TROUBLE — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.”
~ Mark Twain ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

My journey to reading or re-reading all of Gary D. Schmidt’s books was kicked off by my curiosity about names he used over and over in his books. Naming characters is pretty darned important. HERE is a great article by Elizabeth Sims writing for Writer’s Digest with The 7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters.

Do you think about what shape your story should be? Most of us are familiar with the pyramid shape for a story, but there are other ways to shape your story. HERE John Matthew Fox has a very good article about 5 Story Shapes That Will Change Your Book Forever.

You might want to get a cuppa and settle in for this one. K. M. Weiland has a very rich article HERE that will help you make your stories more interesting and more complex. It is called Character Misdirection: How to Write False Allies and False Enemies. Do not miss this one. Her examples are so good.

Sorry my Halloween cartoon is a day late, but I didn’t post last weekend, and I think it’s too funny to not include. I wasn’t here last weekend because I was at the Better Books Workshop. If you are looking for good bang for your writing workshop buck, I can highly recommend this one. HERE is the link to the workshop I just attended. It will give you a good idea of what you might expect for future workshops. And you could probably ask to be on their email list so you don’t miss it. I met some wonderful people, received a lot of valuable feedback on some of my writing, and I learned a lot. One of the presenters was Gary D. Schmidt. I was excited to be able to ask him about the names I find being repeated in his novels. Would they be names of teachers who had been influential in his life? Would they be childhood friends who meant a lot to him? What secrets would those names unlock? I never would have guessed the real story. It seems that some years ago, Gary visited an old cemetery in New England somewhere. I can’t remember if it was a Revolutionary War or Civil War cemetery, but it was old and had many prominent, well-marked graves in the front. Way in the back of the cemetery, he found some small grave markers of ordinary people he thought might be forgotten and shouldn’t be, so he decided to use some of those names for characters in his books. So there you have it. No more mystery for me, but I am so enjoying reading and re-reading his novels that I think I will keep on with this journey.

TROUBLE was published nearly twenty years ago. I think by today’s rules it might be considered a young YA novel, but it is certainly appropriate for older, more sophisticated middle-graders. Henry is in seventh grade and is the youngest of three children in his family. He has an older sister, Louisa, who is a bit of a stranger to him. But the firstborn, Franklin, is idolized by Henry. He is a great athlete and has lots of friends. He has promised Henry to climb Mount Katahdin with him, although Franklin constantly reminds Henry that he is positive Henry won’t make it. Henry’s family is quite wealthy, and all the kids attend private schools. Franklin is terribly injured in a car accident while running, and he loses an arm. He was hit by a pickup truck driven by a Cambodian refugee named Chay, and Chay tries everything he can to help Franklin, but he ends up in the hospital in a coma. The family is devastated. The whole town is angry, and bad things start to happen to the Cambodian refugees living in the next town. At home, Henry finds an injured dog on their private beach and decides to keep her. His father refers to her as Black Dog, and that becomes her name.

Chay is put on trial, and Henry learns things about his brother that make him question a lot of assumptions he has had. When Franklin dies, Henry decides he will climb Mount Katahdin on his own as an homage to his brother, but Henry’s best friend, Sanborn, announces he will go along. The boys and Black Dog set out, and things take an interesting turn when they get their first ride. The journey is not what they expect, and there is trouble waiting for them at many places along the way.

There are some pretty heavy topics in this book, and that is why I recommend it for older, more sophisticated middle graders and for teens and any adult who is looking for an amazing story. The writing is, as usual for Schmidt, spectacular. His storytelling chops are great. If this were a movie, Sanborn would win a Best Supporting Award. He is a terrific character, and kind of sneaks in to steal the readers’ hearts. Here is a little taste of Schmidt’s writing for you. “Henry turned back and closed his eyes and rowed. He felt the muscles in his arms and legs grow thick and slow and tight. He felt his back bend almost to breaking, as if his spine had brittled like that of the wrecked ship in the cove. He felt darkness in the center of his chest, a place where all the air had been sucked out and had been turned solid, so that nothing else could get in.” (page 118)

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.