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From: kiffnkerry at sbcglobal.net <kiffnkerry>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
I mentioned these nonfiction authors in one of my previous posts, but my favorite essay on writing biographies for teens is by Elizabeth Partridge. It was published in School Library Journal and can be found on her website at the following link:
School
Library Journal -The Creative Life
Connecting today's teens with artists from the past.
"Connecting" with Elizabeth "Betsy" Patridge was instrumental to me when I was floundering in the revision stages and attempting to pull it all together. Tanya Lee Stone was another big help in advising me how to organize source notes. Here is her link on her own "Up Close" biography of Ella Fitzgerald. http://www.tanyastone.com/index.php?id=39? And finally, here is the link to Carole Boston Weatherford's BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY, "a fictional verse memoir." http://www.becomingbillieholiday.com/
* * *
More Southern Voices
THE PLAY On our third day in Monroeville, I watched the morning production of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with my sister, Keely, and approximately 250 bussed in students from different schools. The play started at the Old Monroe Courthouse in 1992, and it's grown as the museum has grown. In the Truman Capote Room is his cousin's Sook Faulk's patchwork coat, the one she grabbed and put on the night the Faulk house burned to the ground, according to curator, Jane Ellen Clark.
Jennings Carter, Truman's cousin nicknamed "Big Boy" as a child, donated the coat a few years ago. (It had been hanging in his barn for years.) The running time of the play is about three hours, and I wish we'd seen it at night, because it was somewhat distracting with all the bustling morning activity of Monroeville happening right along with the play, but we absolutely got the flavor it. Below is link to a wonderful description of the production published in National Geographic Magazine in the article, TO CATCH A MOCKINGBIRD by Cathy Newman.
After the play, Jane Ellen Clark arranged for us to meet Mayor Anne Farrish, whose office was right across the street. The now former mayor of Monroeville is sister to the town librarian, Jacqueline "Bunny" Hines. As I did with Jane Ellen, I shaped the interview into Mayor Anne Farrish's extraordinary storytelling voice. She was in Harper Lee's class at school. Her memories were so helpful when I was trying to map out a typical school day in the biography.
THE FORMER MAYOR ANNE H. FARRISH
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GREGORY PECK Nobody ever dreamed the book would have the impact it did. We had a party, a soiree, for Nelle when her book came out never dreaming it would be anything. But when we Gregory Peck came to town, well, then we sat up and took notice. In the afternoons back then, the only way to get cool was to wear our Vanity Fair underwear. (Vanity Fair Mills was a local garment factory that opened in town in 1937.) It was so hot in the summers you had to take a bath after dinner and lie down. Well, one afternoon, my best friend came running over and knocked on my window to say that Gregory Peck was at the Wee Diner. I said, "I'm not dressed," and she said, "We have to hurry!" So I had no time to get dressed. I grabbed a robe to wear over my Vanity Fair slip, and we peeked in the windows of the Wee Diner to get a good look at him. He was so handsome. I believe he was one of the most handsome men I have ever seen.
CHILDHOOD AND OTHER STORIES... I am the oldest of four girls, and when my mother got pregnant with my youngest sister, Bunny, who is nineteen years younger than me, Mama said to the doctor, "Tell me it's cancer! Tell me anything, but not another baby!"
I went to the local school from first to twelfth grade. We had about 27-35 students in each class. One time I got an A minus, and I cried and I cried until the teacher changed the grade. I went to school with town kids and farm families. The farm kids picked cotton and were often kept home to help. Miss Annie Swanson had the dress shop in town, and I fell in love with a red and white dress for
$1.98. And my mother said, "We'll all go to the poor house so you can have that dress." I didn't get the dress, and you can see it bothers me to this day. I loved that dress.
Nelle was a tomboy with a wonderful sense of humor...a real dry wit. She and Truman were always together as kids. Gladys Watson was our English teach in high school, and she was the best. She even read one of the final drafts of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
In our school room was an old pot-bellied stove. We'd sit as close as we could to the stove on cold winter mornings. The school had black oiled floors with saw dust on them. I can still see and smell them. I had a thing about being late, so I always a half hour early for school. I even beat the janitors. I went home every day for lunch. The school sold banana and mayonnaise sandwiches for ten cents. My dog, Bigshot, followed me to school every morning. She was a lovely dog.
Christmas in Monroeville was a wonderful time. We had all these extension cords to keep the lights burning, but if one light blew, they all blew. We hung nylons above the fireplace and the toe was the exciting part. A doll was always waiting for me under the tree - never wrapped. We had a marvelous cook, and dinner was served in the middle of the day.
We'd shop at Lazenby's, and Joe Frank Jackson ran the store. Mama would call him up and ask, "Y'all got a chicken?" And Mr. Jackson would ring the neck and pluck it for you and put it in a brown paper bag.
We vacationed at Laguana Beach and Fort Walton, and we were always allowed to carry one friend. We drove a pale blue Ford V-8. We loved to tan and we'd stretch out and smear iodine and baby oil all over.
? I'd go to town to buy a Mr. Goodbar, and from my house all the way to town, I'd look at the sidewalk cracks for any spare change dropped by men with holes in their pockets. We'd roller-skate on the square and it would disturb the lawyers working in the courthouse. They'd chase us away if they were having meetings, because the windows were always open. In high school, we used to climb up into the courthouse clock tower to see where the boys were. When I went to Auburn, I got a degree in going to dances and having a good time.
Here's a story I remember...The superintendent's daughter, Maudie, put on a play at our school about an ugly girl who becomes pretty. She cast an ugly girl in the first part of the play - a real plain country girl, who seemed happy enough to play the part. Her name was Eva. Then Maudie cast a city girl to play the lead when she becomes pretty in second act. Maudie didn't try to make the plain girl pretty. So in our play, the ugly girl changes to a pretty girl, but she never gets to play the pretty girl. This seemed to be me to be a strange thing. Now the ugly girl didn't seem to mind, but I have always wondered what she thought. And it's always made me sad thinking about it.
What else can I tell you about Nelle? Nelle's brother, Ed, was a handsome dentist. He died so young. Tragic. Her sister, Louise, was the pretty one. Alice was the lawyer, and she helped me a lot when I was selling real estate.
* * *
MORE LINKS A link to a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE by Cathy Newman TO CATCH A MOCKINGBIRD http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0601/feature8/index.html
d;">VROMAN'S BOOKSIGNING LINKS of UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE http://salgal99.livejournal.com/13233.html?style=mine http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/171784.html
A DAY WITH MARY WARD BROWN http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/119508.html
And I will close with a poem by Wayne Greenhaw from his book GHOSTS ON THE ROAD, published by River City Press:
MONROEVILLE by Wayne Greenhaw
It's a sleepy town, the lady wrote. Empty stores decorated with scenes from a Pulitzer novel, the story of three children swimming upstream against a current of racial strife. Harper Lee walks these sidewalks.
* * *
Thank you very much for the opportunity to share these stories.
Sincerely, Kerry Madden
UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961 www.kerrymadden.com
Received on Tue 26 May 2009 01:05:19 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
I mentioned these nonfiction authors in one of my previous posts, but my favorite essay on writing biographies for teens is by Elizabeth Partridge. It was published in School Library Journal and can be found on her website at the following link:
School
Library Journal -The Creative Life
Connecting today's teens with artists from the past.
"Connecting" with Elizabeth "Betsy" Patridge was instrumental to me when I was floundering in the revision stages and attempting to pull it all together. Tanya Lee Stone was another big help in advising me how to organize source notes. Here is her link on her own "Up Close" biography of Ella Fitzgerald. http://www.tanyastone.com/index.php?id=39? And finally, here is the link to Carole Boston Weatherford's BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY, "a fictional verse memoir." http://www.becomingbillieholiday.com/
* * *
More Southern Voices
THE PLAY On our third day in Monroeville, I watched the morning production of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with my sister, Keely, and approximately 250 bussed in students from different schools. The play started at the Old Monroe Courthouse in 1992, and it's grown as the museum has grown. In the Truman Capote Room is his cousin's Sook Faulk's patchwork coat, the one she grabbed and put on the night the Faulk house burned to the ground, according to curator, Jane Ellen Clark.
Jennings Carter, Truman's cousin nicknamed "Big Boy" as a child, donated the coat a few years ago. (It had been hanging in his barn for years.) The running time of the play is about three hours, and I wish we'd seen it at night, because it was somewhat distracting with all the bustling morning activity of Monroeville happening right along with the play, but we absolutely got the flavor it. Below is link to a wonderful description of the production published in National Geographic Magazine in the article, TO CATCH A MOCKINGBIRD by Cathy Newman.
After the play, Jane Ellen Clark arranged for us to meet Mayor Anne Farrish, whose office was right across the street. The now former mayor of Monroeville is sister to the town librarian, Jacqueline "Bunny" Hines. As I did with Jane Ellen, I shaped the interview into Mayor Anne Farrish's extraordinary storytelling voice. She was in Harper Lee's class at school. Her memories were so helpful when I was trying to map out a typical school day in the biography.
THE FORMER MAYOR ANNE H. FARRISH
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GREGORY PECK Nobody ever dreamed the book would have the impact it did. We had a party, a soiree, for Nelle when her book came out never dreaming it would be anything. But when we Gregory Peck came to town, well, then we sat up and took notice. In the afternoons back then, the only way to get cool was to wear our Vanity Fair underwear. (Vanity Fair Mills was a local garment factory that opened in town in 1937.) It was so hot in the summers you had to take a bath after dinner and lie down. Well, one afternoon, my best friend came running over and knocked on my window to say that Gregory Peck was at the Wee Diner. I said, "I'm not dressed," and she said, "We have to hurry!" So I had no time to get dressed. I grabbed a robe to wear over my Vanity Fair slip, and we peeked in the windows of the Wee Diner to get a good look at him. He was so handsome. I believe he was one of the most handsome men I have ever seen.
CHILDHOOD AND OTHER STORIES... I am the oldest of four girls, and when my mother got pregnant with my youngest sister, Bunny, who is nineteen years younger than me, Mama said to the doctor, "Tell me it's cancer! Tell me anything, but not another baby!"
I went to the local school from first to twelfth grade. We had about 27-35 students in each class. One time I got an A minus, and I cried and I cried until the teacher changed the grade. I went to school with town kids and farm families. The farm kids picked cotton and were often kept home to help. Miss Annie Swanson had the dress shop in town, and I fell in love with a red and white dress for
$1.98. And my mother said, "We'll all go to the poor house so you can have that dress." I didn't get the dress, and you can see it bothers me to this day. I loved that dress.
Nelle was a tomboy with a wonderful sense of humor...a real dry wit. She and Truman were always together as kids. Gladys Watson was our English teach in high school, and she was the best. She even read one of the final drafts of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
In our school room was an old pot-bellied stove. We'd sit as close as we could to the stove on cold winter mornings. The school had black oiled floors with saw dust on them. I can still see and smell them. I had a thing about being late, so I always a half hour early for school. I even beat the janitors. I went home every day for lunch. The school sold banana and mayonnaise sandwiches for ten cents. My dog, Bigshot, followed me to school every morning. She was a lovely dog.
Christmas in Monroeville was a wonderful time. We had all these extension cords to keep the lights burning, but if one light blew, they all blew. We hung nylons above the fireplace and the toe was the exciting part. A doll was always waiting for me under the tree - never wrapped. We had a marvelous cook, and dinner was served in the middle of the day.
We'd shop at Lazenby's, and Joe Frank Jackson ran the store. Mama would call him up and ask, "Y'all got a chicken?" And Mr. Jackson would ring the neck and pluck it for you and put it in a brown paper bag.
We vacationed at Laguana Beach and Fort Walton, and we were always allowed to carry one friend. We drove a pale blue Ford V-8. We loved to tan and we'd stretch out and smear iodine and baby oil all over.
? I'd go to town to buy a Mr. Goodbar, and from my house all the way to town, I'd look at the sidewalk cracks for any spare change dropped by men with holes in their pockets. We'd roller-skate on the square and it would disturb the lawyers working in the courthouse. They'd chase us away if they were having meetings, because the windows were always open. In high school, we used to climb up into the courthouse clock tower to see where the boys were. When I went to Auburn, I got a degree in going to dances and having a good time.
Here's a story I remember...The superintendent's daughter, Maudie, put on a play at our school about an ugly girl who becomes pretty. She cast an ugly girl in the first part of the play - a real plain country girl, who seemed happy enough to play the part. Her name was Eva. Then Maudie cast a city girl to play the lead when she becomes pretty in second act. Maudie didn't try to make the plain girl pretty. So in our play, the ugly girl changes to a pretty girl, but she never gets to play the pretty girl. This seemed to be me to be a strange thing. Now the ugly girl didn't seem to mind, but I have always wondered what she thought. And it's always made me sad thinking about it.
What else can I tell you about Nelle? Nelle's brother, Ed, was a handsome dentist. He died so young. Tragic. Her sister, Louise, was the pretty one. Alice was the lawyer, and she helped me a lot when I was selling real estate.
* * *
MORE LINKS A link to a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE by Cathy Newman TO CATCH A MOCKINGBIRD http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0601/feature8/index.html
d;">VROMAN'S BOOKSIGNING LINKS of UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE http://salgal99.livejournal.com/13233.html?style=mine http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/171784.html
A DAY WITH MARY WARD BROWN http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/119508.html
And I will close with a poem by Wayne Greenhaw from his book GHOSTS ON THE ROAD, published by River City Press:
MONROEVILLE by Wayne Greenhaw
It's a sleepy town, the lady wrote. Empty stores decorated with scenes from a Pulitzer novel, the story of three children swimming upstream against a current of racial strife. Harper Lee walks these sidewalks.
* * *
Thank you very much for the opportunity to share these stories.
Sincerely, Kerry Madden
UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961 www.kerrymadden.com
Received on Tue 26 May 2009 01:05:19 PM CDT
