The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill AND a Giveaway!

Congratulations to Ann Eisenstein, a fellow SCBWI-Carolinas writers, who won an autographed copy of Sheri Levy's novel, Seven Days to Goodbye. Thanks to all of you who entered. Here is another book to try and win!

At a recent SCBWI-Carolinas conference, I took an informative workshop with Emma Dryden on world building. First, Emma instructed us to write three tenets that govern the fictional world and/or society in which our character lives. Second, she asked us to write three tenets that govern our protagonist's personal world. 

As I considered how I would review the most recent book I listened to, The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill, I thought how the historical setting played such an integral role in this story.  Applying what I learned in Emma Dryden's workshop, here are some of the tenets which govern the protagonist's, Hazel Kaplantsy, world: 

First of all, the bigger world in which Hazel lives in is governed by the facts that:

1. In 1954, Communism is a very real threat. 
2. Fall out shelters and air raid drills are necessary.
3. Senator McCarthy has a right to search for spies in Hazel's small New England town of Maple Hill.

Second, these three tenets govern her personal world:

1. Maple Hill is a sleepy, boring town that Hazel will leave as soon she grows up.
2. It's normal to grow up living and playing in a cemetery.
3. Hazel's best friend has just moved away and most probably her next best friend will leave her too.

These tenets are the framework upon which Megan Blakemore has built Hazel's dream of showing the world that she is as good a detective as Nancy Drew.  But while Hazel is always ready to find evidence that supports her pre-formed conclusions, her new friend Samuel is the voice of reason suggesting that she might not always correctly interpret the facts. 

The backdrop of the McCarthy era forms a perfect canvas for this upper elementary book for girls. When Hazel's favorite librarian warns her that it is a dangerous thing when a "whisper becomes a rumor and a rumor becomes a fact" she is speaking truth not only about the McCarthy investigation at a local factory, but also to Hazel herself. Hazel's moment of truth comes when she realizes that her erroneous accusations are just as hurtful as the smashed window in her favorite Chinese restaurant. 

For more information on deep world building, check out Emma Dryden's blog. As a bonus, here are two worksheets on world building from Brenda Windberg of Free Expressions Seminars.

I'm giving away a copy of the audio CD of this entertaining and informative book. To enter, please leave me a comment before 9 AM on Friday, October 24. If you want a second chance, become a new follower or share this on your social media of choice and let me know what you did. Be sure I have your email address too!

Yankee Girl and a Giveaway

My apologies if you receive this blog post twice. I am reposting it since it didn't seem to get sent out  the first time and I wanted you to have a chance to win this fantastic book.

Two girls. One white, one black. The South and civil rights. Given my own work-in-progress, Half-Truths, how could I not read Yankee Girl?

Drawing upon her own childhood experiences, the author, Mary Ann Rodman, writes in her author's note: "Like Alice (the protagonist), I was the daughter of an FBI agent. In the summer of 1964, my family moved from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi. My father was one of 150 special agents ordered to Mississippi by President Lyndon Johnson." These agents were assigned after three young civil rights workers who were helping African Americans register to vote, disappeared.

As the title suggests, Yankee Girl is 6th-grade Alice Ann Moxley's story. Her "new normal" opens with the moving truck unloading her bike in front of her new home. Fresh from Chicago, she encounters the Southern drawl, pimento cheese, and whites who call colored peoplenigras. Her parents are sympathetic to civil rights and Alice is torn between her concern for Valerie, the lone African American girl who integrates her school, and wanting to make friends with the kids in her class who ostracize and mock Valerie. 

Alice's internal struggles make up a good part of the novel as the reader sees Alice's awakening to what Valerie experiences. After Alice doesn't stop her classmates from sending Valerie mean Valentines, Valerie stays home from school. When she calls Alice ostensibly to get their math homework, Valerie shares some of her anxiety about her father's upcoming civil rights event with Dr. Martin Luther King. After Valerie shares some of her painful childhood experiences, Alice dreams thatEmmett Till challenges her to stand up for her friend. 

After Valerie's father dies, she moves out of town and Alice regrets never telling her that she was sorry for not befriending her. But in the final image, Alice moves on to junior high where she meets Valerie's cousin. Despite the whispers of "Nigger lover, nigger lover" all around her, Alice brings the new girl to her cafeteria table, where two of her friends are waiting.

Mary Ann Rodman did such a wonderful job of integrating historical fact with fiction, that I tried googling Valerie's father, Reverend Claymore Taylor. When I couldn't find anything about him, I checked with Mary Ann. She wrote:

"Reverend Taylor is a combination of Medgar Evers and a man named Wharless Jackson, who was my dad's last unsolved case (and never will be solved since all the informants and witnesses are dead or deep into hiding so they will never be found.) Medgar Evers was killed in front of his three children in the driveway of his home (he was the Ms. state president of the NAACP). Jackson was a civil rights activist who worked at the Goodyear Tire plant in Natchez, Ms. Mr. Jackson was promoted to a supervisor's position, the first for a black man in that plant. That night when he got in his truck to go home, he discovered that 'someone' (most likely the KKK) had wired his ignition with dynamite. There was nothing left of him."

At the end of the author's note Mary Ann writes: "My mother once said, 'You know, someday you'll be glad you lived in this time and this place. You are seeing history in the making. You can tell your children and grandchildren about it.'

She was right."

Mary Ann Rodman at 10-years-old

**************

Ms. Rodman is giving away an autographed copy of Yankee Girl. Leave a comment and I'll enter your name in the drawing. I'll pick a winner on Monday, November 4. Please leave your email address if I don't have it.

Congratulations to Lisa Fowler who won last week's giveaway, Hill Hawk Hattie.

Yankee Girl and a Giveaway!

Two girls. One white, one black. The South and civil rights. Given my own work-in-progress, Half-Truths, how could I not read Yankee Girl?

Drawing upon her own childhood experiences, the author, Mary Ann Rodman, writes in her author's note: "Like Alice (the protagonist), I was the daughter of an FBI agent. In the summer of 1964, my family moved from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi. My father was one of 150 special agents ordered to Mississippi by President Lyndon Johnson." These agents were assigned after three young civil rights workers who were helping African Americans register to vote, disappeared.

As the title suggests, Yankee Girl is 6th-grade Alice Ann Moxley's story. Her "new normal" opens with the moving truck unloading her bike in front of her new home. Fresh from Chicago, she encounters the Southern drawl, pimento cheese, and whites who call colored people nigras. Her parents are sympathetic to civil rights and Alice is torn between her concern for Valerie, the lone African American girl who integrates her school, and wanting to make friends with the kids in her class who ostracize and mock Valerie. 

Alice's internal struggles make up a good part of the novel as the reader sees Alice's awakening to what Valerie experiences. After Alice doesn't stop her classmates from sending Valerie mean Valentines, Valerie stays home from school. When she calls Alice ostensibly to get their math homework, Valerie shares some of her anxiety about her father's upcoming civil rights event with Dr. Martin Luther King. After Valerie shares some of her painful childhood experiences, Alice dreams that Emmett Till challenges her to stand up for her friend. 

After Valerie's father dies, she moves out of town and Alice regrets never telling her that she was sorry for not befriending her. But in the final image, Alice moves on to junior high where she meets Valerie's cousin. Despite the whispers of "Nigger lover, nigger lover" all around her, Alice brings the new girl to her cafeteria table, where two of her friends are waiting.

Mary Ann Rodman did such a wonderful job of integrating historical fact with fiction, that I tried googling Valerie's father, Reverend Claymore Taylor. When I couldn't find anything about him, I checked with Mary Ann. She wrote:

"Reverend Taylor is a combination of Medgar Evers and a man named Wharless Jackson, who was my dad's last unsolved case (and never will be solved since all the informants and witnesses are dead or deep into hiding so they will never be found.) Medgar Evers was killed in front of his three children in the driveway of his home (he was the Ms. state president of the NAACP). Jackson was a civil rights activist who worked at the Goodyear Tire plant in Natchez, Ms. Mr. Jackson was promoted to a supervisor's position, the first for a black man in that plant. That night when he got in his truck to go home, he discovered that 'someone' (most likely the KKK) had wired his ignition with dynamite. There was nothing left of him."

At the end of the author's note Mary Ann writes: "My mother once said, 'You know, someday you'll be glad you lived in this time and this place. You are seeing history in the making. You can tell your children and grandchildren about it.'

She was right."

Mary Ann Rodman at 10-years-old

**************

Ms. Rodman is giving away an autographed copy of Yankee Girl. Leave a comment and I'll enter your name in the drawing. I'll pick a winner on Friday, November 1. Please leave your email address if I don't have it.

Congratulations to Lisa Fowler who won last week's giveaway, Hill Hawk Hattie.

Hill Hawk Hattie and a Giveaway!

Hill Hawk Hattie by Clara Gillow Clark, fiction for upper elementary school girls, tells the beautiful story of 11-year-old Hattie Belle in the late 1800's. With her mother dead, Hattie is left alone with her father, a rough logger who makes his living by rafting the logs down the Delaware River. 

One day her father comes home and announces that Hattie is going to pass as his son and join him on the river. Concerned that she's no longer "his girl," Hattie still settles into the logging routines and befriends 13-year-old Jasper, another logger's son. 

Clara Clark describes the trip down the Delaware in vivid detail. The reader gets to experience the perils of riding through rapids on a raft that can break apart any minute and how fearful Hattie is that the other men will discover her identity and turn against her father. 

Towards the end of the book Clark uses the metaphor of Hattie's journey to show Hattie's inner life. In reflecting on her mother's death Hattie confides to Jasper, "I think my ma got stuck in her mind somewhere between her fine home in Kingston and our hills. Somehow, I think it just pulled her apart, like a raft breaking apart on rocks you can't see." (p. 146)  

After they get off the river, Hattie discovers that her father has a different plan for her life.  A river of thought spun around in my head, floated together, fit into a pattern like logs and lash poles, pieces that shaped the story of our journey, mine and Pa's. "You taking me to Kingston, Pa?"

Young and old enjoy Hattie's adventures! This is
the infamous Uncle Bob devouring the novel in
two days. 

When I received this book several years ago I thought I'd give it away on this blog. But after my husband's uncle read it and recommended it, I fell in love with it too. Now I have a 7-year-old granddaughter who I think will also love it. Fortunately, Clara is willing to give away an autographed copy herself.  

Clara also now makes felt dolls of her characters! This set of Hattie and Jasper dolls, plus the teaching guide sells for $19.95 plus postage.

And last, but not least, Clara, who is presently teaching at several Highlights workshops, also offers critique services at reasonable rates. You can best reach her at this email address.  

**********

To enter this contest, just leave me a comment and your email address if I don't have it. Clara and I would love it if you shared this on Facebook or Twitter too.  And since my blog followers now number 99, if you become a new follower, I'll enter your name twice, and I'll reach the 3-digit mark! 

I'll draw a winner on Friday, October 25th. Thanks in advance for entering!