THE VANISHING OF LAKE PEIGNEUR — Review & Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?”
~ Philip Pullman ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

No man is an island, as the saying goes, and that is particularly true in creating characters. HERE K. M. Allan has an excellent post on Character Relationship Must-Haves. There are a lot of good ideas here.

We often think of characters and setting as separate pieces of our writing, but they really have to work together and support each other to make a story work well. HERE C. S. Lakin has a great article on the Intersection of Characters and Setting.

I haven’t had a Kristin Lamb post here in a while. I’d forgotten how fun her posts are to read and just how useful they are. HERE she writes about Forgiveness: Everyone Loves a Good Redemption Arc. Her posts are always worth your time.

My trip to Seattle was great. I got to see Maggie’s show three times — first from fifth row center, second from eleventh row left, and third from first row balcony. I think I actually like the balcony view best. It’s a very intricate show, and seeing it from above gives a real taste of just how complicated it really is. We had good weather there (good weather in Seattle means it only rained a couple times) and for the drive back. We had wonderful family time for the last ten days. Maggie left yesterday morning, and now I’m trying to get back to my normal routine. I did get a lot of reading done on my trip, so I have plenty of material for blog posts. I hope you all had wonderful winter holidays and a happy New Year. I do want to give a happy shout-out to Greg Pattridge and his Denver Broncos for some fabulous playoff football. Denver deserves some sports success. It’s been so much fun to watch. I hope they can keep it going since my 49ers are out.

I received an email from a publicist at Candlewick Press offering me a copy of THE VANISHING OF LAKE PEIGNEUR by Allan Wolf and illustrated by Jose Pimienta in exchange for a review. I’m really not a fan of graphic novels, but the story was so intriguing, and one doesn’t often find stories based on non-fiction in the graphic form. Here are my thoughts.

Lake Peigneur is a bean-shaped lake in southern Louisiana. It has a lot of activity every day with local fishermen and a tugboat, the employees of the Diamond Crystal Salt Mines, and those who work at an oil drilling rig on the shores of the lake. The 20th of November in 1980 started like any other day. Miners changed shifts and rode the slow elevator in the salt mine. Men on the oil rig continued their drilling. The tugboat delivers workers to their jobs. But the honeycomb of levels and cuts in the salt mine is a disaster waiting to happen. When the oil drill pierces an old excavated space in the salt mine, it causes the lake to begin to drain. A vortex is created, sucking anything it catches into a huge sinkhole below the lake. Anything. It is a terrifying event for everyone nearby, but somehow, no lives were lost.

Allan Wolf chronicles this amazing story through the points of view of several different people and manages to translate the true terror through his words. The illustrations by Jose Pimienta bring the story to life on every page. This book will be particularly great for those reluctant readers who need an extra kick to keep them reading, but honestly, every middle-grader will find this fascinating. This is a real winner.

I have a gently-read hardback to give to one of you. All you need to do is be a follower (it’s free and easy — see the top, right corner of the post) with a US Address, and leave a comment. If you share the link to this post on social media, please let me know in your comment, and you will get an extra chance. And please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.