Busy Writer/Mom/Triathlete Links on Life

Oh goodness. It has been over a month, a month? since I’ve posted and I’m so sorry. That means I’ve done NO book review Wednesdays for a month. Ack. (And I thought those would keep me blogging.) March has been a month of deadlines and to excuse my absence I quickly fill you in on some of the deadlines that I’ve been meeting and working towards. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve probably see a lot of this already so my apologies.

March 1: Final illustrations for the book Fufu and Fresh Strawberries You can see some of those illustrations here.
Forum assignment for my Picture Book Certification Semester at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA)

March 15: Final egg paintings for the Great Goose Egg Auction. You can see the eggs here.

March 17: My 2nd packet was due for VCFA

March 22: Forum assignment for my Picture Book Certification Semester at VCFA

March 23: I did my first multisport event. An indoor triathlon at the Naval Air Station Brunswick. The event was a 1000 meter row on an ergometer, a 5 mile bike on a stationary lifefitness cycle, and a 1.5 mile treadmill run. You can see pictures of me and Mike (the gentleman paired with me)  in the event and read more about it in the captions here. I used this indoor triathlon to train for an event that I am doing in May, The Tri for the Casco Bay Y. If you’d like to donate a small bit to the scholarship funds and to my team the MIghty Mamas, please take a look at our fund raising page where you can donate online. I’ll be swimming and cycling and my friend Rachel will tag off to do the 5K run.

This past week I’ve been revising and polishing the first 10 pages of my novel, working on the synopsis and query letter for the deadlines associated with the New England SCBWI spring conference critiques and quick queries. While the Friday and Saturday registration is full, there are still spots for Sunday so check it out.

I also just got back from the post office, where I was sending a picture book to for the April 1st scholarship deadline at VCFA and a trip to the library where I was stocking up with a new load of 25 picture books for VCFA Packet 3!

All of this with my husband out of state for the first three weeks of March and two kids who need me.

So you see, I’ve been an extremely busy Writer/Mom/Triathlete but we’ll see if April, with its extended sunshine hours, allows me to find more time to blog. Happy Passover to all who celebrate. Look for my Wednesday review of the book: The Matzoh That Papa Brought Home.


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Book Review Wednesday: Picture Book Biographies 2

This is the second installment of a book review and discussion of picture book biographies. The first one is here, if you’d like to read it or I can just catch you up. Because PB biographies are so short, it is my opinion there needs to be a focus on language, and story over biographical information. Last week I talked about the hook and through line in the Joseph Albers book An Eye for Color, as well as the wonderful language in Susannah Reich’s José! Born to Dance. Today I’m going to discuss voice, and how illustrations can be used to create character.


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We start with Lita Judge’s, Yellowstone Moran: Painting the American West. In the interest of full disclosure, I need to say that Lita is a dear friend but don’t let your knowledge of that fact minimize the sincerity of my praise.

An author writing a picture book biography has to, as any picture book author, leave space for the illustrator to add to the story telling. Lita is an author/illustrator so the evolution of her pictures and text happen in a more streamlined and dynamic way. Throughout the revisions, new art might change the text, new text might change the art.

In this book, the art is a key part of the characterization of Tom “Yellowstone” Moran. Moran was an artist who set up his easel in the wilds of the American West. Lita is also a plein air painter. Plein air painters paint outside catching the light and colors of the landscape moment by moment. Lita brings this skill to the book. Sweeping canyon and mountain panoramas are interspersed with framed inset spot illustrations. What does this have to do with PB biographies?

Lita’s paintings create character. Not only by what they portray but also by how she portrays the landscape. The reader understands the humility, dedication, and sense of mission in Tom Moran by the way the natural world is depicted. The text confirms this. The reader learns how Tom took a chance by leaving Philadelphia and coming out to join a scientific party with only a letter of recommendation. How he presses on through the pain of riding a horse for the first time, camping in difficult conditions, and forging new trails. Each of the inset illustration is a window into a more intimate aspect of Moran’s character. They let the reader glimpse his sketchbook, as well as quiet or difficult moments for the title character.

At the end of the book, the reader gets to see the actual 1872, Thomas Moran oil painting of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The grandeur of the landscape literally dwarfs humankind, as Moran has included tiny figures in the foreground.

Many author’s notes in PB biographies give more facts and dates that the author couldn’t fit into the text. Lita’s author/illustrator notes relay more of her research process and personal connection to the story.


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Jonah Winter is the author of many PB biographies and is so prolific that if you have an idea for a manuscript, you should check his list of titles first. His 2008 releases include books about Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Muhammad Ali. In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor and the book I’m going to talk about today, You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!

The voice of Winter’s narrator for this book is chummy and knowledgeable. He quotes players and gives the reader a VIP view from the dugout. While the narrator is never identified, he seems like the crusty old guy you happen to sit next to in the cheap seats one day, the guy who keeps score of the hits, runs, and plays. Once you buy him a hot dog, he starts to tell you about how it was back in the day when he used to play as a Dodger.

The voice is so easy to listen to, the crusty old player is such a good storyteller, that the child listener/reader doesn’t even realize how long the guy has been talking. For those writers who obsess over word count, remember that first an foremost it is the author’s job to tell a good story. Winter packs the book with information from Koufax’s beginnings as an athletic teenager, to his Dodger debut, to how he sat out the World Series game that conflicted with Yom Kippur, to his surprise retirement. More information, in the form of baseball stats, peppers the pages of the book and give the info-loving kid plenty to read and memorize. A glossary of baseball terms finishes the book. The important thing here is that the voice Winter creates allows the reader to focus on story and take away those facts that seep in naturally.

If my voice sounds a little academic this week, it is because a lot of the text from the two blogs will be in my critical essay about Picture Book Biographies. Here’s a quick list of the books I’ve talked about and a few others that you may want to check out.

 ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL
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Bryant, Jennifer. A river of words : the story of William Carlos Williams. Grand Rapids  Mich.: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2008. Print.

Judge, Lita. Yellowstone Moran : painting the American West. New York  N.Y.: Viking, 2009. Print.

Reich, Susanna. Jose! Born to Dance: The Story of Jose Limon (Tomas Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award. Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, 2005. Print.

Wing, Natasha. An eye for color : the story of Josef Albers. 1st ed. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2009. Print.

Winter, Jonah. Barack. Katherine Tegen Books, 2008. Print.

—. Dizzy. 1st ed. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006. Print.

—. Frida. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2002. Print.

—. Muhammad Ali: Champion of the World. Schwartz & Wade, 2008. Print.

—. Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Atheneum, 2008. Print.

—. Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx / La juez que crecio en el Bronx. Bilingual. Atheneum, 2009. Print.

—. You never heard of Sandy Koufax?! 1st ed. New York  N.Y.: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2009. Print.

Book Review Wednesday: Picture Book Biographies Part 1

Thanks to those of you who have been nudging me to post on my blog again. Since there have been NO Book Review Wednesday’s for about a month, it is high time I get back to work. Get ready for a quick discussion of picture book biographies.

I’ve been immersed in PB biographies recently as I am working on one myself. I find that the most effective writing in this genre comes from authors who remember the importance of story and language without getting caught up in trying to relay too many facts. Thirty-two pages is not a lot of space. The author of a PB biography has to narrow her focus and find a logical and kid friendly entry point into the life she wishes to relate. In the two books below, the text is relatively simple but each book contains author’s notes or historical notes to tell the reader (or teacher or parent) more.

 


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First up is An Eye for Color: The story of Josef Albers. Josef Albers was an artist and designer who studied with the Bauhaus school in Germany until the Nazis closed it. Albers moved to the US and taught at Black Mountain College near Asheville, NC and then Yale. His study of color interaction using large squares of color is taught in every modern color theory class. As a child, the author, Natasha Wing, was Albers’ neighbor.  

The text for An Eye for Color gives the reader a theme for Albers life and the hook for every kid on the first page of the book, “Josef Albers saw art in the simplest things.” The rest of the book explores some these things: doors, collages made from junkyard finds, artistic accidents, and finally the squares of color that became his life’s work. The illustrator, Julia Breckenreid, takes on a large part of the storytelling responsibility by conveying the work of Albers through her illustrations. Her use of large fields of color in various geometric shapes effectively demonstrates Albers’ theories on the interaction of colors and mimics his paintings. 


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In José! Born to Dance, Susanna Reich uses lively, lyrical, rhythmic language that mimics Limon’s dance technique. Reich builds character by weaving Spanish phrases and words into the text. (A glossary appears in the front matter of the book but really the context of most phrases makes the Spanish understandable.)

Reich hooks the child reader by starting the story with 15 pages about Limon’s childhood. Instead of focusing on historic events that might seem dry to a child, Reich magnifies the feelings associated with the events: the happiness and energy of José’s dancing birth in Mexico, his quiet visits with his grandmother, experiencing new things such as theater, being scared during a bullfight, feeling left out as a new kid in America, and his feeling of inadequacy as an art student in Manhattan. Every child can relate to José’s feelings even if the events of his life are foreign. The event that changes José from an aspiring artist to an aspiring dancer takes place only four spreads from the end of the book.  Here, Reich still focuses on the emotion, José’s exuberance at finally finding the thing he was born to do.

I was wowed by the texture in the watercolor and color pencil drawings by illustrator Raul Colon. His color choices magnify the emotion in the Reich’s language.

I have a many other wonderful PB biography examples. Next week I’ll look at Yellowstone Moran: Painting the American West by Lita Judge and You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! by Jonah Winter and André Carrilho. If you can’t wait until then, check out this archived post about Caldecott Honor winning A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams.

News from the outside

Dear Friends,
Originally I was going to lock this post and then decided that there are probably many others who are experiencing similar circumstances and could chime in.

I recently posted about a job for which I applied. I found out yesterday that I did not get the job. I had high hopes that this was the one. I’ve applied to many in the last six months. Six or seven, or is it more like eight or ten? Whatever the numbers, for each one there is the work of the application. For teaching jobs this is more extensive. Transcripts, fingerprints and certifications all need to be gathered. I have to impose upon friends to write or rewrite their references for me, yet again. I send it all in. I get my hopes up. I wait. I follow up. I don’t get the job.

I don’t feel this is at all a reflection of my competence. The employer often sites the large number of qualified and over-qualified applicants. The economy and the high unemployment rate is certainly a factor. Jobs in Maine are few and far between. Budgets are slashed. The employers applaud my intelligence, my creativity, my interesting experiences and then they say, "no." On the publishing front the message is often the same. Wow, the editors say. You are a wonderful writer. So professional. Your piece is great. I just signed a similar one. I’m sorry. No.

The question one might ask, I might ask, I DO ask, is how much "no" can a person take? The reality of our financial situation (two mortgages as our spec house is unrented and unsold) forces me to get up on that horse. Keep riding. Redesign that resume. Network more. Apply or submit again. Tenacity counts. I am tenacious.

I tell myself that a better opportunity will come along. That the universe knows what it is doing. That it wasn’t meant to be.

All this in the midst of a wonderful, magical MFA residency at VCFA in the snow covered mountains of Vermont.
 
What a joy kill.

Anna

A list

Sometimes there is the pressure to have something to say when one starts to write a blog entry. I always start thinking I’ve got nothing. Lists help, so here we go…
1. Kids went back to school today. I got almost all my sketches for Fufu printed out on good Arches paper. Two are already painted. Must keep on, keeping on.
2. Lucy puppy is growing fast. With the kids and hubby gone she was visibly confused and decided to sleep for most of the day. I took her out skiing, went for a walk, and practiced frisbee fetch. She gives it back to me if I keep a few bits of hot dog handy. I’m so happy that she is part of our family.

Is she beautiful or what?
3. My VCFA residency starts on Sunday! This is pack week. That means that this is also laundry week. And go to Target for last minute "I needs", I need twin size flannel sheets, a new set of long johns, an electric water kettle, and a back support chair insert if I can find one. After the New Year’s storm I’m expecting deep snow. I got these slope sliders as a gift to bring with me to the residency.

I’m also trying to catch up with my reading, both pre-lecture and pre-workshop readings. I should have done this during the last two weeks but used the reading time to treat myself to grown-up books The Help and Eat Cake.
4. Cross your fingers for me as I have a job interview on Wednesday as the Media Liaison of a private school. I think I’m a great match for the job, we’ll see how the meeting goes.
5. My kiddo got a Sansa mp3 player which I was assured would take files from itunes. (not purchased but the ones that were originally my cd’s) Turns out that all my music was imported in nonmp3 format so I have to convert them all. Ick. Now I know there is a box to check in preferences to fix this problem for future imports.

Creation

When one is creative, one must create. There are certain ducks that need to be in a row before the creation can begin. If you carefully follow my list of artistic preparation below, and you might be an award winning procrastinator artist. (Someday, I might too.)

Make sure your children are asleep. (They are bound to wake up as soon as you complete the list so don’t have high expectations.)
Let the dog out.
Let the dog in.
Feed the dog
Get dressed in your comfy creative clothes: Overalls (Mine are paint spattered with so many holes that one leg is almost severed.)
My overalls are paint spattered and have many more holes.
Comfy socks. (These are the ones I got for Chanukah.)

Something to hold your hair back (if you have hair). I like the Rosie the Riveter bandana look.

And you’ll need an apron.

Check your email.
Check your friend’s blogs.
Uh. Oh. What did I tell you? Now the kids are up and wanting breakfast. Maybe I’ll create something tomorrow.
"Book Review Wednesday" returns on January 6th! Happy Holidays.

Holiday Boll Family Style

Chanukah Menorahs

On the eighth night of Chanukah we had some friends over for a potluck. Because it was both the last night of the holiday and Shabbat, there was much ceremony, singing, and lighting of candles. It was so nice to share the night with good friends and so nice to be reminded of just why we reloaded all those boxes and came traipsing back to Maine. I am Jewish and Hubby is not so as soon as the menorahs were put away for next year…

Christmas tree picking

We headed to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree. Now with many interfaith families there are some compromises. Our compromise is I say yes to the tree but Hubby has to say no to the Christmas lights outside. He hems and haws and teases me about how he’d really love a huge blow up Santa in our yard but actually, I think it lets him off the hook. Nothing to put up. Nothing to take down. Anyway… we had to try out a new tree farm because our usual one was closed for a "growing year." We marched up and down the aisles and nothing caught my eye. Really, I didn’t like the way they were trimmed. Too skinny and rounded in at the bottom. (Here’s a piece of Anna trivia: One summer I trimmed Christmas trees at a farm in New York state as a summer job. I was the only female on the crew. Let me tell you, that is not an easy job.) So we ended up getting the tree in the picture at an already cut place in Freeport.
Now it looks like this.

Notice the piano and ottoman barricade. It took about 10 minutes to realize that I don’t have enough skill as a dog trainer to get our mouthy puppy, Lucy to "leave it." Hubby reminded me, Anna, we just brought a tree into our house and hung a bunch of toys on it. What do you expect?
Hope you all have a great week. Happy Holidays.

Book Review Wednesday: Silly Tilly


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Spinelli, Eileen, and David Slonim. Silly Tilly. Tarrytown, N.Y.: Marshall Cavendish Children, 2009.

On my trip to New York for the Jewish Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference day at the 92nd Street Y, I met with the Marshall Cavendish art director. She was lovely, enjoyed my illustrations (hooray), and brought some wonderful Marshall Cavendish books to give away. Luckily, I ended up with Silly Tilly.

Eileen Spinelli is a hero and mentor in my journey to publication. When I met her and asked how she was able to find her own writing time while raising her children and supporting her husband’s writing career she explained, "It’s all about writing in the cracks." This has become my mantra and I often look for the cracks in my day when I can fit in a poem or a sketch or even a group of words that come to me. (Sorry, this was suppose to be about Eileen and not me.)

Nevertheless, Eileen has written a silly rhyme, a "daffy-down-and-dilly" rhyme about a goose named Tilly. (A silly goose, get it?) Silly Tilly brings fun and laughter to her farmyard with the silly things she likes to do. Silly Tilly takes baths in apple juice, wears a pancake on her head, tickles frogs and combs her feathers with a rake. When her farm mates get sick of her tomfoolery, they forbid her from any more silly stuff. Until, of course, they realize that the farm is "dullsvile" without her.

I bet right about now you are thinking of a silly toddler who would just crack up about Tilly’s silly antics. Trust me, if that toddler saw David Slonim’s acrylic paintings of Tilly soaking her feet in mayonnaise or sledding downhill on cookie trays they’d have giggles that just wouldn’t quit. Slonim layers his colors creating wonderful cool color shadows and warm highlights. He keeps his work gestural by outlining in pen and pencil.

If you have a silly goose 3-6 year old on your holiday list, check out Silly Tilly.