Orca Limelights

I just finished a first draft of a book for a new series my publisher Orca Books is starting called Orca Limelights. I’m excited about this performing arts series because I love reading about music, theater, and dance, and there are so few books being published today about kids performing.As a kid I loved all the Dancing Shoes books by Noel Streatfeild. Ballet Shoes was one of my favourite books ever, with Dancing Shoes coming in a close second. I loved these books as a child because I took dance lessons and enjoyed performing, but I also liked them for their portrayals of British children’s lives. Even if the kids were orphans or lived with uncles who disappeared leaving them in questionable financial situations, there was also a daily regularity to their lives that I found comforting. 

Noel Straetfieild

While I always assumed Noel Streatfeild was a man (and that he must have lived eons before I was born), a quick Google search has shown me that the author was actually Mary Noel Streatfeild, and that she was still alive when I was reading her books as a kid. Streatfeild was born in Sussex  in 1895 and lived until 1986. She worked in the in the theatre for ten years and used her experience in performing arts to write her books. Streatfeild also wrote many adult books, including three semi-autobiographical novels which I am keen to read.   

 

While my own book won’t be out until 2014, there are several books coming this fall from the series that sound really promising. Attitude by Robin Stevenson, author of Record Breaker and many other great YA titles, is about a girl trying to fit into a new ballet school. Cassie is an exchange student from Australia who is being bullied. When she realizes other summer visiting students are being threatened, she decides to speak out. Stevenson’s book sounds like it will resonate with a lot of teens. It also has the kind of cover I would have been all over as a pre-teen. 

 

Also out this fall is Cut the Lights by Karen Krossing. Cut the Lights is about a girl named Briar trying to direct a school play. Briar has a vision for the one-act play that her cast and crew don’t seem to share. I think anyone who has tried to direct a play, or who has struggled to work on a group project will relate well to this story. It also has a great cover.

Saigon Salad

Even though it doesn’t feel like summer here in Kingston, ON I am starting to think about summer meals. I’m looking forward to beet borscht and some spicy gazpacho with avocado. My family is not looking forward to these soups, and most likely I will eat them for lunch, when they’re not around. They do enjoy my version of Saigon Salad, so we’ll be eating that throughout the summer. Saigon Salad, from the excellent Rebar cookbook, is sure to please everyone because the ingredients are served in many small bowls and everyone assembles their own salad according to their level of pickiness. Like most Rebar recipes, this one takes quite a bit of prep time. I like to make it with my sister so we can chat as we chop veggies. Happy summer, and happy eating!

Saigon Salad

2 cups shredded lettuce

½ package rice noodles, ¼ inch wide

4 scallions, minced

½ cucumber

2 carrots, shredded

2 tomatoes, chopped

4 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs (cilantro, mint or basil)

2 Tbsp peanuts, roasted and chopped (optional)

1 package tofu, cut into cubes and fried in oil in and garlic (you could also use chicken)

Dressing

1 cup hot water

4 Tbsp brown sugar

2 garlic cloves

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 tsp sambal oelek

4 Tbsp fish sauce

2 Tbsp soy sauce

6 Tbsp lime juice

-Dissolve sugar in hot water and let cool. Whisk in the rest of the dressing ingredients.

-Fry tofu or chicken in garlic. Set aside to cool.

-Boil rice noodles according to package directions. Rinse well and set aside to cool. I douse the noodles liberally with sesame oil for flavour and to prevent them from turning into a gluey mess.

-Chop veggies. (Keep chopping... )

- To assemble salad, place lettuce in the bottom of each bowl and then add noodles and other vegetables. Top with herbs, nuts, tofu and ladle on dressing to taste.  

The Creation of Lauren Yanofsky

Last month my third YA novel, Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust was published by Orca Books. Quite a few people have asked about the title, and just how I came to write a book about a Jewish teenager who hates the Holocaust. "Why does Lauren hate the Holocaust?" people ask me. I respond, "Please, does anyone like the Holocaust?"

I launched the book at Novel Idea, Kingston's amazing independent bookstore and before I read from the book, I gave a short talk about how I came to write the book. Below is an an excerpt from my talk that evening.

Good evening friends and thanks for coming.

Several of my members of my book club are here and I know many of them might find it amusing that I have written a book called Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust since I’ve been claiming to them for several years now that I don’t read books about the Holocaust. One would assume that I also don’t write books about the Holocaust, but that appears not to be true, something that also surprises myself. Perhaps I’ve captured some of that ambivalence in the title, because Lauren doesn’t just confront the Holocaust (a title my father suggested) or memorialize the Holocaust, the way Jewish and non-Jewish communities are doing all over the world this week because it is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, she hates it. She hates it because she believes it has overtaken her Jewish culture and her own Jewish identity. She hates the way it has co-opted what it means to be Jewish, the way mentioning your cultural identity brings up images of gas chambers and death trains.

For many years, I was like Lauren Yanofksy. I just hated the Holocaust. I didn’t want to talk or think about it. I was tired of books and movies and reverent glances of non Jews. Could we not focus on something other than the big H? Even terrorism and war and occupation of Israel/Palestine were couched in the language of the Holocaust. The Palestinians accused the Israelis of being Nazis and the Israeli government would bring up the memory of the Shoah, the Holocaust, at the drop of the hat to justify their actions.

Then, while teaching here in the Kingston area, one of my grade six students made a swastika armband during my French lesson. And it stopped me short. The student claimed to have learned about the Nazis from watching the History channel and claimed not to know about the atrocities they had committed. He seemed genuinely surprised when the principal explained why the armband was so offensive, especially to me. The student apologized, the armband was confiscated and the incident forgotten.

Except I didn’t forget about it. And I was surprised at how emotional my reaction to that armband was. It bothered me because it represented the death of so many people, and it bothered me that the student didn’t know about it, and mainly it bothered me that it bothered me. Even though I had tried to forget the Holocaust and not have it be part of my identity, it still was. And it would continue to be so. There was no avoiding it. Even when I read seemingly non Holocaust books, it would pop up mid way through. Or it would be on the news, or my twitter feed. I talked to my father who was still voraciously reading Holocaust books. He said the Holocaust was an opportunity for teaching tolerance. I sighed, and said, surely there’s another way, a more “Gandhian” way. What I really meant was not necessarily a more peaceful way, just one less personal to me.

The armband incident stuck with me for a long time, and so did my Holocaust ambivalence and discomfort. Then one morning I woke up with a title in my head, Lauren Yanofksy Hates the Holocaust. I knew Lauren would hate it because of the atrocities committed, but also because of the complicated legacy to Jewish culture and identity. I knew I was going to have to write the book to work out my uncertainties and ambivalence. And so I have.



Author Leanne Lieberman with her very excited and enthusiastic friend, Karen Zabel
Novel Idea Bookstore, Kingston ON April 2013



How NOT To Write a Book

I’m in the midst of editing a book and it’s not going well. I also haven’t finished it, which is problematic. The first four chapters just rock right along, and then in the middle section none of the chapters (or are they short stories?)  really link up. Then there’s the unwritten third section. All this has made me quite qualified to write a book called How Not To Write A Book: A Guide To Failed Manuscripts and Other Literary Mishaps. I’ve noticed already that this is not a title I should ever choose because writing it even once is re-activating my tendinitis. (Which leads to a flare-up of TMJ, which is an acronym I always have difficulty unpacking, but it means my jaw really hurts.)

Anyhoo, here are ten possible chapters for HNTWB.

1)      Start in the middle and assume you’ll just figure out the beginning.

2)      Plan to write short stories and then decide to make them into chapters.

3)      Use every single idea you’ve ever had so that you have over eleven significant characters.

4)      Overload your main character with every possible life crises - abuse, miscarriage, early death of mother figure, sleazy husbands and of course, deep dark family secrets.

5)      Send your character to a foreign country to see how she makes out.

6)      Create plots that revolve around specific historical events that make later parts of the book completely implausible. For example, you want your heroine to be old enough to experience World War Two, but you also want her to have children in the eighties.

7)      Write half the chapters in the present tense and the other half in the past tense.

8)      Write half the chapters in the first person and mysteriously change to third person half way through the book. Neither is convincing so change the whole book to the very difficult second person. Spend a lot of time changing pronouns.

9)      Kill off characters early on in the book because they are inconvenient or hold up the plot. 

10)  Include long sections from your personal life or experience that you know have very little bearing on the story but are just too good to leave out. Spend A LOT of time perfecting these, even though you know they’ll get axed later.

How Not To Write A Book will also have a special section on procrastinating for writers: changing font size and paragraphing to look like you’ve done some writing, starting a blog (ahem), and re-reading other failed manuscripts to see if they can be revamped etc.

Wish me luck over the next year as I try to pull this book from its current mess into something amazing.  

Dear Teen Me

This week a letter I wrote is featured on the popular blog Dear Teen Me, a site where YA authors write letters to their former teen selves. It’s an inversion of the grade eight guidance exercise where you had to write a letter to your future self. Initially I thought these letters would be full of boring, wholesome platitudes like “be yourself” and “things come out okay in the end.” Instead the letters are intensely personal stories, mini memoirs, with lots of teenage blood and gore.

My first attempt to write my Dear Teen Me letter were full of boring platitudes (Just relax! Don’t stress!), but when I started digging deeper, I started remembering some intense high school memories. I had to stop and take a couple of deep breaths. I remembered things so

intensely personal and shameful that I couldn’t possibly imagine sharing them online. It also felt masochistic to relive some of those experiences, even for the purpose of educating or entertaining others.

I did manage to write a letter to myself that is deeply personal and a hard to read, but doesn’t make me look like a complete idiot. You can read it at www.dearteenme.com. In the mean time, here are some shorter memos to myself in the same teenage vein.

Dear Teen Me,

When you go to France, please don’t tell your host family you came to meet men. It doesn’t go over well and you have to move to another family. Yes, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this story later, but at the time it’s devastating. So please, use a dictionary. You came to France to meet people, les gens, not les hommes.

Dear Teen Me,

When you have a party, don’t let the boys throw the beer bottles in your trash cans behind your house. Your father will come home, recycle them and make tame comments about the boys from the nearby school drinking in the lane. Then your mother will show up at your Hebrew school bottle drive with a station wagon full of beer bottles and also not say a word. Their total silence will

drive you bonkers.

Dear Teen Me,

Please don’t tell your sister to f-off in front of the rabbi during your bat mitzvah pictures. It makes your parents REALLY unhappy.

Dear Teen Me,

If you’re going to lie to your parents about where you’re going for the weekend (Sin Island), get your friends to cover for you. Otherwise they’ll know your parents are worrying about where you are and feel obliged to call and tell them. This isn’t good for anyone’s relationship.

Dear Teen Me,

If you’re going to fall off your sister’s bed and get gouged by the metal frame, please get stitches instead of “just using a band aid.” It’ll leave a smaller scar and you won’t have to wear shorts in February to accommodate the massive bandage on your leg.

Please feel free to share your own hopefully embarrassing Dear Teen Me moments.

 

The Painted Girls by Cathy Buchanan

For my birthday I received a copy of Cathy Buchanan’s The Painted Girls, which has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for quite some time. I was excited to read the book not only because I had heard great things about it in the press, but because I also know Cathy. I met her through my friend Ania Szado, also a great writer with a new book out- Studio St. X. A number of years ago Cathy invited me to her home to meet author Brian Francis, author of Fruit and we’ve kept in touch loosely since I moved away from Toronto.          

So does Cathy’s book live up to the hype? You’d just have to ask my children how I ignored them for large swathes of the Easter weekend with my nose in her book to answer that question. Yes, Cathy’s book is really great. Set in the belle époque period of Paris in the 1880’s, it tells the story of two sisters living in the poverty stricken world of Montmatre. Like all good historical fiction, The Painted Girls takes you deep into the Paris demimonde with its meticulous research. The book is narrated by Marie and Antoinette Van Goethem. With their father dead and their mother addicted to absinthe, theses two young girls must find a way to support themselves. Marie becomes a dancer at the Paris Opéra and then a model for Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. Antoinette works as an extra in Emilie Zola’s play L’Assommoir. Cathy describes the girls’ attempts to survive in a world where poor women have little protection in a deeply moving and compelling way. I was swept up by The Painted Girls not only by the sisters’ rivalry and the period details, but also because it provided a female view into the time period. Instead of the erotic male gaze, the book gives voice to the underclass of women who served as their models and this was a welcome change to the experience of viewing Impressionist paintings. 

I’m looking forward more of Cathy’s books. In the mean time, I have CS Richardson’s The Emperor of Paris to keep me occupied with all things francais.

Tolerance speaks!

I don't usually spontaneously blog, but I heard something on the radio that really moved me this week. Every day I leave my house in time to hear Jian Gomeshi announce the letter of the day on Q and then I listen to his feature interview. If I miss his show, the day just isn't right. Occasionally, I get to work and I have to stay in my car until the news comes on. Since my day isn't terribly media-rich, this is my daily dose. And so I find myself listening to interviews with Michael Bolton, but also Eve Ensler and my world is slightly widened.
Well, this week as I was cruising up Princess Street, Jian interviewed David Abitbol from Jewlicious and two women, Megan and Grace Phelps Roper, formerly of the Westboro Baptist Church. I had never heard of the church before but they do things like picket synagogues and fill the Internet with anti-Semitic and gay-hating propaganda. David and Megan "met" on Twitter a few years ago and what started out as provocation from Megan, quickly turned into an honest discussion about what Judaism was. Megan had been taught to hate Jews, but since she's a curious and intelligent individual, she started to do a little research on what she was supposed to hate. A few years later, she and her sister Grace made the heavy decision to leave their church since they no longer could abide by the church's hate-filled ideas. What moved me most about the interview was not the tremendous story of two young women who can clearly think for themselves, but the tolerance David Abitbol showed them by not responding merely with disdain or disgust. Instead he took the time to respond to their inquiries with genuine patience. Tolerance speaks!
And that's the kind of Jew, and human being, I want to be-a tolerant one. http://www.cbc.ca/q/2013/03/19/leaving-the-westboro-baptist-church/