Great Game--Syzygy!

It is the winter solstice and I want to recommend a terrific word game I just discovered--Syzygy (pronounced siz uh jee). Syzygy, I learned, is an astrological term for an alignment of celestial bodies. Lorraine Spiering, the woman responsible for Syzygy, says her favorite alignment is of the sun, earth and moon that create a full eclipse.
Syzygy is a fast pace, exciting, back-and-forth game that involves arranging and rearranging and rearranging tiles to make words. You can play it alone or with up to 12 people. There are many variations, including theme playing, pass the book, or playing with children. If you love crossword puzzles, Scrabble, Boggle, etc. I am confident that you will flip over Syzygy! I am teaching a writing course next semester and I am going to start the class with a game a Syzygy as a warm-up exercise: writing, as we all know, is about words - - one word after another word after another word! You can check out Syzygy at www.ThatWordGame.com or call for information at 1-888-675-5176.

Back from Nashville with two books to add to the "Nonfiction Books That Kids Really Love"
Nancy Johnson who teaches at Western Washington University said that her students report that 6th graders loved--and learned a lot from--Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H. L. Hunley by Sally Walker. I picked up a free copy of To Dance A Ballerina's Graphic Novel, a memoir by Siena Cherson Siegel with artwork by Mark Siegel. Although I am not typically a comic book/graphic novel(in this case novel is a misnomer because the book is a true story) reader, I was captivated by the harmony and energy of text and illustrations. It has a highly readable design accented by chiffon swirls. I haven't "tested" it with young reader I will and post the results on my blog. As is true in K-12 curricula and classrooms fiction books dominated the conference--fiction book, fiction authors--but we nonfiction advocates hung in there!

I am off to Nashville, TN to a conference--the National Council of the Teachers of English. I'll sign my latest book Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference, have dinner with invited guests, a cocktail party, etc. On Monday I'm on a panel--"The Real Thing: Nonfiction in YA Literature." My writing challenge was organizing everything I want to say in the 8 minutes allocated to each panelist--three men and me. Around and around I went, discarding one structure after another, deleting section after section until I figured out that I could organize my brief remarks around the 4 perspectives with which I approach nonfiction literature--as an advocate, teacher educator, writer, picture researcher. That worked and I've timed my comments--7 1/2 minutes!! I love writing speeches--I think teachers should introduce youngsters to speeches as a genre--very interesting to think about writing something that people will hear, instead of read, i.e. things that are unnecessary for readers help listeners. Anyhow, time to go to the airport.

Update

The good news is: I finished my manuscript for Thanksgiving: The True Story!! AND I just finished the picture research. I'll write more about that later. For now, I just wanted to update my blog with the news that my manuscript and picture research has gone through the scrutiny of my first-line reader, i.e. the person I live with who does a close read of everything I produce before anyone else sees it! She's amazingly thorough and terrific at spotting snags that I then fix--an intense but exhilarating and totally rewarding process.

It was a beautiful fall day & I took my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter to the zoo, not realizing that we were going see an 11-day-old giraffe!!!! WOW--we watched it(don't know its sex) walk and run a bit. Its parents were watchful and nurturing--turns out this was the first day the zoo allowed people to observe the baby. What a thrill! Interestingly it did not have noticeable baby characteristics, except for its unsteady gait. It was just a miniature version of it's parents.

One of my students introduced me to another terrific book; Mother to Tigers by George Ella Lyon, illustrations by Peter Catalanotto. It's a nonfiction picture book--the true story of Helen Frances Theresa Delaney Martini, the founder of the Bronx Zoo's animal nursery in 1944 and its first woman zookeeper. Lyon is a wonderful writer. The book is actually a hybrid because the book has illustrations instead of photographs. Althought the illustrations are wonderful, I wondered what the youngsters would think. One of my students--who was very enthusiastic about the book--read it to her first graders and they couldn't not get into the book because they couldn't grasp that it was a true story. I got the same reaction when I showed it to some youngsters of varying ages. That matched what I've been hearing from teachers--that kids prefer photographs. The piece I hadn't thought about was that photographs signal to reads that a story is true, that it "really happened." I located a copy of Martini's book My Zoo Family that had inspired Lyons and discovered that it had many fabulous photographs!!! There are pictures of Martini with the tiger cubs--Dacca, Rajpur and Raniganj, of her in the nursery she established at the Bronx zoo, etc. Having seen them, I think that Lyon's book might have been more dynamic with the photographs, instead of the illustrations.

Another terrific nonfiction picture book is Vincent's Colors, words and pictures by Vincent van Gogh, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A brief excerpt(few words describing color) from van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo appear on the left hand page, a close up of one of his paintings is on the right hand page.
Thumbnail images of the painting with information is in the back of the book. It's a marvelously expressive book.

Good progress on Thanksgiving. Since my first post, I've reworked several chapters, finished two that were half done and wrote a new one. I've been totally immersed from early morning to late at night. Tomorrow I have two classes to teach at Queens College, so I'm needing to pull my head of out this book. But I want to note that my experience these past few days has reaffirmed several writing truism, at least for me: 1. writing requires thinking, deep thinking, hard thinking; whenever I’m stuck it's because I am not clear about what I want to say or where I want to go in a piece and I need to do more thinking; 2. Writing is really hard and takes time, then when it comes it seems so obvious, so easy! and it is exhilarating! 3. It's all about words, one word at a time, just the right word; 4. clarity is crucial.
I went to the New York Public Library last Saturday to read a book that I had ordered from an offsite location. It was a 1890 book compiled by George Bainton--The Art of Authorship. I was double-checking a quote by Mark Twain. In the process I found this advice from Celia Thaxter, a poet who lived in Maine: "One rule I laid down for myself, to keep religiously--one or two, perhaps I should say--but this one is especial: Never to use more words than I can help to give my full meaning; never to speak a sentence that was not as crystal clear as I could make it; never to sacrifice anything to the allurement of melodious rhyming; to be perfectly direct and clear as daylight is absolutely necessary to my peace of mind."

First blog

I decided to start a blog in the middle of writing a book--seems strange, I know, to add another writing task to my life. However, this is a particularly tricky book to write and I thought it would help if I wrote about the writing of it. So what's the book? Thanksgiving! The True Story of a Scrumptious American Holiday. What is particularly tricky about it? First, discovering and sorting through all the misinformation about the origins of Thanksgiving; second, putting it all together with a clear and engaging narrative; third, write a relevant book, a meaningful book, not just a book that debunks an iconic holiday. I'm just back from Little Rock, AK, where I spoke at a conference. Early tomorrow morning, I'll resume where I left off--the middle of the chpt on Thanksgiving & food. Everywhere I go I ask people about how they celebrate(d) Thanksgiving. In Little Rock, I met a woman who said they had/have two Thanksgiving dinners in her Italian American--first a feast of Italian food; second, turkey and all the trimmings.

In addition to writing about writing, I am also going to write about nonfiction literature for all ages, particularly for children. A number of my speeches on the subject are posted on my web site so I won't repeat why I am passionate about promoting the use of nonfiction literature in schools and homes. Why I think the current hegemony of fiction deprives kids of the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in school and life. I'll be using this blog to post great nonfiction books that kids really read. First I'll recommend an author of nonfiction picture books--Ruth Heller. One of the first grade teachers who is taking a course I teach at Queens College, reported that her students loved Heller's book: Chickens Aren't the Only Ones and The Reason for a Flower. Since many of Heller's books are out of print, a good source is www.allbooks.com or www.alibris.com.

My other abiding interests is women's history. So, I'll also write about my travels in search of monuments, markers, and memorials. As is my habit, I made a list of sites to visit during my visit to Little Rock. My time was too tight to do anything more than locate the room named for Senator Hattie Caraway in the convention center. Caraway (1878-1950) was the first woman to be elected as a U.S. Senator (Rebecca Felton had served for one day).

This then ends my first blog. If you have Thanksgiving stories, or recommendations for nonfiction books that kids really read or know the location of women's history monuments, markers, and memorials, I'd love to hear from you. Or, of course, about anything else you'd like to write about.

Welcome To My New Blog

Hi,

Welcome!