Author – Page 47 – Unleashing Readers

Blog Tour and Author Guest Post!: Storm Watcher by Maria V. Snyder

March 29, 2014February 21, 2014 by Kellee

Welcome to the Storm Watcher blog tour!

Feb 19 – Mar 5, 2014

Storm Watcher
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Published October 19th, 2013 by Leap Books

Goodreads Summary: Luke Riley is lost. His mother’s recent death has set Luke and his family adrift. Even though his father, twin brothers, and their three Bloodhounds are search and rescue volunteers, they have been unable to rescue themselves and become a family again. The summer after sixth grade looms in Luke’s mind as a long, lonely three months where the only thing he can look forward to is watching The Weather Channel. Luke is fascinated with the weather, but since his mother’s death in a storm, he is also terrified. Even the promised 13th birthday present of a Bloodhound puppy fails to lift Luke’s spirits. He would rather have a different breed – a petite Papillon, but his father insists he get a Bloodhound.

When Luke decides to get the Bloodhound from Willajean, a dog breeder who owns Storm Watcher Kennel, he works out a deal to help at her kennel in exchange for the expensive dog. Thrilled to have a summer with a purpose, Luke befriends Willajean’s daughter, Megan and together they plan how Luke can get a Papillon puppy instead of a Bloodhound. But nothing seems to work as they struggle with stubborn fathers, summer storms, unhelpful siblings, and hidden guilt. Can one little white dog really save both families?

So, how does one come to write a book about weather?

It all begins with a fascination with hydrometeors and a great teacher.
Squish this together with a writing career and VOILA!

Hydrometeors are Falling on my Head
By Maria V. Snyder

Let me set the scene – sixth grade at Our Lady of Ransom, a Catholic school in the city of Philadelphia – my teacher, Miss Kane is doing a science unit on meteorology. Meteo…what? At the time (1978), I’d never heard of it, except I had. “Oh, you mean the weather, why didn’t you say so?” a beat later, “There are people who study the weather? Wow.” Little did I know it at the time, but that unit was the vital first step to my eventually careers in both meteorology and writing.

I love big storms and loved the idea of studying them. Not only was it super cool that Miss Kane made it rain in our classroom, but I was able to be a real smart-alecky kid. You see I soon discovered that the adults in my life had never heard the word meteorology either. So when they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d reply, “A meteorologist.” Their blank look was always followed be a quizzical, “You want to study…meteors? Like from space?” and I chirped, “Not space meteors, hydrometeors.” No comprehension so I’d explain in a I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-know-this tone that, “hydrometeors are raindrops.” I did warn you that I was bratty – I was also eleven so I had a good excuse J.

As I continued in my education, the questions about my future remained the same, and so did the answer (except, by now my family was well acquainted with those pesky hydrometeors). Sure, I loved acting, dancing, painting, and playing the cello, but I wasn’t a stand out in any of them. However my math and science grades remained strong and nothing else sparked my interest.

Fast forward to my college graduation. I’d earned my BS in Meteorology from Penn State University. My forecasting skills were dismal so I ventured in the exciting new profession of environmental meteorology (whew – I think I have to rest my fingers after typing all that!). Too bad envir meteo wasn’t all that exciting. My creativity eventually woke from its catatonic state (caused by enduring endless hours of fluid dynamics and differential equations). I started writing stories ‘cause it would have been awkward if I started practicing the cello in my cubicle at work.

Writing was a blast and, in my stories, I controlled the weather – hydrometeors fell at my whim – muuhhhaaawwwaaahhh! Er…sorry. Eventually I switched careers to writing, but I never lost my love for storms. In fact, I incorporated the weather in many of my books. However, the one book that brought me back to that snarky sixth grader is Storm Watcher, my debut novel for readers ages 8 to 14 years old. I was able to geek-out along with the main protagonist, Luke.

While writing the story was fun, I was thrilled when my editor asked me to write an appendix of weather facts for those readers who also have a fascination with storms. It’s called “Luke’s Weather Notebook.” For the appendix I drew pictures, found quirky weather facts, wrote a quiz, and included safety tips – delighting my inner weather weenie. We hoped that the teachers who teach that meteorology unit would find the information helpful and maybe hook another student.

I’d like to thank Miss Kane in person – she probably has no idea she set me on this path. Or…maybe she does. Maybe she saw that spark in my eyes as she taught me about clouds and precipitation. In either case, Thank You Miss Kane wherever you are!

Now, I’ve a question for you. How many of you knew hydrometeors were raindrops? Come on, be honest! 🙂

Just shows how one great teacher can truly change your life!

Also, don’t forget to stop by each blog tour stop to learn more about the book.

Tour Schedule

Wed 2/19 – The Book Monsters – review

Thu 2/20 – I Am a Reader – interview

Fri 2/21 – Unleashing Readers – guest post

Mon 2/24 – Bookalicious – review

Tue 2/25 – Kid Lit Frenzy – guest post

Wed 2/26 – Sharpreads – review

Thu 2/27 – The Mod Podge Bookshelf – guest post

Fri 2/28 – The Windy Pages – review, interview

Mon 3/3 – Teenage Reader – review

Tue 3/4 – Read Now Sleep Later – review

Wed 3/5 – The Brain Lair – review

**Thank you to Alethea and Maria for allowing us to be part of the blog tour**

NCTE/ALAN Throwback: Defending Intellectual Freedom with John Green

July 27, 2015November 17, 2013 by Kellee

At NCTE in 2011, the very first break out session I planned to go to see John Green and Jimmy Santiago Baca speak about defending intellectual freedom (aka censorship and challenges). When the masses arrived and had filled the room, we found out that unfortunately Jimmy Santiago Baca could not make it. Although I was really looking forward to hearing him speak, this did leave 70 minutes or so for John Green to speak. And it was awesome!

John began by talking about his writing and why he writes for teens- “The great thrill of writing teen novels is they’re doing things for the 1st time and don’t know how.” He says the problem comes in because “authors write the porn and educators have to justify it to their audiences” and the audiences aren’t always so accepting. But what we all do not realize is that the “chilling effect of challenging books is people would rather not go through the trouble. But then the challengers win and we’re excluding a class of literature very relevant to teens these days.” The world needs to see “literature as a blanket that covers the world and has comforted us since the beginning of time… Reading can be a way in to not feeling alone but it is also important to read about those not like us. The better I can imagine being you, the more empathetic I am… Censorship is an argument against empathy.” He shared that if a book is challenged within your school, don’t give up. Contact the author, NCTE, others for help and fight it. He gave us one key piece of advice, but asked us not to say he said it so I am staying mum; however, if you ever meet me, ask me what he said and I will share.

This session was also a big pep rally for teachers. Here’s some highlights:

“Public schools exist for the benefit of social order. An educated society benefits us all.”

“We need to trust teachers and when we don’t we do us all a great disservice.”

“Part of the s#*tty thing of being a teacher is you are never thanked.”

His biggest piece of luck was having teachers who didn’t give up on him.

“Anticensorship = not giving up on beliefs and what is good for your students.”

“A teacher’s passion, attention is never wasted.”

“If you can empower teachers to do their job, they’ll generally do it well.”

Leaving the session you couldn’t help but feel empowered and

I hope that everyone in the room felt the same way as me.

But then, to keep my John Green high going, I was able to meet him (briefly) at the ALAN cocktail party and he spoke again at ALAN.

His session at ALAN was shorter and took on the topic of social networking and, of course, reading. He shared how our students are living in the information society and “the information society is about fear- fear of being bored, alone”. Really, most young adults do read, but they read online and “online reading/writing is skimming. It is like the cliffnotes version of consciousness. And it is all terrifyingly wonderfully distracting.” But that is why reading is so important. “Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes a place for that.” He hopes that as a writer he can find “a seat at the table of the lives of his reader”.

John Green is one of those authors who I could listen to just ramble on because random acts of brilliance always accompany him. I was honored to see him speak twice and if you ever have the chance, you should try to see him as well.

It is times like this one that makes NCTE and ALAN a must-attend for me. It always leaves me with an education high that reminds me why I am doing what I am doing,

J&P Voelkel Author Visit

April 22, 2023October 13, 2013 by Kellee

On September 30th, my school was invaded…….. invaded by J&P VOELKEL!
J&P Voelkel are a husband/wife author team who have written
the Jaguar Stone series:

Meet 14-year-old Max Murphy from Boston, and Lola, the quick-witted Maya girl who teaches him to survive in the perilous rainforest. Together, Max and Lola must find the five legendary Jaguar Stones that gave ancient Maya kings their power – and save the world from the evil, cheating Lords of Death.

In The Jaguar Stones, Book One: Middleworld, Max leaves his comfortable life in Boston far behind and heads for Central America in search of his archaeologist parents who have gone missing on a dig. Set against a backdrop of haunted temples, underground rivers and Maya magic, The New England Booksellers Council called Middleworld “funny, fast paced and entirely original.”

In The Jaguar Stones, Book Two: The End of the World Club, the action moves from Central America to Spain, as Max and Lola set off on the trail of the conquistadors. As the rest of the world panics about the end of the Maya Calendar, only Max and Lola can avert the coming doomsday as they continue their battle against the Maya Lords of Death. Booklist called The End of the World Club “a fact-packed, thrilling ride. Rick Riordan fans will love it.”

In The Jaguar Stones, Book Three: The River of no Return, Max and Lola are back in the jungles of the Maya and the Death Lords are on the warpath. Can video-gaming, pizza-loving Max Murphy and Lola, his modern Maya sidekick, save the world one more time? Not if they can’t get past the zombie army, the mutant cave spiders, the subterranean hotel, and some very dark family secrets.

This author visit includes everything a teacher and student could want. Yes, you learn about the Jaguar Stone books (which sound amazing! I’d love to read them, but they are always checked out!), but it was so much more:

During the presentation (which entertained more than 400 of my reading students), they taught about the Mayans, their mythology, survival in the jungle (including having one of my teachers eat a mealworm!), blow darts, archaeology, rainforest ecology, monkey sounds, writing AND rock & roll. The presentation was a perfect mix of teaching, entertaining, interactive activities, and book talks keeping the students engaged the entire time.

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If a presentation ever made students want to read a book, this was the presentation! How often can a student say they learned about the Mayan god of death, a teacher ate a bug, they got sprayed by water, an author played guitar standing on a table AND they learned about a book?!?!

And it all doesn’t have to end when the visit does: They also have amazing ways for students to interact with them after the visit is over: The Jaguarstone Club. The club includes many exclusive articles, cartoons, a blog, news, and giveaways. Students can join on their website.

There are also amazing resources for teachers. The Jaguar Stone website has a FOR TEACHERS section that includes all sorts of resources: Lesson plans & Reader Guides, Maya Math, Jaguar Stone inspired school projects, Maya calendar, writing Maya glyphs, What’s your Maya birth sign?, making a Maya King costume, meet the real Indiana Joneses, and a list of Maya books.

We were so lucky to have J&P visit and you could be too!
Right on their FOR TEACHERS section of their website is a link to a school visit waitlist. It is through this waitlist that this amazing visit was able happen. Trust me, you will not regret having these two come visit your school.

Blog Tour, Review, Giveaway, and Illustrator Interview!: The Real Boy by Anne Ursu, Illustrated by Erin McGuire

July 28, 2015October 12, 2013 by Kellee

We are so excited to be part of The Real Boy Blog Tour hosted by Walden Pond Press!

The Real Boy
Author: Anne Ursu
Illustrator: Erin McGuire
Published September 24th, 2013 by Walden Pond Press

Goodreads Summary: On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy. The city is called Asteri, a perfect city that was saved by the magic woven into its walls from a devastating plague that swept through the world over a hundred years before. The forest is called the Barrow, a vast wood of ancient trees that encircles the city and feeds the earth with magic. And the boy is called Oscar, a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the Barrow. Oscar spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his master’s shop, grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscar’s world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable. And Oscar does not quite fit in it.

But it’s been a long time since anyone who could call himself a wizard walked the world, and now that world is changing. Children in the city are falling ill, and something sinister lurks in the forest. Oscar has long been content to stay in his small room in the cellar, comforted in the knowledge that the magic that flows from the trees will keep his island safe. Now, even magic may not be enough to save it.

My Review: I love middle grade high fantasy! It is always amazing to me that an author is able to build an entire world that doesn’t exist and then puts these amazing characters and magic and story into this world. This is exactly what Anne Ursu did with The Real Boy. More importantly than my review of raving and raving about this book is the guest post I have to share today.

This is the second book that Erin McGuire and Anne Ursu collaborated on and Erin’s artwork adds an even more magic to an already magical story. Today, we are lucky to have Erin here to answer some questions about her work.

Kellee: I’d love to know about your past: When did you know you wanted to be an illustrator? Did you go to school for art? etc.

Erin McGuire: I’ve always loved drawing, and all throughout high school I kept sketchbooks, and still do to this day. My mother is a sixth grade teacher, so she often recommended new kid lit to me (she still does!) and always encouraged reading in general.

As for my education- I attended Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida as an illustration major. While I was a student there, I worked as a student librarian for four years. That was where I discovered Lisbeth Zwerger, Shaun Tan, Adam Rex, and all of the other illustrators who would influence my work.

K: I’m very interested in knowing about how illustrators and authors work together. Did you get the entire manuscript before beginning? Did you just get snippets? Do illustrations have to be approved before they go in the book? How do you choose what the characters are going to look like? Do you get character descriptions from the author? etc.

EM: Each project is a bit different depending on how much I’ll be involved. On books where I only do the covers, sometimes I don’t see the manuscript, just a book summary and a list of character descriptions. For Breadcrumbs and The Real Boy, I read the full manuscripts since I’d be illustrating all the interiors as well. Usually the editor or art director will email me a list of scenes they’d like for the interiors. The artwork always goes through an approval process, being approved by the art director, editor, and (in some cases, but not always) the author.

I did a lot of sketches for the characters to create the look for this world, how the upper and lower classes look different, what the fashion would be, how the rooms should look, etc. All of that was sent to Anne, who gave me some insights into her thought process for the time period and style of the world.

Rarely do I get to work with the author directly, it’s almost always with the editor and art director as middle men. This is intentional, and helps the illustrator focus on their work and sets some limits on how much one can influence the other.

K: You worked with Anne on Breadcrumbs as well – how did it come about that you became the illustrator for The Real Boy?

EM: Breadcrumbs was a really fun project for me, I felt like I was a good fit for that world, and illustrating Anne’s writing felt very natural to me. I think the team felt that I’d be a good fit for The Real Boy as well since I’d done some other fantasy work. My agent asked me if I was interested and I immediately emailed her back an “Absolutely.” As it turns out, I think The Real Boy is now my favorite project ever. It helps that I like drawing cats!

K: I noticed that The Real Boy is a mixture of pencil, ink, and possibly water color — How did you choose the style you are going to use for each book?

EM: The Real Boy felt like a much warmer story than Breadcrumbs. There are so many natural materials, animals, trees, even the magic itself feels natural in the story. I painted all of the Breadcrumbs illustrations digitally, and I didn’t think that same style would make sense for The Real Boy. So for this book, I did all of the illustrations on toned paper in pencil, and a mix of gouache, white chalk, and sometimes ink. All of them were scanned and touched up digitally, but starting out with a more natural drawing felt right for this story.

K: I also loved Darkbeast which you illustrated! Like The Real Boy and Breadcrumbs it is a middle grade fantasy novel. Many of the novels you have done the covers for or have illustrated are fantasy, but you also illustrated the new Nancy Drew Diaries — do you like illustrating fantasy or realistic fiction books better?

EM: It’s really hard to pick a favorite genre, but usually I prefer the stories that have a mix of both worlds (along the lines of Breadcrumbs, where the normal world is affected by fantasy elements in some way). Purely fantasy worlds are fun because you get to create how everything looks, how everyone dresses, and there are fewer rules. I spent a lot of time just gathering reference to create the world for The Real Boy. And I’ve always wanted to draw a fantasy map!

The more realistic work I’ve done (Nancy Drew) is fun in a different way because you just get to “go shopping” for those characters. I’ll go online to different clothing sites and pick out outfits for Nancy to wear. Every project has something different about it that appeals to me.

K: What are some other projects you’ve worked on?

EM: Along with Breadcrumbs and The Real Boy, I’ve worked on the Nancy Drew Diaries series, the Saranormal series, the Higher Power of Lucky series, a picture book called French Ducks in Venice, and covers for many other books. (The whole list is on my website http://www.emcguire.net/).

K: Can you share with us what projects you are working on now?

EM: I’m still working on Nancy Drew, and other projects that I’m not able to talk about yet. I’m also starting to write my own picture books, which is a totally different challenge, but exciting for me!

It is so fascinating how authors and illustrators work together. It really is magical.

Teacher’s Tools for Navigation: On top of the amazing world building and history building, Anne Ursu also writes beautifully. There are examples of figurative language usage all throughout the book. It would be an amazing piece of mentor text for writing workshop. Oh, and it would obviously be an amazing read aloud!

Discussion Questions: What makes someone human?; Do you think cats sense things that humans cannot?; If there was magic, do you think it’d make the world a better or worse place?

We Flagged: “Oscar and Callie sat in the library awhile longer, Callie scanning the books for more information, Oscar just sitting inside his mind. There were not answers about the children, but they did not even know what the questions were anymore. The world had ruptured once again. Even history could disappear under your feet.” (p. 185)

“There is a way the truth hist you, both hard and gentle at the same time. It punches you in the stomach as it puts it s loving arms around your shoulder.” (p. 206)

Read This If You Loved: The Darkbeast by Morgan Keyes, Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit, Rump by Liesl Shurtliff

Recommended For:

Don’t forget to visit the other Real Boy Blog Tour Stops:

Monday, 9/30 – Maria’s Melange – Maria’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Tuesday, 10/1 – There’s a Book – Danielle’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Wednesday, 10/2 – sharpread – Colby Interviews Anne

Thursday, 10/3 – Novel Sounds – Elena’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Friday, 10/4 – Word Spelunking – Aeicha Interviews Anne

Saturday, 10/5 – The Hiding Spot – Sara’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Sunday, 10/6 – The Brain Lair – Kathy’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Monday, 10/7 – Read, Write, Reflect – Anne Talks Oscar with Katherine

Tuesday, 10/8 – Librarian’s Quest – Margie’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Wednesday, 10/9 – Buried in Books – Heather’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Thursday, 10/10 – The Book Monsters – Kristen’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Friday, 10/11 – Cari’s Book Blog – Cari’s Take on The Real Boy + An Interview with Anne

Saturday, 10/12 – Unleashing Readers – Kellee Interviews Illustrator Erin McGuire + Giveaway

Sunday, 10/13 – Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers – Gina’s Take on The Real Boy + Giveaway

Monday, 10/14 – Heise Reads and Recommends – Editor Jordan Brown Interviews Anne
Tuesday, 10/15 – Bulldog Readers Blog – The Bulldog Readers Debut Their Book Trailer

GIVEAWAY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you to Kellie at Walden Pond Press for a copy of The Real Boy for review and giveaway, for setting up the blog tour and review, and to Erin McGuire for her wonderful interview!

Blog Tour, Review, and Illustrator Guest Post!: The Snatchabook by Helen and Thomas Docherty

May 2, 2015October 11, 2013 by Kellee

This is part of the book blog tour for The Snatchabook by Helen & Thomas Docherty,
organized by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky.

The Snatchabook
Author: Helen Docherty
Illustrator: Thomas Docherty
Published October 1st, 2013 by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Goodreads Summary: Where have all the bedtime stories gone?

One dark, dark night in Burrow Down, a rabbit named Eliza Brown found a book and settled down…when a Snatchabook flew into town.

It’s bedtime in the woods of Burrow Down, and all the animals are ready for their bedtime story. But books are mysteriously disappearing. Eliza Brown decides to stay awake and catch the book thief. It turns out to be a little creature called the Snatchabook who has no one to read him a bedtime story. All turns out well when the books are returned and the animals take turns reading bedtime stories to the Snatchabook.

My Review: This book has two very magical elements: the rhyming story and the fun illustrations. The story is one I cannot wait to read to my children. As Brian Selznick says, ” So wonderful it demands to be read out loud.” However, I feel that it is the illustrations that make this book really come to life. It is because of how much I loved the illustrations that when I was asked if I wanted to be part of The Snatchabook blog tour with a guest post, I knew I wanted to hear from Thomas. I am so happy to have his post here sharing what it was like to illustrate The Snatchabook:

The Snatchabook was a real pleasure to illustrate, as well as a lot of work. In fact, at the time of illustrating, it was probably the most complicated book I had done, because of having to create Burrow Down as well as all the woodland creatures that lived there.

I always start with a lot of pencil sketches, and although The Snatchabook came quite quickly, Eliza took a lot longer to develop as a character. At one point, I thought she was going to be a badger!

Once I was happy with the characters and where they lived, I started to plan out the story page by page. I talked through the roughs a lot with Helen and the publishers until everyone was happy and then I started on the final artwork.

I still work in quite a traditional way. I love the physicality of the tubes of paint, bottles of coloured ink, and thick watercolour paper. First I trace my rough drawings onto watercolour paper with acrylic ink and a dip pen using a light box. Then I stretch the paper and when it is dry, I begin to paint washes of colour using watercolour.

It was a lot of fun getting the feeling of suspense into the pictures, trying to make them edgy but not scary. I also love dramatic lighting, so I made sure I had plenty of cold moonlight outside the burrows and warm, cozy lamps inside. The windswept clouds and twisty trees were painted with a lot of dry brushwork and the cold blues in the book are some of my favourite colours.

The Snatchabook is a very rich story, full of drama, emotion and warmth and I hope that I manage to get all of those across to the reader in my illustrations.

I truly believe that he has met his goal! I love seeing how an artist gets from the ideas in his/her head to the amazing artwork that is shared with us!

Teacher’s Tools for Navigation: This book is a great read aloud. It has a lot of opportunities for predictions during the mystery part of the story. It also is a great book to use if discussing rhyming. And of course it can start a conversation about how we would feel if our books started disappearing!

Discussion Questions: How would you feel if your books started disappearing?; On pg. 6-7 it shares some of Burrow Downs’s books. What books to you think they are alluding to?; Write a story of your own using the same rhyme scheme as The Snatchabook.

We Flagged:
The little owls, on Mommy’s lap
were quite surprised to hear a tap
against their bedroom window glass.
Tap, tap! The noise came really fast.
Before they’d even looked around,
the book was gone—without a sound. (p. 8-9)

Read This If You Loved: We are in a Book by Mo Willems, Library Lion by Michelle Knudson

Recommended For:

Blog Tour and Author Guest Post!: The Year of Shadows by Claire Legrand

July 27, 2015August 25, 2013 by Kellee

Today, I am so happy to be part of The Year of Shadows blog tour! First, let me tell you a bit about the book:

The Year of Shadows
Author: Claire Legrand
Published August 27th, 2013 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Goodreads Summary: Olivia Stellatella is having a rough year.

Her mother left, her neglectful father — the maestro of a failing orchestra — has moved her and her grandmother into his dark, broken-down concert hall to save money, and her only friend is Igor, an ornery stray cat.

Just when she thinks life couldn’t get any weirder, she meets four ghosts who haunt the hall. They need Olivia’s help — if the hall is torn down, they’ll be stuck as ghosts forever, never able to move on.

Olivia has to do the impossible for her shadowy new friends: Save the concert hall. But helping the dead has powerful consequences for the living . . . and soon it’s not just the concert hall that needs saving.

I am so excited to read this! One of the things that intrigues me the most is the setting of a concert hall; reminds me of Phantom of the Opera.

Today we are so lucky to have author Claire Legrand as a guest blogger. Claire Legrand used to be a musician until she realized she couldn’t stop thinking about the stories in her head. Now a writer, Ms. Legrand can often be found typing with purpose at her keyboard, losing herself in the stacks at her local library, or embarking upon spontaneous adventures to lands unknown. Her first novel is The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, a New York Public Library Best Book for Children in 2012. Her second novel, The Year of Shadows, releases August 27, 2013, with her third novel, Winterspell, to follow in fall 2014. She is one of the four authors behind The Cabinet of Curiosities, an anthology of dark middle grade fiction due out in July 2014 from Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins. Claire lives in New Jersey with a dragon and two cats. Visit her at claire-legrand.com and at enterthecabinet.com.

Here at Unleashing Readers, one of our goals is helping educators find books that will help them teach their students about different literary elements. We are so excited for Claire Legrand to discuss the literary elements of setting, characterization, and language, and how she utilized those elements to bring the world of The Year of Shadows to life! I think you all will find this post interesting and so useful.

SETTING

The sense of place in The Year of Shadows was one of the first story elements I established. Olivia’s world is an isolated one—she lives at Emerson Hall, she goes to school, she works after school at the tea shop across the street called The Happy Place. We don’t see a lot of Olivia’s city beyond those three locations, and the time spent at Olivia’s school and The Happy Place are relatively minimal. The Year of Shadows is really all about Emerson Hall. It’s not only where Olivia spends the majority of her time; it’s also her new home. I therefore knew I would have to make the Hall as vibrant a character as Olivia herself, full of moods and memories. The Hall needed to feel like a whole new world, one that Olivia explores in the new lens of “home” just as the readers are exploring it for the first time. The state of the Hall, and how Olivia perceives it, represents Olivia’s state of mind.

At the beginning of the story, Emerson Hall is decrepit, shabby, old. Its paint has faded, its carpet is torn, and the once-grand stone angels on the building’s façade have been vandalized. Like Olivia and her broken family, Emerson Hall has seen better days. Olivia directs her hatred of what her life has become at the Hall itself; to her, Emerson Hall and its orchestra lie at the root of her troubles. She doesn’t realize until much later that her refusal to reach out to friends for help and her destructive tendency to isolate herself are more problematic than living in Emerson Hall. Like Olivia and her family, Emerson Hall literally starts to fall apart as the story progresses. Both Olivia and her home undergo crises that could make or break them. It is Olivia’s realization that she and the Hall need each other if they are going to survive that marks a turning point in the story, and allows her to find a peace that, at the beginning of The Year of Shadows, she can’t imagine finding ever again.

CHARACTERIZATION

Imagine for a moment that you are twelve years old. You have enjoyed a comfortable, happy life with your father, mother, and grandmother. Art is in your blood; you are never without your trusty sketchpad, and you studied symphonies with your conductor father from the time you could crawl.

Then, things start to go wrong. Your mother and father start to fight; you lie awake at night listening to them. Your father spends more and more time working and less and less time with you and your mother. The orchestra isn’t doing well; lots of businesses aren’t doing well, and who wants to spend money they don’t have on coming to hear an increasingly crummy orchestra perform? Your stomach is in constant knots.

One day, a day that should have been like any other day, you wake up to find that your mother is gone. She left in the middle of the night without a clue as to her destination. It’s just you and your father now—your father who seems to care more than ever about work, much more than he cares about you. He lets bills and letters from your school pile up. (You’re not doing well in school these days.) He sells your house and moves you into the backstage storage rooms of a music hall that should probably be condemned.

You hate him. You hate everything. Sometimes, you even hate yourself.

This is Olivia. This is the girl whose story I sat down to tell when I wrote The Year of Shadows. She was a difficult character to bring to life; as you can see, her story isn’t a happy one. I needed to both communicate her (righteous, justified) anger and grief while still keeping her sympathetic. To achieve this, I balanced her darker moments—berating her father, insulting people who try to help her—with lighter ones. I felt it was even more important with Olivia than it was for some of my other, more immediately sympathetic characters, to give the reader peeks of the true her, beneath all the hurt that consumes her.

Olivia is an artist. There are beautiful worlds inside her, worlds she brings to life in her sketchpad even when—especially when—nothing else makes sense.

Olivia is kindhearted, devoted to her frail grandmother. She is determined to transform the backstage rooms of Emerson Hall into something like a home—decorating the bare gray walls with pictures from her sketchbook, spending the limited money she earns from working after school to buy her grandmother scarves and a nice warm rug for the cold floor.

Olivia is brave. She will face down ghosts—even the distinctly unfriendly ones—if it means defending her father, as much as she thinks she hates him. (But finding the courage to trust again? That she doesn’t find so easily.)

Creating Olivia was all about finding the right balance between her good moments and her bad ones, and ensuring that even her worst moments came from a place readers could understand.

The other characters in The Year of Shadows help Olivia in different ways. They are like rungs on the ladder Olivia must climb to pull herself out of her depression. Henry is trusting and loyal, traits Olivia can no longer see in herself or in her family. Joan is not afraid of being herself, or of letting others see her, while Olivia is constantly trying to hide. Mr. and Mrs. Barsky are the loving couple Olivia used to see in her parents. Trumpet player Richard Ashley is the love of music Olivia once had, and has now lost.

Even the ghosts play their part. I like to think of the four main ghosts in The Year of Shadows as fulfilling a function similar to that of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, each of which teach Ebenezer Scrooge something about himself. Olivia’s ghosts do the same, each “lesson” increasing in importance. Violinist Frederick helps Olivia rediscover her love of music. Best friends Tillie and Jax remind Olivia of the power and value of friendship. And poor Mr. Worthington, with his horrible secret, shows Olivia that even her family, as dysfunctional as it is, is worth saving.

LANGUAGE

Establishing just the right blend of language to tell Olivia’s story was a tricky process for me. I wanted the language of The Year of Shadows to feel contemporary yet classic, homey yet eerie. The reader needed to feel at home in Emerson Hall, but still feel as unsettled as Olivia does. There are horror elements in this book, but it is not a horror novel; it is ultimately a story about family and friendship. The language needed to both accurately describe intense issues—financial trouble, death and the afterlife, parental abandonment and neglect, bullying, depression—while still being accessible to young readers. Through the narration, I needed Olivia to identify and explore complex emotions; at the same time, I needed her to describe them in such a way that felt authentic for an emotionally confused twelve-year-old.

I think it’s impossible to discuss a story’s language without addressing voice, and establishing Olivia’s voice was essential in developing the right language for The Year of Shadows. I was fortunate to quickly “hear” Olivia’s voice—informal but poetic, intelligent but not book-smart, sarcastic yet brimming with emotion too overwhelming to share. Her voice is conversational, peppered with fragments.

Ultimately, I wanted the language of The Year of Shadows to evoke just that—shadows. Dark, shifting shapes on the wall created by fleeting sweeps of light. Shadows, while they might seem frightening at first, are ultimately hopeful things, because you can’t have a shadow without light. For Olivia, it takes a while to find her light—but she does in the end, even if it wasn’t quite what she was expecting.

Below are a few brief (spoiler-free!) selections from The Year of Shadows that are representative of the book’s overall language:

“The picture I had of them in my head was pretty fuzzy, so I kept drawing them over and over, trying to capture the memory of them on the page. It wasn’t working very well; it’s harder than you might think to draw just the right amount of transparency, of driftiness.”

“The Maestro didn’t cry. The Maestro was made of stone and numbers and anger, and mostly he was made of music—cold, unfeeling, metal-tubed music.”

“Mr. Worthington stared. His eyes and mouth were the largest, hanging open like gateways to some secret, dark place. His head didn’t hang quite right, like someone had screwed it on wrong, and he was skinny as a bundle of twigs.”

“The shades overhead scampered away, but one lingered above me, its face cocked to the side like a bird. It opened its mouth and groaned, this low, rumbling sound that made my ears hurt.”

“In a week and a half, we’d know the Hall’s fate. No, not its fate. Its destiny. I liked that word better. It sounded softer, like something Mom would say. It sounded like stars.”

“Henry didn’t say anything more after that. I think he was afraid to talk to me, afraid that I would crack. He might have been right. All I knew was the tip of my charcoal on my sketchpad, like I was sewing myself back together.”

I can see this post being used in reading or writing workshop; what a great resource for teachers! Also, doesn’t it make you want to read the book even more?!

I want to thank Claire Legrand for stopping by, and I hope you found the post as useful as I did!