From: Nancy Bo Flood <wflood>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:03:37 -0700

This past week Marion Dane Bauer gave an emotionally moving talk at the Vermont College MFA residency in which she referred to On My Honor and her journey of writing from the heart. A major thread of her talk was that the needs of the writer continue to surface in each story she tells. Yes, the poignant moral agony of the main character in On My Honor is a universal challenge to any of us, regardless of age. But Marion spoke of another deeper theme of "return to family." I had forgotten from my own re-reading several years ago that one conflict in On My Honor is the boy's desire to have his father stand firm and say "no" to the whole adventure of biking to the cliffs. Instead the father lets the boy go with his friend. Then the shame and guilt of the secret of "what happened" becomes a huge "disconnect" from family for the boy. When the boy finally tells his dad, at bedtime in his own bed, he asks his dad, "can you sit with me until I fall asleep?" The dad replies, yes.

This book speaks to each reader as readers bring to the story their own needs, secrets, fears and hopes. That is the magic of story. Not that we manipulate what we want the reader to believe, but that we offer a connection to others, a sharing of being a human being figuring out this journey of life.

Nancy


  author of Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons, A Children's Choice and Arizona Book of the Year
  Sand to Stone, the Life Cycle of Sandstone



> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:18:17 -0500
> From: elsa.marston at gmail.com
> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
> Subject: [CCBC-Net] "Hidden messages" -- ON MY HONOR
>
> I have to comment on this book by Marian Dane Bauer. I read it in an auto
> mechanic's waiting room, and found myself weeping by the end (in part, I
> must admit, because the boy on the paperback cover reminded me so much of my
> son at that age, and I couldn't help wondering how he would have behaved in
> such a situation--and how I could have saved him from unhappiness!).
>
> As I recall, it is indeed an open-ended treatment of a very basic,
> all-ages, dilemma: How do you choose between withholding information-- or
> even lying-- in order to save your skin, and telling the truth and suffering
> the consequences? The boy in the story does finally tell the truth, not
> surprisingly, but I think the description of what he goes through until he
> reaches that decision is extremely moving--beautifully handled by a
> master-writer. The background assumptions about families, behavior, etc.,
> to my mind, are just what we need to know in order to appreciate what this
> particular child is experiencing as he finds himself deeper and deeper in
> moral agony, rather than a "sneaky" injection of "what should be."
>
> Elsa
> www.elsamarston.com
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Received on Sun 26 Jul 2009 12:03:37 PM CDT