by Rachel Toalson | Books
Last week I shared the summer reading list for my 9-year-old. This week I’d like to share the list I made for my 7-year-old, who goes into second grade this year.
Again, I chose seven books for him, and he will be choosing eight of his own. I’m only going to share the seven I’ve chosen for him, for the sake of time, but at the end of the summer, he’ll be telling you all about the books he chose as well.
1. The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown
2. Raymie Nightingale, by Kate DiCamillo
3. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
4. Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
5. Red Butterfly, by A.L. Sonnichsen
6. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker
7. Just My Luck, by Cammie McGovern
I also promised last week that I’d share with you the audio books we’ll be reading together this summer. They include:
1. Harry Potter the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
2. The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling
3. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
4. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
We’re going to try to watch all the movies after we finish the books, which will make a fun reward for the end of summer reading.
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
During my Sabbath week I finished two adult memoirs that I really loved. The first was The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson. This book is a love story. It’s a meditation on what it means to be a family, what it means to be male and female. It’s a candid look at gender biases, motherhood, parenthood, the daily moments of life and what it means to be human.
Nelson has a very poetic style, which was engaging from the moment I started reading. There were moments where I was completely captivated by her prose and her storytelling. She alternated storytelling with her deeper, poetic meditation, and I found it gripping and beautiful.
What I liked most about The Argonauts was that while it was a shortish read, it wasn’t light material. I had to take the book in pieces. Fortunately, it was written in pieces, a few paragraphs here, a few paragraphs there, so that made it easy to step aside and really think about and process what Nelson was saying.
The Argonauts is sort of a controversial book and has won all sorts of awards. And while I might not necessarily agree with every point of view she laid out in the book (she gets very philosophical at times), I found it refreshing and encouraging that Nelson made herself vulnerable enough to not only share her life as the wife of fluidly gendered artist Harry Dodge but also share her thoughts about that life and the biases we all face in our society today.
The other memoir was Geoffrey Wolff’s 1990 classic Duke of Deception. This book was fascinating through and through. Wolff grew up the son of a professional con man. His father, who called himself Duke, made up everything he was and everything he did. He got jobs as an engineer by telling lies about where he’d gone to college, and then he quit them and went somewhere else, with a false identity ready for anyone who would hire him. Wolff idolized his father for a time, and even went through a stint where he tried to be like him, before he came to his senses.
Duke of Deception was an interesting look at a father who could never truly become what or who he was but, instead, became what and who he made himself to be.
It took me a while to read this one—not because it wasn’t engaging or because it was really long, but because some of the passages were just so unbelievable that I had to stop and process them for a time. That someone could exist who lied so frequently and so believably was a bit unsettling.
I enjoyed reading the whole book, but the end and the beginning were my favorite parts. I loved that Wolff used so much specificity in his prose; he set up his world around the reader. He presented his father truthfully, as the scoundrel he was, and yet you couldn’t help rooting for his father to be better and do better, because through it all, Wolff wrote with love and a sense of understanding, as is demonstrated in this passage:
“It was my father, though, who taught me that we should distinguish in this life between what we feel and what we feel we should feel. That if we can distinguish between these things we may have access to some truths about ourselves.”
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
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 | 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 | Books
Well, my first fiction series has now released into the public. I’ve had a lot of fun watching people download and enjoy them. But I think the most fun I’ve had is watching my 9-year-old, who is right in the age group for whom the series is written, ask me, after our reading time is over, “Please can you read more?”
So I thought it would be fun to hear a little bit from him about the Fairendale series.
Me: What do you think about the Fairendale series?
Jadon: It’s really good. All the dragons and people.
Me: Who’s your favorite character?
Jadon: Arthur. He’s very brave. Standing up for all those children.
Me: What would you say to someone if they’re wondering whether or not they’ll like Fairendale?
Jadon: You should read it. And if you don’t like it, send a note to my mom.
And there you have it. If you don’t like it, send a note—but make it a nice note, please, so I can share it with my son.
Reading
This week I finished two brand new middle grade novels that have recently come on the market and both feature the drawings of popular picture book illustrators.
The first was Pax, by Sara Pennypacker, which is illustrated by Jon Klassen, one of my favorite picture book illustrators. For those who don’t know Jon Klassen, you should. He’s written several picture books. Our favorites are This is Not My Hat and I Want My Hat Back. As an aside, Klassen has a new picture book coming out this fall called We Found a Hat. I’m sure it will be just as lively and entertaining as the rest of his stories.
Pax is the story of a boy who has to leave his fox behind when his father joins the military service, a boy who has to somehow find his way into forgiveness. Peter, the boy, goes on a journey to find his fox again, after his father leaves for the service, and though he is journeying to reunite with his fox, it also becomes clear that he is journeying to find himself.
Pax is a story of love and friendship and determination. Along his way, Peter meets a wise sage who is broken in her own way, wrestling with her own guilt and demons. She helps him realize he is never alone. He helps her realize she can be forgiven for whatever she did, regardless of what it was.
I finished this book a few weeks ago, but there is just something about it that will not leave me. It was beautiful and lyrical and heartwarming and all the things I love most about middle grade literature. But it also explored the hard things—examining decisions, speaking on identity, upholding the miracle of community. I think kids will be encouraged, delighted and transformed by this story of a boy and his fox.
Here’s one of my favorite passages from the story. Peter has just found the farm of Vola, who ends up being a wise old woman who is broken in her own way.
“Vola studied him. ‘Oneness is always growing in the world, boy. Two but not two. It’s always there, connecting its roots, humming. I can’t be part of it—that’s the price I pay for taking myself away. But you can be. You can vibrate with its heartbeat. You may be on your own. But you won’t be alone.’
‘What if I get lost?’
‘You will not get lost.’
‘I think maybe I already am.’
Vola reached across the table, cupped his head and pressed. ‘No. You are found.’ She got up, and Peter felt her brush a kid son his hair as she passed.”
The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown is another heartwarming story, but with a bit of science thrown in. This is Peter Brown’s first chapter book. He’s usually cranking out picture books, like Children Make Terrible Pets and My Teacher is a Monster.
The Wild Robot is a wonderfully entertaining science fiction story about a robot who crashes onto a deserted island and must find a way to become friendly with all the wild animals there, who look upon her with suspicion and actually believe she’s a monster. She must overcome their prejudices and try to endear herself to them in order to create a happy life on the island.
The book ended in a very open-ended way, which leads me to believe that this isn’t the last we’ve heard from Roz the robot.
What I loved most about the book was the voice of its narrator; The Wild Robot was written in an omniscient point of view, and anyone who’s read my Fairendale series will know that I love omniscient narrators, because they become characters of their own.
Both of these books make fantastic read-alouds for children, and they’ve been added to my kids’ summer reading list.
Learning
I’ve been working slowly on a memoir for quite a while. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to access memories when you actually want to access them. So recently I picked up a book that I thought might help me at least remember certain things about my past.
Writing Your Legacy: The Step-By-Step Guide to Crafting Your Life Story, by Richard Campbell and Cheryl Svensson is a great beginner’s guide on crafting memoirs. It wasn’t written specifically about the memoir genre but was a little more geared toward autobiography, which is almost the same thing, except memoirs tend to follow a bit more of the fiction storytelling technique (just be sure not to make anything up. You could get in trouble for that.).
What I enjoyed most about this book is that it provided me with a starting point for examining my memories. I often write my memoir to a one-word prompt, which has helped so far. You’d be surprised how many memories are tied to the word “snake.” But this book and its probing questions will help me with a more exhaustive search of my memories. The questions are broken out into themes, like “Forks in the Road” and “My Life’s Work” and “The Meaning of Wealth.” For each theme, you’re exploring your memories from beginning to end. And then you can do whatever you want with those memories.
I took many notes on the book and will definitely be using it to help trigger memories and then curating those to become one or more memoirs.
Personal
I’ve been having a bit of trouble recently with work creeping into family time. This is mostly because I work for myself and also because I work from home. When you work from home, it’s extremely difficult to put work away. How do you even do that? Every time I retire for the evening, when boys finally get in bed and stay there, my computer is sitting on my dresser, which is my makeshift standing desk. Why not just take it out and work? I have some free moments, after all.
But something I’ve noticed recently is that I don’t turn off. What I mean by turn off is that my mind is always, always working something out. This isn’t a bad thing, except when it comes at the cost of other things. When my boys are talking to me about the books they’re going to write this summer, and I’m thinking through a plot line, and I can’t wait to get back to my computer so I can jot down some notes, that’s when it becomes a not-so-great practice, because I’m not really listening to my kids. I’m distracted.
There’s not an easy solution to the work bleeding into the family. We just have to purpose to think about family when we’re with family and to think about work when we’re at work. Creative people have a unique challenge when it comes to working from home. That means we need to brainstorm unique solutions.
I’m in a really busy time with work right, launching a few books and readying others for traditional publishing. But once this season passes—and it has a deadline, trust me—there will be strict stipulations put in place that no computer comes out after 5:30 p.m. Because it’s time for family.
Seasons come and seasons go. There are some seasons that require more work. There are some seasons our family requires more attention. I want to be aware of those and adjust accordingly, because this is how I believe we can achieve a sense of balance when it comes to family and work.
Listening
Husband and I have been fans of the band Blue October for quite some time. We’ve seen them in concert, which is an amazing show. I don’t buy swag from bands all that often, but I do have a Blue October beanie.
In April, Blue October came out with a new CD called Home. If you haven’t head this album yet, you owe it to yourself to give a listen. It’s not quite the same style as their former albums, not as hard and energetic, but it’s uniquely beautiful in its own way. One of the things I love most about Blue October is their creative harmonies, and this CD will not disappoint on that count. I can’t stop listening to it right now.
What’s my favorite song on the CD? you ask. That would be a tie between “Heart Go Bang” and “Home.”
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by Rachel Toalson | Books
My first fiction series releases this week (tomorrow, actually). It’s an epic fantasy series that contains mermaids and dragons and all sorts of magical creatures. They are secondary characters, more or less, and the main characters are children who are running for their lives from a king who is trying to capture a magical boy. Magic is the only thing that makes a king, which means that a magical boy who is not born to the royal family is a danger to that royal family. So the king pursues and the children run. The story of the children is all wrapped up in the story of the king and his family, and all sorts of fairy tale villains will make their appearance in different seasons of Fairendale, which, right now, according to my writing schedule, will probably span another four years.
The first season will be available June 1, with the first episode of the season free for people to try. I’m really excited bout this release, because, like I said, it’s the first fiction that I’ve formally released to the public, even though I’ve shared some snippets of my fiction on blogs and in my newsletter. So I’m hoping that readers will fall in love with Fairendale as much as I have.
I eventually have plans to produce an audio book version of the series, but for now I’d like to read you the prologue of season 1, episode 1:
“If one were to visit the kingdom of Fairendale, it would take quite an extraordinary mind to imagine what loveliness it wore once upon a time.
This is the land all fairy tales wish they could inhabit. It is the kingdom where the Violet Sea lends its tributaries with grace and generosity, where mermaids wait just below the shallow waters to call out to those brave enough to cross their bridge from the village of Fairendale to the kingdom grounds, where colors of every hue shimmer in the great green grass and the brilliant blue sky and the lacy flowers of orange and yellow and scarlet.
The kingdom, as it used to exist, lived in a perpetual fall, that season of crisp, cool air whispering in ears and stroking cheeks and sneaking into bedroom windows to lie beside sleeping children. Now the wind is hard and biting and bitter, as if anger blows across this land. And anger is certainly justified in its blowing, as we shall soon see.
It was not so very long ago that Fairendale lost what remained of its loveliness, dear reader, but to its people, a whole lifetime has passed.
They have forgotten what their beloved children used to sound like. They have forgotten the music of laughter. They have forgotten the pleasure of busy chatter. They have forgotten joy.
This once-grand kingdom has faded into a colorless shadow land, dark and sinister and cold.
The children were the light of the kingdom, you see. And now they are missing.
Why are they missing?
Well, now, that is a story worth telling.”
I hope you enjoyed that preview. This whole series is just lovely.
Reading
I love great middle grade fiction. Middle grade fiction is my favorite genre to read, because it’s so sweet and innocent and yet also deals with some deep subjects, like divorce and disappointment and friendship and overcoming what seems like insurmountable obstacles.
Two middle grade books I recently enjoyed were Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead, and Raymie Nightingale, by Kate DiCamillo.
I’ve followed both of these authors for a very long time and have loved everything they’ve written. The latest from Rebecca Stead is about the power of love and friendship. The main character, Bridge, survived a skating accident and is now wondering what’s going on with her friends, because they’re suddenly interested in boys and things Bridge doesn’t really care about yet. She’s trying to navigate this new world, while, at the same time, trying to figure out why she was spared in the accident.
I loved the whole theme of becoming different people during this volatile time in a person’s life—which is right around the seventh grade—because it’s a transformative time in kids’ lives. I also liked that the book was written from multiple perspectives—including that of a high school girl. The book had a lot of meat in it, touching on cyber bullying, the new world of texting and the disappointment of divorce. It was everything I’ve come to expect from Rebecca Stead.
Raymie Nightingale touched on some of the same themes as Goodbye Stranger, but in a much different way. I’ve loved Kate DiCamillo for a very long time, and part of what draws me into her writing is her elegant poetic style. Raymie Nightingale is a story of friendship in the midst of tragedy. Raymie Clarke has hatched a plan that she thinks will get her father, who left her and her mother, to come back home. She’s going to win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition so her father will realize what he’s missing and decide he still wants to be married to her mother. It’s such a tragic beginning for the book, but, as is the case with most of Kate DiCamillo’s books, it doesn’t end tragically, though it’s not a happily-ever-after sort of ending, either. But Raymie finds strength in two lively girls. The girls all come from homes that are broken in some way or another, so they really find strength in each other. They meet for the first time while waiting for their twirling lesson to start, and their friendship blooms.
What I love most about Kate DiCamillo is that though she writes quick reads, they are not light reads. This book was full of profound insight into the life of a child of divorce. And DiCamillo is also a master of characterization. Just listen to this quote, about Louisiana Elefante’s grandmother:
“Louisiana’s grandmother did not believe in stop signs, or she did not see them, or maybe she did not think that they applied to her. Whatever the reason, the Elefante station wagon went past every stop sign without stopping or even slowing down very much.
‘They were going very, very fast, and the car emitted a lot of noises: screeches (from the piece of loose wood siding), thumps (from the door that would not stay closed), and a cacophony of mechanical grinding noises—the overworked and desperate sounds an engine makes when it has been pushed beyond its limits.
“Also, from the backseat it was not possible to see Louisiana’s grandmother’s head, and so it seemed as if they were being driven around by an invisible person.
“It all felt like a dream.”
I love that there’s some humor involved in this, and Louisiana’s grandmother is a source of humor all throughout—stealing food from a funeral and showing up when the girls are watching their twirling instructor talk to the police about a stolen baton.
Both of these are books I’ll have on my shelf to read over and over again, because I don’t think one time is quite enough.
Learning
I’ve had my nose stuck in some research books, because I read a picture book for my kids a couple of years ago about Horace Pippin. Pippin was a black American painter who was self taught. But what is so remarkable about Horace Pippin is that he was wounded by a sniper shot in World War I. The shot paralyzed his right arm, which was his art arm. But instead of giving up, Pippin taught himself to paint, using his left hand to hold his right arm. He became famous in the last years of his life as one of the greatest American painters in our history.
After reading the picture book, I became fascinated by Horace Pippin. He exhibited the kind of perseverance we hope for our children. He was kind and peaceful and unafraid to share an imperfect art that he taught himself to create. So I knew I had to tell his story.
I’ve had a grand time researching this remarkable figure in history, and I’m looking forward to telling stories along the way about who he was and the significant example he gave to the American public.
Personal
While I was on Sabbath for Mother’s Day, my husband and boys brought me breakfast in bed, homemade cards that I’ll keep forever and ever and a video that they had made about all the reasons they love me. I cried, of course.
But after Mother’s Day was over, I started thinking about Father’s Day. It lands right in the middle of my book launch summer, and I knew that I would be hard-pressed to do anything even close to creating a video where my boys talked about all the things they love about their daddy. I started feeling a little pressure, because, of course, I needed to return the favor.
And then I remembered something that my husband has told me time and time again:
You don’t owe me.
See, we live in a world where people give us things and we think we have to somehow give them something back. It’s natural. But when you’re in a marriage, things don’t work that way. Just because I single parent-it one night so he can go out with the guys doesn’t mean that he is obligated to return the favor and single-parent it for me. Of course things will even out. But we don’t owe each other anything.
It can be hard to wrap our minds around this—that someone would just do something because they love us and they don’t expect anything in return, but I’m wondering now how I might be able to apply that even to my business. How might I be able to give without anything expected in return? Of course you couldn’t do it all the time, because there are bills to pay and mouths to feed, but how much more generous might it make us if we didn’t expect anything in return?
I think maybe it’s worth a try.
Watching
For my husband’s birthday, which is way too close to Mother’s Day to really give him a great celebration, we went to see Captain America: Civil War. I just have to say that I am so impressed with the screenwriters that work for Marvel. I’m not really a comic book sort of girl, but every movie Marvel has produced has been amazing. The dialogue is natural, the characters are well developed, the plot lines are always exciting and new. I love the science and the other-worldliness and the themes that run through the movies. I just love everything about them.
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote this particular screenplay, and it was just as fantastic as everything else Marvel has produced. Well done, guys.
Visit racheltoalson.com to get 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 blogs.
