A week from today I will be at the Oregon Council of Teachers of English fall conference to accept the Oregon Spirit book award for The Turn of the Tide. I’m just thrilled to be in the company of the Oregon authors honored this year. Many of these women have been friends and mentors for years, women whose work I’m proud to recommend at the bookstore and books from which I’ve learned much about the craft of writing. Thank you to all those hard working English teachers who served on the award committee and all those who share books in their classrooms.
Oregon on Fire
Ordinarily I recommend only children’s books on my blog, but in view of the fires which are burning hundreds of square miles of my home state, including some of my very favorite places in the wide world, I’d like to recommend a book by my friend Gary Ferguson. He has written dozens of books about the wilderness and its role in our lives. His book just out this summer is called Land on Fire. Its a well-researched look at how we got into our current cycle of catastrophic fires year after year, through decades of fire suppression and record draughts. It would be a great book group read and a worthwhile text for high school and even middle school science classes.
Thank you to the hundreds of firefighters, national guards, sheriffs, state patrolmen. coast guards, red cross personnel and volunteers, who have worked round the clock in brutal conditions to bring these fires under control and protect the people, land and wildlife we all treasure.
First Nations Picture Books–Stolen Words by Melanie Florence
Writing about the ravages of colonial control over First Nations in the United States and Canada is difficult enough when addressing adults. It’s even more challenging when presenting material to the youngest readers. How to convey the seriousness and depth of pain without crushing the spirit of the child reader–it’s a huge challenge, and I admire any author who even attempts to take it on. Few come out with such a successful result as author Melanie Florence in her picture book Stolen Words about her grandfather’s forced enrollment in boarding school and the loss of his mother tongue. Ms. Florence tells the story of a young girl who innocently asks her grandfather how to say grandpa in Cree. He tells her about being taken away from home and punished at the boarding school for speaking his Cree language. Illustrator Gabrielle Grimard captures this beautifully representing the Cree language as a blackbird captured in a cage and locked away. It’s an image that conveys the sadness and brutality of the Canadian boarding school without presenting images too heart-breaking for young readers. The girl finds a Cree dictionary in her own school and brings it to her grandfather and the words on the page, again symbolically, take the fo
rm of blackbirds and fly free. It’s a simple tale–too simple for older readers certainly who need much more substance and a less tidy resolution. But for the youngest readers this is an important story of native language denied and ultimately regained, and a book well worth celebrating.
Stolen Words is published by Second Story Press out of Toronto, Ontario. It will be available in September of 2017. I wrote this review from an Advanced Reader Copy which I obtained at the independent bookstore where I work. If you are looking for more context as an adult reader I highly recommend They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars, and acclaimed author from British Columbia. She is a chief of the Xat’sull and her book is about her own experiences in boarding school. It’s not a read for the tenderhearted but it is very useful in understanding the depth of wrong that was done in Indian boarding schools across the Unites States and Canada.
A Book for the Times
I read a book this spring that was timely in a hundred ways I wish it wasn’t. In the months that have followed it has become all the more relevant. If there is one book I’d give to every family to read this fall it would be Russell Freeman’s newest non-fiction book for readers as young as 10 and as old as 100.
We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler is the story of Austrian teenagers Hans and Sophie Scholl who at the beginning of Hitler’s rise to power were glad to join the Hitler youth which they saw as a patriotic organization. But as the Hilter Youth moved from scout-like campouts to militia training and racist indoctrination, the Scholl siblings knew they had to resist at any cost. They put together The White Rose, a society devoted to making Hitler’s war crimes known and turning the tide ofGerman popular opinion against the Nazis. They succeeded, although it cost their lives. Freemen’s book is well researched and includes many historical photographs and yet it handles this very dark subject matter in such a way that most elementary school students can understand without being emotionally overwhelmed.A Kay Snow Award from the Willamette Writers
I’ve gone to the Willamette Writer’s Conference both as a participant and as a presenter for many years. More than a dozen years ago, before I had my first book contract I won a Kay Snow Award. At that conference I met the amazing and generous Kirby Larson, who had only one published book at that point and was a decade away from her Newbery Honor win for Hattie Big Sky.
Well all these years later I decided to enter the Kay Snow contest again with a story called The Last of the Name. It’s a tale dear to my heart about Irish immigration during the Civil War era. What a thrill to once again receive a 3rd place honor. I’m very much looking forward to once again spending time August 4th and 5th with my wonderful Portland writing community. I think there is still time to sign up workshops and pitching sessions with agents, film agents, and editors. Hope to see you there!