Lowry Updates

The cruelest month?

Not really. April here did begin with a snowstorm, as it does some years. But now the scylla is blanketing one corner of the yard (does anyone remember a popular song from the '50s called "Lavender Blue"? It had very silly lyrics, as many '50s songs did. But it does describe the color in the southwest corner of my yard ), and the forsythia is about to burst into its wondeful yellow. And we have taken the house off the market and decided to stay, because there is no place we like better than this.

I returned from a 10-day trip with a purse full of unreturned hotel keys and a suitcase full of laundry. It is very good to be home, though it was quite a wonderful trip, with great bookstores to visit, a few schools, a University lecture hall, a high school auditorium, a lot of enthusiastic readers, and quick visits with some friends en route. I was plied with gifts and fortunately most were small and thoughtfully chosen...a bookmark engraved with my name from The Tattered Cover; a box of note cards embossed with my name from Book Passage; the charming little dish from Copenhagen that Sean and Christine Astin gave me. One gift was big and unwieldy (a framed poster from my lecture in Ann Arbor) but I managed somehow to carry it without compromising my only-carry-on status; and Michael from Rakestraw Books kindly mailed me the book that I had no room to carry.

Here are some photos just sent to me from St. Anthony's Park Elementary School in St. Paul, MN, a visit sponsored by The Red Balloon:

The wonderfully self-confident NOAH is introducing me here.

After the presentation in the multi-purpose room I signed books in the library...

 and here are some enthusiastic fifth graders.

I so rarely visit schools any more, for lack of time (and okay, lack of energy. It takes a lot of adrenaline!) but when I do, as here, I am reminded of the vibrancy and enthusiasm of kids....and the dedication of their teachers and librarians.

Now I must re-group and re-pack and head Thursday to St. Louis for the Arbuthnot Lecture, at which I will see another extraordinary group of old friends who will be gathered there from many different parts of the country....plus many many strangers who will feel like friends because we are all passionate about the same things.

When my grandson James was very small...three or four...he loved a recording of Louis Armstrong singing "Wonderful World." We could hear Jamie, as we called him then, singing it to himself frequently. But he sang it exactly as he had heard it, with Louie Armstrong's diction...so it was always "wonderful woild."

I thought that as I looked out this morning and saw the sun shining on the lavender-blue flowers. What a wonderful woild.

 

Back home

I got home this morning from my 7-city trip (counting Ann Arbor separately from Detroit) and am still unpacking and doing laundry but will post some photos. Unfortunately I can't seem to load the vidoo of an auditorium full of wonderful kids in Chicago, singlng Happy Birthday to me! But I can show you the necklace some of those kids made for me:

A mouse, an apple, and a willow tree: representing three of my books!

And here I am also in Chicago (Naperville, actually, at Anderson's Books), with Eric Rhomann who did the charming ilustrations for "Bless This Mouse"

And now: The amazing bed in my San Francisco hotel:

and the also amazing bed in my LA hotel (okay, the bed is not amazing; but the BATHTUB beside it is, well, unique in its placement):

Here I am with Sean Astin, in LA, at the Getty Center:

His lovely wife, Christine and their three daughters were there as well and we got a chance to talk about the film of NUMBER THE STARS. I'll keep you posted.

And here, brought to me from Copenhagen by Sean and Christine:

A nice memento of that lovely city. They have spent a lot of time there working on research for the movie.

No photos from Denver (where it snowed!) or Minneaplos/St. Paul or Detroit/Ann Arbor. I guess I had gotten tired by then.  Or, actually...people had give me GIFTS...some large ones, actually...and it made my luggage situation more difficult, and finding the camera, buried under stuff, was hard, so I gave up on the documentation.

It is great to be home. Martin and Alfie agree.

 

 

Alert

After Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, I am now in Ann Arbor, Michigan where later today I will give a lecture at the University.  For the most part this has been an uneventful  trip, made pleasant by good people in each city. One unnerving moment when I got an email from my oil company in Maine telling me that my furnace may have gone off and my pipes may have frozen.....but it turned out not to be the case. Whew.

Now, another concern, which i will pass along, though i suspect readers of this blog are adults rather than children.

This morning I received an email (through my website) from a boy who had received a message, an email, puportedly from me. He had astutely perceived, from the wording and a mis-spelling, that it was not. But someone has created a g-mail address with my name in it and had contacted him (so I am assuming other kids as well) inviting him to a "party."

I've contacted the police and am waiting for a call back from the detective who handles computer fraud. In the meantime I can only hope that other young people who received this email will recognize it as a fake and won't respond to what could potentially be dangerous.

For all the benefits that computers provide for us......there is a whole new set of problems.

And also: Massachusetts is expecting a snowstorm!  Not fair!

On the road

I brought a camera on this trip but unfortunately I forgot to bring the gizmo that allows me to download photos into my laptop. When I get home I'll put them in: a video taken from a stage in an auditorium in Chicago, looking out at an auidience of kids who are enthusiastically singing Happy Birthday to me; and a photo of me with illustrator Eric Rohmann, signing books. No photos from SF, where it rained every minute, except for one of the amazing bed in my hotel room. And a photo of me with Sean Astin and his wife, Christine,  in LA.  We went to the Getty Center, where I had not been before---it's spectacular---and found a quiet place to sit and have tea and talk about the movie of "Number the Stars"...

Anyway, no photos yet. But they will come.  I am in Denver now...where it snowed this morning!...and headed to Mieeapolis/St. Paul tomorrow.  From there to Michigan, Oak Park and Ann Arbor, and then HOME on Saturday.

It was interesting to be in public with Sean, whose face is well known because of the Lord of the Rings movies, and to see the number of fans* who come up to him and say, "Are you...""  "Could you possibly be..?" "Can you sign my child's sweatshirt?" "Can I have my photo taken with you?" and to see that he remains cheerful and gracious.  Fame could be a nuisance, I  think.

*including a group of women in headscarves who said they were from Iraq and had been in this country only four months

My hotel in LA (actually, in Claremont, east of LA), had a tiny movie theater behind it, and as I was finished with appearances by 6 or 7 each evening..I went to two movies: "Of Gods and Men" and "The Lincoln Lawyer"...in the evenings, which made it seem almost like a vacation.

Later today I go to do a reading/signing at the wonderful Tattered Cover bookstore.  Then back to the hotel to reorganize my suitcase (only a carry-on! For ten days! I am so proud of myself!) for the next leg of my journey. No movie theater here. But I'm good at watching mindless TV at the end of a busy day.

Road trip coming up

I'll be heading out next Monday, the 21st, for a 6-city tour (Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Mpls/St. Paul, and Detroit/Ann Arbor).  Schedule of events available on my website: http://www.loislowry.com/tour.php  Book tours are always exhausting. But to my pleasure I will see a number of friends this trip: Eric Rohmann (illustrator of "Bless This Mouse") in Chicago (he'll be at the bookstore with me); my daughter and several friends in SF; Sean Astin, who is making the movie of "Number the Stars," in LA; my friend Alan in Denver; my friend Margaret (to whom "Bless This Mouse" is dedicated), in St. Paul...so there will be some fun times.

In tiny print (lower right corner) on this poster it says "Phto by Nadine Lowry"...she took this when I was in Germany just before Christmas. And here is the beauitful granddaughter/photographer Nadine:

This morning I spent some time sitting and observing a second grade classroom in a public school nearby, making notes about the things on the walls, observing the kids—a wonderfully diverse group, this being Cambridge, MA—watching the teacher teach math (I would FLUNK second grade math), all on behalf of the Gooney Bird books. And I watched the teacher, later, privately, hug a little girl who had been distessed at getting an answer wrong.  How sad that some schools don't allow teachers to touch students. That little girl so needed that hug.

I am busily preparing the Lamstein Lecture (March 31st) and the Arbuthnot Lecture (April 15, St. Louis)...(ah, here's one more poster)..

...but right now I am dashing off to get my hair cut.

Oh, and alsao envying my son Ben. Here he is with his Lori in the Caribbean. Today, in Cambridge, it is bleak and raw and rainy.

 

 

Letters! I get letters!

Reading each day's email that arrives through my website is always interesting, sometimes heartening, occasionally (sorry) annoying, often surprising.

Here is an excerpt from one that came today:

Respected Mam,

I am a teacher and administrator in Dr. Tobgyel School, situated in Thimphu, Bhutan, in this country for our Class X board exams we teach one of your master creation novel THE GIVER, it is in our syllabus and I am so happy to inform you that the students not only enjoy the novel written by you but they cherish each and every moment of the novel class reading your novel. As a teacher I am so thankful to you for giving me an opportunity to teach your creation, it is an life time opportunity to teach a novel like this.

It is a reminder of the role that a book takes on long after it is out of the hands of the writer. Recently, in anticipation of moving, I have been sorting and packing, and in some cases donating, foreign editions of books, and so I have been looking at copies of The Giver in Estonian and Hungarian and Hebrew and a zillion other languages (I don't even know what language they would be reading in Bhutan; Chinese, perhaps?)  and thinking about all those young poeple out there, all of them pondering the same questions, worrying about the future they will all share.  

These two are—(I think; sometimes it's hard to figure them out)—Vietnamese and Serbian.

It's truly overwhelming.

 

 

 

 

 

MICE. Eeeek.

I will be leaving March 21st to visit Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Ann Arbor (schedule of events will appear when I have final details, on my blog  www.loislowry.com) in order to introduce poeple to what I think of as "the mouse book."  Since the main cast of characters appears on the cover, I'll introduce them, left to right:

Harvey, an adolescent,well-meaning but often obnoxious

Roderick, a somewhat bumbling but good-hearted companion (he would like to be more than that) to...

Hildegarde, the elected Mouse Mistress, leader of the community: lots to do, lots to worry about. And she must fend off:

Lucretia: Sneaky, sarcastic, and Hildegarde's sworn enemy. Lucretia would like to usurp Hildegarde's postiion

and finally: Ignatious, elderly and pedantic. He lived for years at the University Library, nibbling knowledge, but ended up at St. Bartholmew's by mistake, having fallen asleep in Father Murphy's coat pocket...where he had gone to nibble some tobacco crumbs... during a dull lecture.

My favorite illustration, out of all of Eric Rohmann's wonderful illustrations, is this one:

I love the look on Roderick's face as he struggles to boost Hildegarde up to where she can reach into the bottle.

This book will not be officially published until March 21st but I'll quote some interesting pre-publication comments, both public and private:

KIRKUS calls it  "gently Christian"

A reveiwer on Amazon says it is "Too Catholic"

Publishers Weekly says: "An impeccably constructed, good-humored adventure"

The former dean of a major theological seminary (Anglican) says that it proves what he has always known, that one must avoid Altar Guild ladies.

And an Episcopal church organist, male, says in an e-mail that Trevor Fusili, the organist in BLESS THIS MOUSE, is just perfect except for his hair.  Trevor has long and unkempt hair. The organist says that his hair should be close-cropped.

Who knew?

Son

Tomorrow, March 3rd, would be my son Grey's birthday and it is hard to believe that he would be 52 if he had lived. Where does time go???!!  He was born in 1959, (I was about to turn 22) when my Naval officer husband was stationed in Key West, Florida. But...typical of a submarine officer...he was at sea when I went into labor. So I took the 12-month old first child to a neighbor and drove myself to the Naval hospital, stopping to pay my rent at the housing office en route. The baby was born a few hours later and two days after that I brought him home wearing nothing but a diaper and wrapped in a thin blanket. Let's hear it for Key West weather! The earlier child has been born in New London, Connecticut (another USN base) the previous winter and came home from the hospital through a snowstorm, bundled in blankets.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of them, taken at the time they turned two and one.

By then we lived in South Carolina...again, a Naval assignment.

For the life of me I can't remember how I managed that incessant packing up and moving. (We moved again, to Massachusetts, when they were 3 and 2).

They were wonderful little kids: funny, smart.....but perhaps I am prejudiced?  Could it be? Moi?

Happy Birthday, Grey. We wish you were with us still.

Stars, movie and otherwise

This handsome poster has been created for the not-yet-made film of NUMBER THE STARS. Producer/director Sean Astin is still in the process of raising the necssary financing but he has a fine screenplay which adheres very closely to the book, and plans (if $$$ is forthcoming) to film in Denmark next spring.

Sean told me this recently:  during leadership speeches that I give at universities...when the students ask what I'm doing next and I tell them we are adapting Number the Stars... without fail, a very specific audible gasp, filled with strong memories and a pulse of excitement, bursts forth... followed invariably by a round of applause...

I hope his production company can pull the necessary pieces together because he is very commited to the project and has worked terribly hard to bring it this far. As I know, though, from watching The Giver movie start and stop and start and stop for years now, these things are never certain.

In the meantime: I love the poster.

and by the way, it is snowing again....

...but who's counting; right?

It is Monday morning, Presidents' Day, and I have just recently corrected the galleys of a new Gooney Bird bok, set in February, when GB herself points out that it is unfair for Abe and George to get all the credit—and the holiday—when there were OTHER presidents born in February. (She, of course, knows who they are)

That book, called GOONEY BIRD ON THE MAP, will be out in the fall.

As for me, even though it is snowing one more time, I am delighted to be up and sitting at my desk after three days with a nasty virus.

Day #1, Friday, I spent in bed wishing for a hasty and merciful death.

Day #2, Saturday, I lay on the couch, dozing.

Day #3, Sunday, yesterday, I was still on the couch, too miserable too be up and around, and too headachy to read, but had slept enough to last me a lifetime; so on Sunday morning at 9 AM I turned on the TV.

Except for Patriots and Red Sox, nether of which are in season—or impending blizzards or cataclysmic world events—I never watch TV in the daytime. So it was a day of revelations.

First, George Will. Is George Willl on every major network all of Sunday morning, or is that just an hallucination brought on by fever?  Listening to George Will talk in a monotone about collective bargaining is right up there with watching paint dry.

And am I just imagining this, or did we all have George Will as a classmate in seventh grade? The boy who gave oral reports on current events for extra credit?

Next: there is an Oprah channel. I have just discovered this. Desperately clicking my way through a hundred channels, I discovered that Oprah Winfrey now has bought her own TV channel and is able to pay homage to herself all day long every day.

Was it because I still had a pounding headache...or does Oprah really SHRIEK a lot?

Moving on from there, I watched an endless documentary about fundamentalist Mormon communitiies; and then I watched an endless documentary about the Amish; and after a while they becgan to seem indistinguishable, except for polygamy, which the Amish don't care for.

I vaguely watched a FLDS woman give birth to her seventh baby, helped out by her benignly-smiling three sister wives, who then had to prepare dinner for their 26 chillden; and then I watched an Amish woman sew, wash, and iron the clothing for her family—without electricity. Her children will not go beyond eighth grade in school because higher education is thought to be corrupting.  Watching, I thought: is there anything remotely to be envied about the lives of these women???

And my answer was yes. They do not watch daytime television.