Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

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Classroom Connections: Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

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genre / form: contemporary verse novel
age range: 10 and up
Joanne Rossmassler Fritz’s website

An insightful exploration of a girl’s inner tickings. 
—Kirkus Reviews 

Maddie’s quiet courage shimmers like the flash of a butterfly’s wing.
—Caroline Starr Rose, author of May B.

A lyrical novel that makes you feel the chill in your bones but also gives you hope and beauty and lightness, like watching Maddie’s beloved butterflies open and soar.
—Kathryn Erskine, National Book Award–winning author of Mockingbird

Today’s post is a full-circle celebration story. Joanne and I have known each other for years from the blogging world. She read May B. when it released — the first verse novel she’d read that she loved so much, she wanted to try to write her own. Joanne began work on her own verse novel and a few years ago sent it to me to critique through my Writing One-to-One editing service. That book sold! It’s a beauty! I got to blurb it, too! Let’s celebrate EVERYWHERE BLUE!

Please tell us about your book.

Everywhere Blue is a novel in verse for middle grade readers, about a 12-year-old girl named Madrigal (nicknamed Maddie) who plays the oboe in her school orchestra, excels at math, and loves everything in its place. 

When Maddie’s older brother vanishes from his college campus, her carefully ordered world falls apart. Nothing will fill the void of her beloved oldest sibling. Drowning in grief and confusion, the family’s musical household falls silent. After her parents fly out to Strum’s college to search for answers, Maddie is left in the care of her sixteen-year-old sister, who seeks solace in rebellion and ignores Maddie. 

Though Maddie is the youngest, she knows Strum better than anyone. He used to confide in her, sharing his fears about the climate crisis and their planet’s future. So, Maddie starts looking for clues: Was Strum unhappy? Were the arguments with their dad getting worse? Or could his disappearance have something to do with those endangered butterflies he loved . . .

Scared and virtually on her own, Maddie picks up the pieces of her family’s fractured lives. Maybe her parents aren’t who she thought they were. Maybe her nervous thoughts and compulsive counting mean she needs help. And maybe finding Strum won’t solve everything–but she knows he’s out there, and she has to try.

What inspired you to write this story?

I played the oboe in school and grew up in a family who listened to classical music. We all played the piano too. I’ve also suffered from anxiety for most of my life (and didn’t seek help for it until I was in my mid-20s, which I don’t recommend doing! If you have issues, please seek help!). 

In 2014, my husband and I went to St. Maarten for a vacation and visited The Butterfly Farm. Seeing those blue morpho butterflies struck me. I never forgot them.

But the similarities end there. 

As I began to write the earliest version of this story in 2015, I realized I needed a conflict. A real-life missing person case inspired me, but to protect the family’s privacy, I’ve changed all the details. 

And of course, the climate crisis is all around us. 

In the end, many different subjects came together and fell into place to create EVERYWHERE BLUE. 

Could you share a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching?

Because it had been decades since I’d played the oboe, I decided to buy a used one on Ebay in 2016 and learn to play it all over again. That was fun, although I didn’t become very good at it. The first time I tried to play a note, no sound came out of the oboe at all! Eventually, I could play a wobbly version of the Duck’s Theme from Peter and the Wolf. Getting the feel of the keys and the reed again brought back a lot of memories, though, which was my goal. However, my second aneurysm rupture in Sept 2017, put a stop to that. I haven’t touched the oboe since.

And I thought I knew a great deal about the climate crisis, but I had to do quite a lot of research. One interesting tidbit I learned was about frozen methane hydrates (sort of like icy cages holding the methane) in the Arctic sea. When I first started researching methane hydrates in 2015, the prevailing theory claimed that warming Arctic seas would soon melt the methane hydrates, spewing methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, worse than carbon dioxide! But by 2017, scientists had realized the frozen hydrates would need centuries of warming to melt and release the methane, not just a few decades. So I deleted any mention of that in the book.

What are some special challenges associated with writing a novel only in verse?

As you know, yourself, Caroline, when writing in verse, authors have many fewer words to work with! It can be a challenge to fit in enough characterization and description in only 25,000 words, instead of 50,000 or more that a prose MG novel might have. I worried that the reader wouldn’t get to know my characters very well, or be able to picture what was happening. The version accepted by Holiday House was 20,000 words and my editor worked with me to add 5000 more.

Another special challenge with this particular verse novel was the character of Strum, the older brother who vanishes. My editor, Sally Morgridge, encouraged me to write more flashback scenes, since the reader only gets to know Strum through the other characters’ memories of him. Her suggestions made the story richer and fuller. Siblings don’t always get along! And before Sally suggested it, I’d never thought of adding a few poems to show that Strum and Maddie didn’t always have a special bond, especially when Maddie was little. I hope Strum comes to life as much as the other characters do!

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?

Everywhere Blue explores several themes, including mental illness, family issues, and the climate crisis. 

Maddie’s growing awareness of the climate crisis would be a perfect jumping-off place for middle-school students who are learning about it themselves. What can kids themselves do to help our planet? This is addressed in Everywhere Blue. I also mention endangered species, rising seas, and the disparity between the wealthy countries that produce the most carbon and the poorer countries that suffer the most effects.

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Filed Under: authors, books and reading, classroom connections, poetry, teaching, the writing life

A good poem will always stay a little mysterious.

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I think a good poem will always stay a little mysterious. The best writing does. The words that click into place, wrap around something mysterious. They create a shape around which something lives — and they give hints about what that thing is, but do not reveal it fully.
— Aimee Bender

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Filed Under: poetry

Quick Lit: Poetry Edition

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Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Shawn was zipped into a bag
and rolled away, his blood added
to the pavement galaxy of

bubblegum stars. The tape
framed it like it was art. And the next
day, kids would play mummy with it.

Will’s brother, Shawn, was murdered. Will’s certain he knows who did it, too. Will knows the rules: no crying, no snitching, you better seek revenge. He steps into an elevator, ready to find his brother’s killer, but the one-minute ride changes everything.

A Newbery Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a Printz Honor Book, a National Book Award finalist, the winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award, an Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction, the Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner, just to name a few.

This book is gut-wrenching masterpiece. Perfect down to the very last (unforgettable) words.

This Poem Is a Nest by Irene Latham

What Hope Is

a cup
of stars

Irene Latham has taken the concept of found poems and put her own spin on it: She’s written a poem she calls a Nest and then has created Nestlings from it — poems whose words all started in the original poem.

One of the things I love about poetry is its limitation and how that limitation creates so much opportunity. You can see that right here in what Irene’s done. There’s great backmatter to walk teachers, students, and aspiring poets through creating their own Nestlings, too. A Kirkus Reviews Best Book, an NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Notable Poetry Book.

I adore Irene. She is a talent and a generous soul, and I feel like she’s out there doing bookish things no one else is. If you haven’t read Irene’s work, please remedy that now!

New and Selected Poems, Volume One by Mary Oliver

The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I’ve committed to reading poetry every night this year, and I started with New and Selected Poems. It’s got the poems most of us think of when we think of Mary Oliver — “When Death Comes,” “The Summer Day,” and “Wild Geese” (or at least the poems I think of!) and many more that were new to me. I love her reverence for nature and keen observation on what it means to be a person. Little lines jumped out at me, like these:

how the mind clings to the roads it knows, rushing
through crossroads, sticking

like lint to the familiar.

and

Who ever made music of a mild day?

Alone by Megan E. Freeman

When last year I learned a middle-grade verse novel about a girl surviving on her own was releasing in 2021, I immediately hunted down the details and contacted the book’s author, Megan E. Freeman. I had to have her on the blog! Regular readers here will remember her post from February.

Thirteen-year-old Maddie wakes up to discover the rest of her town has been evacuated in the night, and she’s been left to fend for herself. Certain the others will soon return, Maddie copes with caring for herself, faces numerous disasters and challenges, and clings to hope, trying to make sense of her “wild and precious life” (there’s that Mary Oliver again).

Could my life be any wilder?
Or more precious?

Thought provoking and courageous.

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Filed Under: books and reading, poetry

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