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Dr. Gwen Plano

I am pleased to have as a guest blogger my friend and colleague Dr. Gwen Plano. A retired educator with a strong background in Counseling and Theology, Gwen recently published a riveting account of her own spiritual journey in Letting Go into Perfect Love.

I grew up on a small farm in southern California, surrounded by cotton fields and grazing cattle. We were isolated from much of the world; but, the arid landscape was fertile ground for dreams. Once tucked into bed and sound asleep, I traveled–to far off lands. I knew I would someday leave the farm; because, I saw that it would be so–through my dreams.

When I got married, though, my nighttime reveries of soaring high into the clouds and traveling to one continent after another, changed. In fact, my dreams terrified me so much that I did not want to sleep.  I would awaken with heart pounding, terror gripping—to images of a baby dying in my stalled car. I would frantically try to revive the child and then rouse fearfully from my bed. Visions of a shriveled, lifeless toddler haunted me night after night. And in each episode, I was desperately trying to save the child. I did not know what these dreams meant at the time; but, I worried about my children. Were the dreams about one of them?

Two years ago I began writing my memoir, Letting Go into Perfect Love. In preparation, I re-read my old journals and walked through the years. I had forgotten about my night terrors until seeing them chronicled in my notes. What had perplexed me in years past was now very clear.

For more than two decades I was in an abusive marriage. I lived afraid of mistakes, of saying the wrong thing, of being me. Joy was transient or not at all. I effectively hid from life, behind a closeted door of shame.

My dreams during this unwholesome marriage were about me, and more specifically, my lifeless inner child.

Through repetitive dreams, my subconscious was trying to get my attention. But, I could not hear its speech; because, my intuitive creative child lay lifeless in my nocturnal arms. With time and much counseling, though, this precious part of me revived and through her playful interjections, she helped me piece together a life that is once again mine.

My Reflection on Gwen’s Dream

With horrific dreams my experience has been that we tend to want to find the meaning outside of ourselves, or take them to be literally true as you did when the dream made you worry about your children. That is why as a starter to working on most dreams, I often like to use the classic dreamwork method taught by Fritz Perls that everything in the dream is part of yourself. It is the quickest and one of the most effective ways of getting to the primary message. I also believe, along with Edgar Cayce, that dreams can have many levels of meanings so the dream could have been making a comment on possible concerns you had for your children at that time, too.  If it was my dream and I had kids, I think that would be the case for me.

Who do you write for?

There are usually two answers for children's writers (or possibly all writers, but somehow the question gets thrown at us more.)

1) For a specific audience. Keep the age of the reader in mind! we are admonished. Watch your vocabulary. Make sure you hook those wiggly young'uns with lots of action. Observe real children. Keep adults out of it. Be a storyteller, not a navel gazer.

2) For yourself. Anything else is pandering. Write to entertain your inner child, and age appropriateness will take care of itself. Universal themes will save the day. Write the book you want to read.

I waffle back and forth between these answers.

I'm definitely aware of the age I'm writing for when I'm drafting a piece. I can't help it; I've tried not to care, to let the manuscript decide, but I'm in the business of making my work public, in all the best sense of that world. (Think public libraries, public interest, the reading public...) I want to be part of the goings on in the town square; I respect the power of words to reach beyond my own little world, and to ignore my audience seems...well, RUDE. I want to talk with them, not at them, and how can I do that if I don't bother to get to know them?

On the other hand, I simply can't sustain the energy needed to write a novel unless it's making me happy, too. My inner child throws a fit, a stinking hissy fit, if she's bored. And she likes to be thought unique, special, in that wonderful "only you can write this book" kind of way. But darn it, she's so often right that I can't ignore her either.

What to do? What to do?

I came across another possible answer, and it occurred to me that maybe I'd already written a book this way:

You must write as if you were talking to a stranger.

Crooked House excerpted a bit of a blog post by Thaisa Frank, and I went and read the whole post. Printed it out, even.

I'm still thinking about it. Perhaps this is what I did when writing Letters From Rapunzel.

"To create a common bond, the writer must write to the reader as one would write a letter, and not for the reader, as one would write a paper in school. The writer must also be able to step back, and, at times, write from a distance, yet with the intention of wanting connection.

This is a special sort of connection. From the beginning of time, writers have forged a singular language of intimacy, much of which is nurtured by the fact that writing involves the meeting of two strangers."

Yes, I do crave that intimacy. So much of life involves being polite or reserved or pretending we don't see the frond of spinach wedged between a diner's teeth two tables down. (Her own tablemates will tell her, right?)

Writing a book gives me both intimacy and distance. I can be totally, embarrassingly personal, but I don't have to be there when you're reading it. I can even disguise the embarrassingly personal within other characters, mixing everything so skillfully that you can't tell what I've done and what I've only thought of doing or seen another foolish soul doing.

When I write, I can whisper to that stranger: check your teeth. And she can whisper back: Thanks. Have you checked your breath?

Mo Willems is offering a free printable bookplate on his blog, featuring his pigeon character (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!). If you enjoy his books (I love most of them), you’ll want to print one of these bookplates. I think they’d make a nice gift, as well.

Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the link.

I love bookmarks. And printing your own can be fun.

Shel Silverstein has a beautiful black-and-white bookmark that you can download and print. It has a whimsical drawing of a child hanging upside down from a branch, along with Silverstein’s poem “Oops.” Lovely! And the perfect format for a bookmark. He also has some other printables with his poems, but if you don’t like violence or the suggestion of violence, you might want to skip Cuttin’ Kate.

IvysGraphics has some free color printable bookmarks. Most of them aren’t my style, but I like the dragonfly one. Maybe you’ll find one that appeals to you.

If you like cute dogs and cats, then these pet portrait bookmarks will probably appeal to you.

If you’re a Harry Potter fan, there are a lot of Harry Potter printable bookmarks here.

If you like Winne the Pooh, these printable bookmarks will probably appeal to you.

RandomHouse UK has a lot of printables for their children’s books. They have one great color bookmark, based on a children’s book: Smog the City Dog bookmark

If you enjoy these book printables, you may also enjoy these free printable bookplates, free printable bookmarks, and more free printable bookmarks.

If you love books, or want to give a gift to a book lover, an attractive book plate can come in handy. Or one that has meaning to you, because of the author, illustrator, or character mentioned or shown in the bookplate. There are some nice free printable bookplates online, many of which relate to children’s illustrators or authors, or are actually created by (or for) them.

bookplate by Penny Dale

bookplate by Mick Inkpen

My Home Library, established by children’s author Anne Fine, is a fantastic resource for free quality printable bookplates–bookplates by well-known (and lesser known) children’s illustrators and authors (mainly from the UK), including illustrators Quentin Blake; Polly Dunbar; Aliki; Shirley Hughes; David Melling; Marie Louise-Gay; Jane Hissey; Mick Inkpen; Helen Oxenbury; and children’s authors Debi Gliori; Ian Beck; Raymond Briggs; and many, many more. There are more than 200 free bookplates here. There are large bookplates (for picture books, etc), medium bookplates (for hardcover novels), and small bookplates (for paperback novels). The majority of the bookplates are in black and white, and look like ink drawings, but there are also color plates found here. Some of the more well-known illustrators are only found in the color section. Some bookplates are quite beautiful, some are instantly recognizable as the artist, all are interesting and all from children’s authors or illustrators. What a find!

My Home Library also has a few free printable bookmarks (6 black-and-white and 4 color).

You can find 6 beautiful color printable bookplates at the Bookhive.

There are some lovely bookplates here designed by New Zealand children’s illustrators.

Graham-Cameron Illustration has 10 free printable bookplates in color, created by children’s illustrators.

Children’s author/illustrator Jan Brett has 3 lovely color bookplates that you can print off. She offers them in .pdf format, which means they’re higher quality.

Children’s illustrator Bridget MacKeith has 4 color printable bookplates for you to print.

Children’s author Anne Fine has 4 free printable bookplates on her site.

PizzaByTheSlice has 4 black-and-white printable bookplates, 2 cat related, and one Christmas related.

Paul Jennings offers 4 free color printable bookplates with images from the covers of his books.

Other Book-Related Printables:

Susan Taylor Brown has a beautiful reading door hanger that you can download and print off; teaching guides; and a coloring page.

Random House UK has a lot of free book-related printables. I thought the best of them were: Teenage Advisory Total Trivia Flyers; Eric the Red - Spot the Difference; How to Speak Moo activity sheet. They also have ecards, desktop wallpaper, and some screensavers.

Phoebe Gilman’s site (The Balloon Tree (one of my favorite picture books), Jillian Jiggs) has an activity book where you can print off some black-and-white illustrations of Jillian Jiggs to color, a bookmark to color, and a word search.

For quality, free printable bookmarks, see my posts here and here.