Spring Materials Review Notes

Trying to impart our love for 37 books in 1 1/2 hours is much, much harder than you'd think. Last Friday veteran Bear Ponder Carrie Fitz, U-32 Librarian Meg Allison and Jane Knight (the latter two are Dorothy Canfield Fisher committee members) burned the adrenaline trying to make sure each book got equal play time. The books that were highlighted were books that did not get chosen for the 2016-2017 Dorothy Canfield Fisher List-- some books weren't eligible because their authors were not from the U.S. or Canada. But many others were eligible and well-liked by the Canfield Fisher committee, yet still did not find their place on the list. 

Often times there are two or more books in contention for a slot on the list that have similar themes and so only one is chosen to represent that theme. Other potential nominees, like Boy In the Black Suit (by Jason Reynolds) or Paper Hearts (by Meg Wiviott) simply feel a touch too old for the list. 

We started off the morning with a round-up of wonderful books by Vermont authors that were published last year. (Those books are noted as such on the book list in the 'notes' section). Both non-fiction and fiction were covered, and instead of killing your eyesight with a tediously long review of each book, we are making the book list available to view with notes. 

A few of our participants shared their memorable titles of 2015-2016, which included Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, a middle grade selection for lovers of Mr. Lemoncello. The Epic series by Brandon Sanderson was also highly touted for its high-action appeal to middle school and high school (boys especially) students who love Rick Riordan or The Maze Runner series and are ready for something more complex. 

The new 2016-2017 Canfield Fisher books were also prominently displayed and we lightly touched upon each by genre and specific kid appeal. 

If you missed this Materials Review, we host one each season and they are super fun and (we think) worth your Friday morning. 

For a peek into past Materials Review Sessions:

Early Chapter Books October 2015

Fantastic Fiction 2015

Exciting Non-Fiction that Kids Will Read

And a couple handy lists to of notable books being published in 2016:

Notable Children's Books of 2016 (Publisher's Weekly)

A Literary Calendar of Children's Books 2016 (this one is really fun-- The Guardian)

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We will be hard at work plotting for our Fall Events Schedule over the summer and we'd like to hear from YOU! Got suggestions, ideas or something you want to know more about? Contact Jane at jane@bearpondbooks.com.

And....don't miss our last event of the spring!

Saturday, April 9th 11:00 am - Noon

Poetry with VT Poet Laureate Chard DeNiord

Vermont’s new Poet Laureate Chard DeNiord has a goal of getting schools across Vermont involved in poetry. He’s been involved in many poetry organizations, including the Next Stage Speaks initiative that he founded. He’ll speak about his experiences with Vermont students, in Vermont schools, and what opportunities there are for local teachers and librarians to involve kids in poetry.

Exploring the Boundaries of Genre

Authors Tod Olson and Laura Williams McCaffrey joined us in the Children’s Room on Saturday, March 5th to discuss the intersections of fiction and nonfiction, two genres often thought—particularly by students—to be opposites of each other. On the contrary, as Tod and Laura illuminated through an exploration of their writing processes of historical nonfiction and speculative fiction/fantasy, respectively, authors of nonfiction and fiction often use similar tools when crafting their narratives. As a result, works of nonfiction can function like fiction to draw readers into a story, and fantasy can help us better understand the real world.

The Role of the Nonfiction Writer

As an author and editor of narrative nonfiction for young readers—including the How to Get Rich series and Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo—Tod noted that there isn’t a proliferation of books in that genre to begin with, and those that do exist are often packaged for parents and teachers. (Take one look at Tod’s books and you’ll see that this isn’t the case.) While readers often expect nonfiction to be a direct reproduction of what happened, Tod stressed that history writers rely on the memories of multiple storytellers—via such things as diaries, letters, and oral histories—sources that are rich but extremely unreliable, as scientific research on memory has shown. Each story changes based on whose point of view it is being told from; thus nonfiction is built on hundreds of thousands of unreliable narrators, and there are still large holes in the historical record. As Tod said, nonfiction writers transform the large ball of clay that is the historical record into a sculpture by carving out pieces and shaping what is left into story. What is important for students to understand, Tod stressed, is that there is a line between the research and the craft of writing, but that it varies from writer to writer.

Resources for Fantasy Writers

Laura laughingly commented that she feels like she has the easier job as a writer of fantasy because she doesn’t have to decide who is the hero and who is the villain of a story based on conflicting accounts, nor does she have to worry about rightness. While works of historical fantasy/science fiction/speculative fiction—such as those by Octavia Butler and Jennifer Donnelly, whose novels are set within and comment on the historical record—have more direct connections to historical nonfiction, writers of fantasy draw on similar sources in their own writing processes. Laura, who also teaches writing, and other fantasy writers often rely on historical archives as resources, which are useful even if a text isn’t historical fiction. When writing Water Shaper, historical archives helped Laura understand what existed and what interpersonal relationships were like in the medieval period. Real-world sources such as technology help writers understand social order and structure. Imaginative cultural sources like fairy tales and folklore shed light on how we understand ourselves to be—particularly in terms of what we’re scared of. Ultimately, Laura concluded, human beings and their relationship to stories are at the core of fantasy writing.    

Crafting Narratives in Both Genres

Tod and Laura discussed how writers of nonfiction and fiction structure their narratives in order to make them viscerally appealing to readers. Shifting points of view to vary the story and crafting well-shaped chapters in which something important happens are two ways to do this. One of storytellers’ primary functions, as Tod explained, is to manipulate time. Writers of history can and do play fast and loose with time—making it seem as if it expands and contracts—by spending the longest portion of the narrative on the events that occurred within a smaller window of a larger story. This creates the sense for the reader of time slowing down, something we often experience in life even though, of course, time continues at its normal pace. Tod presented survival stories as a particularly appealing genre of nonfiction for younger and older readers alike because of their easily recognizable narrative progression: a catalyzing event followed by several attempts to resolve conflict and a final resolution. Stories that lack this progression, according to Tod, challenge both the writer and the reader. 

Tod is currently working on a book about the Apollo 13 mission, the research for which includes working through hundreds of hours of audio tapes, as well as multiple first-hand narrative accounts from astronauts and controllers. Despite this seeming wealth of sources, Tod noted the absence of  unrecorded back-room conversations. Marked, Laura’s recently released third book, is a dystopian young-adult novel featuring interspersed graphic novel vignettes. For Marked, Laura drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including fairy lore and photographs of enormous mines in National Geographic.  

For further reading on process and genre: 

• Thoughts on the blurring of genre boundaries in young-adult literature from the 2012 Young Adult Literature Symposium 
• Laura's interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith, in which she discusses her writing process for Water Shaper
• Jo Walton discusses subgenres of historical fantasy on Tor.com 

Writing About Tough Topics for Kids - Author Panel

On Saturday, February 6th, authors Kate Messner, Jo Knowles, and Tamara Ellis Smith participated in a panel discussion focused on writing about tough topics for kids. As Jane, our Children’s Room manager, noted in her introduction, the subject of tough topics and how to talk about them with kids is a fraught one, and the differences between the issues kids and adults think kids are ready to explore are striking. The authors discussed this tension and why books that grapple with topics such as loss, addiction, and abuse are important resources for young readers.

L to R: Kate Messner, Jo Knowles, and Tamara Ellis Smith

The panel began with each author discussing her recent works dealing with sensitive and traumatic issues that kids face.


Kate featured two of her works of middle-grade fiction: All the Answers, published in 2015, and The Seventh Wish, coming this summer. All the Answers, in which seventh-grader Ava Anderson discovers her pencil can answer almost any question, deals with the reality of anxiety and catastrophic thinking in kids’ lives, something Kate shared she also experiences. Ultimately, Ava discovers herself asking the pencil questions to which she shouldn’t necessarily know the answer. Kate noted that her work has been criticized for the protagonist having “too many issues” when school, family, and friends converge in her novels. Kate argued that it seems adults often want children’s literature to reflect the lives they wish kids had instead of the lives kids actually have. 

One issue Vermont children increasingly deal with is addiction in the family. The Seventh Wish, Kate’s forthcoming middle-grade novel, is a retelling of the Russian folktale about a wish-granting fish. Kate wondered what contemporary kids would ask for, which would let us know what is really on their minds. The book started as a light-hearted story of a girl asking the fish to help with her dance performance. After learning of a close neighbor’s daughter’s struggle with heroin, Kate’s novel continued in a new direction, delving into how a family member’s addiction affects Charlie, the protagonist. The Seventh Wish demonstrates that not everything can be wished away. Older middle-grade students, Kate maintained, can and do deal with issues like drug addiction in their families, and books are a safe place in which to explore them.

Jo emphasized that she approaches her books from the underside, often focusing on what we don’t see and how it still affects us. For example, in Lessons from a Dead Girl, the story is told from the point of view of a friend of a victim of sexual abuse. Read Between the Lines is her most recent work of young-adult fiction and a tribute to Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War. Jo credited The Chocolate War as the first book in which she felt the real world was being shown to her. Read Between the Lines, like The Chocolate War, is a story of bullying told from multiple points of view that exposes life’s complexity. Jo underscored that all of her writing questions how we live with not only what we’re given but also what we observe happening to others, which affects us whether we realize it or not.

Tamara introduced Another Kind of Hurricane, her 2015 work of middle-grade fiction, as a labor of love that she started in 2005 after she took her then 4-year-old son to drop off donations at a Hurricane Katrina food and clothes drive. Her son asked, “Who is going to get my pair of pants, Mom?” Tamara realized that another 4-year-old boy would soon be wearing her son’s pants and imagined what it would be like if he and her son could meet. Another Kind of Hurricane chronicles the intersection of the lives of two ten-year-old boys—Zavion from New Orleans, whose family lost their home in Hurricane Katrina, and Henry from Underhill, Vermont, whose best friend recently died in a tragic accident—who meet after Henry’s blue jeans with his lucky marble still in the pocket make their way to Zavion. In addition to exploring different kinds of loss, the novel asks how and why we connect with other people in places we couldn’t have imagined. Another Kind of Hurricane pulls back the layers society places over us that connect us, creating a map in which kids can identify places of connection.

The panel opened the conversation to the audience, and Jane began the broader discussion by noting that Jo used the phrase “honest places” rather than “dark places” to describe the situations she explores in her writing. Jo answered that her preference for the phrase honest places has to do with the reality of the kinds of issues children experience. Jo contends that books are the safest places to first experience the topics that adults often say children aren’t ready for. Tamara noted that when adults say that children aren’t ready for certain topics, what the adults really mean is that they don’t know how to talk about those topics with kids. The issues of Hurricane Katrina distilled—loss and fear—are issues all kids have experienced in different ways. Kate posited that adults should allow kids to decide if they’re ready for the issues presented in books: kids can and will put books down if they’re not comfortable, and there’s no harm in reading a few pages. If an adult is concerned a child is not ready for a book, he or she could say to the child, “That’s a little edgy; you may or may not like it, ” but not giving kids these books won’t keep away the issues explored in them.

Another audience member inquired about how the authors chose content and context when writing about sensitive topics. Kate pointed out that in The Seventh Wish, heroin use happens off camera. The reader sees the consequences of drug abuse, not the abuse itself. Kate noted that she tackled the issue of heroin addiction differently in this novel written for a middle-grade audience differently than Jo likely would have in a novel for high-school students. Kate referenced her Ranger in Time series as another example of exploring tough issues, this time related to American history. Ranger in Time: Long Road to Freedom unravels sanitized accounts of the Underground Railroad as a highly organized, lantern-to-lantern journey from the American South to Canada. Writing this text challenged Kate to consider how to address the horrific and shameful reality of slavery in America for kids. At the same time, there are aspects of slavery—particularly sexual violence—that she couldn’t talk about in a book for younger middle-grade readers.

The question of whether the books “teach lessons” about tough subjects also arose. Tamara maintained that it’s important when writing to leave space for readers to draw their own conclusions, which creates an interesting collaborative dynamic between the writer and individual readers. Kate added that the big questions explored in all three panelists’ books are more complicated than black and white lessons; she offered “just say no” to drugs as an example of a dictum that we know doesn’t work. Jo said that her books don’t contain lessons, but rather they depict what life is like and how one person navigated it.

One audience member asked whether books like Jo’s Read Between the Lines—books that deal with issues current students experience—are being taught in schools. Jo answered that core curriculum standards make it difficult to add new materials, but that teachers often find alternative ways to introduce such books, often via extracurricular reading groups and summer reading programs. Librarians also play an important role in getting middle-grade and young-adult fiction into the hands of students. Tamara stressed the importance of getting literature into classrooms beyond English. For example, social studies classes could use Another Kind of Hurricane as part of a unit on natural disasters and how to fundraise in their wake. Tamara’s Another Kind of Hurricane Project, launching this month, aims to do just this while connecting schools in one part of the country with others in disaster areas in a “reciprocal learning experience.”

At the end of the discussion, Kate asked the panelists to suggest favorite books written by other authors that cover tough topics. Her own nominations were Kekla Magoon’s How It Went Down and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, both works of young-adult fiction that deal with issues of race and justice. For younger middle-grade readers, Kate recommended Linda Urban’s forthcoming Weekends with Max and His Dad, illustrated by Katie Kath (available April 5th), about divorce and the transition to two houses. Jo recommended two memoirs for older middle-grade readers: Cece Bell’s El Deafo, because she’s “a fan of the grit,” and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, which Jo finds to be a great introduction to free verse poetry. Tamara suggested the recently released Pax, written by Sara Pennypacker and illustrated by Jon Klassen, which is a work of middle-grade fiction that deals with war.

Some links with more information on our panelists, their texts, and author classroom visits:

• Candlewick’s discussion guide to Read Between the Lines
• Jo’s Nerdy Book Club interview about Read Between the Lines
• Kate’s Nerdy Book Club author post about All the Answers 
• Our post about Kate & Jo’s 2014 writing workshop
• Tamara’s interview with VCFA’s The Launch Pad
• Tamara’s interview on Novel Enthusiasts 
• Kate’s School Library Journal post on using Skype in the classroom 
• J&P Volkel’s advice on author classroom visits (both virtual and in-person) 

Cooking for the Classroom

Last Saturday Helen Labun (Discovering Flavor) reviewed some new (and newish) cookbooks for kids that are also useful for teaching subjects beyond cooking. Here's a run down of what we discussed with notes and links to additional information:

Laboratory Science

Exploring Kitchen Science published by the San Francisco-based Exploratorium. This book focuses on scientific principles you can demonstrate via things in your kitchen. . . the experiments may be technically edible, but not all stuff you want to eat. It has lots of classics - the cornstarch solution that's solid under pressure and liquid otherwise, food coloring moved through celery capillaries, Mentos in Coke bottles - and short simple explanations of what's going on. Some experiments do require special equip, but mostly easy to order, inexpensive items. The Exploratorium also maintains a kitchen science section on its website, here.

Science Experiments You Can Eat by Vicki Cobb. This book has many of the same concepts at Exploring Kitchen Science, but with slightly longer explanations of what's going on and chapter-by-chapter groupings that lend themselves to lesson plans. It has more edible experiments than Exploring Kitchen Science but, again, they may not be things you want to eat (for example, cabbage water used in a Ph test). An old version of this book is out right now - an updated version with a more modern look is coming out this summer.


The Lemon Fizz:
(Experiment from Saturday)

Put 4 Tb confectioner's sugar, 2 Tb citric acid powder (available at Hunger Mtn Coop) and 1 Tb baking soda in a food processor and whirr to a fine, uniform powder. This is the British candy sherbet powder - like a Pixie Stick but with fizz (Wikipedia gives a nice run down of all the ways it's used). Added to lemonade or cider it makes a pleasant fizzy drink. It's a more fun version of adding baking soda to vinegar to watch it fizz up. You can take the experiment even further by making a Ph test using red cabbage juice to test for the base (baking soda) and acid (citric acid) and also the Ph resulting from the full reaction of the two. Just grate a red cabbage, let it soak in warm water until the water is well dyed, and pour through a sieve to remove the cabbage. The juice will turn color to indicate acid levels.

The fizzy sherbet powder also has historical tie ins. The search for fizzy water (and there are lots of ways to make water fizz) turns out to be an ancient one, as detailed in this BBC Food Programme episode.

Related Resources:

• Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is the definitive science in the kitchen tome and would be an excellent reference for any adults working with kitchen science. 
• The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a new cookbook that reads like a textbook (that's a compliment), and also goes into the science behind the food. Lopez-Alt focuses on detailing experiments conducted to get a better outcome from his recipes. If you've ever read Cook's Illustrated and thought "I wish they went into even more detail on how they developed the recipe" then Food Lab is for you.

Social Science

National Geographic Kids Cookbook This book is full of little factoids on cooking and culture along with the recipes, arranged by year. The drawback is that it's primarily scattered factoids and difficult to use as an organized reference book, it's more of a skim-through book.

Fairy Tale Feasts by Jane Yolen. This book does a nice job of finding a diversity of fairy tales, some that are familiar and some that aren't, and retelling the story with a recipe to follow. More options than simply baking the gingerbread man. Another resource on using fairy tales in the classroom is our 2014 Author-Educator workshop by Meg Allison "Why Fairy Tales Still Matter"

Kids Cook French / Kids Cook Italian Dual language cookbooks for kids. Recipes are a good starting point for translation, since they're mostly a list of vocabulary words (aka "ingredients") plus simple sentences using a known universe of verbs. Learn culture, language, and cooking skills at once.

Related Resources:

• International Night by Mark Kurlansky - If you're looking for sample recipes and menus from around the world, this book shares menus (with recipes) that he prepared with his daughter - each country chosen by spinning the globe and cooking from the country her finger lands on. The book is for adults, but the recipes are designed to lend themselves to cooking with children's assistance. 
• The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman - This book offers a large collection of recipes from around the world, with sample menus. Designed for cooks of all skill levels. It's currently out of print but I believe they're reissuing it (and of course you can order it used).  

Art and Nutrition
An unusual pairing, but it will make sense. . . 

The Forest Feast for Kids by Erin Gleeson. Erin Gleeson is known for her striking food photography and particularly the use of strong color. This artistic sensibility (you can see examples at her website forestfeast.com) lends itself both to arts instruction for kids and to embracing the nutritional advice "eat the rainbow." Gleeson makes the connection to nutrition clear in her introduction, and this book really does make eating a variety of healthy food look enticing. The Forest Feast for Kids comes out this spring and you can preorder it; the longer adult version Forest Feast is available now.

Cooking Experiments: One aspect of Gleeson's recipe style of highlighting one (sometimes two) high-flavor ingredient is that it makes it easy to try out variations on her foods. The Flavor Bible and The Vegetarian Flavor Bible make experimenting with recipes like Gleeson's particularly easy. These books' authors have interviewed well known chefs to find out what flavors they combine together, then they distill these into lists of amenable flavors. So, for example, if you look up "apricots" you'll get a list of ingredients that taste good with apricots and examples of menu items that use apricots in interesting ways. In the workshop we tried Gleeson's Rosemary Shortbread with the addition of powdered bay leaves. It tasted good. If I were to buy one Flavor Bible or the other, I'd choose the vegetarian version (everything goes with bacon! We know that already!)

Related Resources:

• I don't think there's anything out there right now that makes the case for "eating the rainbow" more enticingly than Gleeson's books. However, some nutrition education resources:
• Nutrition.gov - Central government nutrition website
• ChooseMyPlate.gov - Particularly this section on variety in diet.
• Let's Move! - Nutrition section
• Team Nutrition Resource Library
• Nutrition Topics from the CDC
• And for those of you looking for books related to food and gardening:
• Here is a link to a list of books Jane made for home or classroom use-- you'll see it is tacked on to the cookbook list that was handed out at the event 

Other posts on this website related to food and cooking in the classroom:

• "Cooking Experiments Preview"
• "Agriculture in the Classroom"

Addendum on Explorers: 

We promised the folks who were there on Saturday that we'd include these two explorer-related links:

• "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog" - Food that members of the British navy in the 18th & early 19th centuries might have enjoyed. 
• The Norwegian explorer in Antarctica who is very excited about Cheese Doodles

Now that you've read this far, it's time to change writerly hats-- this is Jane. And I'd like to give a HUGE shout out to the mastermind of these educator blogs, the woman of many hats, Helen Labun, who is moving on (and less quickly than she'd like to as we are so reluctant to let her go!) to make experimenting with food an actual job description. If you haven't yet heard about her new endeavor, be sure to check out Hel's Kitchen on Barre Street in Montpelier. Delicious international food for take-out and unique eat-in dinners with special menus each week. After last week's Indian feast we're hoping Helen will linger on Indian cuisine for a bit. We'll miss you, Helen! (but Jane will most of all!)

Heroes - With Will Alexander & Kekla Magoon

On Saturday, November 14th, Will Alexander (Nomad, Goblin Secrets) & Kekla Magoon (Shadows of Sherwood, X: A Novel, How It Went Down) came to our Author-Educator Series to talk about Creating Heroes. You can read more about the authors in this earlier post. 

Okay, we knew that "creating heroes" was a big topic, a topic that undoubtedly has underpinned dozens (hundreds) of careers in sociology, anthropology, folkloric studies, modern literature, and psychology. We'll call this recounting of the workshop with Will Alexander and Kekla Magoon: "Heroes: Discuss" because it brought up many interesting ways to frame thinking about a "hero" for classroom discussion.

As Will noted in his introduction ". . 'hero' - we all know what it means and none of us agree."

Types of Heroes

Will divides the hero world into three basic flavors - the trickster (a hero with agency but no power), the badass (a destructive hero, they break things, they're cathartic entertainment - like most comic book heroes) and the superhero (who builds things, renews, is a culture hero).

You can think of these types of heroes in terms of rites of passage as well. Tricksters have little to no externally derived power or respect and they're not physically powerful either, similar to children. They rely primarily on their wits. The badass is more or less an adolescent fantasy (as a side note, I looked up a more-classroom-friendly synonym for badass and the online thesaurus included "Vladimir Putin"). And a superhero would be the "best kind of grown up."

Will writes about trickster heroes and observes that middle grade fiction is primarily focused on this type of character.

Hobbits are an example of the trickster hero - they're middle aged and frumpy, and lacked heroic tendencies until they found themselves in the middle of a hero story, learning to navigate a world they didn't understand. Children identify with these power dynamics and the need to learn to navigate the world (although perhaps not so much with being middle aged and frumpy). The trickster stories also tell an important flip side of the coin - how to best handle power when you do have it. . . a lesson sometimes taught by counterexample as the heroes encounter powerful villains. As children grow older they're navigating not only the dynamics of possessing limited power, but of changing amounts of power - culturally, intellectually, and also physically.

In Will's books, Rowny in Goblin Secrets is a young, powerless child who doesn't have possess the direct power of casting spells like a Harry Potter character, but rather exercises an indirect magic conjured through masks, performances, and influencing others in that way.

In Ambassador, the protagonists are (as the title suggests) ambassadors, but they reside relatively low in the power structure. They don't have authority to break rules, they can only move around them. But it is very important that children be Ambassadors between worlds in this science fiction novel. As one can observe in ever-popular Unlikely Friendships series, interspecies friendships always begin between juveniles. This structure gives the children important responsibility even if they don't have a large amount of power.

Almost Heroes

There are some murky hero waters. For example, is a hero defined by the situation or by inherent talents? Superheroes in comic books have inherent powers used for good. Hobbits don't have inherent powers, but are heroes due to situations they were forced to navigate. Katniss in The Hunger Games eventually emerges as a hero, but in the first book most of her actions after stepping forward to save her sister were focused on saving herself - she had the goal of surviving the games, not of challenging the power structure. She wasn't out to Do Good in a broader sense, but her actions and what other people made of her actions led to greater good.

Antiheroes and reluctant heroes don't start off with the expected hero qualities of wanting to bravely fight for an important cause, but they may find themselves in that situation over the course of the book. The protagonists' characters usually develop along with their actions to assume more heroic qualities. What if they didn't? Would the actions be enough to qualify?

Heroes Who Develop Across a Series

Reluctant heroes like Katniss can develop across books in a series. The first book of Kekla's Robin Hood retelling, featuring Robyn Hoodlum, just came out this fall and in it the protagonist doesn't yet own her identity as a hero, even though some hero-like actions have come about from her adventures in Book 1. One way of looking at the arc of Robyn Hoodlum and other heroes who develop over the course of several stories is 1. they develop their hero qualities 2. they take ownership of their role as hero and 3. they fully enact their heroism and achieve a major victory for the cause of Good (whatever Good happens to be). 

Heroes Aren't Always Great Role Models 

Hero and role model aren't synonymous. As Will puts it "Is Batman a good person or even remotely on an even keel?" Not really. Destructive, bad ass type heroes offer a smash-things-up sort of catharsis without representing great life choices. They let readers play out in their imaginations all kinds of possible, and also impossible, actions and their consequences. They're faced with larger than life dilemmas, up to and beyond threats like the entire Earth being exploded by alien invaders. Will would argue in favor of readers of all ages letting these scenarios play out in their minds via the written word.


Are Protagonists Always Heroes?

Lots of protagonists aren't heroes, but in books where Stuff Happens and there's a fair amount of action and overcoming of obstacles, it's hard not to apply some hero framework to the characters. Many children's or YA books have storylines that lend themselves to heroic protagonists.

Kekla tries not to write about heroes. Her early books set during the Civil Rights movements of the last generation focused on average citizens, not the big name heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. who we learn about in school. It's the people who showed up to listen to the I Have a Dream speech, not the person who delivered it. That begs the question whether these characters still count as heroes? We have a cultural understanding now of "everyday heroes" and popular culture highlights the concept of aggregating lots of very small actions from thousands of people for large impact.

In Kekla's book How It Went Down she tells one story from 19 perspectives, which takes away even the structure of a single main character to navigate the story.  But each of those people has their own story, with its own arc, and actions and consequences.

In another book, X: A Novel, Kekla writes about Malcolm X before he was a popular hero. He made a lot of bad choices - it's a hero origin story when the hero comes from a somewhat dubious origin. She wanted to strip away hindsight and show a time when Malcolm X had no way of knowing how his life would turn out, and hero status seemed very unlikely. It makes it clear that he wasn't born into his role, like Superman was born to be Superman, but rather arrived there through a complicated life path.

Heroes in the Classroom:

Will and Kekla's talk offered several ways to examine fictional characters in classroom books. Here are some of the points they brought up, in question form:

• Is this main character a hero? 
• Where does the main character's power come from? Compared with other characters in the story?

• Does this character begin with an inherent heroic quality? (Like secretly being a wizard)
• Does this character acquire heroic personal qualities across the course of the story?
• Is this character's heroism defined by actions? What actions and what choice led to those actions?
• If you think this character isn't a hero, what changes would make them a hero? How would that change the story? (Not necessarily for the better, since presumably the author wrote it this way for a reason)
• What about the characters who aren't the main character in the story, what if they became the main character? Would they become heroes? (In the new book The Rest of Us Just Live Here Patrick Ness does this with characters who would otherwise be "extras" in a Chosen One style story about battling supernatural evil)

(Re)vision - Linda Urban and Melissa Guerrette

Linda Urban (left) & Melissa Guerrette (right)

We love picking up a brand new book, with a seemingly perfect story inside waiting to be read. Of course, we also know in the back of our minds that a lot of work - hard work - went into creating that final story. That story likely spent a long time very far from what the author wanted it to be. Young students rarely observe that difficult process behind their books, much less participate in it. Nonetheless, knowing the work that goes into a final book helps students understand writing and improve their own writing. It also helps them realize that if their work begins in a state they don't like, it doesn't mean they're terrible writers - it only means they need to revise, just like professional authors do (and do a lot).

When author Linda Urban began her latest book Milo Speck, Accidental Agent, she knew she was at the start of a difficult process. For one thing, writing books is just hard. For another, this story would be a departure from her previous novels (Center of Everything; Crooked Kind of Perfect; Hound Dog True). Linda explains that she knew her books had "lots of character and dialogue, without a lot of plot." They were quiet books, with well developed voices in the main characters and, as her son pointed out, an absence of HAM. Humor, Action, Mystery. He wanted a HAM book because that's the type of book he likes to read. Linda promised she'd write something for him.

Creating a different style of book required Linda to find a whole new way to write. Her earlier books she wrote taking her cues from sound (for example, dialogue) and based on feeling, not visuals and action. The common writing advice of "see the story like a movie" didn't apply. Now it did. The early drafts, Linda says, read like a list of set directions. Even the stuff that always worked well for her, the dialogue and the characters' own voices, didn't work well in this new context. Simply getting her main character Milo across the room took heroic effort. (To be fair, Milo spends a lot of the book moving across rooms populated by ogres in the made up world of Ogregon, reached through a malfunctioning clothes dryer, so she wasn't moving him across any old living room. It was nevertheless frustrating).

At the same time that Linda was working on Milo, she was also in communication with Maine-based teacher Melissa Guerrette. Melissa's fourth grade class had won a Skype visit and doughnut party with Linda as part of the promotions for her earlier book The Center of Everything. Linda had been impressed with how engaged Melissa's students were. The students were full of enthusiasm for their own reading lives, and full of advice for books Linda should read to inform her next writing project. An author-classroom learning partnership seemed like a good idea.

Linda sent 5 chapters of Milo to Melissa's class for feedback. These weren't the early super, super messy attempts, but they were also several steps away from what the final product would be. The students loved getting a look at these drafts; they wanted more.

"I know we were just talking to you, but now we just can't stop thinking about Milo, like we want more, we want more. Some books are like that. Some books are that good - people just say please make a book about the same thing, the first one was so good. I feel like those people about this book Milo Speck," one student explained.

The students sent Linda a stack of cards with the general theme "You Can Do It". As one student counseled "I agree it's hard to revise but in my opinion it feels good when you finish."

Linda naturally enjoyed a pep talk. She also honestly valued feedback these students, her future readers, might have. And she knew a close look at a writer's process could change how the students approached their own writing. Melissa, from the teacher's role, didn't correct the letters, but she did read them. . . and learned about many things students hadn't necessarily shared with her directly, their hang ups, concerns, frustrations about writing.

The attitudes students carried towards writing had previously raised concerns for Melissa. Many students arrived in 4th grade with negative feelings, convinced they weren't writers and resisting regular practice in the classroom. She worried about a classroom emphasis on deadlines, and mechanics, and not on creating a writerly practice. Students didn't appreciate writing's potential to let them share the ideas in their heads with the rest of the world.

Melissa's students' attitudes changed over the course of the two years she worked with Linda.

One major point of change in students' approach to writing came with their writing notebooks. Linda keeps multiple notebooks for each project: messy notebooks, more task-oriented project notebooks, and during the Milo project she even began a progress notebook (reflecting on the day's work) based on the recommendation of business writer David Allen.

Page from Linda's notebook

Melissa's students had kept notebooks for class assignments, but they'd viewed them as simply that - a place to complete assignments. Even the way they took care of the books physically reflected disinterest (and sometimes resentment). But, Melissa says, the classroom time dedicated to working in the notebooks soon became a chance to develop their writing practice, with ". . . authentic conditions for writing, not just moving through a check list" and the notebooks themselves were seen as "a place that took care of their ideas."

Linda explains it this way: "A writing notebook is supposed to be a playground. . . a safe place for yourself and others, and within that you can do whatever you want."

And the half ideas, doodles, story boards, random thoughts in notebooks did evolve into polished pieces of writing. Melissa's students were okay with the idea of very messy starts followed by a lot of hard work to get to a final product. As one student described, all the arrows connecting his different ideas were "showing the roads to victory."

Linda and Melissa worked together on ways to help students navigate those roads to victory from what can be rocky beginnings. Below are slides from Melissa showing examples of two exercises:

Exercise comparing two passages (pre-and post-revision) from Milo and discussing what changed, and speculating on why it might have changed. Melissa notes that this exercise was part of thinking about how "writers act deliberately" and their revision goes beyond a spell check.

Exercise in description and action - page from student notebook.

Melissa and Linda both feel that their project can be replicated in other classrooms. Finding classroom time for the work proved challenging, especially since it had many phases of exploration -- with all the expected dead ends and backtracking inherent in exploration. Melissa notes, though, that curriculum standards emphasize quality of writing and that, ultimately, this process produced high quality writing, so it fit into those priorities. She also adjusted her own attitude towards notebooks and early drafts, letting go of any expectations she had of what students would produce. Another challenge is finding those author-educator partnerships. Linda notes that it's a rewarding form of community service, and the author role could be filled from any genre or style, since the need for thoughtful, deliberate revision holds true at the heart of most writing.

At the end of the Milo-based partnership, Linda traveled to Maine for a surprise visit to Melissa's classroom, where she met with students in person and had writing conferences with students who wanted to share their work with her. Now, Melissa reports, her students feel a great pride of ownership in Milo Speck: Accidental Agent, and she herself has returned to doing more of her own writing.

If you're interested in more thoughts on writers' notebooks check out:

This Collection of Blog Posts by Melissa
This Collection of Blog Posts by Linda

• Writers' Notebooks
• The Best Thing in my Writer's Notebook is a Mistake
• What Messing Up Made Possible
• Beginnings
• Finding Voice and Other Bits

If you're interested in other examples of authors working with students on writing skills, check out these earlier Author-Educator workshop notes:

• Kate Messner & Jo Knowles
• S.S. Taylor
• Gary Miller & Deb Fleischman

And, finally, we hope you join us for our final fall Author-Educator Workshop on Saturday, November 14th, at 11:00 am with Kekla Magoon and Will Alexander as they discuss "Creating Heroes." As usual, it is free, open to the public, and comes with refreshments. 

Problem Solving in Stories with Nicole Griffin

N. (or Nicole) Griffin is the author of the new young reader series featuring Smashie McPerter and her friend Dontel. In the first book, Smashie McPerter and the Mystery of Room 11, the two search for who stole the class hamster after it goes missing under the reign of a vain substitute teacher at a time when the class is already miffed that Smashie considers hamsters creepy.

Nicole is also a math education consultant and so it shouldn't surprise us that she started her workshops on problem solving in stories with a math problem. Take a few minutes to consider it:

Now, a few more minutes to consider how did you go about solving this problem?

1. Deal with your feelings.

Some choice comments from the audience on their first reaction to the assignment "Flash backs of horror"; "sweaty palms"; "Relief at not having to share the answers out loud"; "happy because I used to really love math and never do it any more" (followed almost instantly by the discovery that you can forget a lot of math in a few short decades).

The dealing with your feelings phase often gets forgotten in teaching kids about problem solving. Nonetheless, if you're feeling anxious, discouraged, cocky, etc. that impedes your problem solving. Sometimes the feelings part gets forgotten with fictional problem solvers too (particularly odd since emotions usually make stories interesting). Think of Sherlock Holmes who rarely had to deal with his feelings.

2. Make sense of the problem

Making sense of the problem means not just reading it, but using tools like drawing visuals (shapes to represent the paintings for example) or identifying key parts to grasp what you're reading. In mysteries, it's common for investigators to talk over the problems confronting them as ways of making sense. In Smashie McPerter, Smashie and her friend Dontel fill notebooks with their outlines of trying to understand the key parts of the missing hamster problem.

3. Solve the problem

Workshop participants all went about solving the paintings problems in different ways - the blunt instrument of arithmetic (adding prices until you reached the set amount); trying to find an equation from the dim recesses of memory; etc. Often this solving involves false steps that send you back to #1. In Smashie, for example, the kids run through possible suspects and need to return to their notebooks each time they find evidence that one of their suspects can't have taken the hamster.

4. Explain your thinking.

In the math problem handed out at the workshop the test writer specifically requested "show your work." In the world of mysteries, the climactic speech by the sleuth explaining how she deduced what happened (I picture Angela Lansbury here) and caught the perpetrator is a nearly unavoidable plot point.

5. Check your work.

Double checking is, of course, a constant part of the problem solving process and Jane points out that when the kids in Smashie make a false accusation there are real consequences. This is not a problem solving duo who can point fingers until they happen upon the guilty party.

~ ~ ~

When we lay out basic problem solving structure and look at it through the lens of writing for kids, mysteries are an obvious choice for illustrating this skill. They're engaging stories built around a problem to be solved. They're a more fun way of understanding curriculum goals like CCSS.Math.Practice.MP1 - which Nicole shared at the workshop:

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Older students might, depending on the context of the problem, transform algebraic expressions or change the viewing window on their graphing calculator to get the information they need. Mathematically proficient students can explain correspondences between equations, verbal descriptions, tables, and graphs or draw diagrams of important features and relationships, graph data, and search for regularity or trends. Younger students might rely on using concrete objects or pictures to help conceptualize and solve a problem. Mathematically proficient students check their answers to problems using a different method, and they continually ask themselves, "Does this make sense?" They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches.

Not all children's mysteries are created equal and hit the balance of entertaining storytelling and strong problem solving, like what we find in Smashie McPerter. Jane suggests this list to get started:

TITLE	AUTHOR	ISBN	PUBLISHER	PUB DATE	GRADE LEVEL
Julian, Secret Agent	Cameron, Ann	9780394819495	Random House	Oct 2008	2-4
The Book Scavenger	Chambliss Bertman, Jennifer	9781627791151	Henry Holt	June 2015	4-6
The Clubhouse Mysteries	Draper, Sharon	9781442427099	Alladin	July 2011	2-4	series
Operation Bunny	Gardner, Sally	9781250050533	Square Fish	Sept 2014	2-4	series
Smashie McPerter	Griffin, N	9780763661458	Candlewick	Feb 2015		series
Adventures of Arnie the Donut	Keller, Laurie	9781250072498	Square Fish	May 2015	2-4	series
Nancy Clancy Super Sleuth	O'Connor, Jane	9780062084194	Harper	April 2013	2-4	series
Greetings From Somewhere	Paris, Harper	9781442497184	Simon	Jan 2014	1-3	series
The Case of the Missing Moonstone	Stratford, Jordan	9780385754408	Knopf	Jan 2015	3-6	series
Secrets of Selkie Bay	Thomas, Shelley Moore	9780374367497	Farrar, Strauss Giroux	July 2015	3-6
Whodunit Detective Agency	Widmark, Martin	9780448480664	Grosset & Dunlap	Oct 2014	1-3	series

~ ~ ~ 

Don't forget on Saturday, November 7th, we've got another educators workshop coming up with Linda Urban and Melissa Guerrette - learn about their unique collaboration around teaching writing and revision in the classroom as Linda worked on her fun new children's book Milo Speck: Accidental Agent.

Short Version of the Fiction Book Review

How would we summarize the books discussed in last Friday's Material's Review in just a sentence or so? Here's how.

Note that these are just the books we talked about, there were some that were mentioned but not reviewed and for everything please refer to the full lists found here.

Also note, at the event Jane identified the Dorothy Canfield Fisher books that skewed towards the younger end of the age range, and would be appropriate for some kids not yet in 4th grade. You can find that list over at an updated Dorothy Canfield Fisher post.

These books are listed in the order in which we discussed them at the event. Thank you to the panelists (left to right) Deb from Candlewick Press, and Jane, Carrie, and Helen from Bear Pond Books

Smashie McPerter & The Myster of Room 11 by N. Griffin: A search for a classroom's missing hamster in highly styled writing with a sophisticated vocabulary - for fans of Kate DiCamillo. Younger middle grade, grades 2-5. 

Cody and the Fountain of Happiness by Tricia Springstubb: A strong writer with a story similar to the Clementine books, following Cody through her summer vacation in the start of a new series. Young middle grade, grades 3-6. 

Ruby Redfort - Catch Your Death by Lauren Child: Book #3 in this kid-detective series, for kids interested in intrigues and codes. Grades 5+

Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson: The young narrator leaves the home of her guardian to live with her 19 year old brother, who is homeless. One of top books of the season, deals with serious issues of kids and homelessness. Grades 5+

Half A Man by Michael Morpurgo: In this semi-autobiographical book, a grandson, Michael, tells the story of his grandfather who was badly burned in WWII. Illustrated. Grades 5+

Vango by Timothee de Fombelle - A Bear Pond Books pick for the holiday season, good for teens and also adults, a romantic (in the classic sense) espionage escapade that one reviewer calls "steampunk without fantasy." The sequel will be published in August.

The Great War by Jim Kay: Authors were given items from WWI and wrote stories around them, a very useful classroom book. Grades 5+

Into the Grey by Celine Kiernan- Could be an adult book, a ghost story about a displaced family and a possessed twin. It's very scary. Mature teen readers.

Eden West by Pete Hautman- Dystopian fiction about an insular cult (we'll let you know when there's a book about a not-insular cult). If you liked Godless check this out. Mature teen readers.

Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles: A story from multiple narrators, all involving the middle finger. Jo spoke at Bear Pond about writing this book last spring, see the article here. Grades 7+

Tight Rope Walkers by David Almond - A complicated coming of age story in the shipyards of northern England. For older teens, or even adults. Many starred reviews.

X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon - A novel about Malcolm X's youth by his daughter and co-writer Kekla Magoon who lives in Montpelier, what more could you want? Grades 9+

Sign of the Cat by Lynne Jonell - An "old fashioned romp" with secret princes and princesses, evil villains, and a scene where the villain eats cats that upset Carrie, but her kids (ages 9 and 11) thought she was overreacting. Grades 3-7

Moonpenny Island by Tricia Springstubb - An isolated island where first the narrator's closest companions move away and then a mysterious geologist arrives. Strong sense of place, gently addresses topics like abandonment and alcoholism. Grades 4+

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar - Story of a scientist who creates a replacement for oil that comes with its own ecological disasters. Carrie didn't love it, thought it was a little pat, but suspects that Louis Sachar knows his middle grade audience spot on and they will like it. Good for kids who are ready for the content, but are not necessarily strong readers.

Question of Miracles by Elana Arnold - Iris' best friend dies in a car accident, after which she moves to a new state with her family and befriends Boris - an odd kid who should have died as a baby but "miraculously" recovered. His Aunt is now petitioning for full miracle status. Rebecca Stead-esque. Ages 9-12.

Cartwheeling In Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell - By the author of Rooftoppers. A true wild child in South Africa is sent to British boarding school and has to make the best of the situation. Boys will like it if they can get past the girl-centric cover. Ages 9+

Like A River: A Civil War Novel by Kathy Canon Wiechman - A story of two young teens enlisted in the civil war - one a boy and one a girl pretending to be a boy. Told first from the boy perspective, then the girl. It's cheesy, but in an enjoyable way. It's not too graphic, so would work for younger kids. Strong author's notes and photos to go with the fiction story. Good to use in the classroom after learning about Civil War. Grade 6+

When My Heart Was Wicked by Tricia Stirling - For readers who like Raven Boys, Alice Hoffman. The narrator had an evil (both in a fairy tale evil sense and also abusive) mother who taught her wicked spells, then she was abandoned and learned good spells, then the mother reclaims her. It does have cutting. Otherwise, not much mature content. Grades 9+

Jackaby by William Ritter - Sold well at Bear Pond over the holidays. A young woman abandons society life in London and lands in colonial Massachusetts. She starts working with Jackaby, an eccentric detective with an interest in the occult. Funny, smart, will appeal to anyone who likes Sherlock. Ages 13+

Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir - Getting a lot of buzz, written by a journalist based on some of her experiences. It's a fantasy, Roman world. The protagonist couldn't save her brother when soldiers came to take him and so she joins the resistance movement. Meanwhile, the son of the woman who leads the martial rulers wants out of his life as a soldier. And you can probably guess they fall in love. It's violent but not graphic. Ages 14+

Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton- A sci-fi, fantasy book with a decent dose of realism that follows the intersecting stories of 3 teenagers in Scotland and Hong Kong. There will be a sequel. It's expected to be a top seller. Ages 14+

Return to Augie Hobble by Lane Smith - Illustrator Lane Smith's debut novel, very funny and endearing narrator Augie Hobble is working in an amusement park that's seen better days when weird things start happening. Fast moving. Pictures play an important part. Grades 3+

Unusual Poultry for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones - Narrator writes in letter form about her new life on a farm where she discovers, and cares for, magic chickens. It's not the strongest writing - a lot of set up without follow through (why are the chickens magic, for one thing) and pictures that don't add much, but kids probably won't care. Recommended because it's a more modern look at being a farm kid, not nostalgic, feels like it's 2015 not 1955. Lots of tie-in potential for classroom lessons. Grades 3-6

All the Answers by Kate Messner - Solid book with a straightforward plot, easily read and enjoyed by a wide range of reading levels. The simple set up is that the narrator finds a pencil that answers any question she writes. We had an earlier article with Kate Messner on using this book to teach writing, linked here. Grades 4 - 7

Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai- A Valley Girl-ish 13 year old is sent to Vietnam for the summer with her grandmother, who hasn't returned to her home country since the war. Fresh look at rural Vietnamese life, feels current and interesting. The writing has some glitches, it could have used another edit, kids who aren't strong readers or don't feel comfortable skipping over the dull parts might get hung up on that. Ages 11 - 14 (the publisher says younger, but we're not sure why)

Good Bye, Stranger by Rebecca Stead- Three friends enter Junior High School at different stages of development, particularly in their relations with boys, and navigate staying friends. That sounds cliched, but it doesn't read that way. Rebecca Stead continues to be a great writer with unique, fully fleshed out characters. This book lacks the mystery element of her earlier books and (to be honest) probably won't appeal to boys. Some reviewers have bumped this up to YA, but we're standing strong that it's 6th - 9th grade.

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King - Wish we could recommend this. A.S. King is wonderful, the starting concept is intriguing: the narrator and her best friend drink a powdered bat and can see all the ancestry (moving backward and forward) of other people. King doesn't spend much time on the interesting bits, though, and a lot of the plot isn't plausible (even for those of us happy to go along with the premise). Read other A.S. King books! Read her next book! We feel bad being lukewarm here.

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach - Oh it has the trifecta for teenage angst - teenagers, teenagers with "labels" (as the uninspiring publisher's blurb explains), an asteroid with a 66% chance of destroying all life on earth in 10 days. What makes this book great is the writing - a debut by a super smart, funny author who will undoubtedly have many a great book over the rest of his career. Yay. Ages 14+, probably would need to be a mature 14.

My Near Death Adventures! (99% True) by Alison DeCamp - Stanley's mother brings him to his uncle's logging camp in 1895 where he really wants to learn to "be a man" like he imagines his long lost father is, but he's scared of everything. Scrapbook entries heighten the level of amusement. Strong boy narrator, strong girl character opposite him, highly entertaining. Grades 4+

The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart - Debut book that will probably get a lot of attention. The set up is a boy who has cancer who runs away to climb Mt. Rainier with his dog, while his best friend who stays behind struggles with whether to tell the adults where he's gone. To an adult reader, it's pretty hokey. Kids probably won't mind. Grades 4 - 7

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt - The story of a girl who doesn't realize she has dyslexia, just feels "stupid" and uses her other strengths to hide the fact that she can't read. A new teacher helps figure out what's going on. There aren't a lot of great books about dyslexia, so this should be an excellent addition. Grades 5+

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson - Two (if not more) thumbs up. A solid girl power story about growing apart from a best friend and joining roller derby. Will be compared with Raina Telgemeier. Grades 4-7

Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko - Intriguing historical fiction story about the bubonic plague in San Francisco - includes medical mystery, quarantines, social / economic / ethnic stratification, political cover ups, and vaccines. Ages 9-12

War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley- We love it. A lot. Another solid historical fiction, this time about a girl who has a club foot and has never been allowed out of the apartment by her abusive mother. She runs away when children are being evacuated from London to the countryside. Another book with a resiliency theme, not overwritten and not as bleak as it sounds. Ages 10+

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby- Summarized as "feminist magical realism", sort of a Persephone story set in an Indiana small town. For older readers, wouldn't recommend below 9th grade.

And, this just in. . . 

We didn't have a copy in time for the review, but local author Linda Urban has another chapter book en route to bookstore shelves near you (September 1st): Milo Speck Accidental Agent. There's a magic sock, there's a land of ogres, there's a plot against children everywhere, and giant turkeys. Basically, it's a funny and fun book for the 4th - 7th grade age range. Linda's previously-new book The Center of Everything is a Dorothy Canfield Fisher nominee. And Linda will be at the store doing a book signing on Saturday, May 2nd, at 11:00 am, for her other new book, a picture book: Little Red Henry.