Fleabrain Loves Franny & author interview

Before we get all involved in perusing a new book, I want to remind you that there's still time to get in on Friday's Blog Tour & Book Giveaway for Murphy, Gold Rush Dog.

And now, reaching into the bottomless book basket for another mid-grade novel, I find
Fleabrain Loves Franny
by Joanne Rocklin
288 pages; ages 8-12
Amulet Books (Abrams), 2014

The year is 1952, and Franny is stuck in the children's hospital - in an iron lung - because she has polio. She's lucky in many respects:
Sister Ed reads her favorite book (Charlotte's Web)
she's getting better

On the other hand: she's missing out on all the fun things she and her gang do over the summer. And they're afraid to visit her after she's released from the hospital and goes home and is no longer infectious [note: this would be an excellent time to make a distinction between "infectious" and "contagious", especially with concerns about Ebola running rampant. See here and here.]

What Franny wants more than anything is for a spider to spin "some girl" in a web. What she gets is chocolaty-colored scribbles from a flea.

This is a story of friendships made, some remade, of discovery, and of appreciation for the little things in life. There are superheroes. There's a dog, and a horse. There's a bit of magic and some over-zealous application of flea-B-gone. There's a couple different takes on the word "pedestrian" and some insight into the freedom a wheelchair provides (plus how to do wheelies). There is pride, there are falls, there is student protest and, yes, there is even a spider. And for those of us who like a dose of truth with our fiction, there are plenty of pages of authors notes that put this story into the historical context of the polio epidemic and Salk's work to produce a vaccine. Timely reading, as doctors are hard at work on an Ebola vaccine.

Fleabrain was so fun to read I just had to ask Joanne Three Questions:

Sally:  What inspired you to write Fleabrain Loves Franny? 

Joanne: I tend to wake up with "a good idea" for my next book, usually just a phrase that doesn't mean much to anyone but me. The phrase for FLF was "you can stop seeking messages in spider webs." Who would send such a note? Who would be seeking messages in spider webs? I did know that Charlotte's Web was published in October, 1952, after a summer of the worst of the polio epidemics in the U.S. in which 58,000 cases were recorded.  I realized almost immediately that my seeker of messages would be a young wheelchair-bound polio victim, Franny, in love with the newly published book, and seeking her own Charlotte in dealing with her almost kafkaesque experience. I began to do research about the era and the scourge of polio, discovering, too, that many of its victims were avid readers with active fantasy lives, determined to succeed.  Now, I asked myself, who would be the sender of the mysterious message? An erudite, educated writer - a being annoyed and jealous at the adulation of Charlotte, seeking attention and glory as well. Someone unconsciously humorous as well. I needed lots of comic relief. 

Sally: Why a flea? 

Joanne: I knew that a creature jealous of Charlotte would be a fellow bug. Franny's mother was a meticulous housekeeper, especially with an "invalid" living at home. Cobwebs were immediately destroyed (although she did miss one...) so the bug wouldn't be a spider. Flies weren't around all year. But her dog, Alf, was a faithful companion, a good "host" for one flea the flea powder couldn't destroy...I also liked the name Fleabrain, which is often used in a derogatory way, but in this case meant exactly that. 

Sally: What sort of research did you do? 

Joanne: I did a fair amount of research--enough to give an accurate description of physical properties. I actually have a phobia about enlarged photos of bugs and insects, so the research took some courage. During the writing of this book our new cat brought about a flea infestation in our home. My husband was unaffected, but I was covered with itchy welts. When I mentioned to my dermatologist that I happened to be writing a book about a flea, he looked at me strangely and diagnosed "hives", from a possible stress reaction. He was wrong. Anti-flea medication for our cat quickly solved the problem.

Check out the official Fleabrain Loves Franny book trailer 

Today is Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Drop by to see what other bloggers are reviewing. This review from an ARC provided by publisher.

The King of Little Things ~ Blog Tour & author interview

The King of Little Things
by Bil Lepp; illustrated by David T. Wenzel
32 pages; ages 4 - 8
Peachtree Publishers, 2013

"Long ago, on the far side of a mountain, lived the King of Little Things." What sort of things did he rule over? Coins, candles, combs and keys. Mittens, marbles and macaroni. The stuff other kings would hardly notice. Until...

King Normous, the greedy decided that he should rule over everything. He and his armies raided and ransacked the realm and then he declared himself King of All Things.

Except that he wasn't. Because, as the steward noted, there was a very miniscule majesty ruling over the kingdom of tiny things. King Normous raged and roared and plotted. And when he tossed the King of Little Things into the dungeon he figured he had won. Except.... tiny things have a way of causing problems, and therein lies a story. A story so crazy that only Bil Lepp could make it absolutely one hundred percent believable.

You see, Bil Lepp is a storyteller of some renown, having amazed audiences far and wide with tales of toilet plungers and wild beasts. Now he's turned his hand to children's books - something he's been wanting to do for years. A couple weeks ago I caught up with Bil and asked him Three Questions:

Sally's Bookshelf: This is so fun to read. How did you come up with the idea?

Bil: Totally by accident. I was playing with my son (he was about five years old at the time) and he said, "Let's play Kingdoms." He grabbed his T-Rex and other big toys and said he was king over them. Then he said to me, "You can be the king of little things." I had to go write that down!

SB: You've been telling this story for about ten years. What's the difference between telling a story and writing it?

Bil: When I tell a story, I have a lot more time to weave in details. Plus I can see how the audience reacts to the story. I can't see that with a book. Writing a picture book, I had to learn how to pare the story down to the 500 to 800 essential words. I also learned a lot about how much of a story is communicated by the illustrations. I could leave out those little details because they could be included in the pictures.

SB: Were you surprised by the illustrations?

Bil: I was surprised by how well David's illustrations connected to how I see the story in my own mind! I have a vision of what the characters look like and David comes very close - though the King doesn't look at all like I thought he'd look. The other thing is how David stretched the story with his drawings; it was a minimalist story to begin with and his illustrations are rich with details.

SB: Let's end with half a question. What are you working on next?

Bil: A story inspired by my daughter about a Soup Zombie.

Bil started telling stories in the West Virginia Liar's Contest. You can see videos of him telling stories at his website. Review copy provided by publisher

Check out the rest of the Blog Tour: 
Today - visit Blue Owl Reviews
Tuesday the tour stops at Kid Lit Reviews and Maestra Amanda's Bookshelf
On Wednesday wander over to Gidget's Bookworms
Thursday the tour stops off at a Words Worth
and Friday it winds up at Boys and Literacy
ALSO - adding one more: Good Reads with Ronna

Blog Tour: As Fast As Words Could Fly

Welcome to the blog tour for:
As Fast as Words Could Fly
by Pamela M. Tuck; illus. by Eric Velasquez
32 pages, ages 5 - 8
Lee & Low Books, 2013

A quick overview: Trouble is brewing in Greenville, North Carolina. That's where fourteen-year old Mason Steele lives. It's the sixties, and Mason has an important job - he writes letters for his father's civil rights group. When the group gives him a typewriter, he teaches himself where every letter and symbol is located on the keyboard.

That is the year schools are integrated, and Mason and his brothers are bussed to a formerly all-white high school. Despite his fears, and injustice from some students and faculty, Mason does well. He works in the library and joins the typing team. His skill lands him a place at the county tournament where he chooses to type on a manual machine because, he says, "it reminds me of where I come from."

The story, though fiction, is based on the real live experiences of author Pamela Tuck's father, Moses Teel, Jr. He used his typing talent to defy the prejudices of people who considered him inferior, she writes in her author's note.

Pamela, winner of Lee & Low's New Voices award, graciously answered Three (and 1/2) Questions about her new book:

Sally's Bookshelf: How did your father's writing experiences influence your path to becoming a published author?

Pam: I actually wrote for my dad, for his business, and that strengthened my confidence in my writing ability. But my love of writing - I trace that back to being raised by southern storytellers. I loved to recite stories, but once I learned how to write - that was it! I give some credit to winning a second-grade poetry contest; that empowered me and gave me proof that I was a "poet". Then in high school I joined the drama club and wrote a couple of plays - they really showed me how words affect the viewer. I kept on writing after high school and created a home writing business, writing short poems for people and framing them.

SB: Why did you choose to tell this story as fiction rather than biography? And did you have to do research?

Pam: I chose fiction mainly because my father couldn't remember all the details from some of his experiences, and there were lengthy time lapses between some events.  Biographies require accuracy in dates, sequence of events and quotes, and I felt I had more control of the flow of the story and the direction of my plot if I wrote my father's story as a work of fiction. Most of the events in the story actually took place as written, but I created dialogue and creative transitions to connect one event to the other.

(It turns out that writing fiction can take quite a bit of research)... In the book I feature a civil rights activist, Golden Frinks, so I did research on him to get a better feel of his character beyond what my father could tell me. Although I may not use all of my research in my stories, I want to know my characters well enough to talk about them like family members. I researched school names in Greenville, NC during the 60s, to add authenticity. 

SB: You are the winner of the New Voices Award. Talk about your evolution as a children's writer.

Pam: I got into writing children's stories through a family storytelling night we held. When I decided to get serious, I realized that I didn't know the first thing about queries. Someone told me about SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) and I attended the 2007 SCBWI conference in NJ. I returned home a bit overwhelmed - but my husband, Joel, encouraged me to submit this story to the New Voices. So I called my father and then sat down and wrote.

SB: You have eleven children - how do you manage to get your writing done?  

Pam: Being a homeschooler, I'm used to structuring our time - and that actually helped me schedule writing time into my day. Everyone has some individual quiet time in the evening, so that's when I write. Also - when you know you're limited on time, you make the most of it!

And make the most of it she will. Pam says she has two more projects in the works: a mid-grade novel on the civil rights era and a historical fiction picture book.

Review copy provided by publisher. 

 The Blog Tour continues next week with stops at:

Monday July 1:  True Tales and A Cherry on Top

Wednesday, July 3:  ProseandKahn

Monday, July 8: Wrapped In Foil Blog

So be sure to drop by and visit.

Need a monster? Visit the Monstore!

The Monstore
by Tara Lazar; illus. by James Burks
32 pages, ages 4-7
Aladdin, 2013

Zack has a problem - a big problem. And the only thing that can solve a big problem is a big solution... like a monster. Fortunately for Zack, there's a Monstore close by that sells only the "most useful monsters," writes Tara Lazar. Especially the big hairy kind that frighten pesky sisters away.

So Zack invests his hard-earned allowance and takes he monster home. He tells him to keep his sister Gracie out of his room. Instead, the monster and Gracie bond over hiding places and Zack heads back to the Monstore for a refund. Where he learns that there are No Returns; No Exchanges; No Exceptions! But there is a solution: buy another monster - they scare better in pairs.

I just had to find out if author Tara Lazar had used monsters to deal with her pesky younger brother. So I gave her a call and she was kind enough to answer Three Questions:

Sally's Bookshelf: So about your younger brother....

Tara: Sure, he bothered me by wanting to play with my friends, and we fought over some things. But we could be very cooperative. For example, we created casino-type games and invited neighborhood kids to play - for a price. Once we invested our allowances on trinkets for a neighborhood auction and split the proceeds. This is what happens in Monstore: Zack wants to keep his sister out of his life, but then realizes that he doesn't want to get rid of her completely.

SB: Did you have any monsters living under your bed or in your closet when you were a kid?

Tara: Not monsters - but I thought I had a poltergeist living in my bedroom! I had a stuffed clown that I didn't like very much, so I would often toss him into the back of my closet. In the morning, when I woke up, he'd be sitting in a little white chair. I wasn't scared of monsters, but I was worried about the clown. It turned out that my mom would find him when she was getting out my clothes, and she'd put him back in the chair every morning.

SB: If I come upon a monster (or buy one), how should I treat it?

Tara: You need to understand monsters - and in my book, Gracie does. She lets them do what they want to do as monsters. You really have to give them free  rein to be themselves. (SB's note: that seems like pretty good advice for dealing with siblings, too.)

Review copy provided by publisher.

After Eli

After Eli
by Rebecca Rupp
 245 pages; ages 10 & up
Candlewick Press, 2012

Daniel's full name is Daniel (E.) Anderson. That's not the name printed on his birth certificate; Daniel added the (E.) after his brother, Eli, was killed when his truck ran over an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq. To the folks in town, Eli is a war hero.

Eli's death leaves a hole in Daniel's heart and a lot of questions. To help sort through all those questions, Danny grabs an old binder and creates a "Book of the Dead" -pages full of notes about people who died, how they died, and (most important) the reason they died. There's George Mallory, who died while climbing Mt. Everest. Danny wonders whether "because it's there" is a good enough reason for risking one's life. He wonders if Eli had a good reason to volunteer for the war in Iraq. He wonders whether things would have been different if his dad had allowed Eli to volunteer in New York City after 9/11.

Then one summer Danny notices a new neighbor: Isabelle. He makes friends with an unlikely ally. He starts working on an organic farm. He begins to grow into himself while coming to terms with his brother's death.

This is a book of place: rural Vermont, summer fields and fireflies. This is a book of how people connect: parents, friends, people you thought were friends but turn out to not be. It is a book full of struggle and emotional pain and wondering if you're going to be OK when you grow up. But even more, it is a book infused with love and filled with nuggets of wisdom - like the day Danny's working at the farm and tells Emma that "a real friend is someone who likes you for who you want to be and not for who they want you to be."

Author Rebecca Rupp, master of creating fiction that holds deep truths, graciously answered Three Questions about her book.

Sally's Bookshelf: What inspired this story?

Becky: The evening news. In the first years of the Iraq War, every news broadcast had moments of silence and a list of people who had been killed - most of them painfully young. Then, as we moved into our decades-long condition of permanent war, we stopped doing that. II thought that was weong. These are real people; when they're lost, whole families are devastates. I don't want us to forget the human cost of war.

SB: The characters are so real. Where did Emma come from?

Becky: She just blossomed. When I first wrote the book, Emma wasn't even a character. Then she was introduced as a minor character. And then she just took on an infinitely kind personality all her own. She's based a bit on my Aunt Bev, who never finished high school, married at seventeen and by most people's standards wasn't a success in life. But all of us adored her, ans she solved everybody's problems with love and by listening around her kitchen table.

SB: This is a book with many layers. How long did it take to write it?

Becky: That's so hard to judge - maybe a couple months for a first draft. Then second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh drafts. Then editor's comments and an eighth draft... I don't keep a writer;s notebook, but I do have a daily journal in which I note down all kinds of stuff: ideas for books, ideas for characters, interesting tidbits that might turn into plots. Sometimes I outline the whole story, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I write the ending first. As for research, in writing diction you have to know a whole lot more than you ever put in the book. Since After Eli is set in both present and past, I has a huge timeline that went year by year, starting when Eli was born until Danny was fourteen and meets Isabelle.

This is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.

Privateer's Apprentice ~ blog tour & author interview

Privateer's Apprentice
by Susan Verrico
224 pages; ages 9-12 & beyond
Peachtree, 2012

It is the Year of Our Lord 1713 in Charles Towne, the Carolina Territory, and Jameson Cooper is in jail. He thought, when he grew up, he'd take on his father's job as recorder of deeds and printer. But when his mother dies of smallpox, followed three weeks later by his father, Jameson is left homeless. He is accused of stealing and sentenced to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

While running an errand for his new master, Jameson is knocked unconscious, kidnapped, and pressed into service aboard the "Destiny", serving Queen Anne. His new master is the fearsome Captain Attack Jack who, in addition to liberating gold and jewels from Spanish galleons, seeks to claim new territories for England. Jameson not only proves his worth as a sailor, but also finds new uses for his artistic skills in mapping the New World.

Susan Verrico, who penned this whopping good adventure on the high seas, is passionate about history. She graciously answered Three Questions (and a half) about her book.

Sally's Bookshelf: What inspired this story?

Susan: History was my favorite subject in school. Privateer's Apprentice grew out of an interest in the pirate era, combined with growing up in Florida and hearing stories about pirates and buried treasure.

SB: What sort of research did you do to give your book such authenticity - and how long did it take?

Susan: When I sat down to write Privateer's Apprentice I remember thinking: so, what do I know about pirates? I quickly realized that most of my knowledge came from Hollywood. I thought all pirates had peg legs and had parrots perched on their shoulders. In order to write the book I wanted to write, research wasn't an option - it was a necessity. It wasn't too difficult because I'm so interested in that time period. It took a while, though, because I took lots of breaks along the way, raised my kids, went back to college... all in all, the research and writing took several years.

SB: What did you learn that surprised you as you worked on your book?

Susan: That many pirates were mostly decent men who were just trying to earn a living after Queen Anne's War ended. That was the mind-set in developing the captain's character.

SB: question 3 1/2 - Will we be seeing more of the young lad, Jameson?

Susan: I hope so! 

Hop on the Book Tour~
Tuesday (tomorrow) the tour stops at Book & Movie Dimension
Wednesday it's dropping by Boys to Books
Thursday check out Word Spelunking
and Friday the tour winds up at There's a Book

Have Fun! This is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.

Stripes of All Types ~ blog tour & more

Stripes of All Types

Written & illustrated by Susan Stockdale

32 pages, ages 2 – 6

Peachtree, 2013

How can you pass up a book with a cover this bold?  Or one that begins: “Stripes found in water/ sliding through weeds/ Drinking from rivers/ and darting through reeds”?

Like Susan Stockdale’s other books, Stripes of All Types has bouncy, alliterative rhyme that is great fun to read aloud. The illustrations are sharp, bright, and authentic. And, like her earlier books, this one embraces environmental themes – in particular: patterns in nature; animal diversity; beauty. It’s got to have beauty, she says.

Fortunately, I was able to talk to Susan a couple weeks ago and asked her three questions which she so graciously answered.

Sally’s Bookshelf: Talk about how you use art to encourage children’s connections to their environment.

Susan: I got inspired to write the book while visiting an exhibit of colorful frogs at the American Museum of Natural History. There were so many striped frogs that I thought it would be neat to do a whole book about stripes. Once I started looking at pictures of striped animals, I realized there are many that children might see in a park, zoo, or even their back yard.

Though my books are about animals, I intentionally include children interacting with them on the last page. For example, in Fabulous Fishes, I show a girl snorkeling among tropical fish. In Bring On the Birds, I feature a boy and girl gazing at a robin’s nest. And in Stripes of All Types, I end the book with children cuddling striped cats. This is one way I try to connect children to nature.

SB: Your text is so lively, with natural rhyme and flow. It’s clear you love to play with words. How do you know when you have an idea that will fly?

Susan: Usually a line or two will jump out, and I’ll play around with them. They may not end up in the book, but they help me get going. Then I start playing around with ideas. With Stripes I tried three approaches: looking at stripes as animal parts (like stripes on a tail); looking at stripes through how animals move (leaping stripes, creeping stripes); and looking at stripes on animals in different habitats. I settled on the habitats because it gave me a chance to highlight where animals live, plus a chance to use cool verbs. (Animals sprint and scale and drink and crawl….)

The text is spare- it takes kids on a word ride. At the back I include descriptions of the animals – that’s where I work with scientists to make sure that the information is accurate.

SB: Your illustrations add information to the story. I’m thinking of the ring-tailed lemur drinking from a river; you have a baby on her back. What sort of research do you do for illustrations?

Susan: Lots! (she laughs) I start by collecting images of as many striped animals as I can – from photos, books, magazines… A photo of a zebra swallowtail butterfly makes me wonder: what other striped insects (or spiders) could be on a leaf? I try to come up with many candidates for each habitat, and think about what I can say about them, and how I can show their beauty.

Then, as I work on the illustrations, I get feedback from scientists. My original jellyfish sketch had stripes too close together. I even ask botanists about the plant life in the animal’s habitat – for every picture I paint, I make sure it would occur in nature. I paint with acrylics because I love the sharp colors and lines I can get – and because I can paint over mistakes, which you can’t do with watercolors. And I make plenty of mistakes…

Beyond the Book: Susan mentioned that she focused on verbs in this book. If you’re looking for a way to explore language, act out the movements in the book.

Explore science by going on a “Stripe Hike”. You might find garter snakes, woodpeckers, turkeys or monarch caterpillars in your neighborhood. Or visit a zoo or aviary and look for stripes.

Explore art by painting pictures of animals with stripes, or taking photos of striped critters in your neighborhood.

Play a game: Susan pointed out that stripes can camouflage animals or make them easier to see. Look at the environment outside. Then paint some 4-inch paper plates with stripe patterns and colors that might camouflage them or advertise them in that “habitat”. Head outside and put the plates around the habitat and then challenge your friends to find them.

You can check in on the rest of the blog tour at the Peachtree blog. In addition to the blog tour, this post is part of STEM Friday round-up. It's also part of PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copy provided by publisher.

The Dogs of Winter

The Dogs of Winter

By Bobbie Pyron

312 pages, middle grade

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic) 2012

 

When Ivan’s mother disappears, he ends up on the streets of Moscow. It’s winter – deep, dark, bitter cold – and all he’s got to keep him warm is his coat, a hat, his Famous Basketball Player shoes, and the memory of his mother.

Ivan falls in with a tribe of street children and is put to stealing and begging by the gang’s leader. It’s a harsh life, made worse by the cruelty humans inflict on each other. The dogs treat each other better, Ivan thinks. So when a twist of fate lands him in the middle of the dog pack, he becomes one of them. For two years he and his adopted canine family roam the landscape, using their wits to find food and shelter.

Ivan and his pack discover a greenhouse that makes a perfect winter home. In the summer they run through the forest, hunting or, when needed, collecting food from the dumpster behind an amusement park.

This is a story of survival. It’s a story that examines the things that make us human. It’s also based on a true story, and masterfully written by Bobbie Pyron who, it just happens, lives with her own pack of dogs. Bobbie was gracious enough to answer Three Questions:

Sally’s Bookshelf: So, Bobbie, how did you come to write this book?

 Bobbie: In 2005, I read an article in Best Friends magazine. (Best Friends is a huge, no-kill animal sanctuary in southern Utah). The article was about feral children – children who supposedly have been raised by animals. I’ve always been fascinated by this idea, possibly because I’ve always felt more canine than primate. That article, Bobbie explains, opened with the story of a four-year-old Russian boy, Ivan Mishukov…. The boy who becomes the main character in Dogs of Winter.

Bobbie:  I was absolutely riveted by his story and found myself wanting to know more. Why were there tens of thousands of children living homeless on the streets, particularly one as young as four? How did Ivan survive the cold and the lack of food? How did he and the dogs live day to day? And what happened to Ivan after he was taken from the dogs two years later? The more I thought about Ivan’s story with the dogs, the more I felt I had to write it, but as fiction.

SB: It looks like you did a tremendous amount of research – there’s a 3-page bibliography at the end of the book. And the details are so vivid. Did you travel to Russia to visit the places you wrote about?

Bobbie: I’m a librarian, so research is in my blood and bones. First, I started searching on line for anything I could find on Ivan Mishukov. I also realized I need to know more about the socio-economic conditions in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union – I needed to understand why there were, by some estimates, close to a million homeless children and teens living on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. And of course, there were the street dogs of Moscow. How did they live? Again, there was a surprising amount of information on that, even YouTube videos showing them using the subway system! But I never did visit Russia, and that made me very nervous because “place” is very important to me when I write. I was also very fortunate to come across an award-winning documentary, The Children of Leningratsky made around 2003, which followed a group of homeless children in Moscow over a year.

SB: You have a soft spot in your heart for dogs, and in your blog when you do author interviews, you focus on their relationship to their dogs. Tell me about this connection - how it connects with your life.

Bobbie: I was born and raised in the South, and we southerners have very strong connections to our dogs. Dogs were always a part of everything my family did, and as a shy child, my best friends were dogs. That is still true today. (Bobbie has three dogs: two rescued Shetland Sheepdogs and a rescued coyote mix) I love how “in the moment” they are; I love watching the dynamics between them.  I love just being in the company of dogs. They offer us trust, unconditional love, and a guilelessness that is in short supply these days. They have a way of bringing out the best in us, perhaps because we want to be the person they trust that we are. I think that’s why the authors I interview – many of whom don’t usually do interviews – love the chance to just talk about their dogs. 

This is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.

The Passover Lamb

The Passover Lamb

By Linda Elovitz Marshall; illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss

32 pages, ages 6 - 9

Random House 2013

 

As Miriam scatters chicken feed and gathers eggs, she practices chanting the questions she’ll ask tonight at Grandma’s house. “Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh…? Why is this night different from all other nights?

Of course, this is the day Snowball has her lambs – triplets. She won’t nurse the smallest, so Miriam fills a bottle with special milk for newborns and feeds the hungry lamb. But newborns need to be fed every four hours - how can they go to seder?

Miriam wants to take part in the Passover meal where they retell the story of how the Jews were slaves in Egypt. And how one mother hid her baby, Moses, in a basket to….

“Hey!” she says, “I know what to do!”

Linda Marshall’s story is inspired by an actual event that happened on her farm – when her children took a newborn lamb along with them to seder. I was lucky enough to get Linda to answer Three Questions about her book.

Sally’s Bookshelf: Did you carry him in a basket?

Linda: It happened a long time ago, but as I recall, we didn’t use a basket. Instead, the lamb sat on my kids’ laps or under the table where he nibbled our toes as we told the stories. My kids named him “Moses” as a gentle joke. And lamb nibbles? They feel soft and furry...and tickley.

SB: Your books focus on Jewish themes. Why?

Linda: Not all of my books focus on Jewish themes. But it’s only recently that I began writing for children and, as it’s turned out, the books that have been published so far have Jewish themes. My stories, though,  are inspired by many things - from farm life to word-plays to everyday mysteries like vacuum cleaners.

SB: The inspiration for many of your stories comes from relatives or family stories. How do you craft universal stories from these - what sort of process do you go through?

Linda: This is a great question; thank you for asking. I think everyone has a different process for this, so I'll tell you what I try to do – even though it doesn’t always work. First, I think about what actually happened. Then, I ask myself what story do I want to tell? How can adapt (or invent) story elements to build tension? Then I start writing.  For me, the first draft is the hardest part because I'm literally making “something from nothing.” When the first draft is finally written, I let it “simmer” in my subconscious....That’s when I ponder what I call the “deep structure” of the story – the thing that makes it universal. How does this particular vignette speak to the human heart? The answers generally come while I'm driving or swimming or in the shower. They don't come while I’m consciously thinking about the story! When I finally understand my story’s deep structure, I try to put it in context with other literature with a similar deep structure so I can learn from what came before. And, if I can do that, I often have a much stronger story. It’s a complicated process for what seems simple: a picture book – and that’s only the beginning of the process.

Review copy from publisher.