Lois Lowry's Blog

Good morning! I am leaving today to drive to Connecticut to attend the annual CEMA convention in order to speak to the Connecticut school librarians tomorrow. But this morning...as every morning...I was going through the website e-mail and encountered, again, a too-frequent problem: that of spam filters that prevent my reply going through. PLEASE...If you e-mail me (which you can easily do by clicking on the "e-mail me" on the website) and if you want a reply, put my address on your list of approved e-mailers. Otherwise, I write a reply and it bounces back to me and it is a lot of wasted time and effort. With 50-60 e-mails arriving every day, I can't take the time to fill out the forms that such filters ask for. I hate disappointing people who email me, but if my reply is filtered out and bounced back, I am not going to go through the hoops and make a second try.

I'm sorry I don't have a camera here with me because I am in Maine, and there is a wonderful strong wind, and Alfie is acting like Baryshnikov, leaping and twirling.

I stopped on the way up here to have lunch with my son, dauughter-in-law, and two grandsons, who live in a suburb of Portland. It is my younger grandson, 5, who says so many oddball and amusing things that his parents keep a list. Yesterday was not particularly unusual but it's a good example. His older brother, 8, had called some neighborhood friends and invited them over to meet Alfie. When the doorbell rang it was the younger one who answered it and let in two children.

"There's Alfie," he said, pointing to the dog.

Then, gesturing toward me: "And over here we have a famous writer."

***

I have mentioned the symposium I was part of in New York a week ago today..."Fear and Fiction" ... and perhaps neglected to list the authors who were there: Mo Willems, Robie Harris, Martin Waddell, me, Pam Munoz Ryan, Neil Gaiman (who didn't make it and sent his speech to be read by someone else), Chris Crutcher, Jackie Woodson, and David Almond (who, similiarly, because of a family emergency had to send his words along to be read).

All of them are writers I admire, and many of them are people I know.

But I had never met Martin Waddell, who came in with his wife Rosaleen from northern Ireland for the conference, and who is a lovely man and a wonderful story-teller (and deserving recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal a couple of years ago)

Seeing him made me remember an experience I had a number of years ago, and which I was able to tell to him last week. I wrote about it at the time - ten years ago - and here is a copy of that essay (the child mentioned, my grandduaghter, had her 13th birthday yesterday):

Helping Children Cope

I've just received a copy of the new jacket that will be on a new (and slightly larger in size) paperback edition of A SUMMER TO DIE.

A SUMMER TO DIE was my first book for kids, published in 1977...still around after 29 years!...and if I were to re-read it, I think I would probably not find it dated except for the fact that Meg's father uses a typewriter (as did I when I wrote the book.)

I had been asked by an editor to write something for young people (I was a writer for adults at the time) and the story that came to my mind was my own story, that of a younger girl facing the death of her much-loved older sister, as I did many years ago. In truth, my sister Helen was 28 when she died; I wass 25. But because I was writing for a young audience, I made the sisters 15 and 13. They were very much like Helen and me: the older girl pretty and popular, the younger one more scholarly and awkward. I always got better grades in school than Helen did, but I would have traded those grades in a heartbeat to be May Queen or Homecoming Queen or one of those silly things, and to have the ease and self-confidence with which she moved through the world of adolesence and school, while I plodded along a couple of years behind.

I do like this new jacket for the book; the old one had begun to seem a little tired and out of date. The hardcover has a lovely jacket which has not changed or become dated through the years...just a painting of the farmhouse where the book is set.

Me! Me! My turn to be under the chair!

I have been off on a series of engagements...first, the Zolotow Lecture at the University of Wisconsin (and that, as the previous ones have been, will be available by webcast (google Zolotow Lecture and you'll get to it); then to New York for a fascinating conference co-sponsored by the Yale Child Study Center and the Anna Freud Centre in London. The title of the daylong event was "Fear and Fiction"..and a subtitle that I don't have in front of me, having to do with literature and the inner life of the child. Nine authors, each speaking abut a particular book he/she had written; and six child analysts and/or therapists, looking at the same books from their standpoint. So different from the "..and then I wrote" type of speech I frequently hear...and give. And a different audence as well, with many mental health professionals attending...and perhaps becoming newly aware, some of them, of the vital role that literature can play in the emotional life of a child.

Following that event, back to Boston where I moderated a panel on children's books that make the transition into film...how it happens, how it sometimes fails, why now and then it is a smooth and lasting transition into a different genre with its own strengths. Panelists were Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, who spoke about and showed a clip from SHILOH; Natalie Babbitt, speaking and showing a piece of TUCK EVERLASTING; and Randy Testa from Walden Media, the company that moved HOLES, HOOT, WINN-DIXIE, and NARNIA...among others...into film. He let us peek at a wonderful but sad (sob, sob) scene from CHARLOTTE'S WEB, due out soon.

Speaking of Charlottes, Alfie has a playdate tomorrow with a young corgi named Charlotte. His other best friend is Sophie, and since he is hanging out with girls so often, it is probably good that he has an appointment in early December for, ah, minor surgery. In the meantime, he starts obedience classes tongiht. I suppose they won't deal with the never-chew-up-a-ballpoint-pen issue.

Now, at home, I must tend the daily domestic chores like grocery-shopping which I have not done in much too long...last night it was take-out Chinese for dinner. And there are movies to catch up on. "Little Children" yesterday. Today, a quick sneak off to (speaking of corgis) "The Queen."

I think the first translation I ever saw of any of my books was A SUMMER TO DIE, my first book, in Afrikaans. Since then there have been many, 21 different languages altogether, and it is always fascinating to see the different book jackets. (One of those pictured here, in Turkish, chose to stay with the same cover as the American version. The other one is Hungarian) Some of the most beautiful jackets have been the French. Some of the oddest...because they tend to be cartoonish..are the Japanese.

I thoght of all of this because today, through the blog, I got a request from a Vietnamese publisher interested in translation rights to THE GIVER. I have replied to him and told him whom to contact, but in fact I think a different Vietnamese publisher has already snapped it up.

Of course I never have any way of knowing how good a translation is...unless it is in German, and then my daughter-in-law and granddauughter can give me an opinion. The book STAY! KEEPER'S STORY has a lot of verse in it, and my granddaughter, then just 10, was able to read it in both German and English and explain to me how they had (quite successfully, she thought) translated the verse and maintained the authenticity of both voice and form. She and I did a TV interview together about translation, and she was very adroit and quite self-assured, talking about how it works and why it works well sometimes and not others. At the end of the show she was asked if, when she grew up, she would like to be a translater; she looked horrified, then laughed and said, "No. It's too HARD!"

I am off tomorrow to Wisconsin, where I am to give the Zolotow Lecture Wednesday night. Sometimes, preparing a speech, I feel as if I have nothing left to say. I have said it all. I am out of material. But then I rev it up again and find something - I hope - new.

I guess I feel the same way about writing books at times.

Well, today I was in my office working on the speech I am to give soon in Wisconsin, when in limped Alfie, clearly having trouble walking. When I took a closer look I discovered that his legs were tied together with brown yarn which was also wound around his tail, and when I followed the yarn I discovered that he had also knitted the dining room table. Amazing that he hadn't found my yarn basket (now safely out of reach) before. On the whole he has been a pretty un-mischievous dog, and now he is 6 months old so we tend to forget that he is still a puppy. Here in this picture he is in the TV room, where he scampered when I tried to untangle him, and in doing so re-wound the dining room table one more time.

I will spend tomorrow morning at the Meadowbrook School in Weston, MA. I don't usually visit schools any more (no time) but Meadowbrook bought me at a benefit auction...and so, for a good cause (Reach Out and Read, which provides free books to to babies and toddlers through their medical providers during their first few years) I will go and talk to the kids there. It was also in Weston MA some years ago that I asked a classroom of children for some suggestions to do with the plot of a book I was then writing: ATTABOY, SAM! - and that book is dedicated to those kids, who are all grown up by now.

Then on Friday I head to North Carolina with Martin, in order to celebrate his birthday there with all of his children (3 + 2 spouses) and grandchildren (5: Karen, Sarah, Bailey, Gabrielle, and Schuyler). Then to Wisconsin for the Charlotte Zolotow Lecture on October 18th, and from there to New York for a day-long symposium at Bank Street Colllege on Octber 21st. Whew. Busy month!

My seventeen days in eastern Europe were tiring, exhilirating, eye-opening, and quite wonderful for many reasons, but it is good to be back home and dealing with the laundry, phone calls, mail, dog, and groceries, not necessairly in that order.

GETTING home was a bit of a chore.

For starters, British Airways had printed my name backwards on my ticket. I didn't notice. I glanced at my ticket when it arrived and saw Lois/Lowry and it seemed correct. Wrong. It should have said Lowry/Lois.

The person at the British Airways ticket counter noticed the error when I checked in, leaving Boston, but chuckled and said it wouldn't matter. Really said that. I asked, when she pointed out the reversal of names, "How much of a problem is that going to be?" "None," she lied.

My mis-named ticket got me to London, and from London to Vienna. I went by ground transportation to Prague and Bratislava and Budapest.

This photo was taken yesterday morning in a kindergarten in Slavonice, Bohemia (I left there shortly theraafter and am now in Bratislava, Slovakia) and serves as a reminder that children the world over are much the same. Here is a little group of 5 year olds, and you can pick out the Show-off, the Shy One, the Bored One, the Bully, the Prankster. They could have been my grandson's kindergarten class (or my own, at Berkeley Institute, Brooklyn, NY, 1942)

Many of the little boys were named Jakob, I noticed.

School begins at 6:15 AM for those children who need to be there that early. (Others arrive at 7:30 or so) This room was decorated in an under-the-sea motif, but I got to peek at the Meadow Room as well, and downstairs, for smaller children (they can start at 3 years old, though school is not compulsory till age 6) was the Farm.

Now I am using yet one more kind of money, after Euros in Vienna, Czech crowns in the Czech Republic...now I am just calling them kumquats or cornflakes, or whatever word comes to mind; and I have quit trying to figure out how many of them make a dollar. It cost me 450 cupcakes to go to a concert this evening. And worth every crumb.

I am now in a small town called Slavonice, pronounced Slavonitsa, and will be leaving here tomorrow for Bratislava. No time, and tough computer access, to add much here, except to say that last night we had dinner and wine in a tiny restaurant and listened to four local guys play violin, guitar, drums, and a old eastern European bagpipe, and singing folksongs with gusto and great voices...the restaurant clientele, including us, joined in at times; and it made me think once again how sad it is that political and religious differences can't be bridged, when it is so clear that we all have the same spirit and sense of humor underneath.

This morning I bought handmade buttons from a pudgy local lady who spoke no English but had a great semi-toothless smile; and now, when I get home, I will knit a sweater to hold the buttons and I will think of her, and this village, for years to come.

Then Martin and I went to a local grocery store and bought bread, ham, and cheese from which we made ourselves a primitive picnic lunch. Going to grocery stores in foreign countries is always both a wonderful adventure and a good way to get a feeling for real life.....plus you can see what you will be eating, unlike a restaurant where you may order what you think is chicken and it turns out to be cauliflower (also an adventure). I have been in grocery stores in Japan and Iceland and Italy and Kenya and a zillion other places, and it never fails to be one of my favorite stops.

I'm sorry my computer can't insert Czech accent marks because then the words ""Dobry den" would look more interesting..and less pronouncable. It means only "Good day."

We have been in Vienna for three days and are now on our third day in Prague, leaving here tomorrow for Czechy Krumlov. Both Vienna and Prague are beauitful and interesting cities but I found Vienna much easier to deal with, mostly becuase things are in German, which...though I don't speak it...is fairly easy to translate, and when you order wienerschnitzel you know what you are getting. Czech is a much more diffiuclt and alien language, with nothing familiar; and when just today we went the wrong way on a subway, we had to go through stops called Hradcanska, Malostranska, Starometska...you get the picture..in order to backtrack and get our bearings once again.

I've attached a couple of photos from a small lane in a Prague residential area, one of a dog being greeted through a window. Dogs are everywhere, and amazingly rarely on leashes but remarkably well-behaved (could it be a leftover from the repressive Communist regime? You VILL valk nicely?)

Children are the same everywhere, not nearly so well-behaved, and I love seeing them sulk in other languages, assuming an attitude and saying "Nein" or "Ne" is a defiant voice to a tired and frustrated grandma.

We are heading off later today for a trip that will start in Vienna, take us through the Czech Republic, and conclude in Budapest. As a movie fan, that itinerary brings a lot of movies to mind: THE THIRD MAN, which I saw as a kid, and recently re-watched...it holds up well, and the zither music is as haunting as ever; KOLYA...wonderful Czech film; and GLOOMY SUNDAY, a recent movie, terrific, set in WWII Budapest.

Alfie has gone back to the breeder, where when last seen he was romping happily with a Tibetan Terrier named, ah, Elvis. The breeder assures me that he will not forget me in 17 days but I am gloomily doubtful.

I am taking my laptop on the assumption that I'll be able to find internet access at various points in Eastern Europe. There was a time when European cafes were populated by people in trench coats sipping cognac paid for in pfennigs and floirins and murmuring code phrases to fellow spies. Doomed and haunted expatriates right out of novels by John LeCarre. Now, though, it will all be tourists with laptops. Me included.

I travel a lot. Sometimes with Martin, sometimes alone, occasionally with women friends. I was thinking today about some of my worst/best experiences in other parts of the world.

One of the worst was a whale-watching excursion, three hours long, off the northern tip of Iceland, close to the Arctic Circle. The thing that made it bad was our own fault, Martin's and mine, because we had misjudged the weather in northern Iceland in late May. We had thought Spring when we should have known Winter. Thus we found ourselves in rough seas, with snow coming down, in an unheated boat, with an unworking head, no whales in sight, and us in clothes meant for spring. Luckily it was only 3 hours but we both remember it as among the worst 3 hours of our lives, one of those times when the phrase "Take me now, Lord" comes to mind.

I have not posted anything in a while, mainly because I was busy moving from one house to another, schlepping a puppy as I did so, and then heading back to Maine overnight in order to go to a 50th annivesary party for my wonderful friends...I've known them 40 years...Sylvia and Tony.

And now there has been a series of ...well, I could say unfortunate...events that bring to mind the way a story unfolds, when the writer pays attenton to the pacing and the way things fit together. (No, this has to happen BEFORE this, and then THIS can happen next) I will try to tell this as if I were writing it as a story and so I must start out with some background, which is that:

1. Martin and I are planning a trip to Europe quite soon. We are scheduled to leave September 17th, with friends, headed to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. I've made arrangements for the dog, and let people know I'd be away, and all of that, so things have been proceeding in that realm... but at the same time:

2. I was scheduled for fairly big oral surgery, designed to increase bone in the upper right side of my jaw. This was to take place two days ago...Wednesday...leaving me time to see the doctor for a follow-up NEXT Wednesday, the 13th of September, before leaving for Europpe four days later.

3. Tuesday evening I started organzing some stuff for the trip to Europe. I took out our passports, noted that they were due to expire February 2, 2007, so (I told myself) after this trip, we should get them renewed. Then I went to the US passport website so see how I could go about doing that, say in November. On that website I discovered that some countries require travelers to have passports that are valid for 6 months after they enter the country. Hmmm, I thought. Ours are only valid for four-plus months. I clicked through the list of countries and discovered that Hungary has the 6-month requirement. Uh-oh. I panicked. I told Martin to make phone calls, see what we could do, and off I went, the next morning for:

No, I am not going to talk about THE GIVER'S ending. I've done it more often than I want to, and I've done it on this blog, so you can scroll back to one posting titled "Perhaps it was only an echo.." plus the one that precdes it...

But as for endings in general:

Summer is ending. Tomorrow I pack up my car and my puppy and head home after three glorious months on the farm. I've had two women friends here this week—one of them Middy Thomas, who lives in Maine and illustrates the Gooney Bird Greene books for me, the other my friend Nancy, from Boston. Here's a picture of Nancy packing up her car, with Alfie wondering whether he can go along. And one of me enjoying a last few moments on the lawn.

Both Nancy and Middy have been widowed. I listened to them talking about how they make a point of lining up things to look forward to—Middy's headed to California to see a grandchild; Nancy goes next week to Long Island to visit a friend— so that loneliness doesn't take over. The loss of their husbands was of course the end of one part of their lives, but also a transition into the next part.

And though leaving the farm tomorrow is kind of sad, but also it moves me into a fall of projects and travels and work. Yesterday I mailed off the first draft of the theatrical adaptation of GOSSAMER. I worked on it off and on all summer and now it is done and on its way, at least for now. But is the ending of that project? No. After the theater directors have gone over it I expect to hear about certain scenes: "Can't be done"... "This won't work"... etc. etc and then I will go back and revise, working on what is for me a completely new genre, and with the benefit of collaboration.

Here is how - and with whom - my puppy spent his afternoon today. This must be picture book material.

I was blown away by a book this evening. Alone here at the farm...but for a puppy who was busy chewing a pillow at the time...I sat on the porch with a glass of wine and began a book called CROW LAKE by Mary Lawson.

Mary Lawson, the author info tells me, is a Canadian who lives in England. I sat there wondering what it is abut Canadian women authors. Maybe this is a huge over-generalization, but I have found Canadian women authors...Carol Shields*, Margaret Lawrence, Margaret Atwood, among others...to be the writers who have most compelled me with their fiction in recent years.

Canada is, of course, a huge country with vast areas of isolation. I remember traveling by train across Canada in 2001, and as the twice-a-week train chugged through a one-street town - where it did not stop, where it never stopped - a man standing in a second floor wndow turned, dropped his trousers, and mooned the passengers watching from the train windows. I remember wondering about that man. Did he look forward with glee to those Tuesday and Thursday events? Or were they a chore (man looks at watch, groans, says: "Oh god, it's almost 3 o'clock; gotta go pull my pants down again")?

Not much to do in a place like that, and less, I suppose, for a woman. Does it make an intelligent woman introspective, creative, observant, literate?

Mary Lawson is all of that and more.

Here is the start of a list of THINGS YOU CANNOT DO WHEN THERE IS A PUPPY IN THE HOUSE:

1. Use a mop of any kind. The puppy thinks it is a combination of toy and invader, and must be chased, attacked, growled at, and grabbed.

2. Take a shower with any privacy. Of course you can take a shower. But every thirty seconds the shower curtain is pulled aside and a furry head looks in to make sure you are still there.

3. Leave the New York Times on the floor. The puppy goes into shredding mode.

Last night Alfie didn't wake me with his "wanna pee" whine until 5 AM and I must say that I liked that much better then the prevous 2 AM and 3 AM calls, mainly because of the light outside. At 5 AM the sky is lightening a bit in the east, over the lake. At 2 AM, particularly on a moonless night, it is VERY dark here in the country, and as I make my way by Braille around the grassy peeing territory, I am very aware that we have had both bears and coyotes prowling this acreage.

I liked it out there at dawn. There were birds on all the feeders, the grass was dew-covered,and the sky was pink over Long Lake. It felt as if it would be a fine new day.

I didn't know this at the time, but at 4 AM this morning my dear friend Deborah (I'll add a photo of her)was taken into surgery at Mass. General Hospital and given a new transplanted heart. Deb was born with a congenital conditon that had virtually destroyed the heart she had, and since age 45 - nine years ago - she has been living on borrowed time, but with enormous grace and optimism.

There have been some complications, I'm told, but the new heart is functioning, and someone whose name we do not know has given Deborah - and her beloved husband, Jack - a chance at a life together they would not otherwise have had.

I have an organ donor card in my wallet. I hope everyone who reads this will make certain that they do, too.

The puppy woke me up this morning at 6:22 AM (Why is it I always glance at the clock when he gives that little yip that means "Take me out so I can pee"?) and it was (still is, at 7:15) pouring rain. Darn! Tha gardens will love the drink of water, but why today? Today I am having between 50-60 people here for a 50th anniversary celebration. And though there are rented tables and chairs set up in the barn, and enlarged old photos of the anniversary couple thumbtacked to the walls inside the barn.....we had envisioned the barn as the place for sitting-down-to-eat-in-the-shade, a respite for people roaming the lawns and enjoying the view of the lake and mountains. Now the view is gone completely, hidden by rain. I will have to slog out through the deluge to pick the flowers that will become bouquets on the tables. The rain is tap-tapping on the metal roof; and it is DARK today in the barn. With the wide doors open at both ends, on a nice day, breezes and light flow through. Not today, though, unless the weather does a quick turnaround in the next 4 hours. People are due to arrive at noon.

We will make the best of it. But DARN.

Happier note: in the mail I have received an advance copy of a YA book to be published by Atheneum next March: "The Opposite of Music" by Janet Ruth Young. I first read this in its earliest stages, a partially completely manuscript, when I was one of several judges selecting new work to be awarded the PEN New England Childrens Book Caucus Children's Discovery award (an award now named the Susan P. Bloom Award) several years ago. The book-in-progress had a different title then - and I can't even remember what it was - but I do remember that in introducing the author at the event where she received the award, I said that while reading it, I had thought: "I wish I'd written this!" Not in envy but in admiration. The book is so well structured, so innnovative in its form; and I am happy to see, reading the finished product, that it has not lost those qualities.

I very rarely - make that never - write blurbs for books. You know what a blurb is, right? One of those quotations on a book's jacket that says something like, "I couldn't put this down. What a page-turner!" and then is signed by someone who too often is a close friend of the author.

Just for the record, I am not a close friend of Janet Ruth Young. I've only met her once. But I do admire this book and I feel, a bit, as if I was in on its early stages and am now so happy to see that it has grown into such a fine finished novel. So I will be glad to write a few words of well-deserved praise to help send it out into the world.