Wednesday, December 01, 2010

CFBA: Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace & Mitali Perkins

Song Stuck on the Brain: Pat-A-Pan by David Archuleta. My new fav Christmas song.









This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing:


Emily of Deep Valley

Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (October 12, 2010)


by

Mitali Perkins


and






MY TAKE:


How did I miss these books growing up? I read all the great classics from the original Nancy Drew to Mary Poppins. Little House on the Prairie to Pippi Longstockings. I devoured the entire young adult and middle grade reader section in my town's library. I'm glad that I was given a second chance to meet Emily. Maud Hart Lovelace was a great writer. I enjoy her style and characters. It's not just a modern author's look at history. It's a fun peek into the past with authenticity that can't be created from our day and age's research. So much fun. I look forward to reading more.



ABOUT THE BOOK:



Often cited as Maud Hart Lovelace’s (of Betsy-Tacy fame) best novel, Emily of Deep Valley is now back in print, with a new foreword by acclaimed young adult author Mitali Perkins and new archival material about the characters’ real lives.

Emily Webster, an orphan living with her grandfather, is not like the other girls her age in Deep Valley, Minnesota. The gulf between Emily and her classmates widens even more when they graduate from Deep Valley High School in 1912. Emily longs to go off to college with everyone else, but she can’t leave her grandfather. Emily resigns herself to facing a “lost winter,” but soon decides to stop feeling sorry for herself. And with a new program of study, a growing interest in the Syrian community, and a handsome new teacher at the high school to fill her days, Emily gains more than she ever dreamed...

In addition to her beloved Betsy-Tacy books, Maud Hart Lovelace wrote three more stories set in the fictional town of Deep Valley: Winona’s Pony Cart, Carney’s House Party and Emily of Deep Valley. Longtime fans and new readers alike will be delighted to find the Deep Valley books available again for the first time in many years.

If you would like to browse inside Emily of Deep Valley, go HERE.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

A word from Mitali: Who In The World Is Mitali Perkins?

That's a good question. I've been trying to figure it out myself, spending most of my life crossing borders.

I was born Mitali Bose in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, and always tried to live up to my name—which means “friendly” in the Bangla language. I had to! Because my family moved so much, it was the only way I could make new friends.

By the time I was 11, I'd lived in Ghana, Cameroon, London, New York and Mexico before settling in California just in time for middle school. Yep, I was the new kid again, in seventh grade, the year everybody barely makes it through.

My biggest lifeline during those early years was story. Books were my rock, my stability, my safe place as I navigated the border between California suburbia and the Bengali culture of my traditional home.

After studying political science at Stanford and public policy at U.C. Berkeley, I taught in middle school, high school and college. When I began to write fiction, my protagonists were often—not surprisingly—strong female characters trying to bridge different cultures.

Mitali Perkins is the author of several books for young people, including SECRET KEEPER (Random House), MONSOON SUMMER (Random House), RICKSHAW GIRL (Charlesbridge), and the FIRST DAUGHTER books (Dutton).


Maud Hart Lovelace was born on April 25, 1892 in Mankato, Minnesota. She was the middle of three children born to Thomas and Stella (Palmer) Hart. Her sister Kathleen was three years older, and her sister Helen was six years younger. “That dear family�? was the model for the fictional Ray family.


Maud’s birthplace was a small house on a hilly residential street several blocks above Mankato’s center business district. The street, Center Street, dead-ended at one of the town’s many hills. When Maud was a few months old the Hart family moved two blocks up the street to 333 Center. Shortly before Maud’s fifth birthday a “large merry Irish family�? moved into the house directly across the street. Among its many children was a girl Maud’s age, Frances, nicknamed Bick, who was to be Maud’s best friend and the model for Tacy Kelly. Tib’s character was based on another playmate, Marjorie (Midge) Gerlach, who lived nearby in a large house designed by her architect father. Maud, Bick, and Midge became lifelong friends. Maud once stated that the three couldn’t have been closer if they’d been sisters.

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