Did anyone read Enid Blyton's books growing up? Some of her books included the Famous Five series (21 novels, based on four children and their dog), the Five Find-Outers and Dog series (15 novels, five children regularly outwit the local police) as well as the Secret Seven (15 novels, a society of seven children who solve various mysteries).

I loved her books! My British grandmother sent them over to me from England.

A new unpublished manuscript has been found. YAY! Though they say she might have written it at the end of her life when she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. 

In these modern times, many of her books have been edited to remove passages that were deemed racist or sexist. (Just like the Mark Twain/Huck Finn issue, as of late.) My thought is let the work stand as is -- it shows the time and place when written.

I'm excited about the new discovery and maybe will go the the exhibition displaying her work, which will run from 2012-2013 at Newcastle Upon Tyne children's book museum. 

Author On the Bookcase
Claudia Sternbach

I'm excited to welcome Claudia Sternbach, author of Reading Lips: A Memoir  of Kisses. Claudia takes a unique platform to tell her story.  Kisses -- a father's kiss, first love kiss, best friend kiss -- tell the tale about small and, sometimes big, moments in one's life. This book is Claudia's life in her kisses.

Kiss and tell, Claudia! 

One Kiss is Never Enough
by Claudia Sternbach

It wasn't that I sat down one day and decided to write a book about kisses. I am not that clever. But ever since my memoir Reading Lips A Memoir of Kisses sold to Unbridled Books people have said things to me like, "Brilliant!"  Or, "Why didn't I think of that?" As though I actually had made a plan and then stuck to it.

Oh how I wish my mind worked that way. But the truth is I am much more helter skelter. I don't even match up my socks when putting them away. Actually, I don't even put them away. What happened was that like many writers, a tiny seed of an idea lodged itself in my brian, like a piece of spinach between two teeth, and stayed. That seed was the memory of a boy I had known in elementary school. His name was Teddy. I loved him. And there was a rumor he was going to try to kiss me on the last day before summer vacation. I could remember every detail. So I sat down at my computer and began to write. Not because I believed it would become anything. Simply to get it down on paper and out of my head.

I was sure that much more important topics were just waiting to be explored. And once I had excised Teddy I could get back to these most valuable issues. I assumed an hour or two at my desk would take care of things nicely. I was wrong.

As I began to write more and more kept coming. I lived and breathed my childhood and could hear the kids in the school yard, feel the heat of the tar paper roof when a group of us climbed up on it during recess. Could hear the snap of bone breaking when I fell off and feel the cool cement step I sat on with the principal while waiting for my mother to come take me to the hospital.

On and on I traveled, realizing eventually that at most big moments in life there is a kiss. Romantic or maternal. Daring or unasked for. Appropriate or not even close. Say, for example, you are about to be released from visiting a convicted murderer in San Quentin Prison. Should there be a kiss? Or perhaps your boyfriend has just spent a full week sharing a room with his supposedly ex-girlfriend. Should you kiss him hello when you find him at your door? And what about when a dear loved one is about to go in for surgery and it is still dark out and no one has any idea what will happen by the end of the day. A kiss is all there is to express what you feel as she is wheeled away.

So I found my groove and just kept going. I found that like eating potato chips, one kiss story led to another, then another. It became a small group of personal essays and then a full on collection and now the bag is empty but there is, amazingly,  a book -- Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses.

Thanks so much, Claudia, for sharing your story about how Reading Lips took hold and never let go. It is so true that sometimes "a kiss is all there is to express what you feel."

Reading Group Alert! Parents, childhood, friends, romance, identity, grief -- Reading Lips will produce a lively discussion.

Praise:

". . . Sternbach has carefully considered how to make a life story interesting through unusual yet approachable formatting, and she throws humor, sarcasm and self-deprecation into the mix….A memorable, laugh-out-loud, cry-out-loud essay collection for both genders and all ages.”" —Kirkus Reviews

Learn more about Claudia.

Author On the Bookcase
Summer Wood

So pleased to welcome Summer Wood, author of Wrecker to On the Bookcase. Summer's novel tells the story of Wrecker, a lonely and confused boy, and the eccentric relatives that raise him and, somehow, create a family. Set amid the giant trees of northern California's magical Lost Coast, Wrecker charts the ups and downs of a real, ragged, joyful and painful life -- a tribute to the unconventional family and the truest kind of love.

Wrecker "grew out of a rank stew of personal experience, literary experiment, political inquiry, and meandering imagination." 

Summer, please share with us more of this "rank stew." 

As a reader and a writer, I love stories that challenge my ordinary perception. As a mother, on the other hand, I find I’m perfectly okay with the status quo. I don’t need surprise or revelation in that job description. I like it when things go smoothly. I don’t like to have my feathers ruffled.

Except, of course (Mothers? Can you confirm this for me?) – they never do go completely smoothly, do they?

Wrecker came about because of an unexpected bump in my personal motherhood curve. And even though my writing rarely follows the contours of my life, the experience of being a foster parent was so emotionally acute that I turned to fiction to see my way through to a clearer understanding.

We entered the experience innocently enough. We had trained to become emergency foster care parents, thinking that if a local kid needed someplace to stay briefly while the family was in trouble, we could harbor him or her for a weekend or so. With our three sons and their friends, our place was overrun with kids, anyway. The screen door kept slamming as one neighbor child or another came or went. What was one more for a couple of days?

One, maybe; but the first call we got was for four small brothers who needed a family to stay with. Their parents were both battling drug problems, in trouble with the law, and the authorities had removed the kids upon confirmation of neglect. Sally, the social worker, said that if we couldn’t take these boys – aged 4, 3, 2, and not-quite-1 – they’d be split up and sent to different homes.

You want us to take them for the weekend?

Indefinitely, she said, and coughed politely into her hand.

We thought hard. We consulted our sons. And then we said yes, and for nearly two winter months, these small boys – who came to us with pneumonia, an amazing roster of aberrant behaviors, a black trash bag of shorts, t-shirts, and ill-fitting sneakers, and the most cherubic little faces – lived in our home and rapidly took up residence in our hearts.

It’s a long story, the saga of their journey back and forth, into and out of their parents’ custody. We became friends of the family, kind of informal kin to the boys. We were on hand to help when a fifth child was born with medical complications. We rooted for the parents, celebrated with them, wept with them, and when, at last, the whole house of cards came tumbling down, we felt our hearts break for them as their parental rights were terminated and the boys were adopted out to separate families.

I didn’t write this novel in conscious response to having fostered those children. As any novel will, it grew out of a rank stew of personal experience, literary experiment, political inquiry, and meandering imagination – with a good dose of love, whimsy, fear, humor, and warped psychological obsession thrown in. This imaginary child, Wrecker, arrived in a public playground one June afternoon in 1965, and I wanted to know what would happen to him. I wanted to know his mother, and how she lost him, and who would come to love and raise him, and what kind of man he would turn out to be.

Writing his mothers into being – both the one who gave him his start, and the one into whose arms he fell – meant coming to terms with the power of parents. It meant coming up hard against the truth that no parent, not one of us, is perfect. It meant facing head-on the fact that the mistakes we make can have grave consequences. It meant learning forgiveness as a kind of survival strategy.

I’ve come to believe that it is a radical expression of love to parent any child.  And that there’s no right way to do it. It can only be done by trial and error, and error, and error, and trying again. And, yes; there will be unexpected bumps. There will be ruffled feathers.

And writing Wrecker himself? Writing Wrecker into being was a way for me to believe again in the possibilities open to children. I needed to reconnect with the hope that led us to step forward and say:  yes.  With whatever we can offer, for as long as we can, we’ll welcome these children into our lives.

It was an honor to have the chance to know those boys and their parents. And the best way I knew to pay back that honor was to bring this other boy, Wrecker, into the world, and let him muscle his way, with grace and love and a good share of noise, into his future.

Thanks so much, Summer, for sharing your real life experiences and your ability "to reconnect with the hope that led us to step forward and say: yes."

Reading Group Alert! Wrecker brings together great topics to discuss -- motherhood, family, identity, community, coming-of-age, sense of place. What more can you what in a discussible book?!

Praise

"Wood succeeds with surefooted prose; a lush, earthy California backdrop; and a sensitive story of nurturing and family."—Publisher's Weekly

Summer Wood is the author of Arroyo. In 2007, she received the Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation for her work on Wrecker. She teaches writing at the University of New Mexico's Taos Summer Writers' Conference, and in 2009 she directed the first NEA/Taos Big Read. She is currently the director of Voices from the American Land, and has lived with her family in Taos for the past twenty years.

Find out more on Summer.

Around the Bend
Exposure by Therese Fowler

Around the Bend is an On the Bookcase Feature bringing attention to upcoming reading group-appropriate titles.

I'm so excited! Random House sent me an ARC of Therese's new title, Exposure (May 2011). I met Therese at the Virginia Festival of Books (VABOOK) 3 or 4 years ago. (Time flies when you have having fun!) She was on the Reading Group Choices' panel. Therese is a great writer and a fun person. Her previous novels are Souvenir and Reunion - both excellent reading group picks. And, I get to see her next week in DC for the Association of Writers & Writing Progmans.  

Here's the scoop!

Publisher Summary

Amelia Wilkes’s strict father does not allow her to date, but that doesn’t stop the talented, winsome high school senior from carrying on a secret romance with her classmate Anthony Winter. Desperately in love, the two envision a life together and plan to tell Amelia’s parents only after she turns eighteen and is legally an adult. Anthony’s mother, Kim, who teaches at their school, knows—and keeps—their secret. But the couple’s passion is exposed sooner than planned: Amelia’s father, Harlan, is shocked and infuriated to find naked pictures of Anthony on his daughter’s computer. Just hours later, Anthony is arrested.

Despite Amelia’s frantic protests, Harlan uses his wealth and influence with local law enforcement and the media to label Anthony a deviant who preyed on his innocent daughter. Spearheaded by a zealous prosecutor anxious to turn the case into a public crusade against “sexting,” the investigation soon takes an even more disturbing and destructive turn.

As events spiral wildly out of control and the scandalous story makes national news, Amelia and Anthony risk everything in a bold and dangerous attempt to clear their names and end the madness once and for all.

A captivating page-turner, Therese Fowler’s Exposure is also a deftly crafted, provocative, and timely novel that serves as a haunting reminder of the consequences of love in the modern age. 

Praise for Souvenir

“Compelling . . . The characters are likable, troubled and human, and they’re well worth following on their journey.”—USA Today

“Souvenir is indeed one of those books you want to sit down and finish all at once. . . . Fowler’s storytelling is what makes this novel shine.”
—Durham Herald-Sun

Therese has worked in the U.S. Civil Service, managed a clothing store, lived in the Philippines, had children, sold real estate, earned a B.A. in sociology, sold used cars, returned to school for her MFA in creative writing, and taught college undergrads about literature and fiction-writing -- roughly in that order.  With books published in nine languages and sold world-wide, Therese writes full-time from her home in Wake Forest, NC, which she shares with her husband, four amiable cats, and four nearly grown-up sons.

Reading group alert! Family, relationships, current events, coming of age, believable characters. Perfect topics for a lively discussion.

Look for Exposure in May and see here more details about Therese.