Why We Read, Why We Write … the Inspiration

February 24, 2013February 24, 2013 / still a dreamer / 8 Comments

I count myself very fortunate. Reading was an important and integral part of my life from when I was very young. Everyone in my family read – parents, grandparents and us kids – we always had a book, a magazine, a newspaper or all of the above. If we wanted something to do and the parents were busy, the answer was “Then go read your book,” and it was never a punishment.

In my pre-toddler years I was ensconced at one side of my Mom while she read to my older brother sitting on the other. I was soaking up those words like nobody’s business, and as a result I was reading … and writing … at a very early age. To this day, I am deeply grateful for this gift. It has served as a firm foundation for my never-ending love of reading, learning and writing.

When I was old enough to have a library card, and I believe that was at 5 years old and in kindergarten, I was part of the weekly trek to the town library, where my brother and I would each return with a stack of books. It was one of my greatest thrills to go to that library. And I remember it well because the original building was unlike most others in our little town. The Dixon Homestead Library was an old Dutch Colonial stone house with a gabled roof. (In doing a little research, I found that it was built between 1780 and 1790 by Derick Banta, a Revolutionary War soldier whose birth home on this same site was burned down by the Tories.) When I was a bit older, an adjoining addition for children was built and I remember being able to walk from one “house” to the other.

As a result of my love of books, I also loved to write and still do. Today, as I picked up Bird by Bird – Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, and after finishing The Smoke Jumper last night, I couldn’t help but think about why we write and why we read.

I believe we read to learn about another’s experience … to be transported into another world in which we feel something that is meaningful to us, whether that is romance, terror, curiosity, amazement or intellectual enrichment of all kinds. We want to experience that which another knows and/or feels and can bring us through words. A good writer touches some part of us that says, Yes! This speaks to me.

Is this, then, why we write? If we are true to our hearts, I would have to say yes because we are at our best when we write what we know. Our writing has the most impact when our reader is drawn in to the world we create and wants to stay. I am aware that when I write, I want to make a difference to a young reader; whether he or she is 5 or 12 years old, it is my fondest hope that her life will be enriched in some way by my words. As I embark on a new writing project, I know I have a lot to think about and learn. I will have to revisit memories and feelings that will make a story come alive. But in this way, I hope to carry the torch of so many amazing authors that have inspired me, touched and enriched my life over the years.

But then … I also write because I simply love to write.

Children’s Book Illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline

February 21, 2013August 23, 2015 / still a dreamer

While purchasing novels at ridiculously low prices at book sales is great, books featuring the work of outstanding illustrators simply must be bought new and treasured. In this category, I cannot say enough good things about Bagram Ibatoulline. He has become one of my favorite illustrators over the last few years.

In Crow Call by Lois Lowry, a Newbery Medal winner, Ibatoulline brings to life both the characters and the autumn quiet of the woods and fields of rural Pennsylvania. Liz is the shy daughter reconnecting with her father who’s been gone a long time to war. They slowly re-establish their relationship with “Daddy” taking Liz out for a very special breakfast and then a trip to the woods where she calls the crows to wake up and come to her. Daddy has brought his gun to hunt, but easily sees where Liz’ heart is. The story itself is touching, but the illustrations are magnificent.

The feel of the woods and the trees, the capturing of the crows in flight, and the beauty in facial expression and body language of Liz and Daddy are just superb. Ibatoulline was born in Russia and is the illustrator of many acclaimed books, two of which will welcome Crow Call to my bookshelves, Scarecrow’s Dance and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Toulane. His illustration graces picture and middle grade books of all kinds from fairy tales to history to wonderful stories by some of our best modern day authors and poets.

If you are a fan of brilliant children’s book illustration, Bagram Ibatoulline will certainly inspire and delight you.

Reading Who We Know and Who We Don’t

February 11, 2013 / still a dreamer

There’s something very exciting about discovering an author we’ve never read before. Sometimes we are drawn to this author by personal recommendation, subject matter or from our simply having heard of him or her along the way and wanting to check them out. It’s also often exciting to return to an author we do know and read something fresh. Clearly, we can be surprised in either instance.

I picked up House Rules by Jodi Picoult at a friend’s book swap, a chance to try a new-to-me but very well-published author. House Rules is about a family which includes a single mom, a teenage son, Jacob, who has Asperger’s syndrome and his younger teenage brother, Theo. The father had walked out when Jacob was a toddler. He was unable to cope with the demands of a child whose symptoms were on the higher spectrum of autism, and who required enormous amounts of time and attention to continue to grow and function. Theo, who by necessity must often take back seat to Jacob, is longing for a more “normal” home and has begun to engage in dangerous behavior – breaking into people’s homes just to see what “normal” feels like. Jacob is obsessed with forensics and sometimes crashes local crime scenes, instructing the detectives on what they’re missing at the scene. When Jacob’s like-skills tutor turns up dead, he sets up the perfect crime scene to challenge the detectives, but then becomes the focus as her possible murderer.

This was really a very good read. At first, I was bothered by a little too much educating on the subject of Asperger’s, but as I read on, I realized the necessity of this baseline to truly understand Jacob’s behavior. I have some small knowledge of the subject, but Picoult’s extensive research brought a character to life who was worth a little schooling at the beginning of the book. So in House Rules, we have a family wrestling with the numerous complications of a child with Asperger’s, a murder mystery, a burgeoning love story and some great character development. I think anyone who has an Aspie child of any age in their family or works with one will appreciate this book best, but I wouldn’t limit the audience to that. It’s an engaging story on its own merit by an author with a good, clean style, a perpetually twisting plot, and an excellent grasp of her characters.

The I picked up Bleachers by John Grisham. I read a number of his legally-oriented novels quite some time ago, but the book by Grisham that really impressed me was A Painted House. It’s a story about a family in the Arkansas Delta who owns a cotton farm and hosts migrant workers in the summer for cotton picking. This particular summer, two dangerous men were among them, and life became deeply complicated for all, especially Luke, the seven year old farrner’s son. I found A Painted House to be a very powerful book that was exceptionally written and also refreshingly outside the legal genre in which Grisham usually writes. I wish I could say I was as excited about Bleachers. It was a fast read and centered around football players returning to the town of Messina because their coach was dying. The man’s brutality was experienced by the players in every year ‘s teams but because football was the life blood of the town, it was often overlooked or justified. Coach Rake was a hero to many, as were the high school Spartans, but his methods affected those around him in many ways. The premise of Bleachers is good. Maybe if I loved football, I would have liked it more, but I don’t think so. It just lacked something that A Painted House really had – a depth, conflict, that real make-you-want-to-see- what-happens-next quality. Not there for me in this book.

So I’ve picked up The Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans. He is the author of two books that I recommend highly, the acclaimed The Horse Whisperer and The Loop. about the return of a pack of wolves to a ranching community in Montana and the ensuing conflicts between a biologist who wants to save the nearly extinguished species and the ranchers who hate them. Evans is an outstanding writer, and I think he could write about football and mesmerize me. I don’t know anything about smoke jumping – those who descend into forest fires to put them out – but he already has me sucked in in the first chapter. In Evans’ case, I suspect he could use almost anything as the backdrop and still draw in the reader. I’m ready.

Toni Morrison’s Paradise

January 15, 2013January 15, 2013 / still a dreamer

Paradise is the first book I’ve read by Toni Morrison, and I can assure you I will read more. In fact, it’s hard for me to not go back and re-read this book right now.

Here’s a couple things I can tell you – do not read this book late at night when you’re tired; do not put it down for extended periods of time and think you will be able to easily jump right back in; and do not read it when distracted. Here’s why. Toni Morrison assumes you’re paying attention. Her characters are complex as is the storyline … there’s a lot to remember … a lot you want to remember when you’re reading Paradise. This is not light reading, but it is a truly amazing read.

Toni Morrison’s use of language is exquisite; I was thrilled repeatedly with the beauty of how she chooses and uses words. Her characters are so real I wanted to either step in the pages to be with them or have them come and sit down by me and talk; tell me about their lives and how they changed being in Ruby, OK; how they changed living in the Convent with Connie and the other women; tell me more.

The storyline of Paradise is of a group of ex-slaves freed from Louisiana and Mississippi who, rejected by their fairer skinned brethren and terrified by whites, set up their own community deep in the Oklahoma country, self-sufficient and proud. The history of their forefathers was revered and their insular lives safe. Safe except for the women who had come to live at the Convent – women whose lives had been torn apart by suffering at one time or another and who made their way, tried to heal, in this isolated home outside town. Paradise is, in part, about what happens when people come to see others the same way they once were viewed and what they do about it. And, in part, about redemption and finding one’s place in the world.

This is far, far, far too simplistic a summary of this extraordinary novel. If you want to be immersed in another time and place, in the lives of people so real it can be painful, perhaps Paradise is for you. I’m not sure what I can read right after this that will not pale beside it.

The Restless Reader

January 3, 2013January 3, 2013 / still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Have you ever experienced periods of time in which you wanted to read … well, everything in sight? Yet at the same time, you couldn’t find exactly the book you wanted to read? It’s a special and odd kind of frustration.

Here is but one bookshelf of books all waiting to be devoured … but I can’t make a choice. These are largely from the library’s annual book sale, but a couple are purchased or from a friend, and I really do want to read every single one, but I can’t choose.

But wait – there’s more! Like one of those TV infomercials in which you can get twice as many items for the same price if you’ll just order NOW, there are more books waiting to be read! Some of these are middle grade, some YA and some adult … some from my friends’ book swap … and all are calling to me as well. (And we don’t want to know, there is another small group on top of another bookcase.) Plus I’m still in the middle of another fabulous book, Paradise by Toni Morrison. So what’s with the restlessness? Are you experiencing this, too?

I’m thinking it might be the holidays – schedules are completely off for work, rest, entertainment, visiting … and distractions, wonderful as they are … are at a yearly high. Sometimes we just have too many choices. But if fabulous books that cost me little or nothing are what I have too many of, well … it sure could be worse.

Things are settling back into some semblance of a routine and the evenings have become particularly chilly. Seems like the right time to cozy up with a hot cup of cocoa and open up a good book. That and the sound of so many fabulous authors calling my name is becoming deafening.