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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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Creative Braining

By on December 26, 2022   /   Articles, books, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!

As much as I’d love it to be a post about zombies; this is not a post about zombies. 

It’s about creating.

Although it’s not about creating brain-eating reanimated beings shambling endlessly in search of the living, I hope to shed some light on how we creators shamble endlessly in search of creating something unique and satisfying. And it all starts in our heads. In our brains to be exact. 

My mother was known to use the phrase, “You put crap in. You get crap out” when addressing her five, often rock-headed teenage sons. My lone sister, a voracious reader of all things, never seemed to receive this nugget of wisdom from mom. It appears the boys were singled out because of the music, horror movies, comedians with “poor language choices”, etc. that we consumed. Nevertheless, “Crap in. Crap out.” has stuck with me. (Thanks, Mom!)

I recently bought Scientific American’s Secrets of the Mind from their awesome catalog of eBooks. These books from Scientific American are compilations of their articles about a particular topic which I highly recommend. Secrets of the Mind has not disappointed me so far. In fact, it hits the ground running with the Introduction, “Mind from Matter” by Andrea Gawrylewski, and breaks into a sprint from the very first article, “How Matter Becomes Mind” by Max Bertolero and Danielle S. Bassett.  

Bertolero and Bassett’s article is about the network architecture currently being defined and refined in their and others’ recent brain cognition research. I was fascinated, to say the least. We’ve possessed accurate maps of the human brain for quite some time with the brain regions defined by their functions, i.e. vision, motor, emotions, etc. However, these accurate and defined maps of the brain do very little to explain how the brain really works. 

The next wave of research is examining just how these regions fit into the network of the brain to allow us to be walking, talking, thinking, and creating humans. And you know what? It turns out Mom was right again! Crap in certainly leads to crap out in the brain.  

An experiment by US radio engineer Archie Frederick Collins in 1902 tried to use a human brain as a radio wave detector. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The nitty-gritty of a brain network:

The brain network, like most networks, consists of basic building blocks named nodes and edges. Nodes are the units of the network, which, in the brain’s case, are the individual neurons. Edges are the connections between the nodes. The brain’s edges are how neurons are intertwined with the other neurons. 

The brain has modularity, it has a localized network where the nodes show stronger connections to each other. Such modules have specific functions. Sensory and motor cognitive processes involve adjoining modules that are mainly confined to a specific lobe of the brain. The brain needs to put together or process information from multiple, confined modules to make sense of cognitive tasks.

Imagine reading a book without being able to incorporate the emotional modules. The reader experience would be greatly diminished. Since our brain can’t let that happen (You have to take that emotional hit in Bridge to Terabithia to experience the total impact of the story, right?) it’s evolved hubs.

Hubs are nodes where the brain’s different modules meet. They control and mesh activity from multiple modules. Some of these key hub modules, like the frontoparietal control module and the default mode module, make important global connections between brain lobes. 

Secrets of the Mind

As we can see, a network in our brain is built upon a structural framework of nodes, edges, modules, and hubs. A rigid, standard architecture, right? Yes and no. If the parts and processes are similar in all of our brains, why don’t we all think, act, and react similarly? Why aren’t we all like a shambling species of zombies thinking and responding the same to the same series of inputs?

It’s because we all have slight variations in the way the circuits in our brains are wired. New methods of mapping and analyzing brain activity show we all have distinct “fingerprints” inside our heads. Plus, if a brain network has strong hubs with many connections among modules, its modules are segregated from one another allowing for more efficient storage and processing. 

Stronger functional connections show a stronger functional capacity. 

This specific organization allows the brain to function as an integrated network of thoughts, feelings, quirks, flaws, and mental strengths. It allows us to establish our unique identity and maintain it. Our brain network makes us who we are today and tomorrow.

In Austin Kleon’s classic, Steal Like an Artist, he says,

“A wonderful flaw about human beings is that were incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.

So: Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short. What’s in there that makes you different? That’s what you should amplify and transform into your own work.

In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the worlds that only you can add.”

It all fits in. It all makes sense in the grand scheme of how our creative brains work.

Science shows it.

Artists show it.

Mom knew it all along.

We are the sum of all we take in. Our wonderful and unique brains take all the data we feed them and then process it into something only each of us can produce. When we allow ourselves the courage to create from what’s between our ears, we create something brand new and unique. The more we stock our brains with quality input data, the more we have in the creative well to draw from.

Austin Kleon gives the advice, “Write the book you want to read.”

How do you do this? By using your unique fingerprint of nodes, edges, modules, and hubs to do the work of turning the things you input into outputs only you can create.

Creative braining wins!

Read. Write. Repeat.

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