Visiting the Mentor, Ohio, Skating Rink

Here's me with the skaters and their counselor, senior
skater Alex DiCola

One of the perks of writing for children is that you have a chance to meet and talk with kids.  I did just that last week when I met with a small group of skaters at the Mentor Skating Rink in Mentor, Ohio. Before moving to Florida, I lived in Mentor for twenty years, and both of my children went through school there.  My daughter Heidi skated at the Mentor rink when she was in junior high and high school, and it was this rink that I pictured when I wrote Pairs on Ice.

It was a young group and included some hockey players, so instead of talking about Jamie and Matt and the pressures of competition, I read some sections of my book, and we talked about getting along with teammates that you don’t like.  They had stories about doing projects with kids they didn’t like or who didn’t do their share of the work.  When I asked what Jamie and Matt could have done differently, they had some good ideas, like “Maybe Matt could have said he was sorry for making her fall,” or “Maybe she didn’t have to yell at him.”

I also talked about how I can live in other people's lives when I'm writing.  "I can't skate very well," I said, "but when I write about Jamie, I'm with her, flying over the ice." One girl asked if I liked to read.  She had a big smile when I said that I had always liked to read, that, like writing, reading let me have many different adventures. I asked if she read a lot.  She nodded. I added that when I was a child, we didn’t have Amazon or e-books, so I would bring a pile of books home every time I went to the library.

I always enjoy talking with children.  They’re spontaneous, honest, and you never know what impact you might have.

Beach Reading

I love the beach!  I love walking along the shore, picking up shells, listening to the waves crash, and even boogie boarding when we’re home in Florida, where the water is warmer and the waves are gentler than up north.  But just as important, I love sitting in a sand chair facing the ocean and––you guessed it––reading.

Me with a book at the Jersey Shore.

I don’t read just any book at the beach.  It’s has to be vacation reading, even if I’m not on an official vacation.  It has to be fun and filled with characters I can identify with and love.  Happy endings are a plus, although I can live with a sad, but hopeful ending.  But no tragedies are allowed on my beach.

My favorite beach authors are, not surprisingly, my favorite authors off the beach, too––those who write about women’s lives and the ups and downs of love, family, and friendships.  It’s even better when the books have beautiful settings, places I’ve been to or would love to go.

These include:  Elin Hilderbrand, who lives and writes in Nantucket, a beautiful, historic island off Cape Cod that I fell in love with my first visit;  Marie Bostwick, whose Cobbled Court Quilts series is set in a quilt shop, a craft I’ve dabbled in (I proudly display my pillows in my living room);  Jane Green, a British writer who now lives in Connecticut and writes about ordinary families (with problems of course) in southern Connecticut towns;  Mary Kay Andrews, many of whose books are set in and around Savannah;  Dorothea Benton Frank, whose books about the South Carolina Low Country I first discovered in a Beaufort, SC, book shop;  Kristin Hannah, whose books delve deeply into family relationships––Home Front and The Nightingale were books I couldn’t put down;  and Anne Rivers Siddons, who writes about both New England and the South. 

Seagulls at New Smyrna Beach, FL

Last week, I enjoyed four days “down the shore” at a beach house in Avalon, NJ, with my daughter and her family.  I brought Jane Green’s The Beach House with me.  The story revolves around an old beach house in Nantucket’s Sconset community.  Finding herself financially strapped, the owner, a widow in her sixties, decides to rent rooms.  Not surprisingly, her guests are men and women escaping life crises.  It was fun watching them resolve their issues and find new friends and a new “family.”  Perfect beach reading.

What do you like to read on the beach?

Real Skaters Talk About Jamie and Matt

Jamie and Matt are real to me––and to my readers, I hope––but they are fictional characters in Pairs on Ice.  One of the perks of writing about the skating world is that I get to meet real kids who skate.  I’ve been especially lucky to meet two skaters who also happen to skate pairs––Timmy Chapman and Taylor Nordquist, of the RDV Sportsplex Ice Den in Orlando

I was delighted when they agreed to be first, or beta, readers for Pairs at Nationals, my second book about Jamie and Matt.  I was even more delighted that they liked it.

 

“I could really feel Jamie’s emotions,” said Taylor, “and her frustration when things didn’t go right.”

“And I totally got Matt,” said Timmy. “Also, the elements that Jamie and Matt were working on are totally realistic.  Trying to get the split double twist fully rotated, and her back arched in the press, are exactly what skaters at my level are working on . . . I feel like she [the author] really understands some of the struggles skaters go through.”

Timmy and Taylor skated together for five years.  Although they’re no longer a team, I had a chance to talk to them earlier when they still were.  At that time, I asked them if they had anything in common with Pairs on Ice’s Jamie and Matt.  For example, did they ever fight? They both laughed and said “sure.”

“I could identify with the icy glares Matt sent,” Taylor said, a big grin on her face. But unlike Jamie and Matt, who continue bickering off the ice, Timmy and Taylor said they managed to keep their disagreements on the rink. 

“We could have a terrible practice, bomb everything, but off the ice, we were fine,” explained Timmy.

Thinking about Jamie and Matt’s first competition, where they fell on the platter lift, I wondered if Timmy and Taylor ever had a disastrous program.

They looked at each other, then burst out laughing.  “Mama Mia!” they said at the same time.  “We forgot the program!” added Taylor.  “Timmy would whisper what we should do, like ‘do a spin.’”

“The audience thought it was the program,” Timmy said as they laughed again.  “But our coach was not amused.”

I had a great time talking to Timmy and Taylor.  I look forward to following both of them as they advance in their skating careers.  And . . . I look forward to Pairs on Nationals being available to all my readers.

Two Timely Books About Women’s Rights

I recently read two books that are very timely after Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton became the first woman about to be nominated for President as a major party candidate.

Both of these books explore the road women have taken over the past fifty years to change the culture and make it possible for Clinton reach this point.  The first is Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirshman.  The book begins with biographies of these first and second women on the Supreme Court.

Did you know, for example, that after Sandra Day O’Connor graduated from Stanford Law School in 1951 and looked for a job, she was flatly told that law firms didn’t hire women lawyers?  One firm “kindly” offered to see if they could find her a job as a legal secretary.  And when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a student at Harvard Law School in 1956, she attended a dinner party at which the women students were asked to justify their taking places that men could have had.

All that was legal until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  But it took women challenging discrimination and filing lawsuits to achieve real change.  And it helped to have two women on the Supreme Court.  Sisters in Law shows how these two women, with different backgrounds, different styles, and different philosophies about the law, pulled together and helped advance women’s rights.  The many court cases can be overwhelming, but if you don’t worry about the details, it’s easier––and fascinating!

The other book is Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road.  For anyone over fifty, it’s the history of our time, as society slowly changed.  Steinen writes about her travels, her activism, and what she learned along the way by talking to ordinary people from taxi drivers to waitresses, to activists.  She’s had quite a life and her book is relaxed and conversational.

It’s interesting to note that before her speech on Tuesday, Clinton played a video montage of women who had worked for equal rights and paved the way to her historic win. She also paid tribute to the women who organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s right convention in the United States.

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.

––Althea Gibson

Do you have any favorite books about the road to equal rights for women––or about what still needs to be done?