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A Personal Letter from Lois Lowry (author of The Giver)
Dear Reader -
When I was young, I thought that all writers were creatures with mythical status: unavailable, inaccessible, perhaps dead. It never occurred to me to conceive of them as real human beings, in a house somewhere, drinking coffee, using a dictionary, making typing errors, chewing on a pencil eraser, twisting a strand of hair (or stroking a beard) as they thought of the next sentence.
Imaginative though I was as a kid, I never pictured a mailman knocking at the door of a writer and saying something mundane like, "Lots of mail from your fans today." Nor could I envision the writer opening a letter, reading a letter, or chuckling or weeping at a letter from a person like me.
Yet here I sit today, chewing on a strand of hair while I ponder a sentence, and on my desk is a stack of mail from readers who realize that I am no farther away from them than a first-class stamp. I wish I were young again, with a favorite book by my side and a pen and paper in my hand.
Dear Mary Jemison, I just read a book that you wrote. It is called Indian Captive. The girl in it, Mary, had hair the same light color as mine, and so the Indians called her "Corn Tassel." Now I sometimes think of myself as Corn Tassel and I try to be as brave as she was/ I don't tell anybody about that because they would laugh. But I think you would understand.
That's a letter I would have written when I was nine. At ten, I would have written to a woman named Betty Smith, to thank her for creating a little girl named Francie Nolan in a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She was my best friend when we were both in sixth grade, though her life in the boisterous immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn seemed infinitely more exciting and dangerous than mine in a Pennsylvania college town. I envied Francie her raucous surroundings, shared her most private fears and worries, and have remembered her with love for almost fifty years.
When I was eleven, I met a boy named Jody Baxter and learned all there was to know about grief.
Dear Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, I have never lived in the South. I have never been poor. I have never been a boy. But when I read The Yearling, I understood Jody, and I understood how he felt when his pet fawn had to be killed because it ate crops. I had to give my dog Punky away because he bit my little brother. I know Punky didn't mean to. Now my heart is broken. You and Jody know how that feels.
Dear Mr. Flaubert, I would have written when I was fifteen and felt that my life was as dull and unrewarding as Emma Bovary's. At sixteen making acquaintance with Holden Caufield, my letter would have been an ongoing, slightly sardonic thank-you to the author, Mr. Salinger.
Somehow the communications I actually did put on paper never amounted to more than short thank-you notes to great-aunts and grandparents after Christmas. The sweater fits perfectly and will look nice with my new gray skirt. There had never been the underlying level of communication that would have enabled me to speak the real truth.
The sweater fits just fine but, oh, Aunt Grace, I wish and I wonder if I could ever be pretty wearing it, and whether boys will ever like me, and I know you will understand...
No. One can't write such things to a person who will be sitting across the dinner table from you on Sunday, suggesting another helping of peas. Privacy is required. Distance. And a different kind of gift for which to say thank you.
Of course, many authors are, in fact, dead. They are not drinking coffee, chewing on a pencil stub, or stroking their beards - not in this world, at least. Yet how alive they are - Anne Frank, Malcolm X, John Steinbeck, and others - how accessible, how available, to each young reader. What a gift they bring, author and reader, to each other.
Here's another unfinished letter from me to someone who changed my life:
Dear Harper Lee. Thank you for writing To Kill a Mockingbird. I became Scout when I read the book and I have been Scout ever since. She (and you) taught me about innocence and honor. Thank you for never writing another book about her and her brother.
I have grandchildren now. I can watch with delight as they turn pages that invite them into the lives of Scout, Jody, Corn-Tassel, Holden, and others I have never met. But I can't participate in their friendships between writer and reader. Those are private.
The phrase "Dear Author" is not just a simple formal salutation. It's a wish that touches on a love affair. Listen to it with envy and with awe.
Click HERE to finish this activity.
Dear Reader -
When I was young, I thought that all writers were creatures with mythical status: unavailable, inaccessible, perhaps dead. It never occurred to me to conceive of them as real human beings, in a house somewhere, drinking coffee, using a dictionary, making typing errors, chewing on a pencil eraser, twisting a strand of hair (or stroking a beard) as they thought of the next sentence.
Imaginative though I was as a kid, I never pictured a mailman knocking at the door of a writer and saying something mundane like, "Lots of mail from your fans today." Nor could I envision the writer opening a letter, reading a letter, or chuckling or weeping at a letter from a person like me.
Yet here I sit today, chewing on a strand of hair while I ponder a sentence, and on my desk is a stack of mail from readers who realize that I am no farther away from them than a first-class stamp. I wish I were young again, with a favorite book by my side and a pen and paper in my hand.
Dear Mary Jemison, I just read a book that you wrote. It is called Indian Captive. The girl in it, Mary, had hair the same light color as mine, and so the Indians called her "Corn Tassel." Now I sometimes think of myself as Corn Tassel and I try to be as brave as she was/ I don't tell anybody about that because they would laugh. But I think you would understand.
That's a letter I would have written when I was nine. At ten, I would have written to a woman named Betty Smith, to thank her for creating a little girl named Francie Nolan in a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She was my best friend when we were both in sixth grade, though her life in the boisterous immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn seemed infinitely more exciting and dangerous than mine in a Pennsylvania college town. I envied Francie her raucous surroundings, shared her most private fears and worries, and have remembered her with love for almost fifty years.
When I was eleven, I met a boy named Jody Baxter and learned all there was to know about grief.
Dear Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, I have never lived in the South. I have never been poor. I have never been a boy. But when I read The Yearling, I understood Jody, and I understood how he felt when his pet fawn had to be killed because it ate crops. I had to give my dog Punky away because he bit my little brother. I know Punky didn't mean to. Now my heart is broken. You and Jody know how that feels.
Dear Mr. Flaubert, I would have written when I was fifteen and felt that my life was as dull and unrewarding as Emma Bovary's. At sixteen making acquaintance with Holden Caufield, my letter would have been an ongoing, slightly sardonic thank-you to the author, Mr. Salinger.
Somehow the communications I actually did put on paper never amounted to more than short thank-you notes to great-aunts and grandparents after Christmas. The sweater fits perfectly and will look nice with my new gray skirt. There had never been the underlying level of communication that would have enabled me to speak the real truth.
The sweater fits just fine but, oh, Aunt Grace, I wish and I wonder if I could ever be pretty wearing it, and whether boys will ever like me, and I know you will understand...
No. One can't write such things to a person who will be sitting across the dinner table from you on Sunday, suggesting another helping of peas. Privacy is required. Distance. And a different kind of gift for which to say thank you.
Of course, many authors are, in fact, dead. They are not drinking coffee, chewing on a pencil stub, or stroking their beards - not in this world, at least. Yet how alive they are - Anne Frank, Malcolm X, John Steinbeck, and others - how accessible, how available, to each young reader. What a gift they bring, author and reader, to each other.
Here's another unfinished letter from me to someone who changed my life:
Dear Harper Lee. Thank you for writing To Kill a Mockingbird. I became Scout when I read the book and I have been Scout ever since. She (and you) taught me about innocence and honor. Thank you for never writing another book about her and her brother.
I have grandchildren now. I can watch with delight as they turn pages that invite them into the lives of Scout, Jody, Corn-Tassel, Holden, and others I have never met. But I can't participate in their friendships between writer and reader. Those are private.
The phrase "Dear Author" is not just a simple formal salutation. It's a wish that touches on a love affair. Listen to it with envy and with awe.
Click HERE to finish this activity.