YA Through the Decades - Emily of New Moon

Title: Emily of New Moon

Author: L. M. Montgomery

Publisher: Doubleday Canada

ISBN: 9780770417987

Originally published: 1923

Book Source: personal collection

It's the end of January, and time for my first review for the YA Through the Decades Reading Challenge.  It seemed only right to begin with a Canadian book I loved, back when I actually was a young adult.

Emily loves her home, her father, and all things beautiful.  Most of all, she loves to write - stories, poems, and "descriptions" of all she encounters and experiences.  It's a simple life, but rich in all the ways that matter.

Then her father dies, and everything changes.

Emily is sent to New Moon farm, to live with sweet Aunt Laura, odd Cousin Jimmy, and tyrannical Aunt Elizabeth.  To her surprise, she soon comes to love her new home, despite her conviction that Elizabeth sees her as nothing more than a duty.  She makes new friends (and enemies), has triumphs (and tragedies), and finds a new sense of self and belonging.  And she discovers that even as her new life changes her, she changes the lives of those around her.

L. M. Montgomery's best known heroine will forever be Anne of Green Gables, but I've always liked Emily better.  As a budding writer, I strongly identified with Emily's literary struggles.  There was another reason she won my heart, however.  Anne is a complex character, but she's transparent - her whole being is visible.  Emily, with her fairy wallpaper (regular wallpaper transformed by a trick of the eyes), her flash (a periodic glimpse of a world beyond this one) and her uncanny perceptions, is intriguing and mysterious.

Structurally speaking, Emily of New Moon is a dramatic contrast to most contemporary books for kids and teens (with the possible exception of Diary of a Wimpy Kid).  The novel reads more as a series of vignettes or connected incidents rather than as a singular quest.  Nor does it begin with a bang and hit the ground running, the way books like The Maze Runner do.  It's a quieter, more gradual sort of story, demanding a patient, devoted kind of reader.  That said, Montgomery is a master of pacing, hinting at mysteries, creating questions in the reader's mind, and balancing emotionally wrenching scenes with quieter explorations of setting.  Having read the entire series several times, I can identify and appreciate the groundwork, laid in book one, that becomes essential in volumes two and three (J. K. Rowling is a genius at this).

Rereading Emily of New Moon for this challenge, I was struck by another characteristic of the series, one that should serve as a cautionary tale for modern writers: frequent references to literature that is no longer taught in schools or readily available.  How many contemporary teens (or adults) have heard of The Alhambra, much less read it?  In the unlikely event that series like Gossip Girl are in print 100 years from now, how well will those ubiquitous references to Starbucks and Prada hold up?  To be fair, I read Emily seven or eight times as a kid, so clearly it didn't bother me that much.

In conclusion, Montgomery deserves her status as a Canadian national treasure.  No matter how old I get or how many other books I read, Emily of New Moon will always have a special place in my heart.

And now for the fun part of the reading challenge - discussion!  Who's read Emily?  In your minds, how does it compare to Anne?  If you chose a different pre-1930s novel for January reading, you can still play - tell us about the book you picked.

Looking forward to your comments!

Guest Author: Gabriele Goldstone

Today's guest is Gabriele Goldstone, world traveler and author of the powerful middle grade novel, The Kulak's Daughter.

LEC: Tell us a little about your mother and how you came to write her story.

GG: My mom came to Canada in 1953. She and my dad agreed to forget the past. But as a kid I was always embarrassed by her foreignness. Today, the feisty spirit I tried to show in the book is still apparent as she maneuvers her wheelchair down the corridors of her nursing home. Soon 91, she still squirrels food away for later.

After my dad died – and his own stories disappeared – I realized I better get my mom’s stories before it’s too late. And one Christmas, about ten years ago, she shared the story about the secret Christmas tree (Chapter 3). It was then I knew this had to be a children’s book.

About the same time, in 2000, a relative sent her a photo calendar with a forgotten photo (the one on the book).  I’d never seen an image of my mom as a child – or of my grandmother. The memories that had been repressed for decades were stirring. It was very painful for my mom and caused bad dreams and sleepless nights.

I wrote the story because, as Ann Patchett so succinctly said, “Sometimes if there’s a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.”

LEC: What kind of research did you do to bring the story to life?

GG: I’d say there were three sets of research – historical, sensory, and emotional. I found the history about Stalin in many excellent and recent books.  An important connection was Don Miller, a retired pastor, who has not only done much research, but continues to support the widows and the needy in the former Volhynian villages. He’s just finished building a widows’ home in one of the villages –with modern conveniences like washing machines and flush toilets.

The sensory detail was a serendipitous gift.  I already had a finished manuscript (ha!) when I had the opportunity to visit my mom’s home village and area.  Walking in the same fields as my mom and grandfather did 75 years ago was incredible, and reading once top-secret files in the former KGB archives was surreal. Then I went back to the manuscript and added the sensory details like they were spices. I hope they enrich the story. For example, if I hadn’t gone there, I’d never have heard the cuckoo call.

The emotional research was the most natural, but also the most difficult – especially after my editor suggested I re-write the book in the first person. I’d written it as a “once upon a time in a faraway place” kind of story. Now it became much more real, and at first I resisted. But once I got started it felt right.  I’d soaked up a lot of the pain just by being mom’s daughter. But I continued to do a lot of listening for clues about her mental state. She’d reveal important details at the most unexpected times – for example – about the gold teeth being forcefully removed from her mother after her death (Chapter 15). This incident just fell out at random when I told her I’d just broken a molar.  Also, my own children helped me connect with the vulnerabilities and emotions of growing up. When I wrote the book, my youngest daughter was the same age as my mom would have been in 1930.

Oh, and I got to research cold weather just doing my day-job as a letter carrier in Winnipeg. I actually had to keep this job a secret from my mom for several years because she said she didn’t immigrate to Canada so that her daughter could freeze in the Siberia-like weather. I still have to constantly remind her that I have enough food to eat, proper clothes to wear, and a warm home to return to.

LEC: How does research done online and in libraries compare to actually visiting the setting of your book?

GG: I think you need the book/online knowledge to appreciate the physical setting.  They go hand in hand. But talking to real people is the best. Looking into faces rather pages is so illuminating.

LEC: On your website there's a photo of you speaking to the oldest woman in Federofka.  You gave her $40 for helping with your research, and she was happy because she could now afford a coffin.  How did you feel at that moment?

GG: Awful. That old woman doesn’t (she’s still alive, I hear) want her death to be a burden on her family. There’s much poverty, illness and helplessness - it’s very sad. And yet, there’s pride, too. One woman showed me some drawings her granddaughter had colored. And some homes, where illness and despair haven’t taken over, are painted in beautiful, vivid colors, with lots of flowers.

LEC: What was it like to see the ongoing consequences of the events in The Kulak's Daughter?

GG: I feel strong anger when I think that even today there’s nothing being done to reconcile past wrongs. Alcoholism and corruption is crippling the former Soviet states. Russia wants to repress the past. In Ukraine the government has just passed a legal resolution making Stalin criminally responsible for the 1932/3 famine. This is a huge step forward. Will Russia move this way, too? Memorial is a Russian society dedicated to remembering the human rights abuses of the past – but it struggles for funding and support.

LEC: What can you tell us about your work-in-progress, East Prussian Princess?

GG: East Prussian Princess starts where The Kulak’s Daughter ends – after Siberian exile. But it’s a very different kind of story.  The Kulak’s Daughter was about the big bully – Stalin and his communist regime. In the sequel Olga escapes Russia and heads to extended family in East Prussia. But instead of being nurtured and loved, she is bullied by the very people who should be caring for her. Again, this is based on my mom’s life. I’m interested in how personality is formed.  The historical setting includes the Holodomor (man-made famine of 1932/3) in her old home country and the rise of Hitler in her new home. So it’s a book about two worlds and about the transition from childhood to adulthood.

LEC: Thank you so much for sharing this journey with us.  I look forward to reading East Prussian Princess.

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Teachers' supplements for The Kulak's Daughter are available at www.gabrielegoldstone.com.   For further reading, Gabe recommends:

Koba the Dread by Martin Amis
The Whisperers by Orlando Figes
The Gulag by Anne Applebaum
The Unknown Gulag by Lynn Viola

Book Review: The Kulak's Daughter

Title: The Kulak's Daughter
Author: Gabriele Goldstone
Publisher: Blooming Tree Press
ISBN: 9781933831145

Book Source: review copy from author

Olga is the oldest daughter in a family of five children.  She loves her dog, and her youngest brother's tiny toes, and the earrings that mean she's growing up.  And she loves her father very much.

But her father is a kulak (a relatively well-off landowner), and he doesn't want to see his farm absorbed by a collective.  He's arrested for opposing Stalin's communism and carried away in the night.  And then Olga and her remaining family are evicted, exiled to a Siberian gulag for the crime of being class two kulaks.

This was a difficult book for me to read, because my own great-grandparents were German farmers living in Russia.  They immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century, but it was all too easy for me, reading Olga's story, to imagine what might have happened to them if they hadn't.  Olga's voice is so authentic and compelling, her experience so heartbreaking, that several times I found myself on the brink of tears.  The story is even more affecting because it's a true one.

Present tense is an unusual choice in a middle grade novel, but here it works beautifully.  Present tense allows Olga to narrate as it happens, rather than looking back.  This creates real uncertainty as to whether or not she'll survive, increasing the suspense.  I also loved the use of cuckoos as a metaphor - the comparison is not only totally appropriate, but appeals to the biologist side of my personality.

The Kulak's Daughter deals with big, sweeping, historically significant things - the kind of things we watch on the news, knowing they're happening to other people.  The book brings those characters to life - those ordinary, everyday people who experience history and live to bear witness.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of children's books about World War II and the Holocaust currently available.  I don't mean to imply this is inappropriate, as these events demand remembrance.  But there are a lot of other historical periods, equally worthy of attention, that seem to be comparatively neglected.  The Kulak's Daughter is the first children's book I've encountered about Stalinist Russia.  Because the experiences of the kulaks were so similar to those of the Jews, I'd recommend this book to kids interested in World War II, and I'd love to see it used in Social Studies classrooms.

A final note about the cover art.  The photos on the jacket are of Goldstone's mother and her family - the family that inspired the book.  I think this is a lovely and poignant touch.   I sincerely hope booksellers and librarians will discover The Kulak's Daughter and convince kids to give it a chance.

It's worth it.

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For more about Gabriele Goldstone and The Kulak's Daughter, please visit her blog and website.

Introducing the World: Nonfiction For Children

For those of my readers located in the Edmonton area, I'm teaching a class on writing nonfiction for kids at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension.  The course is eight Wednesday evenings, Feb 3 to Mar 24, and costs $275.  The catalogue number is 3783 and description is below.  Registration information can be found at the Faculty of Extension website.

Most writers who dream of publishing for children envision short stories, picture books or novels: few realize that the market for children's nonfiction is both larger and comparatively underserved. We will discuss idea sources, research techniques, and structure and organization of powerful nonfiction for children. We'll talk about revision strategies for transforming first drafts into saleable pieces. Learn how to approach editors, and how to analyze and select appropriate markets for your work. Come prepared with an article idea or be inspired during the first class. Throughout the course you'll develop an article with instructor feedback and learn about magazines that might just be interested in publishing your work.

Hope to see some of you there!

Book Review: The Snow Show

Title: The Snow Show
Author: Carolyn Fisher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780152060190

Book Source: Review copy from author

As much as I love writing stories for young readers, for me, nonfiction often feels easier.  There's no invention required, no world-building, no precarious melding of imagination with logic and consistency.  With nonfiction, the information is out there, ready to be packaged and presented.  But there's a catch - how can a writer make a true subject interesting to children?  How can a writer present information in a way that's fun, intriguing, and doesn't feel like a school-room lecture?  This is a nonfiction writer's challenge.

Carolyn Fisher's The Snow Show meets this challenge with aplomb.

The book's topic is the formation of snow, from evaporation to deposition to back-yard snowmen.  Each step in the process is presented simply and chronologically.  Fisher also defines water's phase changes, describes types of snowflakes and their origins, and introduces people who expanded our knowledge of snow.  Information is presented in digestible pieces, using a format that's very visually accessible.  I particularly like the informal graph plotting snowflake shapes against water vapor and temperature.

The true virtue of the book, however, isn't the information but Fisher's approach.  The Snow Show is a show - a cooking show, to be precise.  Chef Kelvin is a snowman, and his sous-chefs are Snow White and Jack Frost.  Snow formation is presented as a recipe, complete with ingredients and kitchen tools like spoons, refrigerators, and aprons.  The show's audience comments and applauds on cue, and the show's crew make cameo appearances: Fisher is depicted as the show's producer.  In keeping with this Food Network approach, The Snow Show includes a commercial break and deleted scenes, including further reading, bloopers, and a yummy-sounding recipe for Polar Pops.

As I've mentioned before, illustration is not my area of expertise.  So I'll refer to a New York Times review by Paul O. Zelinsky, who said, "[The Snow Show is] one of the most gloriously exuberant, inventive displays of computer-­created art that I have seen in a picture book."  To my eyes, the pictures have a softness reminiscent of the subject itself, and I love that the text of the book is part of the illustrations themselves.

The Snow Show is a fun, engaging, informative book that would make a useful addition to school libraries and classrooms.  As a bonus for teachers, or snow fans in general, Fisher provides a free activity guide on her website.

For more information about Carolyn Fisher and her books, please visit her website.

Reading Challenge Begins!

It's the first day of 2010, and I declare the YA Reading Challenge officially begun.  If you missed my original post, the reading schedule is also shown in the sidebar.

Unfortunately I planned poorly and started reading George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones three days ago.  I'm on page 212 of 801, and thus will not be starting Emily of New Moon until next week.  In the meantime, Happy New Year and happy reading!