Tag Archives: Avi

Serialized Fiction

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Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick ClubWilliam Hall, of the British publishing company Chapman and Hall, wished to publish a monthly series of cartoons by the illustrator Robert Seymour, about the “Nimrod Club,” the comic misadventures of a group of Cockney sportsmen. The cartoons would be the main thing, (think of Hogarth’s The Good Apprentice, etc.) but there would be some subsidiary text, which would supplied by a young writer, who had recently achieved some success. The writer was Charles Dickens. In 1836, shortly after the first installment was published, having been retitled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Seymour committed suicide. In an effort to salvage the project, Dickens, with his publishers, undertook to enlarge the amount of text for the installments, even while a new illustrator was found. The project—the first time a new novel was being serialized–was an extraordinary success. How successful? Some four hundred copies of the first installment were published. As for the last installment, some forty thousand copies were published. Not only had a new writer—Charles Dickens—achieved fame, a new form of publication was also established—serialization. Why am I writing about this? Because one of my books is currently being serialized.

To be continued . . . .

Read something funny

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S.O.R. LosersNow that you’re looking through the bookshelves at Grandpa’s or Aunt Eileen’s for something funny to read, you might try S.O.R. Losers, a tale of a soccer team that does not win. On my website, I often share the “story behind the story.” Here’s what I said about S.O.R. Losers:

“As noted in the entry for Bright Shadow, I am often asked “How long does it take you to write a book?” The answer is, about a year. But it can vary. A lot. S.O.R. Losers took me one day to write. It has never happened before, or since, and I don’t think it’s likely to happen again. How did it happen in this book? When I was in high school I played on our school soccer team. I was goalie. We were terrible. How terrible? We never won a game. My own kids—who had become good soccer players—loved to hear how bad their dad—me—was. So I told them many a story about how we always managed to lose. They thought it very funny.

“One day I decided to write it all up as a novel. Since I had—in a way—practiced telling the tale of our terrible team so often, it just flowed out, game by game—in one day.”

Is losing funny? Read the book and let me know.

Book as documentary …

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Nothing But the TruthIn today’s Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac, Anita Silvey talks about Nothing But the Truth, a book that looks at truth and lies. A comment on that article, written by Peter Littel, offers an interesting perception of the book:

“When I read Nothing But The Truth, I thought of it as a documentary novel. It reads as though Avi has lots of documentary film footage that he has carefully edited to create a narrative but without any voice over to influence the reader. It could easily have become a one dimensional and didactic view of how many groups—students, faculty, administration, parents, media, community—interact with each other in high school. Instead Avi adds to the complexity of it all by showing the variety of opinions and personalities within each group and thus providing the reader with ambivalence rather a clear linear interpretation. In other words, true to life.”

A “rich, nail-biting thriller”

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Sophia's WarHave you had a chance to read Sophia’s War yet? Maybe during the holidays? Publishers Weekly had this to say about the book:

Newbery Medalist Avi channels the mood, language, and danger of the Revolutionary War in this seamless blend of history and fiction, set in British-occupied New York City. Twelve-year-old Sophia Calderwood idolizes her older brother, William, a fervent Patriot soldier who has gone missing after the Battle of Brooklyn. In the first half of the book, Sophia’s desperate search for William leads her to several deplorable prisons where rebels are being held. The second half takes place when Sophia, now 15, becomes a spy who uncovers the truth about Benedict Arnold. The book is chockful of fascinating historical details, including the conditions for those stranded in New York and the failed meetings between Arnold and John André, his (real-life) British contact. Avi doesn’t sugarcoat the brutal realities of war as Sophia races to find help intercepting John André, who was also a boarder in her home years earlier and her first crush, in this rich, nail-biting thriller.

Readers Theater

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ART

Author Readers Theater with (l to r) Avi, Sarah Weeks, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Richard Peck, one cast among our revolving players.

Have you considered doing Readers Theater in your classroom or assembly performance? It’s a fun and instructional way to get inside of a book, involving students firsthand in dialogue, action, and plot. Here’s an article about readers theater I wrote for School Library Journal a few years ago: “Have You Heard the Word? For a low-budget way to get kids wild about reading, try readers theater.“

As I wrote in the article, my “experiences led me to create Authors Readers Theatre (ART) in 2006 with fellow writers Sharon Creech, Walter Dean Myers, and Sarah Weeks. Functioning as a kind of repertory theater group with an evolving core of author-performers, we have been performing readers theater all over the country…”

Authors Readers Theater is still going strong. For information about the troupe, please visit Sarah Weeks’ website.

There are two free readers theater scripts on my website: one is for Ereth’s Birthday and the other is for The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. They may be just the spark you need to involve more students in the joys of reading. I encourage you to give readers theater a try, if you haven’t already.

The Logic of Writing

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logic puzzleArtists, and that includes writers, have the stereotypical reputation for being impulsive, living and working by intuitive steps. Beyond all else there is—so it is often believed—an emotional basis to creativity. Surely some. From this writer’s point of view, what is also fundamental is rational logic. To write true, to use a Hemingway term, a story must unfold in a logical sequence of events. Crudely put, a plot is a series of cause-and-effect sequences until the ending has a logical resolution. When cause and effect are not logical, readers balk. “Doesn’t make sense.” “I can’t follow the story.” “Too many coincidences.” “You lost me.” “Not believable.” “Implausible.” In fact, there is a veritable dictionary of phrases that are used to reject stories which have no innate logic. That doesn’t mean a story can’t have the unexpected or surprises. Indeed, if the unexpected is simultaneously perceived as logical, the reader is pleased, even delighted. Just witness the enormous success of mysteries in which the logic explanation is there, but hidden. The extraordinary popularity of Sherlock Holmes is due, I think, because brilliant logical deductive reasoning is his character. Of course, to compose three hundred pages or more (or less) of logic, is anything, dear Watson,  but “Elementary.”

Real? Fictitious?

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historical fictionHistorical fiction, invented by Sir Walter Scott with his novel Waverly (1814) is a remarkably flexible form, offering everything from what might be called costume drama to meticulously accurate depictions of real events and people. My own work shares that range. Books like Midnight Magic, or The Book without Words, reference the historical moment, but not much more. Crispin, is (I hope) very accurate as to place and time, but has only one real character, John Ball. The Man who Was Poe tries to depict Edgar Allan Poe’s real character in a real place, at a real time, but all else is fiction. The Fighting Ground is real as to place, event, and time, but all characters are fictional.

Sophia’s War, just published, goes another way. Here all events, place, and most characters, are historically accurate. Even minor characters are real. BUT—the main character, Sophia (and her family), is a work of my imagination. That said, it is Sophia, who, if you will, causes the real events to happen. How can that be? In the celebrated case of Benedict Arnold and John André, though studied countless times by historians, there are some key events which happened but which have never fully been explained. Coincidence? Luck? The hand of Providence? Enter Sophia, and those events are explained in as exciting a way as I could write it. It is my attempt to give life to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion, “All history is biography.” Sophia’s War is real history, as lived by a real, fictitious person.

The exact wrong word

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repetitive writingWhen one writes, and one is into the flow of writing, it’s not only easy to repeat the same word, it is a common practice. I’m not referring to big, key words, but the small words that are actually more ordinary in conversational English, rather than literary writing. These are words like just, only, really, meanwhile. They could be phrases like it seemed to me, I stood there, the next moment. I’m sure you can think of many more. Their very repetitions blunt the edge of your prose, and make their use, when vital, very less meaningful. One can, and one does. go through a manuscript and pluck out these weak straws, but it’s so very easy to miss them, more so when you’ve gone over your book a few thousand times. It is here that the computer really makes a difference. Your computer can do what I believe is called a global search and bring these words and phrases right to your eyes and you can do something about them.

A ghost in the house

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ghostI’m deep into my next book, a ghost story. “Do you believe in ghosts?” I can hear someone asking. No, I don’t, but I believe in ghost stories. I have written a few, such as Something Upstairs, Book without Words, and  Seer of Shadows. There are a couple of short ghost stories, too. 

I find ghost stories interesting, and a challenge to write, making what I don’t believe believable. Along the way I’ve learned that a lot of young readers like to be scared. I often ask them why and. although I don’t get exact answers, I get the impression that young people enjoy the intense emotions such stories generate, emotions, moreover, wrapped in the safe blanket of a book. Ghost stories are a reminder that not knowing everything means that there is much in the world and beyond that has yet to be discovered. For young people who have not taught themselves (or who have been taught) to be completely rational, ghosts hover on the fuzzy edge of reality, a place of endless possibilities. 

Avi's ghost stories

Exactly When

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journalKylee, of Madison, Wisconsin, asked me, “How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a writer?”

As it happens I know exactly when. At the beginning of 1955 I decided to keep a diary. On January the First, I wrote, “Considering this a very important year in my life—the school musical, graduation, summer, first year of college, I thought it would be a good idea to record these events … because I wish to clarify my own thinking and ideas.”

The diary has long lists of books I was reading, as well as quotes I liked: “For words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.” (Tennyson) The pages are full of my own wise thoughts, too. “Read Plato. Not bad.” It chronicles my seventeen-year-old efforts at writing, reading, my love of the theatre, and my crushes on girls. 

On March 28, 1955, I wrote: “Well, I finally said it out loud. I intend to stay with the theatre.  In the theatre one can do everything in the world—write, build and be anything or anybody … There is so much to write about.”

I had decided to become a writer, a playwright. From playwright to writer of books for young people is a whole other story. But March 28, 1955 was the day I knew I wanted to be a writer.