We’re celebrating Marilyn Taylor McDowell’s debut this week!  Marilyn has been bringing children and books together for over 25 years as a librarian, storyteller, teacher, and proprietor of a children’s bookshop. She is a past recipient of Connecticut’s Tassy Walden Award: New Voices in Children’s Literature. She lives on an old farm, grows enough food in her big organic garden to feed her family and help support the local food pantries, and is an avid volunteer in her community. She balances all the sitting and writing with many hikes on the mountain paths just outside her door.

Here’s a little bit about her debut novel CAROLINA HARMONY.

It is the summer of 1964, and Carolina is a runaway hiding out at Harmony Farm, nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The Harmonys, Mr. Ray and Miss Latah, are treating Carolina as their own. Carolina yearns to belong, but she figures being part of a family again is just wishful thinking.

Carolina is holding her secrets close. For nine years she lived easy with her free-spirited parents in their mountain home. Telling anyone about the accident that claimed them and her baby brother feels risky, and she won’t talk about the year she spent with Auntie Shen, her surrogate grandma, who took sick and was taken away, or about her time spent in foster homes.

Then Russell, a troublemaker from the foster home, secretly comes to Harmony Farm. Believing he’s a friend, Carolina sneaks him food and takes the blame for his pranks – until one night, something so terrible happens that Carolina runs away again, but this time her heart will not follow.

If you had to give your book a movie rating: G through Rated R, which one would you give and why?

I’d rate it G for this story is about family. The “intertwining of place and character” reveals the power of faith, the courage it takes to tell the truth and the sweetness of belonging. CAROLINA HARMONY would connect movie viewers to a unique cast of characters and a natural landscape both beautiful and fierce.

What topics, issues, or themes does your book address? What drove you to write about them?

A long time ago I had the chance to get to know a beautiful teenage girl who was in foster care. While helping her to write a children’s book for a school project, she shared how it feels to be placed into a new and strange place that isn’t your real home and how her pillow was her sole comfort because it was the only thing that was familiar. I know that there are children in all kinds of situations that are wondering if there is anyone in the whole world that truly loves them, truly cares about them, and I was compelled to write CAROLINA HARMONY because I know that the answer is yes. In my own life, I have moved up and over a mountain of grief strengthened by hope and faith. The characters in CAROLINA HARMONY are based on men and women that I’ve met over the years. Even though these may have been brief moments in my life, the memory remains and the essence of what they meant to me comes through in the story. I liked writing about a child who was free to roam and play, climb high ledges, swing from a rope and splash down into the water, and gaze at stars from a mountain top. I’d love for children to be inspired to go outside and run through meadows, climb trees, splash through streams and make these gifts their own.

Name three examples of readers who would identify or like your book.

• A thoughtful child between the ages of 8 and 99 who has ever felt they were alone in the world, wondering if anyone cared.
• A child or adult who loves the countryside and knows that subsistence does not necessarily mean poverty.
• Anyone who likes strong female characters for Carolina has pluck.

List a few statistically improbable phrases or sentences one might find in your book.

• Balls of white fire trailing ribbons, streaked across a black sky. Told Daddy what Miss Ruby said about shooting stars, how they were angels lighting the way for souls on their way to Heaven.
• They said the hospital had rules about visitors. Twelve years old and up, they said, and here I am almost eleven, which everybody knows is standing right up straight next to twelve.
• She’d thought her arm would fall off from all that stirring, but Auntie Shen wouldn’t let her stop, saying, “Jelly don’t like to be left alone. Turn your head and it’ll be ruined.”
• This book blew dust in her face, drew blood on the pages, and made her feel as if she’d fallen in, …

How can your book be used in the classroom?

Reading this book together could lead to group discussions about how individuals fit within a family and a community. A dialogue could be steered toward how one explores their own neighborhood, about friendships, about knowing and learning from elders, about diversity and culture. As this story is set during a time when modern ways are reaching in and mountain traditions are holding strong, CAROLINA HARMONY can be a catalyst for discussing the old ways of working with what nature provided and how mountain folks were getting by while a few hundred miles away protests and sit-ins where happening at the Woolworth’s luncheonette counter and Martin Luther King and others were leading the Civil Rights movement. How did these two lifestyles effect one another? A caring teacher or group leader could also use this book to carefully and tenderly bring about dialogue that focuses on issues of grief and loss and what courage means. Of course, it is not all seriousness. There is the fun of making foods in the book like biscuits, cornbread and jellies, and there are instruments to explore like a diddley bow and a dulcimer. And, there’s always square dancing.

Now tell us about other already-published books that readers of your book might enjoy.

Readers who like CAROLINA HARMONY might also enjoy HATTIE BIG SKY by Kirby Larsen, BABY by Patricia MacLachlan and BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA by Katherine Paterson and for boys who just can’t stand reading about girls, pick up HARRIS AND ME by Gary Paulsen. By the way, Carolina’s favorite book was JOHNNY TREMAIN by Esther Forbes.

Now whet our appetites with a teaser. Please provide the first few lines or opening paragraph of your book.

The catbird took flight. It sailed over a wide expanse of mountain peaks and lush valleys, over the green of summer leaves and the winding trails of clear mountain streams. It flew over cabins tucked in the hollers. It flew down over pastureland, down over corn patches and fields overlaid with the green leaves of sweet potato plants. Wings flapping, talons taking hold, it perched on a branch low in the tulip tree, getting an open view of the farmyard. It watched the dog suddenly rise up on its haunches and chase the cat which scurried into an opening between the weathered gray boards of the barn. The bird flapped its wings and flew again, over the chickens pecking in the dirt, over the sheep grazing in a meadow of grass, and over a long winding path, where a girl was running.

Are you offering authors visits to schools, libraries, or other organizations?

Yes, I am. This morning I made Cat Head biscuits for the first time, practicing this new baking skill for I plan to bring plates of these biscuits to Carolina Harmony’s Launch Party at my local bookstore, Briggs Carriage Bookstore in Brandon, VT on March 12^th. Then on March 20^th, I will be at my local library for a Meet the Author Café. I will be giving presentations, reading from the book, and answering lots of questions. I’m looking forward to meeting and speaking with young readers about CAROLINA HARMONY and welcome the opportunity to visit schools and libraries in many more communities. ps. Those biscuits came out so light and fluffy, the first taste was Heaven.

Are you willing to speak nationally?

Yes, looking forward to it.

List a few example titles of presentations, talks, or workshops you might give for an author visit.

“The Sacred Garden of Affirmation.” This talk I presented to other writers at a conference that was titled “Tales of Hope and Persistence.”

I have taught writing to small groups of children as young as six and as old as twelve. I presently lead a writer’s critique group. These experiences could be translated into interesting writing practices within the school or library.

For large groups, I would like to incorporate storytelling into the presentation. It is not solely entertainment for stories can reveal meaning on a deep level – it’s how individual cultures hand down stories from generation to generation as a way of teaching how to live.

This concludes our interview with our latest author, Marilyn Taylor McDowell. We wish her much success with her debut novel CAROLINA HARMONY.

To see what Marilyn is up to these days, visit her publisher’s website at http://randomhouse.com/kids and check back in a few months and have fun visiting Marilyn’s very own website at http://www.marilyntaylormcdowell.com.

*GIVEAWAY ALERT*  Marilyn is giving away TWO signed copies of CAROLINA HARMONY to two lucky winners. Tell your friends and  leave a comment for the author!  Enter by March 18th, 2009 11:59 PM CST.

Your email address will not be displayed publicly and will only be used to contact you if you win! And don’t forget to participate in our other AuthorsNow! giveaways.

About The Author

Marilyn Taylor McDowell has been bringing children and books together for over 25 years as librarian, storyteller, teacher, and proprietor of a children’s bookshop. She is a past recipient of Connecticut’s Tassy Walden Award: New Voices in Children’s Literature. She lives on an old farm, grows enough food in her big organic garden to feed her family and help support the local food pantries, and is an avid volunteer in her community. She balances all the sitting and writing with many hikes on the mountain paths just outside her door.  Read more about Marilyn Taylor McDowell.

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