Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

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Preorder JASPER and / or MIRACULOUS and get some goodies!

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The next two months are hopping over here.

Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine releases in paperback on June 28. Miraculous releases in hardback on July 26.

Here’s a quick description of each:

“Hoping to strike it rich, two brothers set out on a treacherous journey to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush.” School Library Journal calls Jasper a rousing historical adventure.

“A traveling medicine show promises to cure all, but two kids learn it takes more than faith in the miraculous to fix things that are broken.” Kirkus says Miraculous is a deliciously sinister read.

I would love for you to get your hands on these two! Buy a book for yourself or for your classroom. Consider giving them as gifts or donating a copy to a local school or library. The books are intended for readers ten and up. As you might have heard me say before, I write novels for my fifth-grade self, but even so, my adult self is a big fan! I think you will be, too.

As a thank you to those of you who preorder, I’ve come up with some giveaways (even if you ordered months ago). Simply follow this link to the form.

Preorder Jasper or Miraculous and receive a personalized bookplate, a signed bookmark, and three book stickers. Order both and in addition to the above get two Jasper journals.

Click through to get your goodies! Offer closes July 26.

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Filed Under: books and reading, historical fiction, Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine, Miraculous

Miracle cures, art from real life, and the shaking palsy

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April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month, so I thought I’d tell you the story of my character Mr. Ogden, the teacher in Miraculous. Long-time readers (or those of you who know me in real life) might remember my husband, Dan, was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s ten years ago, just a few weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. Early on, Dan’s neurologist asked how we were handling his diagnosis at home. We told her we’d been as open as possible with our boys (who were nine and eleven at the time). We told them, as the doctor had said, that Parkinson’s wasn’t a disease someone died from but something they lived with. We said we didn’t know what the future would look like, but that Dad would get worse as the years passed. Most importantly, we told them it was okay to feel worried or confused or mad or scared or embarrassed, that those were normal feelings and they could talk to us and ask questions any time they needed to. We talked to their teachers, too, to let them know what was going on at home and asked them to be in touch if they saw any changes in our boys.

Good, Dan’s neurologist said, because I once had an early-onset patient who decided he’d hide his disease from his children.

Friends, this has stuck with me for years. What would make someone feel this was the best (or maybe their only) option? How could someone hide a condition where their body worked to betray them daily? Was it shame? A need not to appear weak? Something else entirely? The whole thing was heartbreaking.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, that story planted the seed for my character Walter Ogden.

Sometimes readers ask me if I take people I know in real life and put them in books. I don’t. I wouldn’t know how to do that, exactly. I don’t think I’d want to, either. (It feels a little icky.) But I have built a character based on this passing mention from my husband’s neurologist. Perhaps that’s the same thing?

A charlatan is bent on deceiving others for his personal gain. A charlatan selling a cure-all tonic plays to customers who feel needy or weak. The thing about writing a book with a charlatan and a cure-all tonic is there must be characters desperate to change and willing to try anything.

I didn’t know Mr. Ogden’s background going into the story. All I knew was he was a young man, a good teacher devoted to his students who had grown up in Oakdale and dreamed as a boy of teaching in the school where he’d once been a student. I knew that when whispers of Dr. Kingsbury’s arrival made it into the schoolhouse, Mr. Ogden was so surprised and distracted he ended school early for the day.

But why?

When I remembered the father who fought to hide his Parkinson’s diagnosis from his children, it all came together for me. Mr. Ogden has the shaking palsy (as Parkinson’s was called at the time). He’s convinced he’ll lose his job if anyone notices, as the last teacher was asked to leave when he developed a chronic illness. Mr. Odgen is worried that will be his future, too, so he sets all his hope on Dr. Kingsbury’s miracle cure.

I love this character. He feels very real to me. And I hope when you read Miraculous three months from now (you’ve preordered, haven’t you?!) you’ll remember how authors take bits and pieces of the world — experiences and questions and memories and curiosities — and use them to craft something entirely new. I often say writing is my way to make sense of the world, and writing Mr. Ogden’s story was particularly dear to me.

I hope in reading this book kids ultimately see there is no shame in disability, that a person who has physically changed has not had their humanity diminished.

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Filed Under: books and reading, family, home, Miraculous, the writing life

Miraculous: Pass Pages

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Last month I worked on first pass pages, the first time an author sees her book looking bookish and the last time (usually!) she can make corrections. That first glimpse of the title page is always special.

I had read through the draft after turning in copy edits and found some things that needed changing. Some were timeline issues. Others were matters of repetition or word choice. Here’s my favorite from the list: page 25: Miss Moore catches her breath. Page 37: Jack catches his breath. Page 51: Cora catches her breath. Lameness follows! Page 144: Cora let out a breath. “It’s Dr. Kingsbury!” I only let one person catch their breath in the end, and I (hope) I fixed Cora’s weird breathing into something more believable. You’ll have to see if you agree!

In the document itself, there are comments from the proofreader and my editor. Everyone is on the search for various things. The proofreader is looking for grammatical errors, repetition, stacked hyphens, font inconsistencies, and the like. My editor is checking one more time for continuity within the story itself. She found some really good things. For example, in one chapter, she felt the motivation for a character’s particular action wouldn’t be triggered by A but by B. She was right. That meant some rearranging and rewriting. The chapter’s now stronger for it.

This is one of Dr. Kingsbury’s handbills. I’m showing you because it’s fun.

I’m so glad I caught the error above. Though the book had been through multiple readings at this point, somehow no one noticed (including the author!) that when I’d changed the name of a park from Bayberry to City I’d neglected to alter the title of this newspaper clipping. Oops. Thankfully this time through I found it.

How is it that things like this happen? How is it errors even sometimes slip into finished books with multiple readers and multiple reads? The answer is easy. We’re human.

This was a fun surprise I found at the end — excerpts from Blue Birds and Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine! I’ve never had anything like that before included in one of my books. I’ve heard people describe a new book as a calling card for an author’s backlist titles, and in this case, Miraculous really is.

This week, Miraculous went through a second round of pass pages with very minimal alterations on my end. They were things like cutting a redundant sentence, correcting the changed last name of a character, etc. The proofreader was still busy finding places where apostrophes needed to be changed from flat to curved and other minor details like that. It was fun to get a final read through with very little at stake on my end. Truly a chance to see the story as it stands while checking for any last inconsistencies, but mainly a celebratory reading where I could acknowledge my many years of hard work!

I’m turning in my second pass today. Then the book goes out to reviewers and early readers as digital ARCs (advance reader copies). Miraculous will be released July 26. Make sure to preorder a copy!

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Filed Under: Miraculous, publication, the writing life

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