Without further ado, here is Melissa’s v-log:

All material in the embedded v-log is © Melissa Walker 2008 and may not be republished in any form without her permission.

Without further ado, here is Suzanne’s guest entry:

*Granny and Cogy, my grandparents, were farmers in Tennessee. Actually, Cogy farmed, and Granny cooked and kept house and put up vegetables and sold Stanley Home Products. My grandparents were industrious, hardworking, country people.

Since they lived only a few miles outside the town where I grew up, I visited them regularly, and I spent many summer days of my childhood having Laura Ingalls Wilder-like adventures on their farm. I waded in the creek across the road from their old farmhouse and rode the pony, Milk Chocolate. I pushed bales of hay off the back of Cogy’s pick-up truck, went fishing in the pond, had sleepovers with my cousin, bounced on the feather bed at my great-aunt’s house, played board games, and devoured Granny’s homemade teacakes. There were hogs and hens and horses and herding dogs and even the occasional rattlesnake or bobcat, although I never had a personal encounter with either of those, thankfully.

When I first discovered the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I knew immediately the series was for me. I wanted to read about how Pa built a house with his own hands. I wanted to experience that first heavy snowfall in Wisconsin. I wanted to braid my long hair, just like Laura and Mary. I wanted to skip On the Banks of Plum Creek and sleep in the Little House in the Big Woods. I wanted a loyal dog named Jack. And more than anything, I wanted a sturdy father who called me Half-pint.

When the Little House television series started in the mid-seventies, I had already completed the books, or several of them anyway. I’ll confess I wasn’t much interested in Mary and Laura’s adult lives. I viewed these girls as peers, not parents, and when Mary went blind, I was pretty much done. At any rate, the television show allowed me to start the series all over again. I watched it each week without fail, often scrutinizing how well (or poorly) the shows producers adhered to the original storylines. And if I stop typing and listen, I can still hear that opening music, see young Laura running through the field in her prairie dress, picture Ma and Pa smiling and bouncing along in the covered wagon (I don’t even need YouTube for this).

My grandparents are gone now. They are buried, along with my parents, in a bucolic cemetery across from the tiny clapboard church where Granny taught Sunday school and Cogy sat ramrod straight and dozed during the lengthy, dry sermons. One of the reasons I love being a writer is that I get to recapture these parts of my childhood, revisit the places I treasured, close my eyes and remember. Perhaps this is the reason I still, all these years later, feel a kinship with writer and farm girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder.*

All content within the asterisks is © Suzanne Supplee 2008 and may not be reproduced in any form without her permission. The photo above is also courtesy of Suzanne and may not be reproduced without her permission.

Buy books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and/or buy Suzanne’s books, When Irish Guys Are Smiling and Artichoke’s Heart, at Amazon.com.

*At Teen Author Reading Night this week, an inquiring mind wanted to know: Why do you write for teens instead of adults? This was a really easy question to answer. Because I know what it’s like to be the kid who needs someone to reach out to them. And now I want to give back by being the person who’s reaching out.

Being an author is actually my second career. I was a high school science teacher for almost ten years, most of that time at a school in the South Bronx. My purpose in life has always been to help kids, particularly teens, improve their lives in some way. I want to make their lives better. As a teacher, I only interacted with a hundred or so kids each day. But now I can connect with thousands of readers as an author.

Two life-altering events happened when I was twelve. I suddenly knew I wanted to be a science teacher when I grew up. And I read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. From the first chapter, that was it. I fell so hard I still haven’t gotten up. The Outsiders changed my life. I cannot describe the full effect The Outsiders had on me (and continues to have on me), but I was completely obsessed. I slept with that book under my pillow every night in a sort of touchstone/osmosis/safety device ritual. I memorized sections of the story that spoke to me the most. I can still recite Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” but I was so bored with all of the other poetry we had to learn for English class (except stuff by E.E. Cummings — that dude rocked). And although I didn’t know it at the time, The Outsiders was the catalyst for my future writing career.

The Outsiders inspired me in a way I wish my books would inspire other kids. I want to write books for people who need to escape into stories, who rely on books to save them. When I was a teen, reading was the one part of my day that I always looked forward to, the only time when I felt completely comfortable and relaxed. It was my way to deal with the pain of growing up and survive the hard times I went through. I felt like my favorite authors were reassuring me that I wasn’t alone, that I could come back to their books anytime and feel better again.

Back in the day (i.e. the 80s), there weren’t that many good young-adult novels out there. The whole genre of teen books was sort of a desolate void. But now there are so many excellent books available for teens. These books encourage people to search for answers in stories that relate to their lives. My life was different from the characters’ lives in The Outsiders, but one thing was fundamentally the same: I was an outsider, too. Every time I read that story, it made me feel alive. And that’s an amazing feeling.*

Buy The Outsiders and/or Susane’s books at Amazon.com.

All content within the asterisks is © Susane Colasanti 2008 and may not be reproduced in any form without her permission.

I am delighted to present Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Comeback Season, who wrote a guest entry for us today about one of the books that inspired her when she was growing up. She chose a tearjerker, Where the Red Fern Grows, which is probably the novel that inspired the phrase “a book about a boy and his dog.” But here, I’ll let her tell you all about it:

Where the Red Fern Grows, a review by Jennifer E. Smith

* When my first book, The Comeback Season, went out into the world this spring, the one thing I heard more than anything else was that it made people cry. And inevitably, my first impulse was always to apologize.

Rarely is making someone cry considered a good thing. But even so, I’ve always relished those books and movies that elicit that sort of reaction, the ones that wrench your heart in such a way that it never quite goes back to its original shape.

The first time I read Where the Red Fern Grows was in a sixth grade classroom. We were assigned a certain amount of pages each night, but my teacher decided we’d read the ending together as a class. Sixth grade is not really the ideal time to be seen bawling by your classmates, but I remember being completely gutted by the ending, shocked and sad and just generally crushed. It felt like I’d gone through it all myself, the longing for a couple of red hounds, the bravery and sacrifice in the face of danger, the sharp sting of loss at the end. It stays with me even now; I could cry just thinking about Old Dan and Little Ann. Just as I did back then. (In front of my entire sixth grade class.)

A lot of people can’t bear to read these kinds of stories. Life is too sad as it is, I suppose. But for me, it’s a kind of release, and there’s a certain cathartic joy to it. Those are the sort of books that have stayed with me over the years, that cling to my memory in the face of so many years and so many other stories. To say they are unforgettable isn’t quite enough. Books like Where the Red Fern Grows simply become a part of you.

So now, when people tell me they cried when reading my book, I’m no longer going to apologize. It seems to me the most generous kind of compliment, the idea that my words could affect someone in the same way Wilson Rawls’ words still affect me. From now, I’ll simply thank them instead…and perhaps suggest they don’t read the ending in public!*

All material between the asterisks is © Jennifer E. Smith 2008. This material may not be reproduced in any form without her permission.