The Great Reads Campaign

The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance (NCBLA) has just launched GREAT READS, a new project aimed at connecting kids with great books. A GREAT READ can be a page turner, a funny-bone tickler, a wild adventure ride, a slow drift down the river, a snuggle-under-the-covers. A GREAT READ may, or may not, be great literature, but sharing GREAT READS is the best way to turn kids into lifelong readers.

I was very honored this year to be asked to participate in this literacy project. I had no trouble at all picking a book I wanted to share. It’s Echo by Pam Munóz Ryan. I reviewed the book on the blog earlier this year.

Here is my contribution to the book recommendations of the NCBLA Great Reads program. It was great fun to see several Portland authors also in this group. Susan Blackaby, Heather Vogel Frederick, Eric Kimmel, Virginia Euwer Wolff, and Graham Salisbury.

You can see all the other Great Reads posters at thencbla.org. There’s a ton of great literacy resources on the website, so whether you’re a teacher wanting to promote reading in your classroom or just a family looking for the next great read aloud, I hope you’ll give it a look.

First reviews for The Turn of the Tide

It’s always a treat to see the first reviews of new work. I’m very happy to share these two from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

The following titles will be reviewed in the

October 15, 2015 issue of Kirkus Reviews (circ: 10,000):

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

THE TURN OF THE TIDE
Author: Rosanne Parry
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: January 12, 2016
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-375-86972-3
ISBN ( Library Ed ): 978-0-375-96972-0
ISBN ( e-book ): 978-0-375-98535-5
After a tsunami destroys their community, Kai’s parents, busy repairing a power plant, send him to Astoria, Oregon, to stay with relatives he barely knows, including his cousin Jet, whose ambition is to pilot ships across the dangerous Columbia River bar. His white father grew up in Astoria, but Kai, raised in Japan, identifies as Japanese. Being biracial in a culture that values conformity becomes more challenging than ever after his failed, maverick attempt to rescue his grandparents. Equally adrift, Jet doesn’t share friends Bridgie and Skye’s obsession with shopping and boyfriends; another old friend has found a new pal to sail with. Jet’s thrilled that Kai sails too, but she’s blinded by her single-minded focus on sailing. Accepting Kai’s help to repair her boat and crew in the Treasure Island Race, she forgets his trauma; pushing him into the water too soon nearly sinks their friendship. Kai had wanted to stay and help rebuild his Japanese town; he suspects fitting in will be harder when he returns. “Not so easy to be a boy between cultures,” Uncle Per says, then points out, “Lots of mariners are like you—a foot in more than one place. Captain a ship and you’re a citizen of the whole world.” Parry tells her story in third-person chapters that alternate perspective between Kai and Jet, effectively getting readers under the skin of both. Thematically rich, by turns exciting and reflective, this affectionate homage to the mariner life celebrates human commonality and difference in an increasingly interconnected world. (map, message for young mariners, author note) (Fiction. 9-12)

The following titles have been reviewed in the

October 12, 2015 issue of Publishers Weekly (circ: 16,554):

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

Rosanne Parry. Random, $16.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-375-86972-3

After a tsunami leaves Kai’s Japanese town in ruins, his parents, who are busy repairing the local nuclear plant, send him to America to live with his aunt, uncle, and cousins in Oregon. Kai goes reluctantly, but his heart remains in Japan as he is haunted by images of destruction and wracked with guilt for abandoning his grandparents at the height of the storm. Meanwhile, his American cousin, Jet, is also being bothered by her conscience. While sailing her father’s boat, she made a serious mistake that put her and her brother at risk. Absorbed in their own concerns, the cousins remain polite but distant until their common interest in boats draws them together just in time for the annual Treasure Island sailing race, which will bring more danger than either child imagines. Alternating between the perspectives of two vulnerable protagonists, Parry (Written in Stone) has created a modern sea adventure that will keep young mariners rapt. Impulsive, outgoing, and determined Jet is an ideal foil for her introspective cousin. Ages 9–12. Agent: Stephen Fraser, Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. (Jan.)

Irony

This past weekend I was at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Trade Show in Portland. (PNBA) While there I did a workshop on using social media as an author, bookseller or publisher. I had every intention of live tweeting the event and even began with a picture and tweet about Amber Keyser and her new novel The Way Back from Broken.

And then a funny thing happened. I went to some sessions that really expanded my thinking about the book world, including one with a very detailed explanation about exactly how books earn money and why some of them don’t. I sat in on a conversation about how the PNBA book award is chosen. I fell into one interesting conversation after another. I found booksellers and shared ideas for promoting my upcoming novel. I met publishers and talked about the kind of author who is the best fit for an event at Annie Blooms Bookstore. I found books that I wanted to immediately put in the hands of librarians from my school district.

And I completely forgot to tweet. Didn’t post a single thing on Facebook. I know. Missed opportunity.

Here’s what I didn’t miss. The joy of seeing a friend who is passionate about books absolutely in her element and making her dreams of becoming a publisher come true. Dozens of short conversations with publishers about the books they are passionate about. A long leisurely conversation over dinner with a new author friend, and a rather raucous late night conversation with a table full of booksellers. Not a single one of those experiences would have been enhanced by pausing to tweet, post, pin, or snap.

So thank you to the PNBA for an amazing weekend. I’m enriched. I’m exhausted. I’m going to spend every possible minute in the next week reading the amazing books and ARCs I brought home. And thank you to my northwest bookselling community for the mentoring and the inspiration.

The Pleasures of being a Secret Poet

Poetry has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother and father both read poetry, and I had a big picture book of poetry I read and reread so often that many of those poems linger in my mind though I never consciously memorized them. “A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye. Fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky” is a line that reliably comes to mind every time I go hiking and find wildflowers clinging to unlikely spots along the trail.

My fourth grade teacher, an exceedingly no-nonsense woman named Ms. Jacques, seemed to have two great loves to communicate to my nine year old self: long division and poetry. She taught me dozens of poetic forms from Haiku to the ballad and (what seems more impressive to me now) showed me how to scan a line to fit the meter of the line before it. I loved the structure of writing to a particular format. Hunting for just the right word to fill out the rhythm or rhyme of a line was so much more game-like than ordinary writing which I detested at the time for its irritating reliance on standard spelling and punctuation. With a poem I could invent words to my heart’s debliss and dispense with punctuation entirely.

Ms. Jacques introduced me to my first literary crush, the deliciously uncapitalized e e cummings. Since cummings had neither a first name nor a gender, my nine year old self imagined a pleasant, furry alien who might, should I come across him in my ramblings in the woods, translate for me the poetry of slugs and squirrels and sword ferns.

Eventually college broadened considerably my repertoire of poetry while siphoning off much of the pleasure I found in reading it and all of the joy I took in creating it. I stopped writing poems for years and didn’t miss it until I started reading poetry to my own children and writing my own stories.

Novels are so long, I’ve returned to poetry to give me the satisfaction of writing something I can finish a draft of in a single day. By contrast it takes 3 to 9 months to complete a single draft of even a short novel.

When I get stuck or discouraged, poetry gives me a reliable lift and often a fresh perspective on a character if I opt to write a poem in the voice of one of my characters from a work in progress.

It’s a huge relief to write something that I will not only never sell, but never show anyone. I think having work that lives in my own mind and heart but not in the world is extraordinarily valuable.

How about you? Do you have things you write just for your own pleasure? Let me know in the comments!

SMART Author Fair at Powells

I am so honored to be invited to participate in this years SMART author fair at Powells bookstore.

SMART is great program which brings adults from the community into the school to read aloud with students who struggle to read. Next year it will mark the 25th anniversary of the Start Making A Reader Today program.

I will be signing copies of Written in Stone from 2-4. It’s a great way to support a terrific cause. I hope to see you there.