Karen Cushman

Karen Cushman

Newbery award-winning children’s book author

Facebook
blusky
Contact
Karen Cushman

California

Karen Cushman

by
Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked a number of authors, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. A number of gracious authors thoughtfully answered these questions. If you haven’t read them yet, please do. Now it’s Karen’s turn to share some insights into place in her own story, War and Millie McGonigle.“

South Mission Beach
South Mission Beach

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Cushman: The setting—South Mission Beach, San Diego—inspired the book. For nearly fifty years I’ve heard Phil’s stories about growing up there. It seemed a peaceful and comforting sort of place, so its juxtaposition with the coming war was intriguing.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Cushman: A lot of research is how. The publications of the San Diego History Center were invaluable. eBay provided specialty items like an old history of the San Diego Zoo, a 1940(ish) Zoo tour guide, photos of polio patients in iron lungs, and a plane-spotting manual. The internet offered memoirs of the war years by San Diegans, photos of wartime downtown San Diego, and  a wonderful, colorful, 1940s map of the area. While I was writing, Philip and I visited San Diego and walked along the bay with its soft waves and gentle splashing.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Cushman: The place was the heart of the story, and, yes, it did create limitations. It’s a real place with a real history. I couldn’t create a bridge where there wasn’t a bridge in 1941 or sail warships into Mission Bay. I had to change some things about 2020 Mission Bay to make them more accurate or realistic for 1941.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Cushman: The Mission Beach and Mission Bay where Phil grew up don’t exist any more. Since his time, Mission Bay was dredged, redesigned, and developed into a splendid resort with hotels and restaurants and multi-million-dollar houses. And countless tourists. Milly would not recognize it, but the tides still come and go, seagulls still shriek, and the breeze off the ocean can still soften the air and the spirit.

You’ll find a slideshow with photos from Phil’s childhood on South Mission Beach here.

______________________________

Karen Cushman
Karen Cushman, author

 

War and Millie McGonigle #4

by
rationing

You’re not old enough to remember 1941, the year in which War and Millie McGonigle is set. Of course, you weren’t old enough to remember the time periods for your medieval books, either. What was there about Millie’s time that made you want to write about it?

My experience of the war is mostly second hand—my Uncle Chester’s stories about fighting in the South Pacific, my father’s struggles to find tires and gas for the car, my mother’s complaints about rationing. Until the day she died, my mother grumbled about how many ration coupons I used up for the shoes I kept outgrowing. I wanted to know more about their struggles, challenges, worries. What would it be like to live in a time of such constant fear, deprivation, and uncertainty?

rationing

War and Millie McGonigle #1

by
War and Millie McGonigle

How did the idea for Millie’s Book of Dead Things come  to you?

War and Millie McGonigleHaunted by her Gram’s death and the looming war, Millie became fascinated with death and dying. I wanted to give her a way to achieve some control over a scary, gloomy world. Thus The Book of Dead Things, a concrete  manifestation of her obsession. Why a book? Because I was the kind of kid who made lists in a notebook to help me keep track of my world: best books, favorite singers vs. singers I hated, handsomest movie stars, good teachers vs. bad teachers, clothes I’d like to wear when I grew up. I still have a notebook with lists of suggested plots for Elvis movies.

The Book of Dead Things also felt like a metaphor for the troubled, frightened, worried Millie before she felt the courage to accept and embrace what was good in the world. The Book became an integral part of Millie’s story and her growth.

Becoming Californians

by
California

My father loved California and the
Heat.
He’d do cannonballs
Into the neighbors swimming pool
And float with only his nose,
His belly, and his toes
Above the water.

My mother sat in the shade.
With the other wives.
They drank martinis,
Painted their toenails,
And talked about womanly things.

My brother was as pale and thin
As a wisp of smoke
But he could run like the wind.
He found three boys his age
In our new neighborhood
And played basketball and baseball,
Or just ran, fast as he could,
Animated by youth and happiness
And friends.

I was the oldest girl
By far
In the neighborhood,
A block full of babies and
Boys.

I’d swim 100 laps because I could
And because it pleased my father
And then escape inside,
Put lotion on my sunburned nose,
And read.

I was more lonely than I knew.
The loneliness came in flashes
And I swallowed it inside.
I was out of place, not good enough,
Strange and foreign,
Marked like the laundry my Irish mother
Didn’t get clean enough,
Like I, too, should be hanging on the attic,
God’s attic. 

My uncle Stooge’s pigeons could go far away
and still find their way home
But not me.

So I read.
And I wrote.
I wondered and remembered,
Told myself stories I needed to hear,
Stories where I was the hero, the star,
The popular girl, the tap dancer
Or the opera singer.
Stories where I wore tight skirts and black flats
Like the other girls
Instead of brown oxfords and
Puffed sleeves.  

I learned the joy of making things up. 

I wrote about outsiders,
Like Santa Claus going down the wrong chimney
On Christmas Eve
And finding himself in a Jewish home.
I wrote about the handsomest boy in school
Falling in love with the shy, bookish girl. 
And I wrote about masks,
And painted faces,
And swallowing feelings.

Writing was a place to put my sadness
And my joys,
My fears
And tenuous hopes.

Writing saved my life and
Made me who I am.

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?

The McCarthy Era

by

Moderator: How did the McCarthy Era affect you? When you were living through it, did you think of it as “an era”? Is that something we only create in hindsight?

Cushman: I am enough younger than Francine so that the only McCarthy I knew was Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy. Joseph McCarthy and his era really were not a topic of conversation in my high school and even most of my college years. I would say that eras are pretty much identified and described long after they have passed. Otherwise we go day to day, step by step, the best we can.

McCarthy Era

About Karen Cushman’s The Loud Silence of Francine Green, School Library Journal wrote, “This novel follows Francine’s eighth-grade year, from August 1949 to June 1950, at All Saints School for Girls in Los Angeles, a year of changes largely inspired by a new transfer student, Sophie Bowman. While Francine is quiet and committed to staying out of trouble, happy to daydream of Hollywood movie stars and to follow her father’s advice not to get involved in controversy, Sophie questions authority and wants to make a difference. Her questioning of the nuns’ disparaging comments about the Godless communists frequently leads to her being punished and eventually to her expulsion from school. Francine begins to examine her own values, particularly when an actor friend of Sophie’s father is blacklisted and Mr. Bowman loses his scriptwriting job. At the novel’s end, Francine is poised to stand up to Sister Basil, the bullying principal, and exercise her freedom of speech.”

We went to the Zoo

by

In San Diego for a memorial for Frances Cushman, Philip, Leah, and I hung out with the other wild animals at the San Diego Zoo. If you ever get a chance to go, go!

It was very hot and most of the animals were asleep or finding shade, but here are some favorites. First up, koalas!

koala

kc_photo02.jpg spacer_25x25 kc_photo04.jpg

elephants

reindeer

camel

koala

panda bears

 

Prospecting

by

The Ballad of Lucy WhippleReading The Ballad of Lucy Whipple? There are a number of Gold Rush history museums throughout California that will give you a look at different aspects of that particular time in American history. Among them: the Maidu Museum, the Gold Country Museum in Auburn, and the Rocklin History Museum.

If you’re in California for the holidays, plan a visit. As always, double-check the library’s open dates and hours. http://bit.ly/1e0XDa5