Posts Tagged kidlit

Interview with Wendy McLeod MacKnight, Author of The Frame-Up

By on May 25, 2018   /   Author Interviews, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, New Releases  

I’m so excited to chat with Wendy McLeod MacKnight about her latest middle grade mystery, THE FRAME-UP.

MUF Interview Wendy McLeod MacKnight The Frame-UpWhen Sargent Singer discovers that the paintings in his father’s gallery are alive, he is pulled into a captivating world behind the frame that he never knew existed.

Filled with shady characters, devious plots, and a grand art heist, this inventive mystery-adventure celebrates art and artists and is perfect for fans of Night at the Museum and Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer.

There’s one important rule at the Beaverbrook Gallery—don’t let anyone know the paintings are alive. Mona Dunn, forever frozen at thirteen when her portrait was painted by William Orpen, has just broken that rule. Luckily twelve-year-old Sargent Singer, an aspiring artist himself, is more interested in learning about the vast and intriguing world behind the frame than he is in sharing her secret.

And when Mona and Sargent suspect shady dealings are happening behind the scenes at the gallery, they set out to find the culprit. They must find a way to save the gallery—and each other—before they are lost forever.  

With an imaginative setting, lots of intrigue, and a thoroughly engaging cast of characters, The Frame-Up will captivate readers of Jacqueline West’s The Books of Elsewhere.

What inspired this art gallery mystery?

I have always loved art — and wished I painted or drew better! — and I always wanted to figure out a way to make the world of art come alive to kids and adults. Certainly, the book has nods to Harry Potter and Night at the Museum, but I wanted to do something different; I wanted to show two worlds co-existing and not intersecting and how the hidden world would organize itself to protect itself, and I wanted to have readers think about how creativity brings things to life. Theoretically, a painting is simply a flat image on a wall. But depending upon the person viewing it, it can be so much more than that. I wanted to give kids (and the adults in their lives) ways to think and look at art that made it fun and thought-provoking and I hope I succeeded!

Please, tell us about the paintings featured in the book and/or about the real-life Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

Oh gosh, where to begin? The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is a magical place, set on the banks of the St. John River in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It was a gift to the province by Lord Beaverbrook, a native New Brunswicker who found fame in fortune in the U.K. during the first half of the twentieth century and is a towering figure in World War II history and the history of the London press. He filled the gallery with priceless masterpieces, as fine as any collection, in my opinion.

The hardest thing for me was choosing which paintings would be characters. I knew I had to include at least one Dalì, plus the massive Gainsborough, and the portrait of Mona Dunn. I chose paintings I’ve always loved and which included great characters for my story, like the portrait of Helena Rubinstein, Madame Juliette dans le Jardin, and Lucian Freud’s Hotel Bedroom.

But really, the star is Mona Dunn. I have been besotted with her portrait since I first laid eyes on it, and my affection for her has never waned. There was never any doubt that this would be the girl who would live her life behind the frame, and yet long to still be connected to the outer world. It’s as if her artist, William Orpen, knew she was destined to be in a book, the way he captured her. In the novel, I describe her as #TheOtherMona, but really, I think she is a more glorious portrait than the Mona Lisa!!!

Mona Dunn | Interview with Wendy McLeod MacKnight | Th Frame Up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I didn’t realize was that it was MY responsibility to procure the rights to reproduce the images in the book, though I had no idea at the time I procured them that the book would actually be published! But Greenwillow Books has made a gorgeous book, and the fact that they’ve included a sixteen-page full-color insert of all of the paintings who are characters in the book is amazing to me! I can just imagine kids flipping back and forth as they read!

I loved your first novel, It’s a Mystery, Pig Face! And, as a little sister, really resonated with the sibling relationship. So, tell me, who is your favorite character – either from Pig Face or The Frame-Up – and why do you love them more than anyone else?

Oh my! I adore Lester (AKA Pig Face), because he is loosely based on my younger brother, although with my quirks, but if I had to pick one character that I absolutely adore, I’m going with Sir Charles Cotterell in The Frame-Up, because he just makes me sooo happy. He has a small role, but good one!

Will you tell us a little bit about your writing process? In particular how do you go about tackling a mystery story?

First of all, I do a VERY ROUGH outline, and then I write. I’m trying to do a better job of pre-plotting, but I think I may be the writer who really needs to get to know their character through writing, and however much I think I know but doing character sketches, it’s only when I put them in the scenarios that their true colors come out! And the mystery, went through several iterations, and honestly, the mad scramble at the end required LOTS of re-writing so it actually made sense. In The Frame-Up, there are several mysteries: what’s going to happen now that someone from outside the frame knows about the world behind the frame; will Sargent and his father actually come together; and is someone up to something nefarious at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, and if so, who? I have to map it all out and try to find a way to weave it all together in a logical, straight forward way. But I’ll be honest: sometimes I trap myself in my own maze and have to ask for help to get myself out!

What would you like readers to take away from this book?

My greatest wish is that kids (and adults!) are inspired to go to their local art gallery or museum and “visit” the paintings. So often, we shuffle from one painting to the next, not knowing how we should be approaching it. Many galleries do an amazing job of talking about the creation of the art, but for some of us, the only way we can connect is by imagining the day it was painted, thinking about what the artist saw and was thinking, and depending on the kind of art, what the subject was also experiencing. My greatest compliment was when, after he’d finished the book, my husband said he’d never look at art the same way again!

In your book, Mona is eternally 13 years old. Is there a certain age that most feels like you? If so, what about being that age sticks with you?

Truthfully, I think I will always be fourteen years old. I’ll be on my deathbed at a hundred and five (!) and still be as excited and hopeful and curious to see how it all turns out as I was when I was that age. I was fourteen when I had to move away from my hometown, which was absolutely heartbreaking, but it was also the year I had an amazing English teacher, had my first date, and tramped about in the woods with my best friends, just like Tracy and Pig Face do. You know things, but you don’t know things, which I think is a delicious way to live your life!

Thank you so much for chatting with us, Wendy. I can’t wait to grab a copy of THE FRAME- UP for myself. I’m sure our readers feel the same way.

Wendy McLeod MacKnight || MUF Interview with Wendy McLeod MacKnight | The Frame UpWendy lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and wrote her first novel at age nine. During her first career, she worked for the Government of New Brunswick, ending her career as the Deputy Minister of Education. She has been know to wander art galleries and have spirited conversations with the paintings – mostly in her head, though sometimes not. Her debut middle grade novel, It’s a Mystery, Pig Face! was published by Sky Pony Press in 2017. She can’t wait for The Frame-Up to come out so she can share her love of art and her love for the world-class  Beaverbrook Art Gallery. She hopes readers will be inspired to create their own masterpieces and visit their own local art gallery. And even better, she hopes they’ll come to Fredericton and visit the  Beaverbrook Art Gallery and meet Mona and the rest of the characters in the book (and maybe Wendy, too!)


THE FRAME-UP comes out June 5, 2018. You can pick up a copy at your favorite independent bookstore or anywhere else books are sold.

In the meantime, feel free to keep the conversation going by commenting below. I’d love to talk more about Wendy’s books, art, mystery novels, or even your eternal age. 🙂

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STEM Tuesday Inventors- Those Awesome People of Science – Writing Craft & Resources

By on May 15, 2018   /   Diversity, Inventors / Inventions, New Releases, STEM Tuesday  

 

Reading Between the Facts

Don’t you just love it when a story comes to life? When you are reading something and you can smell the sooty aromas, hear the grinding gears of a new invention, taste the tang of tart pie? And when, long after you’ve put a book down, you find yourself wondering about the characters? But that’s fiction, right? A story that wraps you up and carries you away.

Wait, what about fact-filled books that transport you like that? When I looked at this month’s book list, packed with techy inventions and their nerdy inventors, a story that transported me was the last thing I expected. Physical science isn’t my thing, so I gritted my teeth anticipating some dull, dry reading.

                     Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgSupport Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgSupport Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org                      
Boy was I wrong. Flying Machines: How the Write Brothers Soared had me so hooked I convinced my aerospace engineer husband he had to read it (sidenote: he was impressed with the accuracy of the content).  Eureka! Poems About Inventors drew me through periods of history I had never cared about. And then there’s Isaac The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d which made me pondering how light works, I mean really think about the physics of it. A week later I found myself Googling “Newton’s Laws of Motion because I wanted to actually understand them – not just memorize them. How did this book do this to me?

I had to know.

So I did what every good writer does, I studied the words on the page. I looked at how Mary Losure cast stories, how she used sentences, how she arranged paragraphs, and how she constructed chapters that draw me in. And then I noticed something.

Writing Between the Facts

Mary Losure had written a lot between the facts. When you research a historical figure, you only have so much information.  From the level of detail included (like the child’s drawings found in the house where Isaac grew up) it is obvious that this author dug and dug and dug until she found gold. But even a gold nugget won’t reflect light unless it is polished and placed in just the right position – in this case it shone a spotlight on Isaac’s childhood attributes. Losure had to bridge the gaps between the facts.

I’m not saying she falsified facts. No, through clearly-stated, careful conjecture, she brilliantly brought her readers into the world of inquiry.

“Far in the future, a child’s drawings would be found scratched in the farmhouse’s soft stone walls: a windmill, a church, a figure with a spurred boot. It was clear the child who drew them was bright and imaginative. The pictures had been hidden by layers of plaster for many years. The people who found them wondered if the drawings had been made by Isaac. It was easy to imagine him scratching away, unnoticed by anybody in the busy household.” Page 5, The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d

Once I noticed that, I turned my mental search engine on, pulled out my wet-erase markers and transparency paper. I got to work. I wanted to ferret out all of the hard facts on a page, find the gaps between them, and see how Losure bridged them. Laying the transparency paper over a page allowed me to mark up the page without leaving a mark in the book.

I highlighted the obvious facts in green, qualifying words in red, and passages I wasn’t sure about in yellow.

Page 5, Isaac The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d 

Cool! Working my way through the book, I found lots of examples:

  • She presented us with quotes from texts he read: “In his book The Mysteries of Nature and Art, there were instructions for making: A Water Clock …” page 31
  • She admitted we don’t know but presented evidence: “No one today can know exactly how Isaac and his friends spent their time, but the list Isaac made …” page 55
  • She referenced oral history: “To this day, people tell an old familiar story …” page 122

I learned lots of writing moves from Mary Losure that day. And as a bonus, the next time I read a fact-filled text, you can be sure my mind will read right between the facts – that’s an skill for every reader needs to hone.

—–

By Heather L. Montgomery

Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are WILD about animals. She reads and writes while high in a tree, standing in a stream, or perched on a mountaintop boulder. www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

The O.O.L.F Files

For the Out of Left Field (O.O.L.F) post, let’s look at inventions gone wrong.

Some inventions are completely pointless, like shoe umbrellas and the car exhaust grill : http://www.complex.com/style/2013/05/25-inventions-that-are-completely-pointless/air-conditioned-shoes

Inventions aren’t always used the way they were intended. Read how a soybean fertilizer became Agent Orange and why the Wright brothers regretted creating airplanes:

http://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/6-scientists-who-regret-their-greatest-inventions

Time shares 50 of the worst inventions, including pay toilets, DDT and hair in a can:

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1991915,00.html

And then there are always human errors… To read true tales of technological disasters, check out Steven Casey’s Set Phasers on Stun.

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STEM Tuesday Cool Inventions and the People Who Create Them – In the Classroom

By on May 8, 2018   /   Inventors / Inventions, STEM Tuesday  

Cool Inventions and the People Who Create Them

For this In the Classroom feature, I’m taking a broad view of the idea of “invention,” and including similar processes, such as discovery (science) and engineering, although each is unique.I’ve also tried to give a broad range of possible activities–some of them hands-on STEM experiences, others more literary, imaginative, or whimsical, to help you ignite the type of passion and curiosity that your students will be reading about in this month’s books.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgMind Your (and Your Students’) Metaphors
You can explore metaphors and our perceptions of discovery, while learning about a whole range of innovators, with Joyce Sidman’s Eureka! Poems about Inventors (illustrated by K. Bennett Chavez).

Especially with older students, you can begin by conducting the survey described and discussed in Kristen C. Elmore and Myra Luna-Lucera’s work, article, “Light Bulbs or Seeds? How Metaphors for Ideas Influence Judgments About Genius,” which examines how specific metaphors about discovery influence our perceptions of the not just of the process, but, perhaps surprisingly, of the discoverers and value of their achievements. After students respond to the survey (resources are provided in the article), let them in on the whole study and discuss their own responses in light of the researchers’ findings.

Then crack open Eureka! While enjoying the poems and thinking about the inventors, also of looking for the ways in which design, discovery, and invention are portrayed. In any poem, does Sidman seem to see the inventor’s experience as  a “light bulb moment” (as the book’s title suggests), or as a process of  “nurturing seeds?” Perhaps something else? Overall, does Sidman’s view of invention seem to favor one metaphor or the other? (Keep in mind that you can continue this discussion with respect to other books from this month’s list.)

Of course, after students read the stories in Eureka! it makes perfect sense for them to write their own poems about:

  • Their own experiences of discovery or engineering insight
  • Other innovators featured in this month’s books–Elon Musk or Isaac Newton, for example.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgDream Big—Really Big (and Then Maybe Engineer Something)

Readers of Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk & the Quest for a Fantastic Future will surely notice something that really makes Elon Musk stand out: his mission-driven ambition.

This guy dreams big.

Many people– including engineers and inventors–hope to make the world a better place; Musk wants to save humanity. This kind of high-impact calling can be a great motivator for future engineers and other innovators. Capitalize on the excitement of the Musk’s vision with one or more of these ideas:

Encourage Daydreaming!

  • Invite your students to take a cue from Musk and envision something that would be really important to the well-being of people around the world. Begin a discussion with a grand question: If you could invent anything to make the world a much better place for everyone, what would you invent?

 

  • Follow through with a brainstorming session around this question, encouraging students to think about ideas that might not seem realistic or possible right now. (If the class has already read the book, you can remind students that Musk’s ideas might not have seemed feasible at first, and, in fact, that lots of people have scoffed at his ideas.)

 

  • Keep a running dream-list posted in the classroom and return to it from time to time. Invite students to keep “Dream Books,” where they focus on one or two ideas (or more) and write and sketch about how the dream might become a reality through some technology.

 

  • You can expand on this idea by holding your own school version of the National Academy of Engineering’s “E4U” contest—minus the $25,000 grand prize– which (apparently) was last held in 2016. While the national contest is not open now, students can follow the contest rules to create 1-2 minute videos that aim to highlight a mega-engineering project related to one of their big dreams and, in the words of the contest guidelines, “expand the way people think about engineering and how it is involved in solving large-scale global challenges.” Check out winning entries, guidelines that you can use or adapt, and an explanatory (if outdated) video at the E4U contest site. Whether you run this as a contest or a showcase, this is a creative way to help students connect to Musk’s work and the importance of STEM in our world

Join Musk on His Mission (Sort Of)

For a more concrete experience, lead your students through engineering projects with connections to SpaceX rockets and Tesla’s electric cars, such as those featured in these resources from Design Squad Global:

Musk is all about the future. But there’s plenty of excitement in the past. Just check out the likes of Isaac Newton, whose experiences can add a bit of magic to how we think of early science and engineering.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgExplore a Little Magic with Isaac Newton

From the outset of Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d, author Mary Losure explains to readers that in Isaac Newton’s time, some of what we now understand through science, such as chemical reactions and optical effects,  seemed a lot like magic.

They still do.  Have fun with this idea and explore the magical effects of our everyday world!

 

  • Adapt additional resources to create inquiry-based, surprising, and delightfully magical lessons. (Notes: I named these activities to spice things up; you won’t see these activity names in the resources. Also, see the safety reminder, below.)

Spirit Writing?

Cast a Colorful Spell (magic trick begins at about the 7-minute mark)

Cast a Colorful Spell 2

Refraction Action: Disappearing Coin

Liquid Refraction Action 2: Liquid Invisibility Cloak!

Vanishing Glass (See Item 1 in the linked resource.)

 

  •  Finally, to continue the science-is-magical theme, and for a bit more fun and a creative literacy extension, you might have students write and perform scripts for a magic show, each student team building a story or act that uses one of the chemical reactions to create the “magic.”

As I find every month when I contribute to STEMTuesday, the books on the list inspire many more lesson ideas than space will allow. What inspires you? Leave a comment sharing new ideas or comments on what you see here!

*Safety Reminder: The magic/science activities are generally safe, but in the classroom, you should always be sure to follow the guidelines for safety and for modeling safe use of all chemicals. Check with your local science curriculum coordinator or the National Science Teachers Association Minimum Safety Practices and Regulations for Demonstrations, Experiments, and Workshops.

portrait of author Carolyn Cinami DeCristofanoSTEM Tuesday–In the Classroom contributor, author, and STEM education consultant Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano writes about science and technology/engineering for kids.  Running on Sunshine: How Does Solar Energy Work? –a book for early readers released this month–celebrates the innovative spirit and challenges behind engineering solar technologies, and received a starred review from Kirkus.

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