The Liberation of Max McTrue Contest

Brought to you by Figment.com and Kim Culbertson

Kim Culbertson is joining Figment for a whirlwind weekend of Flash Fiction to celebrate her new ebook, The Liberation of Max McTrue! (Look for my review tomorrow.)

Enter the Max McTrue Flash Fiction Contest!

There will be a Total of three prizes: Each winner gets a free download of The Liberation of Max McTrue as well as a custom-made “beautiful things” journal. The first place winner will also receive a 30 minute manuscript review by Kim Culbertson.

All you have to do is write a super short story under 500 words that follows one of the four prompts below. Submit your entry between 11:00am on February 3^rd, 2012 and 11:59pm on February 5^th, 2012. The Figment editorial staff will choose the top ten entries as finalists, and Kim will choose the winners from those finalists.

The Prompts:

(1) Write a story set against the backdrop of a scavenger hunt.

(2) Write a story confined to the periods of a school day. The character can be in school or out of school.

(3) Write a story in which a character is deeply afraid of something.

(4) Come up with a totally ordinary character and then set him/her up to have an extraordinary day.

How to enter:

1. Go to www.figment.com and sign up.
2. Once you have received your confirmation email, go to your Figment profile page, click “My Writing,” and “Create Something New.”
3. Before you start writing, read the full rules on the Max McTrue contest page, which you’ll be able to find under the “Contest” tab on Figment on February 3^rd, 2012.
4. Write an original story, under 500 words, that follows one of the four prompts above.
5. Go to the “Details” tab of your story, and put maxmctrue in the “Tags” section.
6. Wait the 2 hours it sometimes takes to see your story appear on the contest page.

Kim Culbertson, author of Instructions for a Broken Heart and Songs for a Teenage Nomad, is also a high school teacher. On her website you’ll find recommended activities that go with her books. I particularly like the Song Journal and the Collage Poem activities.

You can download instructions for both of these at Culbertson’s website. While you’re there you may want to sign up for her monthly newsletter.

The Song Journal is an exercise that helps teens identify songs that are important to them and write about why the music is significant in some way.

I’ve always had fun working on collages, and the Collage Poem is a great way to combine visual images with the written word. Culbertson’s instructions include a copy of a collage poem she created.

I like that both of these activities are appropriate for teens, and that they enhance not only the reading of Culbertson’s books, but they can be used in other creative ventures as well.

I’m a big fan of Ingrid Law, author of Savvy (read my review). So I was thrilled when she agreed to feature a guest post I wrote for her blog about some of the major benefits of being in a mother-daughter book club. I read Savvy with my daughter Catherine when she was 14, and we both liked it a lot.

Savvy has been named a Newbery Honor book, and it was chosen as the October read for Al Roker’s Book Club on the Today Show. It’s a wonderful coming of age story about  a girl discovering her special talent. I highly recommend it for readers aged 9 to 13.

Check out my post on Ingrid’s blog, and visit her website too, where you can find more information about Ingrid, Savvy, and her new book due out next year, Scumble. I can’t wait to read it.

When I started to date in high school I didn’t know anything about what to expect from a boyfriend, which meant that determining what was good and not so good in a relationship wasn’t all that easy. Thank heavens I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’ve spent time talking with my daughters about healthy relationships. Even so, I think it’s too easy for them to tune their mom out sometimes. That’s why I was happy to learn about this blog post by Kaycee Jane, author of Frog or Prince? The Smart Girl’s Guide to Boyfriends. In her post “Healthy Relationship?—how to tell,” Kaycee discusses signs of a healthy relationship using the frog and prince analogy. It’s worth reading and sending the link to your teenage daughter. A gentle nudge with another voice may just help her see relationships for what they are—good or bad.

Today Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs is featured on author Laura Whitcomb’s blog. I’m fortunate to live in the same area as Laura, and she was the first author my mother-daughter book club connected with. We invited her to our meeting where we would discuss her book, A Certain Slant of Light, and she accepted the invitation. It just blew us all away that an author was actually going to be at our meeting. Then we got nervous. Would she think we didn’t know what we were talking about when we said what we thought of her book? What if we didn’t like it? Would there be awkward silence as we thought of questions to ask her?

There was no need to worry at all. Laura joined us for dinner before the discussion, and by the time we settled down to discuss the book we had gotten over our pre-meeting jitters.We did like A Certain Slant of Light, and Laura was able to answer several questions the moms and girls had about what we had read. We also talked to her about the process of writing a book and getting it published. It was a memorable evening that we wish we could have repeated more often. Here’s an interview with Laura I scheduled after we met: http://motherdaughterbookclub.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/interview-with-laura-whitcomb/.

I recently learned that Laura has written a sequel to A Certain Slant of Light, which I can’t wait to read as soon as it’s in print. You may also be interested in checking out another book she’s published called The Fetch, which I’ve previously reviewed here.

Just over a year ago I met author Kirby Larson while we were attending a Kidlit Blogging Conference here in Portland. I had interviewed Kirby about her writing life and her book, Hattie Big Sky, by email before that, but we hadn’t met in person until then. We got to know each other a bit over lunch, then finished out the conference.

Fast forward a few months to when I was writing Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs. I was searching for a book club mom of a group that had met with an author. I remembered a story Kirby told about meeting with a mother-daughter book club near her home in person. She put me in touch with Sheila, who not only shared a great story about meeting with Kirby, but who also talked about a service project her club had performed. I featured Sheila’s group and their projects in a few places in Book by Book as examples of clubs who were doing out-of-the-ordinary activities.

Connecting with authors like Kirby and moms like Sheila is one of the reasons I had a lot of fun writing Book by Book. Their stories are so interesting that I knew other moms would be able to take away great ideas for their own clubs after reading about them.

Hattie Big Sky gets my highest recommendation as a mother-daughter book club selection for groups with girls aged 11 and older. Kirby posted a blog post about mother-daughter book clubs and my book today. I look forward to visiting her blog with a guest post at the end of the month. She also has a great website with information about her books, Hattie Big Sky, and Two Bobbies, A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship and Survival. Her latest book, Nubs, is sure to be up there soon. Until then, Kirby is posting information about Nubs on her blog.

Tanya Egan Gibson has a novel coming out next month called How to Buy a Love of Reading.  It’s about a high school girl who has never loved books, and her parents commission a book to be written just for her.

Gibson has added a feature to her novel’s website where anyone can share a story about how reading changed their lives. Gibson says she envisions “this as a community of stories about the power of stories.” She also says that “all submissions will be posted (subject to approval to weed out spam and profanity), and between now and the novel’s release date on May 14th, three of them will also be chosen to be made into flash-animated ‘books’ on the site’s virtual bookshelf.  (The winners will also each receive a signed copy of HTBALOR.)”

I plan to post my story in the next week, and I would love to read other stories from readers at mother-daughter book club as well. Here’s the Web site where you can check it out and post a story:

www.howtobuyaloveofreading.com. Just click on the icons to read other stories and find a link to submit your own.

Kenn Nesbitt is the author of many beloved books of poetry for children. They’re also fun for adults too. If your mother-daughter book club is considering a poetry meeting soon, you may want to look at this special offer from Nesbitt to celebrate the launch of his new book. Here’s what he has to say:

“I am offering a free 30-minute ‘online author visit’-meaning that kids can see, hear, and chat with me right on their computers-to any group that buys 10 or more copies of my new book, My Hippo Has the Hiccups. Just purchase the books through my website, http://www.poetry4kids.com/freeauthorvisits and we’ll set up the visit at that time.

These free visits will be available on a first-come basis, during the weeks of April 6-10, April 20-24, May 11-15, June 1-5, and June 8-12. Programs will start at 9am PST, and run on-the-hour, and there will be no more than 2 participating groups (or classes for school groups) in each online session. Kids will be allowed to ask me questions through an online chat, which will be controlled by the moderator.

Technical requirements are:
* A computer with a high-speed Internet connection
* Windows, Mac, or Linux
* A Flash-enabled browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari
recommended)
* Speakers!
* Projector (optional)

For more information, or to sign up online, please go to http://www.poetry4kids.com/freeauthorvisits. Once your time-slot is scheduled and the book order has been confirmed, we will send you a link to the online meeting room, as well as a link where you can run a test to ensure that your software (Flash-enabled browser, etc.) is compatible. ”

April is National Poetry Month, and it may be fun for you to schedule a meeting around reading and writing poetry. Reading Nesbitt’s new book and chatting with him online would make a great combination meeting.

Claire Dean is the author of Girlwood, a book that’s part reality, part fantasy and very interesting to read. (Read my review.)

Today I got the chance to read an essay by Dean, posted by Powell’s Books. In it she talks about some of the things that happened in her earlier life that had an influence on what she wrote about in Girlwood. You can read the essay at Powell’s by clicking here.

I also think Dean’s Web site, ClaireDean.net, is very interesting. On the books tab, Dean talks about visiting a mother-daughter book club, and she says she’s willing to connect with other clubs if they contact her at the email address listed. Her other pages are also very interesting, many with subjects related to themes you’ll find in Girlwood. They include pages on edible plants, wilderness survival and auras. I took the quiz to find out what color my aura is, and found out it’s blue. I like her ideas for coming of age ceremonies that parents can create for their children, and there’s a reading guide for Girlwood. It’s fascinating!

Fans of Shannon Hale’s books (Goose Girl, Enna Burning, Book of a Thousand Days) will find a lot to like on her website, where she shares great information about her books and herself. Just like with a DVD, you can find deleted scenes from several of her titles and discussion guides. There are also quizzes for the books that may be fun for your mother-daughter book club to take. Set it up like a Jeopardy quiz show with a bell to ring when someone has the answer.

Also on Shannon’s site is a list of her book recommendations broken down by categories like fantasy, adult, younger readers, and recommendations by her husband. Here’s the link to The Official Site of Shannon Hale so you can check it out.