Karen Cushman

Karen Cushman

Newbery award-winning children’s book author

Facebook
blusky
Contact
Karen Cushman

Karen Cushman

Reading Past, Present, and Future

by
Fountains of Silence

I’m in a holding pattern with my own writing at the moment while I await editorial feedback on my book in progress (more later) so I’m able to tackle the books on my bedside table. Here’s what’s happening now:

 

I just finished This Tender Land  by William Kent Krueger  Set in 1932, the book follows four runaways from the Lincoln School, where Native American children are forcibly sent, as they launch a canoe and head for the Mississippi River. They encounter tragedy, heartbreak, kindness, and hope. Some lovely passages, exciting incidents, and interesting characters. Think Homer’s Odyssey.  I greatly enjoyed the book and will search out another by William Kent Krueger.

I’m now reading (gobbling up is more like it) Fountains of Silence by the brilliant Ruta Sepetys. Madrid, 1957. Silence, secrets, danger, fear.  Such writing, such research! I’m gobsmacked.

Next up is an indie titled The Serpent, The Puma, and the Condor, written by Gayle Marie. It’s a tale of Machu Pichu. Incas, conquistadors, and the tragic conflict of cultures. I can’t wait.

Grandma’s House

by
Grandma Lipski

Today is my grandma’s birthday.  She would be 129 years old.  Happy Birthday, Clara Czerwinski Lipski. You were a great grandma.

Grandma

Once there was a small, old, brick house
With a tiny brown lawn and a stoop
On a street of small, old, brick houses
With tiny brown lawns and stoops
In Cicero, Illinois.

My grandma lived there
With my grandpa
And my Uncle Stooge and
Uncle Chester
But I always thought of it as
Grandma’s house.

I lived there, too, when I was just born,
With my mama and daddy,
Grandma and Grandpa,
Uncle Stooge and Uncle Chester,
All of us in the small old house
Crowded together like clowns in a circus car.

I was the star of the show
And had an audience of six.
Did she eat? my uncles would ask.
Are her bowels moving?
Did that rash go away?

When I grew older,
I spent nearly every weekend at that house.
The furniture was dark and solid
And there were always surprises for me
On the big old round table
In the dining room:
Cracker Jacks or
Hair ribbons
Or a new dress
From Marshall Field’s.

It was all different from my own house
In a new suburb.
The air at Grandma’s house
Smelled of bleach,
Mothballs, and
Pipe tobacco.
Clocks ticked in quiet rooms,
And pigeons cooed in the back yard.
The floor in the bathroom was made up of
Little white tiles.
That made you dizzy if you stared at them too long.
The toilet was called
A Toledo
Because that’s where it was made:
Toledo, Ohio.

At Grandma’s house
We ate chocolate cake and Pepsi for breakfast,
Played Old Crow at the dining room table,
Climbed the hill of coal in the coal bin.
And my grandma slept
In her clothes
At the foot of our bed
To make sure we were safe.

Los Angeles

by
Los Angeles

We moved from Chicago to Los Angeles when I was ten. When asked recently how I liked California, I came up with this.

Los Angeles

With my frizzy perm and
Little puff-sleeved cotton dresses
With sashes that tied in the back into floppy bows,
And brown oxfords, sturdy and roomy enough
To last all year,
I arrived to find California girls,
Mature even in their
Catholic School uniforms.
California girls rolled skirts up shorter and
Tucked white blouses into tiny waists
And tossed their hair in the boys’ direction.

The nuns at my new school didn’t like the way I
Looked or
Talked or
Or that the smartest girl in the class,
Had a whiff of
Polish and
Chicago about her.
You might have crossed your Ts like that
in Chicago,
The nun in my class told me with a sniff,
But we it is not proper here.

And
Those shoes might be acceptable
In Chicago
But they are not correct uniform shoes
Here.

I went home each day
Alone to lie on my bed and
Read.
In a book I could go wherever I wanted—
Home to Chicago, to Grandma and Grandpa, or
Over the ocean or
Back in time and
Imagine myself there.

Sometimes I wrote my imaginings and
My feelings down
But I never showed anyone.
I was supposed to be happy to be in California
Where the sun shone every day
And it never snowed.

I wrote letters to my grandma
Who couldn’t read or write.
My grandpa wrote back,
Enclosing a $2 bill each time
So I knew he still went to the bookie joint.

Who was drinking Green Rivers with him now?
Who helped Grandma make kolachke,
Sticking little fingers into the dough to make
Dents for jelly?
Was Sparkle happy in her new home,
Or was she sad and bedraggled,
Her cocker ears hanging to the floor?

Did the neighborhood kids play
Red Light, Green Light without me?
Did they play Hide and Seek,
Looking for
But never finding
Me?

Fall Reading Recommendations

by
August 2018 recommendations

I’ve been reading a lot of middle grade novels lately. Here are some I really liked.

Heartseeker.  Melinda Beatty. First book of a fantasy trilogy. I know—me recommending a fantasy. Who’da thunk? But it’s a lovely book.

Rebound. It’s Kwame Alexander. What’s not to love?

The Night Diary. Veera Hirandani. Family forced to leave home after India is partitioned in 1947.

The Train of Lost Things. Ammi-Joan Paquette. Boy searches magical train full of lost possessions, lost memories, and lost relationships for the last gift his father ever gave him.

Ghost Boys. Jewell Parker Rhodes. Boy shot by police speaks from beyond the grave.

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl. Stacy McAnulty. Math savant tries to hide her abilities.

Bob. Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead. Girl finds small zombie in a chicken suit looking for home. Odd but sweet.

FAQ #10: Joy

by

What’s sitting on your desk that gives you joy?  

This photo of Padraic never fails to make me smile. He was a great dog, part border collie by ancestry, ALL border collie by behavior. At his heaviest he weighed 30 pounds and liked to sleep on my lap, which he had to share with Lobelia, the orange cat, who snuggled against him. Wish I had a picture of that! Padraic loved to play football, with a real football. We’d throw it, he’d leap and catch it and carry it home in his mouth like a cigar.

Padraic

FAQ #9: Inspired

by
Book of Boy

What do you read for inspiration?

I tend to read novels set in whatever time period I am writing about. I like to see how other authors tackle the tricky problems involved in writing historical fiction: authenticity vs. info dumps, history vs. imagination, how they invent the past.  

During the years I worked on the medieval books, I read a heap of Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael books. Fabulous books. 

I also read a lot of middle grade novels since that’s what I write.

At the moment I’m reading the delightful Bob by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead about Livy and her friend, Bob, a short, greenish creature dressed in a chicken suit, and Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s The Book of Boy, in which a Medieval child named Boy discovers his courage, his skills, and his wings—literally. I’m loving it.

Brother Cadfael, Bob, The Book of Boy

Huzzah!

by

Totally Middle SchoolI loved receiving this review for the new middle-grade anthology, Totally Middle School (Delacorte, ed. by Betsy Groban). I hope you’ll discover the wide variety of stories within this book, many of them the right length for a classroom read-aloud, and all of them engrossing for reading on your own.

“Featuring an eclectic mix of short stories from a number of beloved authors, this collection explores three topics—“Family,” “Friends and Fitting In,” and “Finding Yourself”—in a variety of formats, from poems to comic panels. Margarita Engle takes on the “dreaded/ dreadful/ deadline-looming/ first-in-my-lifetime/ Middle School/ Mixer,” while Katherine Paterson and granddaughter Jordan offer advice-laden Facetime and text exchanges between two cousins (“organize, organize, organize”). A David Wiesner comic visualizes finding one’s place in an intimidating new setting, and Linda Sue Park and Anna Dobbin’s story, told in part from a dog’s perspective, considers cross-species family life. The stories look at eras and cultural differences, as well, from Gary Schmidt’s searing story about a boy’s neighbor heading off to the Vietnam War, to Hena Khan’s present-day tale of a Pakistani immigrant connecting with her new classmates. The collection, “dedicated to middle schoolers everywhere” (“This, too, shall pass”), deals honestly and sensitively with this volatile time.” (Publishers Weekly)

FAQ #8: Stuck

by

What do you do when you’re stuck on a writing project?

I don’t sit at my desk and try to push mashed potatoes through a keyhole. I do something else. Walk, putter in the garden, play computer solitaire, eat an orange, do the laundry, nap, or work on a different project. My subconscious seems to work on the problem without me, and eventually I find a way back in.

(photo credit: Katerina Kovaleva)

FAQ#7: Frustration

by

What do you find most frustrating about researching a book you’re writing?

I know other writers who swear by it (Kirby Larson, I’m looking at you) but I hate reading old newspapers on microfiche.  Talk about frustrating. Maybe that’s why I mostly write about pre-newspaper eras.