Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

The Notebook Series: A Race Around the World

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I keep a notebook for each book I write. I thought it might be fun to share some of those pages with readers through a series of posts. Today’s post, the sixth in the series, will focus on my third picture book, A Race Around the World: The True Story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.

A confession: most of the work I did for this book didn’t end up in these notebook pages.

Most of it ended up here, on an enormous chart I hung on my wall.

This chart was the simplified, at-a-glance version of the more detailed copy I kept on my computer.

Long-time readers here might remember I grew up with my own Nellie Bly book. As I started my research, I wasn’t sure where my story would land, but I knew I wanted to write about Nellie. When I decided to focus on her around-the-world race (for weeks she had no idea she was in competition against rival lady journalist Elizabeth Bisland), it was crucial I knew where each woman was each day of her journey. This chart helped me keep track of weather and steamships, train routes and landmarks, delays and adventures and mishaps. It helped me see, for example, that the day Nellie, in Hong Kong, learned she wasn’t just racing against time but also Elizabeth (day 39, if you’re curious) was the same day Elizabeth, in Singapore, was convinced she’d be a tiger’s dinner.

The chart helped me track each woman’s highs and lows and compare and contrast their different experiences. I shared it with my editor who shared it with my illustrator. Below you see Nellie in Ceylon, where she savored the setting and her fortuitous speed (but eventually became frustrated and headachey) contrasted with Elizabeth’s wanderings in Japan, a place where she wished she could linger.

I don’t know if I would have been able to see the story’s big picture as well as all its moving parts if it hadn’t been for this approach.

While working on this book, I came across a Nellie quote that fit her journey to a tee and paralleled my own writing experience: Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything. Thank you, Nellie and Elizabeth, for your brave, bold energy! I’m so glad I’ve gotten to share your adventures with a new generation of readers.

Read the post about May B. here.
Read about Over in the Wetlands here.
Read about Blue Birds here.
Read about Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine here.
Read about Ride On, Will Cody! here.

The Notebook Series: Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine

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I keep a notebook for each book I write. I thought it might be fun to share some of those pages with readers through a series of posts. Today’s post, the fourth in the series, will focus on my third novel, Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine.

I love this notebook! It’s my favorite of all I’ve kept so far (a gift from fellow author Sonia Gensler) and even inspired two different poems — “Ode to a Research Notebook,” which is still the most satisfying blog post I’ve ever written, and “Oh, Notebook Mine” (just realized that should be “O Notebook Mine” — oh well), which I sold to the SCBWI Bulletin and was inspired by the first poem.

Jasper was tricky in that it was the first book I wrote where there were mass quantities of information I could delve into. To this day, this is the book I researched most thoroughly. It was also the first book where I visited the place I was writing about (see evidence above of my day in Skagway, Alaska).

It took me a while to decide where Jasper was from. Would he have grown up on a claim outside Alaska’s Circle City, or one near Forty Mile, the oldest town in Canada’s Yukon Territory?

Or would he have lived much farther away, somewhere like Kirkland, Washington?

Below is a sunrise / sunset chart for various places Jasper stayed and information on the real “One-Eyed Riley,” a name too fun to pass up!

Here’s a little pep talk I found that I’d written to myself. It’s kind of corny, but it’s also a great metaphor for writing this novel:

Like the Stampeders wandering toward a destination that sometimes proved insurmountable, elusive, and far, far out of reach, I will push on with a story that has no plot as of yet, I will learn on the journey, change course when needed, [and] keep moving toward the gold — a complete manuscript I can somehow, someway, someday work with!

One of the most interesting bits of research I did was reading Stephen Bramucci‘s thesis, Huck’s Legacy: The Complex Nature of the Humorous, First-Person Storyteller. (Jasper’s character was inspired by Huckleberry Finn.) Those of you who’ve read the book: do you see parallels between the two?

Here I am trying to piece together the clues to One-Eyed Riley’s mine.

Looking back at this notebook has reminded me how proud I am of the work I did. Jasper‘s a good one! If you haven’t read his story yet, I encourage you to pick up a copy.

Read the post about May B. here.
Read about Over in the Wetlands here.
Read about Blue Birds here.

The Notebook Series: Blue Birds

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I keep a notebook for each book I write. I thought it might be fun to share some of those pages with readers through a series of posts. Today’s post, the third in the series, will focus on my second verse novel, Blue Birds.

Twenty years before Jamestown, another English settlement tried to take root in Virginia and failed. This colony of 117 men, women, and children, started on Roanoke island, 150 miles southeast of Jamestown. All we know about the colony and its inhabitants took place over a five-week period in the summer of 1587. 

The colonists had been promised land in the Chesapeake Bay, perhaps not far from the place that eventually became Jamestown. But throughout the voyage, their leader, Governor John White, fought constantly with ship captain Simon Ferdinando. By the time they arrived in Virginia, Ferdinando was done. He left the colonists at Roanoke, refusing to take them any farther.

This was not the first time the English had visited Roanoke. Explorers had come to the island in 1584, and interactions with the Native population had been positive then. But by the time the colonists arrived in 1587, the English were no longer welcome. Those intervening years included the burning of a Native village because of a missing silver cup, the Roanoke’s growing frustration as English soldiers who’d built a fort on their island insisted the tribe provide for them, and English diseases that decimated many of the Native peoples. Then escalating mistrust between the Roanoke and English led to English leader Ralph Lane’s pre-emptive attack on the tribe, killing Wingina, the Roanoke chief. When, days later, the English left, they knew there was no chance at reconciliation.

The colonists who arrived in 1587 knew nothing of those intervening years. The stage was set for tragedy, and tragic things happened on both sides. I wanted to show this historical truth in Blue Birds, but I also wanted to breathe into the history my own version of hope: Two imaginary girls (Alis, who is English, and Kimi, who is Roanoke) destined to be enemies but choosing friendship instead.

17 English women and 11 boys made the journey to Roanoke. No young girls where on the 1587 manifest. But with both the Dare and Harvie families having babies a few days apart, adding Alis to the Harvie family felt practical. She could serve as a nursemaid to both children.

This was an interesting discovering. Early attempts at a poem in Kimi’s voice…

…and its final form in the book.

The poems in Blue Birds are narrated three ways — poems only in Alis’s point of view, poems only from Kimi’s point of view, and poems told in both girls’ voices. As the book progressed and changed, I made a number of “quilt charts” to help me see how that narration played out. Notice the book’s early name was Secret Sharer, a title I’m still partial to.

A silly aside: Of all my books, none has influenced my office space more than Blue Birds! Below is a piece of fabric I drape over a chair the dog likes to lounge in.

Read the post about May B. here.
Read about Over in the Wetlands here.