Author Kaycee Jane Offers Advice to Girls About Boyfriends

When I started to date in high school I didn’t know anything about what to expect from a boyfriend, which meant that determining what was good and not so good in a relationship wasn’t all that easy. Thank heavens I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’ve spent time talking with my daughters about healthy relationships. Even so, I think it’s too easy for them to tune their mom out sometimes. That’s why I was happy to learn about this blog post by Kaycee Jane, author of Frog or Prince? The Smart Girl’s Guide to Boyfriends. In her post “Healthy Relationship?—how to tell,” Kaycee discusses signs of a healthy relationship using the frog and prince analogy. It’s worth reading and sending the link to your teenage daughter. A gentle nudge with another voice may just help her see relationships for what they are—good or bad.

Mother-daughter Book Club Meeting Last Night—How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Last night Catherine and I went to our mother-daughter book club meeting. We had so much fun before the discussion began that we didn’t sit down to talk about the book until we had all been at Ellen and Franny’s house for nearly two hours! Since the girls started high school, we’ve cut back to meeting about once every six to eight weeks, but we do miss each other in the interim. Most of the girls see each other at school, but the moms don’t seem much of each other at all. And there’s no other place that the whole group gathers together at the same time.

After we polished off bowls of chili accompanied by salad and cornbread (yum!), it was time for book discussion. We read How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. We weren’t sure how discussion was going to go, because we knew the book brought up tough issues to read about: mental illness, sexual promiscuity, drug usage and more. Some of the moms especially were not comfortable reading about such dark, emotional issues. But when we got into the discussion, we found the girls had not really focused on those points too much. They’re used to reading and analyzing texts with those issues in them for school, and they don’t have life experience yet to be truly affected by the despair some of the adults picked up on.

Most people didn’t like the way the book was told from the present in the main characters’ lives, back to the past. They believed they could have been much more sympathetic to the four Garcia girls as adults, if they had known more about their lives as children first. I thought most of the chapters were beautifully written, capturing human emotion exceptionally well. But I also thought the book read like a series of short stories connected by a common thread. I found it much easier to appreciate the whole book when I looked at it that way.

I’m sure the author wasn’t thinking of a young adult audience when she wrote this book. We chose it because it was on the reading list for the literature class at one of the girl’s high school. I was reminded during our discussion of the reasons I usually recommend against choosing books from a school reading list. For one thing, those books often contain dark, emotional conflicts that show the characters’ growth over the course of the story. It’s perfect for analysis, but not always perfect for book club. Also, reading school books for book club can mean that your fun group meeting turns into just another assignment.

While we did have a lively, meaningful discussion about How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, I don’t recommend it as a mother-daughter book club book. Next up, we’ll be going in a different direction as we read The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff.

Guest Post with Tammar Stein, Author of Light Years

Today I’m guest posting at Tammar Stein’s blog. My essay is about how reading with your daughter helps you stay closer to her as she grows.

Tammar is the author of Light Years. Here’s the publisher’s description of Light Years:

“He went to school to learn how to kill me. The Israeli girl who ruined his life. Seven people were killed instead. A single mother of two. A computer programmer. Two college students. A grandmother and her four-year-old grandson sharing an ice cream. And Dov, my boyfriend, my heart, the man I wanted to marry, who was there waiting for me.

Maya leaves Israel to study astronomy at the University of Virginia, running from the violence, guilt, and memories of her past. As the narrative switches between Virginia and Israel, we learn about Maya’s life as a soldier, her ambiguous devotion to Israel, and her love for her boyfriend, Dov, who is tragically killed in a suicide bombing. Now, in Virginia, amid the day-to-day pressures of classes, roommates, and fraternity parties, Maya attempts to reconcile her Israeli past with her American future.”

Madeleine and I read Light Years in our mother-daughter book club and it prompted great discussions on Israeli culture, dealing with personal tragedy and learning to live in the aftermath. Look for a complete book review and an interview with Tammar later this month.

The Last Will of Moira Leahy—Book Review and Giveaway, Interview with Author Therese Walsh

Today I’m excited to feature Therese Walsh and her new book The Last Will of Moira Leahy. This was such an interesting book to read, and I’m eager to share more about it with you. First up is my review, followed by an interview with Therese. Then look for details so you can win a copy of her book.

Review: The Last Will of Moira Leahy

Twenty-five-year-old Maeve Leahy likes her life orderly with limited surprises. But she’s feeling restless one November night as she thinks about her twin, Moira, whom she lost to a night in November nine years before. As a distraction, she attends an antiques auction where she places the winning bid on a special dagger, a Javanese keris, very much like one she accidentally dropped into a bay years ago while playing a pirate queen with Moira.

Soon mysterious things begin to happen. A book on weaponry is nailed to the door of her office at the small college in New York State where she teaches. She feels she’s being watched. Then she receives a note asking her to travel to Rome where she can learn more about her knife from a man who uses an age-old tradition to make blades just like it.

In Rome she’s joined by Noel, the only man Maeve has let into her inner world while still keeping him at a distance. Noel has been in Europe searching for answers from his own past and escaping from the uncertainties of his relationship with Maeve. Together they start to unravel their feelings for each other, the mystery of the keris, the man behind the blade, and the voices in Maeve’s mind that refuse to go away. Maeve also finally confronts her own feelings for her twin and the shocking event that separated them as teenagers.

The Last Will of Moira Leahy by Therese Walsh is a richly conceived tale that weaves mystery, romance, adventure and self-discovery into one beautiful package. Moira’s story from years before appears tucked in between Maeve’s narrative in the present. The twins’ inseparable bond is both a comfort and a burden to them as they learn to find their own talents. Topics to discuss include the special bond that exists between twins, learning to be true to your own personality without taking away from family members, honesty in relationships, deciding to have sex with a boyfriend, learning to deal with family tragedy and more. The Last Will of Moira Leahy is billed as women’s fiction, but it is appropriate for book clubs with girls aged 15 and over. Highly recommended.

Interview: Author Therese Walsh

Q. Most people recognize the special bond that exists between twins. What prompted you to write about twins?

TW: Believe it or not, I didn’t intend to write about twins. When I first began writing, I meant to create a simple love story between Maeve Leahy and her friend, Noel. Moira kind of appeared on the page one day and changed the dynamic of the book. I rewrote the story to center it around the relationship between the twins when I realized the emotional power of their story.

Q. The book is mostly told in Maeve’s voice, with small glimpses of Moira’s point of view. What do you want the reader to learn about Moira when we hear her voice?

TW: I wanted readers to get to know Moira and realize she wasn’t a bad person, and I felt that hearing only from Maeve’s point of view might have meant people didn’t give Moira the benefit of the doubt. I think that both girls were good people, and I wanted them each to be understood.

Q. Maeve and Moira’s mother plays a crucial role in their lives through her decisions on how to direct their talents. But she also seems insignificant in some ways. Do you think the twins didn’t need her as much because they had each other?

TW: That was definitely Abby’s perception—that they didn’t need her. The truth was that the twins needed her in ways that felt unsatisfying to Abby, because they were drawing so much emotional support from one another and they understood one another exceedingly well. But Abby was their mother, and so they did need her in a million little ways. There’s a hole in Maeve’s life after she loses her twin but there’s another beside that one because she’s lost her mother in a sense, too. That hole wouldn’t be there if Abby was truly insignificant to her.

Q. How did you become aware of and interested in the keris?

TW: I found the keris almost by fluke. As I said, I’d first planned to write a simple love story. Well, Noel was an antiques dealer, and I spent many happy hours going through eBay listings, looking for antiques that I planned later to describe in his shop. One of the items I found was an antique Javanese keris—a dagger with a wavy blade. It looked interesting, so I made a record of it. I wanted my first scene to take place in an auction house and wasn’t sure which item should draw my characters’ attention. I chose the keris from my list without much thought.

I gave my scene to a friend, who read it with interest and then asked if the keris would be important to the rest of the book. It sounded like a good idea. I dug in, did some research, and realized the keris was so much more than a pretty blade. Maeve Leahy, the main character, realizes the same throughout the course of the novel.

Q. What kind of research did your conduct for your book and how long did you spend on research?

TW: I traveled to Castine, Maine; I read books (on twins, on Rome, on strange phenomena), I spoke with people (about Castine and Rome and the Javanese keris); and I did more online research than I can name (on twins and post traumatic stress disorder and antiques and airlines and sailing and pirates and more!).

I love research, and I spend far more time on it than I’ll admit in a public forum that may be visited by my editor. But seriously, I do love it and I let it divert me and inform the direction of the story if it’s juicy enough.

Q. Your book takes place in Maine, New York and Rome. Are any of these places special to you in some way?

TW: When I first began writing this story, I chose to center the book in upstate because it was what I knew; I live in upstate New York. I ventured out of “safe” territory shortly thereafter by sending my characters to Rome, Italy. When I rewrote the book to focus on the twin sisters, I decided to add scenes from Castine, Maine, as well. I don’t have a special connection to Rome or Castine, but I did visit Castine and learned much about the town on that trip.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a novelist.

TW: I was hired as a features researcher for Prevention Magazine out of graduate school. I’d long loved to write, though I hadn’t considered it as a career until my stint with Prevention. Opportunities were born, and I took them. And when my daughter was born, I left my in-house job to become a freelance health researcher and writer.

Fiction became a part of the everyday at that point—reading to my daughter, then my son. And because I liked to write, one thing led to another; I started writing children’s stories. None were published, but that didn’t matter; Pandora’s Box had been opened. One thing I learned while writing children’s stories was that I loved a good juicy sentence, so I thought I should try my hand at adult fiction. And I did.

Q. Can you tell us about your next book and when we can expect to see it in print?

TW: Yes, I’m writing about a blind woman who travels across West Virginia in search of her dead mother’s unfinished story and along the way teaches others how to see the world. It’s another novel with cross-genre elements—some mystery and psychological suspense, a little romance, and some mythical realism. But this book also has a whole lot of Quirk, and I love that. My deadline for the book is 12/10, so it should be on the shelves sometime in 2011. That may seem like a long time, but I’ll use every minute wisely.

Q. Anything else you’d like to say to members of mother-daughter book clubs?

TW: Just that I’m flattered to be featured here, and I hope that The Last Will of Moira Leahy inspires some interesting conversations between mothers and daughters. Please send me a note when you’ve finished the book to let me know your thoughts. I welcome the feedback. Happy reading!

About the Author

Therese is the co-founder of Writer Unboxed, a blog for writers about the craft and business of genre fiction. Before turning to fiction, she was a researcher and writer for Prevention magazine, and then a freelance writer. She’s had hundreds of articles on nutrition and fitness published in consumer magazines and online.

She has a master’s degree in psychology.

Aside from writing, Therese’s favorite things include music, art, crab legs, Whose Line is it Anyway?, dark chocolate, photography, unique movies and novels, people watching, strong Irish tea, and spending time with her husband, two kids and their bouncy Jack Russell.

Win:  One Copy of The Last Will of Moira Leahy to be Given Away

If you’re intrigued by this review, interview and Therese’s background, you’ll definitely want to read her book. You can win a copy right here by commenting on this post. Tell us which element of Therese’s story intrigues you the most, or make a comment on one of her interview answers. One winner will be chosen from all who comment before midnight, Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, November 5.

Great Review from Booking Mama

Woohoo! I was blown away reading the new review for Book by Book from Booking Mama, who’s focusing on mother-daughter book clubs all week.

Julie at Booking Mama may be a little biased since she’s quoted in Book by Book, but her words are sincere and thorough, and they help readers know what to expect when they pick up my guide to creating mother-daughter book clubs. I believe the advice I gave in the book is stronger because moms in book clubs all over the country contributed stories about their own experiences and thoughts about what has been successful or not in their groups. Connecting with moms like Julie was one of the most enjoyable parts of working on my book, because it was fun to see how so many people can take one concept—creating a mother-daughter book club—and turn it into their own unique experience.

Don’t forget to visit Booking Mama by Monday, November 2 and enter the drawing to win a copy of my book plus five sets of three Heather Vogel Frederick novels: The Mother-Daughter Book Club, Much Ado About Anne and Dear Pen Pal.

New Book Review—Water Steps by A. LaFaye

Ever since she nearly drowned in a storm that took the lives of the rest of her family, Kyna has had a crippling fear of the water. Only three when she was rescued by the couple who became her adoptive parents, Kyna has spent the seven years since then learning to take water steps—small victories that help her get over her anxiety from even simple things like washing her hands.

Mem and Pep, Kyna’s adoptive parents, are patient with her, supporting her efforts and always there to encourage every new water step she takes. But Kyna is dismayed when they book a house by a lake for the summer. Don’t they know she’s not ready to take that big of a step yet?

Despite Kyna’s determination to stay as far away from the lake as possible while she explores the forest instead, she finds herself longing to overcome her fears once and for all so she can stop the limitations she puts on herself.

Don’t be put off by what may be a gloomy-sounding premise: Water Steps by A. LaFaye is delightful to read. Kyna has experienced so much pain and loss, but she’s surrounded by love and hopefulness too. Just as Kyna’s adoptive parents fill her with stories of magical creatures from their native Ireland—silkies, fairies and leprechauns—her story has a hint of magic as well. You’ll find yourself cheering for Kyna with every water step she takes. And you’ll love the Irish myths woven into the story along with a little bit of mystery too.

Good discussion points for mother-daughter book clubs reading Water Steps include overcoming fears, friendship, acceptance, patience and courage. Recommended for book clubs with girls aged 9 to 12.

Read on to find out more about A. LaFaye in a mother-daughter book club author interview.

Book Review—Dear Pen Pal by Heather Vogel Frederick

Emma, Jess, Megan and Cassidy are back for another year of reading in their mother-daughter book club in Heather Vogel Frederick’s new book, Dear Pen Pal. Cracking this third book in the mother-daughter book club series is like reconnecting with old friends. The girls are in eighth grade this year, and they’ve learned a lot about friendship and family relationships.

In their ever-evolving lives, as it is with most of us, just when they figure out how to handle one challenge, another pops up. This time the challenges include dealing with a mean-spirited boarding school roommate, changing family dynamics when new family members move in and others move out, and navigating relationships with boys.

The girls are reading Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, and Frederick once again seamlessly weaves in storylines that somewhat match those of Webster’s classic. The girls and moms learn fun facts about Jean Webster as they gather for book club discussions. The book club members also connect with a pen pal club in Gopher Hole, Wyoming, and it’s fun to read little snippets about the lives of these new girls and their moms through their letters.

I can’t wait to see what the whole gang will be up to in the fourth book of the series when the girls start high school. I highly recommend this whole series for members of mother-daughter book clubs with girls who are 9 to 13.

P.S.—Reading Dear Pen Pal got me to thinking that real life mother-daughter book clubs may enjoy connecting with pen pals too. It seems like a fun way to learn about girls and moms in a different part of the country. So I’ve started a pen pal registry at Mother Daughter Book Club.com, where club members can sign up if they wish to meet members of another club.

See the website page or my previous blog posting for all the details. You can also read what Heather Vogel Frederick has to say on the topic at her blog.

Celebrate Teen Read Week with a Good Teen Book

Today marks the start of Teen Read Week, which is sponsored by the American Library Association. If you’re looking for inspiration for good titles for teens, you can check out the 2009 Teens’ Top Ten and top ten books from past years on the ALA’s site. There are several books on the list I’d really like to check out soon.

The Teen Read Week theme this year is “Read Beyond Reality,” so I thought I would offer a few books that I can recommend along those lines.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I’m even more a fan of this writer after I heard him speak at Wordstock in Portland. In Absolutely True Diary Alexie brings readers into the reality of the Spokane Indian Reservation. My review.

The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb. Enter the reality of the being sent to Earth to fetch souls as they are leaving their bodies in death. Then go along with hi as he takes a journey into the world of the Russia during the days of the revolution in the early 1900s. My review.

Getting the Girl by Markus Zusak takes you into the mind of Cameron Wolfe, who longs to show the girl his brother dumped that he loves her. My review.

Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga takes us into Kyra’s world of goth girls and graphic novels. My review.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a total fantasy world, where castle doors open into new kingdoms. My review.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Find out what it’s like to live in a crumbling castle in the English countryside. My review.

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley. What would it be like to live with a birthmark covering much of your face? My review.

The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Find out about the reality of reality TV shows. My review.

Songs for a Teenage Nomad

Songs for a Teenage Nomad by Kim Culbertson. Callie finds solace through music as she moves from town to town with her mother. My review.

Torched by April Henry. What would it be like to be part of an eco-terrorist group? My review.

Book Review: Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism

More and more autism and treatments for the condition are in the public eye, but when Dan Burns’ son Ben was born in the 1980s, little was known about autism or what to do for children who had it. Parents who had skills and resources acted as the best advocates for their children, but even then, much of what they were able to accomplish came through trial and error.

Parents now have more resources to help their children, including the personal stories of parents who have come before them. One of those is Burns’ book, Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism. Ben’s diagnosis when it came was doubly crippling: severe autism and mental retardation. The level of personal care he needed from others to function would tax the ability of most any parent, but for Dan and his wife Sue, who were struggling with issues of their own even before Ben was born, it was particularly difficult.

While I’m not qualified to say whether the treatments Burns tried with Ben over the years are recommended for those with autism, I can say that Saving Ben is foremost a love story of what lengths a father is willing to go to help his son. Burns had two other children when Ben was born, one who had already left home and one who had nearly finished high school. His professional career was well established, and by all outside views he had a good life.

But under the surface he was struggling with his own sexual orientation and his wife was struggling with past abuse. Caring for Ben added more stress to their household. Ultimately, they would divorce and Burns would downplay his own career to care for his son. He was fortunate to be highly educated, which meant he felt confident enough to question and challenge the medical and teaching professionals who recommended courses of action for his son. He was also fortunate to receive financial support from his mother, which meant that as a single father employed part-time he could still pay for extraordinary levels of treatment for Ben.

If members of a mother-daughter book club have been touched by autism, Saving Ben can definitely help other members see how severely this condition can affect every aspect of the whole family. I would have liked to know more about how Ben’s siblings dealt with his condition and the disintegration of their parents’ marriage, but ultimately, this is an honest portrayal of how profoundly parents’ lives can change when they care for a child with disabilities.

Burns’ frank discussion of his own personal struggles and mature language make this appropriate for mother-daughter book clubs with girls in high school.

New Book Review—Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga

Kyra is back from the mental institution where she spent six months after her dad thought she wanted to kill herself. She’s been released to return home and go back to high school, because she’s not considered a threat to herself any more. But that doesn’t mean life is easy. Her dad, whom she calls Roger, is keeping a tight leash on her, she hates school and gets in trouble her first day back, and she’s very angry. Angry at Roger, angry at her mother who died of cancer a few years ago, and most of all angry at the guy she calls Fanboy, who told Roger she may be suicidal and got her sent away in the first place.

While Kyra was away, Fanboy has suddenly gone from being a geek to being popular with a lot of the kids in school. He’s publishing his graphic novel serially in the pages of the school journal, and he’s getting a lot of attention for it. Before, no one really knew Fanboy except Kyra. She gave him advice about his graphic novels, and she thought they may become more than friends. But now that Fanboy seems to have dropped her and moved on, she’s bent on getting revenge.

Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga is not an easy book to read, mostly because Kyra is such a hard character to like. Her emotions are raw, she bucks all authority, and she’s what every parent doesn’t want to have for a child: a smoking, cursing, school-skipping, car-stealing, in-your-face girl. Yet, interspersed between the chapters with Kyra’s voice are vignettes of a small poem that builds as the book goes on. It’s Kyra’s memory of her cancer-chemotheray-ravaged mother’s last days. These vignettes give you a glimpse into the pain and guilt that Kyra has never dealt with since her mother’s illness and death, and you begin to see what’s behind her self-destructive behavior.

While Goth Girl Rising is a continuation of the story from The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, this book stands on its own and you don’t have to have read the first one to appreciate it. This book is definitely for older girls, I’d say 15 and up. The teens use foul language, are sexually promiscuous, drink alcohol, smoke, and make very bad decisions based on faulty information. It all feels painfully real, and the situations should provide great discussions between mothers and daughters and book club members.