During the busyness of this season we invite you do to stop and do nothing...
Yes, we are sneaking away from our duties here at BFWP to just enjoy being. But we will be back next year with loads of wonderful challenges and food to feed your reading soul.
So we thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite holiday books and to suggest some books in case you are looking for books to give (or read) this holiday season. When you are done reading our suggestions,
We had to add Number 6 All for the Newborn Baby by Phyllis Root illustrated by Nicola Bayley (The Four of Us agreed to list 5 books, but The Little Sisterinsisted we add just one more... and so we did! The Bean gave this to The Big Sister for her 1st Christmas. The dust jacket is long gone, there are a few torn pages, the Sisters adore the illustrations and simply sweet message.)
The Illustrated Book of Ballet Stories by Barbara Newman
Oh, and two more from Big Sis... The Redwall Cookbook and A Redwall Winters Tale by Brian Jaques illustrated by Christopher Denise (We all love these books, including The Dad! We also wanted to suggest Brambley Hedge but it is out of print.)
The Sisters bought this book at the Traverse City Children's Book Festival. Another winner by Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn Dixie and Tales of Desperaux.
Okay, now it is your turn. What are your favorite holiday books? Do you have a suggestion for a great book to give for the holidays? How about a holiday tradition that involves books...
The Books for Walls Project had the wonderful opportunity to interview author Susan Messer. Instead of a "regular" interview we decided to collect questions. Each of us thought about what we'd like to learn from Susan, as a person, as an author, and about her book Grand River and Joy.
Note: The Mom read the interview aloud to The Sisters (which they loved) so we suggest reading it aloud to younger audiences and click the links to learn more.
The Little Sister asked: How
does it feel to write a book? It
feels so many ways. It feels scary because when you start out, you
really have no idea where you’re going or whether you’ll manage
to do what you hope to do. You might not even completely know what
you hope to do. And it can take so long to write a book—years—so
what if you put in all that time and then you get to a point where
you don’t think you can finish it or you don’t believe in it
anymore or you don’t think you can make it work? But in addition to
being scary, it’s exciting because you don’t know what you’ll
discover—about yourself or your art or other people or the world.
It’s like starting out on a new adventure, and anything is
possible. Writing Grand River and Joy
and now living with it afterward—hearing what people have to say,
meeting so many interesting people (including you) as a result—have
definitely contributed to my growth as a human being and a writer.
Some of it has been painful. I won’t lie to you about that.
What
do you do for fun? I
read novels. I get together with my friends. I hang out with my
family. I go to an array of cultural events that the city of Chicago
has to offer—film and theatre and art and music and dance. These
are especially fun to go to if my husband or friends come along.
Sometimes I stay home with my husband and watch amazing movies from
all over the world and then talk about them for hours. I go for walks
and try to notice as much as I can. I try to exercise my imagination
as much as I can. I don’t know . . . does any of that sound like
fun to you? Maybe I don’t have enough fun in my life. Maybe I’m
too serious. (Note from The Little Sister: "Working on your imagination sounds like fun! All of that sounds like fun to me!")
Where did you grow up? How old were you during this time? When did you realize that you wanted to write about this era and racial event? Any particular personal (that you wouldn’t mind sharing) reason for this book?
Click photo to learn more
about Susan.
All these questions go together, so I’ll answer them as one. The book has many autobiographical elements. I grew up in Detroit, my father owned a wholesale shoe business, I am one of three sisters, I went to Mumford High School, I was about the age of the two older sisters (late high school/early college) during the era of the book. All that said, the big events and scenes of the book are imagined: the writing on the window of Harry’s business, the women’s meeting, the bike giveaway, the Moroccan luncheon, the boiler scene, Harry in the shul, Marvin Gaye’s party, and so on.
I decided I wanted to write about this era when I realized that the community where I now live is very much like the community where I grew up—a place with a very wide socioeconomic range in a fairly small geographic area. I noticed this in particular when my daughter started at the high school here and I went to visit. I was thinking, “Hmmm. How is it that I’ve ended up in this kind of place again?” You don’t get that everywhere—the wide socioeconomic range, from very wealthy to very poor, all in there together. It’s a complicated environment, with lots of potential for growth and lots of potential for tension and misunderstanding. These are themes that come up again and again in my writing. Not just in Grand River and Joy but in work that came before and since.
What
did you want to be when you grew up? When
I was very small, I wanted to be a ballerina or a gypsy. For a while
I wanted to be a Mouseketeer. When I got to be a teenager, I wanted to
be the girlfriend of the Beatles. After that, I was fairly
directionless. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I didn’t have
much confidence, and no particular interests, and I didn’t realize
that I had much imagination, or that imagination is a powerful tool
in life. In college, I majored in anthropology because it seemed
exotic, but I didn’t really understand anthropology back then. I
always say that life happened to me rather than vice versa. My
husband is very goal oriented. He always knew where he was heading.
In contrast, my life evolved in a very organic way—working hard,
paying attention, running into the right people at the right time,
being lucky. That was how I became an editor and also how I became a
writer.
Grande Ballroom Marquis
How
much research is involved with your books? For
Grand
River and Joy,
I did A LOT of research, especially about the history of Detroit. I
spent time in the archives of the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University. I read many books. I drove around Detroit with a
local historian who explained lots of things to me—architectural
style, neighborhood development. I talked to Russ Gibb, who owned the
Grande Ballroom, which was located on Grand River near Joy Road. And
for the boiler scene, I did extensive research on how boilers work
and what can go wrong with them and what it smells, sounds, feels
like when something is amiss. I’ve told that story elsewhere—about the boiler research and the great people at heatinghelp.com who
helped me find out what I needed to know. That was such a wonderful
experience. That was fun.
Where do you/did you get your ideas for your book/s? Ideas come from so many places. I once wrote about a broken ceramic pot I found while I was out walking. I once wrote a piece that was inspired by a period—you know, a grammatical period. I pass a sidewalk square every day that has an inscription in it: “I still love Alan.” I’ve wanted to write about that for a long time. Who wrote it and why? Especially because of that word “still.” If it just said “I love Alan,” I wouldn’t be as interested. But the “still” makes me think there’s a story there. How long has this person been loving Alan? What did Alan do that the person who wrote it has to say “still.” It gets my imagination working.
What is your favorite color? If I have to choose one, I’ll say purple, but if I can give a more complete answer, I’d say the range of colors that cluster at that end of the spectrum, including lilac and fuchsia and sapphire/delphinium. Those are the colors I tend to go for.
Why do you want people to read your book? I have written and discarded at least five versions of an answer to this question, so this time I will be as straightforward and plainspoken as possible. I want people to read my book because I hope they will think and feel something as a result. I want them, for a short while, to walk alongside me in the world I created.
Do you support yourself solely by writing; if not how do you support yourself? I work full time as an editor (self-employed) and have done so for 20+ years. It’s very difficult to support oneself as a writer, especially with the kind of writing I do, which is referred to as literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Most people who do this kind of writing also teach or do something else to pay the bills. Editing has been a wonderful complement to writing, as it involves the close study of language on the page. This close study has taught me a great deal about what makes a good sentence, a good paragraph, a good structure. So, although I wish I had more time for creative writing, and perhaps someday I will, I’m lucky to have work that is meaningful to me and that helps me as a writer.
The Sisters picked this baby meerkat to highlight Susan's exotic pet choice!
The Dog asked: Do
you have a pet? If you could have any exotic pet in the world what
would it be? I don’t have a pet. I feel a little bad about that because so many people have them and love them so much, but I just want to put my time and energy elsewhere (see, above, under “What do you do for fun?”). I hope you won’t think badly of me. As for an exotic pet, I am intrigued by meerkats. I like how they look in groups, so I guess I might like to have about a dozen of them.
Maureen asked:
What happened to Harry in the Shul? When I think about this scene, I think back to Ruth at the women’s meeting, and to that feeling in the air for the women, of having something very important to explore but not having the time to follow it through all the way (need to pick up the children, get dinner in the oven, put together the Halloween costumes, all the pressing concerns of daily life). In contrast, I wanted Harry to have something few of us have—a time and a place to fully and deeply explore the path of his life, the bigger questions. That was the gift I hoped to give him in the shul.
The thing about the tefillin is that they press into and symbolically connect the mind and the heart, the two “organs” through which we understand and connect to the world. And then there’s the strange contrast of the world outside exploding and him discovering a sanctuary, a very private space to withdraw into for reflection. So it’s not that he becomes a religious man (or a religiously observant one). I didn’t intend it that way at all. More, it’s about the power of deep reflection; it brings him to a peaceful acceptance that he has the resources to go on, no matter what.
Did Marvin Gaye really move into the area and throw a party? Marvin Gaye did move into the area, but if he threw a party, I wasn’t invited. That was all imagined.
How did you come up with the moving scene of the two men in the boiler room rolling over laughing about the line about zebras and God? A boiler seemed to have so much metaphorical potential—because it relies on the building up of pressure, and because of the explosive potential of water and electricity, gas and flame, in such proximity—and I wanted to explore that. I also was (and am) concerned about power differences in society. Harry as landlord has the power advantage over Curtis. He has an additional power advantage in being Curtis’s sometimes-employer. And then of course there’s the whole socioeconomic/racial power difference between the two men.
Harry’s a basically good man, so he doesn’t abuse his power. But as landlord, he has responsibilities—for one thing, to provide a warm, decent place for his tenants. And he has let some things go (who among us doesn’t?), and now he’s going to have to pay for it—financially as well as emotionally. Curtis, of course, is no push over. He can dish it out, and he does.
So the night in the basement offered a wonderful opportunity for a power seesaw and a “teach-in on race,” as Harry calls it--two men, cold and uncomfortable and slightly inebriated, letting it all hang out. I say “letting it all hang out,” but these two men have good inner controls, so it never gets to violence, boils over or explodes. I knew I could rely on them for that.
By a lucky chance, while I was writing this scene, my husband and I went to a jazz concert at Chicago’s Symphony Center, and a musician named James Moody* told the zebra joke from the stage. Symphony Center is a huge auditorium, and hundreds of people (black and white) burst into uproarious laughter. I was pretty sure right then that I wanted to use that joke in my book. Of course, that became a bit of a research project too, trying to determine if someone held the copyright to the joke, whether I had to get permission to reprint. (*Note from the Mom: Sadly, James Moody died last week, December 9, 2010 the Sisters play the flute and will enjoy learning more about this talented soul.)
Books for Walls Project asked: Do
you have any favorite stories from your work life? Two
stories: one from my work as an editor and one from my work as a
writer.
1.
Years ago, when I was working as an editor for a scholarly journal, I
edited a long, complicated article by an author named Richard
something (can’t remember the last name). The people who wrote
articles for this journal were all big-deal college professors and
generally pretty intimidating, as were the higher-ups in this
organization I worked in. At any rate, when Richard and I were at the
tail end of editing his article, he had to leave the country for a
conference or something. He wrote me a note saying, “Use your
judgment in finishing this. I trust you completely.” One day, the
man who was in charge of the journal (let’s call him X; another
intimidating character) came into my office all in a huff because he
had heard that Richard had left the country with the article still
unfinished. I showed him the note, and he said, “Cranky Dick wrote
that??!!!???” After that, X seemed to have a lot more respect for
me.
2.
Last March, I did a reading at Marygrove College in Detroit.
Afterward, my husband was standing in the crowd, and he heard a woman
say that she came to hear me because the week before, her minister
had been reading from my book from the pulpit, and she got
interested. My husband turned to her and said, “You should tell
Susan that. I know she’d love to hear.” But the woman said, no,
she didn’t feel comfortable talking to authors. My husband
encouraged her, and in the course of the evening, she did come up and
tell me. This made me so happy, to think of my book having a life out
there all on its own, and being honored in this way. And also, there
was the serendipity, that I might not have even known if my husband
hadn’t heard or the woman had been too shy to speak up.
Have you taken a BFWP Challenge? If yes, do you have a favorite?
The Four of Us give grateful thanks to Susan, the writer, and Susan, the woman. We feel honored that she shared so much of her time, and so many of her words, with us!
Click on the links in the interview. The Sisters helped The Mom find out more on the subjects Susan discussed in her interview.
We continue with some of our favorite challenges from 2010...
The Big Sister voted for The Anthropomorphism Challenge. We all loved this one since we learned to pronounce and spell A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-M-O-R-P-H-I-S-M --plus making the video was certainly fun.
The Little Sister voted for The Really Really Really Good Book Challenge. Because there is nothing like a really, really, really good book! Have you read any lately, tell us?
The Mom voted for The Bedside Book List Challenge. Which brought Susan Messer, author of Grand River and Joy, by the project thanks to The Bean's Bedside Book List, (Click here to check out all the book lists and photos!) We are putting the finishing touches on our interview with Susan and will post it soon!
You are a big part of our inspiration --we are happy you stopped by! Read "The Latest, What BFWP Readers are Saying and Reading!" over there on the left, click go to the challenge!
Take a moment and share us with book loving friends, we want to learn about books and people from everywhere!
Open the book and write down the first line, skipping the intro, then flip to the end and write down the last line. Judge from this two sentence thought: will it be a good book, was it a good book?
Then share the lines and your thoughts.
Click on the links, read all the great comments and then take a challenge!
The Sisters and The Mom just had a meeting. We brainstormed about this holiday season and BFWP... we wondered: how can we fit everything in and not speed through this wonderful time of year?
We decided to make December a time to reflect. We'll look back on 2010 and all of the BFWP Challenges, the goals, the people, and, of course, books. The Sisters also want to highlight favorite holiday books, and good books to give as gifts (and we hope to give away a book or two!) Do you have favorite holiday books? --send us an email with any great ideas you might like to share!
We have a lot planned and hope to share it all. There is nothing like working on a project with inspired young minds, The Sisters sure know how to keep life FUN!
Good-bye November... hello December! Come back often to enjoy the wonderful season with us!
The Books for Walls Project is about morethan just books, we are also about collecting stories --stories about where our readers are from, "Yourstory" about reading and the books you love and now we add a little twist...
(WARNING: if you watch the video you will be inspired
and will learn everything you need to do to get started!)
The Books for Walls Projectis
pleased to be an official
state partner of the acclaimed oral history project StoryCorps in
celebrating the third annual National Day of Listening on Friday,
November 26, 2010. On the
day after Thanksgiving every year, The Books for Walls Projectand StoryCorps are
asking all Americans to start a new holiday tradition: set aside an
hour to interview a friend, a loved one, or someone in their
community about his or her life.
The Books for Walls Project will
be taking part in the 2010 National Day of Listening by recording a number of interviews with local members/residents.
To record your own National Day of
Listening interview:
Find
someone you’d like to interview
Create your
question list
Sit down to
record your conversation
StoryCorps has
created a free Do-It-Yourself (DIY) interview guide with step-by-step
interview instructions, equipment recommendations, and sample
questions that is available online at www.nationaldayoflistening.org.
You can record your interview using equipment that is readily
available in most homes—from cell phones to tape recorders to
computers or even pen and paper.
The National Day of Listening was
started by StoryCorps in 2008 as a way to provide an alternative to
"Black Friday" shopping sprees. By participating in this
year’s National Day of Listening, we hope you’ll find that taking
the time out to interview someone about his or her life is the least
expensive but most meaningful gift that we can give.
StoryCorps’ mission is to provide
Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to
record, preserve, and share their stories.
Join the Books for Walls Project and take part in the
National Day of Listening!
Then please come back to The Listening Challenge and tell us how your listening and story collecting goes! Feel free to share your thoughts, insights and of course stories!
