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Sidhanth Srinivasan writes a book report on The Rickshaw Girl

By on January 6, 2023   /   Articles  

Rickshaw Girl, written by Mitali Perkins, illustrated by Jamie Hogan (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2007) was one of the first children’s books by a desi author that I picked up to read at my local library back in 2007-2008. I loved it so much that when Mitali Bose Perkins came to participate as faculty at my local SCBWI conference, I couldn’t wait to meet her in-person. She was brilliant! Fast forward many years later, it’s beautiful to see this book as a movie streaming on Prime! Congratulations to Mitali, and thank you to her for writing Naima’s big, beautiful heart! I gifted a copy of the book to Sidhanth Srinivasan (age 9). He read the book overnight and wrote a book report the next morning.

Here it is for you:

Title: Rickshaw Girl

*This book is about a girl named Naima who tries to find a job so she can fix her father’s rickshaw. Naima is a girl who lives with her younger sister Rashida and their two parents.

It all starts when Naima is doing chores for her parents. Her mother makes sure that she did the chores well and clean. After Naima has finished her chores, she goes outside to work on her alpana ( rice art) . Naima is very good at alpanas and hopes to win the alpana contest this year. While making alpanas, her father comes back from work as a rickshaw driver and talks to Naima’s mom. Naima hears them talking about how they need to earn more money to pay off the debt for the rickshaw. Naima is worried that they may lose their rickshaw by not paying off the debt for it. She also hears them talking about how they wished Naima was a boy so she could work and help her father not work all the time. They also say that Naima’s alpanas are not going to help bring money so they can pay off the debt for the rickshaw. Hearing this, Naima is devastated and erases her alpana drawing for the contest.

She then sees her friend Saleem come by and asks him how to earn money for paying off her father’s debt. He says that girls just work for their mother and boys work for their father. As much as Naima knows this, she is determined to help her father, and she comes up with an idea. If she disguises herself as a boy, she could earn money by driving her father’s rickshaw. She decides to drive her father’s rickshaw. But when she starts riding downhill, she crashes the rickshaw. Evidently her parents aren’t happy to see their rickshaw crashed. Naima’s parents decide to take the broken rickshaw to a rickshaw repair shop.  Naima is unhappy and doesn’t talk to her friend Saleem. On the day of the alpana contest, Naima doesn’t even make an alpana. The prize goes to someone else.

Later that day her father tells Naima’s mom that he did not make enough money to fix the rickshaw. So Naima’s mother gives one of her bangles to her father so they could trade it and get the rickshaw fixed. Naima visits the repair shop and asks the owner if she could help with making the panels for her dad’s rickshaw. The lady says yes and they get to work. When Naima’s dad visits the repair shop, he sees Naima and is mad at her until the owner says, “Look at your daughter’s work!  She did a very good job”. The owner also says, “ I will let you use my rickshaw but Naima will have to work for me and if she is a good worker, I may even pay her.”  Hearing this  Naima’s dad agrees to the deal. In the end Naima realizes that being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.

I think the theme of this book is you can do anything if you try your best. One big trait Naima shows is grit. Even when her ideas don’t work, she keeps trying because she wants to help her father.  You should read this book because it shows how when things push you back you have to try and step forward. You should also read this book because it tells how things were back in the days when women did not have rights and how Naima realizes that it doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl you can still do anything. Thank you for reading my book report about the Rickshaw Girl.

 

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Hitting a novel home run in 2023 by making a difference

By on January 3, 2023   /   Articles, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

By Faran Fagen

Like you, I’ve got a full lineup of goals for 2023. The new year offers a time to look at what’s most important.

My most pressing concrete goals are a home run revision that grabs the reader (my writing world), and to meet my financial goals (personal world).

But my general goal is to make a difference on all fronts. If I tackle each goal with the idea of making a difference, thinking of others, good things tend to happen.

In that spirit, here’s my top 10 list of writing goals for 2023:

  1. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page.
  2. Give the reader just enough detail so they’re dying to know what comes next.
  3. Choose a setting that adds to suspense and advances the story.
  4. Immerse myself in the main character so the reader feels like they’re experiencing the story through their five senses (think “Avatar”)
  5. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page.
  6. Each scene has urgency for the characters to reach their goals (or not).
  7. Conflict. Every scene filled with conflict. Conflict between characters. Inner conflict. Think all the “Rocky” movies.
  8. Transformation. How do the characters change? What do they learn? How do we journey through their transformation?
  9. In revision, know what to take out and what to leave in. I know this one’s easier said than done. A mentor once told me to defend each word like a lawyer defends each client.
  10. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page. Keep the reader turning the page.

In the end, it’s about writing a book that makes a difference. Didn’t I say that somewhere?

Here’s some goals from some of the children’s book writers/agents who’ve had a huge influence on me:

Author/illustrator Fred Koehler:

  1. WORD COUNT:I’m keeping it simple without any sort of overall word count resolution–just a single manuscript to revise, however many words it takes. For 2023 it’s a middle grade treasure mystery where editors LOVED the first half but thought the ending was too over-the-top. Keep what they loved. Slash and burn the rest.
  2. REJECTION:Rejection is a great measurement of how close you are to success. (Here’s my thesis on Rejection.) My resolution for 2023 is 50 rejections. Between a graphic novel already out on sub and several picture manuscripts at various stages, I should be able to achieve that no problem.
  3. COMMUNITY:Through my work with fellow writers at Ready Chapter 1, various critique groups, and other awesome communities like this one, my resolution is to help create the ‘aha’ moment or make the connection for ONE writer to land their first book deal. This will be more meaningful to me than anything I achieve for myself.

Aurora Dominguez, award-winning teacher and aspiring YA novelist:

  1. Finish the draft of my first YA novel
  2. Write for fun more, not just for freelance journalism purposes! *more for fun
  3. Take the time to write meaningful and purposeful, as well as uplifting messages, to loved ones and colleagues.

Jonathan Rosen, agent, The Seymour Agency:

  1. Make time to write. Period.
  2. Stretch outside my comfort zone to write in new genres
  3. Write what I like and let it find an audience

Author Marjetta Geerling:

  1. Finish writing book 1 of a new series.
  2. Remember writing is fun!
  3. Stop stressing about social media.

Joyce Sweeney, agent, The Seymour Agency:

  1. Do not keep scheduling meetings on writing day!
    2. Remember that every client is an individual and needs individual strategy, attention and care
    3. Always be kind, especially to beginning authors who query.

Hope you reach your goals for 2023!!

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Happy New Year from the STEM Tuesday Team!

By on January 3, 2023   /   STEM, STEM Tuesday  

Inertia For the New Year

Painful Inspiration

The weather turned. The temperature dropped rapidly. It was a cold and misty day but the precipitation began to freeze in the late afternoon causing black ice. Typical Kansas weather where the temperature went from the mid-40s to -8 within a 36-hour period. 

No problem. Hunker down, stay warm, and finish the STEM Tuesday New Year’s Post. Easy.

Not so fast. 

I also had to walk my daughter’s dogs who were staying with us. Dog #1 went fairly easily as the dog and human performed seamlessly transversing the ice rink of a sidewalk. Dog #2, however, had other things in mind. Just a few steps past the thawing effects of the ice melt on the sidewalk, a squirrel ran down a tree trunk and sprinted across the ice-crusted lawn. Dog #2, by all measure a champion squirrel chaser, tipping the scales at ~80 lbs., launched with great enthusiasm after the squirrel. 

Time and perception snapped to slow motion. I watched the retractable leash unroll with great speed. Just when it crossed my mind I should probably let go or get my arm jerked off, the line ran out. My arm jerked forward but, fortunately, not off. My feet shot out from under me and I found myself sliding rapidly down the sidewalk incline toward an oak tree trunk located in my path at the bottom of the walk. Just when the inevitable crash was mere seconds away, I had a STEM Tuesday New Year’s Post revelation and screamed, “INERTIA!”

After a few minutes of nursing the scratches and bruises while the rest of the family directed all their attention to the health and well-being of Dog #2, I limped to my desk to capture the moment inertia changed everything. 

(Note: No animals or humans were hurt during this highly dramatized, perhaps over-dramatized, story.)

Inertia. A brilliant and inspirational word! In fact, a perfect word to use as the 2023 STEM Tuesday Word-of-the-Year. 

Throughout our educational journey, we’ve probably been exposed to Newton’s First Law of Motion, a.k.a. Newton’s Law of Inertia, so many times it became rote and not the alive physical law it is. An object at rest or in motion tends to stay at rest or in motion unless a force acts upon it. That’s Newton’s Law of Inertia. 

Inertia is one powerful property and one powerful word to guide us in the coming year.

A Discovery

The year was 1851. It’s deep into a cold January 6th night a few hours after midnight. A young man knelt over his latest experiment in the cellar of the house he shared with his mother at the corner of rue de Vaugirard and rue d’Assas in Paris. He is not considered a great scholar by his peers. Although he has already made several significant advances in science, he is not accepted in the inner circles of the great Parisian mathematical or astronomical minds of the era. Yet, when Leon Foucault released the 5-kg brass bob connected by a wire to an anchor on the ceiling, he made history.

Foucault watched the oscillations as the pendulum swung slowly and gracefully in front of him. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then he saw it. The plane of oscillation had moved ever so slightly away from its initial position. He knew immediately he had done something nobody in history, not even Galileo, Newton, or any of the great scientific human minds, had done. Leon Foucault had proven with his simple, but elegant, pendulum experiment that the earth rotates.

The next month, Focault demonstrated to the scientific community his pendulum experiment in the Meridian at the Paris Observatory. Much debate was raised, especially about how an “amateur” could have made this discovery, but nobody could refute Foucault’s conclusions. The experiment was repeated on a grander scale a few weeks later with a 28-kg bob hanging from a 67-meter wire from the dome of the Pantheon in Paris. The public was invited and people flocked to see the exhibition. Scientists all over the world repeated the experiment and all confirmed Foucault’s findings. Even today, the Foucault Pendulum is a popular experiment to recreate by both science museums and home enthusiasts. In a sense, the inertia of Foucault’s experiment continues in motion to this day.

 

An excerpt from the illustrated supplement of the magazine Le Petit Parisien dated November 2, 1902, on the 50th anniversary of the experiment of Léon Foucault demonstrating the rotation of the earth. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

The STEM Tuesday 2023 Word-of-the-Year “inertia” is submitted for consideration to all creative people in the spirit of Foucault and his pendulum. The whole experiment worked because of inertia and the motion described by Newton’s First Law in the plane of oscillation. When the pendulum moved back and forth, the earth below moved. 

 

Creative Inertia

In order to create, we need to be like Foucault’s Pendulum and use the force of inertia to make our creative world turn. What if on that dark February night alone in his cellar, Leon Foucault wouldn’t have let go of the brass fob? No motion. Which would have meant no discovery. In order for him to prove the earth turned, he had to put the pendulum in motion and tap the power of inertia.

Inertia for 2023 means putting creativity in motion by…creating. Creative inertia!

What fuels creative inertia? Curiosity. A creator is driven by curiosity much like a scientist is.

  • Curiosity about what happens next drives the fiction writer.
  • Curiosity about what actually happened or what actually is drives the nonfiction writer.
  • Curiosity about the image and what it represents drive the illustrator.

Creative inertia grows out of curiosity. Like Foucault, creators need to release the bob and put creative inertia to work. It all starts with a single word or a single mark, followed by one after the other. 

Even if it sometimes (or often) feels like your creative life is static and going nowhere but back and forth, remember the world below is turning. Creative inertia means you are improving. It means you are in motion.

A creator at rest tends to stay at rest. A creator in motion tends to stay in motion.

 

Starry circles arc around the south celestial pole, seen overhead at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1534a/, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

“The phenomenon develops calmly, but it is inevitable, unstoppable. One feels, one sees it born and grow steadily; and it is not in one’s power to either hasten it or slow it down. Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with him forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space.”

                                                   -Leon Foucault, describing his pendulum experiment, 1851

 

Happy New Year from all of us at STEM Tuesday and From the Mixed-Up Files…of Middle-Grade Authors. May you find your creative inertia and keep your creative world turning!

 

Mike Hays has worked hard from a young age to be a well-rounded individual. A well-rounded, equal-opportunity sports enthusiast, that is. If they keep a score, he’ll either watch it, play it, or coach it. A molecular microbiologist by day, middle-grade author, sports coach, and general good citizen by night, he blogs about sports/training-related topics at  www.coachhays.com and writer stuff at  www.mikehaysbooks.com. Two of his science essays, The Science of Jurassic Park and Zombie Microbiology 101, are included in the Putting the Science in Fiction collection from Writer’s Digest Books. He can be found roaming around the Twitter-sphere under the guise of @coachhays64 and on Instagram at @mikehays64.

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