Let's Talk Books with . . .

Greetings from author Padma Venkatraman

2009-06-02T04:39:00.001-07:00

As I look forward to the RI Center for the Book Meeting and being in the company of librarians and books in my all time favorite place in the world – a public library, I find myself thinking back to one of the most important discovery of my life, which I think I made when I was six years old and lived in India.

My youngest aunt, Sundari, who was visiting, had brought gifts for me and for my cousin Ramya, who is just four months younger than I am. I was certain my aunt hated me and loved my cousin, because cousin Ramya’s gift was a large, colorful board game and mine was just a book. Not even a brightly colored picture book, or at least a book with black and white illustrations, but instead a book filled with nothing but words.

I remember staring unhappily at the endless rows of print that stretched across the front page for many long minutes.

Then something magical happened. As I looked at them, those little words, those marks on paper, carried me into another place and time. I heard voices – clearer than any on the radio or a record player; I saw pictures – sharper and more real than any painting. And by the time I put the book away, I had met people as real to me as my friends and family were.

But that evening, I saw a beggar child who looked about my age. The child’s eyes reminded me of how privileged I was to be able to read; that in India, at least, education and books and libraries were accessible only to those with wealth.

Years later, I came to Virginia, to the College of William and Mary’s graduate school. There, I saw my first public library.

“How much do I have to pay to become a member?” I asked. To my astonishment, I was told I did not have to pay anything at all. All those shelves of books were open and accessible to me and to anyone who wanted to walk in through those doors. The amazing public library system became, in my mind, the most beautiful practical expressions of American ideals. To this day, I still believe that there are few better examples of the best of American culture.

So it is truly an honor for me to present the keynote address at the Rhode Island Center for the Book’s annual meeting. I love libraries just as my as Vidya, my protagonist in CLIMBING THE STAIRS, does. Public libraries have been my haven in times of homesickness; public librarians have been a source of support to me since I began climbing the stairs as a writer; and I hope very much that Rhode Island’s citizens (librarians and others) will bless me (inside and outside public libraries) as I keep Climbing the Stairs as a published author.

Padma Venkatraman (http://www.climbingthestairsbook.com/)

Padma

Last chance to nominate a title for the 2010 Reading Across RI selection

2009-05-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Reading Across Rhode Island Nominating committee will do a lot of reading and meet a number of times this summer to discuss the Reading Across RI 2010 selection.

Nominate a title today! Deadline for nominations is June 20, 2009.

Did that happen to you? ~ Ron Carlson

2009-05-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

One of the things a writer gets asked is: did that happen to you? Do you write from your own experiences? It’s a good question. We all know stories which seem absolutely made up and we all know stories that seem very close to life. I have never really been on a construction crew, like the three men in Five Skies, though I have done a lot of handiwork, and my father was a very fine engineer, and I’ve camped out plenty and cooked in those places, and I’ve fished in some remote spots, and I’ve spent some wonderful times in the out of doors. As a writer, you are required to write closely enough that you believe it. This is a responsibility and a pleasure. When people ask me if I write from my personal experiences, I answer: Yes, I do. I write from my personal experiences – whether I’ve had them or not. This sounds like a joke a first, and I’m sure to repeat it in Rhode Island this coming weekend, but it is not a joke. It is just one way of speaking about using the imagination in an empathetic way. As a writer, you send yourself on the journey. If you’re digging post holes for a fence, you take your time and dig in the red earth, sentence by sentence, even if there are rocks.

Scrip-scraps, Ron Carlson

2009-05-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

Years ago, probably around 1991 or 92, I was at a family cabin in the mountains of Utah on a fresh cold morning in the summer and I had my notebook and I wrote a bit of dialogue between two men about something that had been tugging at me for some time. The two men would become Darwin and Arthur, when I would finally turn my full attention to the book more than ten years later. I had the one man ask the other: Did you ever build anything that lasted? Or was it all temporary? And the other man answers: Once in Aspen for a film we had enough time to put a deck on the directors house and that’s still there. The section was a kind of curiosity for me and I kept it in my note folder, along with all of the odd notes I keep. That folder is two inches thick and full of scrip-scraps of phrases, ideas, and the like. I could see from my dialogue that I wanted to write about work, the idea of work, but I didn’t know how to do it. I’d been writing stories and I saw the notion of work was bigger than might fit in a story. Then later I wrote the night three men are driving a truck in the snow and the book started to open up for me. ~ Ron Carlson

Introducing...Ron Carlson

2009-04-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

I have been writing since my school days. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Thornton, allowed me to put on skits with my friends which I wrote under the heavy influence of monster movies, tarzan movies, and a sense of real wonder about the world. I continued writing in college at the University of Utah and I began to see that writing would be an adventure itself. By this I mean, I had thought that writing fiction would be a clear and organized endeavor. I didn’t know what I know now, after ten books, that writing fiction is about going into the unknown each time. We start with what we know and we write from there toward what we don’t know, into the dark, building each sentence carefully so we can believe it and find out – if we stay in the room – what our stories are. In Five Skies you can see me building a world in those first forty pages, process by process. I was so glad to see Ronnie finally get that tent up –with a little help. In the book I worked forward scene by scene, and then, maybe a dozen times, I stopped and made decisions about the direction I might go next. I wanted to make each step in the book a firm and credible step. More soon. April 30, 2009. Ron Carlson

LT Governor Elizabeth Roberts on Five Skies

2009-04-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

As the Lieutenant Governor of The Ocean State, where each of us lives closely together and the ocean breezes and tides are part of our weather forecast, the Idaho setting of Five Skies fascinated me. I have long been a reader of books set in the wide open spaces of America. Willa Cather and O Pioneers set in the plains of Nebraska, Wallace Stegner and his Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose, Larry McMurtrys Lonesome Dove these are three of my favorite books and I look for literature set in the west.

Five Skies, with its wide open, rugged setting, transports the reader to a different world. There are big skies, canyons, long distances to the closest town and to family. It is such a different world that surrounds the three men in this novel, isolating them and causing them to create their own family, father, son and grandson, on the canyon rim.

I look forward to the discussions on May 9, at the Reading Across Rhode Island May Breakfast."

"Five Skies" comes alive at Fidelity Investments

2009-04-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

If you were to put seniors from Smithfield High School, “seniors” from the Smithfield Senior Center, Fidelity Investments specialists, and Reading across Rhode Island committee members in a room together, do you know what you would get? One of the best book discussions you could imagine!

Such a gathering took place at Fidelity Investments in Smithfield on March 26. The event offered a wonderful opportunity to discuss this year’s RARI selection, Five Skies by Ron Carlson, from numerous perspectives and to ask questions that either puzzled or intrigued individual readers.

A member of the RARI committee since 2003, I loved this luncheon and discussion as they exemplified the sharing of viewpoints and feelings that we have been encouraging for years!

A quick confession: I liked Five Skies, but I’m not sure I’d say I loved it. However, I left this gathering with a deeper appreciation of the subtlety and richness of the book.

Many thanks to Fidelity Investments and to Michelle Publicover, Fidelity’s assistant manager of Public Affairs, for making possible an excellent event.

Maxine Williams

The Five Skies of Idaho

2009-03-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

Confess. What do you think of when I say “Idaho?” Potatoes, right? Well, believe me when I say that, after reading Five Skies (the 2009 Reading Across Rhode Island selection) I know Idaho is a lot more than potatoes! And the author of Five Skies, Ron Carlson, is at his best when presenting what can only be described as the book’s fourth main character – the rugged mountains and canyon gorges of Idaho.

The New York Times describes it this way, “Most impressive, though, is Carlson's evocation of the Western landscape, especially its immensely variable sky. Every few pages there's a new image of this panorama, which shifts from ''a luminescent charcoal ceiling scalloped with glowing seams'' to an ''amorphous glaring canopy'' to an ''ebony quadrant of the sky'' where the ''ghosted flashes of an electrical storm'' are ''blooming like small stars.''

If you are looking for a way to travel to Idaho (without actually spending money on airfare) check out the following sites – and then tell me what you think about when someone says “Idaho?”

1. One of the most beautiful sites about Idaho is called simply Scenic Byways. Choose and click on a locale; then click on View slideshow, sit back and enjoy.
http://www.idahobyways.gov/byways/

2. Idaho – Adventures in Living also has some wonderful photos. Scroll about two-thirds of the way down and find the Snake River Canyon Area.
http://www.visitidaho.org/mapsimages/photo-search-results.aspx?keyword=Twin%20Falls#content

3. And finally, one of the Reading Across Rhode Island Committee members “just happened” to be visiting her brother in Idaho and brought back the following collection of photographs by Dave Cabitto of Meridian, Idaho.

Journey with us to the Five Skies of Idaho

2009-01-13T11:27:00.000-08:00

The Reading Across Rhode Island selection for 2009 is Five Skies by Ron Carlson, and the folks at the Rhode Island Center for the Book at Providence Public Library invite you to join with us in exploring and discussing this wonderful book, its characters, its setting and its message.

Five Skies is about a developing friendship among three troubled men: Darwin Gallegos, forman of the group, has lost his wife to a tragic accident; Arthur Key, Hollywood stunt director recently lost his brother in a stunt gone bad, and Ronnie Panelli, a shiftless young man has been in and out of jail for much of his young life. These refugees from the painful past are drawn together one summer by a construction project in the Idaho Rockies – constructing a ramp to nowhere for a bizarre and ill-conceived motorcycle stunt.

Author Ron Carlson makes his first visit to Reading Across Rhode Island 2009 at the RARI Launch Conference, which will be held on Saturday, January 31st from 9:30am – 2:30pm at Bryant University, Smithfield RI. The cost per person is $25.00. The Registration Form is available online and must be submitted by January 22nd.

This conference is designed for librarians, members and leaders of book discussion groups, educators and readers across the state. Please join us in welcoming Ron Carlson and in beginning our state-wide discussion about Five Skies.

If you cannot attend the conference and would like to ask Ron a question, simply post your question on this blog and we will include his answers in a future post. Join the discussion!

Let's Talk about the RARI 2009 book

2008-08-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Nominating Committee of Reading Across RI is busy reading books for the 2009 selection from the list of over seventy titles nominated this year by readers all over the state. Join in the discussion of the ten books on the 2009 Short List by posting your comments about these books (each title has its own post):

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2008-08-08T11:32:00.002-07:00

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
NoveList Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

2008-08-08T11:32:00.001-07:00

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
NoveList Summary: In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston

2008-08-08T11:31:00.001-07:00

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Booklist Review: An act of desperation divides a mother and her child. Only an act of faith can reunite them. Trudy Hulst has no idea if her husband survived his attempted escape past the newly constructed Berlin Wall. But she knows too well the consequences of his actions. Now branded the wife of a defector, she faces a life in prison. With no real choice, she is forced to follow, praying she can find a way to claim their child once she's in West Berlin. Trudy survives a harrowing break for freedom...only to learn her husband was shot during his escape. Alone, she wanders the wall like a ghost, living for brief glimpses of her son, now out of reach behind barbed wire and armed soldiers. Desperate to regain her child, Trudy begins a journey that leads her to America, where she continues an odyssey of hope to find her son.

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat

2008-08-08T11:30:00.001-07:00

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Booklist Review: In Tehran in the early 1980s, after she leads a strike in high school to get her math teacher to teach calculus not politics, Marina, 16, a practicing Catholic, is locked up for two years and tortured with her school friends in the Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious Evin political prison. She is saved from execution by an interrogator, Ali, who wants to marry her and threatens to hurt her family and Catholic boyfriend, Andre, if she refuses. Forced to convert to Islam, she becomes Ali's wife; then he is assassinated by political rivals, and she rejoins her family and marries Andre. They immigrate to Canada in 1991. For more than 20 years, secure in her middle-class life, she keeps silent, until she writes this unforgettable memoir.

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

2008-08-08T11:29:00.001-07:00

Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Booklist Review: Wounded and imprisoned in the Chesapeake Bay attic of vicious slave hunter Patty Stanton, Liz Spocott, 19, foresees the future and leads a breakout of 14 slaves, who are then hounded by hunters from many sides. With a strong focus on the role of women, the author recounts the history of slave revolts without sentimentality in a stirring novel of cruelty, betrayal, and courage, including the part played by the young slave who runs from a kind mistress and is determined to help Liz on the "gospel train to freedom."

The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman

2008-08-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
Booklist Review: In 1862, led by Chief Little Crow and incited by the government’s failure to provide their annuity, the Dakota Sioux staged an uprising in Minnesota, slaughtering hundreds of settlers. As a result, 38 Dakota men were hanged, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Maltman’s promising first novel bounces between the years leading up to this atrocity-laden conflict and 1876, when the James-Younger gang would stir up its own brand of bloody mayhem in Minnesota. Following the struggles of the Senger family, Maltman keeps the telling personal and local, tacked to the Sengers farm and the Dakota tribe situated a stones throw across the river.

The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens

2008-08-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
Booklist Review: Lansen’s remarkable second novel is told from two viewpoints: that of Rose and that of Ruby Darlen, 29-year-old conjoined twins. A recent medical diagnosis has spurred Rose to write her autobiography, and she encourages Ruby to do the same. Between the two sections, the story of their lives is revealed, beginning with their birth to an unwed teen mother and their adoption by Lovey Darlen, the nurse who was with their mother when she was in labor, and her strong, silent husband, Stash.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

2008-08-08T11:26:00.001-07:00

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Novelist Summary: Taking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded.

Five Skies by Ron Carlson

2008-08-08T11:25:00.001-07:00

Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Novelist Summary: Working together on a summer construction project high in the Rocky Mountains, drifter Arthur Key, shiftless Ronnie Panelli, and foreman Darwin Gallegos reveal details about their pasts and beliefs in cautious and profound ways.

Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

2008-08-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Novelist Summary: Ruby, born in York, England, in 1959, relates the story of her family living above shops in the 1960s and of her grandmother and mother living through the earlier wars.

Story Ideas? The "Eyes" Have It!

2008-02-17T16:06:00.000-08:00

It doesn't seem to be much of a problem to find something to read.

You go to a library or a bookstore, find the type of story that interests you, and you bring it home to read. Easy, right?

But where did those story ideas come from?

In talking to students and adults, it is common to hear someone say they would like to write a book but don't know where to start. In this regard, the "eyes" have it.

As I tell the students in my writing workshops, absolutely anything can become an idea for a story. As an example, I ask them to think of their pencil.

It's the end of recess time. The students are lining up to come back into the classroom. The pencil, meanwhile, is sitting on the desk. This is the time of day the pencil dreads the most. The pencil knows the students -- sweaty and disgusting from running around at recess -- are returning.

And what's the first thing they reach for? Right. The pencil.

How do you think the pencil feels about this? You have to know the pencil is thinking, "No, no, don't touch me first, go for the book! Grab the book!"

But the student picks up the pencil.

"Yuck!" says the pencil.

And then the student decides the pencil needs to be sharpened. Sharpened! To a pencil, it's not a sharpener, it's a torture chamber! ZING!!

The point is, anything can be a story with a little imagination and vision. The "eyes" are very important to an author. What do you "see?" You have to "see" details and more details, no matter what type of story you might want to write, whether the genre is picture books, science fiction, romance, historical novel, biography, or whatever.

So the next time you pick up a book to read, try to "see" it through the author's eyes, following the path from the author's vision to the printed words you see on a page. With a little practice, you might soon "see" your own literary creation!

Fun With Words -- Lubricate Your Tonsils

2008-02-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

If you mention the concept to your students, how many do you think would raise their hands and agree with the statement that words can be fun?

A very small percentage, to be sure, if any hands are raised at all.

But words can indeed be fun.

When I'm in the classroom, performing one of my "Nudging the Imagination" writing workshops, I always have a cup of tea by my side. During the workshop, after talking/instructing, I will stop for a moment, tell the students I have to do something very important in their classroom, reach for my mug and take a satisfying, much needed sip of tea.

I ask them what I did. You took a drink, they say. Not quite, I respond.

I tell them I had to lubricate my tonsils.

And then I tell them that when they're at the dinner table that night, they shouldn't say "I'm thirsty." I tell them that's boring. Words can be more fun than that. What they should say is, "May I please have some cow juice so I might lubricate my tonsils?"

"Cow juice?" they say.

They tell me they call it milk, to which I reply, "Why"

What do you get from apples, I ask. Apple Juice, they answer. What do you get from oranges, I ask. Orange juice, they answer. So, what do you get from cows, I ask? They giggle. They say milk.

But it should be cow juice, I insist, because you have to squeeze the cow, too, don't you? At that point I show them one of my children's books, "Why Not Call It Cow Juice," but the point is to have fun with words. So I send them home with an "assignment." They are supposed to ask to lubricate their tonsils with cow juice, which will bring a smile to their lips and happy dinner-table confusion when they carry out their mission at home that night.

Another one of my favorite words -- proboscis. It just sounds funny, doesn't it?

One of the dictionary definitions of the word is a "long flexible snout, like an elephant's trunk."

Now, when we write in the classroom, we stress word pictures. We want to write so clearly, with so much description, that the reader can see what's going on in his or her imagination just through our words, which are painting mental pictures for them.

You can say someone has a big nose if you make that a physical characteristic of one of the characters in your story. You can say that character has honker or a schnozzola, too. But if you say the character has a proboscis? Wow -- now you're talking a major league nose! Quite the smile-inducing word picture, don't you think?

So have fun with the words in the stories you write. And find fun, descriptive words in the books you read.

And while you're doing that, don't forget to lubricate your tonsils with some cow juice!

Read to the Kids -- "Bonking" Game

2008-01-25T12:27:00.000-08:00

Recently, there was an article in the paper that reported a survey indicating parents spend very little time these days reading to their kids at bedtime.

That finding probably doesn't surprise anyone. For whatever reasons -- long work hours, late-night fatigue -- bedtime story time seems to have gone the way of family dinner time.

And it's unfortunate.

Reading bedtime stories is so important to youngsters in so many ways, especially when they are so young and learning how to read for themselves. It shows them the importance of the written word, the happiness and magic contained on the pages of a book and the confidence that comes with learning how to read, not to mention the vocabulary and the word/grammar patterns they pick up by osmosis as they navigate their way through a book, all of which is instrumental in turning them into independent and enthusiastic writers.

But it's unfortunate for another reason, too.

Reading bedtime stories is a perfect opportunity to unwind from a busy day and bond with your kids. It should be fun -- for both the kids and the parents.

When our kids were little, we used to play a game when I read to them. Our kids, Amy (now 27), Jeffrey (25) and Emily (21) had their favorite books, so we would tend to read many of the same books over and over. It got so that even before they could technically read, they memorized and could recite the words by heart, knowing what words were on each page even if they didn't really know how to read them.

So when I would read, I would make mistakes on purpose. And as they got older, this would translate into what we called our "bonking" game. If they caught me making a mistake, they could hit me with their pillow. It was amazing how many mistakes I would make! They were paying rapt attention and didn't miss one of the mistakes! As they got stronger, my head would get a little sore from all of their "bonks" with the pillow, but so what?

The game would dissolve into a spirited pillow fight, which was great fun full of great bonding memories and the opportunity to have them associate reading with giggles, smiles and fun. Because reading is fun, right? And what better way to nudge their imaginations?

So take a few minutes out of your busy schedule. It doesn't take long to read a picture book (Mercer Mayer's "There's A Nightmare in My Closet" and "Just Go To Bed" were favorites, as was any book from Marc Brown's series of "Arthur" books). Read to the kids. Have the pillows handy. Have some fun.