THE MAGIC THIEF--AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Just as we promised, here is our interview with Sarah Prineas, author of THE MAGIC THIEF--coming out this week, June 3! Great timing-a great first summer read if you haven't read it yet.


Franki: Where did the idea come from for THE MAGIC THIEF?

Sarah: The way I come up with story ideas is to have one idea and jot it down in a word file on my computer and set it aside until I find another idea or two to put with it. In the case of The Magic Thief, I had the first lines in one of those files:

“A thief is a lot like a wizard. I have quick hands. And I can make things disappear.”
Then I read a letter to the editor of Cricket magazine asking for more two-part stories and more stories about wizards. I figured I could do that, and Conn became the thief that spoke those words. His character makes the story go, so all I had to do was invent situations and challenges and see what he would do.

Franki: You are a fantasy reader yourself. Were you a fantasy reader as a child? Which books hooked you on fantasy reading?

Sarah: I didn't read a whole lot of fantasy as a kid, though I realized recently that T.H. White's King Arthur story The Once and Future King must have influenced me, first because I reread it about fifty times, but also because Merlin changes young Wart into lots of different animals, and that's like the embero spell in The Magic Thief. I read Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and loved it, because what dorky 12-year-old doesn’t identify with Meg Murry and love reading about her adventures?


Franki: Which fantasy authors are favorites for you now?

Sarah: My favorite fantasy writer is J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is the writer who taught me how to believe in the power of story and the sense of wonder that fantasy can bring to readers. One of my very favorite authors is Megan Whelan Turner, starting with her YA fantasy novel The Thief. Turner does just about everything right—her characters are deep and interesting, her plots are tricky and surprising, and her fantasy world is one in which you can spend lots of time. As a writer, I’ve read all of her books several times each just to figure out how she does what she does. The only problem is that she writes so slowly. It’s hard to wait such a long time for a new Megan Whelan Turner book, but it’s always worth the wait.


Franki: Tell us how the device in your husband’s lab ended up in your book!

Sarah: That’s a funny question! His lab equipment has a fancy name, the “molecular beam epitaxy facility.” It’s very cool looking, all shiny and gold, with dials and valves and porthole-like windows, and gauges for measuring pressure, and so on. I don’t like it very much because it’s an expensive machine that requires constant attention and is always breaking down, which means my husband has to go into the lab to take care of it. I just had to get my revenge by putting it into my book and turning it into an evil Device.


Franki: The setting was so clear to me as a reader when I read THE MAGIC THIEF. Did you have a particular place in mind when you wrote?

Sarah: I did! Not a place I’ve ever visited, though. I have a PhD in English literature and read a lot of 19th century English novels, and I always loved Dickens’s novels the most. Wellmet is modeled on the London of the early Dickens novels. I also used a map as inspiration [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genmaps/genfiles/COU_files/ENG/LON/Rocque/rocque_index.htm]. I got lots of ideas for street names and the twisty alleyways of the Twilight from looking at the seedy Southwark part in that London map.


Franki: Can you describe your writing process at all? How does fantasy writing go for you? What is the typical process? A typical day? Etc.

Sarah: A typical day is that I spend lots of time writing emails to my friends and reading blogs, and I’ll also spend some time tweaking a scene. If I’m really in the zone, I’ll write for eight hours at a time and be completely immersed in the story, in the characters, in fitting the pieces together. When that happens my family lets me shut myself up in my room with my writing chair and laptop computer and waits for me to come out. Which I do, eventually…

I don’t outline at all, so I write into the void—figuring out what happens as I write it, which is a very fun way to write. It’s writing as discovery!


Franki: This is the first in a trilogy. Can you give us any clues about what to expect next?

Yes, I can! You’re the only one who has asked this question, by the way. Here are three clues. One is that Conn must search for something that is lost. Two is that he gets into trouble involving pyrotechnic explosions. Three is that he must leave the city of Wellmet. Biscuits and bacon also make an appearance. The second book is called The Magic Thief: Lost and it comes out in June 2009, a whole year after the first book.


You can read the first chapter on the author's website!

THE MAGIC THIEF--OUT THIS WEEK!

In April, I was invited to a dinner sponsored by Cover to Cover Bookstore where I got to meet Sarah Prineas, author of the new book--out this week--The Magic Thief. If you are a fantasy reader, you'll want a copy of this book right away.

THE MAGIC THIEF is the first in a trilogy. It is a great fantasy that I think lots of my fantasy readers will love. (I had one of my Harry Potter fans read the first chapter online and she was immediately hooked!)

Since so many people have reviewed it, I'll send you to their reviews and then let you know my thinking as a teacher--who might love this book.

There is lots to love about the book. It is a great story about wizards and magic. There are good guys and bad guys. The characters are quite fun and you come to know them quickly. There is humor. The setting is magical-as would be expected.

As a teacher, I love some things about the format. It is a thick book but the print and page set-up makes it very accessible to kids. I am thinking grades 4-6 is perfect for this book. It has lots to it--it isn't watered down like some fantasies for kids, but has all of the things we love about a good fantasy. I am thinking of lots of kids who might like it--those who are new to fantasy and who are pretty skilled readers could read this as a first fantasy. I predict that those readers who love Harry Potter and other fantasies will love to know of this new fantasy series. And I think those readers who can't yet handle Harry Potter will be thrilled with this book. So many readers who will love it.

Tomorrow, we'll post an interview with author Sarah Prineas! And, if you live in the Columbus area, she will be at Cover to Cover bookstore on Saturday, June 7th at 11:00 a.m. She'll talk a bit and then do a signing. It is coming out right in time for Mother Reader's 48 Hour Read!

A great preview of the book is up on the Harper Collins website. You can preview and read quite a bit of it online before it is available. You can also have all kinds of fun playing games, meeting the characters and more on this fun site.

(By the way, Sarah is a member of the Class of 2K8--a group that I love. So many great new voices in children's/YA lit. I pay close attention to them and have found some great books--like this one! If you haven't checked out their site, it would be a VERY good idea to do so!)

Poetry Friday -- Imitation and (hopefully) Flattery

Wild Atrocity
by Mary Lee Hahn

Glory be to God for silly things --
For running-dives all in a pile of musky autumn leaves;
For rollercoaster rides in the first car alone;
Wet late-March snowball fights; frisbee flings;
Junk food caloric and sweet -- pizza, french fries, sundaes;
And all jokers, their plots and puns and funny bones.

All things humorous, playful, joking, tickly;
Whatever is unplanned, spontaneous (who knows why?)
With smile, grin; laugh, shout; giggle, groan;
They maintain sanity whose beauty is past lunacy:
PRAISE THEM!



Fried Beauty
by R. S. Gwynn

Glory be to God for breaded things--
Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,
Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim
With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,
Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,
That in all oils, corn or canola, swim

Toward mastication's maw (O molared mouth!);
Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry
On paper towels' sleek translucent scrim,
These greasy, battered bounties of the South:
Eat them.



Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.



The roundup today is at Wild Rose Reader.

Experimental Read-Aloud

THE BOOK:


Maybe A Bear Ate It!
by Robie Harris
illustrated by Michael Emberley
Scholastic, 2008
review copy compliments of the publisher


THE STORY:
(Exceedingly cute) creature loves book, takes book and toys to bed, "loses" the book (it's right there under the edge of the bed). Creature looks for it, imagines that a series of animals ate, stomped on, ran away with, flew away with, swallowed, or fell asleep on the book. Creature goes looking for the book and eventually finds it and curls back up in bed with the book and the toys.

HYPOTHESIS:
Even kindergartners will see where the book is "lost" and will be able to infer that the animals the Creature blames for the book's whereabouts are actually the Creature's toys.

REALITY CHECK:
I showed the book to a couple of our kindergarten teachers and they said, "Um...no, Kinders probably won't be able to get that on their own."

EXPERIMENT:
I read the book to my fourth graders. They got it.

I read the book to a group of fifth graders. They got it, they got it remarkably quicker than my fourth graders, and they talked about it with greater clarity and depth than my fourth graders. Hmmmm...age is appearing to make a difference.

I read the book to a third grade class. They got it, but I seem to be letting them look at the pictures longer and I'm encouraging more talk and thinking as we read.

I read the book to a second grade class. Again, I supported them more as readers, but they got it on their own.

I read the book to a first grade class. We're down to about one student who sees the book under the edge of the bed, and one who comes up with the word "imagination" to describe what's happening with the animals. Is one who gets it enough to say that first graders get the book? I'm saying it is. That one kid ramped up the whole class and brought them along. (Thank goodness for The One, right, teachers?!)

I read the book to our special-needs/typical-peers preschool class. They loved it. They found the "lost" book with a lot of help. They were pretty sure the animals were real. Imagination didn't seem to be on their radar. In speaking with the teacher later, I found out that most of them, indeed, do not yet engage in extended imaginative play. Most of them are the oldest child in their family and they simply haven't had any role models for that kind of play/thinking.

Then I read the book to the kindergartners. They loved it. They found the "lost" book. A bunch of support got one child to the idea that the Creature was imagining that his toys were responsible for the "loss" of his book, but the rest of the class did not come along they way they had in first grade.

CONCLUSION:
1. Trust Kindergarten teachers. (Corollary: Kindergarten teachers know their kids better than you do.)

2. Making inferences and using imagination are developmental.

3. It doesn't really matter if your audience doesn't "get" the book in the way you intended, as long as you all have fun reading it!

Let Us Commence

Award-winning playwright Margaret Edson, a Smith College alumna who teaches kindergarten in the Atlanta public school system, was the speaker at Smith’s 130th commencement ceremony Sunday, May 18. This is a portion of the transcript; the speech was delivered without a written text. You can listen to her deliver it here.

I want to talk about a particular kind of love, this love: classroom teaching.

I have my posse of gaily clad classroom teachers behind me.

They like to be called college professors.
And we can’t all work for the government.

We gather together because of classroom teaching.
We have shown you our love in our work in the classroom.

Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It’s us; it’s this.

We bring nothing into the classroom — perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom — some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It’s as if we were never there. There’s nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, “I know how to add two numbers, but I’m not going to tell you.” And they laugh and shout, “No!” That’s so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?

Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing –
what does that remind you of?
Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world,
and is based not on gain and fame, but on love.

There are those who say that classroom teaching is doomed and that by the time one of you addresses the class of 2033, there will be a museum of classroom teaching.

Ever since the invention of wedge-shaped writing on a clay tablet, classroom teaching has been obsolete. It’s been comical. Why don’t we just write the assignments and algorithms on a clay tablet, hang it up on the wall, and let the students come who will to teach themselves from our documents?

Why, since the creation of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, do we still bother to have schools?

Why, since the invention of movable metal type, don’t we all just go to the library?

Why do we have to have class? Why do we need teachers?

Why, since the advent of the microchip, don’t we all stay home in our pajamas and hit send?

Technology is nipping at the heels of classroom teaching, but I perceive no threat.
How could something false replace something true?
How could a substitute, a proxy, step in for something real and alive?
How could the virtual nudge out the actual?

The other great threat to classroom teaching is the rush to data — data-driven education.
We must measure everything — percentages, charts, tables.

I’m not entirely opposed to this.
If data-driven education were a pie graph, I would have a piece.

But I was not educated and did not become a teacher to produce data.

I love the classroom.
I loved it as a student, and I love it as a teacher.
I can name every teacher I ever had:
Mrs. Mulshanok, Miss Williams, Mrs. Clark, Miss Bogan, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Muys, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Eldridge, Miss Bush — and that’s just through sixth grade.
I could go on, I promise.

I loved coming to class: the chairs, the windows, unzipping my book bag.
And I loved my teachers.
There was content, I suppose, but that’s not what I remember.
I remember my teachers.
I remember being in the room,
and no data and no bar graph will be assembled to replace that, or even to capture it.

This week my students worked on dividing a pizza between two people, and they realized that if you make the line down the center of the pizza the two sides will be equal. After much trial and error, they came to this conclusion on their own, and I welcome you to try it. I think it’s really going to take off, and let this be where it begins.

When they take a standardized test, they will be able to fill in the bubble next to the pizza that is cut exactly in half. Do they know that will be the correct answer? Yes. But I don’t care that much. What I care about is how they got there, how they figured it out for themselves.

This skinny little high school senior got herself into Smith College by writing an essay about Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s theme, “The journey, not the arrival, matters.” It worked for me.

Standardized tests measure the arrival, but they have nothing to say about the journey, about having wonderful ideas. Do you know it/do you not know it is second, and how do you know it, and who are you, is first.

The only way this knowledge grows inside a student is with a teacher, a classroom teacher. Of course, my students will insist they did it themselves, and I don’t try to disabuse them of that.

But the work you graduates have done was in the classroom with your teachers.
That’s the miracle of today.
Why don’t we talk about it?
Because it doesn’t show up.
There’s not a bar graph for classroom teaching. There’s no data for classroom teaching, and yet it persists this year and the next year and the year after that.

Telling tens of thousands of people what to do is not teaching, it’s shouting, and there’s a lot of that going around.

Showing somebody how to do something exactly the way you’ve always done it is not teaching, it’s training. And there’s plenty of that, too.

But the reality that is neither shouting nor training is classroom teaching.
Nobody can touch it because nobody can point to it.
You have it forever.
When it grows inside you, it’s doing its work.

We can disappear.
We’ll never see you again, probably.
The chairs will be folded.
It will be as if we were never here.
There will be nothing we can count after today.
But not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everything that matters can be put into a pie chart.

The Board of Trustees has set a very great challenge for itself:
to educate us all for lives of distinction.
You are never going to be able to make a bar graph out of that.
That is immeasurable, and that’s what makes it so real.
I admonish you — because that’s my job — to think about the things that float away:
your love for your friends,
the smell of the lilacs,
the feeling your families have on this day.
You will have nothing to take with you.
The diploma you receive will be someone else’s.

Everything meaningful about this moment, and these four years,
will be meaningful inside you, not outside you.

I’ve been a classroom teacher for sixteen years–as long as you have been in the classroom. We started the same year. And I hope to go on for fourteen more years.
That will make thirty, and I’ll be done.

At the end of that time, someone will bring me a box, and I will put in it a ceramic apple somebody gave me thinking it would be symbolic somehow. I will have nothing, and that will be proof of the meaning of my work.

If you can point to something, you might lose it, or you might break it, or someone might take it from you. As long as you store it inside yourself, it’s not going anywhere — or it’s going everywhere with you.

This day is a day of love.
It’s a day of your family’s love for you,
your love for each other and your teachers,
and your teachers’ love for you.

In time, the bar graphs may tumble,
the clay tablets may crumble.
They’re only made of clay.
But our love
is here to stay.

Thank you.

via Susan Ohanian

The Calder Game

The Calder Game
by Blue Balliett
illustrated by Brett Helquist
Scholastic, 2008
review copy compliments of the publisher

This is my favorite of the three art mystery books Blue Balliett has written (the others are Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3) about Calder Pillay, Tommy Segovia, and Petra Andalee. I want the literature circle back that read Chasing Vermeer as their first book in fourth grade and The Wright 3 as soon as we could get multiple copies from the library when they were in fifth grade. They would love this book!

The Calder Game is packed, layered, and balanced with so many different elements. It is about art and the response to art. It is about balance, social class, finding patterns (especially of 5), symbols (ancient and modern), mythology, and language. Oh, the language! The ways Balliett finds to describe with words the way Alexander Calder's mobiles balance, turn, change, and affect the viewer. The word mobiles that the characters create -- five words that balance, turn, and change depending how you look at them (NO-MINOTAUR-ONLY-WISHES-HERE becomes NO-WISHES balancing along with MINOTAUR-HERE or maybe MINOTAUR-WISHES).

It's about how bad teaching kills a student's urge to learn and about how much trust good teaching requires. I didn't really believe that the three protagonists' teacher could go from such a bad teacher to such a good teacher, but the book is also about the power of art to change people, so okay, I'll believe it.

The book opens with a class field trip to an Alexander Calder exhibit of mobiles at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Then Calder Pillay is lucky enough to be able to accompany his father on a trip to Oxford, England. He and his father stay in the nearby town of Woodstock, which is near Blenheim Palace and a real hedge maze made of symbols. Lots for Calder to explore while his dad is at meetings. The biggest surprise awaits them, however -- a Calder sculpture in the courtyard in front of the bed and breakfast where they are staying. And then the theft of the sculpture. And then the disappearance of Calder Pillay. Tommy and Petra come with Mrs. Sharpe from Chicago to help find the boy Calder, but his fate is linked with the Calder sculpture, and all of the characters must shift and re-balance their relationships in order to solve the mystery.

Speaking of characters, the three kids meet a girl who is named after Georgia O'Keefe. Plans are made for her to visit Chicago and stay with Mrs. Sharpe. I'm certain we will be seeing more of her in Balliett's next book...which I am anxiously awaiting!


Shelf Elf has a review with some cool bonus links.
Bill, at Literate Lives, has a review with some cool Calder pictures.

Memorial Day

Thank you, TadMack for a Memorial Day poem, a bit of information about the history of the day, a great photo, and a reminder that Colleen at Chasing Ray has invited bloggers to highlight books (for ages 4-100) that cover political subjects on Wednesdays this August:

August 5th - Race in America
August 12th - The environment
August 19th - Class divisions in America
August 26th - US foreign policy

Start gathering your titles!

SNEAK PEEK: LOOK WHO'S LEARNING TO READ

I am a HUGE fan of Shelley Harwayne. She is the person whose work keeps me grounded in what is right for children. I have been a fan since before she became principal of The Manhattan New School in NYC and before she wrote LASTING IMPRESSIONS, GOING PUBLIC, and others. Shelley ALWAYS makes decisions that are best for children.

Anyone who has heard Shelley Harwayne speak to teachers in the last several years, knows that she is now a grandmother. Being a grandmother has Shelley thinking and learning about early childhood education. She has learned much from her grandchildren that she shares with us in her upcoming professional book LOOK WHO'S LEARNING TO READ.

In this upcoming book, Shelley does what she does best and reminds us all of the things that are best for children. This time, she takes a hard look at what parents, grandparents, day care workers--anyone who spends time with young children--can do to support literacy development in ways that make sense for the child.

LOOK WHO'S LEARNING TO READ is a huge resource for parents and teachers. Shelley talks about many things that are important in literacy development and gives authentic ideas for working with children age 0-6. She includes thoughts about reading aloud, rhyming, the alphabet, singing, writing, sight vocabulary, and more.

The book is also filled with great booklists--favorite read alouds specific to age groups. Shelley includes titles of books that will be loved by young children and recommends both fiction and nonfiction.

It is so nice to see someone who knows literacy and learning so well give us a book that focuses on this important time in a child's development. With these high-stakes times, many parents are buying crazy programs for even our youngest children. Shelley reminds us that the most authentic literacy experiences are the ones that are important.

This is a great new resource for teachers of Pre-K through 1. But is is also a great addition to any baby gift. It will be a book that parents will go back to over the first 6 years of their child's life--finding new books and new ways to help their young children fall in love with reading.

Keep your eye out for this one from Scholastic in July!

SNEAK PEEK: 2 New Books by Louise Borden

Primary teachers are going to want to keep their eyes out for these two new books by Louise Borden. It isn't often that we have two new books about school released by Louise at the same time! This is quite exciting!

Off to First Grade is a new book focusing on the beginning of first grade. Louise has created a unique type of alphabet book focusing on different children in a first grade classroom on the first day of school. Each child tells a bit of getting ready for their first day of school (teacher, principal and others also give their take on this great day!) Children will be able to see themselves in the stories shared. The book begins with Anna:

At last,
it is August 26th
on our calendar.
It's a big day!
The day
I start first grade
at Elm School.
Mrs. Miller will be my teacher.

The story is great from A-Z! The illustrations by Joan Rankin are a perfect celebration of such an exciting day! I can imagine this being read over and over and over in first grade classrooms everywhere.

The Lost-and-Found Tooth is one in the series of school stories written by Louise Borden and illustrated by Adam Gustavson (Good Luck, Mrs. K,, The Day Eddie Met the Author, The John Hancock Club, and others). Each book introduces us to great new characters and Louise always manages to write a book about school that matches the experiences that our children have. This new one, focuses on second grade and the losing of teeth! Such a great story for many ages, but it is always fun to have one that talks specifically about those things specific to the grade you are teaching.

Both are due out July 1--just in time for school!

SNEAK PEEK: THE SANDMAN by Ralph Fletcher

I have been long awaiting this new picture book, The Sandman by Ralph Fletcher. He is one of those authors that writes a variety of things--poetry, picture books, novels, writing books for kids) so I always look forward to a new one from him.

This is a totally different kind of book for this author. It is a kind of fantasy that explains the story of the Sandman--the one that sprinkles sand over children to help them sleep. A dragon's scale is the key to this magical sand! A great story that is a very satisfying read.

You can tell by the cover that the illustrations are quite fun--the cover has a bit of a sparkle and the inside illustrations are just as perfect for the story.

As always, Ralph Fletcher uses great language in his work. Lines like "Looking down, he saw a gleam of light at his feet. A dragon's scale!" and "A great wave of sleepiness came over him." are found throughout the book.

I like this book for lots of reasons. First of all, it is a great story to enjoy as the great story it is. For fans of Ralph Fletcher's work, this is a great addition to the stack that kids already love. From a writing perspective, this is a great model for children-- a believable fantasy that could easily serves as a mentor text for some students. As always, Ralph Fletcher has written a book that is amazing on many levels. A great new fantasy that you'll want to check out!

This book is scheduled to be released on May 27!