November has finally arrived. The stores are filled to overflowing with turkeys, pumpkins, spices, and all manner of signs to remind us that the holidays are just around the corner. One especially sweet addition lining bookstore and library shelves this season is Pat Zietlow Miller‘s newest – SHARING THE BREAD , illustrated by Jill McElmurry.
Subtitled, “An Old-fashioned Thanksgiving Story” Sharing the Bread, has all the charm and feel of a familiar, traditional song that recounts the joys of working together as a family to create a memorable meal. As Mama fetches the cooking pot, and Daddy makes the fire hot, Sister kneads the rising dough, brother lines loaves in row. Grandma and Grandpa, Auntie and Uncle have jobs too. When all is prepared, the table set, the food waiting, hot on the table, the family gathers round to “share the risen bread” and their “made-with-love Thanksgiving spread.”
A beautiful addition to a classroom library or a family’s home collection, SHARING THE BREAD is the perfect read-aloud to share the spirit and joy of this season.
Check back later this week to enjoy an interview with Pat about writing this book, along with what readers can anticipate from Pat in the coming year.
It’s a pleasure to welcome Mary Atkinson back to ReaderKidZ to talk about her new book, OWL GIRL .
Dianne:Learning to deal with change and managing the sometimes-rocky transitions of childhood are important themes in children’s literature. I love the world you’ve created in OWL GIRL. Gram and Gramps’s house on Padgett Lake feels safe and yet things aren’t working out the way Holly had hoped. There’s real tension between her and Gram and readers empathize with the unsettled feelings Holly faces, not only in her day-to-day interactions with Gram, but also as she deals with the uncertainty of the future of her parents’ marriage.
What drew you to this particular subject and what were some of the challenges of fleshing out the story?
MARY: Nature has always been a hugely important part of my life. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve enjoyed going on long solitary walks in the woods or on a beach. (In childhood, I had my imaginary friends with me. 🙂 In good times and in troubled times, nature has always been there for me. It’s my place to find balance, solace and meaning. I’m expecting it will be for Holly, too, as she grows up and encounters more of those “rocky transitions.”
Maintaining a level of escalating tension–you know, that old plot problem–was a challenge for me in OWL GIRL so I’m glad you felt it as you read Holly’s story!
Dianne: Holly’s at a tender age. Not quite old enough to do all the things she’d like to do. But not quite the “baby” of the family, either. You cover a lot of emotional territory and deepen that territory by coming at it from different angles. Each thread of Holly’s story seems carefully woven, one around the other, to create a compact, richly resonant novel. Can you talk about the process of writing this novel and the decisions you made along the way?
MARY: Thank you, Dianne! This novel went through a lot of revisions (as they all do). I wanted to keep it simple and focused on Holly’s experience, carefully weaving together the threads that contributed to her emotional growth. Luckily, I love color-coded charts and diagrams! After the first drafts, my charts showed me that I had too many threads that interfered with the emotional focus I wanted to maintain, so they had to go.
Dianne: It’s obvious you called upon your tools as a poet to write OWL GIRL. What role does poetry and your poet’s toolbox play when you decide to tell a story in prose?
MARY: OWL GIRL started out as a series of poems! I originally envisioned it as a verse novel for young readers, but in the end I wasn’t satisfied. The story kept wanting to burst out into prose. As a prose writer, I’m very aware of sentence length, the spaces and energy between sentences and between paragraphs, word choice and what words sound good together (I always read aloud for musicality and flow), and the resonance of images, symbols and emotions throughout the book. I guess poets and writers share the same tool box!
Dianne: You’ve written about this setting in several poems you’ve published (“My Brother and I and the World” in Got Geography and “Swimming to the Rock” in Sharing the Seasons, both in collections selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins). Was this a favorite vacation spot as you were growing up?
MARY: My husband and I have had a camp on a small pond in rural western Maine for over twenty years. (A Maine “camp” can be anything from a shack to a winterized house–ours is the latter.) When we were living and working in Massachusetts, we used to come for weekends and vacations. Now we live in Maine full time. The camp setting definitely finds its way into my work. So do coastal vacation spots and experiences in Downeast Maine from when I was a child.
Dianne: Thanks for being a part of ReaderKidZ this month, Mary!
Learn more about Mary at her website HERE.
Order a copy of Owl Girl HERE.
Holly loves visiting her grandparents’ cabin in Maine and looks forward to her time on Padgett Lake. But this year will be different. This year Holly’s parents are going through a “rough patch.” Instead of spending the next two weeks together, Holly’s family will be separated… Her parents are planning a trip of their own… Holly can hardly bear the idea of two whole weeks with worrywart Gram. And her brother, Nick? He’ll be busy with Gramps. Who will she play with?
But then, Holly hears an owl calling from deep in the woods. He’s lonely. She’s sure of it! And she’s determined to find him…
OWL GIRL, a beautifully crafted middle grade novel by Mary Atkinson, is a tightly written gem that packs a punch. HIGHLY recommended!
Come back later this week for an interview with Mary about the writing of OWL GIRL.
“Once there was a little girl called Meg, who invented her own kind of happiness.” So reads the first line of THE JAR OF HAPPINESS (Child’s Play, 2015) by Ailsa Burrows. And what a perfect way to begin! Meg keeps all sorts of things in her jar and uses them to cheer up friends and family. When Meg loses the jar, the friends and family she has cheered up come to her rescue with their own bits of happiness.
This is a simple, but powerful story. Similar to a gratitude journal but, somehow more kid-friendly, why not make a “Happiness Jar” part of your home or classroom routine?
Want more tips for teaching gratitude? Check out these suggestions:
In Lisa Papademetriou’s fascinating A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic (HarperCollins, 2015) two girls on polar opposite points of the earth are brought together by a magical book entitled The Exquisite Corpse. Kia is from Houston. Leila is an American living in Pakistan. Each have a copy of the magic book that writes its own story about celestial moths, eerie caskets, and a timeless love shared long ago. Though unaware of one another, Kia and Leila independently become engaged in tale The Exquisite Corpse gradually tells. Eventually, they piece together facets of a compelling mystery, one in which they each unwittingly play critical roles in solving.
Inspired by ornate volume of fairy tales given to Lisa as child, A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic is a testimony to mysteries of the past brought to light through love and magic. The story line is intelligent and complex. In it, Lisa masterfully braids three well-developed voices together, that of Kai’s, Leila’s, and The Exquisite Corpse. Social status, personal confidence, family, and loss are just a few of themes explored in this novel.
Access Lisa’s website to read a sample chapter. She’s also offering a number of insightful support materials available for download – a glossary of Urdu words and phrases, a CCSS-aligned Educator’s Discussion & Activity Guide, and instructions explaining how to play Exquisite Corpse. Who knows? You just might find a little bit of magic on her website, too!
Today ReaderKidZ welcomes back Robin Yardi for Part 2 of an interview about her first book, THEY JUST KNOW. Find Part 1 HERE.
Dianne:Because the book is organized into a compare/contrast format, kids can delight in the natural order of things – “When a newly-hatched butterfly takes her first flight, she doesn’t need anyone to hold her gently by the wing. Butterflies just know.” – , but also giggle at the illustration of a butterfly pouring over maps and charts, and making flight notes as it readies for a long migration. I can see kids using the text as a springboard to come up with their own examples and illustrations of animal instincts. In fact, the publisher has provided a very complete Activity Guide to encourage using the book as a resource for extension activities. Can you talk about how teachers might us your book in the classroom?
Robin: The extension activities in the back of the book really are just the beginning!
Write a Book: I could definitely see kids writing silly scenarios about other animals, and then mirroring the structure of the book to write their own realistic sentences. Wouldn’t jellyfish be great? Or snails? Or geckos?? Then, voila—you’ve got a classroom book!
Learn about Lifecycles: Each animal in the book is given a beautifully illustrated spread depicting their lifecycle. Classroom teachers have so much fun teaching about animal lifecycles… it makes me wonder how kids would draw their own lifecycles. As humans we don’t transform as spectacularly as butterflies, and we can’t swim just after birth like horn sharks, but we do grow and learn some amazing things along the way. Classroom teachers could ask children to draw and write about something they have learned to do and maybe even draw themselves as adults, doing something they plan to learn to do!
Make a Snake: There are also opportunities to delve deply into animal instincts. I recently d
id a bunch of research about snake patterning and learned that different patterns are associated with certain instinctual behaviors. Did you know that speckled snakes instinctively hunt birds? Or that striped snakes almost never live in trees? For the book release party I helped kids design their own snake species, keeping in mind what their chosen patterns would indicate about that kind of snake’s instinctual behaviors.
I think the book is a great springboard into whatever interests you and your students most. I’m sure over the next few years I’ll keep learning about animal instincts and I can’t wait to find out what I’ll discover next. I hope kids and classroom teachers feel inspired to do that same kind of learning!
Dianne: You’re a credentialed teacher and a Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History backyard naturalist. Your own yard is home to a Sulcata Tortoise, eight chickens, and innumerable koi. What does it mean to be a backyard naturalist? Any tips for kids wanting to learn more about the animals that might be hiding in their own backyards?
Robin: When school groups come to the museum there is a very special space set up for them to explore in a riparian woodland. In kid speak this means we have a cool creek and lots of beautiful trees, pots and pans for mud pies and trowels to dig with! Most of what we want them to do there… is play! But we also teach them about what animals are hiding in the dirt, flitting in the trees, and creeping along the creek, about how the soil, the plants, and animals interact to create a thriving ecosystem right in the museum’s backyard. We hunt for frogs and invertebrates, watch squirrels and birds, find tracks and feathers and owl pellets. The museum backyard is a special place, staffed by scientists and teachers, but everyone can be a backyard naturalist. My tips are simple: go outside (if you don’t have a garden, go to the park), look, listen, search, dig, explore, climb… and have fun!
Dianne: Speaking of backyard animals, you have a novel coming from Carolrhoda Books in 2016 called THE MIDNIGHT WAR OF MATEO MARTINEZ about three kids, a midnight war, stinky trike-riding skunks, and an army of vicious raccoons. Tell us more!
Robin: Ha! Well, the idea for that book did start in my backyard. One night, through the backdoor, my daughter and I watched skunks, raccoons, and stray cats battle it out for some leftover dog food. I said, “I wonder if the skunks and raccoons play on the playground at night when you’re asleep?”
“How would they even get there?” my daughter asked.
“On your old squeaky trike!” I said. She laughed and so I had my beginning.
The book is about Mateo and Ashwin, two best friends who are obsessed with knighthood and honor, and, okay, it’s about Mateo’s little sister Mila too. One night two skunks squeak away on Mila’s red trike. Well, Mateo and Ashwin wage a war to retrieve the trike and protect the neighborhood. Their honor requires it. The book is as fun and funny, as full of adventure and heart, and as stinky as all the kids I’ve ever taught! I can’t wait for them to read it.
Thank you for having me at Reader KidZ!
Dianne: You’re welcome!
To learn more about Robin, visit her website HERE.
Mission Statement
To provide teachers, librarians, and parents with the resources and inspiration to foster a love of reading in kids, K-5.
Make a Snake: There are also opportunities to delve deply into animal instincts. I recently d
special space set up for them to explore in a riparian woodland. In kid speak this means we have a cool creek and lots of beautiful trees, pots and pans for mud pies and trowels to dig with! Most of what we want them to do there… is play! But we also teach them about what animals are hiding in the dirt, flitting in the trees, and creeping along the creek, about how the soil, the plants, and animals interact to create a thriving ecosystem right in the museum’s backyard. We hunt for frogs and invertebrates, watch squirrels and birds, find tracks and feathers and owl pellets. The museum backyard is a special place, staffed by scientists and teachers, but everyone can be a backyard naturalist. My tips are simple: go outside (if you don’t have a garden, go to the park), look, listen, search, dig, explore, climb… and have fun!
