Hey There, Hi there Ho There!
This is Linda sending high-fives and hellos to poemstitchers everywhere this Poemdive Fifthday.
Make sure to stop by Live Your Poem for a circlescoop of poetry offerings. It’s also the web-nest of Irene Latham, poet, author and long-time Poetry Friday friend.
Last month, I attended the Penguin Random House Book & Author Festival with Library Journal and was delighted to see Irene and editor, Karen Boss, talk about D-39: a Robodog's Journey (Charlesbridge May 18, 2020). Their presentation, Irene’s reading, and the fact that D-39 is a novel of prose poems were fantastic!
There’s much goodness to share about D-39 for readers and writers of MG novels. Let's begin with the fun voice of the main character Klynt Tovis. I attempted to mimic Klynt’s voice in today's greeting above...it's a kind of silly-but-makes-perfect-sense style. I can tell that Klynt is smart and inventive by her language. She's the kind of character I want to stick with.
Klynt and her Papa live on a looganaught farm in the Worselands in the middle of a devastating civil war. Both the Tovis family and neighbors, the Tannins, have built bomb shelters for what they fear is coming. Klynt is a can-do kid, handy with her ever present screwdriver. She fixes what needs fixing, including ancient items such as toasters and a ham radio displayed in her museum of fond memories. Klynt hopes that someday, one of her messages will reach her mother whose been missing for years.
Readers learn that when Klynt was a baby, a deadly virus, BRXms, spread from canines to humans prompting the government to euthanize all dogs. Klynt’s mother, a veterinarian and founder of the Canine Corredor, (think underground railroad) smuggles dogs out of the Worselands to save dogs targeted for death.
Klynt struggles with her mother's absence and her father’s explanation about what has happened to her when a Dog-Alive model D-39 robo-dog shows up. Even though D-39 is so life-like it eats and poops, the robo-dog quickly fills Klynt’s life and heart -- though Papa threatens to sell its parts for cash to purchase expensive M-fuel that powers the chug-chug requires to harvest looganuts. Klynt introduces D-39 to her best friend, Jopa Tannin, who adores pet ants the way Klynt does D-39. Life is better with friends and pets.
The horrors of war do strike Klynt's home. Soldiers advance into the Worselands and bombs fall. After their bomb shelters are no longer safe, Klynt and Jopa are separated from the adults and have no choice but to strike out on their own looking for safety. They head north fifty miles to where Klynt believes Mama has gone along the Canine Corredor. Can they make it? Will Klynt's can-do outlook protect them from the oncoming freezeseason?
I asked Irene about D-39 and shared her responses below.
I've interspersed some favorite quotes from D-39 throughout our Q&A.
Question: As I was reading the book all I could think of at first were the connections to The Cat Man of Aleppo (G.P. Putnam's Sons 2020). I want to know...which book came first and how did they impact each other?
Answer: This is a great question! I was writing both books at the same time, and both were borne out of my obsession with the Syrian Civil War. It's a very complicated war (as all wars are). The more I learned, the more I had to write, just to sort things out in my own mind.
With CAT MAN, Karim and I were really interested in delivering a story about the people who STAY in war-torn places. We tend to make heroes of the refugees, the ones who leave, but what about those who stay?
With D-39, I shifted angles: the hero (Klynt) wants to flee, but her father insists they stay... until things happen, and staying is no longer a viable option.
In both there's this overarching theme/question/idea about heroism, and what big and small things make a hero.
Q: I’m not going to ask why prose poems because the form works perfectly for this story. But I did wonder what gave you the idea of a variation on a crown as in a crown of sonnets?
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| D-39 A Robodog's Journey by Irene Latham (Charlesbridge 2021) |
A: I am in awe of sonnets. Meter and rhyme intimidate me, so I am a huge admirer of the form. But I don't really want to write them? Borrowing the “crown” of sonnets idea is probably as close as I will ever come to crafting a sonnet.
For those who don't know (I didn't!), in a crown of sonnets, the last line of one sonnet becomes the first line of the following sonnet. In D-39, the last line of each prose poem becomes the title of the following poem. In my mind this makes the book a circle—the last line of the last poem is also the title of the first poem (my editor Karen Boss' idea!)—and it makes me think of each poem as a bead on a chain.
I don't really know where I got the idea, just that I liked how it pulled readers from one poem to the next.
And as a writer, I really enjoyed the challenge of taking words that may mean one thing in the last line of a poem and reinventing them somehow— adding texture, meaning— when I applied them to the next poem. It was so much fun, and I'm proud to have pulled it off!
Q: Klynt has a complicated relationship with her mother -- why was that important to you to write? As an author, how did you write such complexities for such a tender-aged audience?
A; I find the mother-daughter relationship to be rich, deep, and endlessly fascinating—and I only know it from the side of being a daughter (as we have three sons). Writing this book allowed me to tunnel around in issues I experience with my own mother. Ultimately, I think, this book is about acceptance. Writing it helped me to accept myself, and all the ways I'm different from my mother...and it also helped me to accept and love my mother, just as she is. Side note: I adore reading books that explore mother-daughter relationships, and there are some good ones for middle grade. One I read only recently (but was released in 2015) is BLACKBIRD FLY by Erin Entrada Kelly. Amazing book. Completely slays me!
Thank you, Irene, for taking the time to answer these questions and I wish D-39 the very best of luck as it enters our world in a few days.
I've purchased a copy for my school library and can't wait to share it and the teacher resources developed by our own Mary Lee Hahn with my school community.
You don't have to be a teacher to learn from or use the resources--I loved reading through them as a reader and a poet. And, I'm a grown-up (most days). Seeing this book come out feels like a Poetry Friday slamjam of joy! Make sure you don't miss this one.
I predict awards.
Imagine Hamish’s surprise when he googled “robotic ox” after reading D-39 and found some interesting results!
Head on over to his padlet and let Hamish show you the Iron-Ox.
