This Is the Story of You: Teacher Guide

Jaime Wong of Chronicle Books works tirelessly on the teacher guides for author books, and I learn so much from her when I read them.

She's just shared this one with me.

(Link)

I'm grateful for her curious mind, and her reach.

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Elena Vanishing/Hope and Other Luxuries/Elena and Clare B. Dunkle (Chronicle Books): Reflections

A few years ago, in a novel called The Heart Is Not a Size, I wrote of Juarez, of a squatter's village, and of two best friends, Georgia and Riley, each of them navigating this foreign terrain while also navigating secrets. Georgia was privately negotiating anxiety attacks. Riley was declaring to anyone who asked (and Georgia, seemingly unwisely, had begun to ask) that she did not—absolutely did not—have an eating disorder, that she was not starving herself.

I wrote the book and created the characters because I understood both conditions all too well.

This coming spring, Chronicle Books will publish two companion books—true mother-daughter stories—about a young woman's struggle to stop hearing the hectoring internal voices that left her body starving, her heart working too hard, and her future imperiled. Calories were Elena's enemies. A bite of toast was a grave mistake. Numbers were everything. And Elena Dunkle was, in too many terrible ways, dying.

In and out of hospitals. In and out of rehab. In and out of conversations with the family who loved her and the specialists who seemed incapable of hushing the terrible voices. Elena Vanishing is grounded in extraordinary medical records, journals, and conversations. It is told in a high-velocity, present-tense voice. We see Elena's world. We hear the voices in her head. We rush headlong into an illness that may have a name but still remains, for every person afflicted, a mystery. Where does anorexia begin? How is it finally controlled? Where is the key that fits the lock, that stops time from running out?

You will read, your heart pounding. You will remember a version of someone you were, or someone you loved, or love still.

Ultimately, as Clare reminds the reader in an introductory letter, "this isn't the story of anorexia nervosa. It's the story of a person. It's the story of Elena Dunkle, a remarkable young woman who fights her demons with grit and determination. It's the story of her battle to overcome trauma, to overcome prejudice, but most of all, to overcome that powerful destructive force, the inner critic who whispers to us about our greatest fears."

There is depth, beauty, horror, and beauty again in Elena Vanishing. You'll read it, as I did, in a single day. You will think not just about the story that got made, but the story as it was being made—this mother, this daughter, remembering together, writing together, reaching out to the world together.

And when you are done there is a book called Hope and Other Luxuries to turn to—Clare Dunkle's memoir about loving this vanishing daughter of hers. Both books are being released by Chronicle next May. Both were edited by Ginee Seo, who poured her heart into these true stories and, once again (in Chronicle fashion), broke new ground by deciding to publish both sides of a story about an illness that affects millions of people around the world.

I own, it seems, the first two signed ARCs of both books, for I met Clare and Elena at the Chronicle booth at NCTE yesterday morning. I would like to thank Chronicle, as I close this blog, for including me at this event, for making such a home for me, for extending your friendship so warmly. Ginee Seo, Sally Kim, Jaime Wong—you threw one heck of a party, you look so good surrounded by Chronicle blue, and I am so proud to be a Chronicle author (and a Tamra Tuller writer).

Deepest thanks to those who stopped by to say hello, who stood in line for One Thing Stolen, who came and surprised, who spoke with me over a delicious meal. Twenty-four hours at the National Harbor. Not to be forgotten. Nor are these two books, by a mother and daughter.

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Celebrating two new young adult Chronicle Books: "The Revelations of Louisa May" and "The Water and the Wind"

This coming Friday and Saturday I'll be in Washington, DC, for the NCTE, signing and talking about One Thing Stolen.

But the best part of events such as these is the conversations one has with other authors and educators. With people who get books, and love them.

A few days ago, Jaime Wong, the lovely marketing coordinator for Chronicle Books/Children's, sent copies of two books by the authors with whom I'll be sharing a Friday evening meal (alongside educators and the Chronicle team).

The first, by Michaela MacColl (Always Emily, Nobody's Secret, Prisoners in the Palace), is a mystery called the Revelation of Louisa May. Michaela, who I first met in Boston last year, specializes in the "intertwining of the facts of a beloved author's real life with a suspenseful fictional tale." Here we meet the great Louisa May Alcott as a teen—her principled family struggling to make ends meet, her home a station stop for runaway slaves, and Emerson and Thoreau counted among neighbors and friends. Louisa has a lot on her hands when we first meet her, and there will be plenty of excitement ahead, as Louisa's mother leaves for a stint at paying work, a runaway is kept hidden in the house, a slave catcher comes to town, and a mystery erupts. There's a reason these Michaela books are so popular—just the right amount of history, just the right amount of maybe, and an intriguing historical lesson for teens.

The second book in my package is by the debut author K.E. Ormsbee. Called The Water and the Wild, it is graced with a most gorgeous illustrated cover by Elsa Mora. It is a charming fantasy that takes its heroine down through the roots of apple tree to another world "in pursuit of the impossible: a cure for the incurable, a use for the useless, and protection against the pain of loss." The language here beguiles:

Lottie, like any red-blooded girl, had been taught to get out of the way of things like speeding convertibles and masked men with guns, but she had never expected to have a run-in with a homicidal tree. More than that, and what confused Lottie the most in the split-second she had to realize that she was about to get smashed to smithereens, was that she had not seen any lightning. If she was going to be killed by a falling tree, Lottie thought in that last moment of cognizance, she wished it would have at least had the decency to get struck by lightning first. That would have been a much more dramatic way to go.

Look for both these books from Chronicle Books next April.

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