Welcome to Poetry Frida! This week Rose is hosting Here, at her blog Imagine the Possibilities. Thank you, Rose, for hosting!
I finally arrived home after a five week absence visiting my family and was greeted by snow upon my arrival. Not much, only an inch, but today, it is 26 degrees. Spring is holding out a little longer.
Today I received Laurie Purdie Salas‘ new picture book OSKAR’S VOYAGE! It was a Copy signed by the author and the book’s talented illustrator Kayla Harren.
.
Oskar, the main character, a squirrel, is adventurous, sweet and engaging and the setting is also like another character. As Oskar leaves the comfort of his oak tree and finds himself on a Great Lakes freighter, we follow along, trying to spot him. The boat’s route is revealed on an engaging map, the first thing the reader sees after the front cover:
Tracing Oskar’s voyage through the Great Lakes will be fun for kids, and so will the boat with its various machines, the galley and even the mail bucket. Salas’ poetry will inform and entertain:
Rumble. Movement. Oskar wakes. Climbs four stairways lined with gear. Pilothouse holds charts and screens: tools to help the captain steer.
And indeed the illustrator takes the reader to the stairways and the pilothouse as we follow Oskar and try to locate him on the page, reminiscent of “Where’s Waldo.”
The back matter defines the boat terms and an interesting detailed map of this freighter, known as a “footer” because it is 1,ooo foot long. My oldest son, who loves all things maps would have loved this book.
While I was away the last five weeks, I took out my novel in verse to tweak it some more. My WIP, WHEN MY BROTHER WENT TO WAR, is historical fiction, that takes place during the Vietnam war in the year 1969-70. This is how the novel begins, in the voice of my main character Maddie.
SEWING
Just before I turned fifteen,
the end of eighth grade,
I began to stitch together
what I knew about
my family,
my town,
and the War, too,
just like I stitch a dress
at my Singer sewing machine
on our dining room table.
except
just before I turned fifteen
only stitching a dress
made sense.
Janice Scully 2024
I have doubts whether publishers would be interested in a book set in 1969, especially in verse. And I am told by a friend that a novel in verse as a debut novel might be a hard sell. Still reading it through, I still like it and it seems relevant in many ways, though there are no cell phones or computers. So I’ll keep trying to find a home for it. I enjoyed the process, and for me, that has meant a lot.
Well, everyone. Have a great weekend! I’ll close with a ground squirrel I encountered in Pacifica, California. A cousin of Oskar?
Ground Squirrel on the beach eyeing the sea and bright sun-- seeking adventure. Janice Scully 2024