We just got through the audio book of Kate Jackson's reading of Deborah Wiles' book The Aurora County All-Stars, which was published last year.
It was terrific, and Kate Jackson's reading really did it justice. A fabulous local color book (about a town in southern Mississippi) that revolves around baseball. We are a baseball family, so that really worked for us. It's a middle-grade book, most appropriate for about 6th graders, I think. Madison would probably not have read it through on her own, because the beginning is a bit confusing...but the audio was wonderful and both girls (who are 7 and 8) thought it was just great. The characters are just gorgeously unique. It's one of those books that translates upward beautifully, and I was perhaps even more involved in the story than they were. We got lucky, this time...I'd never heard of the book and just grabbed it off the shelf in the Penfield Library because I'd never seen it there before. Yay, Penfield Library.
It's about perseverance, and honor, and the need to integrate new truths into one's existing framework even if they shake things up inside you.
The only bad part of it was that it stopped me dead in my tracks on my own book writing, at least it did last night. I kept thinking to myself that I'd never write as well as that...the language in The Aurora County All-Stars paints gorgeous pictures in my mind while mine...doesn't. That got in the way of putting much on the page last night.
I will try again tonight, though, because there is a contest put out on an editor's blog for the "Perfect Pitch" -- this editor, who specializes in mid-grade mystery fiction, is soliciting a short essays about why she should publish your book. That is due on Friday, and the book MUST be completed by July 7.
I can complete my book by July 7 if I just put my fingers to the keyboard and write the darned thing. The most difficult chapter is behind me, and the rest of it is the playing out of the action. It will probably be the most fun part to write, if I can just.do.it. Goodness knows I've thought it through enough, it's been percolating for months. Sigh.
8 comments:
Oh, good luck! Personally, I find deadlines helpful for getting beyond that feeling that I can't write anything worth reading (and I read SO MANY THINGS that make me feel that way). And I'm looking forward to seeing how the book turns out!
We're a baseball family too!
Thanks for the recommendation - I just requested it from the library for our weekend trips to visit grandparents. It sounds great.
Good luck with your deadline.
Lynne
The one additional thing to be aware of is that this book introduces the issue of race in a way that you need to be sure your kids are ready for.
My girls are oblivious to the issue of race, in the sense that we don't use the words "black person" or "white person" in our house at all. (As home schoolers, we have this luxury.) They certainly don't think of themselves as "white people"--they know that their friends have different skin colors depending on melanin content, and that people whose ancestors are from hotter parts of the world tend to have darker skin, and that with kids who have a parent with light skin and a parent with dark skin, the genes can mix in interesting ways. They also know that American slaves came mostly from Africa, so that their skin color "marked" them as different--and that this was unfortunate because after slavery ended, it became easy to tag people as having been slaves or whose ancestors had been slaves -- and that people who hadn't been slaves often treated them badly, and that among stupid people, there is still some stupidity about that today.
But this was the first book they'd read or heard in which the terms "black man" and "white man" were used. This book is set in a fully integrated contemporary community in Mississippi and we adults can tell from the language that no KID in the book thinks anything of any other kid's race. The protagonist (age 12) is shocked that an old man in the town was not allowed to play baseball when he was a kid because of the color of his skin. The book also discusses what it was like for Jackie Robinson to be the first black man in the major leagues...and also about what happened with PeeWee Reese the first day Jackie Robinson played.
This was my girls' first introduction to the fact of how the race issue played in the 20th century, and they took it in stride. But I might not have wanted this to be introduced even a year ago; they had to grow into these ideas without being tainted with the idea of how race is often discussed nowadays. It's way too early, for example, to show my girls the movie "Akelah and the Bee." I'm in no way interested in showing them, right now, that some people still define themselves and others by their race.
So...before you get the book, please do make sure your kids are at a time in their lives where it is appropriate to introduce these ideas.
Thanks for your insight.
Luckily, my almost 10 year-old asks a lot of questions about stuff she reads or hears if she doesn't understand it. She did just recently touch upon Civil Rights in her history class and is currently studying a painting called The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell, so this may be a perfect time for this book. I'll be sure to be on the look out for points requiring further explanation and teaching moments.
I will admit to being shocked that the idea of racism was introduced to my kindergartener in her Montessori school. Needless to say, some kids misunderstood it and actually pointed out that the black girl currently in their class wouldn't have been allowed to her. The mother was furious. It was, of course, in the context of a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.
Just one more comment - I went to pick up the book at the library today (have to wait for the audio) and was pleasantly surprised to find Love, Ruby Lavender right next to it! I hadn't realized that this was the same author of The Aurora County All-Stars. My older daughter and I read that one together years ago and loved it.
So again, thanks for the pointer.
Oh, how nice! Glad to have been of help!
Go, Deb, write that book!
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