The Amazing Harry Kellar -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."  ~ G. K. Chesterton ~

A gift for my writer friends:

 Here are a couple of links I think you will find valuable.

Kristen Lamb’s blog is always worth checking out. She is a very funny lady. This post is on Social Media: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/3-social-media-myths-that-can-cripple-our-author-platform/

Good post on whether to write a stand alone book vs. a series: http://jamigold.com/2012/11/series-vs-stand-alone-what-should-we-work-on-next/

For my fabulous giveaway, the winner is Janet Smart! (Cue the whistling and foot stomping please!) Congratulations, Janet. Please send me your snail mail address at rosihollinbeck (at) yahoo (dot) com. I will be sending you an autographed hard-cover copy of Tony Gold and the Secret Fortune. It is a most interesting read. I have another giveaway for today, so stay tuned.

A couple months ago, I reviewed a wonderful book for the Sacramento Book Review – the fascinating and beautiful book called The Amazing Harry Kellar – Great American Magician by Gail Jarrow. A couple of weeks after I had written and turned in the review, I went to Pennsylvania for a writer’s retreat with editor Carolyn Yoder, put on by the Highlights Foundation. Every retreat includes visiting authors, and while I was there, Gail Jarrow stopped by. She is a lovely and generous person, and she spent an evening with us talking about her writing process and chatting for a couple of hours. Go to her author page by clicking HERE. She has written several wonderful books. Below is my review just as it ran in the Sacramento Book Review. I gave the book five stars, and I wished I had more than five to give.

When children are assigned biographies for their literature classes, this is the one they will all fight for in the library. In fact, children of all ages, from eight to eighty, will love this fascinating story of Harry Kellar, arguably the greatest magician America has ever produced. This is also a story of great perseverance and focus. Harry Kellar was on his own by the time he was eleven years old. After seeing his first magic show, he became fascinated. When Harry found out the magician he had seen – the Fakir of Ava – was running an ad for an assistant, Harry made his way to Buffalo, New York, to apply for the job. He got the job and was on his way. He traveled the world, learning from the best magicians, figuring out or buying the very best illusions and tricks, and learning how to run the business of being a magician. It wasn’t long before he was one of the most famous magicians, not just in America, but in the world.

“In this illusion, Kellar sat on a chair in the middle of the stage. While the audience watched – some horrified – he lifted his head from his body. As his head floated away, it smiled and nodded. Then it disappeared.”

This amazing book is also one of the most beautiful biographies ever printed. Wonderful photographs and the lush posters Harry Kellar created for his shows support the story.

Gail Jarrow

You might win a hard-cover copy of this gorgeous book. I will put your name in my proverbial hat. Link this post on your blog or Facebook or Tweet about it, let me know, and your name will be entered twice.

For more Marvelous Middle Grade Monday books, See Shannon Messenger's blog by clicking HERE.

On the book giveaway, this is for U.S. only. Sorry, but it would be too expensive for me to send books out of the country. But please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.           

Invest in Yourself. You're Worth It!

Thought for the day: The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile. ~ Robert Cormier

My daughter Maggie sent the following link. It certainly is food for thought. Don’t be put off by the fact it starts out talking about music. It is really for all kinds of artists – like writers! http://puttylike.com/starving-artist-meet-web-2-0/ Just thought you might find it interesting.

A couple weeks ago I announced Megan had won an autographed copy of no-name baby by the incomparable Nancy Bo Flood. Megan, I’ve tried to contact you three times and haven’t heard back. Please contact me so I can send you the book. Readers, if I don’t hear from Megan by the next blog post, I will draw a new name from those who commented on that post. I also have winners to announce from my last blog post. Jennifer Rumberger was the first to have her name drawn, so she will be receiving The Bell Bandit, and Barbara Watson’s name was also drawn, so she will get a copy of The Secret Tree. Congratulations!!!

When I retired a few years ago, my good friend Jan Paluch, who had listened to me talk about how I wanted to get serious about my writing, sent me a brochure for the Sacramento Writer’s Conference. I plunked down some money and spent a couple of days rubbing elbows with the likes of Erin Dealy and Patti Newman, and John Lescroart.(Yes, THAT John Lescroat!) I met some other newbies and learned a great deal. Out of that experience came my first critique group. I was on my way. I went to the conference again the next year, but it was pretty repetitious, so I started looking around for other ways to further my writing. I took the ICL course and went to workshops and conferences and joined SCBWI. I got better and better at my craft. Every year I invest in myself. I find the best workshops and conferences I can and spend the time and money to make myself a more accomplished writer.

Peggy Thomas

Last week I was in Pennsylvania at a Highlights Founders Workshop. This was my fifth time going to Boyds Mills to learn from the best, and it is paying off in many ways. I have sold some work in the last couple of years. No books yet, but YET is the operative word for me. I know that I will sell some of my books. And that is happening because I continue to invest in myself.

Last week’s workshop was Whole Narrative Non-Fiction. I spent a week with Peggy Thomas, Elizabeth Partridge, Susan Bartoletti, CarolynYoder, Nancy Bo Flood, Barbara Krasner and a wonderful group of attendees. Look at the names on that faculty list! Imagine just being in their presence for a week! I’ll bet between them they have close to a hundred books published. Amazing. We had hours of workshop time every day as well as hours of quiet writing time. In addition, we had all our meals together as well as cocktail time. (You’ve got to love the cocktail hour at Boyds Mills.) In addition, we had an individual talk from most faculty members sharing how the writing process works for each of them.

Nancy Bo Flood

This is a new workshop for the Highlights people and it wasn’t perfect, but they listen well and I’m confident the next time it occurs it will be close to perfect. But I came away from that week with a non-fiction book manuscript I believe will be ready for submission very, very soon. It’s miles better than it was when I showed up. I had lots of help from almost all the faculty. (I didn’t happen to get much time with one faculty member, but had good amounts of time with everyone else.) Nancy Bo Flood also spent a lot of time with me on a poetry project I’m working on. She has such great expertise in that area and was happy to share her time and knowledge with me. I think that project is now almost ready to submit. (Thanks, Nancy!!) I made the comment while at the workshop that if I didn’t have grandchildren in California and if money were no object, I would go to all the workshops Highlights offers. I’m not kidding. They are that good. Check out their offerings HERE.

I received an email recently from Nancy Sondel, founding director of the Pacific Coast Children’s Writers Workshop.  She is contacting people for her Fall 2012 workshop and said she hoped I could join them. I wish I could afford to go, but I just came back from a pretty expensive workshop and am already committed to another later this year. Maybe next year I’ll return to the PCCWW. I went to one a few years ago, and it was a great experience. There are different levels you can sign up for including one which includes a full-novel critique from one of the faculty. This year’s faculty includes editor Simon Boughton (senior VP and publisher; Roaring Brook Press and Farrar, Straus & Giroux), agent Emily Sylvan Kim (president, Prospect Agency), and agent Joe Monti (Barry Goldblatt Literary). WOW! For more information, check out the site HERE.  I really think this is worth your time to explore. I learned so much when I attended and, again, had a great deal of time with wonderful faculty members.

Not all writers’ workshops are as good as these are. One year I attended one of the Big Sur Writers’ Workshop. They are pretty popular. After all, it is Big Sur. They do them twice each year. These workshops are put on by a literary agency, are expensive, and don’t return much on your investment, in my humble opinion. Others may have a different view.

I make sure I attend at least a couple of conferences each year and go to a couple of workshops or retreats as well. I really like the one-day local SCBWI conferences and workshops. They are inexpensive and they seem to draw excellent faculty. And the SCBWI regional people work really, really hard to put on great events. I’ve never been disappointed. Ask around before you make any decisions. Talk to all your writer friends and see what experiences others have had. Invest in yourself, but invest wisely.

My next post will be back to some book reviews and probably some giveaways, so please tune in. And please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.

Talk About Language! A Review of Healing Waters: A Hawaiian Story by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

If you are reading this in your email, don’t forget to click on the headline to go to my blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. Oh, and I love comments. Spurring me on this week is the following quote.

"Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box." ~ Italian Proverb

For my writer friends, here is a link to check out that might help you with writer’s block – something I’ve been dealing with lately:

http://childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/2011/07/brainstorming-lists-to-beat-back.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fkidlit+%28Adventures+in+Children%27s+Publishing%29  I’m trying to read my way out of my writer’s block, so you will be getting some reviews here, a win for you and me.

Now, to announce the winner of the copy of The Summer ofHammers and Angels, (insert drumroll here) – Michelle Fayard! It will go out in the mail very soon. Congratulations, Michelle.

When I first began this blog back in January, I wrote a post about True Grit. I was fascinated with the language Charles Portis used for the dialogue in that book. It really set the reader in the time and place of the book. If you missed that review or would like to revisit it, click HERE.

Joyce Moyer Hostetter

In August, I attended a wonderful writer’s retreat run by the Highlights Foundation and led by the wonderful editor Carolyn Yoder. You can read about that, if you like, by clicking HERE. One of the special treats that comes with attending a workshop or retreat at Highlights run by Carolyn is that you will have some visiting authors. We had two this year: Kate Messner and Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Stay tuned because I’ll be writing about Kate Messner’s sweet books in a future blog, but today I want to write about Joyce Moyer Hostetter’s incredible book, HealingWaters: A Hawaiian Story. Now I’m still having trouble with my Amazon link, so clicking on the cover of the book won’t do you any good, but if you click on the title, it will link you to Amazon where you can order the book.

Joyce and her charming husband, Chuck, had a nice long visit with us, and Joyce talked about writing, researching, and the writer’s life in general. It was a lovely time. Then, as icing on the cake, Joyce gave each of us an autographed copy of her new book, HealingWaters: A Hawaiian Story. I finally found time last week, as I fought my way through a terrible flu, to read it. I have to admit, it was hard to feel sorry for my coughing, stuffy self reading this amazing story of a young boy with leprosy.

I didn’t know much about leprosy before reading this book, just a kind of horrific idea about a disease that caused body parts to fall away. I knew there had been leper colonies, but never really thought about what that meant.

Pia is quite young at the beginning of the story, and the story seems to be about his deep friendship with an older boy, Kamaka, a brother/father figure to him, and the wonderful life Pia has with his warm, extended family. A picture is drawn of typical family life among native Hawaiians. But when Pia is diagnosed with leprosy at age thirteen, Kamaka disappears from his life. No one seems to know why Kamaka refuses to see him. Shortly Pia is wrenched from his mother and little sister and sent to the leper colony on the island of Moloka‘i.

On Moloka‘i, Pia finds conditions harsh beyond belief. No one is there to protect the young from predatory people, there is no hospital or even housing, food is scarce, clothing non-existent. Pia is alone – terribly and completely alone. After living like a wild animal for some time, in order to survive, he finally becomes the slave of a man, Boki, who takes care of himself by stealing from and intimidating others. Pia becomes hardened by this life. One day, Pia faces Tamaka again when Tamaka arrives on the island with his wife. His wife, Malia, has leprosy and Tamaka found a way to come along to care for her. Malia and ultimately Tamaka force Pia to examine his life and work through his problems, becoming emotionally whole again. It is a remarkable coming-of-age story of friendship and love and persistence. And let me underline “love” in that. It demonstrates many kinds of love very authentically. You will care deeply about these characters and be moved by this story.

In this heartbreaking first-person account, Pia tells his sad tale in a most compelling voice. It’s that voice and Joyce’s use of language to create it that captured my interest from a writer’s point of view. From the first page, I heard Pia’s voice in my head as clearly as if he sat next to me and told me his story. I thought a lot about how she managed to do this, and it made me think back to Charles Portis’s wonderful book. There are some distinct commonalities. Pia speaks in a rather formal way without the use of many contractions or any slang at all. There are occasional Hawaiian words dropped into Pia’s thoughts, and they remind us that Pia did not grow up speaking English.

“Again and again I hit the man who had entrapped me. I did not think of the moment that I realized I was trapped. I did not think about the hard work I’d done for the last four years, or the cruelties that Boki had inflicted on me. I did not think at all. I simply released the anger that had collected. Anger toward Boki, toward Kamaka, and even toward God.”

It doesn’t quite trip off his tongue, and I felt sometimes as if I were listening to some of my old students who learned English as a second language. And yet, it is so subtle that I really had to study the writing to come to this conclusion. It is absolutely consistent through the book and takes you directly to the time and place of this incredible story.

When you read HealingWaters: A Hawaiian Story, you will understand the quote at the beginning of this post. Let me know if you get the connection.

Also, things will be a little different here on my blog for the next three weeks. We will be traveling around Europe, and I will be blogging about that. Of course, I might get a book or two read on the planes, so I might write about that as well. And I have another author interview coming up, so I will try to post that as well. Stop by. Should be some fun stuff here.

A Magical Highlights Retreat

It has been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been away at a writer’s retreat and have been far too busy to blog –in a good way.

First, some news – I want to announce I had a poem (one that I really think is a rhyming picture book) called The Monster Hairy Brown, chosen to be included in an anthology called Fifty Funny Poems for Children to be published in England next year. I guess that will make me an internationally published author!

Last week, I flew to New York and was picked up at the airport by a driver for Highlights Magazine, the wonderful Pam Box, and whisked away to Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania, to the original homestead of the founders of the magazine. This is a magical place. I have attended two workshops and two writer’s retreats there. You can read about one of the workshops by clicking here. I always make great progress in my writing and learn a great deal when there. This time I spent a week with six other writers and Carolyn Yoder, editor and teacher extraordinaire. Five of us were in a similar retreat last year and all intend to be in another such next summer. In fact, I think all are already signed up. I know I am.

Each of us had our own little cabin with good work space and lots of quiet time. The people from the Highlights Foundation treat us like royalty. They pick us up when we arrive from whatever airport we get to. If you come from the west coast as I do, they are happy to have you come in a day early and, if necessary, leave a day late. No extra charge. The meals are spectacular – always made with fresh, local ingredients and great imagination. When I say great food, I’m not foolin’. Even the oatmeal is the best I’ve ever had!

Each day we came together for meals and cocktails. We each had one-on-one time with Carolyn every day but one as well. No kidding! Every day. Everyone came with work in progress and many of us started new projects while we were there. It was such a collaborative effort. Supper every evening was followed by a critique session. When we read our latest version or chapter or story, we received lots of kudos and helpful suggestions. Everyone there was a published author – some more than others – trying to improve their craft.

I spent most of my time working on two projects – my middle-grade historical novel, The Incredible Journey of Freddy J. and an article for possible submission to Highlights called The Princess Who Wouldn’t Take “No”. I made a LOT of progress on my novel and…Tah Tah Ta Dah…Carolyn took my article to Highlights for submission. That means she liked it and I’m over a big hurdle with it. Fingers crossed!! She also mentioned to someone that I had sold my article on FDR to Highlights! She submitted that last year, then asked for a rewrite. I think there is still one more person who has to give it the thumbs up, but it is looking very good for both articles.

I also started a new picture book. It’s an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile and have completed some research , but had kind of gotten stuck. Besides getting great help from Carolyn, one of the attendees was particularly helpful to me. Lois Huey, an archaeologist and writer with lots of notches on her writing belt and who was at the retreat last year, was someone willing to share her knowledge and expertise and even write to experts she knew to help me with that project. She is still sending me info by email (as well as a great cookie recipe!). She also took extra time to proof some work for me and offered great suggestions. And my picture book is coming along, largely thanks to her and Carolyn.

One of the other attendees, Nicole Groeneweg, also an accomplished and many-times published writer working on an amazing book about Eisenhower, was so generous with her time helping me prepare for some submissions – proofing and offering excellent suggestions. When I didn’t have a return envelope with me (What was I thinking?), she interrupted her writing to take me to town and buy what I needed. Wow. And you heard me right. Submissions – plural. That poem the Brits are publishing next year, that I always thought of as a rhyming picture book, The Monster Hairy Brown, has now been submitted to Boyds Mills Press as a picture book with Carolyn’s approval, which, I am sure, carries some serious weight. I know that it will at least get a close reading, and I can’t ask for more than that.

I’d like to give a shout out to the other attendees – Selene Castrovilla, Tracy Helixon, Norma Lewis, and Lisa Idzikowski. All were generous with their time and ideas. In addition to learning more about my own writing, I learned a lot about the Revolutionary War thanks to Selene (Check out her many books – great stuff!), Air Force One and the Kennedy assassination thanks to Tracy, life in 19^th century Alaska from Norma, and sooooo much about Thomas Jefferson from Lisa.  

We had visits from editors from the press and from the magazines, as well as the much-published author Kate Messner who brought each of us three of her books and graciously signed them for us. Watch for reviews of those books here in the coming weeks.

Yes, it was another magical week at Boyds Mills. Unfortunately, my trip home wasn’t quite so magical. My left knee dislocated during my charge through Kennedy Airport, and I am still nursing that. The pain is unbelievable, especially after physical therapy or my exercises. Ice is my new best friend. But this too shall pass and I will be left with the memories of my magical time at the retreat and my much bolstered writing career!

 If you are reading this in your email, don’t forget to click on the headline to go to my blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. And please leave a comment. I love to hear from you.