My #FAME17 Experience!

Attending the Florida Association for Media in Education Conference was a wonderful experience!

Right off the bat, Sharon Powers and her son made me feel like a rock star. When they picked me up at the airport, this sign was in their car window: 

And then authors got cookies at registration:

And of course being a Scholastic author always makes me feel important:

I participated in my first ever "speed dating" session, which basically means I moved around a packed room, going from table to table, telling educators about RUBY LEE & ME.

And then Augusta Scattergood and I rolled out our presentation, "Writing Bravely--Tackling Tough Topics With Books," and followed that up with a signing at the Scholastic Booth.

FAME was my only appearance in October, but next month, look for me at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Books on November 11th, and at NCTE on November 17th and 18th!

ALA 2016--RUBY LEE & ME

Lots of cool things have been happening to me! I attended the American Libraries Association Conference for the first time ever.

This is a photo of me signing with my friend and fellow Scholastic author, Augusta Scattergood. Several of our Florida SCBWI colleagues gathered to show their support, or maybe just to ham it up!

And I had to snap a photo of my new book beside Augusta's new book!

And this is a stack of our books ready for signing!

In other cool news, I toured the TRIO exhibit at ALA. I was especially interested because RUBY LEE & ME will be part of TRIO in 2017. That means my book will be given to a visual artist and a songwriter. Using RUBY LEE & ME as inspiration, the visual artist will produce a work of art, and the songwriter will pen a song, thus completing the TRIO. The exhibit will debut at the Southern Independent Booksellers' Conference in Savannah.You can learn more by clicking on TRIO.

And finally, I had the opportunity to meet a Louisiana family whose son has been assigned RUBY LEE & ME for summer reading. Here we are at Inkwood Books:

That's all the news that's fit to print. Happy Fourth of July and Happy Summer Reading!

Celebrating Black History Month With RUBY LEE AND ME

I didn't set out to write about school integration. My intention was to pay a simple visit to Mrs. Pauline Porter, my school's first African-American teacher. I wanted her to know what an impact she had made on my life. The visit touched us both.

Mrs. Porter wasn't supposed to be my teacher. She taught first grade in the classroom beside mine, but every afternoon she changed classrooms with my teacher and worked with those of us who were struggling to read. My own teacher didn't have much patience, and so Mrs. Porter was a godsend. But at the time, Mrs. Porter didn't see it that way. She suspected our principal was checking up on her, by sending the white teacher into her classroom. That never occurred to me as a child, but as an adult, I understood her feelings. School integration was hard. By the end of my visit, Mrs. Porter and I weren't sure of the principal's true motive, but we both knew the children she taught had been helped.

My book, RUBY LEE AND ME was inspired by that visit. Over Christmas, I had the privilege to take Mrs. Porter's daughter a copy of my novel. LaVerne insisted on giving me this caroler that Mrs. Porter had painted in a ceramics class. It's sitting in my office as a reminder to write from the heart, to do good work, to make her proud.

Scholastic has compiled this list of new releases to celebrate Black History Month. I think Mrs. Porter would be pleased to see RUBY LEE AND ME on the list.

Scholastic's Mother Daughter Book Club

Scholastic is featuring RUBY LEE & ME as a Mother Daughter Book Club Selection. They've posted discussion questions, a recipe for peach cobbler, and a drawing to win ten copies of the book. You can find more information by clicking here:

RUBY LEE & ME

This is what a dream comes true looks like!

RUBY LEE AND ME received a starred review from Booklist, and will be published by Scholastic on January 5th. A description and ordering information is available by clicking here:.

WRITING A PUBLISHABLE PICTURE BOOK

When I first started writing, I began with picture books because I thought they were easier. HA! They are not. In fact, a clever picture book is one of the hardest things to write. More and more picture books have a "high concept." In other words, you know what the book will be about, just by reading the title. Check out these examples:

In comparison, one of my first picture books was called PIONEER STAR. The premise was that a little girl wanted to drive her grandpa's covered wagon in the Fourth of July parade. It was reminiscent of the bedtime stories I used to tell my little sister when we were growing up. See the difference in my idea and the ones above? The titles and concepts above are much more marketable.

However, nothing we write is ever wasted. I was recently working on a Middle Grade novel, and in one of the chapters, an older sister is telling a bedtime story to her younger one. I pulled out PIONEER STAR and used much of the text to build that scene.

My Middle Grade novel, (title still to be determined), is under contract with Scholastic. So PIONEER STAR will be published, just not as an illustrated picture book as I had imagined.

The path to publishing a picture book is much easier if you start with a "high concept," but I've learned not to throw away any of my stories--sometimes they can be repackaged!

An Interview With Carol Matas, (Sydney Taylor Award Blog Tour)

Carol Matas is an internationally acclaimed author of over 40 books for children and young adults. Her novel Pieces of the Past: The Holocaust Diary of Rose Rabinowitz is a 2014 Sydney Taylor Honor Book Selection for Older Readers.

Carol, What led you to set a Holocaust book in Canada?

Scholastic Canada has a series called “Dear Canada," Canadian history books aimed at girls in Grade 4-8, similar to the US series, “Dear America.” Scholastic approached me and asked me to write a Holocaust book for the series since there was not one yet and they felt that would be an important addition. I had already written two books for the series, one dealing with the Holocaust as part of the story – “Turned Away” is set in Winnipeg in 1941 and is about a young Jewish girl and her first cousin in France. Devorah corresponds with her cousin and we see what happens to the French Jews through Devorah’s eyes. In “Behind Enemy Lines," an “I Am Canada” novel, another historical series by Scholastic, this one for boys, I write about a young gunner whose plane is shot down over France and who ends up in Buchenwald. However, the big question for this new book was- ‘How can you set a Holocaust book in Canada when the Holocaust did not happen there?’ That was my first and biggest challenge, and until and unless I could solve it, there would be no book.

Why did you choose a diary format over prose?

This was another part of the project imposed by the constraints of the series – they are all written in dairy format. That proved to be a huge challenge and forced me to become very creative in figuring out a way to make that format work.

What were your greatest challenges in researching and writing this story?

I began my research in a broad sense looking at all kinds of countries, stories and time periods. But I had other constraints to consider: the girl needed to be 12 or 13 to fit the parameters of the series, and therefore that would impact what country to set the book in, and what time in history the book should begin. I considered Hungary, for instance, since the Jews there were rounded up later in the war and my character could conceivably have survived. The truth is that most children did not survive the Holocaust and it was important to research and to discover who did and what helped them to survive. During this research phase I came across the story of the Jewish orphans who were allowed to come to Canada after the war. I saw that some had come from Poland, some from Warsaw. I had always wanted to write about the Jewish Resistance and the Warsaw Uprising because I think it is important for children to realize that Jews did fight back. But this also allowed for me to show the gradual insidious way Hitler “managed” the Final Solution so that right up until the end many Jews still did not and could not believe they would be murdered. I was also able to write about the hidden children. Most who survived were in fact part of this group or they would have ended up in the death camps. So in the end I decided my character would live in Warsaw and that she would be one of the hidden children who did survive. Because she was going to come to Canada as part of the orphan project that would mean that all her family would perish. Readers would know that from the start so the challenge was to make them want to discover how that happened and what Rose’s story was.

Another important aspect of the book for me was the spiritual and religious questions raised by the Holocaust itself and for my character Rose in particular. Since the story was set in Warsaw, the site of a large and vibrant Reform Synagogue, I chose to make Rose’s father a rabbi. This allowed for her to be both knowledgeable and questioning in her spiritual journey through darkness.

What is the most gratifying thing that has happened to you because of this book?

When I was in tenth grade I went to see a play in Winnipeg called “Andora” staged by the then artistic director of The Manitoba Theatre Company, John Hirsch. That play, and one I saw afterwards, “Mother Courage,” changed my life. It made me see that art could teach and could even change the way a person saw the world. I chose a life in the arts, first as an actor, then as a writer, and have tried to be a force for change. John Hirsch was one of the war orphans that came to Canada in 1947/48. I hope I have in some small way paid tribute to him and the others like him who survived and then made new lives for themselves and enriched all of us.

What can young readers expect next from Carol Matas?

I have two new books, one just published and one coming out this spring. The newly published book is a first for me- a picture book and a non-fiction book about death and dying for young readers and their families. Called “When I Die” it is a short meditation on death that I hope will make the subject less scary for parents as they discuss death with their young children.  

On a trip to Los Angeles I visited The Autry Museum of Western Heritage and saw an exhibit called “Jews in the Wild West.” One of the pictures in the exhibit was of Mayor Charles Strauss, Tucson 1882, and his son, dressed up as cowboys. I knew I had to write about it from the second I saw that picture. The new novel, entitled “Tucson Jo” is inspired by the Strauss story but centers on the daughter of the first Jewish Mayor of Tucson in 1882 – her hopes and dreams, her fight for independence as a young woman, and the anti-Semitism Charles Strauss encountered when he ran for mayor. (I say in the book inspired by Charles Strauss because the family name is Fiedler in my book and I have created my own characters, a choice that gave me more freedom with the fictional  part of the story.) Tucson Jo will be launched at the AJL convention in Vegas this summer and I am very excited about presenting it to librarians and readers from across North America.

Both these books are published by a new digital publisher, Fictivepress.com. The editor is tough and demanding, which has made my books all the better, but she is not worried, as some of the big publishers are, that my work might be “too Jewish”. This has given me a freedom in my writing that I often do not have. And a little farther into the future, Scholastic Canada will be publishing my new science fiction book!  I am already researching that one.

GLORY BE An Interview With Augusta Scattergood

Augusta is one of my writer friends living here in the Tampa Bay Area. I was delighted to attend her book launch party at Inkwood Books earlier this month, and to hear her interviewed on NPR.

Recently, I had the chance to chat with Augusta about her debut novel, GLORY BE, which was edited by Andrea Pinkney and published by Scholastic.

GLORY BE takes place in 1964 during Freedom Summer. What was your initial inspiration for this story?

I actually started writing the book in 2001, after hearing Ruby Bridges speak at Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, where I worked for ten years. Soon after that, I joined a critique group and mostly wrote book reviews and personal essays. Actually GLORY BE started life as “Junk Poker,” an essay/ short story about a game my sister and I played as children. That remained the working title of the novel for quite a while, through several premature submissions. Till I realized neither junk nor poker was a particularly appropriate title for a middle-grade novel.

But I need to go back a bit to tell you that this story really started in 1964 when I worked for my state’s Library Commission as a summer college intern. Sunflower County, Mississippi (And no, I didn’t make up that county’s name) was in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It was Freedom Summer, 1964. A lot was going on, to say the very least on that subject. History unfolded while I shelved books and ran story hours.

As a library intern, I worked with an amazing director. She stood up to a very vocal library trustee who wanted us to close down the library, or at least remove all the chairs, rather than allow it to be integrated. By the end of that summer, Story Hour had turned into a remedial reading class attended by children who’d never been inside a library. That same summer, I briefly met a young, white civil rights worker from Ohio. In town to register voters and teach in the new Freedom School, she spent her off hours hanging out in the library. It’s not a reach to say I learned a lot that college summer.

And now, both my library director and that civil rights worker have ended up in my book.


I read a Willa Cather quote on your blog that said: “Let your fiction grow from the land beneath your feet.” Tell us how growing up in the Mississippi Delta influences your writing.

I see setting as almost another character in my writing. GLORY BE takes place during two short weeks in July. I always loved summers growing up. As I wrote this novel, I pictured mimosa blossoms from the tree outside my childhood home, and I heard crickets — that almost deafening sound that happened every early evening. When Glory and her friends gather to play kick-the-can or baseball, the pecan tree that shaded my backyard is home base.

Another quote I love is from Eudora Welty, as reported in One Writer’s Beginnings. She shared this advice from a literary critic: “Always be sure you get your moon in the right part of the sky.” I tried very hard to get the details of the Mississippi Delta right.

Give us a brief plot synopsis for your novel.

All Gloriana June Hemphill wants this summer is for her pool to stay open and her big sister to stay her best friend. But things are beginning to change in Hanging Moss, Mississippi, whether she likes it or not. The town is divided by the closing of the community pool and the civil rights workers who’ve come to town. Her sister has a boyfriend, the new football hero who’s mysteriously turned up in town.

Glory begins to make sense of these changes when she befriends the daughter of one of these “outside agitators.” Her maid, Emma, also helps her understand what’s changing in her life, and more importantly, why things shouldn’t stay the same.

GLORY BE is historical fiction. What research tips do you have for other authors?

Having spent most of my career as a librarian, the research part was fun. I think when writing for kids about such an important time in history, writers need to make sure young readers understand what it was like living in another century, in a different place or in someone else’s shoes. Quite honestly, even though I was there during this crucial time in our history, as a child I was shielded from a lot of what was happening in the South. So I’ve always been interested in learning more about Freedom Summer. For this book, I tried to read oral histories and also to interview my contemporaries about the actual events. Then I had fun remembering early 1960s music, the hairstyles, the food.

So many debut authors complain about the lack of marketing support for their novels. That has certainly not been your experience. Share with us the wonderful journey you’ve been on pre-publication.

A whirlwind. That’s about the only way I can describe it! My editor loved the book from the very start. We worked together for several months, then she started sharing it with everybody at Scholastic. For me, that’s when the excitement truly began.

Along with four other debut novelists, I was invited to speak at the spring sales meeting. Having been a school librarian for so long, I went prepared. I took my Junk Poker/ Buster Brown shoebox filled with treasures, and did a Show and Tell. After that, I was asked to read from the book for an audio recording Scholastic made to share with potential bookstore purchasers, then a video recording for their Librarians Preview. I could go on and on. I have no complaints! I adore Scholastic!

What has been the most exciting thing that has happened to you in the past year?

Wow. So many things. Re-connecting with old friends (mostly via my blog and Facebook) who have their own memories of the summer of 1964. Hearing grown-up readers tell me they want to share the book with their children and grandchildren and students to help them understand Freedom Summer. Lunch with my editor and tea with my agent when I returned to New Jersey for the summer. All the amazing events at Scholastic. I pinch myself on an almost daily basis. Even before the book is officially in print!

What are you working on now?

Aha. The hard part! I’m working on a second middle-grade novel, set in Florida, started at a Highlights Founders Workshop with Carolyn Coman at least three years ago. I try not to think about how long it takes me to write, from idea to fruition. I’m working hard to speed up that process. GLORY BE took almost ten years from the time I put pen to paper until the book hit the stores.

This “new” novel was critiqued by an amazing agent, Linda Pratt, at an SCBWI regional event. That’s how we met and totally connected, but she didn’t take me on until I revised and submitted GLORY BE a year later.

I have another tiny kernel of a potential master plan for something new, also middle-grade, set in the South of course. Always be prepared. Just in case.