by Rachel Toalson | Books
I’ve been sitting on this book for a while, because I could not find words to accurately describe it. And even now, the only ones I can come up with are lovely, jarring, and hopeful.
They might seem like contradictory terms to use, but that’s because Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, a Printz Honor book, dealt with a tough subject: teenage rape. It evokes a sense of dread, followed by a sense of sorrow, followed by a small glimmer of hope for a girl who would stand up for herself against those who believe that a girl’s body is made to be used.
My love for this book might be explained somewhat because I was, at the same time, reading Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. This is a big deal. And because I experienced two instances of near rape when I was a teenager and when I was a college student, Speak impacted me in a profound way.
Not to mention, Anderson is a master of language, intriguing character, and, even with such a heavy subject, humor. Melinda, the main character, was a spunky girl, in spite of what had happened to her. She did not refer to what had happened in the beginning, but you could feel it in an impending sense of trauma. I loved the tension of that and how much Melinda tried to overcome it on her own.
Here are three things I liked most about this book:
- The main character. As I’ve already mentioned, Melinda was spunky, even though she was depressed about the traumatic circumstances she’d had.
- The mystery. A bit of mystery was planted early, leaving the reader wondering why Melinda’s friends had all stopped talking to her. I love (and yet hate) when authors utilize this technique, because it makes the book very difficult to put down (and in my house if you can’t put down a book, there are all sorts of things that can happen in the meantime).
- The symbols. All throughout the book, Melinda was trying to get this tree right in her art class. It was a beautiful image, and in order to tell you why, I’d have to use spoilers, which I don’t want to do. So you’ll just have to read it for yourself.
Here’s an example of Melinda’s quirky, endearing personality, from the first line of the book:
“It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.”
And here’s one of my favorite parts:
“The first ten lies they tell you in high school
1. We are here to help you
2. You will have enough time to get to your class before the bell rings
3. The dress code will be enforced
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.”
Anderson did a phenomenal job capturing life for a teenager and dealing with such a traumatic subject. It should be required reading to better understand rape culture and the propensity of victims toward silence (and Krakauer’s book mentioned above would be great, too).
The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to it, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
by Rachel Toalson | Books
I’m a big fan of bell hooks’s poetry, and when I found one of her memoirs on a recommended reading list for good memoirs, I immediately marked it down on my reading list. I love memoirs that are told with poetic language and simplicity, and hooks’s has both.
bone black: memories of girlhood is the story of a girl growing up black—the things that were expected of her, the ways she was different, and what that told her about the culture in which she found herself. It was engaging, lyrical, and deeply introspective.
Some moments I found myself relating to her stories and thoughts and feelings, though I did not grow up in her culture or her time period, and other times I found myself mourning for her, as is the case in this passage about the library:
“We are not allowed to take books home. There is no money to replace them if they are lost. I am a good reader, careful with books, a library helper. I take as many books home as I like. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie and Alcott’s Little Women—and every other Alcott book. I find remnants of myself in Jo, the serious sister, the one who is punished. I am a little less alone in the world.”
On the one hand, I relate to finding herself in these books. On the other, my experience at the library was to bring as many books home as I wanted, though, like her family, my family would not have been able to replace the lost books. I am only glad that my mom didn’t let that get in the way of what she knew: that a child is changed in reading.
Here are three things I enjoyed most about this memoir:
- The chapters read like essays. I loved that the story wasn’t completely linear, but hooks began each chapter with a different topic and then explored that in the best way she knew how, a way that followed her train of thought. Some of the chapters even used different points of view—like third person instead of first. It gave the book an unusual feel and drew me even deeper into the story.
- Her ambiguity mixed with her specificity. Sometimes hooks wrote very vaguely about certain events in her childhood, and other times she wrote very specifically. She used this device in a masterful way that communicated suspense and trauma. And for the reader it provided both a drawing in (the specificity) and an intriguing separation (the ambiguity).
- The dialogue was never placed in quotations. What this denotes, for me, is that it was a summary of what was said. When dialogue in memoirs is placed in quotations, I always wonder, as a former journalist, how accurate it really is. Were they taking notes as this happened? Of course there is room for error and memory quirks in memoir, but I appreciated that hooks did not use quotations and simply delivered the dialogue in her own voice.
bone black is a short memoir and a quick read, but it’s full of wisdom, insight, and beauty.
The book mentioned above has an affiliate link attached to it, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on it and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
by Rachel Toalson | Books
I know there’s a lot of debate about whether or not a writer should brainstorm a story in the first place. But let’s put that debate aside, for now, because this resource might be the one to convince you that it’s actually worth your time to plan out a story before you begin it.
Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel, by Lisa Cron, was one of the best writing books I’ve read all year. It’s about exactly what the title suggests: a way to write novels that hooks into a reader’s brain and won’t let them go.
I was first introduced to the genius of Lisa Cron several years ago when I read her other book, Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence. This book was fantastic, too, so I knew, when I saw that Cron was coming out with a new book, I would want to add it to my writer resources.
This one, believe it or not, was even better than Wired for Story. I’ve not read a book that details the brainstorming of a novel as efficiently as this one. Cron has you diving deeply into a single character’s backstory, which seems, at first glance, like it doesn’t really matter, because everyone tells you a book shouldn’t be bogged down with backstory, right? Well, backstory is what creates the story in the first place. It also happens to be what makes readers care about a story and its characters.
Cron includes exercises that will help you create the proper backstory so that you’ll have a compelling novel at your fingertips. I took so many notes and adjusted my brainstorm document based on Cron’s recommendations, because they all felt right to me. I write somewhat intuitively, but I also spend quite a bit of time brainstorming my novels before I begin them. The notes I took from this book will allow me to streamline that brainstorm process even more efficiently.
Chapters include subjects like the who, the why, the worldview, and where your novel should begin. Cron details things like the importance of figuring out past scenes that may or may not make it into a story—because, as in real life, the more you know about a character and their personality and why they do what they do, the more connected you’ll feel to them. And, as a writer, the faster you’ll be able to write their story.
What I liked most about this book was that Cron didn’t just teach the concepts she outlined. She also included a section called “What to do,” where she detailed what authors should do in each step of the brainstorm process. I found this wonderfully helpful and added all the exercises to my own brainstorm document.
She also provided readers with a scene card that will help in brainstorming what happens in each scene and why. And, in addition to all that, Cron included a friend’s process—showing how a novel would be brainstormed from abstract concept to ready-to-write-a-first-draft outline. Sometimes we think that an author has an idea for a story and then just writes it. It’s not that simple, and it was helpful watching an author work out each step of Cron’s process on the page.
I will never brainstorm another novel without Cron’s method. I see it saving me so much time and, in the process, giving me a more efficient grasp on the story I’m trying to tell. I highly recommend Story Genius to those who want to write a great book and save themselves time doing it.
The above is an affiliate link. I only recommend books I find valuable myself. I don’t even actually talk about the books I don’t find valuable, because I try to forget I wasted time on them.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
We’ve been reading, reading, reading in the Toalson home, and two of my boys have just finished Unbound, by Ann E Burg, a short middle grade novel written in verse. I read it a couple of months ago, and this allowed us to have conversations about the subject matter, which is slavery and the escape of a slave family from masters who had authority to separate and sell them.
I loved this book because of the themes that ran through it, namely that people can still be heroes, even when they aren’t calling attention to themselves. There were several heroes in this story who remained slaves but helped others escape. It was not only a wonderfully accurate look at an important time in our history but an inspirational account of what one slave family did to remain together.
Here are three things I enjoyed most about this book:
- The musicality of the language. Burg is a masterful poet (she’s written two other novels in verse and has really honed her style and expertise through practice). This novel included some dialect, but it was not difficult to figure out what characters were saying. In fact, I read this one aloud to my 5-year-old twins, and they understood every word.
- The window into a slave’s life. This is an often-passed-over time in our history, and I was so glad to see such an emotionally satisfying novel about it come out on the market. (Another good one about slavery is Elijah of Buxton, by Christopher Paul Curtis). It was a lovely representation of this time period in our history.
- The themes. Burg wove several into her text—freedom is within, not without. Quiet people can be heroes, too. Family is worth risking everything for.
These words sum up the book for me (consonants missing are dialect pieces):
“Freedom’s not jus a place
you find on a map.
“Freedom’s living
with folks who love you
n having the space
to love yourself.”
The book mentioned above has an affiliate link attached to it, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on it and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, by Dinty W. Moore, is about exactly what the title suggests—writing personal essays. Moore takes his readers through the many different kinds of personal essays—including memoir essays, contemplative essays, lyric essays, spiritual essays, gastronomical essays, humorous essays, nature essays and travel essays.
Not only that, but at the end of the book, Moore includes a section on reaching readers, establishing a regular writing routine, blogging, overcoming writer’s block and how to revise and why.
I enjoyed the examples that Moore wove into his instruction—examples from people like Virginia Woolf, Phillip Lopate, Henry David Thoreau and many more, including himself. Moore also provided a huge list of prompts that were included at the end of every section detailing what elements the specific types of essays should contain and that were also sprinkled throughout every section of the book.
I found those prompts one of the most helpful features of the book, because I’m brainstorming some essay books, and, eventually, I’ll come back to those prompts.
Moore also provided a list of resources in the back of the book, including paying magazines and publishers of personal essays, which, for those who are interested in making money off their writing—not much, of course—is a valuable addition to any instruction book. He also provides a list of essay books to read, which I’ll be checking out in the coming months—because improving your writing doesn’t just happen by reading instructional books. It happens by reading the type of writing you want to do. This book list was, by itself, incredibly helpful, because many books in today’s market are mistakenly categorized as essay books, when they’re really just regular old nonfiction books.
While I think this book was probably written as a guide for beginners in the world of personal essay, those who, like me, have spent a lot of time writing personal essays can still take away some tweaks to their process that will improve writing considerably. I’ll be applying all of the tweaks that I jotted down in my notes so that I can hone my process and write to the best of my abilities.
*The above is an affiliate link. I only recommend books I find valuable myself. I don’t even actually talk about the books I don’t find valuable, because I try to forget I wasted time on them.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Reading has multiple benefits for children, including building vocabulary, fostering a love of language, and teaching them empathy. But what about reading aloud to children? I get asked all the time whether parents should still read aloud to their children, even if they’re 10 or 14 or 17.
My answer is always, emphatically, yes.
When kids are young, research has proven that reading aloud to them is the single most important activity that leads to language development and early literacy skills.
When kids get older, reading aloud is still important, because it forges a connection between a parent and a child, further develops their passion for reading, and flexes their reading and attention muscles—not to mention giving parents and children a springboard for conversation, which is always valuable during the teenage years.
My oldest is 10, and I still read aloud to him. I plan to continue doing it until he’s grown and gone.
Here are some of my current favorites to read aloud to my young children.
1. Dear Mr. Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary (such a wonderful book about a boy who comes into himself amidst his parents’ divorce, a lunch thief, and learning that other people have problems, too.)
2. The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo (one of my favorite fantasies about a mouse who becomes a knight.)
3. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo (another of my favorite fantasies about a stuffed bunny who goes on a trip and rediscovers love.)
4. Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (a heartwarming story about a boy and a special dog.)
5. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, by Maryrose Wood (a funny, mysterious tale about children raised by wolves and their plucky governess.)
6. The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare (an old classic that deals with courage, morals, and colonial times.)
7. The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynne Reid Banks (a fun story about an Indian figure that comes to life in a magical cupboard.)
8. James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl (a wonderful story about a boy who runs away from some mean aunts in a giant peach and meets some quirky insects.)
9. Matilda, by Roald Dahl (an entertaining story about a sweet girl who fights back.)
10. The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown (a cute tale about a robot stranded on a desert island—with fantastic pictures!)
11. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker (a heartwarming story about a boy and a fox.)
My boys and I have read many, many books together, so more lists will surely come in the future. But these are a very good place to start.
The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to them, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
