Patricia Hruby Powell

“Hiding” by Henry Turner

October 14, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

A love-sick teen wandering his neighborhood finds himself in his ex-girlfriend Laura’s backyard. He slips into her basement and is trapped there overnight due to the alarm system, in “Hiding” (Clarion 2018) by Henry Turner. The next morning the family members leave but the maid arrives. And there’s a large dog in the house. He’s got time to think.

He thinks about his close friend Suzy who knew everything about him, but Laura had let him hide, keep his secrets, so the mystery held, which had to do with why he couldn’t get over her. Besides discovering things about himself while trapped in the house he discovers plenty about Laura and what seemed like her perfect life.

Why had Laura, a popular talented girl, chosen him when he was such a loser? Maybe she was attracted to a life that didn’t have to look perfect. Maybe her life wasn’t as perfect as she’d claimed. Is that why he was here? That’s one of his major questions. Why was he here?

Why did Laura love his house and all the “dopey” artwork he’d done that his mother put up on the walls? He wishes his mom would tear them down. But he remembers Laura saying, “Don’t ever do that. She loves you. You’re so lucky to have that.” Ahah. He sees that Laura’s perfect house has no personal touches—it looks expensive and unused. Is that why Laura had never invited him over? Not because she was embarrassed by him, but because she was embarrassed by her own home?

He’s good at hiding. Lots of teens are. “Growing up like I did, there was a lot to tell me that I was just a sort of total nobody . . .” but he actually feels that he’s better than that. However, no one would agree with him, he tells us, “because people don’t actually see me, or see any real value in me, which was probably the best reason I ever had to just start hiding all the time.”

He describes a past experience when he pretended to be a rich boy—a day of lies. He says, “I’d made myself feel like nothing by not being me.” He’d sensed that there was something deep and dark in Laura, and in her house he discovers the truth of that. That’s perhaps why they were initially drawn together. Laura had hidden from herself. “That’s the most dangerous kind of hiding. Everybody knows you, but you’re not really there, even for yourself.” There’s a lot to discuss in this book.

The humor is wry. He’s upstairs wandering and avoiding the maid, and we readers are nervous for him. The living room furniture is reddish so he grabs a reddish tablecloth and hides behind it so the surveillance camera doesn’t detect him skulking through the house.

I found his teen voice refreshing at the outset. Eventually all the repeated phrases such as, “if you know what I mean,” “sort of,” “you know,” “in my opinion,” grew annoying but made it a great candidate for practicing speed-reading. “He” is named only in the surprise twist ending, in the last lines of the book. Good for thoughtful readers.

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of Loving vs. Virginia; Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker and the forthcoming Struttin’ With Some Barbecue talesforallages.com

“Price of Duty” by Todd Strasser

September 23, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

When Jake Liddell returns home wounded from a tour of duty in the Middle East, everyone says he’s a hero. Jake says, “My body may have returned home, but my brain is still wired for war.” He needs pills to sleep. His grandfather, a war hero called The General, is already urging Jake back to the battlefield. Jake waits—and questions—the Silver Star he will be awarded.

Acclaimed author Todd Strasser examines military service in his new novel, “Price of Duty” (Simon & Schuster 2018). Jake visits his former high school JROTC and is asked, “What’s it like?” He answers, “It’s hard.” What he can’t say to them is, “. . . you’ll wish to God that you’d never come. . . you’ll lie in bed at night so scared and trembling and sick with fear that you’ll be a hair’s width from bawling loudly for your mommy.”

Jake shows us the camaraderie among soldiers, the irreverent pranks and nicknames like Morpiss, Skitballs, Magnet; the unlikely friendships with the likes of Brad, the corporal who is married to Jake’s middle school girlfriend. He shows Brad’s over-the-top jealousy, how normal tensions grow in the light of daily shelling, bombings and the ongoing threat to life. There’s plenty of graphic battle scenes here—and legs being blown off.

You learn about “hillbilly armor,” welded extra iron plating to the undercarriages of their vehicles, because some of the gear was badly made. Morpiss says, “Never forget, my friend,” . . . “Your life is in the hands of the lowest bidder.”

Once home Jake has a girlfriend to visit—a girlfriend who wants to know if she should wait for him when he returns to duty. And there’s Brandi, who writes for the Franklin High School newspaper, Brandi, who is making an anti-war video. She claims that JROTC is military preparation. She says that 40% of its members go directly into the military versus 2% from the general population—20 times more. She tells us that 12% of America’s population is black, but 30% of the U.S. Army is black. She tells us that 50% of JROTC are black or minority. She says, “Wouldn’t you say that sounds a little disproportionate?”

At first Jake argues. He comes from a military family, particularly on his mother’s side. Plus, he has a paternal uncle who said the Vietnam “war was immoral, nothing more than mass murder,” was called a “draft dodger” and jailed for refusing to fight. Jake has to be careful of the historic shame this caused his family. But he’s considering not going back to battle. His grandfather, the General, would be disappointed but could pull strings to keep him from returning.

And what about that? He has special care. Jake says that the US tells the world we have an “all-volunteer Army. We just changed the method of conscription…” He asks, “Why should it be the poor and minorities, the disadvantaged and luckless, who have to bear the burden of risking their lives for our country.” And what about “guys like me who are seduced by the action ads and unethical recruiters.”

There’s so much here to think about. And talk about.

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker among other books talesforallages.com

“We Are All That’s Left” by Carro Arcos

September 2, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

The voice of Zara, an aspiring teenaged photographer in Rhode Island, alternates with the story of her mother, Nadja who survived the 1990s Yugoslav War in “We Are All That’s Left” (Philomel 2018), a novel by Carrie Arcos.

The Yugoslav War led to the breakup of the former nation of Yugoslavia. Serbs and Croats were bent on “ethnic cleansing” and ridding their country of Muslims. Nadja’s family, non-practicing Muslims, were all shot and killed as teenaged Nadja watched—hidden. She managed to escape to war-torn Sarajevo with the help of her non-Muslim boyfriend Marko. But he was gone now.

In Sarajevo, Nadja heard people screaming. “She decided if she were to get shot, she would not scream. She would not make a sound. She would be . . . silent and strong, like a large willow tree near the river.” It was no wonder she’d closed off. But after some harrowing years, she made her way to the U.S. and married an American physician. Considering her background, it’s clear to see why Nadja’s mothering skills were less than stellar. Zara is not close to her mother, but she longs to be loved.

Arcos begins the book with terrorist attacks in Rhode Island and around the U.S. Zara and Nadja happen to be at the farmer’s market when a terrorist’s bomb explodes, seriously injuring Zara and putting Nadja in a coma. Zara has the shrapnel excised from her back and face and returns home to her brother and attending grandparents. Her father spends much of his time in the hospital keeping busy and checking on his comatose wife.

Almost a universal experience among survivors, Zara says, “I think of . . . the people who lost limbs. Those who died. Why did I survive? . . . Nothing makes sense . . .” Not long before the attack Zara had refused to talk to her seemingly cold mother. “I wanted to be mad because I felt like it was justified, like anger gave me a strength to fight the loneliness and hurt I felt.” At the time her mother had the wisdom to say to her daughter, “It takes a stronger person to let others in.”

But now Nadja is in a coma. Zara longs to let her mother in—to know her. She wants to know about the war years. In her mother’s closet, Zara finds a box filled with mementos from the war—objects we have become privy to, as we read Nadja’s story.

Wise, handsome Joseph befriends Zara at the hospital. He studies world religions in order to deal with his own traumatic life experience and paraphrases Rumi, the Muslim mystic, saying, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

Zara is wounded inside and out. Eventually she realizes, “Scars . . . don’t diminish our lives, but make them richer somehow.” This is a story of mother and daughter, of love and bonding, as well as of survival.

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker among other books talesforallages.com

Show-Don’t-Tell

August 20, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Show-Don’t-Tell is a writer’s adage and a technique that allows readers to experience a text through their senses and emotions—which is how most of us want to experience text. We want to be drawn into the story and to empathize with the characters. There are various ways to do this and those ways overlap. I’ll describe a few here.

Tip #1A Word Bank: Senses

Writing is a sensual medium. Mostly it’s a visual medium, but all the senses can be used to make your writing come to life. I love author and workshop leader Darcy Pattison’s exercise of drawing an icon for each of the senses: eye, ear, nose, mouth, hand (for tactile). Then you make a word bank or phrase bank for your story. If you’re writing a picture book, your word bank might be a page long. If you’re writing a historical novel, your word bank might extend to hundreds of notecards.

Look at the opening of Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case. (Forgive me for using my own work, but it will exemplify the tips I’m highlighting. For the sake of space, I do not include all the line breaks).

Garnet and I walk in the grass alongside the road
to keep our shoes clean,
but Lewis doesn’t care.
He’s shuffling through dust in the middle of the road.
Garnet’s hand-me-down lace-ups have the most life left in them,
so they’re the best.
She gets the best ’cause she’s oldest and has the feet to fit them.
I wear her way wore-out saddle shoes from last year
but painted and buffed till they nearly glow.
To me, they’re the best—being saddle shoes—
even though I can feel every stick and pebble through the thinned-down soles.
Lewis wears boots so wore-out—
looks like Nippy chewed them soft in the barn.
Being the youngest of seven brothers—
no telling who wore those boots before him.

As the scene continues, the siblings insult each other, laugh, argue, then the two big sisters grab Lewis’s elbows and fly him over the dirt road . . .

with him pedaling mid-air and hollerin’ and that’s how we arrive at Sycamore School.

This scene is mostly visual (you see the grass, the various shoes, the road). But you also hear the aural (hollerin’). You experience the tactile, as when Mildred feels every stick and pebble through the thinned-down soles.

Tip #1B Word Bank: Pithy Details

Whether you develop details in word banks or on the run, you want them to pack a punch. The dusty road shows that the setting is rural. The hand-me-down lace-ups show that they’re poor. The saddle shoes date the piece. The writer doesn’t have to tell us that the kids are poor, that this is historic, or that the kids get along, are lively, and live a good life. The writer shows it.

It usually takes more words to show rather than tell, but if you show well, then you’re doing double duty and conveying facts, gracefully—such as, Garnet and six brothers are older than Mildred and Lewis is younger—without those bits sounding like clunky facts being dropped into the story.

Tip #1C Word Bank: Verbs

Good verbs are the powerhouse of good writing and good showing. And they’re great to develop in the Word Bank exercise. Lewis is shuffling, Mildred painted and buffed her saddle shoes. Nippy chewed the boots soft. Lewis arrives pedaling and hollering.

Look at a couple of scenes from Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker.

[scene:]

Off the street and onto the stage,
Josephine danced like she was
ON FIRE.
She arched her back and flipped her tail like a rooster,
she flapped and pumped,
dancing the “turkey trot”
SO FINE
that the Dixie Steppers asked her
to step along with them.

[bridge:]

So long, Jones family. Josephine was steppin’ out.

[scene:]

YESSIR, she soared over the stage as Cupid,
god of love, with leaping legs and little wings.

Hooked on wires,
she held bow and arrow.
But her wires got crossed.
Couldn’t get down. Hanging in midair,
she rolled her eyes like shooting marbles,
flailed those long legs.
WHAT A CLOWN!
The audience laughed themselves to tears.
They STOMPED.
They CLAPPED.

Josephine arched, flipped, flapped, pumped, soared, and flailed—giving a kinetic boost to the text. Hopefully the verbs make you feel the dance. It was really fun to dance the dances in order to find just the right verbs—and those verbs are pretty razz-ma-tazz. Unless it’s called for, you don’t want to overdo the verbs. Elsewhere in the book:

…rich white flappers and sleek gentlemen
strolled the UPPER decks . . .

Using accurate verbs keeps you from using unnecessary adverbs. The elite strolled rather than “walked leisurely.” Can’t you see them arm-in-arm, owning the world, in their privileged manner? That adverb “leisurely” would have detracted from the succinct activity. They strolled. I can’t think of a better verb. Even ambled is not quite right. They strolled.

Verbs must fit the mood of an individual piece. Loving vs. Virginia is a quieter book than Josephine,and the vocabulary overall must convey a sense of quiet people. Mildred Jeter’s people were farmers, so they plant, slaughter, butcher, pluck, and sugar. Mildred is lyrical, gentle, and imaginative, so she describes her rolling hills and woods—threaded with creeks.Threaded.

Richard Loving is also gentle, but has a bit of an edge. He describes the cruel sheriff as chewin’ on his teeth . . . trying to figure out what mean thing he could do. Or Richard spat out the harsh moonshine—words that show a little defensiveness.

Tip #2 Create Scenes

Whether for picture books, MG, or YA, for fiction or nonfiction, scenes invite your readers into the text by allowing them to visualize your story—like they’re watching the scene of a movie. You set your character in a place, your character moves the story forward by some action, and then the scene closes. You might create a “bridge” of necessary information and then begin your next scene.

The first sample above is a complete scene from Loving vs. Virginia. The scene opens on the children walking to school on a dirt road. You see the characters, get to know them, discover information about their lives. When they arrive at school, the scene closes. Besides being drawn in by this “movie clip,” are you drawn in by the pithy and sensual details and accurate verbs?

Background: I’d researched this subject intending to write a nonfiction book. I visited the Lovings’ rural Virginia section, spoke to family members and friends. I studied the nine-year case. And then my editor called and asked if I’d be willing to write Loving as a documentary novel. “Sure,” said I. (I wasn’t yet under contract.) “What’s a documentary novel?”

Answer: As in Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood, which is the story of a real murder. Capote interviewed the murderer, police, and neighbors and read the news reports. He told the story from the point of view of the murderer. This is an informational book using a fictional element, also called a nonfiction novel.

The fictional element in Loving vs. Virginia was my writing it in the voices of the two real plaintiffs, Mildred and Richard Loving. I studied existing news and documentary footage of the couple from the sixties until I felt I knew them well enough to write scenes about their childhood, their falling in love, their exile, and their fight to return home.

What a gift this turned out to be—writing it as a documentary novel or nonfiction novel.
I used what I knew and created scenes from my imagination. However, everything in the historic record or told to me by an interviewee remains factual.

This prompts the question: can you make scenes writing actual nonfiction? Yes. It’s more challenging than it is in fiction, but aren’t we all up for a challenge? Josephine is straight nonfiction, written in verse. I have labeled the above passage “scene, bridge, scene” to help you identify the parts.

If I were telling (rather than showing) that first scene, I might say:
Because she was seen dancing in the street, Baker was invited to dance in a theater. Her execution of the popular dances of the day, such as the “turkey trot,” was so lively that professionals, the Dixie Steppers, asked her to join their troupe.

That is not a scene. It doesn’t open. And it doesn’t quite close. The facts are the same as those in the scene. But it doesn’t run like a movie clip. It doesn’t evoke much in the way of visuals or emotion.

Whatever your genre, writing in scenes will lift your writing out of the telling category and into showing. Yes, you can also TELL information within your story, but the more scenes you create, the deeper you’ll take your reader into your story so they can empathize with your characters.

Show, don’t tell. Use pithy details chosen from your word banks (which include great verbs) to write scenes. In the next issue maybe we’ll look at the sound of words or metaphors and similes or some such. Please e-mail me with questions or subjects you might want covered.

phpowell@talesforallages.com

Patricia Hruby Powell, formerly a dancer, storyteller, and librarian, is the author of Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle 2014), which garnered Sibert, Boston Globe Horn Book, and Bologna Ragazzi Honors; and Loving vs. Virginia (Chronicle 2017), a Junior Library Guild Selection and Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor. Forthcoming are books about Lil Hardin Armstrong, Ella Baker, and women’s suffrage. She has been a mentor for a WNDB and SCBWI-MI. Visit Patricia at talesforallages.com.

“Moonrise” by Sarah Crossan

August 12, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Joe Moon is seventeen and hasn’t seen his older brother Ed in ten years in “Moonrise” (Bloomsbury 2018) by Sarah Crossan. Joe is nearly penniless, but he leaves New York to go to Wakeling, Texas. Ed is on death row and his execution date is set.

Angela, his sister, stays in Staten Island to earn money for the family, slinging burgers. Joe’s father is not in the picture. His junkie mother left and who knows where she is. Aunt Karen helped out as long as Joe and Angela would denounce their brother. In this novel-in-verse, with great economy, Crossan shows the deep emotional story. “But Ed’s crime put us in another league,/ and that’s where Aunt Karen stepped in—/she spat on us and shined us up to look/ like a decent family . . .” And when they couldn’t denounce their brother any longer, Aunt Karen left.

Ed was almost a father-figure to Joe ten years earlier when Ed was 17. But now? Joe hardly knows him. But Ed’s his brother.

Ed says he didn’t do it. The justice system is well known to want a conviction when a police officer is murdered. Teenagers like Ed don’t know not to speak without a lawyer present. Police are known to bully a “confession” out of minors by means of abuse and fear tactics. There’s no DNA at the scene that links Ed. But in the end, does it even matter if Ed is guilty or not? Is the death sentence reasonable? Especially when the justice system might have chosen the wrong perpetrator?

Ed is on the news and made to look vicious. But Ed isn’t vicious. And being related to a convicted murderer? Joe is shunned. He says, “ . . . Newscasters love revealing the beauty of the victims—/like they’re the only ones who got slammed./Reporters don’t give a damn about our family./ We’re not a story. We’re dirt.”

Joe says to Angela “God. It’s better to be guilty and rich,/ I reckon . . .” But Joe gets himself to Wakeling, finds a filthy slum room to live in, tries to line up a job as a mechanic and screws up the nerve to visit Ed on the row. Joe is searched and led down the corridor. “From somewhere close by comes a holler—/a laugh, barbed and desperate.” One feels the culture on the row. Joe speaks to Ed through plexi-glass via a phone. It’s not easy to communicate.

In the meantime, Joe finds Nelly. He needs a friend. He needs support. But, is Nelly a good match for Joe? Will Angela come like she promises? Has anyone seen their mother? These kids need help pretty badly. But maybe they’re the best support there is.

And how do you say goodbye? Time is ticking. The emotion pulls you along and the situation invites discussion on life, death, and love. What’s more important?

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker among other books talesforallages.com

“Orphan Monster Spy” by Matt Killeen

July 22, 2018 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Sarah is fifteen, blue-eyed, blonde—and Jewish—living in 1939 Nazi Germany in “Orphan Monster Spy” (Viking 2018) by Matt Killeen. The story opens with Sarah’s mother being shot at a roadside checkpoint. Sarah, now an orphan with no identity papers, runs. Her former gymnastic training helps her scale walls and skirt roofs. She meets a man with an unidentifiable accent. In her desperation, she lets him rescue her.

Just as Sarah, aided by her rescuer, is about to find freedom on an outbound ship, she returns the favor by getting off the ship and rescuing her rescuer. Sarah knows her rescuer, first, as Captain Floyd, a British spy. Sarah learns about her mysterious savior through his library. She assesses him “A liar and a trickster.” “Correct,” he says. Can we trust him?

Soon Captain Floyd becomes Herr Haller. With Sarah’s Aryan looks she can pass for Hitler Youth. Haller enrolls her, as Ursula, his niece, at an elite Nazi girls boarding school. The daughter of a Nazi scientist who is purported to be building a bomb on his nearby estate—a bomb capable of destroying European cities—is also enrolled.

Sarah’s job is to befriend the Nazi girl, get invited to her home and report about this bomb project. It helps that Sarah’s mother was an actress who trained her daughter in languages, accents, and acting. Principles of acting run throughout this page-turner. “Stay in character.” Never “drop your mask.” Most importantly, “Use the fear. Fear is an energy. Break it up and build something new.”

After playing the piano, Sarah says, “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” The Captain tells her “Good National Socialist girls don’t quote Picasso, or play Satie. You’ve got to be a good dumb little monster now.”

Girls can be mean. Nazi schoolgirls have had special training for the task. Sarah has issues with the monster role. She instinctively wants to protect the weak. At the same time she competes with the strong, in an effort to win their respect. She must win over the “Ice Queen,” the leader, to get to her real subject—daughter of the bomb builder.

Sarah feels she must win a brutal cross-country race, which spans a fast running river and miles of woods. She uses the power of memory of Kristallnacht—the injustice of what was done to Jews—to fuel her ability to cross over the canopy of trees, which spans the river, rather than the regular route over the bridge. Is this cheating? In a world so brutal a little cheating is easily forgiven. If she can defuse the process of bomb-making by reporting secrets to Herr Haller, the free world might be saved—she hopes. Big stakes. And it’s all told in a believable manner.

There are those who think this is an adult book, which would be enjoyed by young adults, but it’s published and marketed as young adult. The flaws of the protagonist make us believe in the authenticity of this high-tension high-stakes story.

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker talesforallages.com