It’s been an exciting March in Cincinnati and it’s only about to get even more exciting now that March Madness begins this Thursday. As you may have heard if you follow college basketball, my beloved University of Cincinnati Bearcats men’s basketball team is in the big dance and a #2 seed this year. !!!
Their first game is this Friday at 2 p.m. and you know I’m excited because, quite honestly, I don’t think I can get anything done this week besides eagerly anticipate this first game. I have tried, but, no. I don’t think it is possible. I actually woke up at 6 a.m. the day after springing forward because I was too excited to sleep any longer. (And look, I get grumpy when my cat wakes me up at 7 a.m. for breakfast. I am not a morning person.) This is how I have felt inside since Sunday:
Anyway . . . it turns out there is some other exciting news to share that doesn’t have to do with college basketball. 😉
The Distance to Home is going to be in the Scholastic Book Fair and Book Club starting in April!
It was also chosen for the Iowa Children’s Choice Award! In the case of this award, the nominations come directly from readers, so I’m thrilled to see that they enjoyed The Distance toHome enough to nominate it. Thank you, Iowa readers!
Last year, I connected via Skype with two schools that used The Distance to Home in a grade-wide capacity. I was delighted to interview the teachers who spearheaded this project in their respective middle schools, Angie Hull from Dublin, OH, and Tiffany Hathaway from Folsom, NJ.
JB: When I wrote this book, I always hoped it could be used in classrooms someday. How did you select The Distance to Home to be used in this way? What was it about the title that appealed to you, and that you thought would appeal to students?
Tiffany Hathaway (TH): I attended a workshop called “What’s New in Young Adult Literature” and learned about The Distance to Home. Our middle school team was looking for a title for our One Book initiative—students entering grades 6-8 read one book over the summer and we discuss the book in September. We were committed to choosing a book that had a strong female protagonist. We also felt the topic would appeal to a wide variety of readers. As an ELA teacher, I liked the play on words of the title with the double meaning of the word ‘home.’
Angie Hull (AH): When we consider read aloud books for our sixth graders, we have about 300 students to consider. We have to consider books that will hold interest, appeal to a large audience, and are somewhat new. We have students who read at least 100 books in a year [JB: Wow – 100 books!] and we want all students to get books read aloud that they have not read. So we pick books that students may not know about.
When I first read The Distance to Home, I knew it was a book that sixth graders would love. It is written in such a way that you just have to know more, which is the best part of a read aloud. When you stop a read aloud, my favorite moment is the groan that happens when the students realize they will have to wait a day for the next piece and in your book, I found myself doing that when I was forced to stop reading for whatever reason.
At the time, we were looking for a book that would be a good fit for the end of the year (hello, baseball). We were also looking for a book to:
build further understanding of plot and the idea of unique plots
review Kylene Beers and Bob Probst’s fiction signposts
understand how character’s change due to the plot.
Your book could not have been a better fit for our purpose. It held it all. How your book shifts from last summer to this summer creating a duel plot as you were there living those moments with the character. Furthermore, as the reader you saw intense character changes.
Overall, when our team chooses books, we think of our purpose, time of year, and books we have recently read.
JB: What are the activities that you used to complement the text? How did you come up with them?
AH: Considering our purpose of understanding plot and character change, we had students chart notes in their notebooks while reading. Then, we grouped students and had the groups create a plot diagram (or in this case a double plot diagram) based on their notes and understanding of the text. It was an amazing couple of days of discussion, processing, and really thinking about the author’s craft on how this book was created. It was also unique to see how they would design how the plots were happening.
TH: As a middle school team, we meet in the summer to brainstorm activities for our One Book initiative. We kicked off the book with an assembly in Ju
ne, playing some baseball trivia, introducing the novel, and having student readers read the first chapter. The reading was broken into parts with each student taking on a character and reading his/her parts of the chapter. We did a gallery walk of pictures of images that fit into the book. Students
were given two post-it notes and asked to reflect on two images that stood out to them; they were to explain how this image fit in the book and make a connection to the image. Some classes wrote continuations/alternative endings to the text. Others focused on the climax of the novel- choosing what they felt was the turning point, explaining why they felt this was a shift in the storyline, and locating text to support their ideas. In science, students studied reaction time and the science behind specific pitches in baseball. In math, teachers worked with batting averages. In personal/social development
and health, teachers dealt with the topic of loss.
JB: I’m so impressed with the range of cross-curricular connections you were able to make, Tiffany. It’s way beyond anything I could have imagined.
Now, I have to say, my favorite Skype visits are the ones with classes that have read my books. It’s so fascinating to see what the students take away from a text and what questions (and scenes from the book) linger with them. What was the response from students? Was their takeaway what you had anticipated, or were there surprises along the way?
TH: The response to the book was surprising. Students were very drawn in to the story and uncertainty along the way of how Haley died. We thought they would connect more with the sports aspect, and some did but most were very focused on the relationship between the sisters.
AH: Our students love the opportunity to ask questions and learn from authors. They also love the fact that I know you personally and that you are connected to Ohio. I know our Skype was huge last year as it was multiple classes coming together at once. We had it set up where students submitted questions to us first and we called up students based on what they asked so that all classes could be represented and that you weren’t getting completely off the topic questions. In my opinion, it went very smoothly – and hopefully we will be setting up another Skype with you this coming May.
JB: I would love that! I’m always impressed by the various entry points kids find into a story. One thing I remember from the thank you letters from the Dublin, OH students was how many of the kids commented on relating to Quinnen or Haley—they finished with a greater understanding of the challenge of being an older sibling, or, alternately, a younger sibling.
Thank you so much, Tiffany and Angie! None of what I do would be possible without hard-working and creative teachers like yourselves on the other end, fostering a love of reading and writing, and connecting students with the right books at the right time.
Last week during my World Read-Aloud Day (WRAD) Skype visits with 4th-6th grade classrooms in New York, Illinois, Texas, Iowa, and Minnesota, I asked the students for reading recommendations. What books have they read and loved lately? Which books are their all-time faves? (I only wish we had more than 20 minutes to chat so I could have been able to hear why they loved these particular books.)
The answers were a mix of books that I too have loved, books I’m familiar with, and some that had completely escaped my radar. Uh-oh, TBR pile….
Here’s what they had to say:
Alex Rider / Stormbreaker series by Anthony Horowitz
The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison
ReStart by Gordon Korman *multiple recommendations
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Ida B…and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan
Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce *multiple recommendations
Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi
Wonder by R.J. Palacio *multiple recommendations
Ruby Lee & Me by Shannon Hitchcock
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Ungifted by Gordon Korman
Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney *multiple recommendations
Pennies from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Matilda by Roald Dahl
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
Deep, Dark, and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn
Paper Towns by John Green
The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen
The Maze Runner series by James Dashner *multiple recommendations
Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly
Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs
Took by Mary Downing Hahn
The Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The Lightning Thief by Percy Jackson *multiple recommendations
Heart and Soul by Kadir Nelson
I Survive series
Baby-Sitters Club series
The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann
Harry Potter series
It by Stephen King (there’s always at least one kid who’s reading way up and proud of it!)
The Kid Who Ran for President by Dan Gutman
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Imaginary by A.F. Harrold
A Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket
Children of Eden by Joey Graceffa
Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
Funny Girl, ed. Betsy Bird
Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
Dogman by Dav Pilkey
The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
1 book blurbed (my first time being asked! I was so thrilled! It’s coming out in 2018.)
several picture books drafted (none exactly “finished”)
207 books* read (208 if I can somehow manage to finish Masha Gessen’s monstrous 500-page The Future Is History today)
. . . including 46 books by marginalized voices
Favorite books read in 2017 that were published before 2017: Belle Prater’s Boy by Ruth White, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, Sure Signs of Crazy by Karen Harrington, All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry
Favorite books read in 2017 that will be published in 2018: Love, Penelope by Joanne Rocklin, The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller, P.S. I Miss You by Jen Petro-Roy, Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake
Ten Favorite Books Published in 2017:
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Perez
Clayton Byrd Goes Underground by Rita Williams-Garcia
Well, That Was Awkward by Rachel Vail
Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire by Susan Tan
Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
Being Fishkill by Ruth Lehrer
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
5 reading and writing goals for 2018:
Read more books from marginalized voices
Start a fun side project (maybe something where no one dies or is imperiled, Jenn!)
Read more adult books, graphic novels, and MG/YA that wasn’t published in the current year
Write by hand more
Finish at least one picture book draft
5 things I’m looking forward to in 2018:
Visiting more schools in-person and virtually
Book festivals!
Sharing some exciting news in April (a dream come true!)
Running more than 5 consecutive miles for the first time since the 2016 NYC Marathon
Bearcats in the Final Four and the Red Sox in the World Series (a girl can dream)
*I don’t keep track of picture books or easy readers, so this number includes graphic novels, chapter books, middle grade, YA, adult fic and non-fic, and audiobooks.
I know, I know, there are already a gajillion guides out there about which books to buy as gifts this holiday season. But I can’t help myself! I read almost 200 books this year (192 as of today), not including picture books, and there’s something deeply satisfying about revisiting and culling them into my very favorites for the year.
My reading taste has narrowed in recent years as I’ve discovered what I truly love: books that make me feel something. And cats. 😉
If you know me in real life, one thing you’ll notice right away is that I am neat. Tidy. It’s quite possible that I’ve been passed down the neat and tidy gene from my mother, at whose house you can feel extremely safe eating food that has been dropped on the floor for more than five seconds. But you know what is not neat, or tidy, or orderly even when you really, really, really wish it could be?
Writing.
Man, writing is messy! And revision is even messier! I’m in the revision cave right now with two separate middle grade novels. And while I might make a logical, ordered list of the things that need work in my WIPs and try to tackle them one by one, the truth is that revision, well, it sort of looks more like this. (Can you read my scribbles? I mostly can, though I try to get them from the notebook into the computer on the same day in case I start to lose that ability.)
While my first drafts happen directly on the computer (in Scrivener) and I generally write chapters and scenes in order, revision is a totally different beast. More often than not, my revision epiphanies come when I am doing anything BUT writing. I’m out jogging in the rain and — blam — a piece of dialogue that’s perfect and solves a problem I know I need to handle just comes to me. Today, five separate small plot pieces/moments came to me during my five mile run. By the time I got back to my house, I was *this* close to having to create a mnemonic device to make sure I had them all memorized. I might have even told my cat to stop meowing as I literally ran inside to my notebook so I could get everything down before I forgot it all. (Sorry, Lilly!) Likewise, reading other middle grade novels also sends me running for my notebook. And the moments right before falling asleep are ripe for epiphanies. I’ve taken to leaving my notebook on the floor next to my bed just in case.
All of this is to say that creating too many rules for yourself or trying to force the way you work into someone else’s regimen . . . it’s just not worth it. If there’s one thing I’m coming around to, it’s that this messiness is okay. Even when I feel guilty for the right ideas not coming to me during my writing time, I know that my subconscious is at work, 24/7. And in the meantime, I just have to trust the process, in all its messy, glorious wonder.
As of tomorrow, 14 Hollow Road will have been out for 8 weeks (!!!). It’s been super fun stopping by bookstores to sign copies, meeting readers at events, and hearing what real people (i.e. not my mom) think about the book.
Here are some of the highlights:
Chatting with a father and daughter — both of them enthusiastic readers and library fans — at the Jacob Edwards Library (Southbridge, MA). It’s amazing to see what a difference it makes for kids to see their parents engaged in reading. A love of stories is certainly contagious and one of the things you do want to catch from your kid/parent!
Seeing my writer, book blogger, and librarian friends (and family!) at my Massachusetts launch party for 14 Hollow Road at Porter Square Books. I’ve missed them so much since leaving Boston for Cincinnati, and it was such a treat to have some face time even if it was just for the night. Huge thanks to fellow authors Victoria J. Coe, Josh Funk, Erin E. Moulton, Camille DeAngelis, and Emily Martin for trekking out on a surprisingly cool summer night. My only wish was to have MORE time with all of them.
Taking my nephew to the Brewster Bookstore. Family summer vacations on the Cape are about tradition, so it was a total delight to take my nephew (a rising 4th grader) back to this charming Cape Cod bookstore to select some books. Each year I give him a budget of $30 and he leaves with 4-5 paperbacks. This time around, he selected Louis Sachar’s Fuzzy Mud (his teacher read aloud from Holes last year and it was his favorite class read-aloud, along with How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor), Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley, and Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhart. He also really, really wanted his own copy of Holes, but ended up going with the newer Louis Sachar instead. But! Then we spotted a library book sale on the way home so, naturally, I had to introduce him to the wonder that is library book sales and LO AND BEHOLD he found a copy of Holes for twenty-five cents.
Back in early July at Nerd Camp I met Corrina Allen who hosts the fantastic middle grade book-oriented podcast, Books Between. She was reading 14 Hollow Road at the time and I was so antsy to hear what she thought of it. I loved hearing her thoughts about it in a recent episode (#29 – Cory Anne Haydu & Fantastic Friendship Books), especially because she paired it with Bubbles by Abby Cooper. Abby and I have become good friends over the past few years and I’m such a fan of her work.
Speaking of podcasts, I was thrilled to hear sixth graders from Iowa discuss 14 Hollow Road on the podcast “Books R Us,“ which you can find on iTunes.
And finally . . . goat yoga [pictured above]. This has absolutely nothing to do with books but is exactly what it sounds like: yoga, outside, with goats wandering around. It was legitimately one of the most amusing hours of my life.
1. Connecting in-person with online friends! So the truth is, most of the authors I know (myself included) kind of spend a lot of time on Twitter. It’s not just because we’re wasting time (okay, sometimes it is). Twitter is where so many good conversations are. When your author friends are far-flung, it’s the place to keep in touch. It’s also a great space to connect with educators. In truth, I’d be lying if I said a day went by when I didn’t check Twitter. It was so wonderful to meet in-person a ton of people I’d previously only chatted with online — from many of the fantastic educators that are parts of #bookjourney, #bookvoyage, #bookexpedition and beyond, to author friends like Mike Grosso and Elaine Vickers and Abby Cooper and Carter Higgins.
2. Leaving inspired. One of my key takeaways from Nerd Camp this year was that sometimes the person who needs to take the leap of faith is you. I have some ideas about how to connect Cincy-area children’s book people (educators, authors, booksellers) and this fall I’m going to get to work.
3. Fantastic break-out sessions on day one. There was so much to take away from Shannon Hale and Dean Hale’s excellent session, “Stories for All,” about so-called “boy” books and “girl” books. I’ve been trying to unpack some of my own experiences, after one year of being a female author attending conferences and book festivals, and this gave me so much to chew on. (Also, there are still so many of Shannon Hale’s books that I have to read!) In Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesesne’s session, I learned a new word: bibliothecary and, oh yeah, continued to grow my TBR.
4. Learning from fellow authors. On day two, I loved hearing about Caroline Starr Rose’s writing process, especially because she writes historical fiction. I’ve been really enjoying reading historical fiction lately but have always felt so intimidated about how to approach it as a writer. Where do you even start? She talked about how she takes 4-6 months to read exclusively about a setting/time period, allowing herself to ask questions and see where that leads her in terms of what the story could be. I always assumed you had to have an idea and then research! Mind. Blown.
5. Learning from teachers. In day two, I sat in on two great teacher-led sessions. The first was on how to motivate readers without rewards. (I feel so guilty for my years as a public librarian using rewards — books, but still — to entice kids to participate in our summer reading program.) The second was on Little Free Libraries, a topic close to my heart since we finally put up a little free library in our front yard just a month ago. I’m excited to put a guestbook in our little free library and create a FB page for it.
6. The kids at Nerd Camp Junior. Just like last year, these kids blew my mind with their creativity. Our activity this year was Mystery Box. The sixth graders in my sessions reached into the Mystery Box (dun, dun, dun) to discover which random item would inspire them with new story ideas. They generated SUCH exciting ideas. It felt like I was sitting in at a Hollywood pitch session. And because I had fifth graders last year, I got to catch up with several of the same kids, now as sixth graders! It was so cool to see their love of stories grow.
Worst:
7. You will cry. Every time, the Opening Talks at Nerd Camp get me. These seven minute talks, from a variety of educators and authors, always get me going, and this time was no exception. Stacey Reidmiller’s (@literacybigkids online) gave me all the feels and it was only downhill from there. I wish every teacher (and parent) in the country could see these speeches, particularly Tracey Baptiste and Chad Everett’s.
8. Your TBR pile will grow and grow and grow as you attend inspiring sessions and meet authors whose books you haven’t read! (And, remember we’re nerdy book people. Our TBRs are already out of control.)
9. That niggling feeling that there’s someone you missed connecting with. It was so delightfully chaotic that I know I missed people. It was truly impossible to spend as much time as I wanted to with all the people there. ::sniffles::
This one’s for the kids.
The ones who feel insecure about where they stand in friendships.
The ones who feel awkward around their crushes.
The ones who find solace in the companionship of a beloved pet.
The ones who are excited and a little bit terrified about moving on to junior high/middle school and growing up.
This one’s for them.
And starting today, it’s no longer mine. It’s theirs.
At each event there will be delicious local treats, a brief reading, Q&A, and a book signing. The bookstores should have plenty of copies of 14 Hollow Road hardcovers and The Distance to Home paperbacks available for purchase, but it never hurts to pre-order or reserve a copy by phone.
Both events are free and open to the public, so feel free to bring friends/spread the word. Hope to see you there!
