Books I Love: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Title
Where the Sidewalk Ends

Author
Shel Silverstein

I first read this book
about 1985

I have a powerful memory of my mother coming into my grandmother's back bedroom where I was playing one afternoon. She held a thick book in her hands.  The book's jacket was gone, leaving the brown cover with a darker brown scrawl pressed in it. I realized later this was the imprint of Shel Silverstein's signature. I've always thought it was impressive that his signature was pressed into the cover of a book.

Mom told me she wanted to share a book with me--a book of poetry. She stretched out beside me on the king-size bed and began reading some of the poems. I vividly remember her interpretation of "Sick."

I was hooked instantly.

Not only did I fall in love with Shel Silverstein's poetry, but I discovered a love of poetry in general.

The poetry I write is terrible. I simply do not think like a poet. I wish I did. Imagine being able to distill a complex emotion or thought into the confines of a poem.

Shel Silverstein and his poetry have fared me well. I've bonded with friends over our mutual love for his poems. I've performed his poems in poetry competitions.

One of my favorite memories of performing his work was when I read "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony" to a school group touring the library. (Technically, that poem is from A Light In the Attic, but I love that book, too.)

I was reading to this group of first or second graders, and I was having a blast.  I was reading with emotion and attitude and truly giving them a show when, from the front row, I hear one girl say to her friend, "She's crazy."

I don't know how I managed to stop myself from bursting out laughing when I heard that. Internally, I certainly was. I can only hope she delighted in my "crazy" performance and maybe even remembers it still.

But she was correct. I am crazy about poetry, and I love, love, love to share those feelings with others. Just as my mother did with me.

Books I Love: The Dollhouse Murders

Title
The Dollhouse Murders
Author
Betty Ren Wright
I first read this book
in fourth grade, approximately 1986

This book was one of those delicious stories that one person in the class reads and then recommends it to someone else who recommends it to someone else until it seems like everyone you know has devoured it.

The Dollhouse Murders is one of the scariest books I have ever read. It's the story of Amy, a teen girl who has to look after her mentally challenged sister Louann. While the two of them are staying with their Aunt Clare in their great-grandparents' large, old home, Louann becomes fascinated with a model of the home. The model even includes dolls that resemble the girls' great-grandparents. Amy finds the dollhouse creepy, especially because the dolls seem to be moving on their own and possibly even re-enacting the night their real-life counterparts were murdered. Will Amy summon the courage to watch the dolls and solve the mystery?

This story has everything – a dollhouse any girl would envy, cookies, stormy nights, a moody aunt. Best of all, Amy's and Louann's relationship is honest and real. Amy resents her sister and resents the attention she receives, but she loves her, too. This was probably the first book I ever read that featured a mentally challenged character. The first time I read this, I was just as resentful and angry as Amy. Later, after I got to know someone like Louann, I felt more sympathy for her when I re-read the book.

Despite the premise of dolls acting out a murder, the book has a reality to that grounds it. The chills and thrills keep you turning the pages, but it's the relationships and characters make The Dollhouse Murders memorable.

Books I Love: Anne of Green Gables

Title
Anne of Green Gables
Author
L.M. Montgomery
I first read this book
summer after my junior year of high school, 1993

I will admit that I didn't read this book until after I had seen the Kevin Sullivan television movies with Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie. I adored those movies. My grandmother and I borrowed them from a friend, and we watched both of them in one day. Then I watched the first one again!

Needless to say, I needed to read the book.

Fortunately, the same friend who had the movies also had the entire series in paperback. I borrowed all of them, and read them one after the other in about a month.

I love the entire series, but Anne of Green Gables is my favorite. I adore that spunky little redhead and all her misadventures.

I also find myself drawn in by the descriptions the Montgomery uses. To me, they're beautiful. Maybe too effusive, but I don't mind. Prince Edward Island was such a long way from my small-town Texas home that I needed those somewhat flowery passages to fully appreciate the beauty of Anne's world.

I loved Anne so much I had to share her with my best friend. We watched the movies, and she read the books, too. We even wrote letters to each other as Anne (me) and Diana (her). My grandmother became Marilla.

The next summer I was cast in a local production of Anne of Green Gables at the Gaslight Theatre. I got to play Mrs. Rachel Lynde, and the whole experience of that show was such a delight--terrific cast, amazing crew, wonderful director, fantastic audiences.

I'm enjoying my cordial.

photo by Mom

In 2008, I was able to visit Prince Edward Island and see the "real" Green Gables. I walked through the Haunted Wood and drank raspberry cordial. I strolled down Lovers' Lane and cried from happiness.

And that raspberry cordial? It was delicious! I bought two more bottles to share with another kindred spirit and shipped them home wrapped tightly in bubble wrap. I'm pleased to say they made it all the way back to Texas intact. Sharing that drink with a kindred spirit at her apartment was one of the best moments.

Anne of Green Gables has turned strangers into friends and truly changed my life. It is my absolute favorite children's book.

Books I Love: Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Title
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Author
Beverly Cleary
I first read this book
during third grade, approximately 1985

Like the Harry Potter books, I truly love all the Ramona books, probably even more than Harry Potter because I read these as a child. There's that great line in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character talks about books we read as children having a far greater impact on us than anything we read later in life.

I think that's true. It's certainly true of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. Ramona Quimby is still one of my very best friends, and she always will be. No one can convince me she's not real. She has a statue!

Ramona Quimby immortalized in bronze

in Portland, Oregon.

photo by Sara K Joiner

Ramona's very specific problems are what makes her so universally appealing and so enchanting to meet in the pages of a book. How on earth does a fad like cracking hard-boiled eggs on your head start anyway? I have no idea, but it does. Naturally, Ramon is going to have a problem with this situation. Does she learn a lesson? Do readers? Not necessarily the one adults might like.

Being a kid is tough. Ramona Quimby helped me through some pretty difficult times when I was younger. She still gets me through rough patches today. I can only hope the characters I create speak to my readers the same way Ramona Quimby speaks to me.

And if someone decides to build a statue of one of them? That wouldn't be so bad either.

Books I Love: Habibi

Title
Habibi
Author
Naomi Shihab Nye
I first read this book
during my senior year of college in 1998

I first learned about Naomi Shihab Nye from a poetry reading she gave at Texas Lutheran University, the college I attended. During her presentation, she read a poem about Shiner, a small town in central Texas that was ten miles from my own hometown.

At that point in time, lots of people in Texas had never heard of Shiner (although that has changed now due to increased marketing of Shiner Beer), so it was quite a shock to hear a poet mention it. After the reading, Nye was signing books, and I went up to her and asked if she had ever been to my hometown. She said, "No, but I want to live there for a year."

This baffled me. Like people from small towns often do, I thought my hometown was the dead end of the world. Who in their right mind would want to live there?

But I was also baffled for another reason. Why would anyone want to live somewhere for only a year? Why go to all that trouble to move if it's only temporary?

I remained fascinated by Nye, however. Something about her poetry combined with her amazingly open way of seeing the world intrigued me.

While I was attending my first Texas Library Association conference (technically the exhibits only) in San Antonio, I spotted a children's book with a gorgeous cover. Seeing Nye's name on it meant I had to read it. As it was a finished book and not an advanced reader copy, I paid for it and took it back to my college apartment to read. What a wise decision that was!

Habibi is inspired by Nye's own childhood when her family moved to Jerusalem to be closer to her paternal grandmother. It is a beautiful story of an American girl learning about her cultural heritage, her family, and herself while far away from the life she is used to living.

Each chapter begins with these poetic sentences that are simply perfect. I wish I could write like that. I wish I could think like that. I'll never be a poet, but I do love to read it. Habibi is prose, but it reads like poetry. It's nothing less than beautiful and has stayed with me all these years.

Books like Habibi make me think there could be a more peaceful, tolerant future for the world. People like Naomi Shihab Nye make me think that, too.

Books I Love: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Title
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Author
J.K. Rowling
Illustrator
Mary GrandPré
I first read this book
during graduate school in 1999

While I love all the Harry Potter books, my favorite is the third book in the series. This is the book where all the pieces fit together so perfectly that it feels like the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle. It also expands the universe of the story Rowling is telling as we learn more about Harry's history and see the full scope of his loss.

It introduces us to Dementors, utterly terrifying creations that are the personification of depression. What I find most fascinating about Dementors is that the best treatment for an encounter with them is chocolate. Of course it is! Chocolate is the best cure for anything.

But what truly inspires me about this book is the plot. I do not possess Rowling's skill at plotting, and I am envious. Every piece of this story falls perfectly into place, creating one whole story while still feeling like part of a larger work.

Harry? Is that you?

photo by Sara K Joiner

Rowling is a master at doling out clues in little bits and pieces throughout the course of the series. There are clues in the second book that don't become important until the sixth! How does Rowling do this? I've seen that plot outline for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the longest of the books), and it absolutely terrifies me.

I am not a plotter. When I write, I have a beginning (which usually changes over the course of numerous drafts) and an ending. I also have what I call "things that need to happen" throughout the course of the book. In some cases, because I generally write historical fiction, I might have a specific order in which those things must happen, but sometimes I can move them around as I need.

I don't outline. I feel like once I've outlined a story, before I've finished a first draft, I've told it, and I no longer have an interest in writing it.

When I read something like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or any of the other Harry Potter books, it challenges me. I'll never be able to plot a book like J.K. Rowling, but I can keep trying.