Sep 8, 2016 | Book Reviews, Books |
I recently found myself having yet another conversation with parents about what their children can read beyond Harry Potter. I get asked this question or variants of it All. The. Time. There are several ways to answer this, depending on what your specific problem is. I’m going to address those problems over several blog posts, so stay tuned. For today, I’m looking at the very youngest Potter fans.
My child loves the Harry Potter movies but is too young to be reading the books. Are there books for her age range with similar appeal?
I’m going to assume that you’re looking for books that your child can read herself, not books that you read to her or read together. The following are early readers and chapter books my daughters loved when they were about 6-8 years old.
The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne was designed with early readers in mind. The protagonists, Jack and Annie, travel around the world and throughout history from a magic tree house they find in the woods near their home. The books are well researched, and Osborne often provides non-fiction companion books, such as the much-read Titanic guide my elder daughter loved. Magictreehouse.com also provides additional materials and activities for that REALLY curious kid in your life.
The Unicorn School series by Linda Chapman was my younger daughter’s favorite chapter book series when she was six. Focusing on social development and growth, the series provides engaging characters and promotes problem-solving skills.
The Rainbow Fairies series by Daisy Meadows was another favorite. The simple, formulaic plots made the stories easy and quick to read, which is good because there are DOZENS of them! My younger daughter would devour them like popcorn.
The Moomintroll series by Tove Jansson is one of my own favorites from childhood. Originally written in Finnish, the series is populated entirely by fantastic characters you won’t find in American literature: trolls, hemulins, snuffkins, snarks, and a wide variety of woodland creatures. The cozy Moomin family provides a safe, nurturing home base from which Moomintroll and his friends can go off on rollicking adventures.
Though these may be more challenging and require parental assistance, ANYTHING by Roald Dahl, but for young readers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach are good choices.
Have further suggestions? Please share them in the comments!
Sep 4, 2016 | Books, Writing Life |
I had a tremendous amount of fun last weekend at Bubonicon in my home town, Albuquerque, NM. I met a lot of great people and learned much more about the publishing process. I sat on a panel with two Hugo Award winners – no pressure – and read a chapter of A Witch’s Kitchen before an audience for the first time. People came up to me after that to tell me they’d preordered my book, which completely amazed me.
And one panel reminded me of my origins. Melinda Snodgrass, an extraordinary writer responsible for several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, described her early childhood and how she discovered science fiction through her local library, the Ernie Pyle branch in Albuquerque.
A shiver went down my back. That was my branch! I know the converted home of war journalist Ernie Pyle like the back of my hand, and thinking of it brings back the musty smell of the card catalog. I was nine years old, and I’d pretty much read everything in the children’s section of the library when I came across a new book: Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight.
Yes, that’s an adult book. Someone had mistaken it for one of her juveniles and shelved it in the wrong place. But all I saw was a tantalizingly thick book with a dragon on the cover, so I checked it out and devoured it. When I returned it to the library, the librarian gave me a strange look.
“You read this?” she asked. I nodded. “Did you understand it?” I nodded again. She paused. “Could I speak with your mother?”
I brought my mother over, and they chatted for a moment. Then the librarian turned to me and said, “Come with me.”
She led me into the adult section of the library, reached up to a high shelf, took down a paperback, and handed it to me: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Sitting in the panel, listening to Melinda Snodgrass, I wondered whether she’d read the same book. I wondered whether the same librarian had placed it in her hands, though there’s at least ten years’ difference in our ages. I wondered again who that librarian had been. I don’t recall her name. I don’t even recall what she looked like. But I owe that librarian an incredible debt of gratitude for guiding me to a lifelong love of fantasy and science fiction and endless possibility.
The next time I visit my local library, I’m going to make a point of thanking the librarian. And I’m going to donate books, not just my book. LOTS of books. Maybe one of them will be someone else’s gateway to the future.
Aug 28, 2016 | Books, Stories |
For those of you absolutely champing at the bit to get a copy of A WITCH’S KITCHEN (you know who you are), I’ve put up a story told from a slightly different point of view – a villain’s.
Let me tell you a secret: for me, villains are hard to write.
I think it’s because I love my characters, and I hate to see them get hurt. The most common problem I had with my first draft of A WITCH’S KITCHEN was that my characters succeeded too easily. They needed challenges, adversity to make them grow in new and interesting directions. So I increased my level of villainy, making one villain much nastier and adding a whole new one.
But then I had a whole new problem: my villains made no sense. They did random nasty things just to annoy my protagonists. I needed what they did to have logical (if not very nice) reasons. So I thought hard about one villain in particular – what her childhood had been like, how bitter disappointment had shaped her as an adult, how ambition and a deep need for others’ approval and respect drove her to do rather nasty things.
The other villain, Cretacia, was easy to write. I modeled her on every school bully and mean girl I’d ever known. She’s ruthless, calculating, and utterly determined to be the best at everything. I didn’t really think about why until my younger daughter read the final draft. In the middle of a chapter, she looked up at me and asked, “Mommy, why is Cretacia so mean all the time?”
Good question. So good that a story started forming in my head, one in which Cretacia has a terrible secret, a disability she is desperate to hide from everyone. She drives everyone away from her, keeping them away so that they’ll never find out. She is convinced that, if people knew, they wouldn’t like her, and her mother wouldn’t love her.
I wrestled with the idea for a while. I don’t want to imply that people with disabilities are all villains. (Far from it – I consulted with a friend of my daughters who has the same disability, and she is a wonderful, incredibly awesome kid!) Instead, I wanted to show that it’s easy to let self-doubt and fear gnaw at you and lead you to make bad decisions. Cretacia wants, desperately, to ask for help, but she’s just not willing to take the risk.
As I wrote this, I realized that I was pulling from my own experience. As a child, I was terrified of ever asking a question, in case doing so made me look stupid. I was the smart kid; that was my niche, what made me special and got me attention. I had to know everything. If I didn’t know something, I’d make it up, and that got me in trouble sometimes. It wasn’t until I got to college and discovered that I could not survive without asking questions, and asking for help, that I finally learned to do it. Much to my surprise, I discovered that this earned me respect. Every time I asked a question, it not only led me to new answers, it made the people around me think and question and search for answers, too.
I ache for Cretacia when, every time she has an opportunity to reach out to someone for help, she turns away. If only! It’s that tension that drives Cretacia’s Tale, in which Cretacia becomes her own villain. I love this character, and I can’t help rooting for her, even as she makes Millie’s life miserable. I guess deep down, I want even my villains to find happy endings.
Aug 19, 2016 | Books |
I grew up in New Mexico, one of the driest places in the United States. There are trees there, of course, but they’re few and far between. Green is a rare and precious color there, which is why I loved my abuelo’s farm so much. But nothing is more magical to me than (more…)
Jul 28, 2016 | Books |
“What’s it about?” That’s the first question anyone asks me when I tell them I’ve written a novel, and it’s surprisingly difficult to answer. A WITCH’S KITCHEN is about so many things, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s about magic and cooking and growing up and going to school and exploring your world and coping with enemies and making friends. It’s about discovery, and what you do with your discoveries.
At its heart, A WITCH’S KITCHEN is a story about (more…)
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