Monthly Archives: August 2014

Reading Like a Writer: Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

The thing I really hope for my work, more than a particular recognition or financial return, is longevity. It’s one thing to craft a really great story that hits the imagination of the moment and becomes a blockbuster, but it’s an entirely different sort of success to have a book stand the test of time. This Reading Like a Writer post will be one in an occasional series which looks in depth at the text of children’s classics.

One of the things I did this summer was think about books I read to my own children when they were little, the ones they loved and wanted to hear over and over. A big favorite of theirs and mine was Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema and illustrated by Beatriz Vidal. Though I love the pictures it’s the text that I really admire. Its been more than a decade since I’ve read that book aloud to one of my children but I can still recite it word for word. I decided to analyze for myself what made the story so effective. The obvious first thing is the rhyme scene which is perfect. Every rhyme is a true rhyme. The rhymed words are not forced by using archaic grammar They are all easy to read and well within a child’s working vocabulary.

Rain–plain

dead–overhead

feather–weather

cloud–loud

The second fairly obvious observation is that the format of the story, the cumulative or House-that-Jack-Built format, works well for this tale in which each thing is directly related to the next. There is not a heap of tension in the story. It’s dry. Cows are hungry. The herdsman shoots an arrow at a cloud. It rains. Not inherently gripping, but the cumulative structure and rhythm of the text makes the simple chain of events far more compelling than they would be otherwise. However, the cumulative structure is not launched into willy-nilly at the start of the book. It begins with a 10 line introduction to set the scene and ends with a 4 line conclusion which brings the story to rest.

The third thing I looked at was how the lines scanned. How many syllables per line and where do the stressed words fall within the line. I found that all the lines fell between 8 and 12 syllables, and that the pattern of stresses tended to be anapestic, two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. However, there was plenty of variation in the meter. So the verses were less structured than, say a sonnet, but still they were quite consistent in their rhythms. I think a perfectly consistent rhythm would have veered in the direction of boring and singsongy text, so it’s good to see the “rules” judiciously broken.

The last thing I noticed was that almost the entire story relied on lines with a stressed ending.

This is the great Kapitit Plain

All fresh and green from the African rain.

Plain and rain are both stressed syllables and most of the book has these strong endings. But the story begins with a 10 line introduction and the middle 6 lines of the introduction have unstressed endings.

With acacia trees for giraffes to browse on

And grass for the herdsman to pasture the cows on.

The stressed syllables there are browse and cows, so the introduction is set apart from the story with this very subtle variation in the meter as well as being set apart from the structure of the main story.

So why do all this work? I love poetry. I think picture books in verse, when done well, have the best staying power of all. I hope to write one some day. But I want to make sure that when I do I put at least as much effort and attention to detail into the text as the writers like Verna Aardema and Margaret Wise Brown have.

Middle Grade Monday Book Review: This One Summer by Julian Tamaki

This One Summer is by a writer-illustrator team of cousins! Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki.

Here’s what it’s about:

Every summer, Rose goes with her mom and dad to a lake house in Awago Beach. It’s their getaway, their refuge. Rosie’s friend Windy is always there, too, like the little sister she never had. But this summer is different. Rose’s mom and dad won’t stop fighting, and when Rose and Windy seek a distraction from the drama, they find themselves with a whole new set of problems. One of the local teens – just a couple of years older than Rose and Windy – is caught up in something bad… Something life threatening.

It’s a summer of secrets, and sorrow, and growing up, and it’s a good thing Rose and Windy have each other.

This One Summer is a tremendously exciting new teen graphic novel from two creators with true literary clout. Cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, the team behind Skim, have collaborated on this gorgeous, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful story about a girl on the cusp of childhood – a story of renewal and revelation

Three things for a kid to like:

1. Honesty. This is a sometimes brutally honest look at the confusing world of girls on the cusp of their teenage years. It’s about two girls who have a summer vacation home friendship, a taste for horrifically violent movies, a crush on the young man who works at the video shop, and healthy amount of confusion about their own changing bodies and changing desires. Because of the swearing and the pregnancy of an older teen in the story this is a book that will probably be shelved with YA. A reasonable choice. I don’t think I’d want a 3rd or 4th grader to wander into this story unaware, but I do think it has lots of food for thought for the older 12-14 range of the middle grade audience.

2. The graphic novel world is often a very boy-oriented place but this was a great story about two girls sharing a summer. The relationship was not sentimentalized. The art was true to the real bodies of real people. None of the exaggerated and sexualized body types so common in comics.

3. The other thread in this story is the mother of one of the girls grief over her miscarriage. So the story addresses a child’s perception of a parent’s grief–the mother hadn’t yet told her daughter about the pregnancy so she didn’t tell her about the loss either. All the girl can see is that her parents were trying for another baby and then they stopped trying and started fighting. It’s not such a common topic in a children’s book but it might be a good springboard for conversation about grief and specifically how parents and kids grieve differently.

Something for the writer to think about:

Grief is hard to write about and I thought the author and illustrator did a great job of balancing the work of talking/telling about the grief and showing it with images and actions. It got me thinking about those character conversations in my own stories that could be perhaps better left unsaid but expressed through an action.

How I came to review this book:

I found this book in my library when I was looking for something else. I picked it up because it looked like a nice summer “girl story”. The cover is a bit deceptive but I’m glad I picked it up.

Middle Grade Monday Book Review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchet

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Stephen Player

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality . . .

Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

Together they must face headless horsemen, ferocious grimhounds, terrifying dreams come true, and ultimately the sinister Queen of the Elves herself.

Three things for a kid to like

1. It’s hard to beat Terry Pratchett for humorous fantasy. On a bookshelf full of gloom and doom alternate worlds this story is set in a place that holds all the thrills and chills a kid is looking for and is genuinely hilarious besides. It will work particularly well for fans of British humor. If you’ve got a young reader who is driving you crazy quoting Monty Python and Dr. Who, this is the book for him.

2. Dream worlds are tricky to pull off in a story and it’s an element that made this a challenging read in the original edition. The pictures here do much to enhance the dream world Tiffany enters without overtaking it entirely and leaving nothing to the imagination. In my opinion the illustrations are just scary enough but not so vivid as to be daunting to a tender-hearted reader.

3. There is amid all the boogymen and monsters, some really thoughtful elements about the nature of dreams and the problems associated with getting everything you ask for. Plenty to inspire good conversation.

Something for the writer to think about

I’m seeing more illustrated work for middle grade readers all the time and I’m very happy about the change. I love it that there is more work for the many working artists I know. I think it makes a challenging text more inviting to a struggling reader and more accessible to an immigrant child who often comes to the page with little context for the stories he finds at school. In my own work I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can, not so much beg my publisher to put art inside, but create a story in which the images are integral to the plot and therefore necessary to the finished book.

The most recent two Newbery winners will illustrated and I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments for other illustrated middle grade books you think were particularly well done.

How I came to review this book.

I first read this book aloud to my kids many years ago and loved it then. Recently I found a beautiful illustrated edition at my library and gave the book a re-read. Not every book I like stands up to re-reading but this one did.