Believing in Perhaps: THE BRONZE PEN

I make no secret of the fact that Zilpha Keatley Snyder has been one of my all-time favorite writers since I was in third grade.  She’s such an inspiration to me that I’ve named the protagonist of my work-in-progress after her.  In the years since elementary school, I’ve returned often to my favorite ZKS books, but this month I decided to do something different and read a book of Snyder’s I’ve never read before.  Because I love to write, the selection jumped out at me, and so I picked up The Bronze Pen.

Audrey Abbott is the protagonist of The Bronze Pen, an imaginative girl who writes novels in secret yet dreams of becoming a famous novelist.  Sometimes I think that every book is somehow about writing, that writers somehow—consciously or unconsciously—encodes the secrets of their art in every sentence.  The Bronze Pen makes no secret that it’s about writing.  It’s a story marked by Snyder’s subtle magic and filled with advice for writers young and old, including the phrase Audrey first hears when a mysterious creature—perhaps an old woman, perhaps something else—gives her a bronze pen.  The creature tells Audrey to use the pen “Wisely..and to good purpose.”  Sound advice.

Snyder recognizes the doubt that accompanies so much of the writing life when she describes Audrey’s furtive scribblings.  I know I can relate to Audrey’s worries when she tries to explain to her friend why she doesn’t tell people that she’s a writer.  She says, “most people think it’s kind of a stupid thing to plan on.  You know.  Like planning to be Miss America or a famous movie star, or like that.”  Yet Snyder also reminds us of why we write in the response of Audrey’s friend Lizzie (a young artist who’s unafraid to share her talents with the world).  Lizzie tells Audrey, “It’s not like that.  At least it’s not if you do it because—because it’s just what you do.”  And she goes on to explain that it doesn’t matter what other people think, so long as Audrey likes doing it, she should write.  Reading this made me want to put The Bronze Pen in the hands of every young writer.  Lizzie tells a truth that holds meaning for artists of any age.

The Bronze Pen reminded me of why I love Snyder’s work.  It resonates with me in a way I can’t fully explain, but in a way that taps into the person I was when I was ten, when I was a little girl who loved to read and write, who chased after adventures whenever she could, who built tiny houses in tree roots and believed that perhaps some tiny forest creature might use those canopy beds of leaves and chairs cut from pine cones.  Near the beginning of The Bronze Pen, Audrey Abbott meets a white duck and thinks that it is “A barnyard fowl” for certain, “but on the other hand, perhaps something much more” (14).  It’s that “perhaps” that made me fall in love with Snyder’s novels as a child, for they made me believe in the perhapses of life at a time when some people might have thought that chasing ghosts—or even, perhaps, chasing stories—were foolhardy endeavors.  And it’s why I love her novels still. 

Zilpha Keatley Snyder once said that “Anything a writer cares or feels deeply about will inevitably find its way into what he or she writes.”  It’s clear that Snyder cares and feels deeply about “perhaps.”  And I believe that one of the reasons I still care about the same thing—the possibilities, the impossibilities, all that is wild and whimsical and unknown and unknowable—is because I read her novels as a child.  And why I turn to them again, now, as an adult, to be reminded of the possibilities in “perhaps.”

[Snyder, Zilpha Keatley.  The Bronze Pen.  New York: Atheneum, 2009.]

Ten Things About Books And Me

This post is inspired by this week’s Weekly Geeks prompt.

1.) I dog-ear pages.  Sacrilege to some, but I can’t keep track of bookmarks; bookmarks get lost when my book falls out of my hands when I fall asleep reading, which is pretty often.

2.) I read soft-back when I’m buying, but my mom sends me lots of hard backs, so my bookshelf is a mix of both.

3.) I rarely buy second-hand books, though I love the ambiance of second-hand bookshops.  I don’t check books out of the library, though I’m a supporter of public libraries and use them to research and, sometimes, as a quiet (and inspiring) place to write.  The truth is that I love reading brand new books that no one’s ever read.  I love being the first to crack a spine; I see it as sort of an honor, plus I figure that every time I buy a new book (which is pretty often), I’m supporting the literary world—and a specific author—in the most direct way I can.

4.) I’m usually reading two books at once, but sometimes three.  I’ll go through stints where I have an upstairs book, a downstairs book, and a car book (no worries on this last category: it’s for when I’m waiting, not for while I’m driving).

5.) Though lately I’ve been on a blog-inspired YA kick, I read widely in lots of genres, new and old, “literary” and “genre,” though there are lots of areas I have yet to foray into including romance and westerns.  But there’s still time and seemingly endless possibilities.

6.) As with any reader, my favorite authors are constantly evolving, but on my current list: Amitav Ghosh, e.l. konigsburg, Orhan Pamuk, J.D. Salinger, Barbara Kingsolver, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and (always!) Zilpha Keatley Snyder.  (I’ll stop there before I go on forever.)

7.) I’ve kept a book journal with the title and author of every book I’ve read since June of 2006.

8.) My best book recommender is my mom.  We have a book club of two.

9.) I’m pretty picky about non-fiction, yet two of my all-time favorite books are non-fiction: Electric Universe and E=MC2, both by David Bodanis.

10.) I’ve been book blogging since last August.  I started my blog as a project for my MFA program, and as I near the end of that requirement, I’m faced with the decision of where (and if) I want to go next with the blogging world.  Do I continue writing into the void (because really, it often feels that way)?  Do I change the scope or style of the blog?  Do I move on into other adventures?  We’ll see what happens…but no matter what, I’ll always, always, always be a reader.

The ASTONISHING Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party

I’ve just finished reading M.T. Anderson’s novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party, and I’m about as overwhelmed by the task of actually writing about the book as you may be by reading through the Fourteen Words (And One Number) of the title.  A book that’s so complex and meandering in its philosophical explorations and stylistic techniques resists simple summary.  It feels almost like a betrayal to that complexity to write this sentence: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party is about a boy raised by a group of philosophers in pre-Revolutionary Boston; it is only after he’s been dressed in the finest clothes, given the most rigorous classical education, and exposed every fine art that Octavian discovers he’s a slave at the heart of an experiment to prove his own inferiority.

I spent much of the first part of this novel reveling in Anderson’s exquisite craftsmanship.  It may take some time to adjust to the winding passages of Octavian’s narration, but it’s prose that dazzles.  For example, here’s Octavian’s description of the organization that raises him:

They called themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity, and devoted themselves to divining the secrets of the universe, so praising the Creator, who had with infinite art manufactured such a dazzling apparatus; and each investigation into the incubation of tern-eggs or the mystery of sediment was but an ear pressed to the mechanism, the better to hear the click of gears, the swiveling of stars on cog and ambulating cam. (8)

 A reader may—perhaps even gladly—get lost in this whirlwind of words, but Anderson knows that Octavian would tell his story no other way.   That is, at least, until Octavian refuses to tell it at all, until he takes away the one thing he has the power to take away: his voice.

When I lost Octavian’s voice in the second section of the book, I bore the loss only because I believed that he would return.  This section slowed down, but it also gave me a gift: a series of letters capturing the initial battle of the Revolutionary War from the point-of-view of one of the soldiers, a soldier whose voice makes the war real from the ground level in a way no history book might.  It may be fiction, but it’s based in fact, and it feels more true than any textbook paragraph.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but I was particularly entranced with a philosophical exchange that happens near the end of the novel, an exchange that demonstrates how even the most evil practices and policies may be defended under the guise of philosophy.  Anderson lays this bare when one character argues against the idea that “Kindness is common sense.”  The character states, “Kindness without profit is like a teapot hovering over a table, held by nothing” (338).  The exchange really made me think about how even the most evil of policies—in this case slavery—have been defended by men who were considered logical and reasonable.  It serves as a reminder—a timely one, perhaps always timely: logic and reason can be employed (perhaps faultily) towards an end that is neither good nor right.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party amazes and challenges and confounds.  It is not a book that rips the reader right through on waves of adventure and suspense, but it is a book that rewards with much to think about long after the covers have been closed.

[Anderson, M.T.  The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I, The Pox Party. Somerville: Candlewick, 2006.]

Hope and MANIAC MAGEE

I’ve been on a bit of a Newbery kick lately, which is not a bad place to be.  My most recent read is one that was recommended to me many years ago, back when I was student teaching in an eighth grade classroom in Minnesota.  My (amazing) mentor teacher Stacy Casper suggested Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli as a great read for an eighth grader, and I feel a little sheepish that I haven’t read it until now.  But I’ll also say this: it was worth the wait. 

Maniac Magee is awesome.  He’s really, really awesome.  He can hit the pitches of the most talented pitchers.  He can out-duke anyone on the football field.  He can run—not walk, but run—balanced on a railroad tie.  He’ll tie a bow around the neck of a baby buffalo, sit on the stoop of a house from where no children return, and complete various other feats with a casual confidence that leaves other kids—and many adults—gawking in wide-eyed admiration.  Maniac Magee also doesn’t have a home.

Jerry Spinelli manages to create a character who lives a life as big as the mythological stars of jump rope chants yet who struggles to meet his most basic needs of food and shelter.  The effect is almost as shattering as Maniac’s attempt to break the boundaries between the black and white sides of town—a divide that’s longstanding and upheld by force of will on both sides, a divide Maniac crosses regularly and with the same combination of hope and desperation that lands him in the buffalo pen at the zoo, just searching for a warm place to sleep.

Maniac doesn’t go to school.  (But he does believe it’s important—urgent even—that other kids go to school.)  He reads like, well, a maniac, with the same gusto he approaches everything else, but he just can’t bring himself to go to school when there’s no home to go to afterwards.  I remember back when I was student teaching, Stacy Casper telling me that some of our students didn’t have homes.  This isn’t a truth that disappeared when I crossed the country to teach in another eighth grade classroom far away from that Midwestern city.  And I hate it now as much as I did then.  It’s an injustice that can make reading books feel like a worthless indulgence.  How can I read when the world is a mess?  How can I escape into a story when thousands of kids lack safe homes to go to after school?  

In Maniac Magee, a character named Amanda Beale carries her library of books to and from school every day in a suitcase, so they won’t get ruined by her younger siblings while she’s gone.  When Amanda first meets Maniac, she opens her suitcase of books to show him her treasure.  And, against Amanda’s sense of all that is reasonable and logical in the world, she lends Maniac Magee a book.  It got me wondering.  Maybe it’s because she’s a reader that Amanda can go beyond all that is logical and reasonable in the world and lend this boy—this stranger, a white boy in the black side of town, this rumbled kid with his falling apart shoes—one of her most precious possessions: one of her books.  Perhaps reading, like giving away a book you might not get back, like believing that the world might get better someday, is an act of hope. 

A Party With Pickles BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE

I just finished a book that made my heart swell up.  If that sounds cheesy and corny and goofy, that's okay.  You just haven't read Because of Winn-Dixie yet.  If you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Kate DiCamillo has written a book that someone of any age could love.  I can see a parent reading it to a young child; I can just as easily imagine older readers being taken with India Opal Buloni's winning voice, especially the animal lovers among us.  India Opal's voice carries us from the very first page and the event that sets the plot in motion, the moment she claims a stray dog who has wandered into the local grocery store and caused a little bit of havoc.  Opal has just moved to town; she lives with her preacher father--her mother left long ago--and she doesn't have any friends.  After she claims this slightly stinky dog with his missing tufts of hair and his toothy smile, Opal thinks, "I knew I had done something big.  And stupid, too.  But I couldn't help it" (10).  She's lucky she took that dog home, and we are too.

Because of Winn-Dixie hits a balance between humor and melancholy just right on the spot where, as you read, you're smiling yet can feel the slightest tinge of a tear behind that smile.  It's a feeling best captured by the taste of the Littmus Lozenges that Miss Franny Block--local librarian and Opal's first friend in the new town--introduces to Opal: "the sweet and the sad…all mixed up together" (126).  But, like the Littmus Lozenge, Because of Winn-Dixie is also a little bit of strawberry and a little bit of root beer and a little of something else, something unnamable, but definitely, undeniably, good.

[DiCamillo, Kate.  Because of Winn-Dixie.  Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2000.]

The Surprise of I AM THE MESSENGER

Markus Zusak wrote one of my all-time favorite books—The Book Thief—so I must admit that I had ridiculously high expectations for I Am the Messenger.  But once I started, all expectations went out the window.  Not because I Am the Messenger isn’t good, but because it is so completely different from The Book Thief.  I had to let the other book go and jump into this new, unexpected story.

I Am the Messenger is unconventional.  It’s a YA book, but it reads differently from a lot of YAs.  It focuses on teenagers who are out of high school and trying to forge their adult lives; I’d definitely recommend it primarily for older readers.  But once I got over my surprise, I rather enjoyed my time hanging out with Ed Kennedy and his group of friends.  I Am the Messenger is populated by a band of unusual yet endearing characters, including Ed’s friends Marv and Richie, the object of Ed’s unrequited love Audrey, and my personal favorite: the Doorman.  The Doorman is a seventeen-year-old cross between a Rottweiler and a German shepherd.  The Doorman has a stink that’s impossible to get rid of (and Ed has tried—sprays, deodorants—he really has tried), and the Doorman is a happy dog, one that Ed loves despite the stench. 

Here’s how Ed introduces himself to the reader:

My full name’s Ed Kennedy.  I’m nineteen.  I’m an underage cabdriver.  I’m typical of many of the young men you see in this suburban outpost of the city—not a whole lot of prospects or possibility.  That aside, I read more books than I should, and I’m decidedly crap at sex and doing my taxes.  Nice to meet you.

This introduction sets the tone for the whole book, a book that’s outwardly about a mystery involving playing cards and random strangers who need Ed’s help and, of course, Ed Kennedy himself.  But really, it’s all about Ed Kennedy: where he’s been, where he’s going, and whether or not he’s going to remain where he is—without “a whole lot of prospects or possibility”—or seize his life and start living it.

I’d recommend I Am the Messenger to anyone interested in a funny, edgy, unconventional YA book.  Oh, and anyone who’s ever loved a stinky dog.

[Zusak, Marcus.  I Am the Messenger.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.] 

Jumping Into the Deep End of the Pool

So, last night I realized that I've been a blogger for six months, and I got all excited and felt really professional and decided that I should do something super-professional-bloggery and have a contest.  This was my version of jumping the the deep end of the pool, without those floaty swimmy things, not even entirely sure that the pool has been filled with water.  So I jumped in and wrote a post and ordered a book I love and took a tutorial in google docs and even went over into the "Edit HTML" section of blogger and pressed "Publish Post."  And then, I realized that I really have no idea how any of these things really work.  I realized that I was in the deep end of the pool with not floaties and wasn't even really sure how to swim back to the ladder.  So today I (very meekly) swam (dog-paddled really, this was nothing graceful) back to the side of the pool and heaved myself out to dry out and decided that I'm going to wait a little while before jumping into the whole contest thing.  Luckily, I could (very humbly) pull the post before anyone entered the contest.  [Well, actually, there were two entries, Test One (me) and Test Two (also me).]  And I've got that book ready for when I feel a little more confident about my swimming abilities.
Soon to come... a review of the awesome book I'm reading right now: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume One, The Pox Party.