Here in Fox land we are taking time off. My family and I are enjoying the first winter snows, and reflecting on what a couple of years it has been. We hope you stay well and safe.
In the new year I’ll be back. I plan more posts on craft than ever. And more for teachers and parents and readers, too. I you would like anything addressed in particular, please comment!
Cheers to all…
‘Tis the season…to find the perfect gift. And what better thing to buy for your favorite writer than a writing-related book that will help them on their journey?
Here are my recommendations for books available widely, on Amazon, Bookshop(you’ll find each of these titles at this link, with the exception of Create, which you’ll find here), or your favorite local indie bookseller:
are ready to submit. Not craft, no, but a useful tome to address all those issues around the processes of submitting and publishing. It’s especially useful for the self-pubbed or indie author but I found it useful for those of us in mid list traditional publishing. We all must learn how to market – that’s just a fact. And the small tips and tidbits herein are Consider: a writer, no matter how published, needs to cultivate an email list. This list allows your favorite writer to announce their new book to an audience already primed to read it. Gift them this one and they’ll love you for it.Have a happy holiday with writerly joy!
Just a short post-Thanksgiving post…
I spent a part of Small Business Saturday at a charming indie bookstore – Wheatgrass Books – in Livingston, Montana (fictional setting for Carry Me Home), where kids doing community service work were busy making origami paper cranes. They were part of a donation event to send Blessing Bags with handwarmers, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc. to the town’s Warming Center. The cranes are to go with the Bags.
Here’s a pic of the kids hard at work:
This was such a wonderful thing for me to witness, as these kids gave up part of a Saturday to consider an aspect of homelessness and the small things we can do.
And this morning I was delighted to be recording a podcast with Jed Doherty on Reading With Your Kids. Jed is thoughtful and generous, and I loved our discussion of Carry Me Home. He’s posting the podcast on December 23rd, as he thinks it is appropriate for the season. I’ll be sure and share the link.
Be well and try to enjoy this season of sharing, community, family, and joy.
Saturday November 13th was “World Kindness Day”. It seems awfully narrow (to me, anyway) to confine kindness to a single day. I would love it if we’d at least acknowledge the season of Thanksgiving as the season of giving kindness and joy. And heaven knows we could use a lot of both in our lives.
Whether you are a teacher, librarian, or parent, I know you are looking for ways to engender generosity of spirit, kindness, and compassion in the children around you. I do think these values can be taught. I’m quietly hopeful that my book CARRY ME HOME can inspire every reader to think about those less fortunate.
Here are a few suggestions for carrying kindness forward, and modeling generosity.
#1 Often we are hesitant to speak up about issues but a well-worded “letter to the editor” of your local newspaper can go a long way to raising awareness. Homelessness and hunger are on the rise, and those who suffer them are often voiceless. We can lift our voices on their behalf. Suggest ways that your community can come together around these issues, or at least open a discussion and acknowledge that homelessness exists. Help your older students write such a letter – it’s an excellent exercise in the persuasive essay.
#2 As a creative artist, I think a lot about the different ways we can be creative and also be generous to others. Here are a couple of things you or your kids could do, depending on your skills and interests:
#3 Children learn by example, and donating either goods or time to a food bank is an excellent way to model generosity. Many food banks run drives at this time of year. Get kids involved in collecting and distributing.
Finally, open conversation at the Thanksgiving table by not only giving thanks for those things that we are blessed to have, but also by taking a moment to recognize that others might not be so lucky. Ask, what can we do to help?
Let’s make 2022 the World Kindness Year.
Please share your ideas for giving back, and/or fostering compassion and kindness. With my deepest thanks to all of you, my readers and followers.
Just a note – the next couple of weeks are busy with events so I won’t be bothering you! But…I did a livestream interview with 3 of my Spooky Middle Grade friends and it was SO much fun.
You can catch the video here (sorry, I can’t embed) and it will tell you a lot about CARRY ME HOME, what it means to me, and how I wrote it. I thought the questions were amazing.
Enjoy, and I’ll see you again soon!
Yes, I know – Halloween is over. But it does feel like this Halloween was even more of a needed treat than usual, doesn’t it?
As a member of the Spooky Middle Grade authors group, I believe that kids love spooky books for good reason: learning how to be scared of things when you can control them (like knowing that this scary thing is inside a story inside a book) helps kids deal with the scary things they can’t control. Golly, we all need that. (Invisible virus, anyone?)
As a part of this group, we recently recorded a group-written short story for Halloween, which you can listen to here, on the Reading with Your Kids podcast.
This brought up the point, made by the podcast host, Jed Doherty, that group-written stories are a super fun writing exercise for all adults as well as kids. Here’s how ours worked:
Jed suggested we write about a kid who was “having problems with AI” (artificial intelligence). Each author was to write one page and pass it along to the next author to write the next page, and so on. The eight of us had a ton of fun coming up with the weird ideas that developed in the story.
I’ve recently been reading about the origins of Halloween, or as the Celts called it, Samhain. The festival of Samhain was held at the cusp of the year when the veil thinned between the living and the dead – and between light (summer) and darkness (winter). Dead ancestors were invited to partake in gifts of food.
Since I’ve written about so-called “thin places” before, I find this mythology fascinating – you can bet I’ll use it in a future book.
Finally, one of my favorite things to do when I taught was to take a few days of class to read aloud to my students. And yes – this was the 8th grade, but everyone loves to be read to, right? The year I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was one I’ll never forget.
You can find a lot of spooky books, ours and recommended, here.
What are your favorite things about Halloween?
I really love YouTube self-help videos.
I’ve fixed the door latch on a microwave, figured out what was wrong with my dishwasher so I could tell the appliance guy what part to order, and decided which computer would be my next purchase.
I also love Canva. I love design, and color – for me, playing with Canva is like being a kid again with a blank sheet of paper and fingerpaints, or creating something cool in a sandbox. So when a friend confessed that she didn’t get Canva and another piped up that it made her cry, I decided to make a couple of self-help videos, and I’m sharing them with you all here.
Whether you are an educator looking to create a cool poster for your classroom, or a writer wanting to make a series of marketing items, I hope these will be helpful to you.
Small caveat: I was a Canva Beta user, so I’ve been playing with it for a while. When they offered the Pro version, I leapt. Some of the details may not be quite the same if you don’t have the Pro version, but most of them will still be available to you.
I would love to know what else you’d like me to explore!
One of the features I like the best is the “resizing” feature. You can create a single post (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) or banner/header, and then resize it in seconds. This shortens your work considerably. Here’s how you do that:
This is probably the coolest thing in Canva (that I’ve discovered so far…). You can take a picture – even a complicated picture – of something and remove the background so that you can then reuse that image in new ways in Canva. As an example of what I mean, here’s a marketing image I made. The photo was taken on the surface of my carpet – ugly for sure. By removing the carpet, I added a new background, and:
This is a complicated photo, right? Lots of edges and corners. But Canva did it all for me. I could also have added text to this if I’d wanted, but I didn’t need it.
Here’s the video tutorial to using background remover:
Finally, here’s another short video on making things “move”:
Again, let me know if there’s anything else you want to learn – I love Canva!
Are you writing a spooky middle grade novel this November? I have a special coaching offer just for you!
As you know, I’ve written two acclaimed spooky middle grade novels, and am a member of the Spooky Middle Grade Authors group. I’m also a book coach!
I’m offering a chance for you to craft a working plan for your spooky MG novel. I’ll read and comment on your 500-word synopsis, guide you through crafting a two-page outline, and discuss your project in a 15-minute Zoom or phone call. All this in a two-week window and for only $210.
Please contact me before October 15 to get in on this one-time offer. A limited number of spots are available, so don’t wait.
Jump-start your spooky middle grade novel with me!
This post is for both educators and writers. I hope it will be useful!
I had never heard of Text Sets until my friend Deb Gonzales directed me to Barb Rosenstock’s website. Barb has made Text Sets for her books, and they are an awesome teaching tool.
Text Sets provide, in two pages, book titles (fiction and nonfiction) and links to material that enhances and enriches the reading experience of a book. Here’s a screen shot of a small portion of the text set I’ve made for CARRY ME HOME:
And here’s a link to the pdf Text Set for CARRY ME HOME. Note that because of the live links embedded in the document, it’s easier to use on line, but can be downloaded and reproduced as well.
I’ve made downloadable pdf Teacher Guides for all of my books. Unlike Text Sets, Teacher Guides provide suggested activities. Early on my guides were lengthy – now I find that again, two pages is just about right.
Some of the kinds of things that can be included in a Teacher Guide are:
And so on. Here’s an example of the Teacher Guide for my picture book VOLCANO DREAMS.
I’m about to start making video and/or audio snippets of my work. When I was teaching – 8th and 9th graders – I often read aloud to them in class. I don’t think we should ever stop reading aloud, honestly. Listening to a reading touches a different part of the brain, and enhances comprehension, particularly for auditory learners.
I made one video for my publisher this past spring, and an audio recording for TeachingBooks, and I read aloud from my books for both of these. My new goal is to offer very short read-alouds of portions of my books and post them on line. I’ll keep you informed, with links!
What suggestions do you have for ways to bring books alive in classrooms? Please share! With thanks!
A couple of giveaways of copies of CARRY ME HOME are running right now. First, this one ends at midnight on September 14, and these three copies are signed by me:
And over at TeachingBooks.net, my publisher, Simon & Schuster, is giving away five copies, ending September 27. If you’d like a signed bookplate for one of these copies, contact me.
Contact Me For a Signed Bookplate
And you can always order signed copies from my indie bookseller, Country Bookshelf.
Order a Signed Copy of CARRY ME HOME
If you’ve read CARRY ME HOME, would you consider writing an honest review? I appreciate you!!
