Laura's Bookshelf: COUNTING THYME

Happy New Year! I am so excited that 2016 is here, at last.

It's the first Poetry Friday of 2016!
Mary Lee is hosting our New Year's Party
at A Year of Reading.

Being part of a debut author group has given me behind-the-scenes insights and previews of so many great books coming out this year.

One of those books is COUNTING THYME, by Melanie Conklin.

This middle grade novel is about a family who moves from California to New York City, so the youngest of the three Owens siblings can be part of a cancer drug trial. The narrator is middle child Thyme (all three sibs are named for spices). Thyme is a super-feeler. She struggles with balancing her grief about moving away from her home, her grandmother and her best friend, with her hope that moving across the country will extend little brother Val’s life.

Because this is Thyme’s story, Val’s illness – while important – is only a part of the narrative. Thyme has to deal with adjusting to a new school and classmates, living in an apartment building for the first time, and navigating a busy city. All of these elements work together to create a realistic portrait of a loving family going through the highs and lows of an extended crisis together. I especially liked that the finale of the book is about Thyme’s growth, and that some important threads of the story are left, believably, open-ended.

Check out Melanie's blog post,
"Focus on the Good Stuff in 2016."
You'll find printables to create
an achievement jar similar to Thyme's.

COUNTING THYME debuts on April 12. Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Newbery-winning Rules meets Counting by 7s in this affecting story of a girl’s devotion to her brother and what it means to be home

When eleven-year-old Thyme Owens’ little brother, Val, is accepted into a new cancer drug trial, it’s just the second chance that he needs. But it also means the Owens family has to move to New York, thousands of miles away from Thyme’s best friend and everything she knows and loves. The island of Manhattan doesn’t exactly inspire new beginnings, but Thyme tries to embrace the change for what it is: temporary.

After Val’s treatment shows real promise and Mr. Owens accepts a full-time position in the city, Thyme has to face the frightening possibility that the move to New York is permanent. Thyme loves her brother, and knows the trial could save his life—she’d give anything for him to be well—but she still wants to go home, although the guilt of not wanting to stay is agonizing. She finds herself even more mixed up when her heart feels the tug of new friends, a first crush, and even a crotchety neighbor and his sweet whistling bird. All Thyme can do is count the minutes, the hours, and days, and hope time can bring both a miracle for Val and a way back home.

With equal parts heart and humor, Melanie Conklin’s debut is a courageous and charming story of love and family—and what it means to be counted.

There’s a book giveaway running at Goodreads right now! Click on this link for your chance to win a copy of COUNTING THYME .

Who will like it?

• Children 9 and up who are curious about living in a big city.
• Readers who are learning how to handle transitions
• Foodies young and old!

What will readers learn about?

• The sacrifices and changes that happen when a member of a family is seriously ill.
• Patience and a positive attitude can help when you’re going through a difficult transition.
• Food is a way of sharing with and caring about each other.

I’m pairing two poems with COUNTING THYME and both have to do with food. Over the course of the novel, Thyme learns that food is a wonderful way to show you care about someone. There’s a great character in COUNTING THYME who’s the Italian aunt version of Downton Abbey’s Mrs. Patmore. The dishes she makes for Thyme, the Owens family, and a cranky neighbor had my mouth watering.

A good portion of the story takes place over the winter holidays, so first up is Babara Crooker’s poem “After the Holidays.”

After the Holidays by Barbara Crooker

the house settles back into itself, wrapped up in silence, a robe around its shoulders.  Nothing is roasting in the oven or cooling on the countertops.  No presents are waiting to be wrapped, no cards fill the mouth of the mailbox. All is calm, all is bright, sunlight glinting off snow.  No eggnog, no yule log, no letters to be licked and stamped. No more butter cookies, no more fudge, just miles to go on the treadmill, another round plate added to the weight machine. All our good intentions pave the road. We stride out into the new year, resolute to become firm, to define our muscles, to tighten our borders…

Read the rest at Your Daily Poem.

Of course, I couldn’t resist including Shel Silverstein poem entitled “Italian Food.”

Italian Food

by Shel Silverstein

Oh, how I love Italian food.
I eat it all the time,
Not just 'cause how good it tastes
But 'cause how good it rhymes.
Minestrone, cannelloni,
Macaroni, rigatoni,
Spaghettini, scallopini,
Escarole, braciole,
Insalata, cremolata, manicotti,
Marinara, carbonara,
Shrimp francese, Bolognese...

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

Author Melanie Conklin and Cookies for Kids’ Cancer
are partnering to fight childhood cancer
through funding for groundbreaking research!

Melanie is running a great fundraiser to support the charity Cookies for Kids' Cancer. For every pre-order of COUNTING THYME, she will be making a donation! You can read more about the fundraiser here.

I hope your new year is sweet, everyone! I’ll be at ALA Midwinter next week, so I won’t be blogging. Look for my ALA report at Today’s Little Ditty at the end of January.

Summer Reads: Chapter & Verse (The Book of the Maidservant)

It's Poetry Friday. The leaves aren't falling yet in Maryland. Here at Author Amok, we are still enjoying some late-summer reading. Poetry Friday regular Tabatha Yeats-Lonske is here to share her Chapter and Verse selection.

I'm also guest-posting this week. You can find my Today's Little Ditty rant against rhyme (at least in the elementary classroom) at Michelle H. Barnes' blog.

This week's host is
Renee LaTulippe
at No Water River!

Tabatha's pairing of a novel and poem is the ninth post in a series called "Summer Reads: Chapter and Verse." Guest bloggers and I have matched books we read this summer with a poem that complements the novel.

So far, we've paired:

THE GIRLS AT THE KINGFISHER CLUB (Historical YA)

with Edna St. Vincent Millay's "First Fig"

DARIUS & TWIG (Contemporary Urban YA)

with Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"

STARGIRL (Contemporary YA)

with Eileen Spinelli's, "Poem for a Bully" and "Advice to Rapunzel"

Shared by guest blogger Janet Wong

THE IMPOSSIBLE KNIFE OF MEMORY (Contemporary YA)

with W.M. Rivera's "The You That's Left"

THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN (YA Urban Fantasy)

with Sarah Beasley's "Grief Puppet"

WALK TWO MOONS (Classic contemporary MG)

with blackberry poems by Galway Kinnell, Sylvia Plath, and Crescent Dragonwagon

ENTHUSIASM (YA Romance)

with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet III"
Shared by guest blogger Kathy MacMillan

WE WERE LIARS (YA Suspense)

with Margaret Atwood's "This Is a Photograph of Me"

Welcome back to Author Amok, Tabatha!

Tabatha reading with Penelopeep
(Peep for short).

My match-up pairs the poem "Listen" by Barbara Crooker with MG historical fiction The Book of the Maidservant by Rebecca Barnhouse. The Book of the Maidservant traces the journey of Johanna, servant to holy woman Dame Margery Kempe, as they travel from England to Rome in the 1400s. (Read a review here.)

Note: Dame Margery Kemp was a real person. You can read about her at the Online Reference Book (ORB) for Medieval Studies.

Available at ABE Books.

You can see how tough life is for servants, how easy it would be to give up, but Johanna never does. When she finally finds a field of blankness before her, she takes advantage of it. And as much trouble as other people can be, one of the toughest things Johanna has to do is make peace with is herself. Like the moon, though, people get the chance to bloom again.

The poem: 

Listen,

I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing.
I want to say, wake up, open your eyes, there’s
a snow-covered road ahead, a field of blankness,
a sheet of paper, an empty screen. Even
the smallest insects are singing, vibrating
their entire bodies, tiny violins of longing
and desire. We were made for song.
I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take
the breath of the meadow into my mouth,
and I can release it for the leaves’ green need.
I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils.
The cardinals’ red song dances in your blood.
Look, every month the moon blossoms
into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

Barbara Crooker, from Line Dance

I read this poem on Poetry Friday blogger's Margaret Simon's blog, Reflections on the Teche. 

Here's the link for author Rebecca Barnhouse's website: http://www.rebeccabarnhouse.com/book-of-the-maidservant.html

Tabatha is enamored of words and fascinated with the world. Her blog The Opposite of Indifference showcases her love for art, music, and poetry. She is working on a project involving another of her interests, botanical medicine. Her book about Holocaust survivors has just been released as a Kindle edition. 

Tabatha, I have some favorite books set in the same time period: CATHERINE, CALLED BIRDY by Karen Cushman and Kevin Crossley-Holland’s MG series that begins with THE SEEING STONE. Thanks for recommending THE BOOK OF THE MAIDSERVANT. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Readers, I am proud to say that Barbara Crooker—isn’t the poem Tabatha shared beautiful?—has published work in the journal I edit, Little Patuxent Review. Crooker's poem “Rufous-Sided Towhee” appeared in our science-themed issue. We are reading submissions *right now* for an issue about food. Please send your poems through Submittable, but be sure to read LPR’s guidelines first. 

To get an idea of the work we publish, check out LPR's YouTube channel, where you will see contributors reading their work. The deadline is November 1. The Food issue will go on sale in January.

Do you have an idea for Summer Reads: Chapter and Verse? I'm still looking for guest bloggers. The series will continue until summer ends on Monday, September 22. For more information, find a full explanation of this series and a sample Chapter and Verse pairing at this post.