[Missouri-l] tonight's Books And Beyond

[Nancy Lynn]

Why would adults be interested in children's literature? What special magic
does it hold for all of us?
On tonight's Books And Beyond, we will speak with Kerry Madden, author of
the Maggie Valley series for children as well as a biography of author
Harper Lee.
To speak with Kerry and participate in the taping of this show, call
218-844-3388 a few minutes before 8pm eastern time tonight. Please mute your
phone during the first part of the interview by using either your own mute
button or by pressing star 6 to mute yourself on the conference. You will be
given time at the end to ask your own questions.
Now read below for more information about Kerry Madden.




Kerry Madden has written plays, screenplays, journalism (for publications
like the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and Sierra Club Magazine), and six books
including Offsides, a New York Library Pick for 1997, and Writing Smarts, a
guide to creative writing published by the American Girl Company. In 2005
she turned her hand to children’s literature with Gentle's Holler, the first
installment in what became the award-winning Maggie Valley Trilogy. It
earned starred reviews in both Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, was named a
“Pick” by both the New York and the Chicago Public Libraries, and was the
featured children’s book of North Carolina at the National Book Festival.
“It is the genuine article,” wrote Rosemary Wells. “It’s heroine is as
bone-real and endearing as Opal in Because of Winn Dixie.” The next book in
the trilogy, Louisiana’s Song (2007) was equally well received, being named
a Bank Street College Book of the Year and a finalist for several other
awards. The third installment, Jessie’s Mountain, was published in 2008 to
strong reviews. Most recently Madden has completed a biography of To Kill a
Mockingbird author Harper Lee, published in Viking’s UpClose Series in and
was a Booklist and Kirkus Pick of 2009. Madden received the B.A. and M.F.A.
degrees from the University of Tennessee and has been honored as a Tennessee
Williams Scholar and a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’
Conference. She has taught creative writing at the University of Tennessee,
Ningbo University in China, UCLA, and elsewhere, and has visited schools
across the country as a guest author doing writing workshops for young
authors. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Alabama
in Birmingham and editor of Poem Memoir Short Story at UAB. Visit
http://www.kerrymadden. com to learn more about Madden and her work.



* STARRED BOOKLIST REVIEW


Up Close: Harper Lee. Kerry Madden. (Viking 9780670010950).

>From the Up Close series, this informative biography spotlights writer
Harper Lee, who grew up in Monroeville , Alabama , and studied law in
college before deciding to become a writer. After working and writing in New
York City for many years, she found a publisher for her first novel. Her
life was transformed by the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960),
which quickly became a best-seller, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the basis
for an unusually successful movie adaptation. Though Lee appreciated the
critical acclaim, she found the unrelenting demands for interviews, public
appearances, and personal contact increasingly unwelcome and withdrew. Given
the writer’s refusal to grant access to any biographer and her closest
friends’ and relatives’ reluctance to discuss her, Madden has done a fine
job of researching the novelist’s life and presenting it with respect for
her point of view. The sensitive treatment of race relations during Lee’s
youth and the section on three trials that may have inspired parts of her
novel will interest students researching To Kill a Mockingbird. A lengthy
acknowledgments section, source notes for the many quotes, and an extensive
bibliography conclude this unusually readable biography of an elusive figure
in American letters.


* STARRED KIRKUS REVIEW
HARPER LEE UP CLOSE
Kerry Madden
March 2009 Viking UpClose Series

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: March 19, 2009
ISBN-13: 9780670010950
Age Range: 12


KERRY MADDEN
UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
NEW BOOK REVIEW, JANUARY 2009


STARRED KIRKUS REVIEW


Not believing in biographies of living writers, Harper Lee declined to be
interviewed for one, but Madden draws on extensive research—including trips
to Monroeville, Ala., and interviews with classmates, colleagues and town
residents—to explore how Lee’s life and times inspired her masterpiece. To
Kill a Mockingbird has sold 30 million copies in 40 languages and continues
to sell 10,000 copies per year, and Lee is “one of the authors most read by
American students.” A narrative both well paced and richly detailed—even
reproducing two of Lee’s stories for her college literary magazine and
excerpting a recent letter to O magazine, not included in Charles Shields’s
excellent I Am Scout (2008)—this biography will appeal to fans of the novel
and to newcomers. Readers will find a fascinating portrait of an independent
young woman stubbornly going her own way to become the one thing she wanted
to be: a writer. Extensive source notes and an excellent bibliography round
out this superb biography, one of the best in the Up Close series.
(foreword, index) (Biography. 12 & up)




THE MAGGIE VALLEY TRILOGY (Viking Children's Books)



BOOK ONE: GENTLE'S HOLLER

GENTLE’S HOLLER, Viking Books for Young Readers, 2005

Featured children’s book of North Carolina at the National Book Festival,
October, 2008.

Selected by New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing,
2005.

Chicago Best of the Best Bibliography, 2006.

Bank Street College Best Books of 2005 List

Maine Book Award, 2006.

Mark Twain Award Nomination, 2006

California Young Readers, 2007

Young Hoosiers Award Nomination, 2008

Battle of the Book, BOB, North Carolina, 2008

Starred Kirkus & Publishers Weekly Reviews. Penguin Puffin paperback, April,
2007



  “At the center of Madden’s tender novel (her first for children) about a
poor and loving family in the mountains of 1960s North Carolina, is 11-year
old “Livy Two.” … Just when things start to look up… tragedy hits and the
family digs even deeper for the grace and strength to heal differences and
go on. Along with an assortment of affecting family members—particularly
Grandma Horace with her collection of glass eyes, and Uncle Hazard the
dog—Livy Two will burrow deeply into the hearts of young readers.”
– Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In her debut for young readers, Madden creates a warmhearted, compelling
family drama about the Weems, circa early 1960s…. Told from the keen-eyed
point of view of 11-year-old Livy Two, one of nine children (the tenth, Livy
One, died at birth), the story is layered with details of their mountain
life, their struggles, crises and day-to-day moments of joy… And there's
humor too…. The graceful, spirited and, above all, sensory richness of the
writing make this work stand out.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“In spite of the poverty and hardships, this is a family story that's full
of love and delight. The parents have a visible, strong, working marriage,
something often ignored in children's books. Their love and acceptance keep
the children secure, even in their hunger, and gradually smoothes extended
family members' rough edges. Taken individually, these characters are very
human, but together they form a strong unit that will help readers
understand what it means to be a family.” – Booklist

"On every page Madden shows us the joys and sorrows of belonging to a good
family and how that family will shape us for the rest of our lives."
—Jeff Minick, Smoky Mountain News Reading Room






BOOK TWO: LOUISIANA’S SONG
Viking Children's Books, May 2007

LOUISIANA’S SONG continues the saga of the Weems family – begun in the
author’s acclaimed debut young adult novel GENTLES’ HOLLER – through
storyteller, Livy Two Weems, one of ten sisters and brothers in a North
Carolina holler. The novel opens as the children wait for their father to
come home from the “Rip Van Winkle Rest Home” in Asheville where he has been
recovering from a traumatic brain injury for the past eight months. Livy Two’s
tall, shy sister, Louisiana, a gifted painter, readies the smokehouse in
their Maggie Valley home where Daddy will continue his convalescence. She
paints murals of the family at play on the smokehouse walls to spark his
memory and recovery. But Livy Two feels that Daddy has had plenty of time to
get better already and that his coming home simply means that life will
finally get back to normal again. But the “daddy” who returns is a very
different man from the sunny, banjo-playing father they’ve always known. He
arrives home with a short temper, an even shorter memory, and “a fake radio
playing in his head.” Livy Two distracts her siblings from this scary new
man by telling those fairytales and distracts herself by fishing and
plotting her own escape from the mountains to Music City USA as a
singer-songwriter. She also helps shy Louise find her own gumption and
backbone and goes to battle against some school bus bullies to fight for
Louise’s honor.  Meanwhile, the family is also facing dire financial
straights and a battleaxe Methodist grandmother, Grandma Horace, who is
determined to move them out of the sticks and back to civilization to the
local textile plant town of Enka.

Finalist, Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA)
Award

California Readers Collections of 2008

2007 CYBILS Award Finalist

2008 SIBA AWARD FINALIST AT THE DECATUR BOOK FESTIVAL

“Beautifully written and true to its setting in the North Carolina mountains
during 1963, this continues the warm, loving, and poignant saga of a family
that struggles with everything but love.” – Booklist

“Engaging…. Madden’s fluid and heartfelt storytelling will leave young
readers looking forward to more.” – Kirkus Reviews

“A well-crafted and moving family story.” – VOYA

“What a splendid book! I enormously enjoyed my second trip to Gentle’s
Holler, revisiting that very remarkable Weems family.” – Susan Patron

“Livy Two’s voice as narrator will always stay with me, and when times get
tough, I’ll remember Louise, naming the shades of blue. I think that
Louisiana’s Song has helped me to understand both literature and the world a
little bit better, and I’m positive that this book will do the same to you.”
Stone Soup, Anna West Ellis, Age 11.

“This is a beautifully, tenderly crafted novel with moments of humor,
warmth, and genuine poignancy. Not a single word of this novel rings
 untrue.” – Foreword Magazine

“A strong title and one that is sure to become deeply beloved….   [T]his is
a book to love.”
– Fuse #8 blog on School Library Journal

“LOUISIANA’S SONG is an original. Lively, funny, and moving, it’s a novel
that adults as well as young readers should enjoy.” – Historical Novels
Review

“LOUISIANA’S SONG is one beautiful book.” – Shelf Elf

“A beautifully written novel for intelligent readers.” – The Edge of the
Forest

“The tragedy that sunk its teeth into the Weems family at the end of
Gentle's Holler (BCCB 6/05) isn't ready to let loose of them yet: Daddy may
have survived the car accident, but he's not the man he used to be. He can't
remember ordinary words, he no longer plays his banjo, and the only one of
his ten children that he seems to know is Emmett, whose guilt and wanderlust
keep him up at Ghost Town, the amusement park where he works. As Mama tries
her best to keep the family afloat financially, Livy Two writes her songs,
frets about her family, and pines for days past. In the spirit of TV's The
Waltons, each member of the Weems family emerges as a distinct character,
likable for his or her own individual traits and talents. Madden continues
her paean to mountain life, painting a warm and enveloping portrait of a
family who love their secluded mountain home in North Carolina in the 1960s,
and yet they are not untouched by the world around them. Fans of Patricia
MacLachlan, Ruth White, and Laura Ingalls Wilder have a new voice to add to
their favorites list.” —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books




BOOK THREE: JESSIE’S MOUNTAIN
Viking Children's Books, February, 2008
(The whole family got in on this one – daughter Lucy illustrated the birds
in JESSIE'S MOUNTAIN, son Flannery edited the songs, and daughter, Norah,
inspired the character of Caroline, the fairy child, and Kiffen, patient
father and husband, grew up one of 13 children.)


The 3rd book starring the Weems family is here! Previous titles in the
series include GENTLE’S HOLLER and LOUISIANA’S SONG.  “Can something that’s
so awful wrong have shiny bright bits of right to it?”

It’s slowly dawning on twelve-year-old Livy Two Weems that not every
decision in life falls neatly into two categories of right and wrong – and
the harder the decision is the blurrier the lines get.  It’s winter 1963,
and just about every member of the large Weems family has a decision to
make. Should Livy Two run off to Nashville to audition for that music man?
Is Daddy finally ready to play his banjo again? Should the kids secretly be
reading Mama’s girlhood diary? And worst of all: will Mama make them move
away from their beloved Maggie Valley home?  Even strong-willed Livy Two is
overwhelmed by so many looming choices, but she’s as determined as ever to
make her family’s dreams come true. That stubborn determination inspires all
of the Weemses – and leads to a tender and satisfying conclusion to Kerry
Madden’s Maggie Valley stories.

Mock Newbery Finalist at Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana,
2008

Eva County Public Library, Wake County, North Carolina, 2008

Children’s Literature Network “Five Favorite Five” of 2008

“A fitting end to the trilogy, Madden has created a heartwarming family
story bursting with love and mountain music.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Madden skillfully portrays the children’s fortitude in the face of their
nagging poverty…. Young readers can share Livy Two’s insights about
perseverance and working to solve problems one step at a time….
Well-written…. Many adults will find [the book] entertaining and inspiring.”
–    The Advocate, Baton Rouge

"Kerry Madden’s Maggie Valley trilogy will become classics. They are that
good." Andrea Sisco, Armchair Interviews

“After reading Jessie's Mountain, I can't help thinking that it is a cross
between The Waltons, and The Von Trapp Family singers! Kerry Madden does a
superb job of describing mountain life, using the language and
characteristics to paint a picture of the simple happy life enjoyed by the
Weems family. It is clear that she has done her research and the books have
a realism that is both enjoyable, informative about life in the Smokies.”
Literate Lives.

I recommend the Maggie Valley series for middle grade readers of both
genders. Although the titles and cover illustrations are more likely to
appeal to girls than to boys, the escapades of brother Emmett and the
outdoor adventures of all of the children are more boy-friendly than you
might expect. These books would make excellent family read-alouds, suitable
for younger children, but revealing more complex layers for older kids.
Although not at all 'message books', the Maggie Valley books give readers an
appreciation for the pros and cons of rural life, and the hardships faced by
families struggling in the margins. This is a perfect series for kids who
loved the Little House books to read next, before moving on to Hattie Big
Sky. Highly recommended. JEN ROBINSON’S BOOK PAGE

“Life in a big family is messy. Sometimes people don’t get along, don’t
speak to each other, keep secrets they shouldn’t keep, annoy one another.
Each family member has his faults, sometimes major faults. Our family is
like that, and the Weems family is, too. And yet, there’s a happy ending,
not one that assures me that every one of the Weems kids is going to be fat,
rich, and happy forever, but a reassuring conclusion nevertheless. If you
read all three books, you sort of fall in love with the Weems family, and it’s
good to see them in the end settled in, working hard, and pulling together.”
Semi-Colon Blog

MORE ONLINE REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS & LINKS for the Maggie Valley Trilogy

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=1300#more-1300

Children's Literature Network:
http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/

Semi Colon Blog
http://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=3093

SIBA Interview: Author 2 Author:
http://www.authorsroundthesouth.com/component/option,com_letterman/task,view/Itemid,71/id,12/

JENNIFER ROBINSON'S BOOK PAGE
http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/the-maggie-vall.html

LITERATE LIVES
http://literatelives.blogspot.com/2008/04/return-to-maggie-valley-on-jessies.html

CYNSATIONS
http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2007/09/author-interview-kerry-madden-on.html

One Writer's Process, Wordswimmer
http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/

TAKE A CROSS COUNTRY BOOK TOUR (THE MAGGIE VALLEY TRILOGY)
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749664


UAB Professor's Book Named Among the “Best of 2009” by Kirkus Reviews
 - Jan 2Dec 8, 2009 ... The new book Harper Lee: Up Close (Viking) written
by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Assistant Professor Kerry
Madden, MFA, ...
main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/71572/ - Cached -

Madden Named New Editor of UAB Women's Literary Magazine
... at Birmingham (UAB) Assistant Professor Kerry Madden, ...
main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/69560/
UAB Writers' Series Fall Calendar
She is a professor of English and an Arrington ... The UAB Writers' Series
...
main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/66957/



UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
Starred Reviews, Booklist & Kirkus, 2009
"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961
www.kerrymadden.com
Knoxville Girl Stories: http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at UAB Birmingham,ALHere is the
information about the one book on the download site.
Gentle's Holler
Madden, Kerry. Read by Kristin Allison. Reading time 4 hours 42 minutes.
Family
Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina; 1960s. Livy Two worries that love and
music cannot feed a family of ten, especially since her father has no steady
job, her sister Gentle is probably blind, and her mother keeps having
babies. Then her bossy grandmother pays a visit. For grades 5-8. 2005.