The Blue Bookcase

So, I love books.

(If you read this blog often you're probably laughing that I said that, since it's like me saying "So, I breathe oxygen." Yes, you're thinking, we already know.)

I found a book blog that I like! That, as you might NOT know, is a big deal since usually when I find a book blog it's like this:

Sloppy electric green background with words in some horrible unreadable color like purple.
One blog author who has one genre of book she reads, like Young Adult Fantasy.
Said blog author is pretentious and rarely likes books, but cannot give any real substantial reasons for disliking these books.
When she does like books it is again for unknown reasons.
She describes only one book every few weeks when she finishes reading them.
When "reviewing" books she uses words like "Believable" and "likable" and other words that end in "able."

Yes, I used purple to confuse and disturb you.

I hate these blogs. They make me feel sad.
SO when I found The Blue Bookcase, imagine my NOT sadness. In fact, imagine my joy!
Their blog is simple and pretty. They write clearly and positively about many genres of books. And yes! I'm saying THEY because it's more than one person writing reviews!
Check out the Little Blue Bookcase, and check out their book giveaway!

The Pitch

Authors often claim that they spend more time working on their pitch than on their entire story.
Thus after one night of working on a pitch, I am positive it is finished.

Wait. I mean... not finished.
But here's the outline for a pitch (two versions, even though they're basically the same.)
Version 1:
First sentence: Set-up the story
Second sentence: The HOOK!
Third sentence: The resolution.

Version 2:
First sentence: Introduce the character
Second sentence: Introduce his/her problem
Third sentence: What he/she learns.

So here's my pitch: (It's not so great.)

Left home alone by her working mother and absent father, Margaret is resigned to spend summer vacation being bossed around by her little sister Laurie. But after new neighbors move in and the fort burns down, the sisters each have to face the thing they fear most. For Margaret that’s the possibility that her sister could abandon her the way their dad did, and she has to learn to stand up for herself, whatever the cost.

Does it make you want to read my book? For those of you have read it (yes, mom, lana and suzie) does it sum up my book?

Give my your criticism!

Children's Books

Yesterday... nope.

Tuesday.

I can't ever keep days straight...

Anyway, on TUESDAY, which was not yesterday, I spent the whole day at UVU for the Forum on Children's Literature. I found it to be most awesome.

Here are some reasons:

1. I got a free pen.

2. I got a free water bottle.

3. My name tag said Rebeccah Pitcher. How cute is that? I love having Pitcher be my last name.

4. I got to meet lotsa authors, (real live authors!)

5. I bought a few books, and had them signed.

6. I got to have a professional author critique a chapter of my book. (Yes, so, it was Carol, but still: awesome!) Also, I had to try to spell critique many times before I remembered it had a Q in it.

7. I learned the step-by-step procedure for writing a picture book.

8. I learned it so well that I will now teach you.

For especially my mother, who keeps saying that she will write a picture book:

First, a picture book has 32 pages. (almost) Always.

Pages are divided thus:

pg1: title page
pg2: info, like copyrights

pg3: STORY BEGINS.

But think of it like this, or open up a picture book, pg1 is a single, and pg3 (your beginning) is technically on a double page spread, but its a single too, because pg2 has boring things on it. SO pg3 has to be self-contained. (At least as far as text goes)

pg3: Story begins, and you can introduce the topic. But picture books, like poetry, have natural pauses and breaks, and the places where you feel like pausing or breaking...

those are the places you turn the page. (I made a page-break here by adding an elipses! after breaking, didn't you pause? THAT's where you turn the page.)

pg3-6: You can introduce the topic, like this, over those four pages you can say "Kathryn's room was always neat and clean. Nothing was ever out of place... [blah blah blah.] Even her hampster's cage was always tiday. Except her bottom dresser drawer; it was filled with candy. She never shared it with anyone and no one knew it was there but her."

pg7/8: introduce conflict: "But one day when Kathryn got home her bottom drawer was open! Someone had stolen a piece of her candy!"

pg9-29ish: Try to solve the problem three times and fail. "Kathryn knows one of her brothers is stealing her candy, so she lays a trap to catch him, but falls asleep and wakes up and candy is gone! She hangs a cage from the ceiling, but it falls when she goes to get a drink and there's no one in it when she gets back. Too bad her hampster can't tell her who's been sneaking around. Finally Kathryn lures all her brothers into her room and pretends to leave, waiting to see which one will take the candy. None of them do! She looks over to complain to Marigold her hampster, but she's not in her cage!"

pg30-31: Solve the problem. "She's in the bottom drawer eating Kathryn's candy! It was her all along!"

The last page, though, always has to be an "Aha!" moment. You can't just solve it. Often times its in a picture only. Like a picture of Kathryn and Marigold the hampster eating the candy together. Kids know, even if grown-ups don't, that that means Kathryn isn't mad. Everything will be okay.

Or in Can't you sleep little bear? It's when he says "I brought you the moon," and the last picture is just of them standing, looking up at the moon.

or in Where the Wild Things Are its that line, "and it was still hot."

It's not enough that dinner was there, or that Max made it home. That is only satisfying.

Not "aha" worthy.

But dinner was still warm. On that last page, when you thought the story was through, and you thought, "at least he's back safe," then you can add "and things will be okay."

Now YOU can do it. Write a children's book.

But first look at these pretty pictures to inspire you: The Picture Book Report.

They're illustrating novels.

What a novel idea.

It wouldn't let me post any pictures.

Also, it keeps screwing with my spacing.

p.s. Love me inspite of my puns.

Graduation

Remember how I broke my foot freshman year? Luckily that was before this blog, or else the whole server might explode with an overload of angst.
(That was a very hard time for me, I was happily adjusted. I had friends who were girls for the first time ever. I loved college.
Then I was sent home to cold Minnesota winter to stay in bed with only my very-not-college student family for company. Even all my friends from home were gone, off at their own schools.)

Not to mention that I had to miss an entire semester of school. That meant I would graduate one semester late.
Add that to the fact that I do pretty poorly in lots of things (lets not discuss failing my religion classes.)
And to the fact that I usually take about 12 credits a semester because I'm lazy and have a 20hour a week job and a husband to spend time with. Remember, Dad, how often you like to remind me that if you only take 12credits a semester you will graduate years later than you should.
Aaand to the fact that before last semester I never once did a grad plan or looked at required classes and only took what I felt like taking. You know, like writing poetry (not required) and chemistry (not required), creative writing (not required), and Writing YA literature (not required).

I fully expected and had accepted the fact that I would be here for another 2 years. I would graduate after 5 or 6 years at college, maybe.

But the other day, I laid out a grad plan. And miracle of miracles, I can not only graduate on time,
I can graduate a semester EARLY.

Whatwhatwhaaat! I don't even have to work extra hard. I would just take 6 credits each during spring and summer and then my last 15 creds during fall. I could graduate in December.

I will not however, be graduating a semester early. I just want you all to know that I can.
Because if I take Spring classes then I wouldn't get to go Africa.
And I wouldn't get to take those last few not-required, much-desired classes, like Writing YA literature (again- and not because I failed it, but because I loved it), and Children's Media, and Children's literature. (You see a theme, you say? I don't know what you mean...)
Anyways.
Just all of you think and realize something to yourselves, where ever you are: Cs get degrees and slacking gets you exactly where you would have been if you did not slack.

Maybe thats a bad moral to my story.

Here's a new moral: Even if things are hard and bad things happen to good people, everything will work out for the best and you can graduate college early if you want to.
:)

Have a good Hump Day. (Not, of course, referring to the film or anything dirty. Only to the fact that it is Wednesday and Wednesday is Hump Day.)

Angsty Post

A warning to protect my friends: this post will be long (super long) and full of ranting.
You do not have to read it, but if you do, please leave a comment and give me your opinion on the matter, because I am interested to hear it, maybe.. ahem, yes... even if it is a different opinion from mine.

Here goes:
Every single time that I have ever told anyone that I want to write young adult fiction, without exception, they have said "So you want to be the next Stephanie Meyer, huh?"
That makes me want to claw their eyes out.
This is a violent reaction and that is because my hatred for Stephanie Meyer and everything she stands for is itself very violent.
I do not want to be compared in any way to Meyer, and that is because I feel that she writes rubbish and I do not.
Once someone close to me, who will remain unnamed, said, "You can criticize her when you've written a best-seller."
Movie critics do not have to be great directors. Food critics do not have to be great chefs.
I do not have to top the New York Times Best Seller List to recognize the worst books (please do not say literature) ever written.
I get very defensive when people criticize books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and I practically snapped Travis's head off the other day when he asked why everything has to be nonsensical in the novel. (Not the garbage movie, folks, the novel.)
"It's about a little girl growing up," I said over and over again, "She doesn't fit, she's too big, too small. Adults expect things of her that are absurd. She doesn't understand what people want from her. Everything seems confusing."
"But why does the baby turn into a pig?" he asked. "Why do they play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs? It doesn't make sense."
"Nothing makes sense!" (I think I was practically yelling at him) "Don't you remember being a kid and thinking absolutely everything around you was crazy and confusing and adults were nonsensical and you couldn't get a handle on anything because it was always changing? It doesn't make anymore sense than the real world!"
Don't even get me started on Peter Pan.
Too late. I am started.
I am sick and tired of me saying "I love Peter Pan. I think it is among the most wonderful and important Children's books ever written," and people responding with "James Barrie was super screwed up. His balls didn't even drop."
I do not care about James Barrie's balls. I care that he wrote a magical book about someone who could imagine the world into being as wonderful as he wanted it to be.
I do care about Barrie though, don't get me wrong, I used to --and sometimes still do-- wish that I was Barrie, merely so I could be the one to find Peter Pan, to understand him completely. I know Barrie's life totally sucked.
Sometimes I think it was worth it. I love Peter Pan more than words can express.

I know that I will not produce the next Peter or Alice.

But I like to think I'm a pretty good writer
(and yet I know as soon as I say that ever, even to my friends and family, people picture the kind of kid that is the main character in Gentlemen Broncos. A terrible writer who thinks they're Gods gift to literature, constantly asks their friends to read their work for them and hovers over them asking what they think.)
Why is saying "I want to write," looked at the same way as a short uncoordinated kid saying "I want to be the next Michael Jordan" ?
It's an unobtainable, laughable dream. Right?

And if you want to be a good writer, not just a popular writer, oooh boy. Keep dreaming.
Stephanie Meyer is the devil.
Her book of distopian, obsessive, suicidal, sexual-primitivism lust and "love" is just another bomb being dropped on literature.
Because I know that if I want to write and have people hear me I have to write something like Gossip Girl, Twilight, Shiver, garbage.
Because girls who want to read literature read Emma, or Wuthering Heights, or Pride and Prejudice.
And literature, real literature, is so out of fashion that no one knows what books have won the Printz award this year. And even the winners, which I normally really like, are not always the type of literature that mean.
I don't know any ten-year olds that would read and enjoy Peter Pan or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Maybe I feel angsty because I read so much YA lit. At least the angst is how I remember being a teenager, and can write about it.

So here's what it all boils down to, I think: All children know that adults absolutely do not remember being a child.
All adolescents are caught between being a "grown-up" and a kid and do not know how to behave and have absurd things expected from them, no matter their circumstances.
Even if these kids and teenagers have friends and close family, they're all going at it alone. They're all "coming of age" and you know, "finding themselves." They're doing all those cliche things that everyone does around that time between ages 11-19.
And I honestly feel that I have something important to do. I feel that writing can help.

Don't you remember those few friends, the ones who stuck by you no matter what? Don't you remember that they weren't girls in your grade or the young women in your ward? It was Anne of Green Gables. It was Francie from a Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was Jonas from The Giver.
They were the only people who knew, exactly how it felt to be you, because they were SUCH a part of you.
I want to help people feel like someone knows how it feels to be them.
But the more YA lit I read, the more I feel like that is an immpossibility.
I want to do something important, but the world has decided (against my wishes) that it is not important. It is useless.
Teenagers read the soft porn of Twilight and Anne, sweet red-haired Anne Shirley, is forgotten in place of Bella Swan.

Night Ideas

Saul Bellow said "You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

I suspect that he was wrong, because oftentimes in the middle of the night I wake and scribble down something.

In the morning I find phrases like "Rabbit Feet" and remember that I dreamed about a girl who found a secret school in the basement of her actual school. In the secret school everyone is part animal. The girl discovers she has rabbit feet. How did she never notice?

I find a post-it that says "Bathroom Journal" about a girl who hides her journal in the library which is in a bathroom. Also, she writes lies in her journal. So half of the excellent book I could write would be her lying journal and the other half would be a third-person narrative about how crappy her real life is.

Seriously. I have about one brilliant idea like this a week. I wake up feeling happy and secure in the promise of a Printz award.
Then, a few hours later, I look back on what my dream was REALLY about.

Of course, the scene in Twilight where Edward sparkles in the sun came to Meyer in a dream...
Maybe Rabbit Feet could be the next best seller.

and electricity shooting through me

Lauren the twelve year old wrote some beautiful fan fiction under the secret name: BROKENFEATHERS.

We love Lauren.
She loved Lizzie McGuire.

Please read this beautiful story. Begin with Gordo's Summer, and then Confusion: PART 2.

Lovelovelove.
Please leave her some helpful comments.
:)


p.s. the kiss scene is the best part so far! Here's a sneak peak:

“What is it Gordo?” she wasn’t sounding nervous anymore, just worried about me.
“I, I was just noticing how amazingly attractive you are.” Stupid Gordo!

“What?” Lizzie said taken aback. “Gordo, hold on. I thought you said you didn’t like me that way.”

“Do you still like me?” Wait a minute! Just stop talking before you wreck a friendship, my mind screeched at me.

“Yeah, I do,” she said looking down and blushing.

“Well, see over the summer I…” I said trailing off. “Over the summer I found out I really do like you,” I said my secrecy coming undone.

She smiled and leaned in. Then she whispered, “let’s do something about it.” Our lips met and electricity shooting through me.

“Wow,” I breathed.

“Definitely wow,” she agreed.

BYU

Dad says, if you hate going to school, you’re taking the wrong classes.
He said drop French and take a class where you take pictures of food.
But I have to take four more semesters of French to graduate,
even though it’s not my major or my minor.
I have to take five more semesters of religion, and one of physical science, and geography, even though I already passed Chemistry, and all I want to study is writing.
I want to minor in film, without adding another year of school.
Because every class I take, except maybe one a semester, even within my major, is pure torture.
Now that I’m married I understand those women who drop out of college after they get hitched.
I want to be among those women, even though I know a degree is important.
Even though I want to do something with my life and have more than just a high school diploma.
But they won’t let me take cooking or photography unless I change my major,
and I have yet to hear of a class where I just take pictures of food.

children's media

I know what I want to do.
I want to make Children's Media.

Whether that be writing books for middle grade and young adults, or if that be writing or editing films for middle grade and young adults.

That's what I want to do. That's what I care about. That's what, I believe, I am pretty good at.


Also, apparently I connect best with twelve year olds.
When the sixth Harry Potter movie came out I went at midnight, yes dressed up, and then I called Jack (who is 12 and also went at midnight) and we had a lengthy discussion about all the things that we noticed, that had been omitted, and that we appreciated were included.

Aaaand, I got my 11 year old brother-in-law Harry Potter books for his birthday, and nothing is more exciting than when he says, "Hermione was supposed to have bushy hair and big teeth, and Ron should have had a long nose. The movies got it wrong."
Oh, Tate. That makes my day. Please be Harry for Halloween.

p.s. I recently finished the Golden Compass. Talk about awesome.

comments

Some days I give myself a goal.
Make a comment on everyone's blog today.

Today I did not give myself that goal. But I still couldn't keep from writing on all of your blogs.

Good posts, team.

hate

I hate languages.

I took two years of Spanish in high school, and semester another at college and I honestly cannot say anything besides: hola, puedo ir la baño? and como estas?
and are those even correct?

I am in my second semester of college french, and I still cannot understand a single word that my professor says.
I cannot even properly introduce myself.
At all.
Every day I sit through an hour of French and wonder what everyone is talking about.

I am honestly considering changing my major.
I love English. The idea literally makes me cry. I want nothing more than to study the beautiful English language, its literature, its poetry, its grammar.
and yet, I have to take and no doubt pass, three more semesters of a language besides English.
Spanish wasn't easier. Please don't tell me to choose an easier language than French.
If I have to learn a language, French is the one for me.
I love French poets, French film, French culture.
I hate French.

I'm going to try to not cry through today's French class. But every time the professor looks at me, all I can say is je ne sais pas.
and I know that I'm pronouncing it wrong.

I'm sitting in my poetry class

and I can't decide if I should drop it.
My teacher is clearly crazyish.

Her class will be super hard.

BUUUUT, I WANT TO TAKE THIS CLASS.
This class is writing and studying contemporary poetry.
I want to read the books that we have to buy. I want to write poetry and have it be critiqued, because I am good at reading poetry, but I'm not very good at writing poetry.
I love to read poetry, and I love to write it, but this class seems to go beyond what is okay, or sane.
Sane at all.
Crazy.
I think after I check out my Hemmingway class that I will choose between them, and decide which class will be harder and which teacher is more crazy.

Also, that is a picture of Mary Oliver, one of my favorite contemporary poets.

Do you love wasps?

I found this snotty man's blog and cannot stop laughing about things that he writes.
(Enter with caution, not everything's appropriate.)
As far as I can tell, David Thorne spends his time writing antagonizing emails, and mocking the people that cannot put up with him.
He mocks a man's website after the man describes himself as:
"...the adventurous outdoors type with a love of watersports and everything outdoors".

Wasps are outdoors Lesley, do you love wasps? Fuse boxes? Open cut mining? Pedestrian crossings?

He then asks for his readers to send in emails listing other things Lesley must love.
They responded with the following:

Traffic lights
Prickles
Litter
A bus
My sister Amanda
Flies
Cigarette butts
Land mines
Homeless people
Sticks
Grandma
Dark alleyways
Bins
A parking meter
Opera in the park
Feral cats
Playgrounds
Dust
Fat people at hot dog stands
Blowfish
A dead Hedgehog
Construction workers
Snipers
Shade
Airborne viruses
Mandy says Toilets
A box
Shoes because of the carpet
A Wading Pool
Graveyards
Children on a field trip
Astro-turf®
Lesley
Indians on public transport
Land Fill
Holes in fences
Sheep droppings
Tether Ball
Starving 3rd world children
A used syringe
My poodle Benny
Quicksand
Lawn Sausages
Cody Smith
For Sale signs
Boy Scouts
Peeping Toms
Lawn furniture
Flagpoles
Television Antenna's
Owl pellets
Street walkers
Forest fires
Techno Viking (?)
Public Toilets
Yellow Snow
Dirty Redfern Locals
Vomit outside a pub
Speed bumps
Lost kittens
Free Candy Vans
Cement
Garden Gnomes

Honestly, I cannot stop giggling. Now I feel silly when I say that I am "Loving Every Minute" of anything.
Obviously I don't love every single minute.

they're going to keep coming today

I cannot stop writing. You're going to get a bunch of posts today.
I want to address the fact that I am in love.
(Yes with Travis, the best and cutest finacé in the world) But that's not who I am taking about it.
I'm talking about the women who write blogs that are AMAZING.
Do you want to form a club? Will you let me join?
I'd offer to be the secretary, except that you're all better at writing than I am.

Here they are. These are my new favorite blogs in the whole internet world:

(as previously addressed)


(from the author of Le Love, a blog I've adored for months. Also, Trav wants me to cut my hair like this.)

Color Me Katie
She has inspired me. Tonight I'm really going to spulrge on food, and spend two dollars (that IS a lot for me) on food coloring.


All Stripes.
(Okay, I know that it is for a company, but it's one of my favorite, favorite blogs.)

I, of course, have many other favorites which I am forced (by my OCD) to check daily, they can be found on my side bar under Lovely Links.
Look at them for some inspiration and beauty.
Click on the pretty pictures to head to their pretty blogs. Pretty, pretty, pretty.

so...

you know when you find a blog that seems to perfectly, and effortlessly voice exactly how you feel?
Oh yeah. I found that blog.

So about what I said...

(Even just now when I WROTE effortlessly, I had to sit and think for like two minutes of the word "effortlessly" because I could only think of the word "easilessly" which of course is NOT a word, and is the opposite of what I want. )

Also, when obsessively reading my new favorite blog (maybe I love it because of her admitted tendency to over share, something I also have a problem with), I came upon THIS freaking awesome post.
You go girl. She addresses the completely ridiculous interview between Marie Claire and Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth.
Just to give you a preview, here are some of the absurd quotes from the interview:

"Virginity and chastity are reemerging as a trend in pop culture, in our schools, in the media, and even in legislation."

"The lie of virginity — the idea that such a thing even exists — is ensuring that young women's perception of themselves is inextricable from their bodies."

"The main misconception of virginity is that it exists! There's no medical definition. It's a completely cultural invention. It's such a huge deal and yet it's so amorphous. There's no real way to define it at all. "

kjwfiuwqbnxfh ewfheklru! I AM BAFFLED. Too baffled for words. No such thing as virginity.
I almost feel the need to start spouting some scripture.
Even if this wasn't a religious dilemma for me, HOLY COW, this should be a point of controversy for every woman in the world who respects their body, or even... has a body.
Dang.
Please, Mel. Tell this woman off again. Because I am too baffled for words, and the writer of So about what I said... is NOT too baffled for words, but insanely calm and collected, please go read what she has to say.
I'm telling you, she's freaking brilliant.

being engaged = the best thing ever

Trav and I are having so much fun being engaged. Here's a peak into what our day to day is like. It's full of firsts, like this: this is the very first thing that we've purchased together for our home.
It was on clearance. (Can we talk later about my complete obsession with Martha Stewart? She's the BEST.) It was like a forty dollar thing, and we got it for 15! Yay Macy's! Yay Martha!
It's an expandable cutlery holder thing for the drawer.

p.s. after looking at this picture my mother said "them's child-bearing hips."


This is us painting our FIRST house together. Although, let's be honest, it's an apartment in a house, not a whole house, and we're not ACTUALLY painting in this picture. Please look at how tall he is. Please appreciate the fact that my mom is here from Montana and is spending all her time painting our house.

This was our FIRST beard contest, the rules were simple. Using only a small length of tape that we had peeled from off the walls, make a beard without looking in the mirror.
Trav's was better, but only because he had more tape. Mine ended up looking patchy.

Aaaaaalso, since we all know how much I love to blog, this blog will not die when we get married, but instead, will be reborn! The address will stay the same, so as to not confuse my heap o' readers, but the name, I think will soon change.
Because Trav and I can maybe both write, and since this blog won't really be about MY life anymore, but OUR life, we're mixing things up. But don't worry, we won't call it the "Pitcher Family Blog." That would be too confusing.

In the Brother's Bloom, at the end, there's a line that goes (basically) like this:
Penelope: Your brother told me once, there's no such thing as an unwritten life, just a badly written one.

That was our inspiration. What do you think of this new title?



And as Tigger would say, ttfn, tah-tah for now.

A guilty conscience needs to confess.

A work of art is a confession.

-Albert Camus

a book

I would like to take this moment to triumphantly declare, that I, Rebeccah Louise Froelich, have written a novel.
A real, actual book which was finished today (at least, the first draft).
It is 128 pages long.

It is for young adults around the age range of twelve, thirteen, maybe even fourteen, but probably not fourteen.
If you would like to read it, I would appreciate your criticism. Also, if you happen to have my aunt Katie's email address, I actually want send her my book since she's a children's librarian.
So.
Just be impressed.
Help me name this little fellow.
And take this opportunity to go to the book store.

out of the dust

Beginning: August 1920
As summer wheat came ripe,
so did I,
born at home, on the kitchen floor.
Ma crouched,
barefoot, bare bottomed
over the swept boards,
Because that's where Daddy said it'd be best.

I came too fast for the doctor,
bawling as soon as Daddy wiped his hand around
inside my mouth.
To hear Ma tell it,
I hollered myself red the day I was born.
Red's the color I've stayed ever since.

Daddy named me Billie Jo.
He wanted a boy.
Instead,
he got a long-legged girl
with a wide mouth
and cheekbones like bicycle handles.
He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl
with a fondness for apples
and a hunger for playing fierce piano.

(very quickly, let me say, I did NOT write that poem. It's the beginning to the novel Out of the Dust)
I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but now I would like to write about this to a greater extent.
First, as you may know, I want to be a young adult's author, because novels for young adults are SO good, and also, that seems to be all that I can write. (oh, I just realized, that sounds like I'm saying everything that I write is SO good, that's not what I mean. I mean that everything I write happens to be about children who are about 13...)
So I've taken to hanging out in the Newberry section of the library.
When I actually was a young adult, (12-18ish, folks) I did not read Out of the Dust for the simple fact that I love to judge books by their cover, and the cover of this book is generally unappealing.
It was recommended to me, and I was not interested.
Oh what a fool I was!
So Out of the Dust is the best of both worlds because it is a novel written entirely in poetry.
This poetry does not rhyme, and this poetry is not obscure.
I'll give you an example. or five.
Some, like the first one, are very story-like. Some are very poem-like.
But all of them tell so much to the reader in just a few simple words.

Fifty Miles South of Home
In Amarillo,
wind
blew plate-glass windows in,
tore electric signs down,
ripped wheat
straight out of the ground.


Debts
Daddy is thinking
of taking a loan from Mr. Roosevelt and his men,
to get some new wheat planted
where the winter crop has spindled out and died.
Mr. Roosevelt promises
Daddy won't have to pay a dime
till the crop comes in.

Daddy says,
"I can turn the fields over,
start again.
It's sure to rain soon.
Wheat's sure to grow."

Ma says, "What if it doesn't?"

Daddy takes off his hat,
roughs up his hair,
puts the hat back on.
"'Course it'll rain," he says.

Ma says, "Bay,
it hasn't rained enough to grow wheat in
three years."

Daddy looks like a fight brewing.
He takes that red face of his out to the barn,
to keep from feuding with my pregnant ma.

I ask Ma
how,
after all this time,
Dadddy still believes in rain.

"Well it rains enough," Ma says,
"now and again,
to keep a person hoping.
But even if it didn't
your daddy would have to believe.
It's coming on spring,
and he's a farmer."

It's so beautiful. I read it in just a few hours, and I think I might actually read it again before I have to return it. There's a reason this book won a Newberry. Karen Hesse is lovely, and this book is perfect and unique in it's style.
It makes me want to write today. Just spend the whole day writing.

the heart land

Last night as I was reading Calvin and Hobbes I started to wonder where it was that Bill Waterson's characters lived. It certainly seems a great deal like where I grew up.
Snowy in the winter, hot in the summer. Lots of trees and grass, all the children are above average. Well, Waterson is not from Minnesota, but he did grow up in Ohio.
Lots of famous people are from the midwest. For example:

Thomas Edison
John Deere
The Wright Brothers
Oprah
Henry Ford
John Wayne
Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain
Walt Disney
Abraham Lincoln
Dwight Eisenhower
Harry Truman
Benny Goodman
Miles Davis
Ronald Regan
Carl Sandburg
James Dean
John Cougar Mellencamp
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Herbert Hoover
Sufjan Stevens

These people are not only from the midwest, but also from my home state. Aren't they gems?
Bob Dylan
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Judy Garland
Garrison Keillor
Sinclair Lewis
Prince
Charles Schulz
Jesse Ventura

p.s. this is one of my favorite strips.