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Seven editors and three agents from the U.S. and Canada have won fellowships to attend this year’s Jerusalem International Book Fair.
Selected as Zev Birger Jerusalem International Book Fair Fellows, the will attend special programs and seminars at the 26th biennial event, held from February 10 through 15 this year.
More-than-one-word-"review" (Note: I'm not a book reviewer and I don't even play one on TV. I know! I'll call myself a book reactor, since, after all, that's what we do....react to books, right?)
I knew absolutely zero about Russian history before reading this. Sarah Miller brought history to life for me. She showed me history through the eyes of the living, breathing people who experienced it.
A brilliant, fascinating read.
1 Comments on The Lost Crown, last added: 8/4/2011
Yeah, yeah, so I'm like 2 years behind on this one. Blame it on life. It's been sitting on my shelf since the Cybils LAST year and I just never was able to get to it, though I often looked longingly at the cover, touching the Braille written on the front, and wondering when Annie Sullivan and I would get some time together. Well, it happened yesterday and I was just delighted.
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller, written by Sarah Miller, is a lovely telling of Annie Sullivan's work with the infamous Helen Keller. Beginning with Sullivan's train ride to the Keller home, worrying about what her life would be like teaching a child that could neither see nor hear, all while being almost blind herself. The reader soon gets an inside glimpse into the exhausting, painful road that was taken to teach Helen that there is such thing as language and that communication must be learned in order to survive and lead a healthy, productive life.
Miller's descriptions of the Keller family and their constant enabling of Helen's bad behavior was based on facts I didn't previously know, and Annie Sullivan's background at a blind school was beautifully rendered and emotion-drawing. The reader will feel for this woman, wondering how she possibly managed to stick it out as Helen's teacher without losing her sanity, all while, for the most part, keeping her composure.
I was thoroughly impressed with Sarah Miller's accounts of the relationship between Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, appreciating the photos, afterword, and chronology found after the story completes. Beautifully written and definitely discussion worthy, Miss Spitfire would be great for a children's book club and/or class discussion.
To learn more or to purchase, click on the book cover above to link to Amazon.
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller Sarah Miller 240pages Middle Grade Fiction Atheneum 9781416925422 July 2007
You can wear it next week and I'll let you know if it stinks (just won't let you sit on my furniture if you really reek :)). And you, by the way, are most definitely the Keeper of Sanity {{}}. Kim
I'm trying to imagine what such a cologne would smell like. The glue in the binding? The musty smell of a cheap dimestore paperback that's been sitting on a shelf for years? Either way I'm not sure it's a scent I'd advise wearing.
Today's post comes from Sarah Miller, author of the terrific Miss Spitfire (review and interview), writer of a very fine blog, and all around great pal.
Her obsession with the Romanovs is evident in her current work-in-progress, "a novel about the final years of Russia's last imperial family, told by the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II." And today is a very important day in Romanov history. . . .
----
The other day I succumbed to the dual temptations of peer pressure and procrastination to fritter away a few hours composing a video tribute to the last Russian imperial family. The 90th anniversary of their assassination is July 17th, you see. Cheesy as it's become over the last ten years, I began with the theme from Titanic as my background music. That song fairly drips with connotations of love, loss, and opulence, and I couldn't resist the cliche. Plus, it's pretty music. (No Celine Dion vocals though, thank you very much.) About halfway through the process, I took a break to surf YouTube and peek at some other Russian history nerds' memorial movies. A LOT of Romanov videos use the Titanic music, I've discovered. But one had a tune vaguely similar to the theme from Finding Neverland, which I love. On a whim, I duplicated my iMovie project, yanked out Titanic, and dropped in Finding Neverland instead. That's when the trouble started. Um, what on earth does this movie-making stuff have to do with being an author? Well, suddenly I discovered that swapping out the music tracks changed the voice, pacing, and tone of my video. I was still telling the same story, still trying to express the same underlying themes of family love and lives cut short, but a slew of the photos I'd so carefully selected no longer fit. Welcome to the wonderful world of editing. Have a look and see what I mean: The Titanic version is relatively fast, and the mood of the music fluctuates throughout the piece. By following those natural crests and troughs in the melody, I could construct a fairly straightforward visual retelling of the imperial family's history and rely on the music to amp up the emotional level. (Romanov buffs will recognize a chronological progression of images from Nicholas and Alexandra's courting days to the last known photos from family's imprisonment and exile.) In short, the photos are representative first, and emotional second. There's also a lot of plain old motion, both in the images themselves and in the way I panned the camera across them. At the end, the fate of the family is portrayed more or less directly.
The Neverland version is essentially a sliver of ambience. The music is slower and softer, with a constant, level mood. Consequently, the sense of story has to arise out of the emotion inherent in the images rather than from the music. So the photos I'd originally chosen to represent specific stages in the Romanovs' life weren't nearly as effective, which meant I had to give up scenes I loved - in particular, that cut where the music swells and the children grow from darling toddlers in matching sailor suits into a line of poised young adults. *le sigh* But the trade-off was resurrecting photos I'd discarded from the original Titanic version -- photos that were emotionally stirring, but too static visually. Also, this time the Romanovs' death is only implied: while panning over the field of white lilies (the site of the family's original mass grave) the music itself fades away without the customary drop in pitch on the final note. It's downright unsatisfying the way it leaves you hanging, but oddly enough I think it works in this context.
What do you think? Which is more effective? I'm really not sure, myself. Mostly, I'm just fascinated by how quickly I recognized what needed to change, and how willing I was to make the necessary cuts. I am not nearly so amiable when it comes to editing my writing -- probably because in that case I don't get to share the alternate version. I'm also mulling over how many ways there are to tell the same story, even using a heap of the same scenes. All it takes is one change, and everything shifts.
7 Comments on Guest Blog: Sarah Miller, last added: 7/19/2008
Beautiful - both of them in their own ways. It's neat what this exercise shows. Good storytelling, no matter what the media, is a gift, and you have it. CAN'T WAIT FOR YOUR BOOK! Thanks for sharing this, Sarah.
Ooh, that's a toughy! I love both of them so much!
But I would prefer the second one. If you use the first one, it almost seems like you're just talking about a family and showing pictures from a family who died on the Titanic.
Erin, how do you put up youtube videos like that? On posts, when I click add video, it says I have to upload it from my computer. How do I save a video to my computer in the first place?
Some writers refer to the process of writing as drawing water from a well, hinting at a reservoir of words stored beneath the surface.
That well, like an underground aquifer, feeds our imaginations and drenches our words in the same way that underground streams secretly nourish the landscape.
And it's limitless--yes, limitless--but only if we acknowledge the well as a source and carefully
0 Comments on Drawing Water From The Well as of 1/1/1900
Barbara W. Klaser said, on 12/1/2007 12:41:00 PM
I've always loved that story about Helen Keller at the water pump. It's a powerful illustration of how our minds suddenly open up, the "aha" experience. Journal writing often leads me to more productive writing. It's my most reliable writing ritual. I also often find when writing an essay that as I work through the first draft I discover what the essay is really about, the idea I was
Bruce said, on 12/1/2007 5:18:00 PM
Barbara,I think that "aha" experience-- whether it takes ten words or ten thousand words--is what we strive for in our writing... a moment of discovery, a chance to find something that we hadn't known or seen before. Each time it happens, it feels like an unexpected gift, doesn't it?Thanks so much for honoring Wordswimmer with "A Roar for Powerful Words" award. You've been so encouraging from the
Every day people search for three things on google and end up here. I disappoint, I fear, because my blog does not deliver what they so desperately need. If you are in possession of any of the following three things, please let me know, so I can direct readers your way:
nursery rhyme MP3s. Several people a day want these, so if you're the enterprising sort and in possession of a good voice, start recording now.
witch spells for children. If you're a witch and have been holding back your best spells for the kids, now's the time to put them online. There's a huge demand, believe me.
hockey poems for kids. You got 'em? Someone wants them.
6 Comments on What the internet needs, last added: 8/24/2007
Ayisha, are you a) a roving piece of webware b) the personification of a sneeze c) a breathtakingly halfhearted attempt to sell us things we don't want? (The catch-all 'books' is a little too broad.)
I await Ayisha 2.0
Kelly said, on 8/23/2007 6:23:00 PM
I'm sick of Ayisha too, Nick!
Little Willow said, on 8/24/2007 5:50:00 AM
I actually came here looking for witchy nursery rhymes about hockey. Darn it.
SiteMeter reports that someone got to me by Yahoo-searching this question: If you saw a turtle in the dessert flipped on its back, unable to turn itself over, what would you do and why? It occurs to me the and...
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7 Things You Don't Know About Me
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Whoah, my wrist feels sympathy for your wrist. xx