Jumpstart’s Read for the Record

I’m reading from The Last Mapmaker and in this scene the main character Sai is just learning that there is this expedition that’s being planned. So Sai is an apprentice to a map maker and he’s been acting funny. Everyone in the town has been acting funny, they’re whispering about things. She can’t figure out what it’s about. So she’s gotten her hand on a newspaper and she finds a proclamation, a royal proclamation printed in the newspaper and it says her Royal Majesty Queen Siripatra announces the expedition prize adventure to extend the boundaries and glory of the kingdom of Mangkon. The queen has commissioned her Royal Navy’s finest ships for the expeditions captained by the heroes of the longest war. These ships shall sail for all corners of the globe to claim new lands in her name. Her Royal Majesty has directed four of her best captains to set their sights for the deepest sea in the north, the lands east of the hinder range west past Rotan.

And to break the 50th parallel in the South, each captain who returns with a map of their discoveries shall be awarded a purse of 100,000 leks. So leks is their currency. 100,000 leks. My head swam at the number. Mangkon must have done better in the war than I thought. I knew the names of those destinations from the maps hanging in our shop. Master Paiyoon had charted those places, but only barely. It was if the queen were sending her ships out to the very borders of his maps and ordering them to peak past the edges of the paper. There was no mention in the newspaper of the Sandlands, despite what the people in the street were saying. And why would there be that place was a myth. I combed through my memory for the few scraps of stories I had heard about it. It was a continent floating on the back of a giant whale in the deep southern seas. Or was it a group of islands rooted to the ocean floor like a manor tree. It was covered in icy mountains or was it smothered by steamy jungle, home to spirits, home to dragons. So these are all the things she’s thinking about and she’s doesn’t know it yet. But here’s a spoiler, she’s going to end up on one of those expeditions.

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My first children’s picture book, Acoustic Rooster, and I wrote this in Tuscany on a writing fellowship. Yeah. It brings back memories. Acoustic Rooster sat outside strumming his bass guitar. He practiced jazz all summer long so he could be a star.

Now every year about this time farmer announced his plan to hold a barnyard talent show and find the farm’s best band. You know, in the original illustrations there was a farmer here and I told him — I said we should take it out. This is a book of animals. I want no humans in the book. Acoustic Rooster asked to join Thelonius Monkey’s crew, but farmer’s rules prevented that because they lived at the zoo.

I still get a big kick out of this book. This is like six years old. Mules Davis led an orchestra that featured three cool cats. Ella Fitzgerald had a trio, but Rooster couldn’t scat. Rooster was feeling kind of blue, then he heard a baby grand. I have a great idea he said. I’ll state my own jazz band. And so here’s the idea of saying yes to yourself or trying to figure out how to sort of live your passion. I guess this book is sort of a metaphor on my life. Yeah. And you’ll have to read the rest of it to find out what happens in the talent show.

Hi. My name is Carmen Agra Deedy and this is my newest book, The Rooster Who Would Not be Quiet! I’m going to read a little bit of it to you today.

“Once there was a village where the streets rang with song from morning til night. Dogs arooo, bayed, mothers, ohhh, choo, bochoo, crooned, engines brrrmmm, brrrmmm, hummed, fountains warbled and everybody sang in the shower.” La cucaracha, la cucaracha. (Spanish) Wow.

“For everyone and everything in this village had a song to sing. And this made La Paz a very noisy place. It was hard to hear. It was hard to sleep. It was hard to think. And no one knew what to do. So they fired the mayor. Like you do. And now they were a very noisy village without a mayor. So they held an election. Only Don Pepe, promised peace and quiet. He won by a landslide. The next day a very polite law appeared in the village square. No loud singing in public por favor. Things were getting better already.

But more laws soon followed. No loud singing at home. No loud singing. No singing. Basta, quiet already! Until finally the noisy village of La Pass was silent as a tomb, dun dun dun dun. Oh, dear. Even the tea kettles, (whistles), were afraid to whistle. I don’t like this one little bit. Do you?

Some people left the village singing loudly, others stayed behind and learned to, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hum. The rest were just grateful to have a good night’s sleep for crying out loud, which is like singing but not really. Seven very quiet years passed. Then one evening a saucy gallito and his family wondered into the village and roosted in a fragrant mango tree. When the rooster awoke the next morning he did what roosters do, he sang kee-kee-ree-kee.

As his rotten luck would have it, the mango tree grew beneath, oh, no, the cranky mayor’s window, uh oh. ‘You there,’ groused Dom Pepe, ‘no singing, it’s the law. What’s the matter with you?’ ‘Well, that’s a silly law,’ said the merry Gallito. ‘Smell the sweet mango tree. How can I keep from singing?’”

That’s all you get. But children I promise you the rooster will be alright in the end.

Hi, my name is Wendy Shang, and I’ll be reading from my book The Great Wall of Lucy Wu. Regina’s upper lip curved into a sneer. “You are Chinese. You are supposed to like Chinese food,” she hissed. When attractive people make faces like that they look even uglier than normal people would. “I do like Chinese food,” I told her, even though discussing food was making me feel slightly queasy. “There are plenty of dishes from Panda Café that are just fine with me, like their egg drop soup and chicken fried rice.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “That’s not real Chinese food. Panda Café cannot even begin to compare with The Golden Lotus.” “That’s your opinion,” I told her. She sniffed. “It’s an opinion backed by one of the world’s greatest Chinese chefs. When Chef Yi came to my school for the Chinese Culture and Language Society he mentioned The Golden Lotus. I don’t believe he discussed Panda Café.” Regina practically spat out the words Panda Café as if they tasted bad in her mouth.

“Just get over yourself,” I muttered to her. “Girls,” Dad said sharply from the driver’s seat, “Enough.” “You’re a banana, a Twinkie,” Regina whispered. “What are you talking about now?” For a second I thought Regina was telling me to eat something. “You’re yellow on the outside, white on the inside. That’s what you are.” Who did Regina think she was telling me how or how not to be Chinese? I am sure there are people, maybe lots of people in China, who do not love eating pig’s ears and other weird stuff, and no one ever calls them out and tells them they are not Chinese enough.

Hi. It’s Julianne Moore and I just want to say happy, happy birthday to Reading Rockets.

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I tell children that poetry should be fun, if it’s not fun you should be out on the playground playing soccer. But poetry that is fun does not have to be funny.

Poetry that’s fun can be every bit as entertaining if it’s serious. If it — I’m not saying instructs but perhaps tells a story in a way that prose does not succeed in doing. Coleridge said, Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “Prose is words in the best order.”

But he said, “Poetry is the best words in the best order.” And I think that is exactly so.

This poem, I had written it originally for Emmett Till, and my editor said, she thought I should try to do, to do it again, but this time from the point of view of Emmett Till’s mother, and so I have. I don’t know if you can see that, it’s kind of dark but it’s called, there’s Emmett Till’s mother, and the poem is called The Innocent.

And it seemed to me that this poem would take the best form in the sense of a villanelle, a French verse form. The Innocent.

Dark on that Mississippi Delta day my baby Emmett fell so far from grace that justice, what would justice have to say? I taught him not to sass or disobey, they said he shamed a white girl to her face, dark on a Mississippi Delta day.

They beat him bloody, oh they made him pay, they kicked him, shot, then drowned him just in case, and justice could not find the words to say. The quitters — the killers were acquitted by the way. As Southern virtue gussied up in lace, dark on a Mississippi Delta day.

They closed Emmett’s casket to my dismay, seemed like to me it was a hiding place. So Emmett’s momma found the words to say, I laid my bloodied boy, my bloodied boy out on display, but fifty thousand mourners won’t erase dark from that Mississippi Delta day when justice did have one word to say.

So anyway. That’s a serious poem. Half the time when I get up in the morning I’m interested in writing more serious poems, half the time I want to write humorous poems, or nonsense verse. And it just depends upon my mood or it depends upon the collection I’m working on.

So I really can’t say ahead of time until I’m actually in my chair what I’m going to be working on at that particular moment.

I think one of my favorite books is called Swansong, a lot of my friends have done books about dinosaurs and I will never do a book about dinosaurs because other people have done it and I don’t want to do what they do. But I’m fascinated by the subject of extinction, so I did a book called Swansong.

And all of the animals in this book are four hundred, have been extinct less than four hundred years, so obviously no dinosaurs, which went extinct sixty five million years ago. And I had to do research on every single one of them, but it was, I won’t say it was the happiest book I ever did because it was about death, but it was the most fascinating book because of the research.

And how these animals, how the last one died, I always loved telling kids about the passenger pigeon. There was at one time, one out of every two birds in America was a passenger pigeon, there were billions, James J. Audubon once said he saw a flock of them. Three hundred twenty miles long and one mile wide.

It took three days for them to fly over, if you shot a gun in the air you would kill two hundred birds with one shot, if they landed on tree branches, the thick as piano legs they snapped them like twigs. If they landed in fields and flew up again the fields were white with bird droppings.

This is where the idea of stool pigeon came from. They would get one of these birds, I don’t mean to be gross here, they would sew its eyes shut and they would hammer its feet into a piano stool or a tree stump, and the other birds would see it flapping, flapping its wings in pain, they would fly down to inspect, bang, shoot them out of the air.

Out of the billions and billions of these birds the last, the very last passenger pigeon at one o’ clock in the afternoon on September 1st 1914 in the Cincinnati, Ohio Zoo her name was Martha, she was 29 years old, obviously she died from, from either old age or loneliness, or both.

If you ever go to the Cincinnati Zoo you’ll see a huge display of Martha and the passenger pigeon, they’re doing wonderful things with DNA these days but none of these animals: Stellar sea cow, um, the laughing owl, the Arizona cougar, the bally tiger, none of them will ever be coming back again.

And they’re all gone because of the greatest predator on earth, which of course is us, so. That makes I think for a compelling story to fourth and fifth graders who are becoming interested in non-fiction.

You know my poems don’t have a message per say but if they can provide some information to kids in a way that sticks with them, I mean, every time I hear that story or tell it, it’s just not a story I’m ever going to forget.

Yes, this is The Whipping Boy. Let me say first of all, there was very common expression when you (unint.) someone as a whipping boy, that is someone who takes a punishment for something he didn’t do, he’s just the whipping boy.

I didn’t realize there actually had been whipping boys in royal households in the past. And I thought that’s certainly an idea for a story and when it occurred to me at first, I thought it just had the muscle power of picture book story, I couldn’t think it had the importance of a novel which got me into trouble.

But when I let it write itself, out came this short novel. So here she goes. Every so often if I can get some thought on them, I will write little captions and this one is chapter one, in which we observed a hair-raising event, you’ll see.

“The young prince was known here and there and just about everywhere else as Prince Brat, not even black cats would cross his path.” And once I had that line in, I knew I was on my way. One night the king was holding a grand feast, a grand feast. Sneaking around behind the lords and ladies, Prince Brat tied their powdered wigs to the backs of their oak chairs.

Then he hid behind a footman to wait. When the guests stood up to toast the king, their wigs came flying off. The lords clasped their bare heads as if they’d been scalped, the ladies shrieked. Prince Brat, he was never called that to his face of course, tried to keep from laughing.

He had both hands over his mouth, then out it ripped, a cackle of ha-ha-has and ho-has and he-hees. The king spied him and he looked mad enough to spit ink. He gave a furious shout, ‘Fetch the whipping boy!’ Prince Brat knew that he had nothing to fear, he had never been spanked in his life.

He was a prince and it was forbidden to spank, thrash, cut, smack or whip a prince. A common boy was kept in the castle to be punished in his place, the whipping boy. The king’s command traveled like an echo from guard to guard, up the stone stairway to a small chamber in the dreary north tower.

An orphan boy named Jemmy, the son of a rat catcher, roused from his sleep. He’d been dreaming happily of the ragged but carefree life before he’d been plucked from the streets and sewers of the city to serve as royal whipping boy. A guard shook him fully awake.

‘On your feet my boy,’ Jemmy’s eyes blazed up. ‘Ain’t I already been whipped twice today? God, what’s the prince done now?’ ‘Let’s not keep the great folks awaiting lad.’ ‘In the main hall,’ the king said. ‘20 whacks ‘til finally biting back every yelp and cry, the whipping boy received the 20 whacks.

Then the king turned to the prince and let that be a lesson to you. Yes poppa, the prince lowered his head and said… as if to appear humbled and contrite but all the while he was hearing a growing exasperation with his whipping boy. In the tower chamber, the prince fixed him with a scowl.

‘You’re the worst whipping boy I ever had, how come you never bawl?’ ‘Don’t know,’ said Jemmy, with a shrug. ‘A whipping boy is supposed to yell like a struck pig. You dress up… we dress you up fancy and feed you royal, but don’t worry, but it’s no fun if you don’t bawl.’

Jemmy shrugged again, he was determined never to squint a tear for the prince to gloat over. ‘You bellow next time, hear,’ said the prince, ‘or I’ll tell poppa to give you back your rags and kick you back into the streets.’ Jemmy’s spirits soared, much obliged, your royal awfulness he thought.

I’ll take me rags and I’ll be gone in a half blink of an eye.” And that’s the end of the first chapter.

My name is Jacqueline Woodson, and this is Peace, Locomotion which is a sequel to Locomotion, and Locomotion was written entirely in verse. He was learning how to write poetry and tell the story of his life through poetry. Then I decided to write a sequel, and it’s written in letters.

These are letters to his younger sister chronicling the time that they’re separated which is now. They’re living apart, and he’s living with his foster mom and a foster brother named Rodney, and he has a second foster brother who’s fighting in the war. This is a letter to his

Patricia: This book, Goin’ Someplace Special, which was illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, is autobiographical. It’s about when I was growing up in Nashville, and my grandmother and I used to go to a very special place once a week. And to get there we had to go through town and we rode the bus and came back around.

Now this is the South, the Nashville of the segregated South. That was the time when Nashville was segregated based on racial lines. There was so many places that blacks could not go and they had to ride the back of the bus. So when I started out begging my grandmother to let me go downtown by myself, she always said, “No, you have to go with me,” because they didn’t want us to be hurt by those circumstances.

They kind of buffered it with us and so I was not allowed to go, but then one time I asked if I could go and she said, “Okay. I’m going to let you go this one time, but you walk and hold your head up and act like you belong to somebody.” Well, that meant that, you know, I was to behave and that I was to hold my head up and be on my proper behavior.

So when I got on the bus, I had to get on the back of the bus. When I got to Peace Fountain, I couldn’t sit on the park bench there. I was so disappointed when I went past and looked at the hotel and I would have loved to have gone in, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go to the restaurant.

So I was just, you know, discouraged, and so I met a woman there who used to take care of the gardens. She didn’t do it by permission or for money; she just did it because she was there. We used to call her Blooming Mary. And she kind of encouraged me to keep going no matter what. She kind of repeated what my grandmother said. So I’ll pick up the story at that point.

Two blocks later, ‘Tricia Ann came to the Grand Music Palace where a group had gathered for the matinee performance. As the girl approached, a little boy spoke to her, “Howdy! I’m Hickey and I’m six years old today. You coming in?”

Before ‘Tricia Ann could answer, an older girl grabbed his hand. “Hush boy,” she said through clenched teeth. “Colored people can’t come in the front door. They got to go round back and sit up in the buzzard’s roost, don’t you know nothing?” his sister whispered harshly.

Hickey looked at ‘Tricia Ann with wide wondering eyes. “Are you going to sit up there… in the last three rows of the balcony? Well, I wouldn’t sit up there even if watermelons bloomed in January. Besides, I’m going to someplace very, very special,” she answered. And then ‘Tricia Ann asked him to wait.

“I want to go where she’s going,” she heard Hickey say, as his sister pulled him through the door. At the corner, ‘Tricia Ann saw a building rising above all that surrounded it, looking proud in the summer sun. It was much more then bricks and stone; it was an idea.

Mama Frances called it a doorway to freedom. When she looked at it she didn’t feel angry or hurt or embarrassed. At last, ‘Tricia Ann whispered, “I’ve made it to someplace special.” Before bounding up the steps and through the front door, she stopped to look up at the message chiseled in stone across the front face — public library, all are welcome. Someplace special. And I’ve always said those who would have objected to the library being de-segregated didn’t use it that much anyway.

This is a very special book for me. I didn’t want any anger in it. I didn’t want anything to show in it that would be negative. This can be anybody’s special place. I get letters from people who say the library is a safe place for them or that the library was a cool or a warm place for them, that the library was a place where they went and experienced the magic and wonder of going to other lands and seeing other places and experiencing things that were different.

So…for me, it was the doorway to freedom, to free thought when you’re being told, “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.” The library said, “You can, you can, you can, you can,” and I did!

This is my new book, Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek, illustrated by John Hendrix. I’d like to read you a little bit from it. It takes place in Kentucky, 1816.

Now, here’s an old tale of two boys who got themselves into more trouble than bear cubs in a candy store. I like it so well I’ve asked my friend John to help out by drawing some pictures. All stories have a time and place, and this one’s no different. It happened on the other side of yesterday before computers or cars in the year 1816. This green Kentucky valley is our place. Don’t you feel like sticking your toes into that rushing water? That’s Knob Creek.

Life was hard for many folks then — especially those in slavery, and in just a few years, all the cares of America would fall on the shoulders of one tall, thin man. But in 1916, he’s only seven. Here he is fetching wood for his mother. All spring, he’s been helping his father plant corn and pumpkins.

Look, now he’s stopping to watch a wagon rumble by. I daresay you’ve guessed his name, Abraham Lincoln. He’ll grow up to become our 16th president. There’s another boy here, too, sitting on that rock waiting for Abe. That’s Benjamin Austin Gollaher. Austin for short.

Now I can just hear you grumbling, “Who? That feller isn’t in my history book! What do I care?” Well, Austin is Abe’s first friend. He’s three years older and as proud of Abe as a big brother. Abe’s legs were long. His arms were long. Why, even his ears were long Austin would say later. And when it came to being smart, he was way yonder ahead of me. Alright, that’s what we need to begin: a time, a place, and our characters, two boys named Austin and Abe.

This book is a book called Monkey and Me and it’s based on my friend’s daughter who was a really wiggly sort of kid and didn’t like to sit still for reading books. So I made her a book which she could join in with and it’s about this little girl and she’s off out on a day out and she’s having trouble with her tights because I remember from my little girl that little girls have trouble putting their tights on. Big girls sometimes, too.

It’s called Monkey and Me and it starts off… Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went to see, we went to see some… and the girl is doing the action of an animal that she’s going to see. And she went to see some penguins! Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went to see, we went to see some… and she’s hopping across the page, …kangaroos!

Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went to see, we went to see some bats! Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went to see, we went to see some…elephants! And then she’s swinging across the top and all the way through the little toy monkey’s been a little bit miserable because maybe he hasn’t been going to see the right animals or maybe it’s because he’s being dragged upside down a lot.

But on this one he’s starting to look happy and it’s because Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went to see, we went to see some…monkeys! And then by the end of the day, she’s feeling very tired, so it’s Monkey and me, monkey and me, monkey and me, we went zzz… so she’s gone to sleep. And then you can see at the end all the animals also going off home for their tea and to sleep. And that’s the end.

This book is called Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and it was written by me, Mem Fox, and illustrated by the wonderful Helen Oxenbury. And this is how it goes.

There was one little baby who was born far away and another who was born on the very next day. And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes. There was one little baby who was born in a town and another who was wrapped in an eider down.

And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes. There was one little baby who was born in the hills and another who suffered from sneezes and chills. And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes

There was one little baby who was born on the ice and another in a tent who was just as nice. And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes. But then the next baby born was truly divine. A sweet little child who was mine, all mine.

And this little baby, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes and three little kisses on the tip of its nose.

Hello. I’m Emma Walton Hamilton, and I’m gonna be reading an excerpt from a book that I co-wrote with my mother, Julie Andrews Edwards. The book is called The Great American Mousical and it’s a story about theater mice who live and work and perform below the boards of a great Broadway theater and put on their own shows in their own miniature version of the theater downstairs.

Just before this section that I’m about to read to you from, the mice troop have been in rehearsal for a great benefit — their annual gala to help mice in need. It’s called Broadway Airs, and they’ve been rehearsing, but something strange has been happening to the theater and they’re not sure what it means. There’s been sounds and shaking and debris falling, and they’re a little bit concerned about what the ramifications of that might be. So let me begin…

Suddenly, inexplicably, the stage began to shake. A low, menacing rumble came from above and the hanging lamps in the rafters rattled and swung together, their colored lenses breaking into shards. Members of the company screamed and ducked as plaster and glass rained down on stage like a shower. Parents and stage hands ran on to the set and carried children out of harm’s way. Just as suddenly the shaking stopped.

Enoch, the stage manager, rushed out. “Is everyone all right? Anyone hurt?” No one was. Adelaide, the leading lady, said heatedly, “Can anyone explain what that was?” No one could. Emile, the director, called, “I suggest that we go and find out…” but he never finished the sentence for the shaking began again, worse this time. One end of the hanging painted drop broke free and fell at an angle skewering onto the stage, narrowly missing Adelaide. She looked up indignant. “Hey,” she called out to no one in particular. Splinters of wood, dust and debris hurtled into the wings where Wendy was standing.

Curly launched himself in front of her pushing her out of danger in the nick of time. She gasped and looked at him wide-eyes. “Curly, thank you so much. What on earth is happening?” By now, most of the mice were dashing for the stairs leading to the human theater. They streamed down the main corridor where the rumbling noise was even louder and spilled on to the pavement outside the big stage door, tumbling and falling over one another as they skidded to a halt. Maneuvering back and forth in an attempt to park next to the curb was a monster of a machine.

Electric yellow with giant crawler tracks instead of wheels. A cab and a vast crane formed the super structure. Hanging from the crane was a thick chain with a huge, black, concrete ball at the end of it. “What is it? What is it?” The mice children asked, gazing up in awe. Everyone had a question. “What does it do? What is it there for? What can it mean?” Pops, the stage door man held up a paw for silence. “Listen up, folks. Perhaps I can explain.” He told them that as he was leaving the previous evening, he had heard human voices in the main corridor upstairs — a father and his son.

Their conversation didn’t make much sense to him. The father was saying odd things such as, “We own the theater now,” and they talked about a television studio and big bucks. Pops continued, “They used words like demolition and new construction.” Pippin, the apprentice gasped as he remembered the phrase he had heard last night. “They’ll be scurrying soon.” He raised an arm for attention and told the mice of his own experience with the people.

“It must mean that the Sovereign is gonna be torn down to make way for a new building,” he said with horror. “I guess that’s what this huge machine is for.” They all began to speak at once. What would happen to their beautiful, little theater? Would there be enough time to produce the big benefit? Would they all be out of work? What could they possibly do?