Blog Archive: December 2007

This Friday's poem is dedicated to the memory of Tatiana, the Siberian tiger who was shot at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas, following her escape and deadly rampage.

The Greater Cats

The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and different skies,
And night with different stars.

- V. Sackville-West

While I have sympathy for the human victim's family, I confess that my greater sorrow lies with Tatiana. Like any captive animal, she didn't ask to spend her life in a zoo. She had no say in the destruction of habitat in her motherland or the hunting of her species. There are 6.6 billion people on Earth, while only about 500 Siberian tigers survive in their natural habitat, with just a few hundred more scattered in zoos and refuges throughout the world. Tatiana was doing no more than what comes naturally to a tiger. Who's the true victim here?

As of this posting, Tatiana's means of escape remains a mystery. Conflicting reports indicate that onlookers, including the victims, may or may not have taunted the tiger and/or dangled their legs over the fence of her enclosure, not only provoking Tatiana but providing her with a means of escape. I'll be waiting for more definitive information, but in the meantime all I can do is grieve.

Catch the rest of today's Poetry Friday Round-Up at Check It Out!

The past ten years have seen a veritable avalanche of books about the world’s tallest mountain. Why the sudden interest? Is it because of National Geographic’s movie Everest, or the deadly climbing disaster of 1996 chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air? Or because 2003 was the fiftieth anniversary of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic summit? Or because in that same year a 15-year-old girl named Ming Kipa set the new record for youngest person to summit? Whatever the reason, there is no shortage of books, for all age levels, about the dangerously fascinating mountain that is Everest.

One of my favorite books of 2007 is Peak, by Roland Smith (Harcourt, 2007). This well-written page-turner for junior high readers follows the adventures of Peak Marcello, the 14-year-old son of climbers. After getting caught free-climbing – and then tagging – skyscrapers in Manhattan, Peak is whisked off to Asia, where his father leads climbing expeditions on Everest. At first, Peak is thrilled at the chance to be the youngest person ever to summit, but he soon learns the task ahead is more difficult than he imagined.

I’m not talking about physical dangers; in fact, readers may be surprised that a relatively inexperienced climber such as Peak could make it as far as he does without much in the way of illness or injury. (Some other climbers in the expedition are forced to stop due to HAPE and other climbing-related afflictions.) But Smith compensates with a solid exploration of the political issues surrounding Mount Everest. The commercialization of Everest (Can anyone who can pay play?), Chinese control of Tibet, and the incredibly dangerous – and under-appreciated – work of Sherpa guides all get ample discussion.

In a similar vein is Gordon Korman’s fictional Everest series (The Contest, The Climb, The Summit – Scholastic, 2002), for readers grades 5 and up who enjoy a fast read.

True Books About Everest

• Climbing Everest: Tales of Triumph and Tragedy on the World’s Highest Mountain, by Audrey Salkeld (National Geographic, 2003) –Children’s Literature calls these profiles of Everest’s most famous climbers “thrilling reading” for grades 4 and up.
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer (Villard, 1997) – This thick nonfiction page-turner has a lot of teen appeal.
• To the Top of Everest, by Laurie Skreslet with Elizabeth MacLeod (Kids Can, 2001) – One of the first Canadians to summit offers his cheerful and photo-filled account for grades 3 and up.
• To the Top: The Story of Everest, by Stephen Venables (Candlewick, 2003) – Photo-filled history of human interest in Everest, including the author’s personal summit story, for grades 4 and up.
• Within Reach: My Everest Story, by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin (Dutton, 1998) – A teen’s mountain-climbing diary, with special focus on the Everest disaster, for junior high on up.

Last night I ran Microsoft’s spell-check on a 250-page novel. I always write with the spelling and grammar checks turned off because otherwise every page would be full of red and green squiggles.

I’m not a bad speller (hey, I was the second best speller in second grade!), but MS Word really hates my grammar. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if MS Word had its way, every poem would be a business letter.

Anyway, if I leave the spell-check until the end, I can worry about more important issues, like does this story make any sense whatsoever?

Last night’s spell-check revealed a great many boring typos and intentional misspellings (e.g., “He’s fiiine!”). But a few words I got so totally wrong I was actually thinking, “God bless spell-check!” as I corrected the mistakes.

Here are a few examples of my invented lexicon, whose meanings I can only guess at, Balderdash-style:

• Capuchino – caffeinated beverage of choice for professional monkeys on the go
• Criterium – the chemical element by whose qualities all other elements are judged

And my favorite:

• Mediocracy – system of government characterized by unexceptional leadership from the top down (I'm sure you can think of examples)

I fully intend to return to posting about fun adventure books, but the last couple weeks I’ve been sidetracked by serious, nonfiction books. One of these is Race: A History Beyond Black and White, by Marc Aronson (Atheneum, 2007), which I finished last night.

I have misgivings about the term “required reading”*, so let’s just say I think every American could benefit highly from reading this book. There’s no one alive whose life isn’t touched by issues of race, and too often negatively. Race illuminates the evolution of “race” as a concept humans invented to define and justify their ill treatment of others. While it doesn’t dwell on or offer clear-cut solutions to today’s problems, it gives readers a much deeper understanding of how things came to be.

Aronson traces the path of us v. them mentality in the Western World from primitive tribes through the present, with major stops for the Greek and Roman empires, the rise of Christianity, trans-Atlantic slave trade and immigration, and what he terms the “Age of Racism” (which includes, but is not limited to, American lynch mobs and the Holocaust). You see, “race” as we know it is a human invention of the past three hundred or so years, though it was millennia in the making. Race plainly explains how each new moment of enlightenment, that eliminated one kind of prejudice, gave birth to a newer, harsher form of prejudice.

Aronson writes in a formal but highly readable style. Many chapters open with a teen-friendly comparison of ancient political situations to contemporary teen issues. Snippets of his own family’s history and his admissions of racial prejudice lend a personal quality as well. I’m no race scholar, but it seemed to me that Aronson took a very even-handed approach to the sensitive subject matter. He includes extensive end notes and makes transparent those occasions when his personal opinion veers from those of “the experts.”

Though many parts of this book will make you angry, and many more will make you weep, Aronson ends Race on a hopeful note. “Our history of race leaves us uncertain,” he writes. “We should be proud of that. Our ancestors were less confused and left us the story of prejudice, slavery, and death I have described here.” In other words, as much as humans may be, by nature, prejudiced, if we push through our gut assumptions to question the way things are, we can improve our situation – the situation of all mankind.

Dovetailing neatly with Race is the other book I’m reading: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday, 2006). Washington uses history to explain why, today, many African Americans justifiably mistrust the medical system.

Reading Race has improved my understanding of the racial climate in America in the era Washington discusses (I’m only halfway through her book). Though it still seems unbelievable that humans could visit unspeakable horrors on other humans in the name of science, I now better understand that the white doctors doing these abhorrent things truly saw their black patients/subjects as less than human. This will never excuse what has happened, but viewing the events through a more contemporary lens helps explain how it did happen.

You can read the introduction to Race here. Marc Aronson also blogs for School Library Journal. His blog is Nonfiction Matters.

*The other day a middle school boy and his mom were in the library, and I overheard the boy say, “I hate reading books we’re forced to read.” Which, let’s face it, is the foundation of most schoolwork. Mom’s response is what really made me cringe, though. “Oh, you just hate reading, period.” Chicken and egg, anyone? And yes, I’m a Stephen Krashen fan. Free voluntary reading, baby!

This past week, I was the guest presenter for my local SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators) network. The topic was "Ask a Children's Librarian." It went well, in that the audience was receptive, friendly, and supportive, and I think I sent everyone home with some useful new information!

One of the biggest mistakes I see patrons make is not asking the librarians for help! Too often I see patrons looking lost and/or outright refusing assistance, when it's obvious they need a hand. I think often it's because they're in a hurry, or they're shy or afraid of looking stupid, or they don't think the librarians will be able to help (?!) - or maybe they haven't even formulated a question. So in my talk, I wanted to emphasize reasons to talk to your librarians. Here's my somewhat tongue-in-cheek Top Ten list:

10 Reasons to Know Your Children's Librarians

10. We have a top-secret decoder ring for interpreting all those weird numbers in the catalog that tell you where books are. We’ll share it with you if you know the password. (P.S. It’s “Help!”)

9. We know what teachers want their students to read, what parents want their kids to read, and what kids actually want to read.

8. We have a computer chip implanted in our brains that helps us find “missing” books.

7. We can’t explain why some kids would rather read another bland morality play about bears with the “gimmes” than a beautiful, clever book with three starred reviews – but we’ll sympathize.

6. We know advanced searching techniques and have more powerful searching software than is available to patrons.

5. We have a bottomless stash of cute and clever bookmarks.

4. We’re around our books all the time, so we’re able to see patterns and make connections between books that you won’t observe from the catalog alone. And we read a lot of book reviews, so we know what’s new and coming out soon.

3. We can help you connect to the community through author events.

2. We do word-of-mouth book marketing every day through reader’s advisory and our book displays.

1. More than anyone else in your life, we have a prayer of figuring out that book you loved when you were a kid – you know, the one about the bunny…and the weasel…and the…the thing…

My other main goal was to introduce people to very cool, useful library resources they might not know about. This was the best part of the presentation, in my book. I passed around examples of material from the Chicago Tribune Historical Database, and people oohed and ahhed over ads from 1900, editorials on the brink of the Civil War, civilian responses to the bombing of Pearl Harbor…

I have posted a slightly modified, online version of my handout here: Public Library Resources for Writers. But these resources may also be useful to readers, parents, teachers, and students. Please take a look!