The Chosen One: How Do You Generate Hope?

Our Featured Title this week is The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, and in her post, she talked about how to generate more hope.

So tell us, readergirlz, how do you generate hope in your life? Name something that have given you hope in the last year. And let's get to spreading the HOPE!

PS-Don't forget to read our Cover Story on that lovely braided cover.

Featured Title: THE CHOSEN ONE, by Carol Lynch Williams

Hello readergirlz! Here's hoping that everyone had a relaxing holiday season and is feeling cheery and bright-eyed about the new year. No wonder January's theme, Hope, seems particularly relevant during a season of fresh starts, resolutions, and new beginnings.


I'm thrilled to kick off our January title features with Carol Lynch Williams' tense, gripping, and oh-my- goodness-yes, uplifting, The Chosen One. Carol is a fellow Vermont College alumn, and I've been one of her biggest fans since, oh, just about the moment I first met her.

Taking a story “ripped from the headlines,” Williams looks inside a polygamist cult and the dangers it poses for one girl. Kyra and her father, three mothers, and 20 siblings live in an isolated community under the thumb of a prophet, who controls every aspect of his apostles’ lives. The most shocking intrusion of all comes when the prophet decrees that Kyra is to become the wife of her 60-year-old uncle. A secret patron of a local mobile library, Kyra knows there’s a world away from the compound she might escape to, but first she pins her hopes on her father’s ability to change the prophet’s mind. Instead, her family is threatened, and the stakes for her refusal to marry are raised. Williams’ portrayals of the family are sharp, but what’s most interesting about this book is how the yearnings and fears of a character so far from what most YAs know will still seem familiar and close.--Booklist


I'm so excited to have Carol here with us today, talking about hope: 


What a lovely opportunity to have readergirlz think of my novel The Chosen One. It is such a nice honor. Thank you, Girls!


Hope and Things

It seems most of my life I hang on to hope by the tips of my fingers. Yes, I tend to be a little down, a little depressed. It’s a hard way to live.

But I do have hope in my life. My amazing editor for The Chosen One is named Hope. When I start to leap off the deep end, she’s there to stop me or throw me a rope if I’ve already taken the plunge.

In my book Glimpse, the main character is named Hope. She started out something else (I can’t remember what) but the name Hope kept pressing in on my brain. And the truth is, later I saw she was her sister’s hope. So it worked out for me as a writer.

And in The Chosen One, Kyra, the main character, finds out what it’s like to have hope, lose hope and find the tendrils of belief again so she has something to hold on to.

Hope is something we all deserve. It shouldn’t be taken from us by bullies at home, at school or on the street. It’s a gift, like agency.

Just recently (after several very sad things that happened) I discovered something. I was wandering around feeling awfully hopeless. And I was doing quite a bit of whining (those two go hand in hand for me--hopelessness and whining). It just so happened that while the sad stuff was going on, I had started a new novel about grief. That means I was whining, writing and wandering about (the 3 Ws). I couldn’t get away from the grief. I kept asking “Why?” (Another W word!)

And that’s when it came to me. It was kind of like a slow burn--I had this bit of an idea that unwrapped itself slowly and left me with something I felt--even in my saddened state--I could live with. It was how to generate more hope.

I realized something you all probably know: that hope for other people might be influenced by me. We can actually help someone feel better. When we’re a friend, when we’re kind, when we look to the welfare of others (and I don’t mean financially)--we make a difference. We create hope. We create change.

What happened after that was a subtle shift inside of me. When I looked away from my sorrow and offered hope to others, I felt better. All the pain hasn’t gone away, but I started feeling a  bit of comfort.

Hope means we care for others and then it’s like we get a gift all for ourselves--and the world gets that much better. Just because of a choice. A decision.

This is my biggest discovery this year: Life isn't fair and it never will be--but we as good people can make it easier. And that’s what I set out to do in 2011. I hope you join me.


Carol Lynch Williams is the author of more than 20 books for middle grade and young adult readers including Pretty Like Us, The Chosen One and Glimpse. Her newest novel comes out in March 2011 and is called Miles from Ordinary.  Carol has an MFA from Vermont College but the best parts of her life are her five beautiful daughters. Visit Carol at www.throwingupwords.wordpress.com where she shares a blog with Ann Dee Ellis, Ally Condie, and her daughter Kyra Leigh.

What a beautiful post, Carol! Thanks so much for joining us. I do find that when I'm feeling my most hopeless or down, it's invigorating to try to reach out to others - not in the expectation that they will comfort me, necessarily, but that by giving of myself to someone else, I'm reminded of my own value, and putting good karma out into the world. What a wonderful message on which to embark upon a new year!

So readers - how do you find hope in seemingly hopeless situations? 

Rgz Salon: Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams, reviewed by Sharon Levin

Awesome book reviewer/book evangelist Sharon Levin is here as part of the rgz SALON, a feature where four of the top kidlit experts clue us in to the best YA novels they've read recently. Today, she reviews Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

Here's Sharon:

"In one moment
it is over:
In one moment
it is gone.
The morning grows
thin, gray

and our lives—
how they were—
have vanished.Our lives have
changed

when I walk
in on Lizzie
my sister
holding a shotgun.

She fingers the trigger.

Looks up.
My sister.
My sister just looks
up at me.

Touching
the trigger

of that gun.

"And so begins Glimpse the impossible to put down novel by Carol Lynch Williams.

"Ever since Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust we have seen an upsurge in ‘verse novels’ and I’ve known friends who will often dismiss a book unread as they say, 'Oh no, I’m not reading another of those.'

"If they do that with Glimpse they will miss out on an amazing reading experience made more intense because of the spare text, the white space and the tight, tight verse.

"Hope and Lizzie are sisters who are amazingly close. Their father got killed in a motorcycle accident when they were very young and their mother is full of pain, blame and often, beer.

"Once, when Hope and Lizzie were almost six and seven, their mother returned after working all night and looked at her girls,

Then she said,
It is your job,
Liz,
to take care of your
little sister.

And you, Hope,
Momma said
her finger pointing like
she meant it,
you take care of Lizzie.

You hear me?

"And with that, she places the responsibility for the sisters squarely on each other’s shoulders (and off of hers).

"It works for quite a while. Hope and Lizzie adore each other, they have a neighbor, Miss Freeman, who looks out for them and who says to their mother, 'Ms. Chapman, I love these girls like they was my own.'

"Glimpse moves back and forth between present (with Lizzie in a mental hospital) and past, showing a happier time and the disintegration of that time, even while Hope doesn’t fully realize what is happening, because Lizzie is still doing her job and taking care of/protecting Hope (and wow, I didn’t realize the significance of her name until I wrote that sentence – Lizzie’s goal is hanging on to hope/Hope).

"Hope, and the reader, come to realize what has been happening even while we try to remain in denial over the horrors of Lizzie’s life.

"Glimpse is heartbreaking, inspiring and unputdownable (new word). After finishing the book, I just sat and let it soak in for awhile. Even now, whenever I see Glimpse on the shelf, I think, 'That is one AMAZING book' and I find myself wishing Hope and Lizzie well."

Cover Stories: The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams is about a girl who is coming of age--finding herself, falling in love--within a polygamist cult. I asked Carol to stop over and tell her Cover Story, because I think this cover is just gorgeous. Here she is:

"I was working so hard on the novel that I didn't really even think of cover art. As a writer, I knew I wouldn't have a lot of say. My publisher didn't ask for input. They were busy experimenting, I think. And listening to the news. The book sold two days before the Texas stuff came to light and I think they were listening to that news, watching that unwind, and pondering what to do with the cover.

"I was in New York, visiting everyone at St Martin's Press, when my editor and Michael brought what they thought might be the cover for me to see. I was sitting at a table and I remember they set the piece before me and I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing. I remember it had the beautiful picture (that may have been in more grays--I'm not sure). And there was the pink lettering. I fell in love right that minute. I was blown away. My agent, Steve Fraser, was in the room and he and I just kept saying, 'Oh the cover is beautiful. It's just beautiful.' Everyone was relieved that I loved it--including me. But how could I not?

"I know there was talk at SMP about what the model should be wearing, that she would be in a to-the-neck nightgown in real life. You know, something less revealing. But when I saw the cover, I thought, 'This is Kyra, free. This is Kyra on the inside.' I've never really had any say on my covers before. And maybe if I hated the cover SMP would have changed it. But I loved it so much (I know my editor Hope Dellon was worried I might not like it) that I very nearly cried sitting at that table. I'm still taken aback at the beauty of it. I don't really love many of the live-model covers we see now-a-days, but mine feels timeless. Three cheers for the creative geniuses at St Martin's Press! I lucked out, didn't I?"

Well, I think so. I'm so intrigued by this story, and I love the idea that the cover shows Kyra's freedom, the way her back is mostly bare, and her braid is loosening. What do you guys think?