Author Mary Cronk Farrell

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Unbroken: The Women's Story

5/2/2017

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PictureAuthor Kathryn Atwood
I am traveling this week, so I've invited Author Kathryn Atwood to tell you about her book Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater.

She shares the heartbreaking story of three women who, like Louis Zamperini, whose story is told in Unbroken, endured through hardship and torture to survive WWII.  Thank you, Kathryn. 

My personal images and interest in WWII—as well as a previous book I'd written--all focused on the European conflict. My Army Air Corps dad and his three brothers had all flown in the European Theater and while I was in high school The Hiding Place [the story of Corrie ten Boom] had come to theaters.


So the two basic images implanted in my mind regarding WWII—tall, dashing, Dutch-American flyboys and a middle-aged Dutch woman who defied the Nazis by hiding Jews—had, apart from Pearl Harbor, made me consider WWII as a primarily European conflict and had compartmentalized the war in my brain under the category of courage, not necessarily endurance.

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Reading the memoirs and biographies of the women featured in what would become Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater, I came to understand that endurance was precisely what the Pacific War had been for millions of people; not only for American troops fighting an enemy who refused to surrender, but for the civilians unfortunate enough to find themselves in Japanese-controlled territory.

Three women featured in my book perhaps fit more precisely into the Unbroken category because they, like Louis Zamperini, endured intentional physical torture. 

Elizabeth Choy, Sybil Kathigasu, and Claire Phillips all suffered at the hands of the Kempetai, the Japanese military police, who, like the German Gestapo, were tasked with weeding out resistance activities. 

PictureElizabeth Choy

Elizabeth Choy found herself in their hands inadvertently after she had unknowingly passed radio parts to Allied prisoners in Singapore. 

The Japanese were convinced she was part of a larger plot so to obtain the desired confession, they tortured her nearly to death. Deeply religious, she refused to lie, even to save her life. 

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​Sybil Kathigasu, on the other hand, was an active member of the Malayan resistance: she provided medical care to local guerilla fighters. 

She was caught and taken into Kempeitai custody where one officer named Eko Yoshimura took a special interest in breaking her. He nearly destroyed Kathigasu's body but her will remained intact and she never divulged the information Yoshimura sought. 

Claire Phillips, an American member of the Manila resistance, charmed and chatted up Japanese officers in her nightclub, gleaning precious tidbits of intel, then used her earnings to sneak food to starving American POWs.

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Claire Phillips
Claire was caught, interrogated, tortured, and starved by the Kempeitai for nearly nine months without betraying anyone.
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Conversion to Christianity saved Zamperini from his dark, downward spiral but not all American Pacific War POWs fared as well: they suffered far more PTS, alcoholism, premature death, suicide, and divorce in comparison with their counterparts released from German POW camps. 

I found a similar trend among the women whose stories I encountered while writing my book. Sybil Kathigasu died three years after the war from complications arising from her beatings. Claire Phillips died in 1960 from alcoholism-related meningitis.  
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All war creates suffering in the moment and in the aftermath. The Pacific War seemed to be a conflict in which this was intensely true for reasons I’m still sorting out. But whatever the reason, the people who stood up to Japanese fascism deserve respect and remembrance just as much as those who defied the Nazis. 

Louie Zamperini once dismissed his war hero status, claiming that mere survival does not make one a hero. Millions of his fans--myself included--profoundly disagree. Surviving the Pacific War was more than enough to earn the designation.


Thanks you, Kathryn. 
​Learn more about Author Kathryn Atwood and her books here...



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Unfinished Business!

4/17/2017

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Imagine devoting your entire adult life to a cause, living more than 90-years, and dying with unfinished business.

Alice Paul believed that men and women should be equal partners in society, and she was behind most 20th Century efforts for women's rights in the United States, including women's right to vote.


Now, close to 100 years after Alice Paul started the fight for an Equal Rights Amendment, women in the U.S. are still second class citizens under the law.   (See video below)
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In October 1917, Alice Paul and three other suffragists were arrested for protesting at the west gate of the White House. She did not go quietly, believing that equal rights for women would not be gained without extreme measures.

Confined behind bars, her only power was refusing to eat. She had resorted to hunger strikes before when arrested in England.


When the forcible feeding was ordered I was taken from my bed, carried to another room and forced into a chair, bound with sheets and sat upon bodily by a fat murderer, whose duty it was to keep me still. Then the prison doctor, assisted by two woman attendants, placed a rubber tube up my nostrils and pumped liquid food through it into the stomach. Twice a day for a month, from November 1 to December 1, this was done. ~Alice Paul Talks, Philadelphia Tribune, January 1910. 

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A new biography of Alice Paul brings the story of this less-well-known suffragist to teenagers in ALICE PAUL AND THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS.

Author Deborah Kops agreed to talk with me about Alice's passion and determination.

Deborah Kops: I am awed by Paul’s courage and her willingness to risk her life to help women win the vote. Her health was fragile, and she jeopardized it on a regular basis when she was young.

Paul went on her longest hunger strike, which lasted three weeks, in 1917, when she was in jail in Washington, D.C. (she went on three hunger strikes years before in the UK).

For most of that time, she was force fed, which is very painful. A hunger strike was her only means of fighting her imprisonment and reminding the public that women wanted the ballot.
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She and the other Woman’s Party members who went without food (more than twenty) got plenty of coverage in newspapers around the country, which embarrassed Woodrow Wilson. Less than two months after Paul’s release, Wilson finally announced his support for the woman suffrage amendment.
 

The amendment was ratified August 18, 1920.

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Above: Fellow Suffragists protesting Alice Paul's arrest and incarceration for picketing the White House. Photo courtesy of the Historic National Women's Party, Sewell-Belmont House and Museum, Washington D.C.
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Deborah, this book seems personal to you. (Author pictured below)

​I became a feminist during the women’s movement of the late sixties and early seventies, which historians call the second wave. And I assumed that the Equal Rights Amendment, which we were fighting for, was written in the sixties. I learned that the amendment was Alice Paul’s idea and that she wrote it in 1923!

​​​​​​​A century later, when Hillary Clinton made her acceptance speech as the first woman nominated by a major political party for the presidency, I was very touched to see her wearing white, the color that suffragists often wore beneath their sashes.

When I joined the Women’s March in Boston in January, I was very proud to wear a sash with the National Woman’s Party colors—purple, white, and gold—over my jacket.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​


Thank you for taking time for this interview, Deborah, and for writing about this courageous woman! 

You can see all of Deborah Kops books at her website here, including The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 which Kirkus Reviews calls A fascinating account of a truly bizarre disaster.

Back to the Equal Rights Amendment. If you know anyone living in the states colored yellow below...ask them if they know their state has not ratified the ERA.
Then check out the video below (it's less than two minutes long). Feel free to forward this newsletter. 
Thanks www.equalrightsamendment.org for the map.

Just three weeks ago Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the ERA (45 years to the day after Congress passed it).  This year ERA bills have been introduced in the legislatures of Arizona, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

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Thanks www.equalrightsamendment.org for the map.
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Free Book Giveaway to Celebrate                                   Women's History Month

3/10/2017

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What would you do for your principles?

Fannie Sellins went hungry and cold and she went to jail. She challenged powerful men and mighty corporations with nothing but her voice, and her ability to bring people together and inspire hope.

When gunmen threatened to kill her, she stood on the picket line strong as steel. For her principles, Fannie died with a bullet to the back. 

This astounding story has gone untold for generations. Enter now to win a free copy of ​Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman's Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
It brings me to tears every time I hear it. I am not kidding! Listen below. Utah Phillips called Anne, "The best labor singer in North America."
The Grand Prize includes the book, the CD, and then there's more!

If you're the grand prize winner, I'll visit your union meeting, book group, library, or classroom via Skype. I'll talk about my ten year research and obsession with Fannie Sellins, how I kept faith in my vision and how FANNIE NEVER FLINCHED came to be the beautiful book that it is!  Or, you pick a topic and we'll visit via Skype at a mutually agreeable time.  

​Enter as many times as you want and tell your friends! All prize drawing will occur on or before April 1, 2017.
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Imagine: A Teenage Girl goes to War to Impress Her Mom...and that's just the beginning

3/25/2016

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Two Women Revolutionized Science and Changed the World. 
Irene Curie--not Marie Curie, the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist you've heard about, but her teenage daughter. The story takes one twist after another, and here to tell it is Winifred Conklin author of the new book Radioactive!  

Seventeen-year-old Irene Curie volunteered to serve in World War I as an x-ray technician. She used portable x-rays to help surgeons identify shrapnel and perform operations near the battlefield.
                         
​Below Irene Curie on a mobile x-ray unit in 1916.
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Her mother had developed the military x-ray program. Marie wanted to win her mother’s respect, and, frankly, she wanted to spend some time with her mom.  This combination of brilliant scientist and vulnerable teen made her an irresistible subject to me.
PictureLise Meitner in the laboratory (1913).
The Germans were using x-ray technology, too. Lise Meitner, an Austrian who had been working in Berlin when the war began, performed the same work as Irene. She was an x-ray technician on the German side of WWI. 

Both Curie and Meitner would prove to be among the most accomplished female scientists of the 20th century.  These women were among a handful of physicists worldwide who were working on better understanding atomic structure.

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Curie had been born into the “First Family of Science” (both of her parents had won Nobel Prizes), But Meitner had been turned away from higher education programs because she was a woman.  


She finally had a chance to study physics at the University of Vienna in 1901, but she repeatedly came up against obstacles.

She was not paid in the early years of her research program, and she had to set up her own laboratory in the basement of the science building because she was not allowed to work in the main lab with the men. 

The chief scientist claimed he was afraid her hair would catch fire, even though she wore her hair in a tight bun and the men in the lab almost universally wore elaborate facial hair. 


PictureOtto Stern and Lise Meitner, possibly 1937 colloquy with Nobel Price winners
During their careers, both Irene and Lise made important discoveries in the understanding of physics.  Curie and her husband, Frederic Joliot, discovered artificial radiation. They won a Nobel Prize in 1934 for their work.

Lise had to flee Nazi Germany in 1938, leaving her laboratory and research behind.  She continued to consult with her former lab partner, Otto Hahn, and she made the breakthrough in understanding of nuclear fission. 

Ultimately, Hahn took credit for her discovery and claimed the Nobel Prize for the work they did together. Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in West Germany in 1962.

PictureBombing of Nagasaki, Japan
The women had seen such horrors on the battlefields during World War I that they had become pacifists; both were horrified that the work they did in the name of science had been used for the creation of the most destructive weapon in the history. 

“It is an unfortunate accident that this discovery (of fission) came about in a time of war,” Meitner said. 

I find these women inspiring not only because of their accomplishments, but also because of their humanity.  

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They were undeniably gifted scientists, but they also held fast to their love of peace. Curie dedicated her later years to working for nuclear disarmament; Meitner worked on the development of nuclear energy. 

Throughout their lives, they both envisioned a world where scientists could master the art of using the power of the atom not for a weapon but for the benefit of humankind.

Winifred, thrilled to have you on the blog today, and to highlight your wonderful book. Thank you! 

Winifred Conkling is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction for young readers whose works include Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery (Algonquin, 2015) and the middle-grade novel Sylvia and Aki, winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Literature Award and the Tomás Rivera Award.  
See more about Winifred's books here.  

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What's your "flight behavior"?

7/10/2014

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While driving across the state, I started listening to a book on tape, FLIGHT BEHAVIOR, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver. 
       
I haven't finished it yet, but it is sure giving me a lot to think about. 
       
The protagonist is Dellarobia, a young Appalachian woman who discovers some 15-million monarch butterflies have come to winter in the forest on her in-laws property.  There are so many they turn the valley orange, as if it's on fire.
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It's natural for North American monarchs to migrate south and hibernate on trees for the winter, (see a photo here) but in Mexico, not Tennessee. 

The book has mixed reviews and it moves slowly in the beginning. It might pay to listen to the book rather than read it. While the butterflies seem like a miracle at first, this story rarely strays from “real” life.
        
From The York Times review of the book: “Throughout her fiction, the exigencies of work, and the classes of people who do that work, have been among Kingsolver’s great subjects. Here she deftly handles the relentless labor of sheep shearing, yarn dying, even child minding, with all those sticky fingers and sodden, sagging diapers.”    

As a writer, I have to say I love FLIGHT BEHAVIOR. Kingsolver's original use of language really grabs me. Here are a couple of examples.


Dellarobia walks under a "mess of dirty white sky like a lousy drywall job."

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She reflects on how she was once a rebel girl with plans to get out of this town, but now, "Her boldness had been confined to such tiny quarters, it counted for about as much as mouse turds in a cookie jar." 

The church choir sings a hymn, "dragging it like a plow through heavy clay".
       
I also covet Kingsolver's depth of characterization. In this story of "poor backwoods hillbillies", privileged college students, fundamentalist Christians and environmentalists--you see only human beings. Once you get to know them their labels, don't fit quite so well in your mind.


She focuses her skill at characterization on the issue of climate change to make clear the need for people to talk to each other, even when they disagree.


The story makes me aware I sometimes judge that I already know what some people are going to say. I don't want to listen because I think they're misinformed, ignorant of the facts, ruled by fear or whatever. I can go off on my own little "flight behavior".
       
And yet, I wish people who disagree with me would listen when I talk.  I want them to respect my experience and value how my experience has informed me.

One thing I know is that we learn nothing when we only listen to people who tell us what we already know. 

I want to be a person who is learning. I want my life to be about growing. Growing wiser, growing more compassionate, growing more effective in the actions I take and in the choices I make. 

I don't want to live motivated by fear. I want to be courageous, not threatened by someone who disagrees with me. I want to be wise and strong enough to trust that others are able to work out the way of things for themselves, just as I am.

In the current climate of division, it's difficult to believe we will lay down our swords and shields and work together to solve the world's problems. My grip is loosening on mine. And that's were it starts. 



The books title calls to mind a number of different metaphors. My favorite is the idea of who we humans behave when we're afraid.  What about you?  I'd love to hear from you. Whether you like the book or not. :)

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If Reading is so Important...Why are we Failing Our Boys?

6/26/2014

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You might not be surprised that boys don't read as much as girls. You might even think that's just the way boys are.

Research consistently shows they have lower reading skills and a worse attitude about books. The most recent studies come from the United Kingdom. 

At age seven, there's already a gender gap of 7 percent fewer boys than girls reading at the expected level. By age 11, it's 8 percent; by age 13, the gap has increased to 12, and in high school it reaches 14. 

And that's for the boys who have not dropped out of school. Last year the United States dropout rate reached its highest level in nearly 40-years and more boys quit than girls in every state in the nation.

But it's wrong to think poor reading is inherent in boys, and there's much we can do to help boys read more and better. 

For one, we can help boys discover that reading is fun. They may not gravitate to novels like girls, but there's a lot of new and exciting reading material to interest boys of all ages. See lists by topic here. Librarians are excellent at knowing what books appeal to boys, and they're up-to-date on reading options for boys. That's their job.

I should say, used to be their job. The pandemic loss of school librarians due to budget cuts in the last five years means boys have very little help in finding something they might enjoy reading. I was incredibly demoralized when we lost the battle for librarians in my kids' school district. I cannot imagine attending a school without a librarian. It's like a car without headlights. And no spark plugs.

Sheila May-Stein writes a lovely story on her blog about how to approach a boy about a book. Click here for Random Thoughts of an Outlaw Educator.

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A fifth grade teacher in Forth Worth, Texas, Donalyn Miller, motivates her middle school students to read 40 or more books a year.


"I'm invited to speak in schools that want to improve their test scores, but the kids don't have books to read and parent volunteers run the library. They don't get it....

"...The manner in which schools institutionalize reading takes this love away from children. As instruction becomes limited to test-taking drill and kill, we are slowly strangling the joy of reading out of students, and without quality instruction in how to read well, we are narrowing their possibilities as readers forever,"
Donalyn says.


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Anthony Horowitz writes books that many boys devour. His series ALEX RIDER about a teenage spy has sold 12 million copies worldwide. Anthony says, "I can tell you if a school has a good library five minutes after entering it... It is in the eyes of the kids." 

We didn't have a school librarian in my elementary school, but the public library was housed in our school building, and classes made regular trips down the hall to use it. Mrs. Orr, the librarian was one of the strongest pillars in my childhood. I wish every child had someone like her just down the hall.

Was there an important librarian in your life? 

What can we do to help kids, especially boys, find something to read that will help instill a lifetime habit?

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Courage: Being Who You are Meant to Be

6/13/2014

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Today, I'm thrilled to tell you about a new book, which is especially close to my heart because as a young woman in the early days of my career as a television news reporter, I briefly entertained the dream of working as a war correspondant. 

REPORTING UNDER FIRE:16 DARING WOMEN WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND PHOTOJOURNALISTS, by Kerrie Logan Hollihan, is filled with historical photos, newspaper clippings and personal stories from the women journalists themselves. 


The publisher Chicago Review Press describes the women chronicled in the book who risked their lives to tell wartime stories:

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Each woman—including Sigrid Schultz, who broadcast news via radio from Berlin on the eve of the Second World War; Margaret Bourke-White, who rode with General George Patton’s Third Army and brought back the first horrific photos of the Buchenwald concentration camp; and Marguerite Higgins, who typed stories while riding in the front seat of an American jeep that was fleeing the North Korean Army—experiences her own journey, both personally and professionally, and each draws her own conclusions. Yet without exception, these war correspondents share a singular ambition: to answer an inner call driving them to witness war firsthand, and to share what they learn via words or images. Photojournalist Helen Jones Kirtland looking at a spent landmine,probably near Ypres, Belgium, 1919. (Library of Congress)

PictureKerrie Logan Hollihan
The book just came out two weeks ago, and I'm so pleased to introduce you to Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan 

My thanks to Mary for asking me to guest blog this week. 
She asked me to focus on courage, which got me thinking about the sixteen women I profiled. At that point I realized I never especially characterize these women as courageous, though of course they are or were. Other attributes come to mind: smart, articulate, resourceful, brave, bold, brash, stubborn. But were I to choose a single adjective to best describe the women in my book, it would be:


Authentic. 



Authentic. That’s the “keyword” I’d plug in for every one of them. Here’s how I explain my choice in the foreword to Reporting Under Fire:

When my daughter was a junior at [an all-girl high school], someone wrote a lovely quote on a poster during pep week. It was from Judy Garland…It said: “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
… Garland’s words came to me as I was putting the finishing touches on this book. In looking over the profiles I’d researched and written over nearly a year, I was struck by how each of these of these women is (or was) so much her authentic self….


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To be authentic takes courage. To know who you truly are and to live your life acting on that self-awareness takes courage. You might be a war reporter who risks it all to do what you are called to do. Janine di Giovanni (now Middle East editor of Newsweek) “bears witness” to war’s impact on ordinary people. Sigrid Schultz was the first reporter to warn that Adolf Hitler was building concentration camps and isolating German Jews. Chicago Daily News reporter Georgie Anne Geyer was marked for death in Guatemala by the White Hand, ultra-right-wing terrorists.  

Or you might be a big city dweller like my daughter, grown up now, who sees how authenticity and self-awareness matter in the jobs and private lives of modern women, surrounded as they are by bottom-liners and bottom-feeders. How to live courageously and meaningfully in a lousy world. How to be a first rate version of herself.


Photo below: Correspondent Martha Raddatz (right) in Afghanistan, May 2011, Producer Ely Brown (left) Courtesy Raddatz

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ABC Chief Global Correspondent Martha Raddatz is a case in point:  smart, plain-speaking, and unpretentious. She told me she loved to read biographies as a kid, that “…maybe that’s the first inkling you want to live a life that’s not the one you’re living.”


Martha left college to take a news jobs -- something she doesn’t recommend to others. That was about forty years ago, and she’s been reporting ever since. She thrives on what she does, as she said in a talk at her son’s college. “The one reason more than any other that I love the news business is because I learn something every single day. Every single day.”

Martha Raddatz is the real deal, as is every single woman in my book. Authentic. Courageous.



Thank you, Kerrie. And thank you for writing an excellent and exciting book on this important and inspiring topic. 

I appreciate the quote from Martha Raddatz because that is also one of the reasons I loved working in the news business, and part of why I'm so happy writing books for kids. I'm hungry to learn, and writing allows me to share the interesting things I learn.

For more on REPORTING UNDER FIRE, here's what School Library Journal has to say.

"A well-researched and riveting book...the text is chock-full of their daring exploits—such as Sigrid Schultz cohosting an engagement party for top Nazi Hermann Göring—all in the name of landing their stories. Not only do readers gain a healthy respect for each reporter, but they also gain insight into global history. As such, the book reads like a narrative time line of world history, women's rights, and the field of journalism as a whole." 


This is the kind of book that should be in every school library. I'm calling my local district to see if they have it. I challenge you to do the same.


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Courage on the Face of a Third-Grader

3/14/2014

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PictureAudrey Faye Hendricks
 On Thursday morning, May 2, 1963, nine-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks woke up with freedom on her mind. But, before she could be free, there was something important she had to do. "I want to go to jail," Audrey had told her mother. 

Since Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks thought that was a good idea, they helped her get ready. Her father had even bought her a new game she'd been eyeing. Audrey imagined that it would entertain her if she got bored during her week on a cell block.

That morning, her mother took her to Center Street Elementary so she could tell her third-grade teacher why she'd be absent. Mrs. Wills cried. Audrey knew she was proud of her.

She also hugged all four grandparents goodbye. One of her grandmothers assured her, "You'll be fine."

Then Audrey's parents drove her to the church to get arrested.

That's the first page of WE'VE GOT A JOB: THE 1963 BIRMINGHAM CHILDREN'S MARCH, by Cynthia Levinson. Hooked? I was. 

Cynthia graciously agreed to share something of what she learned about courage in the process of writing the book. Welcome, Cynthia.

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Inevitably, a child asks me during a school visit, “So, would you do it?” I can tell by the group’s eager expressions that they want me to shout, “Absolutely!” They know they would do it. 

Invariably, however, I have to answer, “I wish I could say, ‘Yes.’ But I’m too cowardly.” Their new expressions tell me they’re disappointed. After all, why would their school invite an author who’s a wimp, especially when the story she’s just told them focuses on thousands of courageous children?

As a result, I’ve been tempted to alter my response. However, not only must I be honest but also I’ve begun to realize that, paradoxically, their disappointment is part of why I’m there.

When Mary Cronk Farrell asked me to write about how the subjects of my book, We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, affected me, I knew the topic would be complex. Through the experiences of four specific young people, the book tells the story of how 3000 to 4000 black school children desegregated Birmingham, Alabama—the city that Dr. King considered the most violently racist in the country. It was certainly the most thoroughly segregated, with laws and customs decreeing that “Negro and white people are not to play together,” that a seven-foot wall must separate blacks and whites in restaurants, that separate ambulances should carry sick people to separate hospitals.

PictureAuthor Cynthia Levinson
Some black ministers and others tried for years to desegregate the town. But a racist police commissioner, named “Bull” Connor, who ignored bombs tossed at the homes and churches of civil rights activists, defeated them. Instead, children took the lead that May. They protested, picketed, sat-in at lunch counters, and, above all, marched. Even when the commissioner attacked them with snarling German shepherds and powerful water canons, the children held hands and kept marching. They also sang, prayed, were arrested en masse, spent days and nights in packed jails—and did it all peacefully. Two months later, the commissioner was defeated, and Birmingham rescinded its onerous and despicable segregation codes.

So, when I tell school children today about the brave youngsters in Birmingham, they want to know if I would march, too. Would I sing and pray? Would I face dogs, hoses, and jail? The reason that I know, unfortunately, that I would not is that I did not.

In May 1963, I was an eighteen-year-old high school senior in Columbus, Ohio. In fairness, not a single white person joined the black children during their protests in Birmingham so it’s not completely surprising that I didn’t fly down there. (Some white clergymen and the folk singer Joan Baez did, however.) Nevertheless, to the extent that I paid attention to the news, I was bewildered by what was happening down there. Worse, I hardly paid attention at all. In fact, although I knew about the dogs and the hoses, I didn’t know that it was children who took responsibility for desegregating their city until decades later. Furthermore, although later I did participate in a few protests about political issues I cared about, I chose tame ones where no one was going to get hurt.

Because we know how events in the past have turned out, history in hindsight looks inevitable. Young people today could believe that the children of Birmingham weren’t in any real danger. Beforehand, however, Dr. King was so worried that someone might get hurt or killed that he opposed their actions. Sharing my own embarrassing past with them, I think, makes the threats more real. These were truly dangerous times.

Courage, I hope they learn, does not entail ignoring the dangers but, rather, paying attention to them—and then making a decision about whether or not to proceed. Courage, I’ve learned, is not casual. Courage requires a cause. And, courage draws strength from cooperation.



Thank you, Cynthia, for sharing your thoughts here. I'm moved by your honesty. We can all stand to look more closely at what's happening in the life around us and how we respond. I know your book will inspire many of us to do that. Click here for more on WE'VE GOT A JOB.

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Pub day for PURE GRIT

2/25/2014

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PictureBuy now!
So excited to announce pub day for PURE GRIT.  At times it seemed this day would never come. I started research the summer of 2007. The book proposal sold to Abrams in August 2010. February 25, 2013 the book is on store shelves and earns a terrific review from Book Kvetch! Could not have done it without the help of so many of you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!


"Pure Grit by Mary Cronk Farrell is a highly worthwhile read and a first-rate history for YA readers on the experiences of combat nurses serving valiantly in the Philippines during World War II....[It] might prompt interesting classroom inquiry and discussion of issues relevant to women in military service." Read full review here.

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History Matters: Author Explores the Makah Tribe Whaling Tradition 

1/9/2014

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Click for more info
WRITTEN IN STONE by Rosanne Parry, a middle-grade novel featured on this blog in November has been judged a finalist for The Oregon Book Awards.
The historical novel published by Random House is set on the West Coast of Washington State on the Makah Indian Reservation in 1920. 


It is one of three novels chosen for the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature. The other finalists in the category are THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (Philomel Books) by Kari Luna and AMBER HOUSE (Arthur A. Levine) by Kelly Moore, Larkin Reed and Tucker Reed.
Award-winners will be announced March 17, 2014.

Here's my interview where Rosanne talks about the historical background of WRITTEN IN STONE.

To learn more about the Makah people and whaling check out the official Makah Tribal website here. To read more about Author Rosanne Parry, her books and teaching materials click here.  For more History Matters videos check my YouTube Channel (still under construction). 
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Dog Makes Climbing Mount Everest Look Easy

12/12/2013

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Lucky Luke climbs ladders on Everest
Leaving Everest Base Camp, the first stretch toward the peak takes climbers through the Khumbu Ice Fall. In 1.62 miles they gain two-thousand feet in elevation, snaking over deep crevasses and between tall seracs, which are huge  columns of ice towering overhead.

Climbers (and stray dogs like Lucky Luke) cross the crevasses on aluminum ladders strategically placed early in the season. We don't know how long Lucky had been climbing up and down the ladders en-route to Camp 1.  He earned his nickname due to the fact he had not yet fallen.

 Near vertical walls fall away to a drop of  a hundred feet or more. Some mountaineers refuse to look down into the abyss. Kay LeClaire took a peek between rungs. The ice is a beautiful blue, but one must not gawk for long. 

More climbers die in this ice fall than any part of South Col route up Everest.  But Kay started preparing for this moment years ago...



Excerpt from JOURNEY TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD:

One cold, gray Saturday, our class meets at a rock-climbing park to practice. My heart sinks when I look at the steep cliffs. At five foot, one inch tall, often I cannot reach the hand and foot holds used by taller climbers. I must grope for my own.

Before long, I’m clinging to the sheer rock, unable to reach any hold. My heart hammers. I’m gasping for breath. Rope anchors me to the rock from above. If I peel off, I won’t fall far. But I freeze.

“What should I do?” I whimper like a toddler.

 “Go up,” says the instructor, not a shred of sympathy in his voice. 

Get a grip, Kay. I scold myself, then scrabble for a hand hold. Up I go.

I feel great when I reach the top, but that success didn’t dispel my fear forever. The panic can return anytime. Mountain climbing is dangerous, and there have been times I could have died. Sometimes a climber gets hit by a rock fall or avalanche. That’s just it.

When the panic comes, I’ve learned to take a deep breath and focus. Focus on the job at hand. I’ve trained. I have the proper gear and knowledge. I don’t take unnecessary risks. The rest is out of my control.


Thanks, Kay. It sounds like good advice for life as well as mountain climbing! I've felt panic sitting safely in my chair facing a day of writing.  My life is not at risk, but something sure is, or it wouldn't feel so scary.



What about you? What makes you quake with fear and need to remind yourself to focus on the job at hand and let go of the rest?

Click here for more about
JOURNEY TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD.

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Remembering Pearl Harbor

12/6/2013

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What About the Women?
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Nine hours after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor they attacked American Bases in the Philippines.  Japanese pilots expected fierce fighting when they cleared the mountains north of Manila with their sights on Clark Air Field. 

Instead, they found U.S. B-17 bombers and P-40 fighter planes lined up on the runway like knives in a box. American flight crews were eating lunch.

Less than an hour later, nearly half of the U.S. Air Forces in the Far East were destroyed.


PURE GRIT tells the amazing story of 100 American military woman stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked. How they survived battle followed by three years in POW camp testifies to the strength of the human spirit.


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Breaking Stalin's Nose

11/29/2013

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If you have a minute—1:23 to be exact—watch this video of Eugene Yelchin talking about growing up in the Soviet Union and the tough choice he had to make.  Yelchin’s 2012 Newbery Honor novel BREAKING STALIN’S NOSE is partially based on his own childhood. 
The book begins with a boy’s letter to Comrade Stalin telling the Soviet leader his greatest dream--to join the Young Soviet Pioneers.

Of course, as seems to happen to main characters, the boy Sasha runs into trouble reaching his dream. He comes face to face with a hard, life-altering choice and in that choice defines himself.

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Hard choices come with a cost. And though our own may not be as pricey as Sasha’s or Eugene Yelchin’s, they still demand courage. 

I think of my daughter making the choice to pursue a career in screenwriting.  

As she was going off to college to major in film, I remember speaking with the mother of one of her friends. The friend had also considered majoring in the arts, but her mother told me she had convinced the girl to major in business.

Perhaps that girl now has a good paying job and flew home for Thanksgiving with her family, while my daughter is twelve-hundred miles away in Los Angeles, working the holiday at a restaurant, sharing a bedroom with a friend to save on rent, and living daily in uncertainty about her future as a screenwriter. Sure, people all over the world are facing decisions that will cost them much more. But I am inspired by my daughter’s courage and willingness to bear the cost of following her heart.

What about you?  Share whose courage fills your heart and makes you want to live with more authenticity, or tell me about a life-altering choice you’ve made.


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The Necessary Ingredient-- For a Quarterback, A Writer & You

11/1/2013

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Monday morning my husband had the radio on ESPN and Colin Cowherd was ranting about some quarterback who had a poor game. 

I'm not a sports fan, so I didn’t care a great deal, But I started listening because the guy makes a lot of sense.

Cowherd says a quarterback needs consistency, and before he can be consistent he needs to know who he is and what kind of game he’s playing. Sounds a lot like being a writer. And a winning game plan for life, too.

Take Matt de la Peña, a young adult writer I heard speak at a writing conference this summer. Matt says writers must have their own voice, which I took to mean, they have to know who they are, where they’re coming from. 


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Matt came from poverty in a California border town. His strong authorial voice gains his novels critical acclaim.  At the heart of Matt’s work is young people’s desire to be seen.

“I’ve always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots,” he says, “maybe because that’s who I was. I’ve always thought it was super important, out of respect, that I show the forgotten kids, the group with ‘less potential.’ Because I really think there is beauty there, too. And grace. And dignity.

Cowherd talks about a player or a team knowing what they do best and consistently doing that no matter what opponent they’re facing. But even hard-working, talented people don’t have an easy time discovering what it is they do best. Or believing in their own grace and dignity.

Matt didn’t always see himself as a writer. Winning a big writing contest in college helped. 

“That validation, those professors picking me, it completely changed the way I viewed myself. For the first time in my life I thought, man, maybe I am smart.” Still, when it came time for grad school, his professors applied for Matt behind his back because he didn’t identify as grad school material.

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In an interview on Blogtalk Radio, Matt spoke of the struggles of his main character in the book MEXICAN WHITE BOY.

“I think Danny was the hardest character I’ve written so far for one simple reason, and that is, he’s probably the closest to me in terms of the stuff he’s dealing with. I was a biracial kid—father Mexican, mom white, just like Danny.”

Writers have the advantage of digging deeply into the question of self-identity in their daily process. I’m guessing athletes work at this daily, too, practicing their sport. Maybe some of their biggest discoveries come on Sunday in front of a million people.

What about you? What is it that you’re best at and how consistent are you? Digging deeper, do you know who you really are? How do you continue that journey of self-discovery? Go ahead, leave a comment.

PS Matt de la Peña is teaching a intensive for writers in Spokane, WA November 16th. He’ll talk about how characters reveal who they are through dialogue. It’ll be a chance to workshop your work-in-progress.  

Sign up here.


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 A Young Man, An Old Soldier, and a Fight to the Death

10/18/2013

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Click to pre-orderPre-order book now
Today I introduce you to Christine Kohler, author of NO SURRENDER SOLDIER due out Jan.18. Christine’s experience as a journalist gave her instant credibility in my eyes. Her YA novel is set in Guam and connects two wars–Vietnam and WWII.
Publisher's Weekly recently mentioned NO SURRENDER SOLDIER as a book helping teens make sense of war. Important for kids, whose country has been at war since they were born.


Welcome, Christine.

"War is a terrible thing, and many return with wounds invisible to the eye." -- Terry Pratchett, DODGER


This is true of all my characters in NO SURRENDER SOLDIER. The after-effects of war on people's lives are like contracting a genetic disease, even passing it down to future generations.

People often ask how I got interested in writing about war. I usually tell them about my experiences as a reporter living in Pacific-Asian nations. My heartstrings tugged when I heard the stories of refugees. So for decades I wrote about war refugees.

My first article in the mid-1980s was about Laotians who came to Hawaii to start new lives. My last news article on the topic was in the mid-90s when Russian Jews relocated to the United States.


Picture Author Christine Kohler
On Guam's annual Liberation Day I interviewed Guamanians who had been subjugated by the Japanese during World War II. It was out of these stories while I lived on Guam, Japan, and Hawaii, plus my travels to the Philippines, Saipan, and Korea that led me to write about war in Pacific–Asia in NO SURRENDER SOLDIER.

Even though NO SURRENDER SOLDIER takes place in 1972 at the end of the Vietnam civil war and revolves around events from World War II, I don't think of my book so much as being about war as dealing with the after-effects of war on the individual.

As General Sherman said, "It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."

And, regarding the survivors, he said, "Courage--a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it."

It is my hope that NO SURRENDER SOLDIER honors those-- on all sides of the battle lines-- who endured, survived, and rose above the pain of war.


Read more in-depth on this subject at Christine Kohler’s blog READ LIKE A WRITER.
Do you know someone who has survived war? Does anything in this article ring true for you? Please share your thoughts.

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    Author

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    I'm an award-winning author of Children's/YA books and former journalist with a passion for stories about people facing adversity with courage.

    My books have been named Notable Social Studies Book for Young People, SPUR Award for Best Juvenile Fiction about the American West, Bank Street College List of Best Children's Books, and NY Public Library Best Books for Teens. My journalistic work has received numerous awards for excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists and two Emmy nominations.
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