If April brings showers, then May brings flowers…and books! Read on for this month’s new releases.

CONTEMPORARY

♦ Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Summer Vacation (Roaring Brook Press) – Tommy Greenwald. Despite all attempts to avoid reading and extra work, Charlie Joe Jackson finds himself in a terrible dream he can’t wake up from: Camp Rituhbukkee (pronounced “read-a-bookie”)—a place filled with grammar workshops, Read-a-Ramas, and kids who actually like reading. But Charlie Joe is determined to convince the entire camp to hate reading and writing—one genius at a time.

♦ Elvis and the Underdogs (Balzer + Bray) – Jenny Lee. In the tradition of funny and heartwarming bestsellers like Wonder and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, this is the story of a sickly boy whose life is turned upside down when he gets a therapy dog…who can talk! Benji Wendell Barnsworth is a small ten-year-old boy with a big personality. Born premature, Benji is sickly, accident prone, and at the hospital so often he even has his own punch card. That is, until the day Benji wakes up from a particularly bad spell. Concerned for Benji’s health, the doctor offers him two options: wear the world’s ugliest padded helmet or get a therapy dog. Benji chooses the dog, of course. But when a massive crate arrives at Benji’s house, out walks a two-hundred-pound Newfoundland. And that isn’t even the strangest thing about the dog. He announces that his name is Parker Elvis Pembroke IV. That’s right, this dog can talk! And boy, is he bossy. Having a bossy dog can come in handy, though. Elvis brings out the dog lover in the most surprising people and shows Benji that making new friends may not be as scary as he once thought.

 ♦ Just Grace and the Trouble with Cupcakes (The Just Grace Series) (Houghton Mifflin) – Charise Mericle Harper. It’s time for the school fair, and Just Grace’s class has chosen a cupcake theme. But the fair’s highlight, a cupcake competition, causes quite a stir when Grace gets paired with dreadful Owen 1 and not with her best pal, Mimi. Grace is devastated. And just when she thinks things can’t get worse, her team votes down her idea to build a cupcake Eiffel Tower in favor of building Spiderman. It’s a challenging time for Grace. Will she be able to overcome her disappointment and lead her team onward? Will Grace’s team ever figure out how to make a Spiderman out of cupcakes?

♦ Odessa Again (Wendy Lamb) – Dana Reinhardt. Fourth grader Odessa Green-Light lives with her mom and her toad of a little brother, Oliver. Her dad is getting remarried, which makes no sense according to Odessa. If the prefix “re” means “to do all over again,” shouldn’t he be remarrying Mom? Meanwhile, Odessa moves into the attic room of their new house. One day she gets mad and stomps across the attic floor. Then she feels as if she is falling and lands . . . on the attic floor. Turns out that Odessa has gone back in time a whole day! With this new power she can fix all sorts of things–embarrassing moments, big mistakes, and even help Oliver be less of a toad. Her biggest goal: reunite Mom and Dad.

♦ The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: Best Friends Fur-Ever (Bloomsbury USA) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. When her teacher assigns a report on animals, Ellie is stumped about what kind she wants to research. Then a neighbor goes on vacation and asks Ellie to pet-sit for her parrot, Alix. Perfect–exotic bird it will be! Unfortunately, Alix flies the coop…literally. But when Ellie can’t lure him back on her own, it will take clever teamwork from a librarian, a zookeeper, some good friends, and Ellie’s own pet-obsessed family to save the day.

♦ The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: Have Pen, Will Travel (Bloomsbury USA) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. One girl. One sketchbook. One week with the world’s most annoying relatives. When Ellie McDougal’s parents go out of town, she’s forced to go on a camping trip with her aunt, uncle, cousins, and baby brother, Ben-Ben. Ellie can handle mosquitos and poison ivy, but sharing a cabin with her crazy relatives? No way! From her aunt’s many rules to her cousin Eric’s constant teasing, Ellie needs her sketchbook to survive this family vacation!

 ♦ The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: Most Valuable Player (Bloomsbury USA) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. Poor Ellie. When her best friend, Mo, suggests they try out for soccer together, Ellie isn’t convinced she’s the athletic type. And sure enough, Ellie can’t seem to get her head (or her feet) around the game, even with her dad’s coaching. The truth is, Ellie would much rather be doing brain-bending puzzles with her school’s Journey of the Mind club. But when both teams have a tournament on the same day, the race is on to see whether Ellie can be in two places at once and help her teammates bring home a win–on and off the field!

♦ The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: New Kid in School (Bloomsbury USA) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. Ellie’s family is moving to a new town, and Ellie is sure she won’t fit in at school. The other kids play “new kid bingo” behind her back, and even the teachers can’t seem to remember her name. But when her new classmates start complaining about long lunch lines (and bad food), Ellie jumps at the chance to lead a protest. And tackling the school cafeteria just might be the perfect way to make new friends!

♦ The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: The Show Must Go On (Bloomsbury USA) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. When Ellie McDoodle signs up to help with her school’s production of The Wizard of Oz, she never expected it to be so much work! There are sets to help paint, costumes to plan, and then there’s casting. When her best friend Mo gets cast as Wicked Witch–and not the coveted Dorothy–Mo and Ellie have their first big fight. As the student director, Ellie should have helped her get the starring role, right? Mo thinks so. Ruth McNally Barshaw’s creative doodles take Ellie through her first big drama production at school. And just like the main characters in Oz, Ellie and her friends will find courage, heart, brains, and that there’s no place like home!

♦ The Life of Ty: Penguin Problems (Dutton Juvenile) – Lauren Myracle. Winnie Perry’s sweet baby brother, Ty, is the quintessential dreamer, full of big ideas and wacky plans that only a seven-year-old boy could hatch. Whether it’s battling the family cat with a Dustbuster or smuggling a baby penguin out of the aquarium, Ty is always in the middle of a well-intended, big-hearted scheme.

 ♦ The Short Seller (Atheneum) – Elissa Brent Weissman. It all starts when seventh grader Lindy Sachs is granted $100 and access to her father’s online trading account as a way to alleviate her boredom while she’s home sick from school. Lindy learns something immediately—she is very, very good at e-trading. Her $100 becomes $200. Then $400. And more. With trading talent and access to her parents’ savings, the opportunity to make some real dough is too tempting to pass up. In fact, given how well Lindy’s stocks are doing, it would be a disservice to not invest it all… Right?

 ♦ Twerp (Random House) – Mark Goldblatt. Julian Twerski isn’t a bully. He’s just made a big mistake. So when he returns to school after a weeklong suspension, his English teacher offers him a deal: if he keeps a journal and writes about the terrible incident that got him and his friends suspended, he can get out of writing a report on Shakespeare. Julian jumps at the chance. And so begins his account of life in sixth grade–blowing up homemade fireworks, writing a love letter for his best friend (with disastrous results), and worrying whether he’s still the fastest kid in school. Lurking in the background, though, is the one story he can’t bring himself to tell, the one story his teacher most wants to hear. Inspired by Mark Goldblatt’s own childhood growing up in 1960s Queens, Twerp shines with humor and heart. This remarkably powerful story will have readers laughing and crying right along with these flawed but unforgettable characters.

 ♦ The Year of the Baby (Houghton Mifflin) – Andrea Cheng. Last year, Anna learned how to be a good friend. Now that her family has adopted a baby girl from China, she wants to learn how to be a good sister. But the new year proves challenging when the doctor warns that the baby isn’t thriving. Can Anna and her best friends, Laura and Camille, create a science project that saves the day? In this heartwarming sequel to The Year of the Book, readers will be just as moved by Anna’s devotion to her new sister as they will be inspired by her loving family and lasting friendships.

 ♦ Violet Mackerel’s Natural Habitat (Atheneum) – Anna Branford. Violet is the smallest in her family, and has a special affinity for Small Things everywhere. So when she finds a tiny ladybug in the garden, she expects she knows how it feels. It probably has to go to bed before all the others, and whenever it finds out something interesting (like that your ears keep growing all your life even when you are old), the bigger ladybugs probably say they already knew. Violet wants to help the ladybug, so she names her Small Gloria, puts her in a jar, and feeds her cheese toast. And then Violet wakes up to a horrible surprise. But thankfully, even as Violet learns a hard lesson about natural habitats, she realizes how nice it is to share her own habitat with a big sister.

 ♦ Vote (Wendy Lamb) – Gary Paulsen. Kevin Spencer, the hero of Liar, Liar, Flat Broke, and Crush, has a knack for tackling big ideas and goofing up, so what’s next? Politics, of course! He’s running for office, and his campaign is truly unique.

FANTASY

♦ A Box of Gargoyles (HarperCollins) – Anne Nesbet. In this sequel to The Cabinet of Earths, twelve-year-old Maya is feeling more at home in Paris, a city filled with old magic. Her little brother, James, is safe, and the terrible man with purple eyes is gone. At least Maya believed he was until a person-sized column of dust and leaves with hints of purple where its eyes should be begins following her. Maya suspects the strange, shadowy column is what’s left of the purple-eyed man, and that it—he—is behind the eerie changes in Paris, including the appearance of flying, talking stone gargoyles. She’s right. Worse, he has bound Maya to make him whole again, even if it kills her.

 ♦ Doll Bones (Margaret K. McElderry) – Holly Black. Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they’ve been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her. But they are in middle school now. Zach’s father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she’s been having dreams about the Queen—and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave. Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?

♦ Handbook for Dragon Slayers (HarperCollins) – Merrie Haskell. Like Gail Carson Levine’s books, Merrie Haskell’s middle-grade fantasy / adventure Handbook for Dragon Slayers mixes magic, mythical creatures, thrilling action, and a wonderful cast of characters. Political upheaval sends Princess Tilda fleeing from her kingdom in the company of two hopeful dragon slayers. The princess never had any interest in chasing dragons. The pain from her crippled foot was too great, and her dream was to write a book.But the princess finds herself making friends with magical horses, facing the Wild Hunt, and pointing a sword at the fire-breathing creatures. While doing things she never imagined, Tilda finds qualities in herself she never knew she possessed.

 ♦ The Lost Princess (Mermaid Tales) (Aladdin) – Debbie Dadey. Not one of the merkids in Shelly Siren’s third grade class can believe the shell-shattering news: Shelly is a princess! A real princess! It’s been a deep, dark secret in Trident City, but now everyone knows—and Shelly doesn’t know how to act. Should she start wearing a glittery crown? Or move to a grand undersea palace? Will her friends have to call her Princess Shelly? She knows it’s an exciting turn of events, but Shelly’s not sure she can truly fit the royal part. Can she find a way to be a princess and stay herself?

 ♦ The Neptune Project (Disney Hyperion) – Polly Holyoke. Nere has never understood why she feels so much more comfortable and confident in water than on land, but everything falls into place when Nere learns that she is one of a group of kids who-unbeknownst to them-have been genetically altered to survive in the ocean. These products of “The Neptune Project” will be able to build a better future under the sea, safe from the barren country’s famine, wars, and harsh laws.But there are some very big problems: no one asked Nere if she wanted to be a science experiment, the other Neptune kids aren’t exactly the friendliest bunch, and in order to reach the safe haven of the Neptune colony, Nere and her fellow mutates must swim through hundreds of miles of dangerous waters, relying only on their wits, dolphins, and each other to evade terrifying undersea creatures and a government that will stop at nothing to capture the Neptune kids…dead or alive.

 ♦ The Pirate’s Coin: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure (Random House) – Marianne Malone. Sixth Graders Ruthie and Jack return to the Art Institute of Chicago’s magical Thorne Rooms. During a school presentation, Ruthie and Jack discover that their classmate Kendra is descended from Phoebe Monroe, the young slave they befriended when they traveled to 19th-century South Carolina. Kendra tells them that long ago her family lost their good name and their business selling herbal remedies when mobsters accused them of stealing the recipes! Only Ruthie and Jack know the truth–because only they know about the secret ledger that Phoebe wrote the recipes in long ago! Ruthie and Jack’s mission to clear Kendra’s name takes them back to the Thorne Rooms, where a mysterious old coin leads them to 1753 Cape Cod and to Jack’s own ancestor . . . the pirate Jack Norfleet! But playing with history can be dangerous! Suddenly, Jack’s very existence is in jeopardy! Can Ruthie and Jack find the proof they need to help Kendra? And can they fix the past and save Jack’s future . . . before it’s too late?

 ♦ The Watcher in the Shadows (Inquisitor’s Apprentice) (Harcourt) – Ms. Chris Moriarty. At the turn of the twentieth century, New York’s Bowery District becomes the scene of a terrible murder when the Klezmer King gets fried to a crisp by his Electric Tuxedo—on stage! The Inquisitor’s apprentice, thirteen-year-old Sacha Kessler, tries to help find the killer, but the closer he gets to solving the crime, the more it sounds as if the creature that haunted him in his first adventure is back. Worse still, his own Jewish family is in danger. Sacha has avoided learning magic until now, but as his world falls apart around him, he changes his mind.

 ♦ Troubletwisters Book 3: The Mystery (Scholastic) – Garth Nix. The third thrilling installment of the new middle-grade fantasy series from bestselling authors Garth Nix and Sean Williams. Just as Jaide and Jack Shield are settling into their crazy new lives in Portland, The Evil threatens another Ward, and the twins will need to put their growing powers to the test!

 ♦ Wings of Fire Book Three: The Hidden Kingdom (Scholastic) – Tui T. Sutherland. The dragonets of destiny aren’t sure what to expect in the RainWing kingdom – Glory hopes to learn more about her family, and since the RainWings aren’t fighting in the war, all five dragonets think they might be able to hide safely for a while. But something deadly is stalking the peaceful kingdom, and the dragonets soon discover that RainWings have been mysteriously disappearing from the forest. When the RainWing queen won’t do anything to find her missing tribe members, Glory and her friends set off on their own rescue mission – which leads them right back into enemy territory. . . .

MYSTERY/ADVENTURE

♦ Below (Candlewick) – Meg McKinlay. On the day Cassie was born, they drowned her town. The mayor flipped a lever and everyone cheered as Old Lower Grange was submerged beneath five thousand swimming pools’ worth of water. Now, twelve years later, Cassie feels drawn to the manmade lake and the mysteries it hides — and she’s not the only one. Her classmate Liam, who wears oversized swim trunks to cover the scars on his legs, joins Cassie in her daily swims across the off-limits side of the lake. As the summer heats up, the water drops lower and lower, offering them glimpses of the ghostly town and uncovering secrets one prominent town figure seems anxious to keep submerged. But like a swimmer who ventures too far from shore, Cassie realizes she can’t turn back. Can she bring their suspicions to light before it’s too late — and does she dare?

 ♦ Romeo Blue (Arthur A. Levine Books) – Phoebe Stone. The follow-up to Phoebe Stone’s instant classic, THE ROMEO AND JULIET CODE. When Flissy Bathburn’s parents first dropped her off in Bottlebay, Maine, she hated everything about it. She hated the big gloomy house she was to live in. She hated meeting her long-lost and highly eccentric relatives. And most of all, she hated knowing that she was safe in America while her parents faced the guns of WWII in Europe. But a year has passed now, and Flissy has grown to love her life in Bottlebay — and especially Derek, the boy the Bathburns have adopted. Then a man claiming to be Derek’s true father arrives, and soon he’s asking all sorts of strange questions. Flissy has a nose for trouble. Has Derek’s new father come to take him away . . . or is there something even more sinister happening in Bottlebay, Maine?

♦ The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor (Philomel) – Peter Abrahams. Robbie Forester has learned the hard way that life isn’t fair. So have her friends Ashanti, Silas and Tut-Tut. But Robbie and her friends—who call themselves the Outlaws of Sherwood Street—want to change that. When Sheldon Gun, an evil business man, ends up killing Silas’s father so he can build a new apartment complex in Brooklyn, the Outlaws know it’s up to them to make Sheldon Gun pay. With street smarts, Silas’s inventions, and a little help from a charm bracelet, these friends know they can take on Sheldon Gun and win—at least, they hope so. If not, they may end up just like Silas’s dad. This story is filled with action, adventure, social justice and great friends–and is especially relevant during our current economy and the rise of the Occupy Everywhere movement.

HISTORICAL

♦ P.S. Be Eleven (Amistad) – Rita Williams-Garcia. Eleven-year-old Brooklyn girl Delphine feels overwhelmed with worries and responsibilities. She’s just started sixth grade and is self-conscious about being the tallest girl in the class, and nervous about her first school dance. She’s supposed to be watching her sisters, but Fern and Vonetta are hard to control. Her uncle Darnell is home from Vietnam and seems different. And her pa has a girlfriend. At least Delphine can write to her mother in Oakland, California, for advice. But why does her mother tell her to “be eleven” when Delphine is now twelve?

 ♦ Sugar (Little, Brown) – Jewell Parker Rhodes. Ten-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road sugar plantation along the banks of the Mississippi. Slavery is over, but laboring in the fields all day doesn’t make her feel very free. Thankfully, Sugar has a knack for finding her own fun, especially when she joins forces with forbidden friend Billy, the white plantation owner’s son. Sugar has always yearned to learn more about the world, and she sees her chance when Chinese workers are brought in to help harvest the cane. The older River Road folks feel threatened, but Sugar is fascinated. As she befriends young Beau and elder Master Liu, they introduce her to the traditions of their culture, and she, in turn, shares the ways of plantation life. Sugar soon realizes that she must be the one to bridge the cultural gap and bring the community together. Here is a story of unlikely friendships and how they can change our lives forever.

Today at the Mixed-Up Files, we are talking about craft! Specifically the hows and whys of writing for children.

With us is Lisa Rojany Buccieri, co-writer of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies, the second edition which came out this past year. During our interview, Lisa shared with us why her book is a must-have for writers starting out and establishing themselves in the children’s market today. 

Welcome, Lisa! So tell us, what led you to writing the first edition of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies?

Peter Economy, a veteran Dummies book writer, was looking for a lead writer for this title and found me online through my business, Editorial Services of Los Angeles. We really connected—it was one of those immediate professional love fests—and we started working together about a month later.

What was one thing that surprised you or that you learned as a process of writing this book?

This is Writing Children’s Books for Dummies Second Edition, and it is 80% new material. What surprised me the most was that although the first edition was a thorough and absolutely useful book for beginners, over the years I had further honed my editorial skills and was able to encapsulate even more material into specific, easily digestible bits that have helped writers of both children’s and adult books improve their writing.

How is your book different from some of the other books out there on children’s writing?

Our book gives writers of different levels the whole kit and caboodle. Everything from generating story ideas and the specifics of creating every part of a good book through to the submissions process, self-publishing, e-book and digital publishing, and then marketing, including social media and traditional marketing, such as interviews like these. We even have information on the most important parts of the contract first-time writers should keep an eye out for.

Your book is chock full of information for the children’s writer, from picture book to the young adult novel. What do you think is in here that might be especially relevant for middle grade writers?

A good story is a good story. Middle-grade writers need to master the components of good storytelling and voice, humor and character development, plot and vocabulary level as much as—if not more than—writers in every other format. Middle-grade readers are persnickety, but if you catch them, they will make sure to collect every single one of your books and read them all.

I love the way you encourage writers to use “bibles” (character bibles, setting bibles, etc.). Can you explain this concept to our readers and how you think it helps writers in crafting their children’s novels?

As with any kind of building, you have to first create a solid foundation. Your main character has to be memorable; so I encourage my writers to develop and really flesh out their characters using a character bible. Knowing your characters inside and out means you can see them in your mind’s eye and allow your readers to do so as well. 

If the environment will play a large part in a book (fantasy world? magical world?) I encourage the same bible building approach for environments and places. If you can create a place (realistic or otherwise) that is evocative enough to allow readers to imagine themselves there, then you have created a successful place in which to develop your characters and your story.

I also strongly urge writers to create an action outline. An action outline consists of three questions you need to ask for each chapter: 1) How does this chapter develop my main character through his or her actions / reactions? 2) How does this chapter push forward or develop the story actionwise? 3) How does this chapter contribute conflict or drama to keep the pace moving? I even use this approach when breaking down a picture book to make sure every word counts. It really keeps the writing spare and purposive.

What’s the biggest obstacle standing in the way of finishing a project?

Whenever a writer gets stuck on any part of the writing or revising process that impasse creates an opportunity for the process to come to a halt. It can be overwhelming if you do not have tools for each part of the process. And that is what we provide in Writing Children’s Books for Dummies Second Edition: breaking down the process into easily digestible parts and then providing the tools to help take control of each one of those parts.

Lisa Rojany Buccieri

Characters, dialogue, setting—all three need to be fleshed out bit by bit. That is why bibles are so helpful, because you can amass in one place all the details—that go into creating a well-developed character, a bit of relevant and purposeful dialogue, a bit of the setting that tells us where and when we are—and then mete them out little by little throughout the story.

One great place to develop setting is at the beginning of each new chapter.

A good rule of thumb: Data dumps of background information or setting description of more than one paragraph, maximum two at a time are not allowed.

How might this book be used by a new teacher leading a course in writing for children? What are some common mistakes you think a new teacher should try to avoid?

New teachers of writing need to follow steps that students can understand, one by one, so that they learn to build a story, show a story, not just tell a story. It’s a process that gets honed and added to over time, but never perfected. That’s why writing is as exciting as helping a child grow from an infant to an adult—you can never master the process completely, the surprises are always illuminating, and the possibilities are simply wonderful.

Any parting advice or words of encouragement for writers out there?

Keep writing. Turn off the editor when the creative juices are flowing and just let it come. You can always go back to hone and tighten. If you are going the traditional route of submitting to traditional publishing houses, make sure you have a manuscript in the wings so that you always have some new work to add to someone’s inbox—and new hope for getting yourself published.

And if you are self-publishing, make sure to get al the feedback and help you need, right through to the type and page design, so that when you make your first impression—and you only get one!—it’s a fabulous impression.

Regardless, take every opportunity to participate in writing classes and workshops, conferences and retreats—you never know which one will end up changing your writing life for the better.

 Lisa Rojany Buccieri has published over 100 books, including several award-winning and bestselling titles. She has been Editorial/Publishing Director for Golden Books, Price Stern Sloan/Penguin Group USA, Intervisual Books, Gateway Learning Corp (Hooked on Phonics), and other established publishing houses. As well as spearheading four publishing startups, Lisa has simultaneously run her own successful business, Editorial Services of L.A. since 1990.Lisa loves working with new and published writers of fiction and general nonfiction for all ages, helping them make their work the best it can be. She lives with her family in Los Angeles. She may be contacted at www.EditorialServicesofLA.com.

———————————

 Sheela Chari is the author of Vanished (Disney Hyperion), which was selected as a 2012 Children’s Literature Book by the Asian Pacific-American Librarian Association (APALA). 

For school, my fourth-grader is preparing to be Marco Polo. Or to be more exact, an imaginary female accompanying the fourteenth-century merchant traveler from Venice. I don’t know if Marco Polo had female companions on the Silk Road, but since my nine-year-old is a girl, this is the best way she can pretend to be a part of that time and place.

Venetian merchant traveler, Marco Polo. Source: Wikipedia

This isn’t her idea, by the way. It’s her teacher’s. It’s part of their “Explorer” unit, where they get to research a famous explorer from the past, and present their findings to the class, while dressed in period costume. The challenge isn’t finding enough information from books or online. The challenge isn’t writing it all down. The challenge, and this is where the dear parent being me is involved, is finding the dang period costume.

Where exactly am I supposed to find a Venetian, medieval gown for a nine-year-old girl?

Source: Morgue Files

My daughter and I have been discussing ways to render this outfit, using items from our 21^th century, Indian-American household. These include sari material, scarves, throws, Indian bedspreads, and a belt I used when I was nine-years-old myself. You could call it improvising. But would you call it research?

Research is an interesting concept, especially in the life of an author. These days, you have the most amount of information you’ve ever had right at your fingertips. A simple Google search can yield paintings of women in the time of Marco Polo, online catalogs where you can purchase period costumes for adults, children, or pets, and Wikipedia pages describing the items Polo discovered on his journey to the Far East. You don’t have to go far to go back far in time.

When I was first writing my children’s novel, VANISHED, I did similar research online, learning as much as I could from Google, about an ancient, South-Indian instrument known as the veena. This was the instrument that would belong to my book’s main character, the one that would go missing, and that she would go to great lengths to recover. At the time, the only person I knew who owned this instrument lived in another state. There were no nearby teachers or veena players.So I did what any other able-bodied author did – I imagined everything. I used my years of being a violinist to imagine how the strings felt when you played on a veena instead, the calluses that formed on your fingers from practicing, the fears of sounding “twangy” in front of others, and what a seemingly unsympathetic teacher might sound like when she’s badgering you to practice. During the summer, I interviewed a real veena teacher in person, and took photographs. And that’s how I wrote my book.

The box I carried my veena in from India to New York.

Today I actually have a veena of my own. With great care and a certain amount of luck, I was able to bring one back from a trip to India last year. Not only that, I actually found a teacher near me, one I didn’t meet until very recently. And I have to say, imagination aside, there is nothing like playing on the real thing. Finally I know firsthand what being a veena player is all about. Looking back at the book I published, I strangely got the details right – the strings really do feel the way I’d written about them! Still, nothing beats the feel and sound of a real instrument – for me the author, and for others who have read my book and get to see and hear the instrument for themselves.

Creative research is definitely a way to bring something otherwise inaccessible to life. Perhaps the materials my daughter will use for her Explorer project will be derived from a silk sari given by her Indian grandmother, or from a Rajasthani bedspread brought back from a trip to India. And maybe the cloak will come from Walmart. She, like her classmates, will have to imagine much.

Source: Flikr

But the real physical and tactile experience of assembling the various materials together,  of wearing them and walking around in them, might evoke a sense of what it was like to be a lady in Marco Polo’s time, hundreds of years ago.

We cannot underestimate the value of a real experience, even a simplified or modified one. Sometimes these real moments have the power to take us farther than a Google search, and we become the musicians and explorers we first could only imagine being inside our heads. 

In the meanwhile, if someone has a spare Venetian, medieval gown that fits a nine-year old, please let this parent (and author) know.

—————————————

Sheela Chari is the author of VANISHED, which was recently featured as an Al’s Book Club Pick on the Today Show. She lives in New York.