What do you think?
Rate this book
Killing Miss Kitty and Other Sins
Life in Claire’s typical Midwestern town is quiet; some would even say boring. But this is the 1950s, and things that seem calm on the surface are often churning underneath. When Claire takes a new black friend, dressed as “Liberty,” to the Fourth of July parade in the town park, she realizes there can be no liberty for either girl in her all-white town. And as she grows older, she discovers that her world is more complicated than she ever imagined.
Being the “new girl” in school isn’t the fresh start she was hoping for. Getting a pet involves sacrifices. And falling in love is more confusing than fulfilling—especially when it is not a love that can be spoken of, least of all by Claire.
Teenage sexuality, northern segregation, differing religious beliefs, and animal cruelty are just a few of the controversial topics explored in this collection of five interrelated stories, told in a voice that is both refreshingly naive and darkly humorous. With this book, Marion Dane Bauer lives up to her reputation as a writer who is not afraid to delve into difficult material in search of the truth.
Being the “new girl” in school isn’t the fresh start she was hoping for. Getting a pet involves sacrifices. And falling in love is more confusing than fulfilling—especially when it is not a love that can be spoken of, least of all by Claire.
Teenage sexuality, northern segregation, differing religious beliefs, and animal cruelty are just a few of the controversial topics explored in this collection of five interrelated stories, told in a voice that is both refreshingly naive and darkly humorous. With this book, Marion Dane Bauer lives up to her reputation as a writer who is not afraid to delve into difficult material in search of the truth.
- GenresYoung Adult
167 pages, Hardcover
First published May 21, 2007
3 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Marion Dane Bauer
172 books186 followersMarion Dane Bauer is the author of more than one hundred books for young people, ranging from novelty and picture books through early readers, both fiction and nonfiction, books on writing, and middle-grade and young-adult novels. She has won numerous awards, including several Minnesota Book Awards, a Jane Addams Peace Association Award for RAIN OF FIRE, an American Library Association Newbery Honor Award for ON MY HONOR, a number of state children's choice awards and the Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota for the body of her work.
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
-------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
-------------------------------------
Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
-------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
-------------------------------------
Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 29, 2018
What a...strange and interesting book? I don’t really know what I’m feeling. But it definately kept my interest. Trigger warnings for for racism, homophobia and animal cruelty.
November 5, 2012
Reviewed by Natalie Tsang for TeensReadToo.com
You would think that reading about other people's sins wouldn't be much fun, but Marion Dane Bauer's KILLING MISS KITTY AND OTHER SINS is a surprisingly pleasant and quick read. Set in the 1950s, we follow Claire, a young girl growing up in a small town in Illinois, through five stories spread out over about five years.
One of my few complaints is that at only 167 pages, including the foreword and afterword, the book is much too short. The five stories offer just a glimpse of Claire, a thoughtful but woefully awkward girl. I think that the author is great at illustrating Claire's charmingly adolescent need to define who she is yet her inability and lack of desire to understand anyone else. Only belatedly and temporarily does Claire see beyond her own little world. It's refreshing that Marion Dane Bauer's characters consistently put self-preservation before doing the right thing but have enough of a conscience to feel guilty, at least briefly, each time.
My favorite story is KILLING MISS KITTY. It will be hard for me to tell what's so great about this story without giving away the plot. This is the only story that is centered around family. This is also one of Claire's most imagined stories because she isn't actually a witness to a lot of the events that she recounts. It's ironic that the story in which her mother and her brother become most life-like is also the least "true." Because Claire is not there, it gives her enough objectivity to see her mother and brother as people instead of obstacles and the occasional aid.
KILLING MISS KITTY AND OTHER SINS is definitely not a novel, but the five stories are so interrelated that calling it an anthology or a short story collection would be a betrayal of its cohesive nature. Sometimes it seems as if the contents are lifted from the pages of Claire's journal. A journal that is both extremely private yet also begging to be read and understood.
Overall, Bauer paints a convincing portrait of adolescence that doesn't illuminate but points out and occasionally pokes fun at the trials and tribulations in the inevitable stumble towards growing up.
You would think that reading about other people's sins wouldn't be much fun, but Marion Dane Bauer's KILLING MISS KITTY AND OTHER SINS is a surprisingly pleasant and quick read. Set in the 1950s, we follow Claire, a young girl growing up in a small town in Illinois, through five stories spread out over about five years.
One of my few complaints is that at only 167 pages, including the foreword and afterword, the book is much too short. The five stories offer just a glimpse of Claire, a thoughtful but woefully awkward girl. I think that the author is great at illustrating Claire's charmingly adolescent need to define who she is yet her inability and lack of desire to understand anyone else. Only belatedly and temporarily does Claire see beyond her own little world. It's refreshing that Marion Dane Bauer's characters consistently put self-preservation before doing the right thing but have enough of a conscience to feel guilty, at least briefly, each time.
My favorite story is KILLING MISS KITTY. It will be hard for me to tell what's so great about this story without giving away the plot. This is the only story that is centered around family. This is also one of Claire's most imagined stories because she isn't actually a witness to a lot of the events that she recounts. It's ironic that the story in which her mother and her brother become most life-like is also the least "true." Because Claire is not there, it gives her enough objectivity to see her mother and brother as people instead of obstacles and the occasional aid.
KILLING MISS KITTY AND OTHER SINS is definitely not a novel, but the five stories are so interrelated that calling it an anthology or a short story collection would be a betrayal of its cohesive nature. Sometimes it seems as if the contents are lifted from the pages of Claire's journal. A journal that is both extremely private yet also begging to be read and understood.
Overall, Bauer paints a convincing portrait of adolescence that doesn't illuminate but points out and occasionally pokes fun at the trials and tribulations in the inevitable stumble towards growing up.
February 28, 2010
I think the last story was my favorite. That's the thing about linked-short-story collections, the last ones tend to be my favorites. Why? Because I've already gotten into the world and the character, so by the end I'm anxious to see what happens.
Anyway, this is one of the better short story collections I've read. They aren't necessarily happy stories, but then again, what short stories are, really?
That's the end. I can't make my thoughts sort themselves out. It's hopeless. I'm too groggy.
Anyway, this is one of the better short story collections I've read. They aren't necessarily happy stories, but then again, what short stories are, really?
That's the end. I can't make my thoughts sort themselves out. It's hopeless. I'm too groggy.
March 12, 2008
This is a series of five stories about a girl named Claire, growing up in the 1950s. I'm not sure who the audience is for this book - it's too mature for elementary aged kids, but high schoolers won't relate to it either. The title story really is about the girl's mom killing their vicious family pet, so just b/c there is a cat that is murdered, I don't like this book!
May 28, 2012
sins...
August 2, 2012
Author is the grandmother of a past 5th grade student. Love how her stories are based on her life experiences.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews