Margaret Fieland: Poetry and Prose

It’s so exciting!

Next month, VBT – Writers on the Move is having its ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

To celebrate this accomplishment, we are having a STUPENDOUS Blogaversary Tour!

Daily postings and daily prizes! But, that’s not all, we’re still having our Mystery Site Giveaway: the Anniversary PRIZE is a $25 (US) GIFT CARD.

Visit the VBT – Writers on the Move blogsite for all the details.
http://vbt-writerso nthemove. blogspot. com

and it was terrific. After going through Lisa Gentile’s and Beverly McClure’s forums, I decided I needed to email a friend who’s a music director at a local middle school about my work in progress, and I got lots of good ideas. So now I’m off to:
— make cards for each chapter of present version of book
— note revisions
–start revising

I also found a website with math history information aimed at middle school students. Hot diggety!
And I started reading my Number book and making notes.

Oh, yeah, and I may have started another series of poem..

All I need are 36 hour days.

I’m in the middle of working through my new work in progress, tentatively titled “Don’t Ask Me Why” and here I’ve been struck with another idea — one that won’t seem to leave me alone. It’s to write that book — quite possibly for kids — on the history of mathematics that I looked for and couldn’t find when I started writing my math poem collection.

The problem is that it’s going to be a lot of work, and involve a lot of research. I’ve tried telling it “down, little idea,” but it won’t cooperate.

.. it’s going to be a busy week. Lucky yesterday was a holiday.

.. actually, I’m not inclined to give the one of my favorite books.

The Annotated Alice is probably my all-time favorite book — but it’s not everyone’s taste.

What I’m inclined to give them is a book of Far Side cartoons — I just love the whacky humor.

Today’s topic is I hated … when I had to read it in high school, but when I read it on my own later, I loved it because….

This is a tough one because I try to forget about the books I hate — it’s hard enough remembering all the books I liked.

So I’m going to try here for books I didn’t absolutely love..

Wind in the Willows — so sue me. I found it boring. I reread it later and did like it better, but I still don’t love it. Still, in high school I abandoned it part way through and as an adult I did manage to finish it, which is something, anyway.

Susie Wong — I read this at age 12 or so, at a point where I thought ’slept with’ meant you shared a bed for the night. I was just too darn young. I reread this later and loved it — the story had me hooked on the second go round. I was in my twenties.

My parents didn’t censor my reading as a kid — they just let me read what I liked. I guess they figured, rightly, that if it were unsuitable, it would just go right over my head. Too, too true.

Anna Karenina — it was required reading. Didn’t hate it, just couldn’t follow all the names. I reread it later, after I’d taken two years of Russian in college, and it made much more sense, because I could follow it.

what classic book?

Actually, I can’t think of one. This is, I fear, less a testament to the uniqueness of my life than to the weakness of my memory. Here are some I’ve disqualified:

The Secret Garden: Never was orphaned
Alice in Wonderland: Did plenty of daydreaming, but never fell down a rabbit hole
Peter Pan: Believed in Tinker Bell at one point, but never learned to fly
Farmer in the Sky: Never went to Ganymede. Heck, never left Earth at all.
Ballet Shoes: Never orphaned, never went to a stage school. I do have a sister, but just one. That’s enough IMO.
Theater Shoes: Never orphaned, never went to a stage school, never got a scholarship. Have a sister but no brother. I do have male cousins, though. Oh, yes, and I did discover previously unknown family at the age of eight or so.

Well, so far Theater Shoes is the closest, due to the family thing. My father, it turns out, was the youngest of six, but until we were six and eight we never knew. It turns out Dad had been seeing his siblings regularly — he just never bothered to tell the rest of us about them. It turns out I had five cousins on my father’s side I hadn’t previously known about, as well as three Aunts and two Uncles. Let’s hear it for family.

If you read yesterday’s post, you already know some of my childhood favorites and the reasons I liked them. But here’s another: when I was in fourth grade, my absolute favorite book was the Landmark biography, “Life of Saint Patrick.” As my family is Jewish, this was something I knew nothing about, and I was fascinated. I read the book at least seven times over the course of that year. The history was just so interesting. Too bad I didn’t find my social studies courses in school nearly as compelling. As I told my kids, I was paying attention on Math and English, and some of the time in Science, but not in social studies, so if they had history questions on their homework, then needed to ask someone else.

In honor of National Great Books Week, I’ll be posting about books this week, Monday through Friday. Today’s topic: If I were stranded on a desert island with only seven books to read over the next few years, what would they be?

1. Corny, perhaps, but true: The King James Version of the Bible, old and new testaments.
My oldest son has read the entire old testament at least twice that I know of, but while I’ve read parts of it, I’ve never read the entire old testament, and the only parts of the new testament I’ve read were the parts on Jesus’ birth, which I looked up when I was in college in order to write a Christmas story for a French class.

In case you’re wondering, my family of origin is Jewish.

2. Because it’s pretty much my all-time favorite book, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll.
When I was in college, I’d try to keep my mind on my studies, so I’d eschew trips to the local library. I’d end up having book withdrawal symptoms, and thus I would reread Alice every exam time.

I also taught myself to wiggle my ears, a talent I passed on to one of my sons (the bible reader) during middle school. His teachers were less than thrilled.

3. One of my favorite books as a kid, Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie.
A classic, and I can’t remember the number of times I reread this.

4. Another childhood favorite, Understood Betsey, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
I just reread this one, and it’s still a great read.

5. Theater Shoes, by Noes Streatfield.
I read all of Streatfield’s SHOES books, but this one is by far my favorite, perhaps because I read it first.

6. Farmer in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein.
This is the Heinlein I picked out as a present for my 10th birthday. It’s hard to pick just one of Heinlein’s books, as they are all compulsively readable, but this one remains one of my favorites.

7.The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I just love this one, too. The flowering of the garden and the characters gets me every time.

http://news.naiwe.com/2009/10/03/great-books-week-blog-tour-october-4-10-2009/