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One last thing:Secret Letters
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From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 15:04:02 -0600
To the CCBC-Net Community:
It's said that good things come in threes. We know that many stories have three elements. Below you'll find three separate, interrelated messages with the most recent message listed first: 1) a message from me to Viking editor Jill Davis (3/22/99 - afternoon) ; 2) a message from Jill Davis to me (3/22/99 - morning); and 3) a message from the author of the book written in French "Secret Letters from 0 to 10" by Susie Morgenstern (who has long made her home in France but grew up in the U.S.A.) to Jill Davis, her U.S. editor (3/6/98).
It's possible to read these three messages in any order - from top to bottom or vice versa.
Remember from a CCBC-Net message last week that the French title for the U.S. book "Secret Letters..." was "Love Letters..." (If you don't have those messages and cannot go back to get them now, they'll be in the CCBC-Net archives for March 1999.)
Along with finding out more about "Secret Letters from 0 to 10," you will discover a coincidental parallel with the book "Thanks to My Mother."
Enjoy, Ginny Moore Kruse
MESSAGE NUMBER ONE:
Jill, I'm going to send your messge and Susie Morgenstern's letter
(3/6/98) to everyone in the CCBC- Net community today. It's very moving and extremely helpful. Her letter reminds us that genuine art contains so much more than techical skill. There is care, thought and emotion behind every truly realized work. We cannot take the works of thoughtful writers for granted, even when the works seem grounded in sheer joy. And - we must not take the children who read these books for granted - ever. Thank you for sending this marvelous letter to me, not a
"secret letter" but a kind of "love letter" of its own kind. Perfect!
Warm regards to you for all you've made possible for the CCBC-Net community during the past several days, Jill. ... Ginny
MESSAGE NUMBER TWO: Dear Ginny,
I know that the discussion of SECRET LETTERS is done, but I had been hoping Susie would send you this letter she sent me last year. But she said I could if I wanted. In it she explains the idea for the book. I didn't want to post it because the discussion's over, but I thought you might like reading it because you liked the book. Anyway, in her letter she talks about her husband, Jacques, who was a math scholar in France. He died after a very sad terminal bout with cancer. I thought this explanation was particularly meaningful in light of the discussion I heard at ALA Notables during which one member of the panel wondered why Ernest and his grandmother were so depressive. It almost seemed to bother her. In this letter you find out that there was a good reason. And you find out how deep the meaning in this story really is. Here it is:
MESSAGE NUMBER THREE:
From Susie Morgenstern, dated 3/6/98 The idea came from Jacques. He used to get up in the morning and tell me my errands (his mother, the cleaners, the pharmacist, the social life) and sometimes he'd say "Tu devrais ecrire une histoire qui ..." (You should write a story in which . . .) So that day he said I should write a book that starts with a letter that comes from the front in the First World War and that nobody can decipher and in the end it will be a meaningless little nothing but the stamp will be valuable. That's how I started. I wrote that first chapter in Santander in a beautiful round hotel room facing the sea
(in Spain). Jacques had been invited there by his beloved math partner Joos and they were working all day at the university. I tagged along on that trip because Jacques was already very sick and I didn't want him to go by himself. So I sat and wrote. Jacques loved that first chapter. Then he got sicker and sicker and I stopped writing for many years because there was just too much to do accompanying Jacques day by day, and then he died and I didn't write for another two years because I've always felt that when you write for children you have some sort of obligation to be positive and optimistic and I was afraid of the explosive combination of the pitch black ink and my tears. And when I came back to life, I invented Victoire (Victoria) knowing that we have to LIVE. I wrote the book with the extreme and everpresent consciousness that this was Jacques' last idea and I couldn't let him down. Ernest and Victoire are really Jacques and I. Jacques, the holocaust survivor and I, the rah rah shish boom ba American.
Ginny, I hope you find this as enlightening as I did. ...Jill Davis
********************************************************** Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education (www.soemadison.wisc.edu/ccbc/) Unversity of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Mon 22 Mar 1999 03:04:02 PM CST
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 15:04:02 -0600
To the CCBC-Net Community:
It's said that good things come in threes. We know that many stories have three elements. Below you'll find three separate, interrelated messages with the most recent message listed first: 1) a message from me to Viking editor Jill Davis (3/22/99 - afternoon) ; 2) a message from Jill Davis to me (3/22/99 - morning); and 3) a message from the author of the book written in French "Secret Letters from 0 to 10" by Susie Morgenstern (who has long made her home in France but grew up in the U.S.A.) to Jill Davis, her U.S. editor (3/6/98).
It's possible to read these three messages in any order - from top to bottom or vice versa.
Remember from a CCBC-Net message last week that the French title for the U.S. book "Secret Letters..." was "Love Letters..." (If you don't have those messages and cannot go back to get them now, they'll be in the CCBC-Net archives for March 1999.)
Along with finding out more about "Secret Letters from 0 to 10," you will discover a coincidental parallel with the book "Thanks to My Mother."
Enjoy, Ginny Moore Kruse
MESSAGE NUMBER ONE:
Jill, I'm going to send your messge and Susie Morgenstern's letter
(3/6/98) to everyone in the CCBC- Net community today. It's very moving and extremely helpful. Her letter reminds us that genuine art contains so much more than techical skill. There is care, thought and emotion behind every truly realized work. We cannot take the works of thoughtful writers for granted, even when the works seem grounded in sheer joy. And - we must not take the children who read these books for granted - ever. Thank you for sending this marvelous letter to me, not a
"secret letter" but a kind of "love letter" of its own kind. Perfect!
Warm regards to you for all you've made possible for the CCBC-Net community during the past several days, Jill. ... Ginny
MESSAGE NUMBER TWO: Dear Ginny,
I know that the discussion of SECRET LETTERS is done, but I had been hoping Susie would send you this letter she sent me last year. But she said I could if I wanted. In it she explains the idea for the book. I didn't want to post it because the discussion's over, but I thought you might like reading it because you liked the book. Anyway, in her letter she talks about her husband, Jacques, who was a math scholar in France. He died after a very sad terminal bout with cancer. I thought this explanation was particularly meaningful in light of the discussion I heard at ALA Notables during which one member of the panel wondered why Ernest and his grandmother were so depressive. It almost seemed to bother her. In this letter you find out that there was a good reason. And you find out how deep the meaning in this story really is. Here it is:
MESSAGE NUMBER THREE:
From Susie Morgenstern, dated 3/6/98 The idea came from Jacques. He used to get up in the morning and tell me my errands (his mother, the cleaners, the pharmacist, the social life) and sometimes he'd say "Tu devrais ecrire une histoire qui ..." (You should write a story in which . . .) So that day he said I should write a book that starts with a letter that comes from the front in the First World War and that nobody can decipher and in the end it will be a meaningless little nothing but the stamp will be valuable. That's how I started. I wrote that first chapter in Santander in a beautiful round hotel room facing the sea
(in Spain). Jacques had been invited there by his beloved math partner Joos and they were working all day at the university. I tagged along on that trip because Jacques was already very sick and I didn't want him to go by himself. So I sat and wrote. Jacques loved that first chapter. Then he got sicker and sicker and I stopped writing for many years because there was just too much to do accompanying Jacques day by day, and then he died and I didn't write for another two years because I've always felt that when you write for children you have some sort of obligation to be positive and optimistic and I was afraid of the explosive combination of the pitch black ink and my tears. And when I came back to life, I invented Victoire (Victoria) knowing that we have to LIVE. I wrote the book with the extreme and everpresent consciousness that this was Jacques' last idea and I couldn't let him down. Ernest and Victoire are really Jacques and I. Jacques, the holocaust survivor and I, the rah rah shish boom ba American.
Ginny, I hope you find this as enlightening as I did. ...Jill Davis
********************************************************** Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education (www.soemadison.wisc.edu/ccbc/) Unversity of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Mon 22 Mar 1999 03:04:02 PM CST