amazing, thrilling and life-affirming story, and proves to me once again that love really is stronger than hate, and stronger than death, and stronger than revenge. Love has the capacity to do good, to change a community and a country and a life, while revenge and hate can do nothing except to perpetuate themselves. Love is tougher, braver and more resilient than revenge on its best day, and it's our only hope for a better future.

She could have chosen hatred. She could have chosen rage.  She could have chosen revenge and animosity and isolation. But she would have changed nothing. Instead she loved, and that changes everything.

And she has inspired me to be brave. And she has inspired me to be hopeful and loving and vulnerable and alive.

And maybe I will write that book after all.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: death to life, forgiveness, mary johnson, mother-to-mother, oshea israel, restorative justice, saint joan of arc catholic church

Second Story!

Well, not that kind of story. It's the Second Story Reading series at The Loft – a literary arts organization in Minneapolis. If anyone's available, you should come. Phyllis Root is reading. Phyllis Root!

She'll be reading from this book: Doesn't it look marvelous! Don't you want to purchase it instantly? Of course you do.

Though you may know her work already from this book:

or this book:

or this book:

In any case, I think she's marvelous. I never knew she wrote a book for middle grade readers, and I'm excited to hear her read. You should come!

Here's the details:

Second Story, the Loft's reading series for writers of young adult and children's literature, curated by Swati Avasthi and Heather Bouwman, presents authors Phyllis Root and Eileen Beha.

Eileen Beha spends summers vacationing on Prince Edward Island, where she has a cottage near the quaint village of Victoria-by-the-Sea. A former middle school principal, Eileen lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two terriers, Tango and Louise. Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog (Bloomsbury, 2009) is her first book for middle grade readers.

Phyllis Root has been writing for children for thirty years and has published over forty books, including picture books, middle grade novels and non-fiction, including Big Momma Makes the World, which won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award.  She teaches in the Hamline University Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.

Recent books include Big Belching Bog and Lilly and the Pirates

Target Performance Hall

Open Book

1011 Washington Avenue South

Minneapolis MN 55415

Filed under: Uncategorized