Read Finding Miracles Online

Authors: Julia Alvarez

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Family, #Adoption, #Fiction

Finding Miracles (22 page)

As for favorite books now, I have so many! I love poetry, novels, nonfiction books—anything well written can engage my attention. It can be a story in a cookbook or a poem about a snake or a tale about a girl who saves her life by telling stories. I’m not picky when it comes to good books. But if a book is not well written, I don’t care who wrote it—
poof!
It’s transformed into a doorstop or a coaster or an item in the recycle box!

Q. As both an author and a longtime teacher of writing at Middlebury College, what advice do you offer young writers?

A.
What advice can I offer young writers? Most important of all is to be a voracious reader. How can you learn to swim without getting in the river? I’m astounded sometimes when a young student writer tells me that he is not into reading! How can you be a writer without being a reader—that’s like being a horseback rider but not really being into riding horses. Read, read, read. The best books are your best teachers!

Another piece of advice is to develop the “habit of writing.” If I decided to write based on whether or not I felt like it on any given day, I would end up writing maybe only a handful of days a month. All kinds of things would get in the way: an invitation to lunch at a favorite restaurant, a beautiful day tempting me to go out on a bike ride, a cold that makes me feel under the weather. Most people I know have no problem with my being a writer, but they often feel annoyed when I am actually writing, because I’m not answering their phone call or going to the movies or going shopping with them.

The point is that it’s hard just to get yourself to sit down and write. Like any other skill, you’ve got to practice it to become good at it. In fact, even after you become good at it, you’ve got to practice to stay in shape. I often compare writing to dancing. Say a dancer only did her floor exercises when she felt like it. Say a week went by when she did not feel so inclined. Then the day she does feel inspired, she tries to do a jeté and she pulls a muscle or she falls flat on her face. Writing also requires daily exercise of your “writing muscles.” If you don’t write for a week, when you sit down to write, you just don’t have the same agility as when you are at it every day, even if it’s only for an hour. Once you have developed the habit of writing, you don’t have to think about whether you are going to do it today or tomorrow or the next day. It’s just something you do, like having breakfast or brushing your teeth or watching TV.

One of the ways to do this daily writing is to keep a journal. In other words, you don’t have to try to write a prizewinning poem or a chapter of a novel every day. Just write an entry about whatever happened to you today. Practice putting the adventures of your life into words, the little things you notice, the way people around you talk, the view out the window, the smells after a rainstorm, the taste of your mom’s apple crisp. Practice making your sentences reflect the rhythm of a scene. Imitate a paragraph you admire from your favorite book.

And here’s a third piece of advice, a must for any writer: pay attention! Writing begins before you ever set pen to paper or put your hands on the keyboard. It’s a way of life, of being awake to the little things around you that you would otherwise miss. I do agree with Henry James’s advice to the young writer, “Be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” It’s a great way to live, not just for writers, but for anybody: smelling the flowers—as the cliché goes—and touching them and tasting them, and even listening to them.

Haiku are great little “finger exercises,” by the way. In order to write one, you have to pay close attention to the tiny things in your life. Not only that, but you have to choose the just-right word, since so few are allowed. It also helps that haiku are easy enough to compose even if you are far from pen and paper. Here are two favorites from the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Buson. Try a few yourself.

That wren—
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?

Asked how old he was
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.

RELATED TITLES

Heaven
Eyes
David Almond 0-440-22910-3 Erin Law and her friends in the orphanage are labeled Damaged Children. They run away one night, traveling downriver on a raft. What they find on their journey is stranger than you can imagine.

Bud,
Not
Buddy
Christopher Paul Curtis 0-553-49410-4 It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan, and when ten-year-old Bud decides to hit the road to find his father, nothing can stop him.

Find
a
Stranger,
Say
Goodbye
Lois Lowry 0-440-20541-7 Natalie Armstrong has all a girl could want: beauty and intelligence, a loving family, and a great oyfriend. But something is missing—the answer to a most important question: “Who is my mother?”

Monsoon
Summer
Mitali Perkins 0-440-23840-4 Going to India during monsoon season to volunteer at an orphanage isn’t Jazz’s idea of a great summer vacation. But then she meets Danita, a young girl facing a tough dilemma, and begins to see how she can make a difference.

READERS CIRCLE BOOKS

Kit’s
Wilderness

David Almond • 0-440-41605-1

Kit Watson and John Askew look for the childhood ghosts of their long-gone ancestors in the mines of Stoneygate.

Becoming
Mary
Mehan:
Two
Novels

Jennifer Armstrong 0-440-22961-8

Set against the events of the American Civil War,
The Dreams of Mairhe
Mehan
depicts an Irish immigrant girl and her family struggling to find their place in the war-torn country.
Mary Mehan Awake
takes up Mary’s story after the war, when she must begin a journey of renewal.

Colibrí

Ann Cameron • 0-440-42052-0

At age four, Colibrí was kidnapped from her parents in Guatemala City, and ever since then she’s traveled with Uncle, who believes Colibrí will lead him to treasure. Danger mounts as Uncle grows desperate for his fortune—and as Colibrí grows daring in seeking her freedom.

Keeper
of the
Night

Kimberly Willis Holt • 0-553-49441-4

Living on the island of Guam, a place lush with memories and tradition, young Isabel struggles to protect her family and cope with growing up after her mother’s suicide.

The
Giver

Lois Lowry • 0-440-23768-8

Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices, until Jonas is given an opportunity that will change his world forever.

Cuba
15
• Nancy Osa • 0-385-73233-3

Violet Paz’s upcoming
quinceañero
, a girl’s traditional fifteenth-birthday coming-of-age ceremony, awakens her interest in her Cuban roots—and sparks a fire of conflicting feelings about Cuba within her family.

Milkweed

Jerry Spinelli • 0-440-42005-9

He’s a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. He’s a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He’s a boy who wants to be a Nazi someday, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind—the day he realizes it’s safest of all to be nobody.

Also
by
JULIA ALVAREZ

Before
We
Were
Free

0-440-23784-X

I wonder what it would be like to be free? Not to need wings
because you don’t have to fly away from your country?

Under a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, young Anita lives through a fight for freedom that changes her world forever.

AN ALA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS

AN ALA NOTABLE BOOK

A
MIAMI
HERALD
BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

WINNER OF THE AMÉRICAS AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S AND

YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

WINNER OF THE PURA BELPRÉ AWARD

Published by Laurel-Leaf
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2004 by Julia Alvarez

Laurel-Leaf and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,
visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers

RL: 5.4

May 2006

www.randomhouse.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-43333-6

v3.0

Other books

The Cannibal Within by Mirabello, Mark
Illusions of Death by Lauren Linwood
Had We Never Loved by Patricia Veryan
Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm
Baby It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren
Green Tea by Sheila Horgan
Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith
The Lie by Helen Dunmore


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024