by Rachel Toalson | Books
This week I’ve got two more middle grade readers that I thought were great reads.
The first is Kwame Alexander’s newest book called Booked. I was actually drawn into this book because of the cover, which has a soccer player on it. One of my boys really loves soccer, so I wanted to read the book and see if it was one I’d add to his summer reading list.
I found that the book was a little bit mature for him and, I think, other middle grade readers. If I had been categorizing this book, I might have put it in the young adult category, just because the language is a bit mature. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good book, because it definitely was. It’s just that I’ve come to expect certain things from middle grade literature. Something I’ve noticed is that romance seems to be popping up in the middle grade literature, and this is weird to me, because when I was a 10-year-old, I wasn’t even remotely interested in boys. So this book has an element of romance, but it also uses some mature language—words like hell and damn—that I just wasn’t comfortable with my 9-year-old reading just yet. Keep them innocent while you can and all that.
All that aside, Booked was a great read. It dealt with the issue of divorce and some of the bad things that can happen to you. The main character, Nick, is a soccer player, a really good one, and before a big game of his, he gets stricken with appendicitis. His parents are also in the middle of a divorce, so there’s a lot going on in Nick’s life.
One of the most enjoyable parts of the book was the voice of the main character. Nick is sort of a sarcastic kid, which makes the prose humorous. His dad is a linguistics professor, and Nick is tasked, every night, with the assignment to read his father’s dictionary and learn all the words in it, because his dad is a little obsessed with Nick pulling ahead of his peers in the vocabulary department. Their exchanges and Nick’s asides make for some great comedy in the book. I should mention, also, that this book was written in verse, which, if you’ve been around, you know I love.
The Thing About Jellyfish, by Ali Benjamin, was full of emotion and beauty and sorrow. Suzy, the main character, loses her best friend, Franny Jackson, during a summer vacation. Franny drowned, but that doesn’t make sense, because Franny could always swim, and so Suzy sets off on a quest to prove that Franny actually died because of a rare jellyfish sting. She becomes obsessed with her quest, effectively keeping her sorrow at bay.
I loved this book, because it looked at the crazy time kids go through, right around sixth and seventh grade, and brought all those issues—the ones where kids worry they’ll be too weird and they won’t have friends and things are never going to get better—and brought them to light. Suzy is kind of the odd girl out, and Franny was about her only friend. I also loved how Benjamin inserted so much information about jellyfish into the story. You could feel Suzy’s obsession in her research of the jellyfish. It was wonderful.
Here’s a passage that displays the sort of emotion that comes off the page and keeps a reader reading:
“I think about my hair, about the tangles I battle every morning. I have spent so many hours of my life trying to brush out tangles. But no matter how carefully I try to pull the individual strands apart, they just get tighter and tighter. They cinch together in all the worst ways, until they are impossible to straighten out. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but to get out a pair of scissors and cut the knot right out.
“But how do you cut out a knot that’s formed by people?
“I don’t like where this is going at all.”
I highly recommend both of these books for great summer reads—but maybe leave the first one for some older children.
Learning
Right now I’m pooling some resources, trying to learn as much as I can about the business of writing. One of the people I followed a while back is Tim Grahl, a book marketer who’s worked with people like Daniel Pink and Hugh Howey to successfully launch author careers. Grahl has a new free training series out called Hacking Amazon, and it’s written specifically for beginning authors. I’ve been watching the videos, even though I know most of the information he has to share, because I’ve been doing this for a while, but it’s always nice to have a refresher and be reminded of what matters in the business.
Sometimes there are so many business things to take care of, every day, that you can easily lose sight of what’s the twenty percent you absolutely need to do and what’s the eighty percent that you don’t really need to worry about right now. This video series had been great for reminding me of that.
Grahl is also the author of Your First 1,000 Copies: The Step By Step Guide to Marketing Your Book. You can learn more about Tim at timgrahl.com.
Personal
I promised you last week that over the next several weeks I’d be sharing my boys’ summer reading lists. I thought I’d start with my 9-year-old, who right now is my most voracious reader, but he’s also the oldest and so has been reading the longest.
Every summer we sit down and discuss summer reading lists, because I like to have a plan. My boys don’t really care one way or another—they’re probably always going to read—but I like to give them goals and help them achieve those goals. So this year, I let the boys pick out eight books they were going to read, and then I added seven books and two bonus books (which will earn them two extra dollars on their end-of-summer reward).
I had a bit of a hard time figuring out the books I wanted my 9-year-old to read, mostly because I’ve been reading such great books lately, and I wanted to make sure I took all the best and put them on his list. This is harder than it sounds. But here’s the list I came up with for him.
1. Just My Luck, by Cammie McGovern
2. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker
3. The Red Butterfly, by A.L. Sonnichsen
4. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
5. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
6. The Nest, by Kenneth Oppel
7. The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown
The two bonus books include
1. Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
2. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
I’m challenging him a bit with those bonus books, but I think he’s capable.
As a family, we are also going to read aloud four books:
1. Rules, by Cynthia Lord
2. Doll Bones, by Holly Black
3. A Little Princes, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman
Next week I’ll also talk about the audio books we’re going to read together this year.
I enjoy summer reading just as much as my boys do. We have instituted an hour-long Silent Reading time in our house, right after lunch, and so far it’s going magnificently.
Writing
Someone sent me a message this week asking about how to get started with a blog and whether I would recommend blogging. This is sort of a complicated question for me. I’ve been blogging for about three years now, posting every week. Some weeks that feels really easy for me, and some weeks, it feels like just another obligation.
It seems weird to say that blogging feels a little hard when we’re a writer, but what it boils down to, I think, is that blogging feels like a project all on its own. And I’m usually working on book projects. So recently I’ve changed my blogging techniques a little.
But what I would say to someone who is just starting out with blogging is to first ask yourself some questions:
Why do you want to blog?
How would it help you, if you’re doing it for business reasons?
What would you talk about?
One of the things I try to maintain with my blog is consistency. I post on the same day at the same time every week, so even though I don’t advertise that on Mondays at 10 a.m. there will be a new blog, people just get used to seeing writing from me on Mondays. Consistency also helps us develop a voice and a purpose and community in our blogging. I don’t recommend blogging just to blog, unless you’re doing it for your family memories or something. But I do feel like we all have something significant to share with the world, and blogging is a great place to start.
I use wordpress for my blogging, because it has a very friendly interface and is easy enough for someone like me to understand. But it’s really up to you what blogging platform you use. But I would highly recommend taking a deeper look at your reasons for blogging before you make the commitment—because it is another commitment.
Listening
I recently finished listening to a theatrical version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. It was produced by the BBC and included an entire cast of people. I enjoyed it so much. Even my kids would sneak downstairs when I was listening to it, because they wanted to hear it, too.
I plan on listening to the other two books in the trilogy, and I think I’ll probably enjoy them just as much as I enjoyed this one.
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by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
You know that scene in Cinderella where she’s in the kitchen trying to get things ready for the day, and on the wall there’s this collection of bells ringing incessantly, signaling that people who are depending on her (mostly because they’re lazy) need things? Every morning, my kitchen fills with its own chorus of little bells, too, except those bells are walking around in the form of two 3-year-olds, a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old, and I can’t just simply leave the room to get away from their clanging, because they have legs and will follow me to the edge of the world without asking any questions about where I’m going.
“Mama!” the 5-year-old will say in the whiniest voice I’ve ever heard (and that’s saying a lot. I’ve really cleaned up my act.). “I can’t find my shoes.”
He’s not even out of bed yet, so I’m pretty sure he hasn’t even attempted “looking,” which I put in quotations because “looking” for a 5-year-old consists of sometimes seeing what’s right in front of his face, sometimes not. He just tripped over one of those missing shoes, and he still hasn’t found them.
His bell is followed up closely by one of the twins saying, “Mama, my brudder beat me down the stairs.” If only I could turn back time.
Followed, almost in the same breath, by his twin brother saying, “Mama, I firsty. I need milk, Mama. Mama, I need milk. I firsty, Mama” without even the slightest pause so that I can let him know that his milk is already on the table if he would just “look.”
“Where’s my blue folder?” the 8-year-old will say, even though I’m not the one in charge of his blue folder and there’s a designated place for it and I can see it sticking out from that designated place right his very minute.
“Oh! I forgot (fill in the blank),” the 6-year-old says on a regular basis. Usually that fill-in-the-blank looks something like forgetting that he’s VIP student this week and he needs to bring a poster with pictures of himself and his family on it so that all the other students will know who he is and what he wants to be when he grows up. Or forgetting that he’s supposed to have his book club book finished today, and he still has 75 pages to read. Or forgetting that there was a birthday party he was invited to this weekend, and he didn’t get to go, and how can we possibly keep track of all this?
Get me a drink, I hungry, I can’t find my shoes, where’s my library book, please hold me just because, help me, carry me, push in my chair, where’s my folder, sign my papers, I’m cold, I’m hot, I’m hungry, I need my vitamins, bring me my blanket, where’s my backpack, can you turn on the light, I need more toilet paper, I want more, More, MORE.
With all these children and all their constant demands, sometimes I start feeling a little like Cinderella, except I’m a mama. Cinder-Mama. It’s like the fairy tale I always wanted, except it’s not.
Brush my hair, wash me off, wipe my bottom, what’s ten plus ten, I want my color book, the baby’s getting into the crayons, button my pants, tie my shoes, help me up, kiss this hurt, when’s dinner, can we go to the store because I have two dollars to spend, I need a snack, I can’t open the toothpaste, aw, man, it’s the minty toothpaste, I like the strawberry toothpaste, what are you doing? going to the bathroom? You don’t have a penis, where does your peepee come out?
There is something inherent in a mama that hears a need and that wants to meet it, desperately, right this minute. But the thing is, if I try to meet every single need in my house, I will go a little crazy.
Because one minute the 5-year-old will need someone to show him how to tie his shoes, again, and, at the same time, the 6-year-old will want help pouring the milk, because it’s a new gallon and I’m really thankful that he’s asking because the last thing I want is a whole gallon of milk dumped out onto the floor, but there’s no way in the world that I can be in two places at one time, and so one of those needs is going to have to remain unmet until I can manage it or he learns how to do it himself.
I tried to be in two places at once one time, and I ended up feeling resentful and angry that they would ask me to do so many things at the same time even though there was only one of me and six of them. So I had to take a step back. I had to breathe. I had to say it was okay that I couldn’t meet every single need the first time they asked. Or even the fifth time they asked. Or ever, sometimes (they did, after all, wish they could have gone to that party they missed. I was Cinder-Mama, not Fairy GodMama). It was good for them to learn how to wait. It was good for them to learn to do things for themselves. It was good for them to realize they were fully capable of doing what I could do.
[Tweet “Kids should learn how to wait. So the needs I can’t meet right this minute? Building character.”]
So they started tying their own shoes, because they figured out they could do hard things. They started pouring their own milk, even if it was a brand new gallon, because they knew they had permission to screw up and spill, as long as they cleaned it up. They started writing their own events on a calendar and waiting to be hugged and kissed and taking responsibility for their own backpacks and shoes and school folders.
They don’t always remember, of course. There are mornings when it still sounds like there are shrieking bells wrapped around my ankles. There are days they forget “mama” is not synonymous with “servant,” but they are learning, day by day by day, that they are fully capable of handling the world on their own.
No more Cinder-Mama. Except for my indescribable beauty, of course.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
“Are you going to go swimming tonight, Mama?” he says in that little-boy voice. It’s the 5-year-old, who likes to play with her hair. Who loves to snuggle. Who thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
All that doesn’t matter. She’ll still say no.
“Not tonight, baby,” she’ll say. Because she didn’t shave her legs or her bathing suit doesn’t fit yet (maybe it never will) or she’s just too tired today to deal with the emotional effort of trying to put on a swimsuit.
Because it takes great emotional effort to squeeze into that piece of spandex she keeps in her closet, where she can’t see it.
Those secret excuses—I’m just not ready to see what I look like, I’ll wait until I have a chance to lose more weight, no one wants to see this—go unsaid.
It’s okay, she tells herself. I’m still watching, so it’s not like they’re missing me. It’s still family time. I’m still present and fully engaged. I’m still there in the way it matters.
Every time she reads one of those articles urging women to just put on a swimsuit and get in the pool, this is what she tells herself.
Because, you see, it’s not as simple as just putting on a swimsuit and getting in a pool.
She’s had babies, and with every one of them, she added new marks, the ones that are almost invisible, almost unnoticeable, until they see daylight and start shining like they’re proud of their jagged lines, and people don’t need to see that. People don’t need to see the jiggly stomach she still carries five months, five years, fifteen years later. People don’t need to see those blue veins on the back of her knee.
God, she hates swimsuit season.
She does a pretty good job of hiding that disappointing body on a regular basis, with baggy shirts and hold-it-in undershirts and those workout pants that actually make her butt look a little bit good maybe.
Swimsuits are nothing of the sort. There is nowhere she can hide.
Children don’t understand these things, of course. They need other excuses—like she just doesn’t feel like it or she’s tired or she’d rather watch them having fun than join it. (Well, maybe not the last one. It’s too close to the truth.)
Her boys don’t care about the way she looks. They don’t care what other people think. They don’t care what she thinks, even.
Neither should she.
She knows this.
It’s just that it’s easier said than done, that putting on a swimsuit and getting in a pool. See, she is recovering from years of eating disorders, years of body dysmorphia, years of I-just-want-to-be-perfect-but-can’t.
It’s been years, a decade, more, but she is still recovering. She will always be recovering. This is her reality. No matter what they tell her, no matter what those body-empowerment proponents say, she still cares about having an attractive body, and she still cares about swimsuits showing the world that she doesn’t (at least not from her perspective).
Every year after babies were born, she slipped back into that perfection mode—gotta lose it fast, gotta get “it” back in record time, gotta somehow fit back into that spandex suit well before summer rolls around, even if the baby came in May.
Every year she could feel those old ghosts creeping in, telling her not to eat, telling her to stick a finger down her throat, telling her to reach for the laxatives. Just do it. It’s easy. You’ll be thin in no time at all. Remember?
She fought hard, too. She pressed through, every day, every hour, every second. She made it, sort of. Her hair was a little tangled and her clothes a little torn and she still walks with a limp she’ll try to hide.
But it’s not a once-healed, always-healed kind of thing. This is her body. This is her eyes. This is her criticism of something that would be beautiful on someone else.
Trying to stay in a constant state of body-appreciation instead of body-despising is really hard work for women like her. And there is no easy way out of this body-conscious state irritated by summers at the pool. There is only through.
She will have to go through.
She’s managed to avoid it, until now. But now they’re asking, every day, and she knows. She knows how this will go.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who can look their best at all…
After children
in a swimsuit
walking in broad daylight?
What all those “outsiders,” the ones who have never fought through anorexia or bulimia or dysmorphia, don’t understand that it’s not so much what other people think as what she thinks of herself, how she feels about that body wrapped up in a too-tight suit.
What does she think?
Well, she tries not to think about that.
So she makes her excuses for as long as she can. She stays out of the pool. She watches.
Her boys just keep asking (and thank God they do, because she can’t use those excuses indefinitely. They’ll never let her.).
And then, one day, her husband whispers in her ear, I think you’re beautiful. Just wear it for me. Just get in the pool and play with your boys.
And she thinks maybe, maybe, maybe she can.
Maybe she can.
She doesn’t look, can’t look, in the mirror, so she doesn’t know exactly what she looks like. These steps have to start small. This is how it must be for now. She’ll leave without looking, but that doesn’t mean she’s lost this war. Because she GOES.
She goes. She leaps. She soaks up the joy of those precious boys, who are just so excited that their mama is finally, finally, finally in the pool with them. Finally.
And Isn’t she beautiful? their eyes say.
Isn’t she beautiful?
And another day, another more courageous day, when she has the strength to look in that mirror and still go, she will see it, too.
Yes. She sure is beautiful.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
I usually make it my goal to read between 130 and 150 books every year. I don’t know that I’ll make that goal this year, because I’ve started doing some online courses to learn more about building a writing career, and that eats into the time I’ve set aside for reading and improving my craft (because everything I read, whether it’s critically or for pleasure, improves my craft).
Still, when people hear the number of books I read every month, they always express shock—probably because I’m the mom of six boys, and who has time to read so many when you’re a mom AND you work?
Well, here’s how I do it (and you can, too!):
1. Read aloud to your children.
We have multiple read-aloud times in our home. I read aloud to my twins and the baby while they’re having lunch (usually two picture books and a section from a middle grade chapter book). Right now we’re reading A.L. Sonnichsen’s The Red Butterfly. I read aloud to all my boys right before bed (right now we’re reading my Fairendale series—almost done with Episode 5).
Children love to hear stories, and this is a great way to not only introduce kids to longer reads but to fall in love with middle grade literature yourself. Middle grade books are great read-alouds most of the time.
2. Listen to audio books in the car.
Whenever we go on trips with our children, we bring a bunch of audio books. It’s super easy. Most libraries now have an e-audio book option, where you can download the book right to your phone and play it over your car speakers while you’re traveling. That way you don’t have to mess with CDs getting lost (which is always a plus in my house. Because we live in a house that includes a black hole).
We also listen to audio books when I’m fixing breakfast in the mornings and the boys are getting ready for school, and when I’m preparing lunch for my younger boys and they’re cleaning up their toys.
3. Get a shower speaker and listen to audiobooks while you get ready for work in the morning.
I usually do this every day (or at least when I get showers and actually find the time to put on makeup or brush my hair). (I use this shower speaker. It has great audio, great tone, and the battery lasts forever. And (best of all!) it’s affordable.Which you can’t say about every shower speaker out there.)
Some people say they’re not that great at listening to audio books. They don’t retain the story all that well. What I tell them is that they haven’t had enough practice. Listening to audio books well takes practice. I remember having a bit of a hard time at first, but after five years of practice, I’ve gotten really good at it—can even analyze books while I’m listening. My mind wanders every now and then, but audiobooks are also a great practice in focus.
4. Read while waiting in line…anywhere.
I find all kinds of little moments to read, because something I’ve learned is that I don’t need a whole lot of time to read a page or two. So when I’m waiting in line at the boys’ school to pick them up after the bell has rung, I have a book (usually poetry, because you can read in short snippets). When I’m sitting in the car waiting for my husband to get back out of the grocery store, where he went for that one item we needed and we didn’t have the energy to unpack all the boys for a “family outing,” I read. When I’m walking to check the mail, you guessed it, I read. I always have a book at the ready in my purse.
Now. This takes practice. You have to know your streets, because it’s easy to miss a step when you’re reading while walking. I know. I’ve tripped before, and it’s not pretty.
The point is, I read every moment I get. There’s always time to read, if we don’t have expectations for what it should look like.
5. Institute a Silent Reading time in your house.
Our family, in addition to its read-aloud times, has a Silent Reading time every afternoon following lunch (one hour) and every night before bed (15 minutes). All of us sit together in our library and read silently. This is a great way to flex kids’ reading muscles and help them prepare for reading their own books. We’ve had three early readers and are now working on our 4-year-old twins. They all pull out their books and read during these designated times. Our twins take a bit of redirection, because fifteen minutes is a long time for a 4-year-old to sit silently, but with practice, it’s become something we all really look forward to at the end of a busy day.
And (bonus!) it helps everybody go to bed much easier, because no one gets riled up during Silent Reading time.
6. Look for other places to read.
Sometimes we can cut out our social media time, because we know we spend entirely too much time playing on it. Sometimes we can cut out the amount of time we watch movies instead of opening a good book. Sometimes we can read with our kids at other points in the day.
I’m not saying that we should use every possible moment to read. It’s good for us to watch movies together (we’re still learning story!) and play around on social media, because it’s good to have community. But there is always time we can find in our schedule that we could spend with a good book.
Books and stories have a magical effect on us. We’ll certainly be glad we traded a bit of unfocused time for time spent within the pages of a story.
Week’s Prompt
Write as much as you can about the following word:
Sugar
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
The other afternoon I was sitting in our library reading a book, because it has a direct line to my 3-year-old twins’ room, and they’re not traditionally great nappers.
I guess they didn’t know I was watching, because one of them was hanging from his top bunk like a monkey, trying to swing into his brother’s bottom bunk. The other was laughing hysterically.
“Get back in your bed,” I said, startling him so much he lost his grip and crashed to the floor.
“You scared me,” he shouted as he was climbing back up the steps to his bed.
I didn’t feel sorry for him, though, because how many times have I told him not to hang off the side of the bed like that? At least twenty billion.
There is something I’ve noticed about my boys. When they think they can get away with something—not because they’ve gotten away with it before, ever, but because they think someone’s just not paying attention—they will do it.
It’s easy to understand in a house with so many kids and so few parent eyes, but there’s something they haven’t quite figured out.
This mom sees and knows everything.
So, in the interest of helping them out with this hard-to-understand mystery, I’ve compiled an easy-to-read list of everything a mom knows.
1. I know what you’re doing, even if I can’t see you.
Call it eyes on the back of my head, call it intuition, call it whatever you want. I know. I know that when you go to the bathroom, you are probably going to play with the plunger because you’ve done it six thousand times before. I know that when you go upstairs (and I know when you do), you will head straight for Daddy’s forbidden computer and that your inexperienced fingers will close out PhotoShop, along with the latest project your daddy forgot to save, on your way to Cool Math.
I know that when you think you escaped unnoticed from the house, you will immediately run toward the neighbor’s rock path you’ve been told not to touch. I know that when you disappear into the pantry, you are looking for the raisins, because they’re still spilled on the floor from the last time you tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak a snack three minutes after you’d eaten your lunch—which included your weight in watermelon. I know that if you beat me to the library by half a second there will already be fifty books scattered on the floor that you’ll try to hide by shoving them all under the couch.
I know.
2. I know you don’t think I’m paying attention, but I am. Always.
When that phone call comes through and you think my attention is split, you should know that I’m still paying attention.
I know what you’re doing on the stairs because I can hear the footfalls leading up to the baby gate you’ll dismantle in three seconds. I know the sound of the closet door opening means you think you can sneak Battleship from its hiding place and dump out those red and white pieces without getting caught.
I know that because it seems like I’m paying full attention to the phone conversation and not at all to you, you will try to get a cup out of the dishwasher and fill it with water you’ll spill three steps from the water dispenser, even though I gave you milk in your Thermos sixty seconds ago.
I know.
3. I know as soon as I leave the room you will think about doing what you’ve been told not to do.
I know that if I go upstairs to get your baby brother, you will try to take the lid off that LEGO container Daddy left on the counter so you can scatter the pieces into a land mine before I get back (and if you can’t get the lid off you will destroy the container).
I know that as soon as I go to the bathroom you will climb onto the table and steal that crayon you wanted from your brother. I know that as soon as I disappear to put your baby brother down for a nap you will open the refrigerator and try to stuff as many grapes as you can get into your mouth before I get back.
I know what’s in your mouth and the toy you snuck up to your bed for some naptime fun and the thing you’re thinking about right this minute.
4. I know quiet doesn’t always (hardly ever?) mean good.
I know that sometimes it means you’re coloring your carpet red with a crayon you found hidden in the cushions of the couch. I know it means you have unraveled the whole roll of eco-friendly paper towels because you wanted to make a paper bag for your cars. I know it means you’re probably trying to fit into a shirt for a six-month-old, even though you’re 3. Your quiet isn’t fooling me at all.
I know all of this mostly because
5. I know you.
I know your adventurous spirit that catapults you out the door and halfway down the road before your daddy and I can even get out of the kitchen. I know your creativity that turns a door into a canvas. I know your curiosity that puts a cup with a car submerged in water into the freezer to see what happens.
I know your playful nature that sees everything—a plunger, a roll of paper towels, butter knives—like it’s a new toy. I know how hard it is to tame the strong will that sees a challenge in every don’t-do-it.
I know you, all the wild and all the crazy and all the most beautiful pieces, too.
And guess what? I love it all.
But next time you decide to see what happens when you put a balloon in the toilet and try to pee on it, just remember, you will be caught. I promise.
A mom always knows.
So don’t even think about it.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
I recently finished two middle grade novels that I was reading my 4-year-old twins. They were both novels written in verse and both had the word “Red” in their title, which my 4-year-olds thought was really funny. Different stories, same word. It’s the little things that are amusing to kids.
The first story was called The Red Pencil and was written by Andrea Davis Pinkney. This story is about Amira, a girl from a Sudanese village that is attacked by the Janjaweed, a violent guerrilla group. Many in the village are killed. Amira and her family flee the village, and Amira begins to feel the bonds of her traditional culture clamping down around her. She wants to go to school. She wants to do many things. And she must find the strength to carry on amidst tragedy, disappointment and trial. It was a beautiful story of perseverance, hope and overcoming. Though many middle grade readers will not be able to empathize with Amira’s physical circumstances, they will be able to empathize with her love for learning, her fascination with art and her determination to work hard for what she has.
The Red Pencil is a sweet story about looking on every circumstance—good or bad—and asking what else is possible. It is the red pencil she receives at a camp that opens up the whispers of possibility in Amira’s life.
The second book was called The Red Butterfly and was written by A.L. Sonnichsen. This was the story of an orphan, Kara, who lives in China. She is eleven and spends most of her days in her tiny apartment with her mother, whom the people in her apartment complex see as old enough to be her grandmother. There is some mystery around her circumstances, which all comes crashing in on her when her sister from America comes to visit.
The Red Butterfly was a shockingly beautiful story about the hope of finding a home and not really knowing where that might be. Kara had a home she thought she wanted, but her mother had secrets. So she was forced to find a new home. In the middle of her uncertainty, she has to come to terms with her deformed hand, her dashed hopes and her new reality, while, at the same time, try to figure out who she is.
There are so many emotions that go into this story, and I think this quote will show you just why:
Mama would sit on a stool,
Crack the window
To let in the outside air
As she played
From memory,
Eyes closed,
Shoulders straight,
Body swaying
Forward and back,
As if she were a tree
Bending in a slow breeze
As if her fingers were leaves
Tapping sounds into the air
We sold that piano
Because food
Became more important
Than music.
Now, two years later,
Mama’s fingers can only
Run over the edge of the tabletop,
Remembering what it was like to be free.
This quote comes at the beginning of the story, and the entire book is filled with gems like this one. Both stories would make great summer reading reads for middle grade readers.
Learning
I recently finished a book called Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story Through Action, Emotion and Theme, by Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld. I know that some people have a slight aversion to plotting a novel, and I’ve spoken about this before. I used to write all of my stories as a sort of let’s-just-see-what-happens kind of thing. But I realized that I would end up with a lot of really good scenes but not really necessary scenes (and there’s a difference). And while this served a sort of purpose if you think about it in the terms of getting to know your characters better, it also meant that I was spending more on my stories than I really needed to. So my plotting has evolved since then, and I try to make sure that each scene has all the necessary pieces to it.
This book was really helpful in breaking down what should be present in each scene so that we can ensure that readers will continue reading and not check out or feel bored or decide the book’s not really what they expected. One of the authors is an expert on plotting and the other is an expert on writing scenes, and I felt like they made a really great team. This book was full of great information about how to plot out a scene in a way that makes it irresistible, which is what we always hope as writers. I think any writer, no matter where they are on the spectrum from novice to expert, would benefit by reading this book, if even only for the reminder that every single scene counts, and we have to make the most of them. Writers compete with things like television and YouTube videos, and we have to work harder now to get the attention of our readers and keep it.
You know, when I’m reading a book and a notification pings on my phone, depending on the book, I have to work really hard to not immediately pick up my phone and see why someone texted me. I want my books and every scene to be the kind that people can’t put down, even if their phone is blowing up. This book will help any writer do that.
I’ll definitely be reevaluating all of my scenes in all the books I have yet to publish, even the ones I’ve marked as “final final drafts.”
Personal
I’m a big proponent of getting books in kids’ hands and encouraging them to read. Every summer I sit down with my boys and make a summer reading list for each of them. I pick half the books on the list, and they pick the other half. We have some guidelines around that, of course. The 9-year-old is expected to read chapter books, not picture books. But the 5-year-old will probably have a few picture books and some early reader books on his list, since he’s still getting his feet under him when it comes to reading.
I generally try to make a list of 15 books they’ll read with their actual eyes, four books they’ll listen to on audio, and three books that we’ll all read together. We usually end up reading more than that together, but I don’t like to pressure us if we decide this is a summer to hang out at the pool together instead.
This year, my 5-year-old, 7-year-old and 9-year-old will be reading fifteen books each. My 4-year-olds will be reading as many books as we can get to, since they’re not yet reading on their own. But reading time in our house is really important, so they’ll at least get four picture books a day.
People have asked me whether we reward our kids for reading so much or if we just say “hey, good job.” I like to encourage more reading when they’ve finished their list, so what we’ll do at the end of every summer, is this: we’ll take a trip to a secondhand book shop and let our boys pick out as many books as they can get up to a certain dollar amount. They get super excited about this, and I don’t think the reward is the only reason they finish their summer reading lists. And if it does, well, the reward is more books. So I feel like that’s a win-win.
I’ll be sharing in the next few weeks the summer reading lists of each of my boys, and we’ll also be hearing from each boy about the books they’re most excited about reading this summer.
Writing
I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably say it again, but I never really thought I would be one to write something as involved as fantasy.
My first fiction series has released in digital form, and will release soon in hard copy form, and I’m just so flabbergasted how I got here. I typically write middle grade realistic fiction, but when the idea for Fairendale came along, I started to get a little excited. And also a little nervous, because I didn’t know for sure if I was up to the task. Could I really create a whole imaginary world around all of these characters?
Writing fantasy is not easy.
There are so many things you have to brainstorm. There are other lands, and the boundaries of those lands, and there are timelines and family trees and histories and how the lands came to be called what they’re called, and all the magical rules that the land is bound by, and then you have the storylines, and when you have a series as massive as Fairendale, there are so many storylines. I keep very detailed notes, pages and pages of open loops that will need to be closed by the end of the series. So much planning goes into writing a story like this one. So much care.
But when I think back to a year ago, when Fairendale was just a tiny little hint of an idea in my head, I think about how it felt so very far out of my league, and yet I decided to go ahead and try. And I surprised myself. I did it.
So I want you to know that you have no idea what you’re capable of until you actually try. That thing you secretly want to do? Just give it a go. It’s okay if it doesn’t look exactly like you thought it would. Sometimes that just means it’s better. So go ahead and try.
Watching
My boys and I recently watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the one with the creepy Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, and I was struck, as I have been every time I’ve watched the movie or read the book, by the wonderful imagination that created this story.
The story itself is wonderful. Rich and poor. Entitled and hard working. Disrespectful and respectful. It was clear what Roald Dahl was trying to teach his young readers.
But the movie is so full of color and music and creativity that it’s just amazing. I guess I had forgotten how entertaining it was. Even though it was produced in 2005, my kids still loved it. They’ve read the book, of course, because we don’t allow them to see movies until they’ve actually read the book, and the movie brought the story to life. It was a great experience for all.
Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library. If you ever have any questions about great books to read or the craft of writing or creativity, leave them in the comments, and I’ll answer them in future episodes.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
It’s summertime!
My favorite part of year, because I get to have everyone at home all the hours of all the days, fighting over who gets the one red LEGO pieces out of the 14 billions that exist in our house.
I love my boys fiercely. But man are they hard on a house (and a sanity) in the summertime.
Here are 13 pictures to show how much havoc boys can wreak on summertime.
This happened about half an hour after they got out of school. The first place they went was their bedroom, to pull out all their stuffed animals so they could celebrate with them. We’ve been finding stuffed animals all over the house.
You see? This stuffed animal is doing me a favor, though. She’s guarding those writing notebooks, because everyone knows what happens when you leave a notebook with a pen stuck in it within reach of two 4-year-old twins. (No, your notebooks won’t get ruined, don’t worry. Your walls will.)
This is all the junk they brought home from school. I still haven’t had the energy to sort through it all, because every time I try to, I look at the counter to see that someone else had the sorting idea except they were much less competent than I am.
These are all the workbooks they brought home. I mean, I’m really grateful to have something to do with my boys, to make sure they don’t lose all the learning they did this year. The problem is, they seem to always forget how to put things away. So I guess I’ll just have to get used to staring at a pile like this.
Or sitting on something like this. Hey, at least they love workbooks, right?
This was a perfectly organized craft table once upon a time. We set it up, because we believe in free expression, and the boys really, really love doing crafts. But they really, really hate cleaning up crafts, and so do I. Which means this craft table might not last very long.
There’s another rogue stuffed animal, next to the cup with the crazy straw that I just picked off the floor, where the 16-month-old was headed straight for it. Disaster averted. (Ten minutes later, someone knocked over an open gallon of milk, so, honestly, I would have taken the cup over the gallon, but, hey, boys don’t do anything half-heartedly.)
Swimsuits are the staple of summertime. The problem is, they wear them so much I don’t even get to wash them. They put their swimsuits on as soon as they get up, and they don’t take them off until after we’re done at the pool, and then they do it all over again the next day. I asked this boy why his pants were crackling as he walked. He said it’s because he toots too much in them. Which is also probably true.
When they’re not wearing their swimsuits, they’re wearing regular clothes out in the rain, (1) because the only time they wear regular clothes is when it’s raining and (2) because I’m so desperate to get them outside, yes, I let them dance in the rain. It’s been raining a lot here in Texas, and I’ll do anything to save my sanity.
Toys everywhere. I should just get used to this one, but you know what? I never do. Every year I want to throw all of our toys away and just start over from scratch. But look how precious he is, standing with his wooden blocks.
You think stepping on LEGOs is bad? You should try stepping on this guy, which I did a few minutes ago. I think my foot is about to fall off. (And, yes, those are popcorn kernels smashed into the floor. We had popcorn last night and someone was too lazy to vacuum the carpet.)
The biggest problem in the summertime is attention span. This photo was taken exactly five minutes after he asked to play with the LEGOs. I guess he decided reading was more fun.
This is, hands down, my favorite part of summer. Not the LEGOs, the masterpieces. My boys are so incredibly creative, and I just love stumbling upon creations like this from the 9-year-old who wanted to be a robotics creator for half a second before he decided, nah, he’d rather design video games (he’s got a writing notebook filled with set designs already, so it’s too much work to change careers now).
While summertime presents some challenges in the way of a clean house and working from home, it also presents some great opportunities to rest and be a family and marvel in the amazing ingenuity of kids.
I guess I’ll take the latter for today. At least until they start fighting over who gets to sit on the couch for silent reading time, even though there’s room enough for five.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
We all gathered on the same two acres where my sister and brother and I grew up, though the house we lived in for seven years no longer sits on the land. Another marks its place instead, wider, longer, newer.
Fajita meat smoked on the island in the middle of the kitchen. A bowl of my mom’s potato salad hugged the edge of the counter, a metal spoon rising out of it. A cake, frosted in white, covered in candy mustaches, bleeding red along the sides, waited to be cut.
It said, “Happy Father’s Day.”
I’m not a cake person, but my eyes would catch on those words every time I passed by the island. Happy Father’s Day, it said. Happy Father’s Day.
All day long I felt something pinching at the corners of my existence. All day long I shoved it back down where it belonged, hidden and safe in a heart that had come to terms with this, truly. All day long I tried to forget about my rocky relationship with the word “father.”
But it’s not something a fatherless child can so easily forget.
///
My memories of my father, especially the first ones, are vague and hazy and uneven. I remember looking up to him and remembering how tall he was, like a giant. I remember watching everything he did with awe and adoration, like he was the very definition of a hero. I remember the way he smiled, his eyes crinkling up in a way that made you want to do whatever you could do to elicit another, because they were so few and far between.
I remember hands that would hold me when crossing a road, so I would be safe, and hands that would smack me for crying harder when he threatened to give me something to cry about. I remember tall glasses of milk with butter biscuits and the mess of a kitchen my mom would have to clean up after my father decided to cook. I remember a bright yellow truck and swimming in a murky lake and words that could sting worse than his hands.
I remember standing beneath a cover of trees, the wind pulling at my dress, whipping it against my knees and calves, while he climbed on the back of his motorcycle. I asked him when he would be back. He said nothing, only smiled and drove away. I watched him until I could not see that motorcycle anymore, until I could not see him anymore.
And then I remember gone.
///
It took him a long time to come back, but he did. He came back and then he went away again, and then he came back and went away again. After a year of his being gone, my mom told us we were moving.
To Ohio, she said.
To be together, she said.
Like a real family, she said.
We cried and protested, because we didn’t want to leave our friends, and we’d never been out of the state of Texas, but we went in the end. We had no other choice. Being a real family was too alluring.
My mom settled us into the largest house we’d had, or at least that’s how my memory tells it, even though I can’t remember the rooms all that clearly, because a veil dropped over my memory that year, as if my life had been a candlelit movie set until a move to Ohio turned it into a darkened theater, with only flashes of clarity.
But what didn’t happen in the Promised Land was we weren’t together. We weren’t a family. Nothing changed.
My father’s absence in that year carved a jagged hole in my heart. I tried to be the best I could be, so he would come home. I tried to make the best grades, tried to have all the right friends, tried to be perfect, tried to be less of an inconvenience, tried to prove I was worthy of love. But nothing I did could bring him home.
We left Ohio with failure whipping across our backs, and I would work harder in the years that came after, always trying to prove I was somebody. Somebody great, somebody noteworthy, somebody who deserved a loving father who stuck around.
The harder I worked, the larger the hole grew and the harder I worked and the larger the hole grew and the harder I worked. It was a cycle that could not be tamed.
I fell fast and furious into it.
///
I was a seventh grader when my step-dad showed up at the front door with two large pizzas and met us for the first time. He was a young blue-eyed buzz-cut-haired man who treated my mom like she was something special, and as much as we loved that about him, we could not forgive him, at the time, for taking my father’s place. And we made it hard on him.
We shouted our disrespect, and we fought with our hands and our hearts and our words, and we told him we didn’t want him to live with us, never ever ever. We did everything we could think to do to make sure that our father’s space was untouched. Saved, if you will. Because our father might one day return.
It’s hard for a kid to let go of that dream. It’s hard for a kid to let another man step into the place of one who should have loved them unconditionally, recklessly, forever and always just because they shared his blood and genes and the long legs and thin lips and straight hair.
But my stepdad stuck around. He fought for our hearts. He picked up all the pieces my father left and said we could be his. We could be loved. We could be good enough.
My stepdad walked me down the aisle, and he sat in the waiting room the day all my sons were born, and he calls my sons his grandsons, even though they share none of his blood. He has shown me what it means to be a father.
It means putting a heart back together with Duct tape and calling it spectacular anyway.
///
My husband is one of the most hands-on fathers I know. He cares for our children for half a day every day. He plays with them, he raises them, he speaks life into them. I watch him sometimes with a mixture of love and awe, because I never knew that a father could be like that. So hands-on. So forgiving. So involved and heroic and wonderful.
I never knew a father’s love could be so spectacularly life-changing—not just for the ones who are the recipients of it, but for the ones who are watching it unfold around them.
A father, in my world, had only ever picked up and left, moving on to another family—one that was better, easier, more worth the work of sticking around. But healing crept into my heart, watching my husband. Not just because he was a phenomenal father but also because he messed up.
He messed up. My father messed up. We all mess up.
A father has a tough job, this being a hero to the ones who look to him for truth and love and identity. Some fathers aren’t up for the task. Some are. Some try. Some don’t so much. Some step into the role and play it for all it’s worth. Some are too afraid to even toe it.
And some? They just don’t even know where to start.
///
So Father’s Day. It’s not an easy day for me. I always feel a bit guilty that I only really call my father once a year, on Father’s Day. Sometimes I don’t even do that. Sometimes it’s just a text. Sometimes the whole day goes by and I’m so busy with my husband and boys that I forget to even text.
Part of the problem, see, is that my father is not the first person I think of on father’s day. I think of the man who stuck around when the going got hard and I turned into a raging teenager. I think of the man who stood there, stoic, when I called him an idiot because he wouldn’t let me go see my boyfriend. I think of the man who spun me around the dance floor during the father/daughter dance the day I married.
Father’s Day isn’t always a simple day in the lives of the fatherless ones. Some of us have blood fathers who gave up and called it quits, and that damaged something deep inside, told us we weren’t worthy of the effort it takes to be a dad. Some of us have fathers who left in other ways, like death or suicide or an accident that left him inaccessible to us. Some of us never even knew our dads.
We were hurt by our dads. We still carry the scars. Maybe we haven’t quite forgiven them.
And so when it comes time to celebrate dads, we say, oh, well, it’s just another day in my life, because I never really had a dad anyway.
But there is something I have learned in the years between that vulnerable 11-year-old and this woman I am today, and it is this: Dads come in many different shapes and sizes, and the ones we think of on Father’s Day aren’t always the ones who scientifically contributed one half of who we are.
The fathers of our heart look like teachers and coaches and friend dads and stepdads and fathers-in-law and mentors. They look like the ones who step into our lives when others step out. They shape us the same as any dad should, even though they didn’t have to. They fill us. They rebuild us. They are dads.
And so, for Father’s Day, I choose to thank all those men who step into the lives of the fatherless ones and teach men how to be men and women how to be loved. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your love.
Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers of our heart.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
As writers, we hear a whole lot of talk about this “voice” thing. What is voice? How do you find it? When do you know you’ve found it?
Well, unfortunately, I can’t tell you exactly what it is. What it’s not, though, is somewhat easier to identify:
What voice is not:
1. The imitation of another writer.
2. Contrived.
3. Difficult.
Sometimes, when we’re wading through a story we’re trying to tell, and we feel like it’s maybe the hardest story we’ve ever told before, it could be that we’re fighting against our own natural voice. I used to want to write these posts on this writing blog in a really intellectual way, like I was a professor imparting wisdom to all her students. But my voice is a more laid-back one. I like to crack open my life and share examples from that, not from all the literary voices who are out there—because I can only speculate about what was learned and gleaned by them, but when it comes to my own life, I know exactly what was learned and gleaned.
I also used to fight against my natural poetic bend, because a creative writing professor in college had called me “melodramatic.” But I know now that he wasn’t correct. Maybe, at 19, my poetic bend wasn’t quite as polished as it is now, but I’ve always been poetic. Even when I was little, I would speak in poetic sentences. When I was only 9, I discovered my mom’s 1,000-page anthology of Emily Dickinson poetry—and fell in love with it—and was sold on the— absolute beauty of poetry.
(The dashes—in case you didn’t know—is a trademark of Dickinson’s poetry. This is my voice—and yet it’s not—because I’m using dashes—where I normally wouldn’t.)
So while I can’t tell you exactly what your voice sounds like, I can tell you some of the practices that might uncover your own unique way of writing. They’re really pretty simple.
1. You have to practice.
This is probably the best thing you can do for your voice. No one is going to find your voice except for you. If you’re practicing day after day after day, you’re going to find it, even if you aren’t really looking. Actually, you’ll probably find it sooner if you’re not looking, because if you’re looking and you’re thinking about it as you’re writing, then your voice will probably go into hiding, because all those internal editors will come out and start saying you need to make this sound a little more like Hemingway or Faulkner or maybe Jacqueline Woodson here and Rainbow Rowell there.
[Tweet “No one can tell you what your voice is. You find it by writing consistently.”]
2. It’s okay to emulate.
For a time. That means it’s worthwhile to study some other authors and try to get a feel for their voice. Something I like to do every now and then is read a passage of text I have in a document and try to guess who wrote it. Some of the old classic writers have quite amazing voices. Faulkner is one of my favorites. He wrote differently in all of his novels, but one of my favorites is As I Lay Dying. Each character in it has his own voice (which should happen in fiction, by the way—there’s your voice, but there’s also your character’s voice. They should be two different things. But before you can write the voice of a character, you have to be familiar with your own.).
Test yourself. Study the masters. But don’t try to emulate them for long, because it’s disingenuous to your own voice—and the world needs your unique way of telling stories.
3. Keep a journal.
The best thing I ever did for finding my voice was taking out a physical journal and writing by hand every evening. I did it every evening for a year, and those writings became a book, but they also became a better grasp on what my real voice sounded like. So much of our writing today is done on computers, but writing by hand is a great way to slow your hand down enough to listen to the voice that’s speaking inside your mind, which is the voice that holds the essence of your true voice.
4. Remember that your voice will be unique.
Comparisons are out. Don’t sound like Wilkie Collins? That’s alright. You’re not Wilkie Collins. Don’t sound like Salman Rushdie? Perfectly fine. You’re not him, either. You’re you, and you have to be okay with not sounding like anyone else.
I’ll be honest. This isn’t always easy. There have been a number of times I have read an essay that some other blogger has written (or a song or a book), and I’ll think, Man, I wish I could have said it exactly like that. The most recent example of this was a Kelly Clarkson song called “Piece By Piece” that felt like it was written about my life. Right after I heard it, I sat down to try writing a song that said the same thing in the same powerful way. I gave up after a few hours, because I have my style and she has hers. I have my voice, and she has hers.
At the end of the day, the only thing that will help us along the way to discovering our voice is to practice—and to quit comparing, to quit trying to be like all the other people. We have a unique talent, and we have a unique way of telling stories.
[Tweet “We have a unique talent, and we have a unique way of telling stories.”]
We just have to uncover it.
Week’s prompt
Write what comes to mind when you read the following quote:
“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.”
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It’s the fourteenth time he’s come to our room tonight, and we still have to get up at 5 in the morning to get anything done, so his daddy leads him out and says, “It’s time for you to go to bed, for the last time.”
“But I don’t have school,” he says, as if we didn’t just have this conversation fifteen minutes ago. “It’s my summer break.”
Oh, well, in that case, why don’t you stay up all night, and, while you’re at it, go ahead and disregard all the rules, because IT’S SUMMER VACATION!
When I tilt my head and squint my eyes just so, I can almost understand why they would equate summer vacation with do-whatever-I-want time, because summer means they are no longer trapped at school for seven whole hours, listening to someone else giving instructions. They don’t have to write their name on fifty math or reading or science worksheets, and they don’t have a half-hour time limit on lunch and they don’t have to finish all their work before they get to do the fun stuff like reading and drawing and playing.
But what’s getting old in my house is that every day there’s another fight—not because we’re coming up against new territory. No. We’re coming up against the same old territory that the boys have forgotten because apparently summertime is synonymous with short-term memory loss.
Dang summertime.
Sometimes I wish summertime meant exactly what they think it means—relaxation of the rules. I really do.
But last time I relaxed the rules and let them have a little more freedom, they pulled out the economy-sized glitter I didn’t even know we had for some horrifying glitter projects we’re still cleaning up, a year later. Also, the 8-year-old somehow climbed to the top of the bathroom door, where he positioned a cup of water so it would fall on someone’s head when they opened the door. And someone else put thumbtacks in the twins’ booster seats.
So no. Rules still intact.
I wrote a note for my boys, reminding them of the most-frequently-forgotten rules. Feel free to use this letter as many times as you need. I’ve already read it to them twenty-six times today, because that’s how often they’ve forgotten.
Dear kids,
It’s summertime. Not I’m-a-grownup-now time.
Unfortunately, that means there are still rules in our house. Here are some you seem to have forgotten.
1. No, you may not snack all day.
We just had breakfast, and you ate twelve pancakes and five eggs. How in the world are you still hungry fifteen minutes later? That’s called boredom, son. Boredom is not a good excuse to eat. Get thee outside. Thou shalt dig in some dirt. Or do art (without glitter). Or read one of your books. Or chew on your fingers. Whatever keeps you out of the refrigerator. Because, good Lord. The grocery store only has so much food.
2. Close the door behind you.
This rule has been in place since you were old enough to walk, but you’ve conveniently picked now, when it’s so hot it’s painful to wear clothes, to forget? That’s called irony, kids. It’s ironic that you’ve forgotten how to close a door in the middle of summer.
Here. I’ll help you out. Closing is the opposite of opening. So, if you pull the door to open it, you’ll push the door away from you to close it. Push it away from you. Away from you. Away from you. There. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of a door closing. Amazing, isn’t it?
Now that we’ve had this nice little refresher, next time you leave the door open, I’ll take a portion of the electricity bill out of your college fund. You won’t be laughing when you’re 18 and you don’t have enough money to pay for your first semester of books (because, by the time college rolls around, that’s about what the money we’ve saved will be worth. If you keep forgetting the close the door, it’ll pay for your first dinner out.).
3. No, you may not stay up all night.
Believe it or not, even though you’re not going to school for the time being, we are still concerned that you get enough sleep. Because we love you, and we know sleep is important for you to grow and function well. Also (mostly) because you turn into a horrid monster when you haven’t had enough sleep. So turn out the light. Put away the book.
And for God’s sake, stop coming to our room when we’re almost asleep, asking if we remember where you left your special pencil with the blue eraser. Some people want to get some sleep around here.
4. Things that were not allowed before are also not allowed now.
This would be things like walking across the table with dirty, dirty feet; getting five games out that, all together, have a total of forty-thousand pieces; sneaking onto the computer to play your Cool Math game when a parent is not present and before you’ve earned your technology time.
Nope. Still not allowed in summer.
What? Every other kid gets to do what you can’t? Well, it’s too bad those aren’t your parents. You got stuck with us. It’s a hard knock life.
5. Any mess you make, you still clean it up.
What’s that? You dumped out all the glitter on accident? Well, it’s a good thing you know how to wipe off a table and sweep a floor, so get to it.
Wait, you want to play outside with your friend, but you were playing throw-them-in-the-air-and-see-where-they-fall with the markers? Welp. You know the rules. Clean it up first.
You don’t like this game and want to play a different one? CLEAN IT UP.
6. You may not wear your swimsuit for more than 20 days in a row.
It’s time for a dress code, kids. I know your swimsuits are comfortable and you’re hoping that, by wearing them every hour of every day, we’ll say that, oh, look, it’s time to go to the pool, but no. A swimsuit is not an appropriate choice for 20 consecutive days. I’ll give you five. Maybe even six.
It’s been longer than that, so let me have them. Let me have them. LET ME HAVE THEM. I just need to wash them, and then you can have them for another six days. Now. Go get your underwear on. Remember the other unspoken rule: No skivvies, no service.
7. Pool time is not bath time.
I know, I know. Chlorine, soap, what’s the difference? It’s so fun to play in the pool and pretend it’s a bath, and it’s no fun to come home and get wet again in a tiny little bath tub. But the thing is, chlorine. And kids peeing. And all those other bodies.
A dip in the pool does not qualify for a bath. Get on out. Come home. And wash those smelly armpits (you too, kids.).
8. If you know the rules and break them, there will (still) be consequences.
I know it’s hard to believe that your parents are still enforcing these stupid rules even though it’s summertime and you should really only be experiencing great freedom and wonderful fun, but you see kids? Consistency is important, too. Without consistency, you would feel like you were just trying to navigate life without an anchor tethering you to reality. Living life without an anchor isn’t as much fun as you think. Just ask any kid without a parent.
I know these rules seem ridiculous and arbitrary, but we enforce them because we want you to have the best possible family life experience you can. We have them because, more than anything, we love you.
Now. Go play outside so I can have a little quiet time and try to remember why these rules are so important.
