SO I'M FIFTY: WW2

Date Published: January 8, 2013

ISBN: 0375938915

Genre: Historical Fiction
Themes: Family, home, friendship, food, wartime

About The Book: It's 1944, W.W. II is raging. Jayna's big brother Rob is her only family. When Rob is called to duty on a destroyer, Jayna is left in their small town in upstate New York with their cranky landlady. But right before he leaves, Rob tells Jayna a secret: they may have a grandmother in Brooklyn. Rob found a little blue recipe book with her name and an address for a bakery. When Jayna learns that Rob is missing in action, she's devastated. Along with her turtle Theresa, the recipe book, and an encouraging, ghostly voice as her guide, Jayna sets out for Brooklyn in hopes of finding the family she so desperately needs.
First Line: Just a couple of dreams?

One Great Line: You can't help but love the simple recipes that Jayna shares throughout the book. Here's my favorite.

What Others Are Saying: "Unfortunately, the cover image of a girl with a suitcase walking by brownstone houses won't entice readers, though the story itself is riveting. While the outcome is foreseeable, Jayna's journey is a memorable one." —Kirkus Starred Reviews

"Not full of difficult vocabulary, the book is a gem of character development. Perfect to use when teaching third through fifth graders about character traits. All the characters in the book have unique characters traits that are created and solidified during the course of the book.
This would be a wonderful read aloud or a great book for small group discussion. Great choice for a classroom teacher or a young book group." —The Examiner

Some Other Bloggers Weigh In:

Jen Robinson's Book Page

The Children's War
Book Mama

My Analysis:
1. POV is consistently first person through Jayna's perspective and
2. 160 pages
3. The Hook: Giff uses an interesting introduction labeled "Afterward" where Jayna actually tempts the reader: "If you don't believe in ghosts or voices that c ome out of almost nowhere, there's probably no sense in reading what I have to say." What middle grader could resist some reverse psychology?
4. Inciting event: Rob leaves to fight in the war.
5. Plot and Pace: The character driven plot had several twists and lots of tension on every page.
6. Voice: It was easy to submerge myself into Jayna's world because her voice was believable and very middle grade.

What I Thought Overall: I really enjoyed Jayna's journey to find home. The universal themes of family and self discovery that led her and then the mysterious ghost all kept me reading. Add to that the historical setting, Brooklyn, the food and the relationships together wrapped me in a cozy blanket during this quick read. Amazing how much happened in only 160 short pages.

About The Author:
Patricia Reilly Giff
Website
Blog (Hasn't been updated since 6/11)
Interview

Who: "In Brooklyn, there's a garden so small I could almost put my arms around it: Emily's garden. I stop to look at it whenever I go back. I walk from there along the streets my parents and grandparents must have walked when they were young. I keep looking up because in front of me is the most beautiful bridge in the world.

"Ah, that Brooklyn Bridge. It's so delicate, so lovely. It's hard to believe that its hundredth birthday was a long time ago. It's hard to believe that men scrambled deep under the East River in caissons to begin that bridge, that they hung in chairs high overhead to finish it.

"I wrote Water Street because I love Brooklyn and that bridge, and because a woman named Emily finished the bridge during a time when women stayed home. But more, I wrote it because the Mallon family is alive to me: Nory and Sean, Bird, and Thomas Neary, Bird's friend. The love they have for each other is like the love I find every day in my own family. And they remind me of what it must have been like to live in Brooklyn in those long ago days when the bridge was being built.

"I hope you enjoy the story of these people. Maybe you'll go to Brooklyn as I do, and see Emily's garden and that beautiful bridge." —Patricia Reilly Giff

"I want the children to bubble up with laughter, or to cry over my books. I want to picture them under a cherry tree or at the library with my book in their hands. But more, I want to see them reading in the classroom. I want to see children in solitude at their desks, reading, absorbing, lost in a book."—Giff

If you haven't read any of Giff's other books here's a great list to check out. Talk about a prolific writer! She's received multiple honors for several of her books: The Newbery Honor for Pictures of Hollis Woods and Lily's Crossing, which is also a Boston Globe—Horn Book Honor Book. Nory Ryan's Song was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and an ALA Notable Book.

Next week: Newbery Medal Winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

The list of MMGM Reviewers has really grown, be sure to stop by some of the others. You can find them in my sidebar!!

We are very privileged to have Carol Fisher Saller, author of Eddie's War and the Subversive Copy Editor with us today.
You can see my review of Eddie's War here.
Carol has offered a signed copy to one lucky commenter!

So let's get started...

1) After spending many years in academe what made you decide to write a book for children?

Actually, although Eddie’s War is my first children’s novel, I wrote several books for younger children before I started working in academe. In the early 1990s when my children were small, we read a lot of children’s books, like Beverly Cleary’s books about Ramona and Beezus, and the Little House books, and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series, and Jack Prelutsky’s poetry collections. Not to mention a million picture books. It made me want to try writing them myself.

2) Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became a writer.

I grew up unremarkably in Peoria, Illinois, and like all writers I must have begun writing as a wee tot, since I don’t seem to remember the process.

3) What made you decide to use verse to tell Eddie's story?
Truly, I never set out to write in verse, nor would I call it that (although you aren’t the first reviewer to describe it that way). I would call it “prose chopped into short lines.” Early on, a critiquer at a conference told me the short lines were a bad idea, so I rewrote them into paragraphs, but the short lines continued to assert themselves and I finally stopped fighting them. I like the way they slow the reader down. They also allow a bit of stream-of-consciousness when I don’t want to be explicit. And of course, without them, the book would only be about 50 pages long.

ORDER HERE

4) Tell us about your process.
It’s kind of a mess. I don’t follow any of the usual advice (write every day, keep a notebook, etc.). When I’m writing, I try to give it 20 or 30 minutes when I first get up in the morning, before I go to the office. Writing Eddie took me something like six years, and it’s a really short book! I’m very slow, partly because I’m compulsive self-editor. I love revising so much that I do it continuously as I write. I spend much more time rewriting and honing than drafting. It’s so much more enjoyable and rewarding.

5) I understand the inspiration for Eddie's War came from the journal of your father. Tell us what other research you did and it's role in the creation of the story.

The research was endless, and unlike many writers of historical fiction, I did not love it! It was like homework. But I took my responsibility seriously to get things right, and since I’ve spent my whole adult life copyediting scholarly research, I know how to find facts and document them. I read old newspapers on microfilm; I read books written by WWII bomber pilots; I looked at memoirs from the 1930s and 1940s. I read about farm machinery, typewriters, sparrows, horseshoeing. I listened to Churchill’s war speeches and bought a CD full of radio news programs from the war. (You should listen sometime to Edward R. Murrow reporting from London during the Blitz!) I looked at several books about the Roma in Poland and read whatever I could find online. And my father’s diary was a gold mine of period detail. If I needed Eddie to be doing some authentic-sounding farm chore in June 1943, all I had to do was look in the diary and take my pick. I used the names of books my dad was reading, movies he saw, radio shows.

Although the usual sequence is that a writer needs to confirm a fact and looks it up, your question reveals that you know it sometimes works the other way around: you look something up, and what you discover suggests a new twist. For instance, Jozef was a minor character before I read about the Polish Roma, after which he seemed so much more important as a symbol of the war and its atrocities.

4) You stated that revision is your favorite part of the process, even to the exclusion of drafting. You've also written an important book The Subversive Copy Editor. Why did you feel compelled to write this?

For many years, as part of my job at the University of Chicago Press, I had been reading all the e-mails sent to The Chicago Manual of Style, and so many were from writers and editors who were asking for proof that they were right about something so they could win an argument with someone. I began to see how much needless trouble and angst there was in the editing process, writer versus editor. I also saw how many educated people felt superior when they were actually just clinging to fake or antiquated rules (like not splitting an infinitive, or not using the passive). I wanted to write a book that would give both parties a smack and ask them to update their knowledge, put egos aside, and cooperate in service of the reader.

7) The underlying theme seems to be about keeping the experience of the reader at the forefront of the editing process. Why is this especially important now with the digital evolution of publishing?

Because online publishing is not always run by professional editors, there’s an increased likelihood of errors and inconsistencies that both detract from the reader’s experience and damage the credibility of the writer and publisher. The idea that editorial quality matters to readers is widely accepted, but editing costs money, and low-budget publishers often decide it’s dispensable.

8) What does a typical writing day look like?

Unfortunately (fortunately?), I don’t have writing days. I have the day job, and I’m involved in a lot of other activities outside work, so I write in little bits and pieces. I’ve often thought that even if I were free to write all day, I’d probably find other things to do after a half hour.

9) Where is your favorite place to write?
In the sun, which is difficult on my high-glare laptop. I wonder if there’s some kind of gadget for that.

10) What did or do you find most challenging in creating the story and getting it published? What do you wish you would have known?
I got very discouraged at times, thinking that the whole thing was hopeless. My writing group and my editor, Stephen Roxburgh, kept telling me just to keep writing, and I wish I’d had more faith that it would actually lead to a finished book.

11) What is the best writing advice you've ever received?

Aside from “Just keep writing,” it would be “Only you can write your books.” I’m sorry I don’t remember where I heard it. It’s easy to get caught up in comparing myself to other, more celebrated writers. Or worrying about whether someone else is writing something similar, instead of remembering that what I do with a given idea is unique and valid, and that writing is not a competition. There’s room for many voices.

12) Are you working on a new project? Can you tell us about it?

I am! I’m still outlining, so nothing is set in stone, but I can at least say that it’s about a girl whose great-great-grandmother was hanged for murder. I want it to be a bit dark—a mystery—as the girl tries to track down a journal that will prove her ancestor’s innocence. It will be more YA than Eddie, and set in the present—although of course we’ll have to go back to 1935 when the hanging took place.

13) What advice would you give others who write for children?
Join SCBWI! That will give you all the advice you’ll ever need.

Thanks so much for coming by the blog! This has been great getting to know more about you and your work. Find more Carol here:

Website
Subversive Copy Editor Blog

And now for the giveaway...

Answer the following question in a comment and tweet about this post. Easy, right?

Question: According to Carol, what was the advice she wished she'd had more faith in?

Whoops, I forgot to put a deadline on this give away. Deadline for entry is March 31st and winner will be announced on April 1st.