Today is the fourth anniversary of the PaperTigers blog and what could be a better way to celebrate than to be welcoming author and fellow-blogger Uma Krishnaswami on this the third leg of what promises to be a scintillating blog tour for her new book The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, illustrated in black and white by Abigail Halpin and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers. You can find out more about the illustration process from yesterday’s stop on the Blog Tour, when Abigail Hilpin met up with Joy Chu over at Got Story? Count Down, along with a few other surprise guests. And don’t miss Uma’s insightful interview from Day 1 with Cynthia Leitich Smith over at Cynsations (where it’s so good to learn that there is a grand plan for a 2012 sequel to The Grand Plan to Fix Everything).

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything is a middle-grade novel that will have its readers laughing aloud as they encounter a cast of characters who become closely knit through coincidence and accidents or deliberations of circumstance. We will be publishing a full review of the book soon, in the meantime here’s a brief introduction from its blurb before we meet Uma herself:

“Eleven-year-old Dini loves movies – watching them, reading about them, trying to write her own – especially Bollywood movies. But when her mother tells her some big news, it does not at all jive with the script of her life she has in mind. Her family is moving to a tiny village in India, far from her best friend Maddie and the grand plans they’ve made for the summer.

So now, Dini is hard at work on a new script, the script in which she gets to meet the amazing Dolly Singh, Dini’s all-time favorite Bollywood star. But life is often more unpredictable than the movies, and when Dini starts plotting her story things get a little out of control.”

…and here’s the book’s trailer, put together by Uma’s son, Nikhil Krishnaswamy:

Uma, thank you for dropping by the PaperTigers blog. Right in the inside jacket it says: “they’re moving to a teeny, tiny town that Dini can’t even find on a map: Swapnagiri. It means Dream Mountain, a sleepy little place where nothing interesting can happen..” Well, by the end of the story, no one is going to agree with that final statement – but I have to admit, I did try looking Swapnagiri up on a map and I couldn’t find it. Is Swapnagiri a real place or did you invent it? Can you tell us something about the locations in the book and your connection with them?

Dini couldn’t find Swapnagiri on a map (and she’s pretty thorough) so of course, neither can you. All right, all right, I made it up!

It’s based loosely on several hill towns in a real region of south India, the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains. So the mountains are real, but the town is made up. The house Dini and her family live in is real, but the tea estate is made up. That is a tea-growing area, though, so that was an easy fictional step to take. My family lived in that part of the country when I was very young. I don’t remember it, as we left there before I turned two, but I heard about it often as I was growing up. I visited it later and fell in love with that house. It seemed to be crying out loud to be placed in a story.

As for Takoma Park, Maryland, my husband and I lived in the DC suburbs for nearly twenty years before we moved to New Mexico. Of all the suburban communities in that area, Takoma Park seemed the right one to place Dini and her family in.

Reading the book gives a sensation of worlds within worlds, so that by the end readers may well be questioning themselves about the notion of reality – also bearing in mind that the book itself is a work of fiction. How easy was it to jump between the different levels of reality in your writing?

Oh, I don’t think I even realized I was doing that until several rounds into the process. Then when I did begin to sense it, I found that I could play with the notion. That’s how all the commentary on film and filmmaking came to be. That’s when Dini began to make little asides on her life as a movie. But I do think that it began with that part in the opening chapter about Swapnagiri not being detectable on a map.

I think my inspiration for this came from the P.G.Wodehouse books I read growing up. They’re spoofs of a small social setting seen from close up—but then there’s a pig, and newts, and hordes of batty people. The whole thing is not so much realistic as idealized. If I’ve managed even a tiny, tiny fraction of what Plum accomplished in those wonderful books, I would be a happy woman.

As soon as you say that, I can totally see it. Just you have monkeys, goats and a peacock – and hordes of batty people! And I came away from reading the book with just the same sunny outlook on life that reading Wodehouse engenders.

There were a couple of places where I laughed aloud because you allow the reader the conceit of knowing what is going to happen before the characters do – and then turn those expectations on their head. Was this intentional and what do you think it adds to the notions of kismet and coincidence that run through the book?

That’s a very perceptive observation. I wish I could say that I plotted those bits out carefully and then wrote them. But the truth is that I wrote some very messy drafts and then combed through them looking for cues. When I found some that I could turn on their heads like that, I was delighted. I worried for a while that scattering so many chapters about without Dini in them would drain all suspense, but then I remembered something that E.M.Forster said. He wrote it about fantasy but it applies equally to many kinds of fiction: The writer, Forster says, “manipulates a beam of light which occasionally touches the objects so sedulously dusted by the hand of common sense, and renders them more vivid than they can ever be in domesticity.” I hope I’ve found that beam of light in this book.

Much of the novel revolves around friendship – maintaining a friendship across different time-zones; realising that making new friends does not have to mean being disloyal to older ones; “Giving an inch” when it matters; and being open through “listen-listening, look-looking” to finding friendship in unexpected places. There are no “baddies” in the story, except by proxy, as it were, from descriptions of Dolly’s films, but lots of people are feeling harassed by a variety of circumstances. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

I think that a story finds its own trajectory, when the writer establishes the right premise and manages to place the right combination of characters on its stage. I often feel as if I’m inviting a range of characters to come audition for a story, and then when they show up and start talking I can figure out if they’re going to last or not. So what can I say? No real baddies showed up. I don’t think any were needed. On the other hand, if there were, say, criminals hanging around in Swapnagiri (and maybe there are a few) they’d have their own stories and they’d be forgiven in the end. It’s that kind of place.

There is absolutely nothing didactic about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything but “listen-listening, look-looking” readers will learn some interesting facts about India. How do you generally approach conveying the cultural aspects of what you are writing?

Seamlessly, to the extent I can. I try to refrain from giving explanations unless the story needs them. I never use the shorthand convention of using a parenthetical comma phrase to translate from an Indian language into English. I try to make everything clear in context, so that there are no gratuitous facts strewn about for their own sake. I trust my readers. Young people are capable of “listen-listening” and “look-looking” with their whole bodies and minds with an ease that we adults have to make an effort to recapture. Maybe they tend to do so in smaller snatches than adults, but still, I trust them to connect the cultural dots in the story.

Are you a “true fan” of Bollywood films?

Not really. My father was of the opinion that no good films had been made in India past around, oh, let’s say 1949. So Hindi movies were not standard fare. But if you grew up in north India in the 60’s the music was everywhere, so the ethos of the movies got to you whether you knew it or not. I did watch several rather wonderful movies, and skimmed through some that didn’t grab me as much, while I was writing the book.

Your writing very much reflects the narrative’s focus on film, whether it’s Dini’s preoccupations with film-scripting the events around her, or the make-believe Bollwood world of her beloved “fillums”. Did you approach writing the novel as though you were writing a script, with locations, dialogues, props?

I approached it through Dini’s sensibility, and that in turn led me to thinking (as I watched those “fillums”) about the narrative voice that sometimes shows up in Hindi movies. In Lagaan, for example. It’s a sonorous kind of voice, with a high degree of omniscience, and it inserts commentary on the story at intervals along the way. That was the kind of voice that in the end spliced the events of the novel together for me. It was less a conscious effort to mimic the movie form and more that I had certain instincts—short scenes, that wacky narrative voice, cutting away from scenes to follow letters and e-mails and so on. At some point along the way I gave up trying to control the plot and instead followed those instincts.

Wouldn’t it be great if The Grand Plan to Fix Everything was made into a film! If you were in charge, how would you go about it?

Well, Dolly and Mr. Soli Dustup could probably pull it off. Wait—they’re characters in the book! Too bad. I did have a dream once in which the story became an animated film, but I’m a bit foggy on the details, on account of waking up in the middle.

Can you tell us what your plans are following The Grand Plan to Fix Everything’s release, and do you already know what you’re going to write next?

I’m working on a couple of novel projects right now that are still taking shape. They’re amorphous enough that I’m worried if I talk them out they’ll vaporize! And I always have a couple of picture book projects in the hopper, but again, they’re in the early stages.

I can tell you that my picture book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! published last year in India by that little press with a big vision, Tulika, is to be published in a 2012 North American edition by Canadian publisher Groundwood Books. That’s very exciting to me, as we generally tend to see subrights sold in the other direction, with books published first in the US and then in overseas editions.

That really is great news about Out of the Way! Out of the Way! -we’ll certainly be looking out for it next year. And I just can’t resist this one final question about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Chocolate is prominent in the story – in fact, my mouth was watering at various points in the book – what’s the story behind the curry puffs? Can you possibly point us towards a recipe?

When I was younger than Dini is in the book, we lived in Delhi. My family hardly ever ate out, but every now and then my aunt Viji, my father’s sister, would take me shopping to Connaught Place which was at the time the major shopping center. Now Delhi has all kinds of fancy malls and whatnot but back then CP was it. We’d go to a restaurant called Nirula’s which still exists. And I would order curry puffs. http://nirulas.in/images/products/large/681-b.jpg. They call them “vegetable patties” now but I’m pretty sure they were called “curry puffs” back in my time.

Mr. Mani of course adds his own secret ingredient. I must confess that when I threw that secret ingredient into the novel, I was quite pleased with myself. It added just the right touch of eccentricity, not to mention cultural fusion. I didn’t for one minute stop to think that I might actually have to make the things some day. Now, with people asking if I could possibly share the recipe, or even bring a batch or two for book events, I’ve had to test it in real life. Yes, it works. Whew! For your culinary delight, there is a recipe in the activity kit on my website.

Yum! Thank you, Uma. It’s been such a pleasure hearing all about The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Enjoy the rest of your Blog Tour – we certainly will! But wait, we’re not quite finished yet… Cue drumroll:

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything is celebrating its launch with a Grand Giveaway! Three lucky Grand Prize winners will each receive one copy of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything along with a starry assortment of bangles and trinkets that Dolly Singh, famous famous Bollywood movie star, would adore! An additional 3 runners-up will receive a copy of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything.

To enter, send an e-mail to GrandPlanGiveaway@gmail.com. In the body of the e-mail, include your name, mailing address, and e-mail address (if you’re under 13, submit a parent’s name and e-mail address). One entry per person and prizes will only be shipped to US or Canadian addresses. Entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on 30th June 2011. Winners will be selected in a random drawing on 1st July 2011 and notified via email.

Click on event name for more information

Black History Month~ Canada

African American History Month~ USA

National African American Read-in~  USA

The Katha Chitrakala Award (Excellence in Children’s Book Illustrations) Winners Announced~ India

The Golden Age of the Picture Book: 1920s & 1930s – History’s Message to Children~ ongoing until Feb 6, Tokyo, Japan

The 11th Annual National Storytelling Week~ ongoing until Feb 5, United Kingdom

Kolkata Book Fair~ ongoing until Feb 6, Kolkata, India

Tales in the Garden Festival~ ongoing until Feb 12, Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand

Mirror, an Exhibition by Children’s Author and Artist Jeannie Baker~ ongoing until Feb 13, Australia

2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award~ submissions accepted until Feb 25, United Kingdom

International Youth Library Exhibit: The Fabulous World of John Kilaka, Pictures and Drawings by a Tanzanian Artist~ ongoing until Feb 28, Munich, Germany

Entries Accepted for The Growing up Asian in America Contest~ ongoing until Mar 10, San Francisco, CA, USA

2011 PBBY-Alcala Prize~ submissions accepted until Mar 30, Philippines

International Youth Library Presents Walls: A Book and an Exhibition~ ongoing until Apr 5, Munich, Germany

International Youth Library Exhibit: Manga From Japan~ ongoing until Apr 5, Munich, Germany

Making Books Sing Presents a One-Woman Play Based on The Storyteller’s Candle/La velita de los cuentos by Lucía Gonzalez~ ongoing until spring, New York, NY, USA

Partners in Wonder: Selections from the Collection of Jane Yolen~ ongoing until May 1, Amherst, MA, USA

Look! The Art of Australian Picture Books Today~ ongoing until May 29, Melbourne, Australia

The Art Institute of Chicago Exhibit: Real and Imaginary: Three Latin American Artists – Raúl Colón, David Diaz and Yuyi Morales~ ongoing until May 29, Chicago, IL, USA

Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney~ ongoing until May 30, Stockbridge, MA, USA

Animal Fair: Birds, Beasts, and Bugs in Children’s Book Illustrations~ ongoing until Jun 5, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Seven Stories Exhibit: There’s Nuffin Like a Puffin!~ ongoing until Jun 27, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

International Youth Library Exhibit: The World in Miniature. The Family in Historic Picture Books and Children’s Literature~ ongoing until Aug 31, Munich, Germany

World Congress of Asian Studies~ Feb 2 – 6, Kolkata, India

Children’s Literature Symposium: Critical Perspectives on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Images and Illustrations in Children’s and Young Adult Literature~ Feb 5, Sarasota, FL, USA

2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour~ Feb 6 – 11

36th Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (AULLA): Storytelling in Literature, Language, and Culture ~ Feb 7 – 9, Auckland, New Zealand

Translated! An Interactive Festival of Literary Translation~ Feb 7 – 12, Melbourne, Australia

iConference 2011~ Feb 8 – 11, Seattle, WA, USA

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Exhibit: What a Circus! The Art of Etienne Delessert~ Feb 8 – Jun 5, Amherst, MA, USA

Nordic Children’s Literature Conference~ Feb 9 – 11, Norway

Taipei Book Fair~ Feb 9 – 14, Taipei, Taiwan

Sun Gallery’s Twenty-second Annual Children’s Book Illustrator Exhibit~ Feb 9 – Apr 16, Hayward, CA, USA

The National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature Exhibit: Anita Lobel – All the World’s a Stage~ Feb 10 – May 28, Abilene, TX, USA

Book Launch: Out of the Way! Out of the Way! by Uma Krishnaswami, pictures Uma Krishnaswamy~ Feb 11, Chennai, India

Rhizomes VI – Other Words, Other Worlds: Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in a Globalizing Era~ Feb 11 – 12, Brisbane, Australia

Imagine Children’s Festival~ Feb 12 – 27, London, United Kingdom

2010 Cybils (the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) Winners Announced~ Feb 14

First Nations Public Library Week~ Feb 14 – 19, Province of Ontario, Canada

LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival: Crossing Borders~ Feb 16 – 19, London, United Kingdom

12th International Vilnius Book Fair: Literature Without Frontiers~ Feb 17 – 20, Vilnius, Lithuania

All In! Young Writers Seminar~ Feb 19, Singapore

25th Jerusalem Book Fair~ Feb 20 – 25, Jerusalem, Israel

Freedom to Read Week~ Feb 20 – 26, Canada

2010-2011 Mathieu Da Costa Challenge Winners Announced~ Feb 22, Canada

Challenging Books: Who Should Decide What Our Children Read?~ Feb 23, Toronto, ON, Canada

The International Society for the Social Studies Annual Conference~ Feb 24 – 25, Orlando, FL, USA

The Arabian Reading Assocation’s (TARA) Conference~ Feb 24 – 26, Manama, Bahrain

International Conference for Writers and Translators (IBBY Flanders, IBBY Netherlands, Friedrich Bödecker Kreis Germany)~ Feb 24 – 26, Antwerp, Belgium

SCBWI’s Annual Golden Gate Conference At Asilomar~ Feb 25 – 27, Pacific Grove, CA, USA

Bath Lit Fest~ Feb 25 – Mar 6, Bath, United Kingdom

The Graphic Novel Today, a Special Children’s Literature Network Presentation for Librarians and Educators and Bookology~ Feb 26, Plymouth, MA, USA

Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable Presents: Serendipity – a Graphic Novel Extravaganza~ Feb 26, Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature Presents: Children’s Literature, Classics, and the City~ Feb 26, Dublin, Ireland

19th Annual Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference~ Feb 27, Saint Paul, MN, USA

In her Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, Uma Krishnaswami ponders some of the questions that have come her way as a writer recently. Make sure you head on over to the main website to read the whole article; in the meantime, here’s the introduction. I found her pondering over the word ‘swale’ particularly fascinating as I live not too far from Swaledale in the UK – and it certainly catches a lot of rain too! – could there be a connection?

Four years ago, an uncle of mine, D.V. Sridharan, started the crazy, impossible, madcap project, of restoring a wasteland in a rural area near the city of Chennai in India, and turning it into a sustainable farm. The reason this has anything to do with my own crazy, impossible, madcap occupation, writing books for children, is that his endeavor too had to do with words.

Words like “swale”: Roll it on your tongue. How round and beautiful it is. How it creates a resonance in the air. Swale. A low tract of land, a swale follows the contour line, and can catch water when it rains. Holding the rush of a monsoon shower, the swale in turn recharges underground water sources so that in the dry season, wells can remain refreshed. Swale. The thing is as magical as its name.

The name of that restoration project is “point Return.” The capitals are intentionally placed, intentionally withheld. The point, Sridharan says, is to return. To come back again and again to the places and the ideas that give us sustenance and hope, that are generative and regenerative in nature, that keep us going, that lead to a larger sense of who “we” are.

Story does this too. Thinking of story as cyclical in nature rather than linear, with a beginning, middle and end, changes everything. It stops me from rushing after answers, grabbing the first one that comes along. It allows me instead to live with questions.

I am happy to say that I have managed to make a career out of living with questions.

As I said, do read the rest of the article, in which Uma talks about her latest picture-book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! (illustrated by her near-namesake, Uma Krishnaswamy, Tulika Books, 2010), which certainly provides scope for lots of questions, and gives a tantalising look ahead at her forthcoming middle-grade novel The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum Books, due out 2011) – and then pay a visit to Uma’s wonderful blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk.

We’re delighted to welcome Out of the Way! Out of the Way! on this the third day of the book’s blog tour, when it will also be visiting Tarie at Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind.

Written by Uma Krishnaswami, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy and newly published by Tulika Books in eight languages, it is a delightful and deceptively simple story. A small boy finds a tree seedling in the middle of a path and puts some stones around it to protect it. As time goes by, the tree grows, the path changes its course to go round the tree, and becomes a road and then a major thoroughfare with urban spread growing up around it. Meanwhile, we see the boy become a young man, a father and a grandfather. The illustrations contextualise the story in its Indian setting and extend the detail of the narrative, showing nature and development growing together. The tree is a landmark, a meeting place; the road takes people at different paces to their various destinations – and there’s always someone in a hurry, shouting “Out of the Way! Out of the Way!”

You can read a full review by Pooja Makhijani at Chicken Spaghetti from yesterday’s Blog Tour stop. I was also fascinated to read in Saffron Tree’s interview with (writer) Uma that part of her inspiration for the story came from her father reading a newspaper story to her about trees being planted in pot-holes to protest against the state of roads.

For our PaperTigers leg of the Blog Tour, I’m excited to present some artwork created in response to Out of the way! Out of the Way!. On Friday, I had the enormous pleasure of spending the afternoon with Class 2 (Ages 5-7) at St Benedict’s RC Primary School in Ampleforth, North Yorkshire (UK). We set the scene by looking at photographs from I is for Inda by Prodeepta Das (Frances Lincoln, 1996) and then read the story together, with plenty of resounding participation.

We looked closely at the illustrations, which are an effective blend of color and black ink vignettes, and picked out lots of details (you can see some of them here). Then the children divided into two groups to create their own artwork -

one group painting:

and the other working to draw detailed outlines first in pencil and then over the top in black ink.

Everything was then brought together into the final collage – and I’m sure you’ll all agree they’ve created a beautiful work of art.

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…Here are some details (note the footprints in the first one and the baskets, goats and skyscrapers in the second):

You can see all these photos and a couple more details over on our Flickr site…

Thank you, Mrs Andrew and Class 2 at St Benedict’s, for such a lovely afternoon; and thank you, Uma and Uma, for inviting PaperTigers to share in Out of the Way! Out of the Way!‘s blog tour.

Now it’s time to get out of the way as the book continues its journey – you can see where it’s headed here…

Newly published Out of the Way! Out of the Way! by Uma Krishnaswami and illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy (Tulika Books, 2010) begins its blog tour today at Educating Alice, where you can read her students’ reviews of the book; and Saffron Tree, where there’s an intriguing Q&A with (writer) Uma, as well as the book title in all of its available languages/scripts…

Also, do read Uma’s explanation of the book’s format – I found it fascinating…

And we can’t wait to be hosting Out of the Way! Out of the Way! on Wednesday. Don’t miss it!

Here’s the whole schedule (I’ll update links to the actual posts as the week progresses): (more…)