I only understand what I am ready to hear. My readiness is the contingency, always.

Here’s a list of three things I’ve learned from editors. I rediscovered them in a notebook in which I’d scribbled notes during lectures at the July 2016 residency at VCFA.

My friend and writer colleague Caroline Starr Rose suggested I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders (reflections on stories he’s lovingly taught for two decades at Syracuse). Also Saunders is the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a storytelling feat in its own right.

Caroline sent along a snippet of text from A Swim…:

The closest thing to a method I have to offer is this: go forth and do what you please.The closest thing to a method I have to offer is this: go forth and do what you please.

Indian Shoes by Cynthia Leitich Smith was one of the books I used to make my students read to get a feel for a story that was about more than one kid. A story, in fact, that was more than one story. It was a set of interlinked tales about family and community and connections and a whole way of being in the world. So, when I found out that Ray Halfmoon and Grampa were going to make a grand return in this new book, I thought I knew where I was going. I should have known better.

On a Wing and a Tear delivers the same family warmth and loving humor that is so endearing in Indian Shoes but oh, my! This is a book with layers—history, adventure, humor, and perhaps the most marvelous of all, there's a whole wonderful animal storyline. This middle grade novel is packed with satisfying familiarity and delightful surprises. I asked Cyn to tell me more.

The subtitle of Kenneth Baker’s gorgeously illustrated history of book burning across histories and geographies carries a lyrical note of hope:

How flames fail to destroy the written word.

Breathe that in. I hope it’s true.

In our age of division and conflict, in a time when so many people around the world are retreating into their own little corners of religion and ethnicity and ideology, I read this book looking for the long view.

With the election of 47 as United States President in the rear-view mirror and the reality of a clownish, arbitrary, self-obsessed administration playing out in the present moment, you wouldn’t think there’d be any comfort to be gleaned from dystopian fiction. Yet what did I find myself downloading in audiobook format? Children of Men by P.D. James. It’s set in an England that is rather quaintly dated 2021, which must have seemed far away in 1992 but now feels counterintuitive. But honestly, that was the only point at which I had to work to suspend disbelief.

I smiled my way through Wicked Marigold, a middle grade novel by Caroline Carlson. In honor of Tell a Fairytale Day (February 26) I asked Caroline to tell me more about her experience writing this romp of a fractured fairytale. Here is her reply:

Old Narratives, New Worlds: Some thoughts on the long tradition of fracturing fairy tales

[Posted by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk]

Kim Rogers (Wichita and Affiliated Tribes) comes from a military family. Many of her family members served  at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, named for Clarence Tinker, the first Native American Major General in the US Military, and the subject of Kim’s recent picture book biography I Am Osage.

Finding Clarence’s story was a surprise to Kim–she stumbled across a record of him in the Oklahoma Historical Society while researching something else entirely–and the process of writing the biography was likewise unexpected.

“The enforcers of law in Canada and the United States sometimes coated their bullets in anti-coagulant. Not for when they shot men. For when they shot dragons.”

Set in the Pacific Northwest, Ness’s YA novel Burn takes readers back and forth across the border between countries. But it also crosses the borders between worlds—parallel universes of possibilities playing out in the lives of the characters.

You know you’ve heard this quip before: “This Woman’s Place is in the House — The House of Representatives.” But do you know who said it? Bella Abzug (1920-1998) was a lawyer, politician, social activist, and pioneer in women’s rights. Here’s Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug, a loving picture book portrait by Sarah Aronson, illustrated by Andrea D’Aquino. I asked Sarah to tell me more about the making of this book.

I was privileged to read Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson poem by poem, as she wrote it. A few months earlier, I’d been delighted to read Wings to Soar by Tina Athaide.

Those two verse novels spoke to each other, with their musical threads, their self-aware young characters, and the histories unfurling in and around those characters’ families. So I knew I wanted these writers to talk to each other, and to me, about their books.