LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN A Guest Blogger Review by Mara Scudder

 I've been on the "other side of the pond" for the last two weeks and just returned home. I look forward to sharing a few of my European adventures, particularly as they relate to my next WIP, Nightmare in Nuremberg. But while I get over jet lag, I have a review for you by a new young guest blogger, Mara Scudder.

REVIEW

Light Comes to Shadow Mountain surprised me with the skill and warmth of the tale it told. Completely immersed in the world of Cora Mae Tipton, the author, Toni Buzzeo, let her voice shine throughout the work. With distinct figures of speech and an optimistic worldview, Cora shares the story of her struggle to help bring electricity to her mountain home in southeastern Kentucky. 

Cora knows the only way for her to fulfill her dream of becoming a successful journalist is to make it through high school, but she can’t imagine passing the exams without electric light at night to study by. Her days are filled with the tedious chores that are necessary on the mountain -- chores that Cora could imagine would be a breeze with the electrical appliances she’s seen in magazines from the city -- and she simply doesn’t have time for schoolwork during the day. Unfortunately for her, electricity is relatively expensive for a small town in the Depression, and far worse, her mother views electricity as the end of their way of life. 

Cora and her mother repeatedly clash, sometimes over electricity and many times over other issues, some of which were out of Cora’s control. Cora finds it challenging not to make electricity a personal matter to her. She knows a good journalist should be objective, examining both sides of an issue before forming an opinion, but she can’t help but feel frustrated that her mother is so stubborn. Over the course of the novel, Cora attempts to not only understand her mother’s side of things but also recognize and work to change her own flaws. She learns how to forgive those who have hurt her and works to stay positive despite frustrating circumstances. Cora’s passion for her dreams does not hinder her from recognizing her own faults and putting her family first. She risks her life to save her newborn sister and gives up the money that she hoped would bring light to Shadow Mountain to help pay hospital bills. 

As a character, Cora works to shed light not only on her mountain home, but also on the issues of the time, the challenges she faces, and most of all the opposition to her cause. Her desire to understand even those who are firmly opposed to her only chance at fulfilling her dreams is one of the biggest things that makes her a memorable protagonist. She seeks to put aside her feelings and step into the shoes of someone else, making her an unusual, but especially perceptive character. Whether it is her mother, her cousin, or the cranky neighbor down the road, Cora always seeks to understand different perspectives. It is this understanding that finally enables her to reconcile with her mother and resolve the tension in their family. 

Cora’s vibrant personality, her understanding of her faults, and her willingness to sacrifice anything for her family (even if certain members of that family make such sacrifices especially difficult) make this novel stand out from the many other middle-grade works on the shelf. Light Comes to Shadow Mountain chronicles a little-told story in an unusual setting, but this uniqueness only adds to its beauty and originality. Cora’s story sheds light not only on a little-known setting with long-forgotten perspectives, but also on crucial themes such as love, forgiveness, and family that make this a heartwarming read.

REVIEWER

Hi! My name is Mara, and I’m a Christian artist, violinist, and blogger. I remember the day that I decided that I would learn something new about what makes a good story from every book I picked up — whether it was good, bad, or a mixture of both. I use my blog as a way of sharing some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned and highlighting which books, cartoons, and movies have taught me the most about writing an awesome story. I’m in tenth grade and live in Philadelphia. 

                                                                            *****

Congratulations to Emily Weitz who won ETHEL'S SONG from my last blog post. 

2 Picture Books by Shannon Hitchcock, 1 Giveaway

 If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember my post on Shannon Hitchcock's book, Saving Grandaddy's Stories. I'm happy to share two more books that Shannon has written about unsung Appalachian artists. I love these books so much that I'm saving one for my granddaughter who I'm teaching to sew. 

The illustrator is mixed-media artist Sophie Page. Sophie used clay, fabric, paper, and wire to bring these stories to life. Both books are published by Reycraft Books.

As you read my reviews, notice Shannon's poetic text that emphasizes the importance of each word and Sophie's illustrations that show depth, color, and texture. Her images are like mini-stories.

REVIEWS

SHE SANG FOR THE MOUNTAINS: The Story of Singer, Songwriter, Activist Jean Ritchie.

The book opens with a simple line that says so much about Jean Ritchie.

Jean came from a large family who loved to sing while they worked. In the evenings, they rested on the porch swing and sang accompanied by their father's dulcimer.

Jean wished she could turn back time.

Her brothers and sisters left home one by one.

Finally, it was Jean's turn to go.

 

Jean taught the songs of the hills

to the children of the city--

songs that had echoed 

through the mountains for generations.

In the process, Jean was noticed by a song collector. 

Jean was far from the home she loved in Kentucky, but when she heard about companies that mined coal and then moved on--leaving men sick or unemployed--she realized that she wanted to protest too.

She sang about the unemployed coal miners and the strip mining that poisoned the water. 

Jean never stopped singing important songs which inspired others. Even when she was old and moved back to Kentucky, she kept 

singing for the mountains

and heard music everywhere.

                    ......

To this day, Jean's music lives on,

in the hearts of folksingers,

dulcimer players

and activists

who raise their voices and sing for the mountains.

The author's note includes more information about Jean. To hear her sing and play, click on this youtube video.

STORY QUILTS: Appalachian Women Speak

Here's the opening page that says so much:

The women had large families and worked hard. Their days were filled with cooking, cleaning, gardening, and canning.

Then, at day's end, they threaded their needles,

reached for their rag bags,

pieced colorful squares

and turned scraps into quilts that told stories.

Daughters watched their mothers until they were old enough to create a quilt of their own.

Sometimes, the daughter watched her mother pull out scraps from an apron that once looked like this:

Blue was special because,

Scraps of pillowcases became clouds or snow; other scraps became wildflowers.

She would move her quilt squares like puzzle pieces,

until they told a story.

 

The author's note includes Shannon's inspiration for this beautiful story of forgotten women. Sophie lists some of the quilters who inspired her illustrations.

Shannon is giving an extensive interview--plus information on her next book in this series--on the Talking Story Facebook page on Monday. (Not a member? Click on the link and ask to be admitted and you'll be in!). But she told me that she is drawn to writing about the past because she grew up on a farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. "We lived primitively compared to lots of families. My grandparents were farmers. They raised cows, pigs, and chickens. My grandma churned butter, had a large vegetable garden, canned, and quilted. Writing these books reminds me of home and a way of life that I want to preserve in my stories."

GIVEAWAY

If you have never won a book from my blog or are a new subscriber, I'll put your name in twice for SHE SANG FOR THE MOUNTAINS. Make sure you leave me a comment by December 7 with your name and email address if you are new to my blog.

Eileen Heyes entered last week's giveaway and told me that since she didn't have any "littles" in her life to give it to a library. Per her request, I gave Christmas with Auntie to Matthews Elementary School. Congratulations to Barbara Younger who won Miss Mary's Mittens. 

Kathy Wiechman: Behind the Scenes of EMPTY PLACES

As promised in last week's blog, Kathy Wiechman agreed to answer a few questions about her inspiration for EMPTY PLACES. 

CAROL: I believe you used some family history to create this story. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

KATHY: EMPTY PLACES is not a family history, but events in family history served as inspiration for aspects of it. The fiction came first. It was only after I had created Adabel and her situation of being raised by her sister, Raynelle, that I happened to think about the fact that my husband's sister was also his mother figure. Thinking about his sister Mary helped me to flesh out Raynelle's character more.

I had also created a missing Mama, and throughout the story, it's a mystery why Mama is gone. My original idea for why she left wasn't working, so again I borrowed from my husband's family for inspiration. His mother (Helen) died when he was 13 days old. His parents had lived in Cincinnati until several years before, when at least three members of his mother's family died from tuberculosis. She feared she would die, too, so she convinced her husband to move their family of five children to the safer climate of New Mexico. Helen gave birth to two more children there, and died in a small town hospital, where medical care was much more primitive than it had been in Cincinnati. Perhaps in Cincinnati, she would have survived. Mama was not really inspired by Helen, because she died before I was born, and my husband has no memory of her. But I did borrow from her death and her fear of tuberculosis.

Both Mary and Helen are gone now, and I hope they would have liked the roles they played in helping me shape this story.

CAROL: My understanding is that within the publishing industry dialect is not looked upon too highly. Yet EMPTY PLACES is full of dialect which gives authenticity and life to your characters and setting. Can you share your thoughts about using the Appalachian dialect?

Coal miners carrying 3-tiered lunch pails to hold food and water. Carbide lamps
are mounted to soft headgear which offered no protection.

 Lynch, Ky Photo from the Benham and Lynch Collection,
Southeast Community and Technical College Appalachian Archive

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909

KATHY: I wrote EMPTY PLACES in dialect, even though I know many editors don't like books in dialect. I used Polly's West Virginia dialect in LIKE A RIVER, and "got away with it," so I figured it was worth a shot. I can't imagine trying to tell Adabel's story without it, at least not in first person. I ran the dialect past many people after I wrote the first few chapters and was given a thumbs up from them all. I mention most of them in my Acknowledgements. The Kirkus Review mentions it as an "interesting choice" I made, but says it works "surprisingly well." The glowing review from School Library Journal doesn't address the issue, which is the way I like it. I feel if I make a big deal of it, it will call attention to it unfavorably. If and when someone attacks the book for it, I will decide whether to respond. 

CAROL: I thought the dialect helped me hear the voices of the characters in my head. Was it hard for you to translate what you heard into words? You have some “invented spelling”  Was that part difficult for you to do? 

KATHY: I received a lot of great advice with the dialect. Author Jan Cheripko said he uses slang for his characters and spells it phonetically. I did that in a number of places, deciding for myself how to spell the words. But I made the decision not to drop g's, as in workin' for working. I felt the number of apostrophes added by doing that could make reading it more difficult. When I read from it aloud, I drop those g's, and hope the rest of the dialect would make a reader drop them, too. It's impossible to get the whole twang clear, but I tried to come close. I didn't want to offend anyone by my use of dialect, so when I had written the first six chapters, I sent them to a Southern lady I know and asked for her opinion. She didn't feel it would offend anyone and made a few suggestions on other ways I could use it. I didn't take all her suggestions, because I felt some of them would confuse or slow down a reader.

Black Mountain Mine #30, Harlan County, Ky
http://kycoal.homestead.com/kycoalmines.html

CAROL: Why the coal mines in Kentucky? I remember you saying that you visited Kentucky a lot with your kids—was that part of what drew you to this story?

KATHY: What drew me to that part of Kentucky was meeting a couple who had grown up in Harlan County. They talked about company stores, company scrip, and kin who had died of Black Lung. Everything I write begins with a "spark" that makes me want to tell the story. In most of my writing, the spark was an event (the Sultana disaster, a coal mine explosion, a flood). With EMPTY PLACES, the spark was a place. I just had to set a story in Harlan County.

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlPhoto from the Benham and Lynch Collection,
Southeast Community and Technical College Appalachian Archive

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html#storylink=cpy

CAROL: Any comments on the state of historical fiction for young readers? I’m wondering the reactions you’ve received from reviews, teachers, or media specialists. 

KATHY: I know of several teachers who assign or read aloud LIKE A RIVER in their classrooms. And I will speak on using historical fiction in the classroom at a Children's Literature Conference in November. I think Common Core might have led to historical fiction being more readily accepted in recent years, and while Common Core seems to be on its way out, perhaps this is one good thing to come from it. The Grateful American Book Prize was developed for the purpose of getting young readers more interested in American history, and it might help more quality fiction to be written and published.

CAROL: What’s next?

KATHY: My current project is a novel about the 1937 Flood in the Ohio River Valley. It's based on my father's family's experiences during that flood.

                                      

As mentioned last week, I am giving away the ARC of EMPTY PLACES. Please leave me a comment with your contact information and I'll add it to the list I started last week. A winner will be drawn on April 21. 

For another chance to win one of Kathy's books and for a different inside view of Kathy's writing process, see Clara Gillow Clark's blog.

EMPTY PLACES: A Review and ARC Giveaway

Congratulations to Deb Allmand  who won SCAR on last week's blog.

Introduction

I first introduced my husband's uncle, Robert Toupal, to middle grade historical fiction by giving him Joyce Hostetter's book, BLUE. Since then he's often my first reader when I receive an ARC. A man of definite opinions, I wondered what he would think of EMPTY PLACES (Calkins Creek, 2016) by award winning author, Kathy Cannon Wiechman. 

Robert Toupal

I've heard many of Bob's stories of growing up in East St. Louis in the 30's and 40's, as the son of a shoemaker. Familiar with hard times, the depression, and folks who worked hard, his comments about Kathy's second novel didn't surprise me. "People who haven't been there can hardly believe that's the way it was...Coal miners had a rough way to go."

Writers as Readers

Writers-in-training have certain writing principles drilled into their brains. 

• Hook your reader from the start
• Show don't tell
• Choose specific details to show characters and settings
• Employ verbs as your muscle words 
• Use imagery and beautiful language to convey your story

Whenever I teach writing, I advocate learning how to write by reading good literature. Let's examine some excerpts from EMPTY PLACES to see what we can learn.

Opening Paragraphs, Specific Details, and Figurative Language 

If you'da rode into Harlan County, Kentucky, that June in a shiny new 1932 Packard, you'da seen hickories, oaks, and maples leafed out with the promise of shady places to rest and listen to birdsong.

If you'da got close enough to set in one of them shady spots, you'da heard the chug of engines pulling coal cars that squealed on aged tracks. You'da heard swear-words of miners and seen coal dust that clung to their faces, filled their pores, and caused their lungs to heave out deep, retching coughs. 

But even if you'da been close as a tick on a dog, you wouldn'ta heard the secrets each body kept, secrets not even told in whispers--secrets about my mama. 

Secrets and gossip spread through coal camps like Smoke Ridge the way a fever does, keeping folks talking. Until new gossip seeps into their lives. Old gossip, like stale bread, is all but forgotten when there's fresh bread to chew on.  (p. 7)

Are you hooked? I was! Did you get a taste for Harlan County, Kentucky during the 30's? You probably could practically hear the trains chugging through town, feel the cool shade, and sense the whispering gossip. Kathy gets an "A+" for sensory details that pull the reader into the time and place. How many powerhouse verbs do you count in these four paragraphs? As for figurative language, the comparison of gossip to how fever is spread and to stale bread are both masterful. As the story plays out, both fever and stale bread are components in this authentic Appalachian story.

The Story

Pretty quickly the reader meets spunky, 13-year-old Adabel Cutler who is trying her darndest to keep her family from falling apart. Adabel's father is a coal miner who drinks too much and fights with her big brother, Pick. Her older sister, Raynelle, wants to marry the grocer's son to help keep food on their table. Her little sister Blissie has a "sweetness that makes folks smile and forgit she's a Cutler." (p. 10). But Adabel's biggest problem is that her mother disappeared seven years ago and Adabel is tormented by the fact that she can't remember her. "Mama was an empty place in my mind." (p. 17)

Like a detective, Adabel's relentless pursuit of the truth propels her through the story and into conversations with her family and neighbors. This dialogue transpires after Pick tells her about how their father sent the children away after their mama disappeared:

"Don't ya remember? When Mama first left, Daddy shunted us young'uns off. Me to Shovel's. Raynelle and Blissie to Granny Cutler's. And you...I cain't recall who he give you to. Was it Jane Louise's mama?"

"I don't recall none of that. I only remember living in the old house with y'all. Till we moved her last year. It's always been us. You, me, Raynelle, Blissie, and Daddy."

"Ya's lucky not to remember ever'thing. Some things is best forgot."

"Ya's wrong, Pick." A mind full of empty places was worse'n the awfulest memories a body could have. (p. 67)

Each conversation leads to the next. Adabel asks Jane Louise's mother:

"But ya recollect Mama leaving?"

"I just recollect how broke-hearted your daddy was. He loved your mama deep."

It was hard to think of Daddy loving anyone deep. (p. 77)

With each new conversation, Adabel begins to put together a picture of her past that is different than what she had previously believed. 

Not having memories of her mother haunts Adabel. When she finds out the reason for her poor memory she thinks, "Knowing didn't fix the empty places in my head, but having a reason for 'em being there made me feel a heap better about it." (p. 188)

Adabel's new found knowledge gives her courage and strength. I'm not going to spoil the ending for you--I hope you decide to read EMPTY PLACES yourself--but let's just say Adabel's detective work brings healing to her family and leaves the reader feeling hopeful for her future. 

EMPTY PLACES will be a great classroom resource for middle school students studying the Depression, coal mining, and the Appalachian area.

In next week's blog, Kathy will answer some questions about the inspiration for this story. I'll pick a winner on April 21 and give away this ARC then. Leave me a comment on this post and I will enter your name. If you leave a comment next week or post this on social media (and let me know what you do!) I'll enter your name accordingly. PLEASE leave me your contact information if you are new to this blog.