Title Thoughts Mini-Series

Destination: Library

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Have you read the picture book The Library by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by her husband, David Small? From the moment I saw the cover illustration, I knew I would love the book. I couldn’t resist that depiction of a young woman coming home from the library, her nose in a book and pulling a wagonload of books behind her, while her cat looks on. Books upon books, books and more books, until there was no room to move in her house filled floorboard to rafter with stacked-to-the-ceiling-high books. Her house and books formed a library, and her life came full circle, with her daily destination again becoming the trove full of treasures, her very own library of books. A library is a worthy destination for a reader… and a writer.

Keeping Hopes Alive (for writers and others)

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My Dad loved to tell a story about my cousin who, when he was in first grade, came downstairs one morning, set a copy of Black Beauty on the corner of the kitchen table, and said, “Nobody move that. We’re learning to read today and I’m going to read it when I get home.” Family lore does not record how the little six-year-old felt when he came home and couldn’t read his beloved Black Beauty that evening. I can imagine his disappointment. I wonder if it colored his feelings about reading thereafter? Great Expectations. A Dream Deferred. Many titles of both books and poetry speak to this story of a little boy believing that “learning to read” would immediately and fully open up the door to words, and books, and all the mysteries therein. Great expectations and dreams deferred are part of a writer’s life as well.

Seize the Opportunity!

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Something writer, actor, arts advocate, literacy advocate Julie Andrews stresses, no matter who she’s talking to — aspiring writers, young people wanting to become involved in the arts, whoever — is that one must do one’s homework, be fully prepared, and be ready to recognize and seize opportunities when they come along. I find it easy to look back and see opportunities missed, but I also find it amazing that when I start acting on the opportunities, having done the work to prepare myself, that other opportunities seem to fall into my lap. I seem to have come to a point in my life, in my writing life, when it’s full speed ahead. And that’s what is behind today’s book-title musing.

Just one more chapter before lights-out? Please?

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Although I expect those words can be frustrating to a parent who just wants a child to go to sleep, the words are still something that I think all parents should be glad to hear, because it means the child is reading. Not watching TV, not playing yet another level of a video game, not glued to the computer. It’s sometimes difficult to know how to encourage a child to read, when there are so many other enticing options. Emma Walton Hamilton’s book, Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment, provides a plethora of suggestions both of ways to get kids to read, and books suitable for every age level. Raising Bookworms is a title that has something to say to writers, as well.

Open your big blue/brown/hazel eyes…

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When I was a child, searching for something in my room, I’d eventually say, “I can’t find it!” and Mum would come into my room, say, “Open your big blue eyes…” and she’d quickly find whatever I was looking for. In later years, she would often lament that people don’t really look at things. They don’t really see. People tend to drive through our part of the prairie and say, “There’s nothing to see,” and Mum would say, with passion in her voice, “You have to look for the beauty here. It doesn’t come up and smack you in the face. You have to really look for it.” She and my Dad were good at looking for the beauty on our prairies. After retirement, they spent countless hours driving out on country roads, Dad with his camera with the telephoto lens, Mum acting as his “spotter”, and they’d come home with wonderful photographs of birds, animals, wildflowers, and equally wonderful stories of what they had seen, for they knew how to look and really see. Today, as I commemorate the first anniversary of Dad’s death (Mum died two months before him) I remember their delight in the things of nature, and their passion for the tiny evidences of beauty all around me, and I am grateful. And I find a message about writing in that.

How Do YOUR Writing Shoes Fit?

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The book title that caught my eye, and inspired this reflection on writing, is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. Although the edition I have is the 75th Anniversary Edition, I just bought it and read it for the first time this summer while I was in Walton-on-Thames, England. It says a lot for a book when it is still in print so many years after being published. I wonder how many of the plethora of books published for children in 2012 will still be around in seventy-five years?

Hanging On… and Letting Go

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The book title that inspired today’s post in my ongoing miniseries is Something to Hang On To, by Beverley Brenna (whose name has come up a couple of times on my blog this week!) The book is a collection of Young Adult short stories, on a variety of topics, some serious, including one heart-wrenching story that opens the book, Dragon Tamer, about the death of a boy’s father; some taking the reader into another culture, such as Gift of the Old Wives, which retells a Cree legend; and some just plain funny, such as Toe Jam, based on a true story of getting one’s toe caught in the vacuum cleaner (ow!). This title led me to some thoughts about writing.

Giggles Galore

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One of the chief objections a young reader had to the first version of my middle grade manuscript was that it wasn’t funny. She said she likes funny books. In the comments about genre-identity yesterday, Erik (about the same age as the reader mentioned above) said that he liked writing funny stuff. There’s a message there, and it’s the message I got from the title that suggested today’s post (a rather unlikely source, I must admit…)

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