What She Might Think

From the Child's Shelf: Sendak's No Bumbler

2012-02-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

Sendak, Maurice. Bumble-Ardy. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Maurice Sendak's new book Bumble-ardy is the story of a pig celebrating his first birthday party, which is his ninth birthday. The backstory, which is told in preface, is that Bumble-ardy's family "frowned on fun", which explains his lack of birthdays hitherto, and his parents were recently killed. Although his parents were butchered, the fact that humans would have been the ones to murder them isn't emphasized. And so, all readers of the book are immediately set up as the antagonists to this world.

The story begins with Bumble-ardy moving in with his aunt and his decision, against her wishes and knowledge, to throw himself a birthday party. A masquerade party. The party lasts most of the book as the animals, dressed as humans, drink "brine", dance, and celebrate the life of Bumble-ardy--and, as such, life itself. But it's a strange dance to celebrate an equally strange life. Without surprise, as it is with any celebration of life comes life's comrade-in-the-wings: death.

When any talk of controversy or irritability about Bumble-ardy rears, it's typically in regards to the presence of death (although, a cursory glance at the GoodReads page for the book suggests that adult readers are equally irritable due to Bumble-ardy not being Where The Wild Things Are).

However, death is not a focus of the story, is never central to any page, stands in the background, and only becomes apparent on subsequent reads. Perhaps it is death's representation as natural and part of the scene that causes some readers to focus and dwell on it, and in dwelling, become concerned that their children are dwelling in the same ways. Perhaps if readers view death as unnatural and something to be feared, heckled, ignored, repressed, and otherwise stricken from reality, then Bumble-ardy works as a counter to those notions.

Bumble-ardy is a fine addition to the growing canon of children's literature. The style of the illustrations ranges between realism (in how Bumble-ardy and his aunt and friends are depicted) and the grotesque (in how the costumed animals are depicted when they attend the masquerade). Thus, because Bumble-ardy's birthday masquerade is the dominant focus of the story, the majority of the illustrations are styled in purposely crude renderings.

Foldout of one of the masquerade scenes from Bumble-ardy. In this one it is less clear whether

the skeleton is a costume worn by a pig or a guest that slipped in as guests do when everyone's in

disguise.

This is an especially poignant decision on the part of Sendak because it is when the pigs mimic humans that the drawings become grotesque--the pigs' imaginings of human life and their play-acting it. After all, the pigs' world is the reality of this book, and the humans' world is not the reality--adult humans are the murderers and antagonists. And the swine children, in subverting power take on the masks of how they perceive that power to look and behave (little differently than human children behave behind the backs of authority figures who have abused their power). That the masquerade has a dark element running throughout it is true, but perhaps it is not the background presence of death that causes it but in how the pigs act when they pretend to be more powerful (what chaos they reflect).

In terms of calling the figures at the masquerade grotesques, it seems useful to note that the drawings at these points are much closer to the hand of the child artist--and so, likely, children will recognize their own renderings of the world in Sendak's and, thus, find a comrade in the world of adults. In a way, Sendak is replying to the child reader's own drawings, no doubt tucked away under his or her mattress or in a desk at school.

(It is little wonder that some adult readers do not like these drawings, but again, the book isn't for them. Here I'm reminded of an anecdote from my sister-in-law in which she had to have a child's drawing printed on T-shirts for her son's class of third-graders and when she went to pick up the T-shirt she found that the business owner had "fixed" the child's drawing and printed the "improved"--adult--rendering on the T-shirts. Needless to say, the shirts had to be reprinted with the correct, child's drawing. And, then, there's the children's literature equivalent of the narrator of The Little Prince joking with his readers about how silly people can be about drawings.)

When Bumble-ardy's aunt comes home to find her house overflowing with swine and brine, she threatens to slice everybody into ham if they don't scram. Here she is not threatening cannibalism as some casual readers have suggested but murder. In fact, since the pigs' predator is the human, Bumble-ardy's aunt is at her worst when she treats Bumble-ardy and his friends as a human would treat them: unreasonable animals undifferentiated by any action, thought, or word--as a mass for mass slaughter. And she holds the human's tool: the cleaver.

But the book can resist this read as well, for it's unclear whether or not humans actually exist in the world Bumble-ardy lives in. Just as humans have masquerades in which they don costumes of mythical creatures, so too might Bumble-ardy and friends be costumed as the mythical human. After all, no human presents him or herself in the book outside of being a costume and there does seem to be a hierarchy of class in Bumble-ardy's world in that not all the swine walk upright and not all the swine are in costume but are used more like a servant class (being used, for example, like a footrest for another pig to stand on). In this way, Bumble's parents could have been killed by other hogs, and the closest resemblance to those sorts of hogs that we get is in the actions of the outraged then suddenly calm aunt.

Her extreme and sudden outrage upsets Bumble-ardy enough that he wishes aloud to stop time, a sort of Peter-Pannish refusal to age. But whereas Peter Pan's refusal to age results in an impish, somewhat endearing child-man, Bumble-ardy's refusal has an immediate deep tenor to it, one that contains the wish and impossibility, just as any birthday is both a celebration of life and an acknowledgement of moving one year closer to death.

As soon as Bumble-ardy matches her emotional level by expressing his sorrow in terms of halting life ("I won't ever turn ten"), his aunt undergoes an equally extreme and sudden mood change and decides he's her valentine. They hug and kiss and the book ends with Sendak asking the reader "Ain't that fine?"; however, this time when Sendak asks "Ain't that fine?" readers are left to decide if it was, and what "that" refers to.

It's an ingenious move because the book ends in the way many simplistic children's books do: tying everything up in a neat bow, but Sendak is simultaneously asking the reader about that bow--what to think about it. After all, is everything really fine when an aunt can nearly simultaneously move into a murderous rage and then into a swarm of affection and triviality?

In all, Bumble-ardy is a welcome addition to the few but important shelves of excellent children's literature. Like the best toys that don't require batteries to operate, the book requires no adult to operate. The illustrations are complex and will hold a child's interest on his or her own.

The book is written for a child audience and not an adult one, which is one of the reasons it resists adult control of the narrative (this is not a Richard Scarry book where adults are plainly lead to read a word and point at the object and have their children mimic these motions). In addition to the main lyrical narrative, pictures are embedded with text (like the writing on the birthday cards), but the story isn't lost by not being able to read embedded text or by skipping it and returning on subsequent reads.

The book's pages are slightly thick but likely not thick enough to endure an early toddler's curiosity, though there's nothing wrong with torn and taped pages.

The age range can go into adulthood, of course, but likely will top out at a ten-year old or eleven-year old--or any age of child who is still not totally sold on adults and their version of the way the world works.

A good book, this one.

EDITOR IN OZ: May be human, only behind curtain

2012-02-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

When I attended the Dublin Phoenix Convention as a guest last year, I met John Kenny, co-editor of Albedo One magazine. During the convention he solicited a story from me, which I then wrote for the Aeon Press anthology he edited, entitled Box of Delights. Because I had a good experience with him as an editor, I started following the blog he recently began. And he recently wrote a good blog article on submission strategies for writers.

It stood out to me for a number of reasons, one is likely because I find myself in a rather new situation as a long-time submitting writer: I have a number of new stories, and all of them are thirty-to-forty pages long. Most magazines no longer accept story submissions of such length, and those who do typically cut off at 10,000 words. The few remaining either charge a $3 "reading fee" to submit or don't seem really that interested in reading long stories to begin with.

Of course, what writer with half a thought in her head would decide to write long stories ("novelettes", suggests Duotrope) at the very moment everyone else has decided that a story the size of a dead leaf is best?

Image of Writer Submitting Stories Pre-Ebook

Needless to say, I've been spending some additional hours thinking about submissions and, in many ways, feel like I'm re-experiencing what it was to send out my stories when I was 15. Except it's not as exciting, the dazzle is gone, I don't save all my rejections in a jean purse, and online form rejection letters are--as I'm noticing--often made to seem like they're not form letters, which makes the task of submitting (and managing them) all the more frustrating.

In the good old days, the rejection form, and its variants, implied a certain code to the writer based on how it was written and signed. Little differently, I would assume, than how a writer's cover letter--its formatting, tone, and content--will say something to the editor about the professionalism, or lack thereof, of the writer.

But in regards to the code of rejection letters: A rejection addressed to "Dear Writer" and signed with a photocopied editor's signature (or simply "The Editors") meant that the story didn't merit more than this. It was just another story, and so the writer would know something about what just happened and how to think about re-submitting. The same rejection letter but with a real signature above the photocopied one meant the editor was sending a sort of compliment. It was a rejection but the editor took the time because of this particular story. And so that would tell the writer something. Thus, a handwritten P.S. on an otherwise form rejection was really something. This is what was meant by "I got a good rejection."

But many magazines are emailing form rejection letters (equal to a photocopied Dear Writer form rejection) but making them look personal. And while I'll save my deeper thoughts on pseudo-personal form rejections for another day, perhaps you can see why automated online rejections that fill the writer's first name into the "Dear" field and the story's title in the Thanks for submitting your story ___________ can be a bit confusing:

'The Floating Order Feels Significant'

2012-01-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

Women: A Cultural Review recently published a review by John Regan, a Cambridge graduate and lecturer at University College Dublin. His review, "More Than Women and Cats", regards two collections from Two Ravens Press: Regi Claire's Fighting It and Erin Pringle's The Floating Order.

In an overall positive review, about The Floating Order, Regan at one point calls Pringle "a master of tragicomedy" and later writes:

"Just as her stories thrive on a kind of profitable restlessness, The Floating Order feels significant by virtue of its narrative, structural and thematic variety."

Quite nice, quite nice.

Obviously, Dr. Regan has excellent taste. Cheers!

Landscapes Carved By Death, Onto Memory: An Interview With Poet Laura Read

2012-01-16T21:24:00.000-08:00

Laura Read, 2011 Winner of the AWP
Donald Hall Prize in Poetry

Isat down recently at Madeleine's Cafe in Spokane, Washington withwriter and fellow teacher Laura Read to discuss her new book ofpoetry, Instructionsfor My Mother's Funeral,which won the 2011 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and was a finalistin the 2011 May Swenson Poetry Award. Her first book, The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You,won the 2010 Chapbook Award held by Floating Bridge Press.

Read is an active member of the Spokane writing scene, co-running withpoet Maya Jewell Zeller the monthly Beacon Hill Reading Series atSpokane Community College and co-advising with poet Connie Wasem Scott the student literaryjournal WireHarp atSpokane Falls Community College.Readparticipated as a panelist in last year's GetLit!, a Spokane-wide literary festival, and has read her work with other well-known and local poets atAuntie's Bookstore.

Aspart of the AWP award, Instructionsfor My Mother's Funeralwill be published in late 2012 by University of Pittsburgh Press. Judge and poet Dorianne Laux, and one of Read's deepest inspirations,had this to say about the book:

Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral uncovers the mysteries of girlhood in haunting tableaus and synesthesiac encounters with the past and [ . . .] domestic present. Strange in that way all art is strange, light come to light, but always a palpable darkness riding beneath; a mature lyrical voice translating memory’s turbulent, wordless world.

Likethe title poem, Instructions for My Mother's Funeralis a mapping of absences and, in returning to where each absencebegan—or what best symbolizes the absence, Read recreates the pastinto the present. Explanations to questions of why occur, but notall explanations serve and many questions still remain, such as whatis it for a father's death to cause a house to be sold and strangersto live in it, and what is it to live in a house where he neverlived.

Justas the title poem directs the listener not to go back to the mother'sbirthplace because it's all gone—all the buildings that wereimportant, all that made who she is exists only in memory—byimagining the return, the identity is created through the path ofreturn:

[.. .] IfI go back, I won’t find her—

theytook the town down

likethe Heath Library

acrossthe street from St. Aloysius

whereI read the World Book Encyclopedia

formy ornithology report—

Ihad to tell the story of 30 birds,

wherethey lived, what they ate,

howyou can spot them up in the branches

andtell them one from the other. [. . .]

Sometimesthe path of returning is linear as is the overall organization of the book; however,
the return to memory resists the linear movement and causes a stylistic tension that is

International Ghost Story Contest 2012

2012-01-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Dr. Euguene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas has announced its fourth annual ghost story contest, Scare the Dickens Out of Us!

Word count: 5,000 or less

Who?: Anyone (adult and junior divisions)

Entry fee: Adult division $20; Junior division $5

The money is used to benefit the library.

First prize: $1000.00 and a trophy

Second prize: $500.00 and a ribbon

Third prize: $250.00 and a ribbon

Junior contest prize $250.00 and a trophy

Entries will be accepted only between July 1, 2012 and October 1, 2012 (postmark dates).

For more information, formatting guidelines, and a list of previous winners, visit the library's website (www.clarklibraryfriends.com).

To qualify, stories should be of the ghost-story genre.

Read This Book: Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke

2011-12-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

Her husband brought this book home from the magical place where most all the books in their house have come from--the best ones that move from bookcase to bookcase, the ones carried most and that, most often, while she and he sleep, seemingly try to slip out the door--again and again and so they must be pinned down with little notes in the margins, dark lines under their feet.

Space, in Chains is a collection of 72 poems by Laura Kasishke, whom she hadn't read or heard of until now and now she thinks is one of the most brilliant writers moving among us.

From the publisher: Space, in Chains speaks in ghostly voices, fractured narratives, songs, prayers, and dark riddles as it moves through contemporary tragedies of grief and the complex succession of generations. [. . .] Kasischke has pared the construction of her verse to its bones, leaving haunting language and a visceral strangeness of imagery.

This is one of those breathless reviews, the kind where she doesn't want to, or cannot yet, explain why this book is good, why we must read it, why the writer shows her skill--her genius here, here, and here, too.

Ho! Ho! Oh! The Floating Order Available on the Kindle

2011-12-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Click to Preview
on Amazon.com

Two Ravens Press has recently released a Kindle Edition of her short-story collection The Floating Order.

Retailing at $7.99, the Kindle Edition is half the price of the print version. A short preview of is available as well.

Merry reading!

Man Types a Painting

2011-12-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

Image of Chromatic Typewriter
built by Tyree Callahan

A man has typed a painting. To do this, he had to rebuilt a typewriter. It's a lovely idea, she thinks, especially because the image below is pretty representative of how she imagines her writing process as she's inside it: the page as she writes, just before the ink dries from clouds into letters.

It's a lovely idea.

Read the interview with the man over at GizMag.com and view his non-typed paintings at his website.

From the Child's Shelf: Holiday Books for 2011

2011-12-11T23:20:00.000-08:00

Tonight, she went to the bookstore with a mission to find a good holiday book for children... published this year. As it went, she didn't find that book. She did find an excellent, non-holiday book that was published last year entitled A Sick Day for Amos McGee, but she's saving that to review for another day.

The holiday books at this particular shopping-mall-bound bookstore were rather disappointing. All of the Night Before Christmases were either cartoony and bubbly or artful but all were dull in their choices: as in, she felt like she'd already looked through these books even though she hadn't. A mouse, stockings from a mantle, a man running to the window. Got it. Books that would require a lot of rationalization or cash to burn before buying.

There were books there she recognized. She didn't bother picking up the Mercer Mayer book because she loved Little Critter books as a child. And she skimmed through The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by James Marshall, and it was also great (a chicken sleeping with the children, and all the usual and excellent detail that makes the illustrations integral to the story but also their own separate stories). But all of James Marshall's books are witty, creative, and interesting, and this one was published in 1985. She set it down, glad to be reminded of it, but still wanting to find a great recent book.

Christmas Began at 1104 South Linwood

2011-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

My mother, 1939

Since I interviewed my mother a few years ago, hers has become the most popular post on What She Might Think. Because of this and because I won't see her this Christmas, I wanted to interview her again.

To prepare, I searched online for images of the house where she grew up in the 1940s and '50s, and where I would spend many of my Christmases through the 1980s and '90s.

I located the house on google maps, and stood in front of it in a virtual world. A junk car was parked outside. A destitute grocery cart was kicked up on the curb. The tree blocked most of the porch where a swing once hung and my grandmother's plants grew in heavy planters, and where I roller-skated back and forth one visit. The house like a gravestone, a wind-block for someone else's faded flowers.

Built in 1915, only a few years after my grandmother was born, my grandparents' house was first my great-grandfather's, Great-Grandpa Steffee. Evidently, when my great-grandmother died of tuberculosis, my grandmother decided that, as my mother says, great-grandfather "couldn't boil water", and so she insisted that she, her husband (my grandfather) and their young family move in with him.

Q. Often, I feel like many of my Christmas memories take place in Evansville, and I don't know if that's because we went to visit your parents every Christmas or because I would imagine Evansville when you told me stories of your life. Do you have a similar experience in that you have memories of Christmases that your mother would tell you about? What were Grandmother's Christmases like, as far as you know? Do you remember her telling any stories about them? What about your father?

My mother, her father, her grandmother

A. . . . Mother. . . We did not talk big time in the family. The most talking we did was when we were doing dishes. If we wanted to embarrass mother, we'd ask embarrassing questions. Neither parent talked much about their past. I think mother's past was like ours. The Depression started in '29 when Dad was about to graduate high school, but I think things were already bad. No, Dad didn't talk about that anymore than he talked about World War II.

I remember you talking fondly of your childhood Christmases. I remember you saying you would get an orange in your stocking every year, and I think you also got candy. It seems that one year you got a doll but weren't very impressed with her: I think you'd wanted something else. Can you describe your Christmases more?

Probably the expectation of everything-Christmas was as wonderful, if not more so, than the actual opening of gifts. According to Mother, my dad started our tradition of opening our gifts on Christmas Eve. Then, while we slept that night, Mother filled the stockings with the above fruit, candy, and tiny gifts wrapped in the previously used wrapping paper from Christmas Eve. I'm sure we went to Grandma Ryan's house on Christmas Eve (before the late-night worship
service at church) or Christmas Day.

Part of the preparation was going to Dalton's grocery store a block away--before supermarkets were 'invented'--to choose a scrawny, short-needled pine tree for our Christmas tree. Each tree was set in a block of wood (also prior to tree stands) and usually had one side with branches fuller than the other side--the one we put against the window so we wouldn't have to look at it! Mother also managed to buy or gather additional greenery to...

From The Child's Shelf: Feel Santa Claus' Beard

2011-12-09T00:04:00.000-08:00

Of course, over the many Christmas years, a plethora of good Christmas books for children have been made, read, remaindered but still read. No doubt, her favorite Christmas book from her childhood is the 1940 book Feel Santa Claus' Beard, though it's no rival for the elegant The Polar Express.

Whereas The Polar Express ends to twist the heart because the older one gets, the harder it is to hear the bell from Santa's sleigh, Feel Santa Claus' Beard ends, if she remembers correctly, with a happy white family in their colorful pajamas opening presents by a Christmas tree. It is, as everyone knows, a holy image. And if the social critics are right: a terribly despondent family behind their smiles, just come from re-hiding failure in the attic and God in the deep freeze.

It is the 1950s Caucasian-American Christmas ~~reality~~ ideal, brought to us by the same people who brought us the Pilgrims and their beloved Natives, and set in what is likely the placeless-place we all know as the Midwest: her birthplace, and where Abe Lincoln split logs and walked with muddy feet on the ceiling (have you heard that one?). Lincoln who, like Santa, wore black boots.

Feel Santa Claus' Beard is one of those sensory books, a "Touch and Feel Book": feel his beard, which really is quite soft and fluffy, and as she remembers, an effective hook into opening the pages to the annual disappointment that no other touch-illustration was as interesting. For example, there are his black boots, but they are rather shiny. Then there is the chimney, which is pasted with gravel. At last come the presents, gold-foiled and much like the feeling of his black boots, which have no especially distinguished feeling.

But it's a durable book, cardboard pages that have lasted thirty years and of the size made to empower children readers because it fits their hands and is image-heavy, useful on the snowy days when children idle about the house in quiet exploration and sometimes belly-down to flip through private worlds made just for them.

She loves this book. Maybe because this is the Santa image from which all are based on for her, or because he looks like the cardboard Santa face she would tape to the living-room mirror every year, or maybe just because this was part of the Christmas box of books that would be tucked away all year then brought out with the tinsel her mother had dutifully removed from last year's tree and re-packaged in a ziplock bag for next year's tree.

--Along with the ornate silver ball that plugged into the wall and, every ten seconds, chirped like a bird.

Relanguaging: Toward a Definition, Of Sorts and a Bird

2011-12-05T21:25:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Jack Kaulfus's recent flash review of Curio by Lauren Ellen Scott , she read "The Brewsters", which is a really smart little thing, a delightful re-languaging romp. What does re-languaging mean? It's a word she just made up as a way to describe what Scott is doing. What Scott is doing is re-languaging. Although Scott is not the first to relanguage, "The Brewsters" is, for our purposes, a very effective example not only because it's well done, but also because it's SO very well done.

The Jumblies

Edward Lear re-languaged, too. For an example of Lear's re-languaging (or to figure out more how she's defining this new word), read his poem "The Jumblies". She thinks you'll find that Ellen Scott and Lear are linguistic friends. If you enjoy "The Brewsters", then you'll definitely want to read "The Jumblies"--aloud, of course, aloud.

Re-languaging may be a synonym for Nonsense-verse, but it should be clear that relanguaging may not be set on a metered line. But! re-languaging, as a descendant of nonsense-verse, requires syncopation.

Re-languaging is to nonsense verse what early jazz was to blues.

Re-languaging may cause whimsy but the whismy may offset, or collide with, the deep questioning of reality or the suggestion that deep questioning is occurring; although, in fact, due to the effects of re-languaging, the presence of deep questioning may be more an aesthetic effect of the collision between language and meaning. The aesthetic effect, however, can cause deep questioning in the reader.

It may be the case that re-languaging is more applicable in its use to fiction. If not, and only if, because poetry has a full dictionary of words to describe itself with, and poetry may not accept fiction that re-languages as a poetic form. It could be argued, and likely someone will (and why not?), that "The Brewsters" is a prose poem and not flash fiction. The argument, if proven valid, may lead to the conclusion that "The Brewsters" is not re-languaging but doing [insert poetry term]. This person who argues to such a conclusion will likely like clam chowder with a sweet potato on the side.

Re-languaging should not be, however, used as a synonym for experimental writing since experimental writing does not imply or guarantee interesting rhythm--although pieces that re-language may be defined as experimental, and the most interesting experimental writing may re-language. See Michael Stewart's A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic for an example of this, or Ben Marcus's The Age of Wire and String. Susan Steinberg re-languages in many of the stories in The End of Free Love, but she is of the held-note variety of re-languagers.

Rain, by Marc Chagall (1911)

(Held-note relanguaging: a distant cousin of Ben Marcus and Ellen Scott, like the compromise between the two, although nothing has been compromised. Style typified by circular, rhythmic language that, as it both circles and progresses, creates a narrative.)

In visual art, re-languaging is closest to this painting by Chagall (when it is worn as a song that sits as a bird on one's heart, clutching):

Perhaps.

!

Writerly Tip: Organizing Story Submissions

2011-11-25T12:27:00.001-08:00

Her first submission log was a bag she'd sewn from a jeans pants-leg and then affixed with an iron-on image of an old-fashioned girl. Here is where she collected all her rejection letters. Likely the bag is still being stored by her mother, in her old bedroom, in a box full of other rejection letters and notebooks. No doubt, for a keepsake, this is a lovely way to keep no-track-whatsoever of the writing you have submitted for publication.

Typically, she uses a spreadsheet to track the submissions. She finds it best to keep everything as simple as possible so that she's more likely to use the log/calendar.

Story	Magazine	Submission Type	Notes to Self	Date Replied
11/12/11
Every Road	New Fangled Review	submishmash - pdf from August 2010 folder	query after four months	11-13-11, form letter, don't send again, response too quick
Every Road	*Next Journal*	email to editor, Jane Doe	pays penny/word
The Snow-Cone Stand	Lulu Story Contest	Contest requires e-book creation, uploaded on site	mid dec results announced

She places the date submitted in the story column and highlights it. This is also helpful for tracking the last time she did a large batch, and it's easier to compare response times of journals.

Until a magazine rejects a story, she keeps the row in bold.
When a magazine accepts the story, she highlights the row in purple.

Why keep a submission log for writing?

To know when it's time to query about a submission that's been held longer than the magazine's stated response time.
To have the information necessary to write a professional query, e.g. I'm checking on the status of my story, "The X to the Y", which I submitted on such-and-such date.
If you're a gambler, to keep track of how much money drained in contest entry-fees.
To keep track of postage, envelopes, paper for tax purposes (or in hopes that one day these can be claimed on taxes)
To keep track of writing; for example, sometimes she'll subconsciously give up on a story, forget about it, then find its title in the submission calendar
To rally one's spirits or realize that the number of a rejections a piece of writing has had may mean you need to open it up for revision.
To keep track of editors - a cordial or personal note from an editor means that, even if rejected, this is a person you would want to work with in the future and, thus, to submit to again.

Happy Human Day!

2011-11-24T14:47:00.000-08:00

One must try not to imagine what will be served at the dinner these turkeys are going to (or what they've already eaten).

Happy Thanksgiving!

"The Skydivers" Forthcoming in Emrys Journal, Spring 2012

2011-11-16T20:39:00.002-08:00

Emrys Journal has accepted her story "The Skydivers" for publication in their Spring 2012 issue. This will be her first publication with Emrys.

From The Child's Shelf: Review, The Black Book of Colors

2011-11-11T16:49:00.008-08:00

"Thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but is as soft as a baby chick's feathers."

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faría, translated from Spanish by Elisa Amado. Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press: Toronto, 2008.

Winner of The New York Times Book Review of the Best Illustrated Children's Book Awards, The Black Book of Colors is the story of Thomas, a blind boy, and the way he experiences sensation--or, at least, the way that Thomas has expressed his experience to a person who has also watched Thomas navigate his world. Now, that person is relaying Thomas to a sighted child, both the reader and the imagined sighted child who has asked the question that the book answers: What is it like to be blind and never see color?

"The Rabbit" Forthcoming in Big Pulp, March 2013

2011-11-08T16:12:00.001-08:00

Her mini-story "The Rabbit" (not to be easily mistaken with her story "Rabbits" from The Floating Order) will be published in Big Pulp in March 2013. This will be her third publication with Big Pulp, which is lovely because it's one of her favorite venues.

Pringle-Toungate's previous publications with Big Pulp are "Every Good Girl Does Fine" and "Palestine, IL".

E-story Experiment: The Snow-Cone Stand

2011-11-04T18:48:00.024-07:00

***

Post Update 12/21/11:

Now that the contest is over, you can download "The Snow-Cone Stand" for $.99

***

With the rising popularity of e-readers, she has now and then considered self-publishing a single story. She has romantic ideas of photocopying thousands of copies of a story and dropping them on a city or handing them door to door. It's ridiculous, of course--that much paper.

Certainly, the music industry has been changed by the user's ability to download single songs, and she has wondered how that might bleed into the publishing industry--or how that might provide her a little more control, now and then, of getting her work to her readers by self-publishing a single story. She found her valid excuse with Lulu.com's 600-word short-story contest.

Basically, writers submit a story of 600 words or less, convert the story into an e-book, and upload it on Lulu. Later, Lulu judges will declare whatever story the winner.

The contest is not dependent on how many times the story is viewed, and she also couldn't find anything about not charging people for a contest story (so Lulu will be making money off contestants who do sell their contest entry). Regardless, she's giving her story away for ~~free~~ 99 cents [now that the contest is over].

After taking several hours to format a tiny story, she thinks she'll go back to her old-fashioned route of letting editors do their jobs and she hers. But that doesn't mean that she wouldn't like you to have it, dear reader.

Download and read "The Snow-Cone Stand" at Lulu.com, iTunes, or Barnes & Noble.--Especially since she might have disqualified the story by putting an image on the cover. Ah, well.

Cover photo by Keoni Cabral,

used under a Creative Commons License

"Winter's Wooden Sparrows" Forthcoming in Lake Effect

2011-10-29T11:51:00.012-07:00

The first time he felt a need to walk, he was a boy of six or seven. He had awoken one winter morning with the urge to be outside, alone. And so decided to go, and felt the good feeling that decisions often have. He zipped on his snowsuit, wrapped his face in his scarf, and left the house while his parents slept.

The early sun was somewhere behind the bright gray sky, and the snow was so bright he couldn't look at it without forcing himself, but he forced himself and felt the strange, pleasing feeling of snow-dazzled eyes. The snow in front of the house was not new, mussed with boot-tracks filled with gray water; but the snow in the back still followed its own created planes, on and on, untouched—and it was this that guided him to take his walk in the back. He walked and listened to the crunch of his boots and felt the cold air. A few black birds crossed the sky like a meaningless thought. Beside him trotted the ghost of the old dog that had died recently enough to still follow him.

Read the rest of "Winter's Wooden Sparrows" by Erin Pringle-Toungate in Lake Effect, due out in January 2012

Photo used from Getty Images, with permission/

Dirk Wustenhagen Imagery

Writers Run, Too

2011-10-26T18:23:00.013-07:00

Her friend and a fellow writer, Stephanie, will be running as part of the Komen Race for the Cure in Austin, TX. To donate to the cause, via Stephanie's running shoes, follow this sentence to her donation page.

She thinks this is worthwhile. The number of graves due to breast cancer, among other cancers, is more than wearisome.

New Interview Up: Fear, Halloween, and an Enchanting Talk

2011-10-14T19:31:00.016-07:00

Erin recently sat down with her sister-in-law, Misty, via computer and across 2,000 miles, and chatted about Halloween, making stories, making childhood, making memories.

Here's an excerpt:

Misty: Did you visit graveyards as a child? Since reading The Floating Order the first time, I have wondered if we had this in common. I'm sure my brother has told you about our adventures in graveyards prompted by our grandmother.

Erin: We lived down the road from one, and so we drove past a graveyard every day. The schoolbus took the same route. I remember my mother getting into genealogy and so that took us to graveyards, making rubbings and such. Graveyards captured my imagination. Everyone who had lived in the town had ended up in one. Then, part of the town's teenage folklore included visiting either graveyards or places where hauntings might occur in the country. I was part of the drive-out-into-the country crowd, though mostly I just heard about what would happen if you went to the bridge and did such and such. I was never very brave or popular enough to find myself very often at such "haunted' sites but would imagine what I would do were I.

But graveyards have never ceased to interest me, maybe more now since I know more people who now exist in them. So I do visit more now, though not so much the ones where I know the people whose names are on the stones. For example, the graveyard in Fredericksburg, TX is a really intersting one because of the amount of children's graves-- and that the children's graves are in their own section and many of them have metal bassinets made around them. Graveyards understand grief. I find them to be empathetic places to go.

Read the rest of the article and interview, "fear and an enchanting talk", at the blog senseMaking.

"This Bomb My Heart" in War, Literature & the Arts

2011-09-17T11:27:00.006-07:00

Out in the vast field, she kneels under the wings her brother made when she lost her arm. He sawed them from a storm-fallen tree then picked a wheelbarrow of Queen Anne’s Lace from the field and ditches, spreading the stems across newspapers on the porch as their mother once had. When the flowers dried, he glued them over the boards then spray-painted the wings white. He screwed the wings to the front of his drum harness from marching band. She wore the harness backward, as she does now over her winter coat, though the wings are patchy and he’s dead.
Read the rest of "This Bomb My Heart" by Erin Pringle-Toungate in the new issue of War, Literature & the Arts (volume 23, 2011)

"The Lightning Tree" in Box of Delights, anthology from Aeon Press

2011-05-19T00:28:00.015-07:00

The house has the empty feeling cleanliness or new death brings.

She touches her neck. Her heart like a leaf scared by the wind.

The wind presses against the window panes

She turns to the other side of the pillow, imagining her pupils like two broken, erratic lenses, like two puddles on a country road to nowhere with a sky, like skull sockets dark as death—death always. Death that makes and diminishes all our gods.

She reaches to her husband's side of the bed.

He isn't there.

Finish reading "The Lightning Tree" by Erin Pringle-Toungate in the anthology Box of Delights, published by Dublin's Aeon Press.

In Celebration of Mother's Day: The Woman Who Helped Author Me

2011-05-08T10:39:00.004-07:00

Last June, she interviewed her mother to find out what her mother might think about reading, writing, and more:

What excited you more—learning to read or learning to write?

Mother Pringle as a young girl, 1940s
Evansville, Indiana

I don’t remember learning to write. You’re assuming I was excited to learn to read. It was just part of what you learned. I remember in second grade being bored. Because everyone read together, and the slow readers took longer. I know I sighed. First grade you learned to read, second grade you learned to tell time, third grade you learned cursive. You knew what you would learn. No, fourth grade we learned cursive. I was impressed by that. But we had ink pots. You couldn’t control the ink. Big blobs. That was before ball-point pens were invented, apparently.

To read the rest of the interview, click here

Daffodils were open in St. Stephen's Green

2011-05-07T09:50:00.010-07:00

(Outside Amsterdam airport)

In March, she flew to Dublin to be a guest at the Eighth Annual Phoenix Convention. She stopped in Amsterdam and had wine and lunch with an old college friend from Brussels. They found that even after a few years and so much ocean between them, they were still tied at the souls in important places, and so when their glasses were empty and the time what it was, they parted.

When she arrived in Dublin, she took the 16A bus to the convention's site at The Central Hotel and would have missed her stop had she not sat next to a lovely woman who didn't say a word until Georges Street. The lovely woman wore a black coat. and was a guest in Dublin, on business, and would be speaking as an important person part of an important event. Or so it seemed, based on what she said into her telephone.

Had she found that breakfast was served at the hotel downstairs, she would have avoided an embarrassing scene the first morning, which took place at a convenience store and ended with an irritated clerk, a currency problem caused by Wells Fargo, and the clerk basically giving her the bun and snapple. She ate her bun and drank her drink outside, on a cold bench on Dame Street. She leaked jam on her skirt and thought, I'm such a stupid American.

(Sculpture dedicated to Yeats,
picture by Erin Pringle, 2011)

Luckily, her day could not be totally shot since, before the bun incident, she had strolled through St. Stephen's Green and found the daffodils blooming up. She also took some pictures for her husband, like this one, of Yeats. It was a peaceful place except for all the sculptures to those who had died as part of defending Ireland during the Easter Rising or events that followed. The sculptures, then, were doing as they were intended and keeping Dublin's history present in its present.

She took part in several panels and attended several panels ranging from how to think about the event of the e-book as a writer, to the rise of the graphic novel in publishing. She drank several Baileys and promised several times to attend other, future conventions. She was told several times that the economy wasn't what it was since the last time she was there, eleven years ago. She had new thoughts about publishing, writing, and marketing and came away feeling less threatened by the e-book and more empowered by it now that she has an idea of how to think about it.

On Sunday, she gave a reading in a private room in the Library Bar. The audience was warm and welcoming and took their lunch as they listened. The sun came through the windows, and the people went into the faraway places she had made for them.

(Up Georges Street, Dublin,
Photo by Erin Pringle-Toungate)

Then she flew back home, and hardly believed she had been in Dublin. Most of all, she came home feeling far less worried about being a writer, or reader, or general citizen of the world--because she met good people who think writing and reading is important and worth meeting to discuss. Everyone was so warm and welcoming at the Phoenix Convention, and she wishes it many more good years. She thinks of those few days in Dublin like the cool, sweet air she had felt in St. Stephen's Green.

Real Surrealism: 1955 Documentary, Night & Fog,

2011-05-01T09:56:00.004-07:00

Directed by Alain Resnais, Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard, 1955) is a 31-minute film that ponders the Holocaust at the sites of abandoned concentration camps.

While an unseen narrator answers what he can and gives words to the questions that have more questions, the film moves between footage of camps during their activity and present-day (1955) footage of the camps.

The film is elegy whose poetic brevity and honesty make it an extremely respectful film, though the footage is, of course, utterly the opposite, utterly surreal. A camera slowly panning out on all that hair, so much hair, just hair taken away. Stored. Spun into cloth. By someone. Someone's hair spun by someone. So many someones.

A trillion eyelashes to wish on.

Mini-Review: A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic by Michael Stewart

2011-04-24T10:02:00.001-07:00

She ordered this book a year ago; it came in the mail a year ago; she began to write a post about how splendid it was to come home and find it in her mailbox in its small envelope. Then, she never hit "publish". Instead, she read the little book that fit so well in her hand that she can't find it now. She carried it around with her, read passages aloud to people. Like this one:

Trick eggs. There are so many trick eggs. A partial list could include: eggs from which full grown pigeons emerge; hollow eggs with silks hidden inside; eggs so heavy two men would be needed to lift them; eggs so light they float an inch over the table; unbreakable eggs; eggs which can wobble and walk on their own; eggs which when broken scream out.

Then she would look up, and they would be smiling. Maybe they would laugh.

She would frown and reread to herself what she had read to them. But isn't it sad? she would say. Well, sort of--but it's humorous, it's also supposed to be funny, they would insist.

Oh. I think it's just tragic and beautiful.

--a Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic, Cupboard Pamphlet, 32 pages, $5.00

Review of Nightmares: Hiroshima by John Hersey

2011-04-21T10:07:00.003-07:00

She had a nightmare that took place in San Marcos, TX, where she lived at the time. It was one of a series of nightmares in which sudden explosions occurred, huge fiery blasts that lit up and burned up everything--including her. In this particular nightmare, she was downtown, walking down the sidewalk along Hopkins Street. She was across from the courthouse. It was a blue sky day. Then everything exploded, and went orange and black.

Maybe that dream ended there, her thinking, Why can't I feel myself burning? And then the pain so intense it wasn't even pain. Or maybe the dream continued, or this was another nightmare in the series, after an explosion, and she's running down the sidewalk toward the river, and there are all these people jumping in, and she's trying to tell them not to, that jumping in water will only make their burning skin worse, and then the river is filled with death instead of the usual people floating down on their inner tubes--lazily, under the bridge, under the train trestle, gliding away where the water curves against the curving earth.

seed toss, kick it over: new make-it book by w. craghead

2011-04-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

w. craghead w. craghead, the artist who turned her story "The Only Child" into an award-winning work, has a new make-it book: "seed toss, kick it over". The book is available and free oncraghead's website where readers can print out and fold the 12-page book into place.

"seed toss, kick it over" is a love letter out of craghead's signature style that collides the childlike with the somber-serious.

--To return (or turn) subject matters to the startling that, for one reason or another, had gone numb.

He's an artist to thank, she thinks.

Man Reads a Short Story Every Day for a Year

2011-03-11T15:59:00.004-08:00

http://www.caseyumc.org/

And then he makes a list of his top fourteen favorite stories. One of her stories makes the cut. Congratulations to the story "Sanctuary" from The Floating Order.

Read an excerpt of "Sanctuary" as part of a 2009 interview at Romancing the Book.

To Win: The Floating Order on St. Patrick's Day, 2011

2011-03-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green,
Dublin, Ireland 2011

She has physically returned from Dublin and the Phoenix Convention. Mentally, she has yet to leave it. Thus, to celebrate her simply wonderful (and too short) trip and her meeting very lovely people, she is giving away a copy of The Floating Order.

How to enter: Answer one of the following:

Your favorite Irish writer and why he or she is your favorite The Irish writer you've heard of but, ashamedly, have not yet read and why that is (or why you want to read him or her)A literary detail you've always wanted to know about Dublin and why.
Deadline to leave comment: March 17, 2011
Comments closed.

"The Vanished Hitchhiker" @ Girls With Insurance

2011-02-24T23:39:00.003-08:00

*Photograph by Daina, CC license

She sleeps in a glass room in the backyard. Back here, behind the house, she can't hear the knocks on the door and so can wake on her own time, though time is not hers anymore. She has thought of her bed as a coffin enough times that it is one, her bed a sun-baked rectangle of earth surrounded by planters. Every night, she leaves the glass room and threads through the yard, car keys in hand. And she drives.

Read the rest of "The Vanished Hitchhiker" by Erin Pringle-Toungate at Girls With Insurance

Seven Days To Dublin

2011-02-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

In seven days, she'll be departing from Spokane and flying her way with strangers toward Dublin. A few connecting flights, a few conveyor belts, a few drinks and sighs and general-interest magazine articles later, and she'll be in . . . Amsterdam, and will get to visit with an old college chum, and then back to the airport and to. . . Dublin and the Eighth Annual Phoenix Convention (March 4-6 @ The Central Hotel). A reading will be involved as well as sitting in on a few interesting panels, such as perspective in writing.

P-Con Guests include C. E. Murphy, Cheryl Morgan, Bob Neilson, Derek Gunn, John Kenny, Juliet E. McKenna, Peadar O'Guilín, R.F.Long, and many more. The guest of honor is Ian McDonald.

Pringle on Spokane's KYRS

2011-02-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

She recently dropped into the KYRS studio and read a few stories and talked with the host of Open Poetry, about writing, the Midwest, and more.

Spokane listeners can tune in to 92.3 or 89.9 FM on March 6, 5:30-6:30 P.M.

2011 Ghost Story Contest: Scare the Dickens Out of Us, $1000 to Winner

2011-01-10T22:45:00.006-08:00

The 2011 Edition of the Scare the Dickens Out of Us Fiction Contest runs between ~~July 1, 2011 and October 1st, 20011~~.
Contest has closed for 2011. ~~Results will be announced before December 2011.~~
Results Announced on library webpage.

Length Limit: 5,000 words
Entry Fee: $20 (used to benefit the Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas

For an entry form, Junior Division Information, or a list of previous winners, see www.clarklibraryfriends.com

Scare the Dickens 2012 deadlines will likely be posted in early 2012.

The 2012 Deadlines are Posted here.

Organized and held by The Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library, to promote reading, writing, and the love of the page.

January 2011: Spokane's Beacon Hill Reading Series

2010-12-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

She will read selected stories as part of the January 2011 installment of Spokane's The Beacon Hill Reading Series.

Poets Tod Marshall and Tom Gribble will also read.

WHERE: Spokane Community College Library (Building 16, Second Floor), 1810 North Greene Street Spokane, WA

WHEN: Wednesday, January 26th, 6:30-7:30 P.M.

(Copies of The Floating Order will be available to purchase: $15, cash or check.)

Toad Flower, A Garden Fairy Tale

2010-08-05T16:37:00.001-07:00

Toadflower, taken by Erin Pringle-Toungate 2010

The story of toadflower is very long so I cannot fit it all here, but I will tell you it involves a girl, a hat, a piece of bread with the crusts cut off, and a far away forest made of one tree with two limbs and three autumn leaves that still haven't fallen off after all this time.

From The Child's Shelf: Seven Top Children's Books, from Sendak to Baum

2010-07-03T17:53:00.011-07:00

Last night she noticed that the sign on the Ozona bank announcing that July is Early Childhood Literacy Month. She thought this was a national event until she googled it and learned that November is the national month, but San Marcos, TX has decided that July is more fitting for this city. (Skip to the end of this post if you want more information about where to donate books in July in San Marcos.)

Since she's procrastinating working on a story that she has worked on for several days and more hours, and she's at yet another decision-making place (and without clear answer), she is procrastinating productively. Therefore, here is her list of favorite books (and unfavorite books) to give, read (or not give) to children between 0 and 6:

_________________________________________________________________

1. Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library

She still has the Nutshell Library that her mother read to her. Her favorite book out of the collection is Pierre. She thinks of him often. Pierre doesn't care about anything, which becomes problematic when a lion asks if Pierre wouldn't mind being eaten. She thinks she especially liked the books because they were her size--no larger than an adult's palm. Since then, she has preferred small books and would be thrilled with a palm-sized edition of As I Lay Dying. Her least favorite book is the alphabet one called Alligators All Around. She will momentarily discuss her thoughts on talking animals.

2. Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst

She still has her copy of this, too: a faded hardback discarded from the town library. She wonders why it was discarded. She tried to give her personal copy to children who would like it, which means any child she has met, but she likes the book too much to part from it. She read and reads this on particularly bad days, and even if she doesn't open it, she often hears Alexander saying that he wishes he could move to Australia. She is an escapist like Alexander, wanting to move far away since it seems life would just be a bit better in the faraway. There's a sequel to this book, but she has never read it. She assumes Alexander is older in the sequel, and she doesn't like it when characters grow up.

She especially didn't like characters growing older than her, which happened in the Anne of Green Gables books. In book 1, Anne was Erin's age. By book 8 (and the length of the summer it took to read to book 8), Anne's children were Erin's age at the time, and she found that especially irksome--because she'd lost Anne as a friend and comrade.

3. Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel

She doesn't have any of these books, but she doesn't remember ever owning a copy. Checked all of them out of the library when she was a kid. She remembers not liking Frog so well because he was sort of a know-it-all, or maybe it was that he was always getting Toad out of predicaments. She liked Toad. They're very good friends, like Mole and Troll (equally recommended).

4. Amelia Bedelia books

She very much enjoyed Amelia Bedelia. Amelia, a maid, always takes things literally and so makes hilarious mistakes. For example, when she is supposed to plant bulbs, she plants lightbulbs. The reason a child would especially like Amelia is because she, like a child, is always being told what to do and then getting in trouble for not behaving as she should. Children will both identify with Amelia and feel protective of her (once they learn the pattern of Amelia's faulty reasoning or language errors).

5. The Velveteen Rabbit --whichever illustrated version the child chooses (or a non-illustrated edition if such a book exists)

This is, by far, one of her favorite fairy tales because she simultaneously does and does not like it and spend more time than you would think trying to figure out why. Deciding which illustrated version to read or buy a child seems very important because if the reader does not like the illustrations, the story may be shot. In searching for book covers of this, she recognized several versions. It would be nice if some publisher made a box set of, say, five different illustrators of this story. She has never seen such a thing done. Also, one must be careful with this book because it's the kind of story that will be changed or made "nicer".

For some reason, she remembers reading one in which the boy wasn't sick. The boy must be sick. If he doesn't get sick, then the story's shot because the velveteen rabbit's feelings of loss and abandonment come from the boy being sick. If the boy is merely cleaning out his closet, then it might as well be any boy and any rabbit or Toy Story III (which is wonderful, by the way).

Jerry Pinkney hasn't yet illustrated The Velveteen Rabbit, but if he ever does, then that would be the version she would recommend. Anything Pinkney illustrates is excellent. As a child, she didn't read any stories illustrated by Pinkney; she only discovered him a few years ago, but he's always who she looks for now when in the children's section of a bookstore or library.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?

She did not like this book. Her kindergarten teacher read it all the time. She thinks she had read the book (or had it read to her) before the days of kindergarten, so it became pretty hellish every time the class got in a circle and had to listen to it.

Also, she despised sitting "Indian-style" so having to do this and listen to this book was pretty terrible (which must be why it was especially good to have the Alexander book). She still doesn't understand the practice of making children sit that way because, really, children are small and don't take up that much room. She was always very happy when, in second-grade, there were times the class didn't have to sit like that.

This book is best for children who are a long way from reading on their own. Good to read to a one-year old because the text is simple and has call-and-response rhythms.

She had a similar relationship with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but the caterpillar book may have been useful since she still thinks of it when she sees butterflies. She thinks it was a bit confusing or perhaps irritating because the caterpillars she saw in real life were fuzzy and brown, not green and hairless. She can't remember if the brown bear talks--she thinks he does. He sees this, he sees that. She has never liked talking animals. Frog and Toad are exceptions to this rule since they behave like humans. If the animal isn't wearing a coat and hat, then it shouldn't talk. That is how she thought and thinks about it.

Later notes: She enjoyed Bumble-ardy by Maurice Sendak, which has talking animals, so talking animals must not be what her major malfunction is. Maybe children's literature is drowned with talking animals, many of whom aren't the brightest or in the most interesting of storylines.

Also, this little nugget about Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Evidently, the book "was banned in January 2010 by the Texas Board of Education because the author has the same name as an obscure Marxist theorist, and no one bothered to check if they were actually the same person" (Huffington Post)

6. Morris the Moose books

In one of the books he eats gum balls. She remembers liking him. She remembers her mother reading this to her, so this was the pre-literate stage since, once literacy was established, she jumped to the romance books. A Vote for Love, a Sweet Dreams Romance, was the first long book she read, which was in first grade. The librarian, before checking it out, told her there weren't any pictures in it. The librarian didn't want her to check it out. Consequently, she read the entire Sweet Dreams series within a few years and never wanted to read "a kid's book" again. This may have negatively influenced her perspective on the world; if so, it gives her a strange thrill to blame this on a librarian, since the reverse should probably be true.

7. The Patchwork Girl of Oz

This was one of the nightly books her mom read aloud, so this may not count as an Early Literacy book or not, but she was under six when her mother read it. She doesn't remember why she liked it or even the book's plot, except that someone finds the Patchwork Girl. She's living alone or maybe with someone who made her. She's a maid or servant. Living in a rather isolated place.

She liked her a lot, though--vice and versa.

She especially liked this and the other editions of the Oz books her mother had because they were old hardbacks and it was really wonderful when an illustration appeared because it was beautiful and took up a whole page, and the illustrated pages were always glossy, and so those seemed more important than the other pages, even the ones that might have a black-and-white illustration amidst the text. She can't remember if this book has any of those nice glossy pages.

________________________________________________________________

She could probably think of three more books to add, like Goodnight, Moon, which is always at the top of people's recommendations, but she never liked that book. Then there's the Corduroy Bear books, which she didn't like enough such that she would now go out of her way to buy one for a child. Same with Clifford the Red Dog. Really, she'd only buy #1 and #2 on this list because those are books to be read again and again and again--the others she'd find at the library.

If you live near or in San Marcos, TX, here is the link to information about July as Early Literacy month, along with a list of the places to donate new or gently used children's books. The catch-phrase is Early Readers Become Leaders. She doesn't know if that's true or important. She doesn't know where we're all going that we need all these leaders. But, if the idea is appealing enough to encourage book donations and reading, then she supposes that's fine. If she had to come up with the catch-phrase, it wouldn't be any better, and it wouldn't fit on a banner, like Early Readers Become Better Writers, Engaged Readers, and Critical Thinkers.

A Necessary Book, Depending: Death of a Man by Lael Wertenbaker

2010-06-26T10:13:00.009-07:00

Death of a Man is a memoir by Lael Tucker Wertenbaker about her husband's diagnosis of incurable cancer--colon cancer, which is the same cancer my father died from. I found Wertenbaker's book on a list of books regarding self-deliverance, or a human's choice to end life during terminal illness.

From the dustjacket: Lael Tucker Wertenbaker has written of their final days together, of the last meetings with friends, of memories, of children, of pain, of work--of the simple, blunt words they used, and of their dignity. It is the story of "unloneliness," as Lael called it, of two individuals in profound comfort together, in the face of the two loneliest acts of all--dying and being left living.
The 1974 reprint, which is the copy I read, begins with an introduction by Joseph Fletcher who is a proponent of right-to-die issues. The introduction is problematic because it frames the book in terms of a political issue and presents that issue in simple terms. If the book is a political tract meant to persuade people to choose their own deaths or accept the chosen deaths of others, I don't this book provides an easy enough interpretation or reasoning-map to lead to one conclusion.

The writing is well done such that, by the end, Wert and his wife are fully humanized and empathetic to the reader; thus, Death of a Man, shows that death and how to think, and behave, toward has no easy answer. It complicates, rather than simplifies, what Fletcher seems to see as easily answered. In this way, the book is good for those who don't want to feel as though they're being maneuvered to believe one way or another but who want to see the difficulty inherent in the experience of having a fatal illness.

The book begins with Wert's writing, his account of his learning of the tumor on his intestine. He and his wife are journalists. He was the editor of Time magazine when they met. He and his family live in France, in a small coastal village--good for the isolation needed for writing and living, good for their children. The doctor does not want to say it's cancer--does not say it even when Wert says, Is it cancer? The doctor does not want to say it's fatal. Much of the book returns to this, the way cancer was thought of at the time, the way people react to knowing someone is dying and the perceptions of what the dying person ought or ought not to know.

"A few days earlier [previous to learning of the tumor], I had had a long discussion with my wife about one aspect of the situation that troubled me: the reluctance of many doctors to tell a patient an unpleasant truth. Ever since I can remember, it had seemed to me that to be deceived about the nature or progress of a serious illness, or even to suspect deceit, would go far toward destroying whatever fortitude one could summon to face one's trials." (5)

A surgery is recommended, as the doctor believes the tumor can be removed successfully, and Wert and his wife decide to use their savings to fly to New York for the operation. The operation does not go as planned. Like my father, Wert did not "do" hospitals. (During one of my father's hospital stays, he escaped, ripping out the IV, hailing a taxi, and coming home.) "Wert expressed the opinion that a hospital was no goddamned place to see anybody in, no goddamned place to be, and that he'd be goddamned glad to see the last of it, even feet first." (44).

The first chapter is the only extensive writing by Wert, outside of an article of his that appears later in the book about a cartoonist--an excellent article about the cartoonist's experience during the Holocaust. It is a smart addition to the book if the book's point is to show the complexity of Wert. It is a poor addition to the book if the intention of its inclusion is meant only to parallel Wert's death with the cartoonist's own harrowing experience, and provide evidence of Wert as being reasonable and credible and, thus, able to make his own decisions about how to die.

Of course, typically, when an experience people encounter is politicized, those who vehemently disagree with it (or agree with it) will revert to poor argumentation tactics in order to make themselves seem more right; one of the ways they do this is to vilify anyone "on the other side". So, if the intended audience of Death of a Man are people who disagree with a person's choice to end his or her own life, then maybe the inclusion of Wert's essay is the author's move to show that not only was Wert reasonable, but also that he understood and came into contact with others who, because of traumatic experiences, were impacted in other ways but not made unreasonable.

My experience in reading the book was, by its end, not wanting Wert to die--no matter how death came. He had become too real to me for me to be able to think: Yes, he must end his life now. He was real enough for me to think: I wish he didn't have to die, no matter how death comes. I don't want this pain in him, but I don't want death so close, either.

The book is about a man who knows who he is, perhaps to the extent that he won't let death change the way he stands toward himself. This could be congratulated or be problematic; this may show how limiting it is to our lives to believe in identity as an unchangeable force that we must protect--until, if we protect it too much, we're shattered by it and inadvertently take choices away from ourselves. Of course the book is made further muddied because its author definitely loves her husband and, now that he is dead, must make sense of that--though there's little reason to question her perception if you're a reader who just wants to read an interesting book about an experience that is not often relayed in memoir (to the extent of my knowledge).

If the book is about cancer, what it does to a person, how it eats the body, withers it, causes humiliation, makes the person passive to it--then this is a finely written book.

If the book is about how complicated situations affect marriage, and how two people try to negotiate each other and death and pain, then this is a good book.

As a political tract, this isn't a good book.

As a memoir, it's excellent.

-----------

Death of a Man (Random House, 1957; Beacon Press, 1974)

The Woman Who Helped Author Me: An Interview with My Mother

2010-06-26T00:26:00.026-07:00

As I’ve been cleaning out the house and packing up for my husband’s and my move to Spokane, I ran across the first book I “wrote”, in 1984. It is palm-size, stapled, and page after page of letters, letter after letter--top to bottom. Mostly Ks because I must have just learned that one. It is the first of several homemade books I made as a child—several of the books my mother “translates”, which she would do in letters she wrote to her mother (she and her mother wrote each other a letter every week).

I would scrawl, telling mother what the scrawls meant, and she would write the words under the scrawls. Something similar to when I was learning piano before I began lessons, and she would write the names of the notes beneath them so I could play the sheet music. Something also similar to when I learned cursive—making her teach me because I didn’t want to wait until second grade, and so for a while, each day that we (my father, my mother, and I) went to the diner for coffee, she would write words in cursive, and I would copy them. I would get in trouble in first grade for writing in cursive on my spelling test because I wasn’t following directions, and I shouldn’t have known how to write like that yet.

She read to me most every night before bed. Grandpa in Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Ramona the Pest, book after book from the library. Mole and Troll, Frog and Toad, any book by Maurice Sendak. On and on, books and books. And she would always make the voices. (I always liked how, before she was done reading a page, she'd slip her hand beneath it ready to turn it so she wouldn't miss a beat.)

During my mother’s visit, we take time during our coffee so that I can interview her. I get the idea mainly because I'm currently chatting online at Goodreads, and I can never think of what to say in online chats--how to get them started, how to make them interesting for readers, and it had occurred to me that my mother would be here during one of the two weeks I'm chatting online, and so I thought as part of the chat, she could answer reader questions. And so, although no one has yet asked her a question, I decided to write up some questions myself, quickly realizing that I didn't know any of the answers.

A brief bio:

My mother was born in 1939 and grew up in Indiana. She will turn seventy-one next month. She has her college and Masters degrees in Elementary Education and has taught in elementary schools for "thirty-plus years". Also, she likes to read, which is the main subject of this interview since I’m a writer, and it seems I should try to keep this blog as thematically focused as possible.

We are in San Marcos, Texas, sitting outside the coffee shop where I penned most of The Floating Order. It is hot, but my mother says no to my offer of going inside. She says she has been waiting for this kind of weather for a long time. My mother says I have to wait for her to finish copying a scripture into her notebook before we can begin (in July, she is going to Liberia to teach in a literacy program; she asked members of her church to tell her their favorite scriptures so that she can read over them each day while she is gone). One thing then the next, that’s my mother.

What is your earliest memory of your mother reading to you?

I remember us all sitting on the sofa together. Not just me—my sister and my brother. And I think she was reading us The Honeybunch classics. Every night she would read us a part of that book. I was four or five. It’s interesting that you didn’t ask if my father read to me—he didn’t. I never had a man read to me.

Did your parents read?

Yes! They took a book to bed with them to read every night. Avid readers, avid readers.

I remember your mom reading mainly thick, hardback mysteries. Was that what she read when you were a kid?

I don’t know. Sometimes she’d read a book more than once, but when she got older, old as me, she’d make lists so she wouldn’t read a book more than once. I know she read Harry Truman’s wife or daughter, I remember her reading those books. Mother wasn’t a jabberbox, she didn’t tell you everything, so I don’t remember what she read. She was very reserved. She didn’t say things like, I really enjoyed that book. We didn’t have, for example, book discussions around the supper table.

I know your father wrote letters to your mother during WWII. Did your mother have you include notes in your letters to him?

Well, there was a special V-mail. I don’t know what it stood for. They took a picture of them [the letters], and you got a negative of it, and it had been reduced in size. But, yes, we wrote to Dad. I don’t know if it was one letter included in Mother’s or if she’d just write what we said. But he would respond to what we had said in her letter. I was five or six.

When did you learn to read? What did you learn to read on?

The Dick and Jane series. I don’t remember using phonics to learn to read. We learned it in first grade because I was six. I remember the big book the teacher had. I remember her telling us the difference between how and now. The h and the n. That’s all I remember her telling us. I don’t remember if we brought our books home to practice on. That’s still during WWII, you know. There were like thirty kids to a classroom. And that was all the way through grade school—those poor teachers!

What excited you more—learning to read or learning to write?

Did your elementary school teachers read aloud to you?

Oh. . . yes. I especially remember fifth grade because she was so good at read-aloud stories. To this day, I still wonder what one of the books was. One of the characters had a lisp and she would read it that way.

Were the books in the boxes in Grandmother’s attics ones that you read? Like the Bobsy Twins? Where did she buy them? Was there a bookstore near your house?

No bookstores, no. I think Grandma ordered the books, but I don’t know where she ordered them from. I know she ordered The Child’s Book of Knowledge. And that’s where I felt so badly because I always thought everyone else was more prepared than we were. I couldn’t go to The Child’s Book of Knowledge to make any report because it didn’t have in it what I thought was in the reports by the other children.

It seems like on radio—this was before TV days—people read stories to you. You could buy records. Margaret O’Brien—that’s where I heard “The Bremen Town musicians”. On a ’78 [record]. We must have bought records. I remember the day we bought a record player because Dad said we were going in to town to see a movie, but we went to get a record player, and I was so mad because I wanted to see the movie.

And the movies, they had—I don’t know what kind of movies you’d call them—in the summer time, every week you could go to the movie and it was a classic book on film, and I thought that was wonderful. We were being better educated than I realized. They were entertaining, I don’t know if we realized they were classics. Like Tom Sawyer, I’m sure there were others, but I can’t remember the titles.

What did you like about the city library where you went as a child? Could you walk to it, or was it a special trip by car?

Yeah, we could walk to it, about six blocks. It was a regular occasion. You never had your books overdue, that was a no-no. So every two weeks, and it was special to be with mother. It wasn’t a place where you could have conversation—not like today’s libraries. You were always told to shhh, be quiet.

I remember the librarians being mean, except one, which wasn’t conducive to wanting to go to the library. They had these things you could look through and you could see a picture from two sides. There was a slide. Before view masters came. That was an extra perk of going to the library, what you’d do while Mother looked for her books. There weren’t many books in the children’s section of the library.

Did you like reading out loud when you were in elementary school?

Yes, because there was a time—this was in fifth grade, this is why I loved fifth grade—opportunities just came for us. We read to the lower grades. I owned probably three books. My favorite book I took and read. I knew which ones were my sisters—hers were the Raggedy Ann stories. My brother won all kinds of books in a drawing contest, and I thought that was wonderful, like he’d hit the jackpot. The books just kept coming. We went to the library every week, and I really wasn’t that much of a reader. I don’t know if it was because I couldn’t see so well [Mom got glasses when she was three]. There was a summer reading program. If you read the book then gave librarian book reports, we got to go to Lincoln City.

What fairy tale did you like the most and why?

I liked “Rapunzel” because she had long hair and I never did. I was tender-headed. It hurt to have it brushed or combed. Did I like “Cinderella”? “Snow White”. Definitely I liked “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. “Three Billy Goats Gruff”. That fascinated me—that was almost like birth order. I was the middle child. It made me feel safe because the oldest goat goes first and so I knew the ogre wouldn’t get me because I knew he was there. And “Little Red Riding Hood”, that was a prominent one. I remember reading it over and over. And see, I didn’t mind the different versions—especially the ones that Grandma was safe, where the hunter came and saved everybody. Oh, and “Three Little Pigs”. I liked that one. I liked the building process, the different ways they built the houses. They were clever. The ways they thought to outwit the bad guy. They used their head to solve problems. That still appeals to me.

Were you in spelling bees?

Yes, fifth grade. Did I win? No. You know what word I missed? Weird. I spelled it w-i-e-r-d, and I never misspelled it again in my life.

My teacher made everyone feel like they were smarter than all get-out, made them all feel special. We got new desks that year, they were blondish wood, and you could raise the lids. She went on all year about how well we needed to treat these desks, and we’d have special days to wax the desks, and she made us feel that way too, special.

How did you find books to read to your third-grade students?

Well, Scholastic Books always had these things you could send home and they’d buy them. We had a library at school—not a very extensive one. I had taken the course in Children’s Literature in undergraduate school so I knew what quality books to read to them. For me, it was more the authors. Like E.B. White, Beverly Clearly—still to this day. C.W. Anderson who wrote Blaze books, they’re still around to this day. I don’t know if other teachers, probably other teachers mentioned books they thought were good, or the special reading teachers would mention them.

One of Mom's teacher photos

What were your favorite books to teach as a teacher and why?

I didn’t teach them. I just read them to them. I always thought, whatever reading series we were reading from. . . I thought there were some good stories in them but all the questions in them messed up the literary. . . it didn’t create a desire to read—all the questions we had to from the teacher’s manual. I know why we had to ask them, but it didn’t create a love for reading any more than AR [Accelerated Reader] does, but I don’t think that was ever the aim. Reading comprehension was.

I know you and your class wrote E.B. White one year as part of your Charlotte’s Web unit. How did your students respond to receiving a reply, and what made you think to write him?

We had just read Charlotte’s Web—I read it every year except the last page, I couldn’t read that without crying so I’d hand that over for someone else to read it to them. We’d dress up like Charlotte or Wilbur. I don’t know how we decided to write him. I just wrote letters to people. I didn’t expect a reply. They were excited that he wrote back. I thought it was wonderful, that it was teaching them that authors were real people and did ordinary things like write back when people wrote to them.

Do you think there’s a certain age when parents should start reading to their children?

Yes. Probably six or seven months old so they can hear the rhythm of the language. And that’s where language develops. This produces imagination, hearing the beauty of the language. Even the rhyming of it. That all leads up to good reading skills—it’s a predictor of later-reading skills, their ability to handle the language as they hear it.

Do you think a children’s book has to have a happy ending?

No, but I think it needs to teach something, and I think it needs to relate to something in their lives or their imaginations.

What elements do you think make a good children’s book?

Conversation among the characters, an interesting setting, universal things that happen to children like in Where the Wild Things Are where Max gets sent to his room without any supper because he has been bad. A plot that makes them think how the characters will solve the problem.

What do you think a student gains from writing a book report that he or she doesn’t gain from reading programs like Accelerated Reader that have students answer multiple-choice questions?

I don’t know. Book report is almost a dirty word. It’s painful for them. Ideally, it would make them think about what appealed to them in the story and how the character worked through whatever the problem was. –Whereas, the AR is really superficial, low-brain thinking. It’s not an evaluation of anything, it’s just what they remember from the facts they read. You don’t have to have any empathy for the characters to read an AR book. From the child’s perspective, they’re probably only doing it so they can meet the requirement and go to a party at the end of the quarter—and eat pizza or popcorn or watch a movie. That’s how AR is set up, that’s the big reward.

On the other hand, the kids who didn’t make the goal, they have to go to some other room while everyone else goes to the party, which is almost a punishment. There are realistic goals. It’s not that the goals were too high, but that will never teach them to enjoy reading. By fifth grade, it’s almost impossible to administer the program honestly and motivationally. They just seem to lose interest, although there are some good books up there, but there must be another way to motivate them to read those good books. Maybe they are all worn out from being pushed every year previously. It [the program] starts in kindergarten.

What do you think causes children not to like to read?

It’s not modeled for them at home. They probably don’t see the connection between the books and their lives, and feeling forced to read when they don’t want to rather than inspired to read. I think it’s who comes into their lives at a crucial point to make that happen.

[She then relates a story about a child who grew significantly in his reading from kindergarten to second-grade, how exciting it was watching him grow—how she thinks he’ll always be a reader now. Her face is bright as she tells the story, her hands gesturing, talking through a smile]

Why do you think children make fun of children who like to read?

I was just thinking that what is valued in our culture is sports, and so they spend their lives practicing sports at the expense of spending time reading. Maybe it’s a stereotype of especially boys being nerds if they read. I haven’t heard other kids put down kids for not reading, but there’s a lot adults don’t hear of what kids are saying to each other. I don’t know if it’s a popularity thing or not. I’ll stop there.

Mom teaching in Liberia, July 2010

In thinking about the thirty years you’ve been in elementary school education as an educator, have you noticed any changes in children as readers?

I don’t know the answer to that, but there’s a lot more distractions today in a child’s life, starting with TV that could pull them away from loving to read. We’re not talking about skills here, just the loving to read.

On the other hand, children’s literature has exploded, so I think more children own books, so I don’t think we have a poverty of books in the home that I know of.

I think we know more about children and child’s development that we know more about what books can match to age. I’m a little bit bothered by videos of children’s books. I don’t know if it leads them to read books or stunts their imagination that reading the book would give them. We know more about dyslexia and things like that to know how to teach.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a good reader if you don’t read.

I’ve often heard you complain about bathroom humor in children’s books—what other aspects of content in children’s books do you not welcome?

Have I? That’s just where they are developmentally, I’m sure. It’s just one of those repressed things society makes jokes about.

Sometimes when I’d be reading in third-grade, and there’d be content about beer parties and things like. Not that they don’t know about them. I just think society puts a bunch of stuff on children that doesn’t allow them to be children for very long. Far more from TV than books. And swearing. I’m talking elementary-level. I just don’t think it’s appropriate. I remember even in eighth-grade, we could choose our own books to read. I think we had it in our home, and that’s why I chose it: Showboat, and I came to the word “damn”. I was shocked that it was there and then felt so guilty. Does my teacher know this word is in this book? I felt assaulted by the book, and it’s not that I hadn’t heard swearing in my life—Dad swore all the time. So, I’m saying, beer parties in third-grade books?

I realized one positive aspect of the AR program is that children recommend books to each other. I see the pattern of what books are read and what are not. Like those Boxcar books are read a lot and the Bill Wallace books.

Why do you think reading is important? Do you think reading is less or more important as an adult, or what exactly do you think?

I believe reading is just as, if no more so, important as an adult. To be challenged and aware about life. There’s just so much more to learn, and it’s usually by reading. It’s like people are back to living in the here-and-now. What’s the conversation at a coffee shop? It’s the weather, last night’s news, news around town, and politics, rather than what’s the latest book you’ve read, how can we improve our community more by this or that. People are just tired and stressed these days, but they don’t look to a book to relieve any of that. I hate to generalize. I can think of others who are teaching their children, taking them to the library, teaching them how to be socially-integrated, but think how much time is spent on a cell phone. That is not an intellectual hobby. I think books connect people to each other, especially when you’re reading the same thing. There are book clubs.

I think reading is important as an adult because you’re still looking for the truth, the truth of life, and I think books can do that. Even when we don’t know, when we have questions our mind are working on, and when we see that in print, it’s a huge relief, like “Oh, yeah!” There it is, the solution right there on the page. It helps you know about your inner world.

What were the last four books you read?

Three Cups of Tea—that was a non-fiction about a guy who was a mountain-climber originally and was trying for the top of K2, and so at the point he was supposed to go to the summit the next day, someone in the group got sick, and he chose to take them back to base camp, so he missed his chance to get to the top. However, he had a heart for the poor and the children of India, Afghanistan, especially those, and so he said to these people, When I come back from America, I’m going to build you schools for children, and he had no idea how, how he’d fund it or anything.

I’ve been reading this collection of short stories, Hemingway and Chehkov and Fitzgerald and . . . [Shirley Jackson, I remind her, as she told me earlier that she had read "The Lottery". She says, Will they know who I'm talking about? Yes, I say. Okay, she says, And Jackson.]

Over your life, who have your favorite writers been? I already know Maeve Binchy and you liked Erma Bombeck.

Those [Bombeck’s books] were light-hearted. Eugenia Price. A woman who wrote Amish books. I want to say Matthews but I don’t think that’s right. Catherine Cookson. My authors are dying off, you know. Who was that who wrote The Thorn Birds? That must mean I like female authors. It never occurred to me. I guess I do, I do. That’s interesting. Oh, the one that wrote about the Episcopal priest, a whole series. I read that last summer. I can see where they were in the library.

Do you read books that people recommend to you?

Nobody recommends any to me. [I remind her that I recommended Carol Shields to her, that she then read all Shields’ books. Oh, yes, she says.] Mother and I had pretty similar taste. Robin Cook. Yeah, I do. I ordered a lot of Liberian books [she’s going to Liberia in July]. Sirleaf, this woman [writer]. Sugar Beach, how it was during the war when the rebels took over. I read a lot of those Liberian war stories.

Oh, and I read a lot of religious books, too, you know. Philip Yancey. And then Beuchner. Those are my favorite Christian authors. I don’t do well with C.S. Lewis. He’s beyond me.

Has your mother’s side of the family always sent books to each other after they read them—why do you think that started?

I remember it was either a birthday or Christmas, I was very disappointed as a child that my Grandfather gave me the book Winnie the Pooh. I wasn’t interested in it. I didn’t think it was a good present. I don’t know what I wanted.

I have sent books to my aunt that I thought she would like, like Beverly Cleary’s autobiography because it was in the era my aunt grew up in.

So, how did it start? I don’t know. Did you know your great-grandmother was a teacher? I don’t know if she was a reader or not.

It just started because people shared everything, and we were far enough away from each other that if we wanted to share, you either mentioned it so they’d get it at their library, or you sent the actual book, but that wasn’t until adulthood.

You know your great-aunt was a librarian.

I know you have a wish-list, but I never check it. What books are on it right now?

Mostly the Christian books. Nouwen. I have a lot of his books on there. After we went to North Carolina and all those places, I think I have more Eugenia Price on there. [We had gone to Eugenia Price’s living and burial place, Saint Simon’s Island.] One book by someone about his aunt’s mental illness. He was being interviewed on NPR about his book, and it hadn’t been published yet so I put that on the list. I’ll probably get that this year. About how his aunt was treated—her mental illness—in her day.

I think I remember you reading the ends of books when you were still in the early part—why did you do that and do you still do that?

I just started doing it as an adult because I’d get too anxious about how it was going to end, so I couldn’t even concentrate on what I was reading. So, I’d check, and then I could be calm and read it to the end.

What book would you say is your favorite book and is that the same as the book you care about most?

I think it’s Charlotte’s Web. I know it is. I still quote from it. It’s a book I would give to children. I also like his book, The Trumpet of the Swan. You know he was not originally a children’s author. He’s the one I wrote a report on in graduate school.

What was the first book you read to me?

One of the first books was just where you identified objects, a Richard Scarry book. Here’s the grocery, where’s the squash. Someone had given it to me for my birthday. But, "The Three Bears". Oh, man, we used to go to the library and get four at a time, but that wasn’t one of the first ones I read. I guess they were fairy tales I read to you.

Why did you let me read whatever I wanted?

I didn’t know that I did. Well, I would think that if you thought it was good it appealed to you. Some of the books I got you were discarded. I remember the one about the girl with red hair and everything was red. And one where the girl kept changing who she was. She’d switch who she was. Someone would say, You’re this, and she’d say, I’m not this, I’m . . . What stage is it that kids go through that—when they don’t want nicknames. Five and six year olds want to be exactly who they are.

I know Dad wasn’t very pleased with my phase of dirty romance novels when I was 13. What did you think of it?

Well, I read some of them myself. I didn’t think they were dirty romances. Didn’t someone suggest that it’s good to read those kind of books every now and then? It’s just kind of a break for your brain to go there. That’s probably the same thing Cinderella was when you’re a little girl.

Do you have any thoughts about books becoming electronic—books being read on computerish devices?

Like Kindle? I think it’d be handy on a plane trip. It’d just be a handy thing, an expensive handy thing. But, unless it has the feel of holding a book in your hands, I think it loses something—becomes impersonal. There’s something about turning the pages. You do have a relationship going on with the book in your hand. Although I did check out the Kindle to see what it was about, but I thought the price was too high. Maybe frequent travelers--that’s the very thing they need to do, but I’m a homebody. I didn’t see anyone on the plane having a kindle. They had real books. Paper pages.

I think the audio books are also a good thing, travelling as you go. I’ve put them in the computer so I can listen to them while I’m going about the house.

Anything else that you’d like to add?

I'm pleased that you became a writer, that both you and Jennifer [my sister] became writers. I’m glad you enjoy reading, though I don’t know if I had anything to do with it. I think it’s because we introduced you to books early, took you to the library. You responded to them. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. I remember what you said about being so disappointed in kindergarten because you came expecting to read, and it wasn’t taught until first grade. I think now you would have learned in kindergarten.

~~~

At one point I had asked her what her favorite book in the bible was; about an hour after the interview, she exclaims, Psalms! Psalms is my favorite.
~~~

Read my Christmas 2011 interview with my mother, "Christmas Began at 1104 South Linwood".

Whitman's Sky

2010-06-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

(Image: America's Bard, Walt Whitman)

Her dear friend and former literature professor, Dr. Marilynn Olson is in the news with her astrophysicist husband, Dr. Donald Olson. Dr. Don Olson's team has pieced together the stars that fell into Whitman's poem Years of Meteors.

"In many of his investigations, Olson and his students use the methods of modern astronomy to determine precisely where and when a particular work of art was created or to pinpoint the event that inspired it. For example, Olson analysed Vincent van Gogh's Moonrise, a painting depicting a glowing yellow orb looming behind the silhouette of a rocky outcrop. Olson was able to determine the exact spot in France from which van Gogh viewed the rising moon, as well as . . . "

Continue reading "Forensic Astronomer Solves Walt Whitman Mystery" at NewScientist.com

Pringle to read at Austin's Five Things

2010-05-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

Stiffy Green

Erin will be reading a piece inspired by The Legend of Stiffy Green, a famous bulldog that once belonged to Mr. Heinl, local Terre Haute, Indiana legend (and owner of the former Heinl's Flower Shop).

Five Things takes place Friday, May 14, 2011 at the U.S. Art Authority
510 W. 29th St.

"Palestine, IL" in Big Pulp

2010-02-09T21:21:00.010-08:00

First, the story. Then, the grave.

She loved him, she loved him not. She killed him, she didn't. Before we killed her, she spoke or she didn't speak.

Read the rest of the story "Palestine, IL" by Erin Pringle-Toungate in Big Pulp

Not Normal, IL: "Exposure to the Bizarre Might Make Us Smarter"

2009-12-20T09:46:00.011-08:00

StarTribune ran a review by Laura C.J. Owen about Not Normal, Illinois, an anthology edited by Michael Martone. The anthology contains stories by Midwest experimental/non-traditional writers.

In the review, Owen nods to Erin's story "Wednesday Night Reflections, Edited Thursday" as an example of one of the form-playing stories:

"Erin Pringle's 'Wednesday Night Reflections, Edited Thursday' is a series of short sections describing a troubled relationship: The sections are written with such an attention to emotional detail that the sum of the story's parts is devastatingly precise."

Originally published in Quarter After Eight, "Wednesday Night Reflections, Edited Thursday" is also in The Floating Order.

Red Mountain Review 4: "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary"

2009-12-09T20:17:00.011-08:00

Her story "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary" appears in Red Mountain Review's 2009 edition (volume four).

To purchase a copy of the journal, write
Red Mountain Review
c/o ASFA Creative Writing Department
1800 Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. Blvd.
Birmingham, AL 35203

Texas Books in Review Reads The Floating Order

2009-10-22T15:42:00.010-07:00

The most recent issue of Texas Books in Review contains a review of The Floating Order entitled "Veneration of Madness" by Rene LeBlanc. The issue can be ordered through their website or found through the academic database Proquest.

Here's an excerpt:

"The stories in Erin Pringle’s The Floating Order focus on images and ideas frequently linked in Western literature—fairy tales and reality, madness and imagination, death and children. [. . .] So, what saves Pringle’s stories from the realm of the exhausted metaphor of madness and childhood as sources of truth, ones Faulkner used long before in As I Lay Dying?

"First, the titles themselves are typically deftly interwoven with the stories and freighted with poetic meaning. Examples occur in the name of the title story and of ones like 'Looker,' in which the 'looker' is both attractive and a perpetual searcher and seer. Other instances of conscious, focused attention to poetic language, to the boundaries and intersections of poetry and fiction, include Pringle’s use of ellipses and the child narrator voice. These allow such illogical pairings as that represented in 'they took him back to where children turn into fireworks.'"

~ Rene LeBlanc, "Veneration of Madness"
Texas Books in Review

"Asylum" in Dogzplot

2009-10-17T13:07:00.015-07:00

The government removed the lid of the incredible disappearing box and turned over the top hat and punctured the water tank so the patients spilled down the hallways, over the walls, to dry out like toads to be mowed over in the neighbors’ front yards.

Read the rest of "Asylum" by Erin Pringle-Toungate at Dogzplot

Two Ravens Press Releases E-Book Edition of The Floating Order by Erin Pringle-Toungate

2009-09-10T20:12:00.012-07:00

Two Ravens Press has released the E-book version of The Floating Order. The E-version is half the price of the print version, ringing in at £4.50 (~$7.00 US).

Two Ravens Press E-Book Catalog
The Book Depository E-Version of The Floating Order

(E-ISBN: 9781906120832)

"Here Be Monsters": the shortReview reads The Floating Order

2009-08-05T13:00:00.006-07:00

From Pauline Masurel's review of The Floating Order:

These are disturbing stories. A lost child finds sanctuary inside a piano, infants are drowned and buried, a baby-sitter disappears, a mother is kidnapped, a sister washes compulsively, a child goes blind and a goat is sick. This collection contains nineteen stories of childhood, which are full of dark, dangerous and deadly events that return to haunt you long after reading. There are no safe, saccharine fairy tale endings. This is contemporary Brothers Grimm for adults.

Read the full review, and an interview with Erin Pringle-Toungate.

July 31-August 2, 2009: Dogzplot Atlantic City Reading

2009-07-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

As part of the 2009 Dogzplot Reading, Pringle will read from The Floating Order on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ

Reading At the Mudhouse

2009-07-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

She meant to write first about the lovely time she had last night reading at The Space in Durham, NC, but she has to announce two, last-minute engagements.

She'll be reading at Mudhouse Coffeehouse and Espresso Bar in their Crozet and Charlottesville locations. You can find her in Crozet on Wednesday, July 29 (2009) @ 7 PM and then in Charlottesville on Thursday, July 30 (2009) @ 2 PM.

The Charlottesville Mudhouse: 213 West Main Street

The new Crozet Mudhouse: 5793 The Square

July 19, 2009: Michael Martone and Erin Pringle at Greencup Books in Birmingham

2009-07-08T10:52:00.015-07:00

biblio.com

Michael Martone and Erin Pringle-Toungate will give a reading together at Greencup Books in Birmingham, AL.

Event begins at 8:30 PM.

July 18, 2009: Book Signing at Bienville Books, Mobile, Alabama

2009-07-06T15:06:00.006-07:00

Erin will make her first stop of The Floating Order book tour in Mobile. She'll be signing copies of from 12-2 at Bienville Books in the Haunted Book Loft.

Bienville Books is in the heart of Mobile's historic district: 109 Dauphin Street, Mobile, Alabama.

July 8, 2009: Author Reading and Signing BookWoman in Austin

2009-07-03T14:42:00.011-07:00

At 7 PM, Erin Pringle-Toungate will be reading from The Floating Order at Austin's Feminist Bookstore, BookWoman.

BookWoman is located at 5501 N. Lamar Blvd. #A-105, Austin, Texas. A book signing will follow the reading.

July 4, 2009: Reading at Burro Coffee & Stone River Festival

2009-06-26T14:31:00.006-07:00

Erin will read from The Floating Order as part of the Stone River Festival, at Burro Coffee in Wimberley, TX. She's scheduled to read at noon.

Burro Coffee is located in the village square, near the store with the awesome animal sculptures.

June 22, 2009: Erin Pringle at Cliff Bell's Monday Night Poetry and Slam Series

2009-06-17T19:50:00.003-07:00

Erin and Deidre Carmen Smith will present their writing as part of the Monday Night Poetry and Slam Series at Cliff Bell's in Detroit, MI.

Cliff Bells is located at 2030 Park Avenue

June 20, 2009: Book-signing at Read Between the Lynes Bookstore

2009-06-10T19:21:00.007-07:00

As part of a local author day, Erin will be signing books from 1-3 PM at Read Between the Lynes Bookstore in Woodstock, IL. The bookstore is located on the square, 129 Van Buren St., Woodstock, IL

"Why Jimmy" on Audio Book Radio, June 2009

2009-06-05T15:41:00.007-07:00

AudioBook Radio.net will be playing a recording of Erin reading her story "Why Jimmy" from Monday, June 8th to Monday, June 15, 2009. The first airing begins approximately 12:13 AM UK time.

Nothing that Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith

2009-06-01T13:44:00.012-07:00

Last autumn while researching the mystery genre for a paper that ended up focusing on Patricia Cornwell's death irreverance, she bought Nothing that Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith. She also bought Highsmith's novel Strangers on a Train, which she enjoyed but thinks Highsmith accomplishes as much, or more, in a short story. Highsmith's plain but focused style is a similar to Carol Shields'--both authors have a similar sophisticated poignancy and a real eye for the moments inside people.

Like several good collections, she slowed herself down in finishing it so as to savor the good reading.

Although Highsmith's known for The Talented Mr. Ripley, which she has not seen or read, and known as a mystery writer, much of the stories in Nothing That Meets the Eye would qualify for either the mystery or sleuth genres, which is neither here nor there unless you picked up the book expecting more of an Edgar Allan Poe rather than an O'Henry.

The collection spans from 1938 to 1982 (on a personal note, from about the birth of Erin's mother to the birth of Erin), and the stories range in setting from Mexico to New York City to Evanston, IL. As of the time of this review, her favorite stories were "Where the Door is Always Open and the Welcome Mat is always Out" which is about an ex-taxi driver in his mid-30s who gets off the train in a small, idealistic town (the Americana pie town) and rents a room and tours the town while his perceptions change from tourist to native and the happiness he thought the town had brought him slowly decays as he becomes friends with a local girl.

Another story, "The Still Point of the Turning World" also deals with perception (though most every story does and quite well) and takes place in a small park and is told from both the point of view of a rich woman who takes her child to play there for the first time and, in her perception, an impoverished and dirty woman who also takes her child to play at the park. The ending is quite heartrending and perfect. "The Pianos of the Steinachs" is quite fine, too, perhaps simply because of the way Highsmith conveys the experience of playing and hearing piano music.
-------
Several years after reading the book, she still thinks of the stories, one very sweet one about a man who answers people's ads for their lost parakeets and another fun one about a single woman in the city who is getting her apartment together for her sister to visit, and another about a woman the last few days of her life. It is a book to return to, in mind or on the shelf where it awaits. Highsmith is definitely a master fiction writer--up there with Flannery O'Connor.

"Looker" in the anthology, Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years

2009-04-29T21:53:00.010-07:00

Her story "Looker", originally in Adirondack Review, will be published in the anthology, Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years.

Interbirth Books Releases INTER 01

2009-04-22T20:05:00.014-07:00

Her stories "Rabbits" and "The Boy Who Walks Across Fields" are available in Interbirth Books' annual collection of art, INTER 01. The anthology is hand-sewn on high-quality pages and quite lovely to behold.

Not Normal Anthology: Unconventional Fiction from the Heartland

2009-02-13T07:55:00.005-08:00

You can now pre-order the Not Normal Anthology published by Indiana University Press.

My story "Wednesday Night Reflections, Edited Thursday" is in it, and you'll find stories by Coover, Saunders, Martone, Erdrich, and more.

~ ~ ~
Update (9/11/09): Not Normal, IL now available for purchase

From The Child's Shelf: Review of We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball

2009-01-24T09:52:00.013-08:00

She began reading We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball in the children's section at the public library but wasn't finished when the husband was ready to go, so she checked it out and finished it that night.

We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson is a really wonderful book not simply because of its historical importance in shaping national identity; though, certainly, this is important, as the book fills the gap in baseball history and, thus, the present.

The story is told by the collective "we" which highlights the storyteller and makes the reader have a more auditory experience; this also serves to highlight that the present collective understanding of baseball is a skewed one and favors a caucasian cast. As a reader, or listener, the collective we causes the story to embrace and make the reader feel the importance of the story, if not simply because the story says to the reader that he or she is part of the we. It feels as like one is sitting by a grandfather's chair, learning a story to pass on.

Additionally, the illustrations--the paintings--are really lovely: rich and vivid and reminiscent of many of the industrial/social-realist WPA murals, which is fitting in reinforcing the story's voice due to its collective nature and the time-setting.

In terms of reading-level, this would be appropriate for an intermediate reader (grades 3-5), as the text is usually on its own page and is dense. However, the story would work well as a read-aloud book; certainly the formatting (text on one side, images on the other) suggests a read-aloud intention, and the story and images are so well done that it would work well long before the child reader is advanced enough to read alone.

It was published last January (2008), so she does hope that the Caldecott Committee is considering it for the medal. [Update: the book did not win the Caldecott, but did win the Sibert Medal]

Awards the book has won as of January 2009:

New York Times Best Seller
New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award Winner
School Library Journal 2008 Best Book Selection
Select Title for 2009/10 Texas Bluebonnet Master List
2009 Horn Book Fanfare Title
Selected for NPL 2008 list of 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
Selected Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
Kirkus Reviews Best Books 2008 Title

View more art and work by Kadir Nelson.

Also, We Are the Ship is a travelling exhibit, so check to see if the original paintings are at a museum near you.
---
We are the Ship, Hardcover, Hyperion Books Ch, 2008. 96 pages/purchase at the Ma&Pa bookstore closest to you

The Floating Order at ISU's The Statesman

2009-01-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

Review: Former ISU student publishes dark stories - Entertainment

The Floating Order is reviewed by The Statesman, the newspaper of her alma mater, Indiana State University.