ReFoReMo

Funny title - hectic but helpful month ahead. Job is to read and report on 5 books a day for the month of March. This year I am looking at more serious issues - death, homelessness, poverty, life in developing nations, hospice. Also going to spend time with bilingual concept books.

This all would be intense even if Holy Week was not in March!

 I ordered a bunch of books from the library and did subject searches on Amazon. There are probably 20 new picture books coming out on death this year! Obviously the next Big Subject. Interesting how many books are being self published on Amazon - the art is a big challenge!
http://www.carriecharleybrown.com/reforemo-2016.html

Here we go!

Diverstiy - Personal!

I registered https://illinois.scbwi.org/events/creating-stories-for-every-reader-diversity-in-your-work-3/. As usual I signed up to submit a manuscript for critique. Then read the fine print that it needed to be on a diverse topic or based on diverse characters! Gracious - what does a suburban geezer have to say about diversity?

In the ministry I do now at St. Mark's our 4th services each Sunday (yep - 4!) is in Spanish. Many of the attendees at this service are from Mexico also besides learning some Spanish, I have celebrated Cinco de Mayo and Our Lady or Guadeloupe with a lot of energy. I also teach the first communion class - about the age of child for whom I write. Once a week I read to Headstart children, too, many of whom are bilingual Spanish-English. This is the diverse group with which I am most familiar.

I had a story about a building implosion with Hispanic kids as the protagonists. The second generation of kids - born here - are amazingly fluent in both worlds, but I have noticed that when they are excited they revert to Spanish. Knowing this I rewrote it with Spanish words when the kids were surprised or afraid. The context of the words will still make it understandable to English native speakers.

Incredibly my manuscript was one of the first 10 submitted for critique so I got to choose the person to work with! I chose Claudia Guadalupe Martinez, who grew up in Texas, and I hope can help me improve the possible new direction.