Behind the Scenes with Gretchen Griffith's New Picture Book and a Giveaway!

Many years ago, Gretchen Griffith commuted to Charlotte to be a part of our SCBWI critique group. Since then she has found a group much closer to her home in Hickory, NC, but I have watched from afar as she got her much-worked on article "Finding Forty Two" published in Highlights in 2009, and then went on to publish two books set in the North Carolina mountains. Today, I'm happy to share the story behind her newly-released picture book, "When Christmas Feels Like Home." Her publisher, Albert Whitman, is providing a giveaway copy. Details at the end of the blog. 

Carol: Can you share the backstory of this book? What influenced you as you wrote it? How did you come up with the story idea? How did you find your publisher?

Gretchen: I wrote the manuscript in 2008 for the 2009 Highlights for Children writing contest when the theme was “contemporary world culture stories,” but it was in my head for quite a while before that. I lived in Lima, Peru when I was in high school, so I have experienced the anxiety associated with moving into a new culture. For several years I’ve worked with high school exchange students who go from the US to other countries and those who arrive in North Carolina as well. Our orientation materials tell them to anticipate milestones of when they will fit into the new culture, as well as the ups and downs they'll experience.

With that concept in mind, I began to think about the milestones my fourth grade students would face moving into a new culture, or even if they were just moving from one town to the next. When would their new city feel like home?

By the time I received word that my manuscript didn’t win, I had gone on to other projects, to honing my craft, attending conferences, and studying how to revise what I had written. Most key to this manuscript, I began reading blogs that offered tips on submitting. Somewhere along the line I found a reference to an editor at Albert Whitman & Company looking for international or diversity themed children’s picture books.  

I dragged out the manuscript from the floppy disk (yes, it was that long ago technology-wise) and took a new look at it. Being away from it for over a year helped me see it as a stranger would and through this new perspective I was able to find flaws. I rewrote, fielded it to my critique group (essential step) and revised it again. I submitted and returned to my other projects, always writing, always tending to improving my writing, and I admit, always checking the mailbox.

When the letter came, it wasn’t an acceptance. It was a “the pacing needs some work and we’ll look at it again” kind of letter. I revised and resubmitted a few more times until the offer finally came. Even then, I had to mold and refine until the words sang.

Carol: The illustrations truly complement the story. What are your thoughts about how the book has been illustrated? Did you submit the manuscript with many art notes? 

Gretchen: The illustrator, Carolina Farias, is from Argentina. I had nothing to do with selecting her, but what a perfect match to my manuscript!  I offered no input other than a few minor points. I did say that there couldn’t be any older brothers in the family illustrations because the story line of the main character being alone wouldn’t have worked.

I'm on the picture book authors’ panel at this year’s fall SCBWI Carolinas conference in Charlotte, September 27-29 where I’ll fill everyone in on more details. Meanwhile, stop by and visit my blog. Comments are always welcome!

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To win a copy of this book (think: present for a fortunate child or grandchild!) please follow these rules:

• Post this blog on your social media site of choice OR become a new follower of this blog and I'll enter your name once. 
• Post this blog on two different social media sites OR become a new follower of this blog AND post it on a social media site and I'll enter your name twice.
• Either way, leave a comment with your email address (if you are new to my blog) with what you did. 
• Winner will be drawn on Monday morning, August 26 - so get those entries in!

Same Kind of Different as Me

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Ron Hall and Denver Moore were as different as day and night. Ron, a white, affluent art dealer lived in one grand, expensive home after another in the suburbs of Fort Worth. Denver was black, uneducated, and an ex-con who lived on the streets of Fort Worth.


They were worlds apart; but in a way that only God can orchestrate, their lives became intertwined together. Same Kind of Different as Me is their story. 

I enjoyed this book on many levels.  Written from alternate points of view, the book doesn't hold back on portraying the thoughts, feelings and prejudices of men from two different races.  Each man's voice comes through loud and clear as they describe their upbringing and the events leading up to meeting at the Union Gospel Mission. It also showed the esteem they both had for Deborah Hall, Ron's wife, and the grief they shared when she died.


But most of all, it showed how God was at work, bringing all three of them to faith in Jesus Christ and then working out His purposes in their lives.  

Since my work in progress, Half-Truths, is also about the relationship between a white and black person, here are a few passages which I appreciated:


Ron, talking about his childhood in Corsicana, Texas: 
"In the 1950's the Southern social order was as plain to the eye as charcoal in a snowbank." (p. 22)


Denver sharing his life in the '60's: 
"But [if] you go down to Louisiana right now, and take a drive on down the back roads in Red River Parish, and you might be able to see how a colored man that couldn't read and didn't have no radio, no car, no telephone, and not even 'lectricity might fall through a crack in time and get stuck, like a clock that done wound done and quit."  (p. 64)

During one of their first conversations Denver challenged Ron with the "catch and release" principle of friendship:
"If you is fishin for a friend you just gon' catch an release, then I ain't got no desire to be your friend....But if you is looking for a real friend, then I'll be one. Forever." (p. 107)


When Denver mourned Debbie's death he talked to her: 
"You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth saving... We all has more in common than we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life." (p. 193)

In conclusion, Denver wrote:
"After I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wasn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found our everybody's different--the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walking down the road God done set in front of us...The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain't no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless--just working our way toward home." (p. 235)

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I finished the book on April 15 and tried to contact Denver and Ron to tell them how much I appreciated their story. I discovered that a week earlier Denver had gone home to be with his Lord. 

This is a moving book on many levels showing the power of God to change lives. 

Crossing the Wire

Assault rifles, a wild puma, extreme cold, excessive heat, starvation, dehydration, a capture by the Border Patrol and deportation, hundreds of miles of deserts, drug-smuggling thieves, extortioners, a rattlesnake bite-- Crossing the Wire by Will Hobbs has all this and more. Girl and boy middle schoolers will be rooting for 15-year-old Victor Flores as he struggles against unbelievable odds to secure one thing: money for his Mexican mother to keep their family goats and chickens. 

I would encourage teachers to use this coming-of-age book as a good example of creating a character who faces both internal conflicts (wanting to be the man in the house since his father's death), and external conflicts (see the opening sentence of this blog!). Victor's desire to help his mother propels this book forward; this is a good example of a plot-driven story. 

But undoubtably this book will also open readers' eyes to why illegals attempt a dangerous border crossing. Although statistics indicate that arrests at the Mexican border have diminished,   the U.S. is still in the midst of many emigration issues and border controversies. This novel, published in 2006, is well-written, timely and in parts, poetic. Consider this line:

"Sorrow sings also when it runs too deep to cry."

Read this book. You won't forget it.