The Luck of the Buttons

The Latest Button News /  by Anne Ylvisaker

More good news for Tugs! The Luck of the Buttons has been named to the 2013 California Collection and is a nominee for the 2014 Grand Canyon Reader Award. Go, Tugs, go!

Some nice notice for Ned as well. The Button Down audio book, narrated by the delightful Sanjiv Jhaveri got a lovely review in the November issue of AudioFile. Here's an excerpt:

Jhaveri’s Ned is doggedly determined to right injustice; his friends, predictably youthful. The voice of Jhaveri’s grandfather has a raspy, drawn-out sound that manages to pack just enough oomph when a vital point is needed.

Thank you for bringing Ned and the gang to life, Mr. Jhaveri! 

Growing a story: The art of doing nothing /  by Anne Ylvisaker

How much time do you spend doing nothing? Nothing as in being by yourself without the TV on, without your phone or computer or even a book. If you want to write, learning to do nothing is an important skill to develop. 

In her book If You Want to Write, Author Brenda Ueland calls this “moodling” time. Moodling is letting your mind wander and explore without distraction, allowing it to work out problems and find ideas. 

I was moodling one day a few years ago in my house in Iowa. There was a picture on the wall of my great-grandparents on a rickety porch with chickens running around in the yard. I looked at that picture and let my mind wander for a long while. 

I let one thought lead to another and then another, from that photo to a tombstone in a prairie cemetery with the name I’d misread as “Tugs Button,” to my grandmother and her long gangly arms and something her father had said to her once about not getting a swell head. 

The thoughts piled one on top of another until an idea sprouted. I took that idea for a walk in the woods and let it grow a little taller. I sat again in front of the picture until the idea bloomed, then I picked up a pen and started scrawling loose sentences. 

All the time that may have looked to an observer like I was being unproductive, I was actually growing a story that turned into three books about the comically unlucky Button family: The Luck of the Buttons, Button Down, and a third that I’m writing and moodling over now. 

Do you want to write? Put down your pen, turn off the TV and radio and computer and phone. It’s time to do nothing! 

Read on, Georgia! and other birthday news /  by Anne Ylvisaker

Today is my birthday and what better present is there for an author than to know that her books are connecting with readers? My day started with emails from Candlewick sharing great news about two of my books:

The Luck of the Buttons has been nominated for the 2012-2013 Georgia Children's Book Award. Thank you, Georgia readers! I am honored to be included on this wonderful list. 

2012 is also the ten year anniversary of Dear Papa's publication and I am thrilled to learn that there are plans to release it in e-book next spring. 

The very best celebration of Dear Papa's tenth birthday was a visit with a group of enthusiastic ten-year-old readers. I had the great privilege of spending an afternoon with Ms. Bishop's fourth grade last week. They read and discussed Dear Papa as a class over the course of several months and knew the story and characters inside and out. It was incredible to hear how the life of 1940s Isabelle resonated with these readers of today. There was talk of what to call a step-parent, what it's like when we find out Mama's having a baby, what it's like to miss someone. They shared the letters that made them laugh and had so many interesting questions and comments. I look forward to my next visit when we'll explore journal keeping. Thank you, fourth graders! 

Books to Read and Share /  by Anne Ylvisaker

I love lists. Word lists, grocery lists, even to-do lists. But my favorite list of all is a to-read list. I keep one in my planner, in the list section, of course. Here is the New York Public Library's list of 2011 children's books to read and share. Find great books to add to your lists: to-read, to-give, to-read to others. And hurray, the list includes The Luck of the Buttons!

Independence Day 1929 to 2011 /  by Anne Ylvisaker

A fun Luck of the Buttons review appeared online today, written by a twelve-year-old reader who retells a bit of Tugs’s Independence Day 1929. Thanks, Faith McPhee!

It’s hard to believe that it is already mid-summer and Independence Day 2011 is upon us. The Fourth of July is one of my favorite days of summer because all over the country, communities are gathering in celebrations similar to ones I participate in as well as the fictional celebration in Goodhue eighty-two years ago.

The image I had in my head when I first sat down to write a scene of what would become The Luck of the Buttons was of the community Fourth of July event that takes place in the neighborhood where I lived for many years, St. Anthony Park in St. Paul, Minnesota.

There is a parade down Como Avenue. Convertibles carry various local dignitaries and veterans march with flags. When I was a kid, my Grandpa marched with the World War I vets. A vintage fire engine rolls down the avenue followed by a lawn mower brigade, a group that choreographs steps with lawn chairs, clowns of course, school groups, musicians, and more. When all the paraders have passed, children join in on decorated bikes and trikes, then all the spectators follow the parade down the hill to Langford Park. Families claim spots with blankets. Kids wander. Everyone eats. Patriotic essays are read. There are races for all ages, and ribbons.

I dropped Tugs and the Buttons into a Fourth of July like the ones I’ve known and felt immediately at home in Goodhue. Check out the chapters Independence Day, Ribbons, and Click to read about Tugs’s Independence Day.

Enjoy your community celebrations this Fourth of July and may you have many lazy hours for reading this month! 

Just a note: I will be away from the internet until late July, but will respond to your comments and emails when I return. 

Novel and Nouveau...Settling Esther B /  by Anne Ylvisaker

One of the things I like about writer Barbara Watson's Novel and Nouveau blog is that she keeps posts concise and to the point. With so many sites to keep up with these days, it's nice to know that when I pop in here, I'll get an interesting, focussed tidbit in a manageable size. 

One of her regular features is Marvelous Middle Grade Monday for which Barbara recently reviewed The Luck of the Buttons. Lucky me. She also asked me to write a guest post about the process of writing the book. It got me thinking about where characters come from, which got me thinking about my dear Grandma B. I pulled out a photo of her and was surprised to find how much she looks like the picture that ended up on the cover of the book. Click over and have a look!

The Rowdies /  by Anne Ylvisaker

Setting The Luck of the Buttons in 1929 gave me an excuse to peruse newspapers from that year. One of my most charming discoveries was The Brooklyn Standard Union. In the company of headlines like "Woman's Wit Foils Bandits After Payroll" and "Florence Berger Not Worried" I found this gem:

McGUINNESS After Park Rowdies
   Alderman Peter McGUINNESS is making good his threat to war on rowdies who
visit the parks in Greenpoint. He has been seen strolling about the parks for
several nights.

And from there, Goodhue's band of rapscallions, the Rowdies, were born. Luther Tingvold, Walter Williams, Bess McCrea, and Finn and Frankie Chacey mostly lump about parks and alleys looking tough but one never knows where they'll turn up or what their intentions may be. 

Midwest readers, I will see you soon! Come hear more about Tugs, the Rowdies, and other Button tales in St. Paul at The Red Balloon on Saturday or in Iowa City at Prairie Lights on Sunday, 2pm both days. 

Why Iowa /  by Anne Ylvisaker

When I moved away from the Midwest, I was surprised at how many people confuse Iowa with Ohio and Idaho. It’s true that the vowel-laden names sound similar to ears that don’t hear them frequently, and all three are land-locked states, so what sets Iowa apart?

Today I’ll share why I set The Luck of the Buttons in Iowa. Learn more about Iowa by checking back in the following days as several authors, artists, and others answer the question, Why Iowa?

Young Corn - Grant WoodI was living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when I got the inspiration for The Luck of the Buttons. (Read about Tugs Button here.) But the reason for setting the fictional town of Goodhue in Iowa goes deeper than that.

Iowa has at once a wideness of space and a closeness of community that is enticing.


New Road - Grant Wood
Waiting for the Parade - Marvin ConeThe paintings of Cedar Rapids natives Grant Wood and Marvin Cone illustrate the sense of wideness and closeness of landscape and people that captivated me. I visited their work at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art as I settled my imagination into the atmosphere of Iowa, 1929. I could see Tugs, Ned, and the rest here.

Stone City - Grant Wood

Do you have a Why Iowa thought you’d like to share? Add a comment below. If you’d like to write a guest post or share an image on this topic, email me here.

Have a Listen /  by Anne Ylvisaker

When I was a kid, listening to an audio book meant slipping a record out of its sleeve, lifting the heavy lid of the stereo cabinet, balancing the record on the spindle, waiting for the record to drop, then lowering the needle carefully so as not to scratch the surface and cause one line to repeat over and over.

The book I remember listening to most often was Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price. Just say the word “donut” and the distinctive voice of that narrator comes back to me instantly, bright and lively, a sit-down-here-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story voice. On those lazy summer afternoons, I felt as though Robert McCloskey himself was curled up inside that cabinet, telling me over and over again about Homer and the donut shop.

The Luck of the Buttons was released last week in audio book and when I got my first listen I couldn’t stop smiling. The charming voice of Laura Hamilton takes me right back to those blissful hours sprawled out on the floor in front of the stereo cabinet.

Hear a sample here and see if Ms. Hamilton doesn’t leave you with a craving for pie and lazy summer afternoons.

Thank you, Librarians! /  by Anne Ylvisaker

Miss Lucy, the librarian, was the most exotic person of Tugs's acquaintance. Unmarried, yet not a widow or an old maid, taller even than Uncle Elmer, with wavy sunset-orange hair skimming her belt, and a warm whispery voice, she seemed completely unaware of Tugs's lack of academic prowess whenever she chose books for her. (The Luck of the Buttons, p. 44)

It's book launch day for The Luck of the Buttons and it's also National Library Workers Day. I know Tugs would want to say THANK YOU to Miss Lucy and I'd like to thank librarians everywhere for the work they do to connect readers with books and information. 

I grew up going to the Roosevelt branch of the Minneapolis Public Library where my own Miss Lucy, Lucy Selander, seemed to have magical powers. She would stand in front of the shelves of books, look over at me with a long pause, maybe ask a question or two, then turn back and peruse the shelves while I held my breath, wondering what treasure she'd retrieve. 

Lucy was also the librarian behind the counter when I signed up for my first library card. Because I had an older sister, I knew that in order to get my card I had to be able to print my full name. Anne was easy, but my middle name, Elizabeth, seemed an endless stream of letters. I practiced and practiced at home and was so proud to walk into the library that day and ask for a card.

Lucy passed a card and a pen across the counter. I remember sounding out Elizabeth as I wrote: Eliz za beth. Elizzabeth. I passed the card back for approval. Lucy praised my neat printing then asked me if I was sure that my middle name had two z's. Yes, I said. I'm sure. I pronounced it out loud for her. To her great credit, Lucy did not dampen my big moment by correcting me. She simply smiled, congratulated me, and handed me my card. I've been proud to carry a library card ever since. 

 Thank you, Lucy!

Through the Lens /  by Anne Ylvisaker

Tugs looked down through her camera’s viewfinder and pivoted slowly all the way around and down and up. It was like watching a movie, seeing the bandstand, the bakery, the soft evening sky go by in that tiny frame. These were the same ordinary sights she’d been seeing her whole life, but suddenly they were sharp and beautiful, like little jewels collected in a box. (The Luck of the Buttons, p 102)

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Box, the Hawkeye model. It was my summer of being twelve and Dutch Elm Disease was rampant in Minneapolis. City workers painted red lines around the trunks of doomed trees on the boulevards on my street, and though the infected trees appeared healthy, they were to be cut down within the week.

I remember standing in the middle of the street looking down through the lens of my Brownie at the long rows of elms. I noticed for the first time the perfect arch they made of the three-block length of 47th Avenue. I couldn’t save our beloved trees, but the act of taking a picture made me feel empowered, like I was witnessing and preserving a small piece of my neighborhood’s history. 

It was a piece of Kodak camera history that led me to setting The Luck of the Buttons in the year 1929. The first Brownie came out in 1900 and was made expressly to put photography in the hands of children. In 1930, to celebrate the company's 50th Anniversary, Kodak gave free Brownie cameras to children who turned twelve that year. 

I set my story in 1929 because I wanted Tugs to have a camera before most of her friends. I chose the Number 2 F Model for Tugs, which came in five colors. She was able to get her favorite color, green. And, lucky me, I found one just like it on ebay. 82 years old and it still works!

Enter the cat...meet Leopold /  by Anne Ylvisaker

This is my great-grandmother's cat, so docile on her lap. She's knitting and he's not even chasing the yarn. But I have a cat that looks remarkably like this one and my cat can act demure and innocent one moment, then get into mischief as soon as I turn my back.

So it is with The Luck of the Buttons's Leopold, who belongs to the elderly Thompson sisters but, unbeknownst to them, finds adventures all over town. 

Leopold outsized most raccoons. His belly hung so low he collected all manner of leaves and ground scraps, which he then left on the library carpet every time someone let his shaggy self through the door. You could always tell where Leopold had been when you went into the library, as there was a trail of leaves and grass marking his path, like Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. Usually he went to the children's area, because he got lots of attention there until somebody's mother shooed him out. Then he went scurrying in a straight line for the door, mewing as if maimed. 

How a cat that fat had gotten himself up in the apple tree Tugs couldn't imagine. But sure enough, there he was, the tiny sisters carrying on beneath the tree.

The Plot Thickens /  by Anne Ylvisaker

This is another family photo that has fascinated me for years. Most of the pictures we have from that era are posed, taken for an occasion. So, like the porch picture I wrote about yesterday, I've long wondered who had a camera on this trip. Where is this group going and where have they been? How long have they been stranded? 

Again, I imagined Tugs looking through the lens. I imagined that the man was a stranger who'd chanced along. What was his business, appearing on a country road out of nowhere?

Meet Harvey Moore, a slick and optimistic newsman on his way to deliver progress to Goodhue, Iowa. He's come to help, so why is Tugs wary?

Meet the Buttons /  by Anne Ylvisaker

A framed enlargement of this picture has hung on a wall in each of my last three houses. It is a family photograph with my grandmother's handwriting on the back: 1927 House north of town. My grandma is the one standing next to the door. Her in-laws are seated on the edge of the porch, holding my Aunt Sylvia.

Who's house is this, north of town? Why is the window broken? Why are the chickens running around? There is another picture taken just a moment before or after, without the chickens. I could find the answers to these questions easily, but because wondering about it is half the fun, I haven't asked. 

Most of all, I've wondered, why was the picture taken at all, and who is behind the camera? As a writing exercise I tried starting a story with this scene. I wrote as if this weren't my family at all, but some strangers I was encountering for the first time. After a few flat starts, Tugs Button (see yesterday's post) popped into my head as a spunky twelve-year-old girl with a new camera. This is my family, she seemed to say. Let me tell you about them. 

When something went wrong in the Button family, they shrugged, they sighed, they shook their heads. “Just our luck,” the Buttons said. 

Tell me more, I said to Tugs. And she did. 

Aggie, Felicity, Mary Louise...Tugs? /  by Anne Ylvisaker

The countdown is on! The Luck of the Buttons launches one week from today.

This is the story of twelve year old Tugs Button, a girl born to a luckless family. The Buttons are content with their lives of misfortune until the summer of 1929 when Tugs decides to become the first lucky Button.

Where does the name Tugs come from?

Several springs ago I was on a picnic with writer friends in a rare tall grass prairie that happens to be in a rural Iowa cemetery. While searching for wildflowers we stumbled across this Civil War era headstone.

Tugs! I said. Now there's a name with scope for the imagination!

I went home to try to write a story about a boy named Tugs who fights in the war. By the time I got to my notebook I remembered the last name as Button, not Britton as on the tombstone, perhaps because I'd recently been to the Pearl Button Museum in Muscantine, Iowa.

But Tugs was elusive, and the Civil War story just didn't emerge.

The next spring we went back for another picnic and I looked at the stone more closely. Not only was the last name Britton, not Button, but the first name was actually THOS, short for Thomas, not Tugs at all. 

Hmmm...I thought...what if someone else made the same mistake? What if...

Tomorrow: how I met the Button family.

Button Up /  by Anne Ylvisaker

I'm playing the piano again after a long break. My fingers are slow and clumsy so I'm starting with my trusty childhood practice book Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises. Published in 1900, my copy has penciled marks from generations of piano teachers and it brings me right back to those hours sitting at the bench with only the ticking metronome for company. 

The Luck of the Buttons is set in 1929, and while Tugs Button is not musical, her best friend Aggie Millhouse escapes piano practice by putting a roll in the player piano. Today we've got ipods, ipads, electronic keyboards that play accompaniment, even keyboard staircases. Yet the sight of this piano playing itself still amazes.

Here's a player piano playing a hit from 1929: Button Up Your Overcoat.

Lucky Day /  by Anne Ylvisaker

Treasure in the mailbox today: a big padded envelope filled with bags of buttons – inspiration as I work on the next Button book – and this note from the marvelous Michelle Edwards:

From shops where buttons are recognized for their worth – for the role in bringing two sides of fabric together – and allowing them to remain that way, somewhat securely.