Month: July 2022

How do you eat a whale?

I’m in the copy editing stage of the publishing process for my book SHIRA AND ESTHER DOUBLE THE WONDER. My middle-grade debut novel launches Fall 2023 from Chronicle Books.

Perhaps because of the heat, my attention is not as focused as usual. Like a squirrel, I skitter from one thing to another—foraging, cleaning, social media, videos, playing with Rothko the cat, and back to the work at hand before something else shiny catches my eye. I’ve been waiting and working for this moment for the last 20 years and yet, I’m procrastinating.

One show that I’ve been obsessively procrastinating with is Home Town Takeover with Ben (a cuddly bear of a man who can make anything out of wood) and Erin (pixie-dream-girl, and artist extraordinaire) Napier. The premise of this show (in case you don’t know) is that they have chosen one town to revitalize. Ostensibly, the show is about remodeling buildings but REALLY it is about leadership, economics, transportation policy, marketing and community. The Napiers often reflect on the massive task they’ve taken on with the question: How do you eat a whale? The answer of course is: One bite at a time.

Back to copy edits. Enjoy this excerpt of the poem “The Whale,” by Joseph Edwards Carpenter.

The Whale
by Joseph Edwards Carpenter

1

Oh! the whale is free of the boundless sea
He lives for a thousand years;
He sinks to rest in the billows breast,
Nor the roughest tempest fears:
The howling blast as it hurries past,
Is music to lull him to sleep,
And he scatters the spray in his boisterous play,
As he dashes the king of the deep.
Oh! the rare old whale, ‘mid storm and gale,
In his ocean home shall be,
A giant in might, where might is right
And kind of the boundless sea!

Book Review Wednesday: Jumper by Melanie Crowder

Blair Scott is in her second season as a wildland firefighter when the Forest Service puts out a call for an additional class of smokejumpers. She and her best friend Jason both apply, though neither expects to get in since they’re only nineteen. But it’s been a devastating fire season, and they are both accepted. But going to training camp is only the first step—everyone expects the teenage rookies will wash out in the first week. Blair has always been touchy about people telling her she isn’t good enough, so she begins taking unnecessary risks to prove herself. It doesn’t take long before everything spins out of control, leaving Blair struggling to cope. 

Penguin Random House (2022)

There are very few YA books that I read in a day, but Melanie Crowder’s JUMPER wouldn’t let me go. Perhaps it was the characters. Blair Scott is a young woman with a medical secret. A daughter driven to achieve everything with her body when her mother would prefer she be careful and cautious. Aunt Cate, a single, smart, scientific, woman who lives in the woods. Jason. Ah. Sweet, strong, incredible Jason. All of us want a friend like Jason. Two smart, salty, veteran firefighting instructors and a cadre of firefighting candidates, each with their own carefully drawn personalities and experiences.

Perhaps it was the setting and the action. The textures of Montana range, mountains, and forests are beautifully drawn on the page. It is a ripped-from-the-headlines setting where Blair and Jason train to contain and fight fires that most of us would run from. But, the big fires aren’t the only ones burning and they aren’t the focus for Blair, Jason, and their smoke-jumper colleagues. The smoke-jumpers parachute into the woods to tamp out and contain smaller, hard-to-get-to fires. Crowder keeps the reader on the edge of their comfy reading cushion as the firefighters strategize to battle the intensity of the flames while keeping their egos and personal struggles in check.

Perhaps what kept me reading was the structure. For an East Coast reader, a lot of this was new information, but Crowder had that covered as well. Careful and intentional insertions of firefighting orders, “watchouts,” and vocabulary kept me informed and foreshadowed the action, urging me on.

Perhaps it was the timeliness. In just the last couple of weeks, four fires have broken out in Montana and in a California heat wave, the Oak Fire in Yosemite (the photos in this TIME magazine article are jaw-dropping) expanded to 28 square miles (19,000 acres). Climate change has expanded the fire season so much that for some places, there’s no more season at all. Fires happen all. The. Time. (Take a look at this fire and smoke map.) Upon finishing the book, I ran into this tweet reminding us that those who run toward the fires to save our lives and property are often volunteers and underpaid workers.

But wait…I can’t forget the emotional arcs of each of the characters. Crowder writes emotion so well. You’re going to swoon, you’re going to cry, you’re going to be destroyed in all the best ways.

Get the book. Just get the book.

Poetry Friday: Empty Nesting

Purchase at your local independent bookstore or through my Bookshop link.

It’s been a long time since I spoke about mothering. Mommy blogs as a genre seem to satisfy their purpose once a child has become an adult. And yet, I am still a mother. With two sons, I’ve experienced everything twice. They each left for college but came back for holidays and vacations. Then they each finished college and set up nests of their own.

This last time handed me a gut punch I wasn’t really expecting. After all, we had already navigated long stretches away from each other, serious girlfriends, a pandemic separation (when we all agreed they’d be better with Dad in Maine then with me in NYC), and weekly phone calls that became more occasional. I’ve learned I cannot control their day-to-day health and safety (much less my own). I understand not only that I’ve given them all I could, but also, that they are fine humans whom I trust completely.

However, I had those moments, maybe you’ve had them too, where you look at the young man before you, and perhaps the light shifts, and you see a flicker of them as the small child they once were. And then it’s gone.

This poem from Laura Foley in the poetry anthology THE PATH TO KINDNESS: POEMS OF CONNECTION AND JOY (p.76 Edited by James Crews, Storey Publishing, 2022) captures my experience.

Laura Foley
A PERFECT ARC
I remember the first time he dove.
He was five and we were at a swimming pool
and I said: you tip your head down as you are going in,
while your feet go up.

And then his lithe little body did it exactly right,
a perfect dive, sliding downward, arcing without a wave,
and I just stood
amazed and without words
as his blond head came up again
and today

I watched him for the longest time as he walked
firm and upright along the street,
with backpack, guitar, all he needs,
blossoming outward in a perfect arc,
a graceful turning
away from me.

Summer Reading TBR

With the humidity, it feels as if it’s over 90ºF here in the DMV. So find yourself some AC, a fan, and a cold glass of lemonade and get busy reading some phenomenal books. (I’m hoping that my students read at least one this summer!)

Here are some middle-grade and YA that I’ve loved over the past few weeks. If there’s a date on it, that means it’s an ARC (Advanced Readers Copy). A few of those won’t be out for purchase until the fall.

Here’s my To Be Read (TBR) pile. It keeps getting bigger, but I’m trying to use the library too. Some came out last year and some are brand new. If you read any, leave me a message and tell me what you thought.

Happy Reading!