Let's Talk about the RARI 2009 book

The Nominating Committee of Reading Across RI is busy reading books for the 2009 selection from the list of over seventy titles nominated this year by readers all over the state. Join in the discussion of the ten books on the 2009 Short List by posting your comments about these books (each title has its own post):

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
NoveList Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
NoveList Summary: In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Booklist Review: An act of desperation divides a mother and her child. Only an act of faith can reunite them. Trudy Hulst has no idea if her husband survived his attempted escape past the newly constructed Berlin Wall. But she knows too well the consequences of his actions. Now branded the wife of a defector, she faces a life in prison. With no real choice, she is forced to follow, praying she can find a way to claim their child once she's in West Berlin. Trudy survives a harrowing break for freedom...only to learn her husband was shot during his escape. Alone, she wanders the wall like a ghost, living for brief glimpses of her son, now out of reach behind barbed wire and armed soldiers. Desperate to regain her child, Trudy begins a journey that leads her to America, where she continues an odyssey of hope to find her son.

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Booklist Review: In Tehran in the early 1980s, after she leads a strike in high school to get her math teacher to teach calculus not politics, Marina, 16, a practicing Catholic, is locked up for two years and tortured with her school friends in the Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious Evin political prison. She is saved from execution by an interrogator, Ali, who wants to marry her and threatens to hurt her family and Catholic boyfriend, Andre, if she refuses. Forced to convert to Islam, she becomes Ali's wife; then he is assassinated by political rivals, and she rejoins her family and marries Andre. They immigrate to Canada in 1991. For more than 20 years, secure in her middle-class life, she keeps silent, until she writes this unforgettable memoir.

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Booklist Review: Wounded and imprisoned in the Chesapeake Bay attic of vicious slave hunter Patty Stanton, Liz Spocott, 19, foresees the future and leads a breakout of 14 slaves, who are then hounded by hunters from many sides. With a strong focus on the role of women, the author recounts the history of slave revolts without sentimentality in a stirring novel of cruelty, betrayal, and courage, including the part played by the young slave who runs from a kind mistress and is determined to help Liz on the "gospel train to freedom."

The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman

The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
Booklist Review: In 1862, led by Chief Little Crow and incited by the government’s failure to provide their annuity, the Dakota Sioux staged an uprising in Minnesota, slaughtering hundreds of settlers. As a result, 38 Dakota men were hanged, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Maltman’s promising first novel bounces between the years leading up to this atrocity-laden conflict and 1876, when the James-Younger gang would stir up its own brand of bloody mayhem in Minnesota. Following the struggles of the Senger family, Maltman keeps the telling personal and local, tacked to the Sengers farm and the Dakota tribe situated a stones throw across the river.

The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens

The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
Booklist Review: Lansen’s remarkable second novel is told from two viewpoints: that of Rose and that of Ruby Darlen, 29-year-old conjoined twins. A recent medical diagnosis has spurred Rose to write her autobiography, and she encourages Ruby to do the same. Between the two sections, the story of their lives is revealed, beginning with their birth to an unwed teen mother and their adoption by Lovey Darlen, the nurse who was with their mother when she was in labor, and her strong, silent husband, Stash.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Novelist Summary: Taking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded.

Five Skies by Ron Carlson

Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Novelist Summary: Working together on a summer construction project high in the Rocky Mountains, drifter Arthur Key, shiftless Ronnie Panelli, and foreman Darwin Gallegos reveal details about their pasts and beliefs in cautious and profound ways.

Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Novelist Summary: Ruby, born in York, England, in 1959, relates the story of her family living above shops in the 1960s and of her grandmother and mother living through the earlier wars.

Story Ideas? The "Eyes" Have It!

It doesn't seem to be much of a problem to find something to read.

You go to a library or a bookstore, find the type of story that interests you, and you bring it home to read. Easy, right?

But where did those story ideas come from?

In talking to students and adults, it is common to hear someone say they would like to write a book but don't know where to start. In this regard, the "eyes" have it.

As I tell the students in my writing workshops, absolutely anything can become an idea for a story. As an example, I ask them to think of their pencil.

It's the end of recess time. The students are lining up to come back into the classroom. The pencil, meanwhile, is sitting on the desk. This is the time of day the pencil dreads the most. The pencil knows the students -- sweaty and disgusting from running around at recess -- are returning.

And what's the first thing they reach for? Right. The pencil.

How do you think the pencil feels about this? You have to know the pencil is thinking, "No, no, don't touch me first, go for the book! Grab the book!"

But the student picks up the pencil.

"Yuck!" says the pencil.

And then the student decides the pencil needs to be sharpened. Sharpened! To a pencil, it's not a sharpener, it's a torture chamber! ZING!!

The point is, anything can be a story with a little imagination and vision. The "eyes" are very important to an author. What do you "see?" You have to "see" details and more details, no matter what type of story you might want to write, whether the genre is picture books, science fiction, romance, historical novel, biography, or whatever.

So the next time you pick up a book to read, try to "see" it through the author's eyes, following the path from the author's vision to the printed words you see on a page. With a little practice, you might soon "see" your own literary creation!

Fun With Words -- Lubricate Your Tonsils

If you mention the concept to your students, how many do you think would raise their hands and agree with the statement that words can be fun?

A very small percentage, to be sure, if any hands are raised at all.

But words can indeed be fun.

When I'm in the classroom, performing one of my "Nudging the Imagination" writing workshops, I always have a cup of tea by my side. During the workshop, after talking/instructing, I will stop for a moment, tell the students I have to do something very important in their classroom, reach for my mug and take a satisfying, much needed sip of tea.

I ask them what I did. You took a drink, they say. Not quite, I respond.

I tell them I had to lubricate my tonsils.

And then I tell them that when they're at the dinner table that night, they shouldn't say "I'm thirsty." I tell them that's boring. Words can be more fun than that. What they should say is, "May I please have some cow juice so I might lubricate my tonsils?"

"Cow juice?" they say.

They tell me they call it milk, to which I reply, "Why"

What do you get from apples, I ask. Apple Juice, they answer. What do you get from oranges, I ask. Orange juice, they answer. So, what do you get from cows, I ask? They giggle. They say milk.

But it should be cow juice, I insist, because you have to squeeze the cow, too, don't you? At that point I show them one of my children's books, "Why Not Call It Cow Juice," but the point is to have fun with words. So I send them home with an "assignment." They are supposed to ask to lubricate their tonsils with cow juice, which will bring a smile to their lips and happy dinner-table confusion when they carry out their mission at home that night.

Another one of my favorite words -- proboscis. It just sounds funny, doesn't it?

One of the dictionary definitions of the word is a "long flexible snout, like an elephant's trunk."

Now, when we write in the classroom, we stress word pictures. We want to write so clearly, with so much description, that the reader can see what's going on in his or her imagination just through our words, which are painting mental pictures for them.

You can say someone has a big nose if you make that a physical characteristic of one of the characters in your story. You can say that character has honker or a schnozzola, too. But if you say the character has a proboscis? Wow -- now you're talking a major league nose! Quite the smile-inducing word picture, don't you think?

So have fun with the words in the stories you write. And find fun, descriptive words in the books you read.

And while you're doing that, don't forget to lubricate your tonsils with some cow juice!

Read to the Kids -- "Bonking" Game

Recently, there was an article in the paper that reported a survey indicating parents spend very little time these days reading to their kids at bedtime.

That finding probably doesn't surprise anyone. For whatever reasons -- long work hours, late-night fatigue -- bedtime story time seems to have gone the way of family dinner time.

And it's unfortunate.

Reading bedtime stories is so important to youngsters in so many ways, especially when they are so young and learning how to read for themselves. It shows them the importance of the written word, the happiness and magic contained on the pages of a book and the confidence that comes with learning how to read, not to mention the vocabulary and the word/grammar patterns they pick up by osmosis as they navigate their way through a book, all of which is instrumental in turning them into independent and enthusiastic writers.

But it's unfortunate for another reason, too.

Reading bedtime stories is a perfect opportunity to unwind from a busy day and bond with your kids. It should be fun -- for both the kids and the parents.

When our kids were little, we used to play a game when I read to them. Our kids, Amy (now 27), Jeffrey (25) and Emily (21) had their favorite books, so we would tend to read many of the same books over and over. It got so that even before they could technically read, they memorized and could recite the words by heart, knowing what words were on each page even if they didn't really know how to read them.

So when I would read, I would make mistakes on purpose. And as they got older, this would translate into what we called our "bonking" game. If they caught me making a mistake, they could hit me with their pillow. It was amazing how many mistakes I would make! They were paying rapt attention and didn't miss one of the mistakes! As they got stronger, my head would get a little sore from all of their "bonks" with the pillow, but so what?

The game would dissolve into a spirited pillow fight, which was great fun full of great bonding memories and the opportunity to have them associate reading with giggles, smiles and fun. Because reading is fun, right? And what better way to nudge their imaginations?

So take a few minutes out of your busy schedule. It doesn't take long to read a picture book (Mercer Mayer's "There's A Nightmare in My Closet" and "Just Go To Bed" were favorites, as was any book from Marc Brown's series of "Arthur" books). Read to the kids. Have the pillows handy. Have some fun.