After living in twelve places in eight years with her drifting mother, fourteen year old Calle Smith finds herself in Andreas Bay, California, at the start of ninth grade. Fearful of putting down roots anywhere, but armed with her song journal, she moves to her own soundtrack through a world that bounces her between the school drama crowd, a mysterious loner, and an unlikely boy who will become her first love. But it's the troubling truth Calle uncovers about the father she thought abandoned her that forces Calle to face the toughest choice of her young life.

[Read additional excerpts.]

In a writing workshop I once took, the literary novelist Ethan Canin told us that reading is "about connecting with a sensibility." This resonated with me as a writer because I know that when something I read compels me, it's because I feel like I'm connecting to a certain world view in a piece of writing, a specific take on a timeless theme, a fresh, original voice. A teacher I had in college used to like to say "there are no new plots, just new characters" – and I'd like to take that one step further. New sensibilities. Lucky for all of us writers – each of our sensibilities is truly individual. No one else in the wide world sees the way we see – through our unique experience, through our distinctive eyes.
 
And that’s the heart of point of view.
 
Not just who's telling the story or how it’s being told but the entire world view that an author translates through a piece of writing to a reader.
 
Different readers connect to different point of views, to different sensibilities. It's why I can read something and think "Wow, this engages me. I'm hooked." And the guy sitting next to me in the cafe can tell me he couldn't get through it. It's two sensibilities connecting – or not.
 
So that's why I think Point of View is essential as a writer and a reader.
 
Each month, I want to do three things in this Point of View newsletter.

• I want to share a young adult novel that I love. And I'll tell you a bit about why I connected to it.
• I will give you a little writing exercise that this novel made me want to do, an exercise you can do with or without reading the novel.
• The teacher in me can't resist: Each month, I'll include a project idea for the novel, something teachers can use for an outside reading assignment with the book or adapt whatever way they want.

Subscribe to Kim's Newsletter Email:

APRIL 2010, the Premiere Issue [READ]

MAY 2010 [READ]

JUNE 2010 [READ]

JULY 2010 [READ]

AUGUST 2010 [READ]