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IT’S GETTING CLOSER… TRICK-OR-BOOK #4!

Foggy morning, chilly nights

5 pm, and on with the lights

Pillow and blanket in your cozy nook

4 more days till Trick-or-Book!

Are we really at the Fourth Annual Trick-or-Book already? Wasn’t it just yesterday the first day of school, just those lazy summer days, just the early-bird crocuses and tulips, just Valentine’s Day, just Christmas and Chanukah and Kwanzaa?

But already we slide and tiptoe again toward Halloween, planning costumes and decorating doorways, carving our best jack-o-lantern yet, jumping at the sound of early firecrackers, shivering at the ghostly voice emanating from behind the neighbours’ door, and of course preparing for the arrival of both beauties and beasts by stocking up on –

books?!

Well, at this address, yes indeed. Picture books. Adventures. Dog stories and tales of magic. Words silly and words serious. Sports heroes and princesses, orphans and talking animals; the Wild West and the Near East; things you could never have imagined; kids who are just like you…

No chocolate, not one piece of candy?

That’s right.

Just new worlds to discover.

Dive in now – hold tight!

Discover the history of Trick-or-Book here:

https://laughinginthelanguage.com/trick-or-book-is-almost-here/

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TRICK-OR-BOOK IS ALMOST HERE…

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Door locked. Outside light off. That was how I was greeting the returned trick-or-treaters of 2021.

It didn’t feel quite right, but I refused to hand out candy that wasn’t good for them, chocolate that was dependent on child labourers.

Except then I started hearing the scurrying feet, the first excited voices. A bold one, too eager to be deterred by the dark doorway, rings the bell.

How can I ignore them? But then, what can I give them? Spying, on the top shelf of the hutch, the old wooden salad bowl Mom and Dad used to fill with shiny apples and boxes of raisins on Halloween, I grab it. Rinsed, dried, it’s beautiful. And still empty. The doorbell sounds again.

What do I have to give away? I scan the kitchen, living room again. The answer, patient, stares back.

Are the kids still there?! I rush to the door, and fling it open. “Just a sec. One sec, okay?”

They’re patient too, and when I return with my bowl brimming with books, rendered speechless. Still, it takes them only a moment to adapt, to start giving each other book recommendations. “Oh, I’ve read that – it’s really good!” “Look, this one is all about…” “Your little brother would like this one, right?”

Many thank you’s, and then, clutching their books, they chatter and giggle back down the path and to the next door. Turning to ferret a few more books off my shelves, I hear one little girl’s happy conclusion: “I think this is going to be a different kind of Halloween.”

*******

This Booktober, um, October, I’m thinking ahead. Stock up at Value Village. Make sure I have enough books for all ages. Classics. New favourites. A couple of YAs? Board books. Remind everyone who loved the idea last year and thought it should be annual. (Wait, how has a year gone by already?) Photoshoot? Sure.

~~~

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BOOKS, ON AUGUST MORNINGS, FALL FROM HEAVEN

There is a certain kind of magic that can only happen in the world of books…

Early August, warm day ~

My front door stands open all morning for the breeze.

No sound or sight of a delivery truck, but suddenly, as I turn the corner into the kitchen, I see a slim package lying in the unswept entry.

A book, though I haven’t ordered any.

Return address: TOR Books, NYC

Mailing label: Malmo, Sweden

And within: an uncorrected proof copy of “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”, by Becky Chambers.

My mind circles and spins. This is the sequel to by far my favourite book so far this year: “A Psalm to the Wild-Built”.

But who/why/how?

I’m not on the author’s mailing list, didn’t rate the book on Goodreads, haven’t won any free-book contests.

In the book is a “Letter to Readers” in which Becky speaks of ”…wondering why hopeful stories are something we’re expected to grow out of, or no longer need.” “Hope,” she continues, “is a key ingredient in every book I’ve written, but I wanted to lean into that even further.”

“Same,” I whisper. My climate fiction, though not always the happiest of themes, is never eco-thriller— the inspiration, the foundation, the epigraph are all hope. In my Middle Grade novel, rude ghosts beset a diverse step-family MG, and it is hope that begets the listening that is finally the solution. Two children run away from the endless crises of the world in my just-completed adult literary novel. How could I have written this without placing them in the sheltering hands of the Maine Woods, without channeling the certain heart of the child?

I look down at “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy” as it sits, wholly unexpected and still inexplicable, but comfortable, truly beautiful, in my hands. Perhaps hope magnetizes hope?

   And books, on August mornings, fall from heaven…

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PLACE OF DEPARTURE

 

Schenectady, N.Y. to Walpole, Mass., Philadelphia to Chicago to Kansas City… As a child, I had no say, saw place as something that might not last, escaped into the unfailing world of books.

Finally, then choices ― Vermont for college, Italy like home rediscovered, and graduate school in British Columbia leading me at long last to a place to stay, a place to write about and to stand up for. Though I’m first and foremost a prose writer, it is in poems that I freeze-frame lake and log boom, new moon, clear-cut cedars, still-tall pines and the Friday night sidewalks of skid row Vancouver.

And yet, after decades, BC has quietly begun to serve also as the template for my novels and stories, providing an achingly beautiful place of departure for the ravaged world of my climate fiction. Even as we who live here simultaneously spoil and protect it, BC becomes ever more my platea, the open space that sustains me, from which I declaim the truths I have the honor of glimpsing in sea and fellow place keepers and wide wide sky…