Ten Percent

 Hello, hello! I've been away, finishing a book (The Night War, release date April 9, 2024), galivanting with friends, and then being sick for two weeks. That last I don't recommend, but there you are.

You all know about Appalachian Literacy Initiative , the nonprofit my friend Tracy and I started six years ago to give low-income Appalachian schoolchildren free books. We designed our program as a specific and researched response to the question, "Why are poor kids two-and-a-half times less likely to read at grade level than their wealthier peers?" Tracy and I really did spend a whole year looking up the answers to this and figuring out the most cost-effective way to help, and now, for the first time, I have proof that we nailed it.

All along, we intended to track test scores to see if our program was having an effect. Now, of course there are limitations--testing is flawed, and teachers are doing their best to teach all their students, and may have access to many other interventions beyond our free books. BUT in a giant meta-study of reading interventions, the only thing that consistently raised reading scores was giving kids books. I always hoped we could see some sort of effect.

However we hit a little glitch with the global pandemic. Not only was there no testing for two years, but comparing post-pandemic numbers to pre-pandemic numbers makes no sense at all. So we waited, and kept telling everyone we thought this was a great idea, to hand out books, (as an aside--there's new research that correlates increased reading proficiency with lowered teen pregnancy rates--so, yay books!) and happily lots and lots of people agreed with us, so that every year out of our first five our program doubled in size and last year we gave books to 455 teachers and 8353 kids. 

And finally we're getting some test scores where we can compare, before and after our program. We're in six different states which all test differently, and some schools have their results back and others don't. I spent yesterday making a spreadsheet of all the information I do have and I can tell you--

roughly, we increase reading proficiency by 10%.

Ten percent!

Does that sound small to you? Because I'm here to tell you, it's huge. Last year our program cost $28 per student enrolled. If we helped 10% of our students reach proficiency, that's 835 kids.

The greatest predictor of graduating from high school is whether kids read proficiently by the end of 4th grade (we enroll 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades). High school dropouts have an estimated net lifetime cost to the government (these numbers are five years old, I'll have to get new ones) of $292,000; high school graduates (again old numbers) have an estimated lifetime gain to the government of $180,000. Take 835 kids and get them on the track to high school graduation: a potential swing of $394,120,000. 

Three hundred ninety four million dollars.

Another way of saying it: each dollar we spent giving books to kids could produce $1685 future benefit to society.

One of the studies I read, back when Tracy and I were doing our research, showed that giving kids $50 worth of books of their choice at the beginning of the summer had a greater impact on their reading scores than $3000 worth of summer school. What I'm saying today is that $50 worth of books can be worth $84,250. The support you all give us really does and will change lives.

Hooray.

Our applications are open on our website--if you teach at a low-income Appalachian school, by all means, apply to be part of our program next school year. 

If you're feeling generous--there's a donate button there too. Every year we've doubled, and every year we've had to turn otherwise qualified schools away once we've committed all our funds. The money we bring in now will be spent on next year's students. 

The Swallows Returned!

 Monday was my red-letter day of spring. Monday the swallows returned.

There are two species of swallows that summer on our farm: pearly white-breasted birds that I've always called "Field Swallows" but have just learned via Google are actually "Tree Swallows," and their buff-breasted cousins the Barn Swallows. I am fond of the Tree Swallows. I love Barn Swallows.

These tiny birds fly thousands of miles to migrate each spring and fall. In October I saw them along the Amazon in Peru, to the eventual annoyance of one of our guides, Julio. We'd spend hours exploring tributaries by skiff, and whenever any of us (8 tourist per skiff) saw anything interesting, we'd point it out to Julio so he could identify it for us. 

So. Me: Julio, Julio, what's that? (said with wild excitement, because I'm pretty sure I know)

Julio: That's a swallow.

Me, two minutes later: Julio, over there?

Julio: That is also a swallow.

Me, one minute later: Julio, Julio!

Julio: Swallow.

Me, yet again: Julio! Julio, look!

Julio: Swallows, Kim!

Me: HAHAHA

Barn Swallows return to specific laying sites year after year, often reusing old nests, which they make themselves out of mud. Our barn became a barn swallow nesting site the first year it was raised. There are small flat metal plates on top of each light bulb fixture (because you have to have covered light bulbs in barns, for fear of fire) that were apparently perfect bases for barn swallow nests. We have nests on each of 12 light bulbs. We have a couple of nests built right next to the light bulbs, and a few  tucked into corners of the framing. In an average summer we'll have 8 active nests, each raising two clutches of 3-5 birds. That's four dozen more swallows every year. Swallows can eat a whopping 850 insects per day which keeps both flies and mosquitos to pretty low levels around our farm. Often when I'm riding in the summer, half a dozen swallows will fly circles around me, hunting the insects my horse kicks up from the grass.

Also, they're beautiful. They're graceful and endearing and the babies are fabulously grumpy. 

The tree swallows always return to our farm first, followed a week or so later by the barn swallows. When they're flying, it's hard to distinguish the two except that barn swallows have a deeply forked tail, a sideways V. I saw some tree swallows about 10 days ago, to my intense delight. Monday when my daughter and I went into the barn a pair of swallows was flying in circles around one of the old nest. They flew out the back door when they saw us, and we hurried after--"Forked tails!" my daughter exclaimed, and hugged me. I don't think she likes the swallows quite as much as I do, but it's admittedly a high bar.

I spent the next few days telling everyone how the swallows had returned, and now I'm telling you. Some sad day in mid-August they'll all leave at once, with no warning and far earlier than I think they should. But for now it's swallow time, my favorite season of the year.

Why We Needed Freewater

On Monday morning the Newbery award went to Freewater, a debut novel by Amina Luqman-Dawson. I'd bought the book last summer, but I didn't start reading it until this Monday afternoon, not for lack of interest, but because my To Be Read pile is threatening to overtake my entire house. I knew exactly where the book was in my stacks, and I snagged it and started reading over lunch.

This book, my friends, is exactly what a Newbery winner should be. It's also a primer in Why Everyone Needs Diverse Books. As it happens, the book may not have existed, at least not in its current form, without the work of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 to address the fact that the books being published for children in this country did not reflect the diversity of the children living in this country. WNDB runs excellent mentorship and grant programs for aspiring children's writers and illustrators and for aspiring children's editors. I understand that both Amina Luqman-Dawson and her editor were part of those programs, which absolutely delights me. 

It's vitally important that all children see themselves in the pages of the books they read. When I spoke at Southern Festival of Books a few years back, my daughter and I also spent some time working in the Parnassus Bookstore tent, both out of the goodness of our hearts and because they gave us a hefty discount in exchange. My daughter saw a little Black girl walking past a line of picture books suddenly stop and say, "Mama, look! This girl has hair like mine!" She patted the cover illustration of book showing a little Black girl with tightly curled hair. Her Mama stopped and smiled and acknowledged the likeness. "What's the book called?" the little girl asked. "It's called 'Beautiful,'" her Mama said, and the child beamed.

But diverse books aren't just important for diverse (non-white, non-straight, non-cis, disabled, etc.) readers. Telling stories from different points of view builds empathy and understanding in all of us. That sounds very highbrow--here's what I mean. Freewater takes place within a community of formerly enslaved people (and some freeborn children) living hidden in the Great Dismal Swamp. I already knew the difference between describing someone as a slave and describing them as an enslaved person. 'Slave' seems to indicate something immutable; 'enslaved boy' tells you that the condition has been imposed on the boy by someone else. 'Enslaved person' centers the personhood.

In Freewater, Amina Luqman-Dawson uses the phrase "enslaved soul." 

Think about that for a moment. Think about the difference between an enslaved man and an enslaved soul. It's subtle, but it's very, very real. Enslaving someone's soul feels far more devastating. It's a much more powerful phrase. And it's not one that ever occurred to me, even though I wrote a book about enslaved souls that at the time garnered very positive reviews. My book didn't win awards; for the first time, I'm glad. 

I'm changed by reading Freewater. Hallelujah. You go read it, too.

The Day After All The Calls

 Today is the Oscars, the Tonys, and the Grammys of KidLit--American Library Association's Youth Media Awards. The Newbery and Caldecott winners were announced today, as well as the Printz, Siebert, Schneider Family, Stonewall, Coretta Scott King, and others--it's a great big festival of happiness. Nowadays there's a live online feed of the award announcements that draws several thousand kidlit watchers, including, of course, myself. While I technically did have a book published in 2022, there was absolutely no chance that She Persisted: Rosalind Franklin (of which I am quite proud) was going to win anything so I was in all senses a spectator this year.

It's lovely to have a book in contention but it's also strangely nerve-wracking. None of the major awards announce finalists ahead of time. However, winners do get "the call" before the official announcements--traditionally calls were made on Monday mornings very very early--that was what happened when I got an Honor in 2016--but now the switch seems to have been made to sometime the weekend before. That was true in 2021 when I got a call for Fighting Words, and according to a tweet from my friend Christina Sootornvat, it was true this year as well. 

Christina got the call while selling Girl Scout cookies.

I always have favorites going in but hesitate to say what they are, because I know I haven't read a full sampling of the books. I hadn't read any of the Printz awardees this year, nor any of the Caldecotts, though I had books I loved that didn't get any mention. I loved Christina's The Last Mapmaker but I read it so long ago, when she kindly sent me an ARC, that it was almost a surprise to me that it was still eligible.

There are always favorites left off the lists. Both last night and this morning I saw posts online reminding authors and illustrators that books do not need shiny award stickers to be valuable to children. I know this with all my heart. The current surprise runaway hit from the fifth-graders enrolled in ALI? Science Comics: Robots. Honestly probably about as likely to have gotten an award as my Rosalind Franklin book--but 39 kids from a single elementary school in southwest Virginia just requested copies, as did 47 kids from a single school in eastern Kentucky the week before. 

I have firsthand evidence that sometimes writers won't know the impact they've had on readers for years. Twenty-one years ago I published a novel set on the Appalachian Trail called Halfway to the Sky. It's still technically in print, though only electronically. It got good reviews, not great ones (a brief check just now on Amazon finds the phrase, "a fairly standard coming-of-age novel") and won absolutely nothing, though I did have several teachers tell me they enjoyed sharing it with their classes. About five years ago I got a letter from a young woman who wrote to tell me that my story had changed her life--because of it she started hiking. She found she loved the mountains and the woods. She listed some of the places she'd hiked and enclosed a photograph of herself on a summit.

Then I got another letter, from a young woman who'd started hiking because of Dani. She enclosed a photo of herself on the top of Kilimanjaro. 

Then a third letter. Then a fourth. Extraordinary.

I read something you wrote, and my life changed.

No one can say anything better to any author, anywhere.

This year's Newbery Award went to a middle-grades novel called Freewater. I bought it last summer when I happily found myself in Anderson's Bookstore (which resides in the same suburb of Chicago as the nearest TopGolf--my son lives in Chicago, and TopGolf is a good time. So is Anderson's.) I remember holding Freewater and another book (don't remember that one) in my hands, telling myself to pick one (why I was exercising such uncommon restraint I don't know) and going with Freewater on the grounds that it sucked to be a debut author as Amina Luqman-Dawson was, while we were still halfway under pandemic restrictions--I think the author of the forgotten book must have been more wildly known. Everyone is going to read Amina's book now. Everyone will know its name. This is fabulous, and it's even more fabulous that both Amina and her editor came out of We Need Diverse Books' mentorship program. Several years ago some leaders in children's literature saw that we needed to be listening to, upholding, and honoring many more voices, from all backgrounds, not just white peoples'. I'm so thrilled about this. I once wrote a book about enslaved children called Jefferson's Sons. It's out of print but I sometimes get letters from people asking if I know where they can still get a copy. I don't. I've been suggesting people read Crossing Ebeneezer Creek instead, and I do love that book--but hey, here's Freewater, try this one, too. I'm pretty sure you're going to love it.

A Good Ride on Good Horses

 Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of my fifth concussion, the big one--well, okay, the biggest one. I suppose any time you're transported to hospital by ambulance it counts as "big." It was the stupidest of my concussions, too--it was at the end of a foxhunt when we were heading back to the horse trailers, cantering easily across a mown hay field. My mare, Sarah, caught the back edge of her front shoe with her back hoof, and tripped, and I went over her shoulder. Shouldn't have been much, but either I was quite unlucky or my brain had had enough of being knocked around. I was unconscious for eight minutes. When I started to come to, I was surrounded by sniffing foxhounds. One of them started to squat, and I batted and him and growled, "Don't you pee on me," which made our huntsman say, "Oh, thank God."

The huntsman hadn't noticed that Sarah was missing a shoe. I'd been at the back of the very small field, and no one knew why on earth I'd ended up on the ground, let alone unconscious. He'd called the local emergency response, and, when they told him they couldn't send an ambulance to a hay field no matter how exactly he could tell them where it was, rode out to the closest road and found a mailbox with an address on it and gave them that. He also, when the ambulance arrived, convinced them to take me to my home hospital in Bristol instead of the closest, which I think was Greenville. I had an MRI and didn't have a brain bleed. My children were making their ways home for Christmas. My husband rushed to the hospital and held my hand. The ER doc suggested I not ride "for a week or two."

I took six months off, which was the recommended return-to-play from my sport, eventing, which unfortunately sees a fair number of concussions. It was a long slow recovery. For the first several weeks I slept 14 or more hours per day. I couldn't stand to have my head moving in three dimensions, so yoga, which I loved, was out. Worst of all, I had trouble writing--not with ideas or stringing words together, but with the appearance of print on a page or a screen. I couldn't switch between fonts, or between handwritten and typed words, so I had to quit my volunteer job entering data for Bristol Faith in Action. I was working on The War I Finally Won, and the only way I could keep the words from dancing on the screen was to turn down the brightness of my screen and make the font size bigger. And then I could only work for an hour or two before I needed a nap. 

It was a sucky winter, but by spring I was better. In the summer I took a Ride Safe clinic to reduce my chances of injury when coming off a horse. (I'd agreed to quit foxhunting and stay at the lower levels of eventing, but I still wanted to ride.) The Ride Safe clinic was fantastic; I highly recommend it. And I think it did teach me new muscle memory, as I've fallen off a few times since then and managed to protect my head. (It goes without saying that I always wear a helmet. In fact I've got a new one on order now that Virginia Tech just released their new research on concussion prevention.)

But I wasn't right. I was pretty close to right nearly everywhere but in the saddle. The rest of my life went on well. When I was riding I felt short of breath, sometimes dizzy; I couldn't do things I'd always done easily, and I sometimes did completely the wrong thing--little staccato blips of putting my hands or legs or upper body where they didn't belong. Once my trainer, and good friend, Cathy Wieschhoff roared at me, "WHERE IS YOUR MUSCLE MEMORY?" and the only thing I could say is, "I don't know."

My daughter was away at school. My books were doing well, I was more in demand as a speaker, I was traveling a lot. I was a little anxious in the saddle, I have severe asthma, I hadn't exercised in those six months of recovery--I had all the reasons, but no answers. 

Then the pandemic hit. I wasn't going anywhere. I had been riding consistently, but mostly just hacking around the fields, sometimes jumping small things. Now I set about fixing whatever was wrong. I worked on the anxiety and asthma. I worked on slowly becoming more fit. I rode every day. 

I rode poorly.

Sarah was injured in the field. I borrowed a friend's pony but didn't feel comfortable on him. I leased a saintly horse and got back into competition, sort of--I survived, but mainly due to the horse's goodness and care. I wasn't riding worth a nickel. 

It's very frustrating to lose competence in something you love. I really could not figure it out. 

My leased horse had to go back to his owners. Cathy found me a sweet intelligent mare with smooth paces and a broad back, perfect for me. I named her Rosie. I rode her every day and made almost no progress, all winter long.

Then I bought an Apple watch, for two features: its ability to tell me my blood oxygen percentage (a measure of how much my asthma is affecting me) and its fall alarm, which would alert my family if I fell off when riding alone. But I started noticing two things: my heart rate variability was always abnormally low--a sign my autonomic nervous system was running the show--and my heart rate itself soared whenever I rode. If I used the exercise bike in my basement, normal increase commensurate with the exertion. If I trotted around the field, my heart went above 140 bpm. If I cantered or jumped, 170 bpm. This is not remotely normal.

The kicker came when my friend Caroline and I went to Cathy's in May, and had a gymnastics lesson. I would trot into the gymnastic line, canter out. Then I'd wait while Caroline did the same. One hour. Heart rate between 155-170 bpm the entire time. 

My friend Kelly, a biology professor who also rides, suggested that this was all neurological, unhealed damage from my concussion. And it was. This post is already long enough without my going into medical detail, but I spent the summer making trips for treatment to a functional neurologist in Raleigh, and my poor brain is finally better 

Yesterday was cold and bleak. Katie and I haven't ridden much in the last few weeks of rain. We went out to our little ring on our filthy, shaggy horses, and we had the best rides--lovely moments of trot and canter, balance and harmony. It's all coming back now, and Rosie, who loves harmony, all but purred. 

It's been six years, and I'm finally reaching the end.

Happy Monday

 It's an odd day, isn't it? Around here the schools are closed, and I believe PenguinRandomHouse is shut down, too, for the regular two-week all-publishing-houses holiday. My son arrives from Chicago on Thursday. The post office just dropped off two Christmas gifts I'd ordered as well as Cookiepalooza, a box of assorted cookies my friend Rae sends us every year. We love Cookiepalooza; we all have our personal favs. (Meanwhile, Rae, if you get a book that doesn't look like it's from anyone, it's from me. Amazon didn't allow gift messages this year. And I KNOW I shouldn't be ordering from Amazon. Truth is that I'd bought six copies of my dear friend Betsy's new book, Reader I Murdered Him, all planned as gifts, and then I spontaneously gave two to Katherine Paterson and Stephanie Tolan when they were here, so I had to replace them, and of course I didn't think of it until last minute. So.

Our house is absolutely transformed by Christmas decorations, courtesy of my husband, who gets more artistic with every passing year. Our outdoor lights are lovely, too. Some of the trees we used to decorate have gotten too big for that, so last spring we planted a lot of new evergreens (really!) so that we still had plenty of appropriate light-bearing trees. The Santa Duck is up on Weaver Pike, with a new improved stand apparently sponsored by Lowe's. I love the Santa Duck. Everyone does. Also, I need to shout out to the person who lives in the house across from Tennessee High in one direction and Tennessee Middle in the other. They've got a Grinch in their yard and he's taking down the Christmas lights--there's a tree laying sideways on the lawn and another drooping from the edge of the porch. It's inspired.

Meanwhile, at ALI, we're giving out books for Christmas: 500 to Bristol, Virginia, schoolchildren; 75 to the YWCA after-care program; 77 to Bristol Faith in Action; 80 to children who came to the Holiday Open House on State Street; several dozen to an organization in Johnson City who needed last-minute donations for kids aged 0-16. Our regular program is for kids ages 9-12, but we were really lucky this year in that both Books-A-Million in Bristol and Barnes & Noble in Johnson City did book drives on our behalf, so we had absolutely beautiful books for all ages to share. We got a bunch of toys and stuffed animals, too--most of those went to Isaiah House, the transitional place for kids awaiting placement in foster care. If you gave a book this season, thank you so much. (If you didn't--there's still time!) This year we have so much to be grateful for, but tops on our list is the connections we've been able to foster with so many area organizations this year. 

Happy second night of Hannukah to my Jewish friends. I will be Team Sour Cream until I die.

Books Saves Lives--Bid on a Zoom With Me!

 

Hey all--

I think any of you who know me at all know how passionately against book-banning I am. I'm also a huge advocate for diversity of all types in children's literature, and as such have supported We Need Diverse Books from its inception. WNDB has just started an initiative against book banning called Books Save Lives. I know books save lives; I read my fanmail, and children write to me to tell me that it's true. 

Like most children's book authors, I do paid in-person classroom visits. I'm expensive, and I'm good. As a usual thing I don't do paid Zoom visits, but every year I make an exception in support of WNDB. Their annual auction opens today, and you can bid to have me speak to your classroom or organization via Zoom here. I hope you will! I'd love to talk with your students, and you'd be contributing to a cause very dear to me.