Writing and Illustrating

Today, we have Susan Lynn Meyer’s award-winning middle-grade book, A SKY FULL OF SONG, published by Union Square Kids on April 11th, 2023.  

Susan has agreed to send the winner a copy of her book. All you have to do to get in the running is to leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link, and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know what you did to share the good news so I can award you the correct number of tickets. Sharing on Facebook and Twitter and reblogging helps spread the word about a new book. Thanks for helping Susan. 

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BOOK DESCRIPTION:

This heartwarming, beautifully written middle-grade historical novel about an untold American frontier story is destined to be a cherished classic.

North Dakota, 1905

After fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, eleven-year-old Shoshana and her family, Jewish immigrants, start a new life on the prairie. Shoshana takes fierce joy in the wild beauty of the plains and the thrill of forging a new, American identity. But it’s not as simple for her older sister, Libke, who misses their Ukrainian village and doesn’t pick up English as quickly or make new friends as easily. Desperate to fit in, Shoshana finds herself hiding her Jewish identity in the face of prejudice, just as Libke insists they preserve it.

For the first time, Shoshana is at odds with her beloved sister, and has to look deep inside herself to realize that her family’s difference is their greatest strength. By listening to the music that’s lived in her heart all along, Shoshana finds new meaning in the Jewish expression all beginnings are difficult, as well as in the resilience and traditions her people have brought all the way to the North Dakota prairie.

BOOK JOURNEY:

This book began when my brother Steven started doing ancestry research.  He sent us, his five siblings, this astonishing photo (see photo 1).  We were amazed to learn that this family, a father and mother, a baby in a homemade baby buggy, and another young woman, possibly the mother’s sister, posed in front of a dugout in Oklahoma, were our ancestors!  None of us, and none of our five cousins on this side, had ever heard about this part of the family history.

Because I was so astonished, I shared the photo on Facebook with my Facebook friends—and the reactions poured in.  The amazement of my friends was in a way surprising, because, of course, we all know this is part of American history.  (In fact, it seems about 25% of the current American population has homesteading ancestors.). So why were my friends so amazed?  I realized that it was because my friends know I identify as Jewish—although I am of mixed ancestry and this was a non-Jewish branch of the family.

That made me think about how incongruous it is to imagine little Jewish children running around the prairie with kids like Laura and Mary Ingalls, how Jews don’t seem to fit into the American mythology that has built up around the settlement of the prairie.

I began wondering whether any Jews had ever been homesteaders on the prairie.  I began to explore the question, and I quickly learned that a small percentage of Jewish immigrants, drawn by the idea of farming rather than living in cities, had taken advantage of the Homestead Act.  Because Jews arrived relatively late in the homesteading era, most ended up with poor quality land in North and South Dakota. Some also homesteaded on the Canadian prairie.  (See photo 2.) I got very interested in these homesteaders, and I read a lot about them.  I knew there was a novel in there—and eleven-year-old Shoshana, with her many sisters and brother, her love of animals, and her joy in the vast, wild openness of the prairie, came to me as the protagonist.

As I worked on the book, I realized that in a way, my novel is a cross between Sydney Taylor’s All of a Kind Family, about a large Jewish family at the turn of the century in New York City, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie—but with an awareness of the Native people who were living on the prairie before the settlers came.

Some other important energies that fed into the novel were my awe-struck response to the sky over the Great Plains, when I first visited them, my love of the fiction of Willa Cather, and my strong emotional response to Klezmer fiddle music.

And then there’s the large family—five siblings and a mother and father, as well as a dog and a cat, living together in one small dugout!  What would that have been like?  As I imagined it, I absolutely drew on my memories of having grown up in a family of six children.  Are there some particular memories that made their way into the novel?  Well, I’ll just say I still have a scar on my left elbow from the childhood incident that is shaped, in the novel, into Libke’s competition with her brother Anshel in the Rabbi Hillel competition!

Of course, a book based on history requires a great deal of historical research.  I love that sort of work.  I read a lot about homesteading, about the antisemitic discrimination and pogroms in the Russian Empire that led Jews to flee, and about the displacement of the Native Americans.  But lots of very small, highly specific questions also come up when you write historical fiction.  At one point, for example, I realized I needed to be sure that diapers of some sort were actually used on toddlers in small rural villages in the Russian empire! To get this sort of small detail of daily life right, I also read archival newspapers, oral histories, etc.  The most helpful sources for the whole book tended to be memoirs written by homesteaders, especially some accounts I was able to find by Jewish women homesteaders of their experiences. I include an author’s note in the back of the novel with some of my most helpful sources. One, Sophie Trupin’s Dakota Diaspora, is so beautifully and simply and poetically written that teachers of students in about fifth grade and up might be able to assign excerpts from it to students as a point of comparison. I love that book!

After I had written the novel, I sent it to my wonderful agent, Rena Rossner, who told me it needed to be shorter by about 25%.  She was absolutely right.  Cutting those pages was difficult, but it also helped me really focus on the heart of the story.

I had two Native sensitivity readers read the novel for me in manuscript, and their work was invaluable.  Kisha James was so helpful to me when she encouraged me to represent not just the displacement of the Dakota but the positive aspects of Dakota culture and joy.  She mentioned beading—and because of Kisha, I wrote the episode where Shoshana meets Nani and admires and reflects on the beaded crane on her bag, an episode that, I came to feel, drew the whole novel together.

Then Rena sent the novel out, and it was acquired, in a pre-empt, by Laura Schreiber at Union Square Kids.  Laura is a tremendously skilled editor who edited with a light but decided hand.  I felt it was somewhat like being directed by a very gifted conductor.  She would suggest that I emphasize one episode more and touch on another more lightly.  I felt fortunate to be working with her.And I love the cover that Union Square Kids designed for the book!

Were there struggles along the way?  There always are, for me, in the course of writing a novel.  I have learned, through painful experience, that getting a novel going in the right direction is very hard for me.  I go through a period, sometimes a period of many months or even years, when I write, sometimes many chapters, heading in one direction, get stuck and feel tremendous self-doubt, then start off again in another direction.  This process repeats over and over until I finally find the right direction, the inner life of the main character, and the right voice.  It’s an agonizing phase, but I’m trying to be patient now and tell myself it is just part of my process.

SUSAN’S BIO:

SUSAN LYNN MEYER is the author of three previous picture books, including New Shoes, winner of the Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award and the New York State Reading Association Charlotte Award. She is also the author of three middle-grade historical novels for children A Sky Full of Song, Black Radishes, and Skating With the Statue of Liberty) and of three previous picture books.

Her books have won many awards, including the Sydney Taylor Honor Award, the Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, the New York State Charlotte Award, and the NAACP Image Award Finalist. They have also been translated into German and Chinese. Susan is a Professor of English at Wellesley College and lives with her family outside Boston.

Susan, thank you for sharing your book and journey with us. After reading this beautifully written book, it is easy to see why A SKY FULL OF SONG is a winner of the Sydney Taylor Honor Award, Western Writers of America Spur Award, Will Rogers Medallion Award, and the New York State Historical Society Children’s History Book Award Finalist.

This is a heartwarming and heart-aching story. The book starts in Ukraine, part of the Russian Empire, in 1905. Eleven-year-old Soshana, her mother, and her sisters need to escape their small village due to the violent attacks on the Jewish people living there. Jews were the subject of many harsh laws that restricted and limited their movements and imposed laws that forced young Jewish boys into the Tsar’s army for 25 years. Shoshana Papa and her older brother fled Ukraine to start a farm in North Dakota, but after her mother is attached to the village by the pogrom, she writes to let them know they need to get out of Ukraine and sail to America. The reader sees the heartache of leaving most of their cherished possessions behind, including their loveable cat, and how happy they are when they see the Statue of Liberty. But before they are even off the ship, they are met by a group of boys who pick on Momma, rip off her best scarf, and toss it in the ocean. I love that Soshana finds a hungry kitten on the dock, sneaks it into her bag, and hides it on the train from New York City to North Dakota.

Children will love this family. They are all loving and very courageous. Kids will be shocked when they see where they have to live. There are no trees on flat prairie plains, so they have to live in a dugout in the ground, where the floor and the ceiling are dirt. Kids will cringe when dirt drops into Soshana’s soup. There is so much to learn from reading this book. Teachers can create many lesson plans around this book. The writing is so good children will get sucked into life on the prairie, and unless you live in that area, it will enlighten readers about the dangers of living where all you can see is grass. I live in the North East, and we have blizzards. I drove in a blizzard, where I could only see the red taillights of the car in front of me. But I never imagined what a blizzard looked like when there weren’t any telephone poles or buildings without lights to mark your way. My heart was in my throat when Soshana and her friend had to walk miles in the storm, not knowing if they were going the right way. I had never heard of a horse dropping over when its hot breath turned the snow into ice that clodded its muzzle and stopped it from breathing.

There is a lot of tension to keep every reader’s attention. This is a very timely book with so much anti-semitism starting up around the world and so many immigrants coming into our country. Although this is a middle-grade book, adults will love it, too.

And the end of the book is beautiful. I love how Soshana tells the reader, “The North Dakota beginning, making a living on this hard land where not everyone wanted us, this beginning was difficult, no doubt about it. But life stretched out before us, as wide open as the North Dakota Prairie.”
“Beginnings were beautiful too.” (referring to her new home and her family coming together)
“If you held onto who you were.” (referring to her wanting to fit in with the other girls in her class)
“If you played your own music.” (referring to her playing Papa’s fiddle and not being ashamed of her family)
“If you kept your own light burning.” (referring to the Menorah and its importance in the book)

And I also loved the cover of the book. It immediately caught my eye and made me want to read the book. To sum things up, I loved the writing. I loved the characters and the rich story that tugs the reader’s heartstrings. I am so glad I read this book.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy