The Dark Side – Of Elves, Faeries, Sproggans & Such

February 15, 2010

The land of elves and faeries also is home to witches, warlocks, werewolves, trolls, and various other assorted things that go bump, slither and hiss in the night. As hideous, gross, frightful and perverse as these creatures may be, most readers agree that they add immensely to the interest of a story. This is especially [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: Hatchet

February 11, 2010

Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet – a 1987 Newbery Honor book – has an intensely gripping “What if?” What happens if you’re a 13-year-old solo passenger on a plane flying over the Canadian wilderness – and your pilot has a fatal heart attack mid-flight? In Hatchet, Brian Robesen, the teen in question, fights to survive. He crash [...]

Read the full article →

For Writers: Super Writing Software

February 10, 2010

I recently acquired two writing softwares that have significantly amped my productivity – Writer’s Cafe fiction writing software ($45 to download), and PageFour software for novelists and writers ($34.95 to download). Writer’s Cafe is both well and poorly named. It’s well named because it does function rather like a cafe for us creative types, a [...]

Read the full article →

For Writers: The Perils of Slang

February 6, 2010

Emily Neville’s It’s Like This, Cat won the Newbery in 1964. Children’s writers who read this book will be reminded of the perils of writing a first-person narrative in slang. Slanguage can be wonderful when it’s fresh and new. It demands – and gets – an instant connection to an audience. It amps up a [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: Shiloh

January 22, 2010

Like the dog who lends his name to the story, there are many things to love about Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Shiloh – 1992 Newbery award winner. The two things I like best about this novel are the voice of the 11-year-old narrator, Marty Preston, and the resolution of the story. Shiloh is the story of [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: The Underneath

January 16, 2010

Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath, a 2009 Newbery Honor book and a National Book Award finalist, is a triumph of voice and tone. The whole book is a bluesy prose poem, a powerful cry from the heart. The language is magical. Who can resist a tale that begins with, “There is nothing lonelier than a cat [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: The White Stag

January 14, 2010

Kate Seredy’s The White Stag, winner of the 1938 Newbery, entwines myth and history to tell the story of how a boy called Red Eagle by his people became Attila the Hun. Seredy describes Attila as a boy who “from the moment of his tragic birth had been deprived of love, tenderness, and comfort, (and) [...]

Read the full article →

Piping in Spring – Of Elves, Faeries, Sproggans & Such – Part 3

January 14, 2010

The lovely thing about Other World is that it is always Spring somewhere – unless, of course, a witch or wizard up to no good has placed the land under a dark enchantment. Then anything goes – landscapes grow grim and gray, birds stop singing, winter seems eternal, and gloom pervades all. It’s a bit [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: Sarah, Plain and Tall

January 5, 2010

Only 58 pages long, Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall was the winner of the 1986 Newbery. The first thing I liked about this book was the title. It was original and drew me in. Turns out “plain and tall” is how Sarah – the mail order bride who is the focal point of the [...]

Read the full article →

What I’m Reading: All Alone

January 3, 2010

Claire Hutchet Bishop’s All Alone (a 1953 Newbery Honor book) tells the story of Marcel, a ten-year-old shepherd who spends his first summer alone on his family’s small Alpine pastureland. The conflict is clearly set out: Papa Mabout commands Marcel to keep to himself, and to look out only for himself, as he watches over [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →