Keeping Novello Alive

For years my children and I enjoyed attending Novello, the book festival that the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library held in downtown Charlotte. After they were too old to attend, I often worked the SCBWI booth which provided "word play" activities for children and information about writing for their parents. When my children were young Novello had been a one-day event; gradually it grew to encompass several weeks of programs and lectures from famous authors and speakers.

Due to budget cuts, this much-loved annual event was not scheduled this year. Fortunately, two Charlotte literacy lovers; former librarian Pat Siegfried, and UNC professor Mark West, have stepped up to the plate and led a grass-roots effort to keep Novello alive.

Although you might have missed last weekend's events for adults, it is not too late to put the children's events on your calendar for this Saturday, October 9. The line-up includes several North Carolina authors who are members of the SCBWI-Carolinas region. I have added web links for the authors who are either part of our region or whose books I have read. Although only one title is listed by their name, most of these authors have published several children's books. They are donating their time and energy to talk about books and inspire young readers. Books will be available for sale; stock up for birthdays or holiday gifts!

All events take place at ImaginOn, 300 E. Seventh St. Here is the schedule:

Picture Books

11 a.m.: Tameka Brown  Around Our Way on Neighbors' Day
Judy Stead 12 Days of Christmas in North Carolina
Gail Haley A Story, A Story
Sherry Neidigh, illustrator of Count Down to Fall  (her books make wonderful presents for grandkids!)

Noon: Kelly Starling Lyons One Million Men and Me 
Gloria Houston The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree
Carole Boston Weatherford Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom

Junior fiction and young adult:

11:15 a.m.: Stephanie Tolan Surviving the Applewhites
 Melissa Thompson Keena Ford series
Eleanora Tate Celeste's Harlem Renaissance

Young adult mystery/suspense
 12:15 p.m.: Caroline B. Cooney Face on the Milk Carton
 Mark de Castrique Death on a Southern Breeze

Young adult
1:15 p.m.: Carrie Ryan The Forest of Hands and Teeth
 Karon Luddy Spelldown
Joyce Hostetter Blue, Comfort, Healing Water  (my co-author of Talking Story!)
 P.B.MacEnulty Alixandra's Wings

Novello Festival Press panel
 1:30 p.m.: Introducing the press's first bilingual children's book, "Wings and Dreams: The Legend of Angel Falls," by Irania Macias Patterson, illustrated by Catherine Courtlandt McElvane.
*****************************************************************
Novello is back to being short and sweet. But who can deny that good things often come in small packages? Make a point to bring your children to ImaginOn this Saturday. This is a unique opportunity for your children to meet local authors and illustrators who are passionate about reading and writing. 

It almost makes me wish my kids were little again.

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Everyone has a story

Just as I love playing with words, I also love stories; those that are written as well as ones told to me. Yesterday when I was riding to the Houston International Airport after the Texas Gifted and Talented conference, I heard my driver's story. Born in South Africa, educated in Great Britain, and now a 20+ year-resident of Houston, my driver had a degree in mass communications and was also a computer analyst. When I asked him why he was driving a shuttle he laughed and said that everyone asked him that! He explained that he was the owner of the SuperShuttle franchise in Houston and this job allowed him to be home with his family and be more involved with his children than his previous employment. He was delighted to find out I was an author because when I asked him what his dream job would be he answered, "I'd be a writer!" He has two novels written and is working on his third. Afraid to send his work out for fear that it would be stolen (a common fear, but rare occurrence), his books have remained private and unpublished. I encouraged him to find a local critique group, look at the publishers who publish work in the genre in which he is writing, and work on getting it out there!

These are key pieces of advice for any aspiring writer. To "birth" a piece of writing, writers must put time and energy into writing, revising, and perfecting it; risk the trauma of potential rejection, and then send it out into the world.

Everyone has a story. What's yours?

Eyes on the Prize - Audio Book review and Giveaway

Congratulations to Megan Hoyt and Becky Scharnhorst who won copies of Viviane Elbee's book, Teach Your Giraffe to Ski.

It's hard to review a book that covers the entire Civil Rights period in as much detail as Eyes On the Prize by Juan Williams does. The book, suitable for adults and young adults, is simultaneously comprehensive, academic, and personal. Williams wrote it as a companion to the first season of the NPR series with the same title. As noted below, several segments are now on YouTube. 

Even though I have read many books on the civil rights era, William's book showed how one event led to another--like dominoes falling in succession. I recommended it to one of my experts, Vermelle Ely, who enjoys audio books. When we had talked previously my questions were about Charlotte and Second Ward High. When I asked her about Little Rock she said, "Sure we knew about it. But back then, news didn’t travel so fast." Her remark was historically revealing.

Although I have chosen different portions of the book to highlight, it is very difficult to summarize any of these historical events. For more detail--please read the book!

PART I

https://youtu.be/Ts10IVzUDVw
1954-1956

Charles Hamilton Houston served as a mentor to a generation of black lawyers leading up to the Civil Rights period. He was instrumental in attacking the "separate but equal" rules that governed the Jim Crow South. He investigated educational discrimination by creating movies of the schools for black children. Although he started with elementary schools, his goal was to develop graduate programs that were nonexistent for blacks. Houston was instrumental in pulling together the cases (including the historic challenge in Clarendon County, SC as I blogged about here) to create the lawsuit that eventually led to the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. Interestingly, Williams said that Emmit Till's murder did more for civil rights than Brown vs. the Board of Education as it brought the plight of southern blacks to national attention. 

PART II

 https://youtu.be/4D5xwC6M_Gk
1957-1962

Since blacks frequently used buses for transportation to work, Williams noted that it was no accident that bus boycotts throughout the South became the stage of protest. "Indignity suffered alone was debilitating, but indignity shared was powerful."  Although blacks feared white reprisal for their boycotts (losing their jobs and physical violence) a growing sentiment was that the time had come to take a stand for freedom. 

During this time Martin Luther King, Jr. preached nonviolence. Segregationists put pressure on white commissioners not to give in to black boycotts. The boycotts received national attention and

bus segregation started to be challenged in courts. 

The behind the scenes politics in all the cities, but especially Little Rock, AK were fascinating.  Desegregation was a political football from the local level all the way up to President Eisenhower. The politicians, including Governor Faubus, were often more interested in grandstanding than fair play. 

It was also interesting to track the role of the NAACP Youth Council as young adults and college students became involved in the movement. Williams features Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Jim Lawson who were leaders in nonviolent protests at lunch counters throughout the South. President Kennedy was deeply influenced by the student protests and became an important advocate of civil rights. An interesting segment at the end of the book details where these individuals were in 1987 when the book was published.

PART V

https://youtu.be/aP2A6_2b6g8
1962-1964

In this section I heard the sad story of Medgar Evars, a WWII veteran and civil rights activist who was murdered in 1963 by a Klansman. "All we wanted was to be ordinary citizens. If the Japs and Germans didn’t kill us, it looked like white Mississippians would." He was rejected at the University of Mississippi law school and was very active in the NAACP. This invovlement could lead blacks to being called niggers, alligators, apes, coons, possums and was often equated with being a Communist. 

Similar to the political maneuverings in Little Rock, the behind-the-scenes events among the Mississippi delegation and Lyndon B. Johnson's negotiations at the 1964 Democratic convention were insightful and fascinating. 

I can't possibly summarize Freedom Summer in 1964 when blacks were trying to register to vote. Whites threatened economic reprisals even though at times the blacks were better educated than the whites registering them. It was a summer of violence when President Johnson was spending money on Vietnam while blacks were being killed. But black teenagers singing the Star Spangled Banner and the marches from Selma to Montgomery were a source of inspiration to many. 

Williams noted that the decade between 1954 and 1964 saw more social change and more court decisions than any other decade. The lives of blacks and whites were forever changed because of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Television forced the print press to be more honest. The white perspective was no longer the only one heard.

Listen to this audio snippet of the book and see what a fine job actor Sean Crisden did. 

GIVEAWAY

Leave me a comment by October 4 with your email address if you are new to my blog. Tantor Audio will provide a code for the winner to download the book.

On my way to Houston

One of the fun things about traveling is that you never know who you'll sit next to on the plane and what your conversation will include. On my way to Houston for the National Middle School conference yesterday, I sat next to a vice-president of a manufacturing company. After finding out the reason I was visiting Texas and my interest in literacy, he began talking about the problems his company has when it comes to hiring high school graduates. He is deeply concerned that many high school graduates lack basic reading, writing, and math skills and are therefore eliminated from the pool of applicants. At entry level positions that begin at $85,000, jobs at his company are job market plums.

When I asked my seat partner (who served on his local school board for 12 years and made academic issues his priority) why he thought so many high school graduate were under-perfomers he listed 3 reasons:

1. Parents weren't setting high enough expectations for their children.
   
2. Parents are not adequately encouraging their children and not involved enough in their lives. "Kids can quickly be sucked into an 'underworld" type environment," he said. Parents need to know what is going on with their kids and care about their academic performance.
   
3. On the state level, he felt that although he believes that "life is a test" there is too much stress on high-stakes assessment testing.
   

My new acquaintance believes that the answer to this dilemma is that all of those who have a stake in the education process-the students, parents, teachers, administrators, and the "customers" (as he termed others in the industrial sector like himself) -- need to be working together.

And that's what I'm seeing here, at the National Middle School Conference. Teachers and administrators who take seriously the challenge to educate young people. My new friend would be impressed.

A (Teacher's) Blast from the Past

I've been cleaning out filing cabinets-- a once a decade task--and have found some interesting items that I saved over the years. I thought I'd share this gem, courtesy of The Sam Houston Historic Schoolhouse in Maryville, Tn.

1872 Rules for Teachers

1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.

2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session.

3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.

5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.

6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

7. Every teacher should lay aside from each day's pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pools or public halls, or gets shaves in a barbershop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves. 

**********

What do you think about these rules? I'd love to hear!

National Middle School Conference Report

9000 middle school teachers and administrators. Hundreds of workshops stuffed into 2 1/2 days. Ten enormous rows of vendors selling everything from excellent writing lessons plans Maupin House to interactive maps Rand McNally, to spicy popcorn used for fundraising, to worldwide travel experiences for students. Add several roving reporters for The Conference Insider who desipte being dwarfed by the adults swarming around them navigated the exhibit halls as if they were in middle school....and you have the 2007 National Middle School Conference in Houston.

Was I overwhelmed? Slightly.
Stimulated? Without a doubt.
Excited to be a part of an event that drew educators from as far away as Seoul and as close as Louisiana? You bet.

Hands down this was the largest conference I have participated in and was rewarded by the opportunity to speak with dozens of educators about Teaching the Story. The response to my question, "Do you have time to teach creative writing?" was mixed. Many shook their heads sadly and admitted that preparing for standardized testing and or district mandated curriculum precluded time for creative writing. Others were excited about finding a book like mine and commented that they'd never seen anything like it (always heartening for an author to hear!) and were looking forward to using it. One teacher declared that she didn't care about the test: she taught what her she thought was important and her students consistently performed well. A seventh grade teacher said that in an exit poll her students invariably wished they had written a short story. A school outside Wilmington, NC offers creative writing in the 9th block; although the instructor admitted that gothic poetry was the frequent genre of choice.

I discovered that 7th graders in Kentucky and 9th graders in Canada had to write short stories. (Frankfort and Alberta here I come!)

I was tutored throughout the conference by my roommate and fellow Maupin House author, Jane Kiester (pictured above). Random gleanings from her 30+ years of experience:

• Middle school teachers love to have fun by working together. They love to laugh, giggle, sing, and do calisthenics while they're learning. It's important they do some type of activity every 10 minutes. No wonder they are so high energy!
• Make back-up overhead transparencies of all powerpoint presentations. Glad I listened!
• I have a found a way to make revision (usually a boring and dreaded chore) fun.

What can I say? I'm addicted to wordplay and now to blogging and sharing this experience with all of you!

Food, Memories, and Writing: Connecting Food & People

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I'm participating in Charlotte's Community Read for 2024. The "Food, Memories, and Writing" workshops are going well and I'm having a blast. The first event was held at Visart Video and the participants ate it up--excuse the pun. 

We talked about Buttermilk Graffiti, the showcase book for the event, and how chef Edward Lee appreciated the layers of food history with each dish he tasted. He made me appreciate how different cuisines-like  Peruvian food in Patterson, NJ, or Nigerian food in Houston, TX, has become a part of the American landscape. 

We quickly settled into tasting, smelling, and savoring food prepared by Visart Cafe.

As attendees recorded their associations with the food and drink, I challenged them to write like Lee and capture specific details. Then improvising on George Ella Lyon's "I am From Poem,'' everyone remembered, freely associated, and wrote. There were no right answers--each person's creation was their own.

The results were delicious. One participant remembered the spiky okra plants in her grandmother's garden; another wrote about Bourbon in his home state of Kentucky. Watermelon chunks, olives, and triangles of toasted cheese sandwiches (along with small cups of tomato soup--of course) generated a bowlful of memories. 

A woman of Mexican heritage remembered how grilled cheese sandwiches and apple pie and ice cream seemed exotic to her as a child. Growing up, she envied this all-American food instead of the tortillas that her mother made from scratch every day. One woman brought little containers of tapioca pudding because it had been a Pennsylvania childhood favorite. Prompted by the way Lee found the history of different dishes, she was surprised to discover that tapioca had South American heritage.

One of my hosts, Mason Bissett, the adult services librarian at the Independence Branch, enjoyed watching strangers come together and--over the camaraderie of shared food--felt safe enough to share personal stories. I was impressed with the result: haikus, rhyming, and free verse poetry complete with personification, interesting points of view, and mood-inspiring words. 

Mason was glad that each person left with the realization that they could express their voice through writing. And even though they might not have thought of themselves as writers, for ninety minutes on a Saturday morning, this diverse group dug into a soup pot of memories and found delectable morsels that they served to the rest of us.

Edward Lee would have been proud. 

I didn't collect their papers so I can't share their work here. But Elliott Kurta, one of my talented teen book reviewers, agreed to share two of his poems with you. 

FOOD INSPIRED POETRY

Watermelon Children

by Elliott Kurta

 

I am from heat

My tendrils spiral into the soil, sipping its moisture

Fat on dew, I am swollen with the spirit of summer.

 

You slaughtered me in the kitchen

Cracked my green skull into pieces.

You sucked pulp and marrow from the rinds,

Spilled my seeds across the marble countertop.

Hands sticky with sin

You cleansed yourself with chlorine and sunblock

Took fireflies hostage so they couldn’t share what they’d seen.

Greedy children.

 

But I shall have my revenge

For I have lodged a dark afterthought inside your body

Planted a seed in the folds of your stomach.

Green with youth and chlorophyll

You shall know what it is like to be full with the spirit of summer.

                                                🍉🍉🍉

 

Ode to Olives

by Elliott Kurta

Athena’s promise

Briny as the Aegean Sea

Swollen crabapples.

 

A Note on this Haiku

            According to an ancient Greek legend, the citizens of Greece were once in conflict over what to name their newest city. Athena, goddess of wisdom and combat, and Poseidon, god of the seas, both wanted to be the city’s namesake. Poseidon offered the people a well of salt water as a gift, but as it was so salty, they were unable to drink from the well or water their crops with it. Athena gifted the city an olive tree, explaining that the wood could be used to build ships, the oil could be used in lamps and to heal wounds, and the olives could be eaten. Athena won the competition, and the people named their city “Athens” in her honor.

                                                                                🫒🫒🫒

Elliott at work.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Do you wish you could have been there for all the fun? It's not too late to sign up in these Charlotte branches. Here is the schedule:

North County. March 18, 12:30-2. Register here.

Matthews. March 26, 6:30-7:45. Register here.

Main at The Market @7th Street. March 27, 10:30-12. Register here.

FOR EDUCATORS & LIBRARIANS

You can adopt this activity for use in your home, classroom, or library. Keep it simple. Pick non-messy foods that kids can pop into their mouths. If you want a copy of the "I Am From" poem which I adapted, please email me. 

Congratulations to Heather Skinner who won Underwater World from last week's blog.