Category: Books

Posted in Banned Books, Books

Banned Books Week

Posted on by beckylevine

As I said back here, I grew up on folk music, including The Weavers–Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, & Lee Hays. Not quite so many years back, but enough, I watched the 1982 documentary “Wasn’t That a Time,” about their 1980 reunion. What’s the one thing I remember the most strongly?

Lee Hays saying this about their experiences during the McCarthy era:

“If it wasn’t for the honor, I’d just as soon not have been blacklisted.”

This week is Banned Books Week. You can read about it at the ALA website.

I think it’s an important week. My world is highly made up of writing blogs, like yours, and I’m pretty sure we all hear a lot about censorship, about parents deciding a book can’t be taught in a school, carried in a library, offered to students. That a writer can’t come and talk to their kids. And, yes, thank goodness, we hear a lot about the other parents and the teachers and the librarians and the school administrators who fight on the other side.

We also, I think, hear a lot of joking. Like Lee Hays, we know–writers know–that humor is a way of coping with pain, that it can diffuse a battle and, sometimes, get a few more people to listen. We talk about how censorship will get an author more readers; that if a book is banned, its numbers will probably go up on Amazon.

Except, really, it’s just not all that funny.

Here are a few posts & articles that I think are important to read:

Guess what, guys? It hurts. It hurts the writers & it hurts the kids. How many decades later, Lee Hays was still angry and bitter and sad. Rightly so.

When I was in high school, a teacher got reprimanded for having us read a book, and told he couldn’t teach the book in class. I think it was Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. I was furious. At least I thought I was. I didn’t realize how much angrier I could get until the School Board president (at our request? Another teacher’s request?) came to “explain” their choice. That was probably the first time I truly realized how absolutely head-against-brick infuriating it can be for a kid to come up against an adult who just refuses to see or say the truth, to admit what they have done, to accept responsiblity–in full–for the choice they have made.

It was “not censorship.”

Yeah, right.

What changed in my life that day? Did I narrow my choices of books? Duh. No. Did I decide that I was going to take every chance I got to read a book an adult told me I shouldn’t? Sure. Did I decide that no authority figure would ever get automatic respect from me? Of course.

So, all in all, not a bad thing.

Except for the anger. The brick-wall fury. The helplessness.

Those feelings should not line the path that a kid takes to a book.

Read banned books. Read unbanned books. Give them to your kids. Give them to your friends’ kids. Give them to your schools.

And how’s about we do it 52 weeks a year!

Posted in Books, Reading

Quiet Books: Can I hear a YES?!

Posted on by beckylevine

Remember “edgy?” Okay, the word is still here. And I like it–I like edgy books. I admire the strength these authors put into their words, the sharp and almost painful voice with which their narrators tell their stories, and the power that pulls me in and keeps me turning the page, at times faster than I can really keep up with.

BUT…

I also like books that AREN’T this way. Lately, I’ve heard the word “quiet” tossed around. People are talking about it on Twitter & Facebook. Writers are trying to figure out what it means, when they hear it from publishers and agents, and they’re trying to figure out–I think–if it has to be a bad thing. Because I think there is some sense out there that it may, indeed, be something that, well…won’t help your book get picked up and sold.

Honestly, I hope that’s not true. Not only because I suspect that my own writing may be more quiet than…edgy? Loud? Whatever that other thing is? But because–if my understanding of quiet books is right–I value them so much for the reading experience they bring me that I don’t want to see them go away.

I’ve been thinking about a few authors whose books I’ve read–some recently, some not so recently–books that I think of as “quiet.” (Some of these authors have also written what I’d called edgier books that I also loved, but I’m not talking about those today.) I’m going to name these books, and I want you all to take this labeling as a STRONG recommendation to go out and read them. Because they’re all incredible, powerful writers. Just…in a different way.

All of these books, like the edgy ones, deal with teens who face problems. BIG problems. MODERN problems. The two things that seem to be different, to me, are the pacing and the voice.

These books don’t rush. I’m not sure the edgy ones do, either, but I find myself rushing through them, often, to find out what’s coming next. These “quiet” stories don’t feel slow, I just feel like I have time to sit with them, to follow the explorations the author is making into character and choices and connections and to make my own explorations at the same time.

The narrative voices in these books also give me time. Somehow, there is a strength of character in the hero (even if they’re not 1st person, we’re almost always getting the story through the hero’s perspective) that makes me feel confident and safe. I’m not saying I read their stories knowing that they’ll be okay, or expecting a predictable ending. That’s not it. It’s that somehow I believe the hero has the strength to make it through their pain and their experiences, and that strength lets me breathe a bit more slowly and read for HOW they’re going to do that–to watch their choices with curiosity, sympathy, and hope.

I’m not doing this very well–telling you what I like so much about these books, without sounding like I’m putting down the others. Honestly, I like them all. I just get sad when I hear writers worrying about whether they shouldn’t write these books. I want to stand up and shout, wave my arm frantically to get their attention, and say, “Yes! Please! Keep writing!”  I want to tell them that I crave their kind of story, and that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Am I? 🙂

Posted in Books, Reading

Just for Fun: Winter Reading

Posted on by beckylevine

Hey, all–it’s only Thursday, but for some reason it’s feeling like Friday! We’re having our first cloudy, drippy day in weeks (sorry, all you Nor’easters!), and I’m actually wearing long sleeves. The warm, sunny weather has been great, but it’s boding not well for our summer water supply, so I’m actually pretty happy to have used my windshield wipers this morning.

Anyway, I’m feeling sort of lazy and snug, so I’m not going to bring out the big guns on writing theory today? Instead, how about a little conversation?

Do your reading habits change with the seasons? I always hear about beach reads (may I recommend the entire Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot?), but what about fireside reads? Couch-under-fleece-blanket reads? Let’s-not-get out-of-bed-yet-in-the-morning reads?

My son has started on the Lord of the Ring series (after I told him he could TOTALLY skip the Tom Bombadil section, because, really, everybody does!). To me, this is a perfect winter read–you’re inside, safe & sheltered, and–even if the power is out–at least you’re not headed toward Mordor. I’ve been doing my research reading with Jane Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull-House, which makes California winters, even in a stinky economy, look pretty warm and prosperous. And I just read a wonderful YA book called Need, by Carrie Jones, which is set in Maine and filled with seriously cold fingers and toes, snowshoe romance, and creepily dangerous pixies. (I fully reviewed Need on my other blog, here.) Yes, it had me looking over my shoulder into the “forest” around our house, as I read late into the night, but I was tucked safe into bed and pretty sure those were coyotes I was listening to.

When it’s cold, do you want to read about somewhere colder? Or do you hunt out palm trees and streaming sunshine, to counter the darkness inside? Share your favorite reads this winter, and let’s pass them around. We’re not done yet–remember, the groundhog saw his shadow!

Posted in Books, Research

Research: What You Look For and What You Find

Posted on by beckylevine

My current WIP is a YA historical novel, about a young girl in 1913 Chicago. This is the first time I’ve written a historical story, and I was very intimidated, when I started, at the idea of all the research I’d be doing.

Okay, I’m still a bit intimidated.

I cleared off an entire bookshelf for the history books, and I’m working my way through them. Yes, the Internet is out there, and it’s full of fascinating and incredible information. What I’m really loving, though, is burying myself in a book with the depth and layers of a specific subject or theme. 

When I started on this path, I expected I’d be reading for facts, specific details I would need to flesh out the world I’m writing about–to make that world real for my readers (and me). And I’m finding those–although the ones I know I need are making me dig and the ones I had no idea I’d want are jumping out at me!

What I hadn’t thought about was how full a picture I’d get of a place and time, of the people who were moving along the streets and stopping to talk and making changes, small and big.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams. Addams was one of the founders of one of the biggest, if not the biggest, settlement houses in the country–in Chicago. My MC will get involved with the settlement movement in the city, so I’ve been reading up on it a lot. Addams’ book has been on my shelf for several months–for the same reason, pretty much, that I hadn’t read Donald Maass’ book for so long. Someday, I’ll learn.

I read Hull-Houseyears ago in college and remembered only that it was the most boring book of the year. Now I just shake my head at the things “They” expect 18-year-olds to read and connect with. Yes, the book is very densely written, and Addams has a seriously convoluted style. This is why it’s taking me so long to read–I have to back up frequently and restart a sentence or a paragraph. Even then, depending on how much she’s referring to politics or events I don’t know about, I don’t always get the point she’s making.

But, oh, I’m learning. I’m finding out the goals of the settlement houses, and the dreams of their founders and residents. I’m getting solid, concrete visions of the people around Hull-House, the families and the children and, oh, the women! I’ve found a couple of wonderful facts that either fill in a gap or are sending me down a new path I needed to find.

The best, though, is what I didn’t expect. I’m getting to know Jane Addams. At 18, in college, if I’d been able to understand this book, I’d have respected the woman who wrote it, even admired her. Now I get to like her. Yes, she was incredible, amazing, even awe-inspiring in dedication to the things she believed in. She was also, though, warm, generous, and funny–in a way that smiles with us as we chase our own ideals.  The energy of trying something new, the passion of commitment, the sometimes head-pounding dead-ends–she sees them all. She can laugh at her young self and still respect that woman she was–even as she made mistakes. She’d rather have had regrets than never have tried.

I would have liked to invite Jane Addams over for tea.

Do you do research for your stories? What magic have you discovered?

Posted in Books, Publishing, Somebody Else Says, The Writing Path, Writing Books, Writing Goals

Somebody Else Says: Jane Lindskold

Posted on by beckylevine

I was going to put up this great, maybe-even-profound blog about…blogging first thing this week. Then I read this post by Jane Lindskold at Tor.com and thought it was a good one to share. We can all use more info about What Happens After the Book is Written. Hop over and have a read.

Thanks to Nathan Bransford for the link.

See you in a few days for that brilliantpost on blogs!