An Interview with Pat Zietlow Miller

Posted on 11/11/2015

It’s a pleasure to welcome back Pat Zietlow Miller to ReaderKidZ to talk about her newest book, SHARING THE BREAD.

Dianne: SHARING THE BREAD is your third book, and what a beauty! The subtitle, “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving Story” hints at the traditional and timeless nature of the text. The illustrations – gouache on watercolor paper – beautifully rendered by Jill McElmurry, capture a 19th-century American family preparing the stove and cooking pot, kneading bread and basting a tasty turkey. Yum!

Americans love Thanksgiving. Do you have a favorite tradition associated with the holiday? Maybe the “before” time of prepping food, setting the table, making sure all is ready? Or the quiet “after” time when everyone’s stuffed and talked out?

PAT: I really enjoy Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. I like all the parts, but my favorite might be eating the leftovers for the next few days. I like turkey sandwiches – chopped turkey on good sourdough bread with a little butter and some salt. And, I like seeing my brother and sister, whom I don’t see nearly enough.

And, may I just say that I’m so impressed with Jill McElmurry’s art in this book? I love how she brings the family to life and all the research she did to reflect the kitchen accurately. Here’s an interview where Jill talks about how she approached the book.

Dianne: From the first page, your lyrical text immediately brought to mind the rhythms of a song. Not a song I knew, but one that I felt might have roots in an old colonial favorite. The pattern of the first line, repeated with a small change in the last line of a stanza. A chorus, that folds in a key word from each of these stanzas, follows. It’s lovely. 

Sharing the Bread by Pat Zietlow Millar, illustrated by Jill MeElmurrySometimes the simplest text can be the hardest to write. Other times, the words just seem to pour out. Can you talk about your process in writing SHARING THE BREAD? Did the text come quickly, or was this a story that needed lots of think time? How did you choose the structure? What about the decision to rhyme, which can be a challenge in and of itself?  

PAT: First, thank you for comparing the text to a song. It isn’t something I’d thought of, but an author friend of mine, Lisa Morlock, says her kids came up with a tune and sing the book. This makes me happy on many levels.

The first draft of this book came relatively easily. I heard the first two sentences in my head during a work meeting that had nothing to do with food. I emailed them to myself at home and started playing around with them. Soon, I had a family working together to create a meal.

An editor suggested having the family cook a holiday meal to give the book a bit of a hook. So I pulled out large chunks of my hair as I tried to come up with rhymes for traditional Thanksgiving foods while keeping the language simple. Anne Schwartz of Schwartz & Wade suggested adding a refrain, and I’m so glad she did. It took a while to figure things out, but once I came up with the idea of repeating words from the previous stanza, things came together.

I’ve sold three rhyming books. But, I try to avoid rhyming when I can because it makes things so much harder. There’s much less room for error in rhyme, and when it’s bad, it’s really bad. But if you hang in there and do the work and have hair to spare, it just might turn into something you’re proud of. And when that happens, it’s a great feeling.

Dianne: You have three, very successful books with more on the way. What can readers look forward to next?The Quickest Kid in Clarksville

PAT: I have a picture book coming out in January for Chronicle – THE QUICKEST KID IN CLARKSVILLE, enchantingly illustrated by Frank Morrison. It tells the story of Alta, who takes pride in thinking she’s the quickest kid in Clarksville, Tennessee. But when Charmaine moves to her neighborhood, Alta feels threatened. Eventually, both girls discover they love Olympic gold medal sprinter Wilma Rudolph, and are able to form an alliance. This is the first historical fiction I’ve written, and it was fun because I’ve always been a big fan of Wilma Rudolph, and I learned all kinds of Sophie's Squash Go To Schoolnew things about her as I researched the book – including the contribution she made to integration in her hometown. This blog post tells how the story came to be.

Then, in June, the sequel to SOPHIE’S SQUASH comes out. It’s called SOPHIE’S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL and it follows Sophie starting school. Her classmates don’t immediately appreciate the many charms of her squash friends. And Sophie doesn’t see the value of human friends right away, either. I am extremely fond of Sophie, and am thrilled to see her back in action. And Anne Wilsdorf’s art? Just thinking about it makes me smile.

Dianne: Thanks for stopping by ReaderKidZ, Pat!

Be sure to check out an earlier ReaderKidZ review of Pat’s book, WHEREVER YOU GO,
and learn more about Pat on her website HERE.

Sharing the Bread

Posted on 11/08/2015

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.

An interview with Mary Atkinson

Posted on 11/04/2015

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?OwlGirl_frontcover

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!

Sharing the Seasons, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by David DiazDianne: 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.

Owl Girl by Mary Atkinson

Posted on 11/01/2015

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.

The Jar of Happiness

Posted on 10/27/2015

“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:

A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic by Lisa Papaemetriou

Posted on 10/25/2015

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!