Influential Women Authors for International Women's Day

International Women’s Day has encouraged me to think about the influence of female authors on me over the years.  I am now and have always been an avid reader.  As a child reading took me to places and through experiences the real world didn’t offer me.  I am amazed at the memories that are coming back as I explore some of my early reading loves. Thanks to these women who were instrumental in shaping the woman I would become

My earliest faves...

Laura Ingalls Wilder - my earliest reading memories are in The Little House in the Big Woods.  I write a little bit about it here.  Suffice it to say I started these at age 8 and read and reread them over the years.  I introduced them to my daughter who, thank goodness, loved them as well.  It is possible I already have a brand new set for my future granddaughter. Well, someday…

Carolyn Keene - I’m not sure I am admirer of Carolyn Keene; I think I learned somewhere along the line that she is a pseudonym for several writers, but her heroine Nancy Drew - she was my girl.  I read the entire series living vicariously through her adventures, her travels, even her boyfriend.  

My secret teen loves...

Victoria Holt - We would make the trek to our little public library once a week, and I would bring home 6 books.  Holt’s were a mainstay. The internet tells me that Victoria Holt was actually Eleanor Hibbert.  Certainly when I was chewing up her shelf in the public library as a kid I had no idea that she wrote under a variety of names.  Honestly, these books remain a bit buried in my subconscious.   I suppose my current love for historical fiction is rooted here.  Of course, I still love a good romance.  I don’t do so much with the gothic now though except in YA. I read that one of her early influences was Jane Eyre which is one of my current favorites for sure.

Grace Livingston Hill - Just a shelf above or so I could find Hill’s books.  I am sure I read most of them.  These were simple and straightforward books. Generally a poor or orphaned protagonist would make her way bravely in the world ending up with true love and a strong faith.  I still read a great deal of Christian fiction.  The new stuff is a bit more creative and less formulaic, but I think Hill paved the way.

The classics...

Jane Austen - I wish I were one of those folks who could claim to have cut her literary teeth on Austen, but I became a fan as a young adult.  But such a fan I’ve become. I like to believe that Elizabeth Bennet would also have enjoyed a sassy Laura Ingalls and a resourceful Nancy Drew. I love her independent spirit. I have read all of her works and am preparing to teach her for the first time. She is wickedly insightful into human nature and while I love the glimpses I get into another time, her characters transcend time. She was brave in her time, choosing a literary career over more traditional paths.

Emily Dickinson - I often joke that I am drawn to spinster writers.  Perhaps I admire their dedication to the craft. One that I used to wish I could emulate.  I love her use of language.  I love to read her journal entries and explore her life through her poetry.

I could go on now about the women authors that I love to recommend to my girls now.  I am feeling like that is a separate entry to come soon. 

Garth Brooks - A Storyteller

What kind of excuse exists for an English teaching librarian who blogs about books and things related to books to write about what a great concert she saw this weekend.  The two don't necessarily go together, the literary mind and country music, but I have been a Garth Brooks fan since his beginning way back in the late 1980s.  He is the only artist for whom I have waited in line for hours to get tickets to a show (before internet ticket ordering was a thing, ouch!).  The concert 20 or so years ago?  Worth every cold and damp minute that it took to get those tickets. I have long since left most of country music behind.  Not necessarily intentionally, but Brooks retired, and live moved on, and so did I. About a year ago, we stumbled onto the televised version of Brooks' Vegas show.  Very quickly we were drawn into his story - the story of how his life was changed by music. When the opportunity came to seem in in concert again - much more easily this time through a gift of tickets, I was thrilled.  For a couple of hours this weekend, I was nearly thirty instead of nearly fifty, with 20 years of opportunity sparkling ahead of me. So again, why do I indulge myself here?  I think because, as I was singing along this weekend, I was reminded again that Garth Brooks is a story teller.  Most of my favorite songs are short stories.  And while they don't maybe illustrate my life, they have become the fabric of part of my life.  Much like my favorite stories.  I can pick up Laura Ingalls Wilder and remember clearly being snuggled up at my grandparents' house reading her for the very first time.  The house, my grandparents - long gone, but the memories evoked by the book are so real. The same way with the music.  Mostly as an educator, I just want to make my students to feel, even if just briefly, the power of the story to shape lives, to reflect our world, to change the way we see things. We compare that power in AP Literature to the power of music.  I felt that up close and personal this weekend.

Don't Underestimate Laura Ingalls Wilder

I guess I am hardly unique in my fascination with Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I was excited to read in this article at the NPR that the demand for the unvarnished version of her life story Pioneer Girl has far exceeded expectations! I cuddled in several nights over the winter break to read the book and am fascinated.  Until I study the pictures and explore all the footnotes, a considerable amount of time passes.  I have wanted to talk about it here, but was trying to finish the book first.  Then school happened, and lately the beautiful book is just looking lovely as a coffee table decoration.  I love hearing Laura Ingalls Wilder's unedited voice.  I love having access to the drafts and some of her drawings that accompanied them in this work.  I think it is cool (yes, I typed cool) to have met Laura as a little girl with her polished little girl voice and now to read the adult voice.  It may be summer until I get to really touch it again, because it needs to be savored, but Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, give it a look!

She Touched The World - Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer

Alexander, Sally Hobart and Robert. She Touched the World: Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer. New York: Clarion Books, 2008.

What a joy to read, the story of Laura Bridgman, rendered blind and deaf from small pox as at age 4, the Alexanders chronicle her story of hope and healing.  Long before Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller in the 1830s few proven methods existed for the education of the deaf and blind child.  Laura was clearly eager to experience as much as she could of the world around her as she quickly learned to navigate somewhat successfully both in and out of her small farmhouse. Laura’s parents and caretakers were becoming quite frustrated as Laura’s inability to learn and to interact with others was leading to frustrated and willful behavior.  Sometimes, as in the case of a fatally burned cat, she was putting herself and others in danger. Fortunately, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe came to know of her and asked to care for her and educate her in his newly formed Perkins School of the Blind in Boston. Here through a process of trial and error and much patience, Laura learned to attach words to objects and to fingerspell these words in order to communicate.  She experienced immense joy in learning, and her vocabulary and ability to speak with others grew in leaps and bounds. She went onto learn to read and write; she was a representative for her school and for education becoming extremely famous in her time. This time period is beautifully represented in the text as well. The medical treatments (or lack of ), the life of a farmer and his family, the hobbies  - all are illustrated through text and accompanying photographs of the period.  The photos, many from the Perkins school, create the experience of moving through a well organized museum and reliving the past through its artifacts.

I have written before of my fascination with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her life and family. Part of my pleasure in reading this book likely stems from its time period.  I have always wondered about Mary Ingalls experience as a blind child, at the blind school, in life generally. While Mary was born 35 or so years after, I imagine she benefitted a great deal from the work of Laura Bridgman and Dr. Howe.  I was also fascinated by the people whom she met over the course of her life – Charles Dickens, Sophia Peabody, Charles Darwin, Julia Ward Howe.  I would love to have been a fly on the wall for any of these meetings.

I plan to use this title in a book talk for 8th grade reluctant readers.  Most of them read about Helen Keller in 7th grade reading, so they will be interested to note that Laura Bridgman taught Anne Sullivan how to fingerspell, giving her the tool to unlock the world for Helen Keller years later.  Also, I am always happy to give them examples of children who long to learn, who love the accomplishment of it. I will be talking about Malala in the same book talk.  I can certainly draw many parallels between these two girls who fought seemingly impossible circumstances for the ability and the right to learn.  

As a cool side note for me, the authors Sally Hobart Alexander and her husband Robert Alexander are from Pittsburgh, pretty local to me.  This note and Sally's own experience as a blind woman will also pique the interest of the kids.  A cool article about her here.