Posts Tagged ‘storytelling’

• AND YOU CAN LOVE ME my experience writing a children’s book (2)

  Date: 2019.09.22 | Category: And You Can Love Me a book for everyone who loves someone with ASD | Response: 0

  And You Can Love Me a story for everyone who loves someone with ASD

  the process of getting this picture book published

   

  Having received positive feedback at the picture book workshop facilitated by Alison McGhee, I pondered what next.  Alison helped me to wordsmith Ethan’s story, and then suggested we send it to her agent.  Seriously, I’ve never had an agent or even thought about getting one.  I was introduced to LHP by a friend, and I’ve been loyal to Victor Volkman and LHP ever since.

  I agreed, however, to have Alison McGhee send And You Can Love Me to her agent.  The agent, however, had concerns about “political correctness” and that was that.  But I believed in Ethan’s story-it was his story, although fictionalized.  I took the agent’s concerns into consideration and asked others, with experience and knowledge relevant to the story and the responses were overwhelmingly positive and supportive of the diversity of opinions within the autism  community.

  I, again, professed loyalty to LHP and submitted Ethan’s story to the indie publisher.  The response was “yes”-yet, with an indie publisher I needed to take responsibility for the art whether paying an artist or finding someone to participate by accepting a share of the royalties.  Eventually, the granddaughter of a high school friend, agreed and we set out on a multi generational journey, which also, eventually, included a woman whose age was between the artist and the writer, to hand letter the story.  We were, all three of us, newbies to the world of picture book publication.  Thank goodness, LHP has a history of picture book publications, and Victor was supportive and patient as we created a manuscript print ready.

   

  Reviews are slowly appearing on Amazon and Goodreads (see below) , but the review that meant the most to me was the simple note my grandson’s public school teacher sent home with him:

  “Thanks for the book!  It was great.  We read it in class & Ethan was smiling the whole time.  Such a great book.”

   

  https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Love-Me-everyone-ebook/product-reviews/B07QYGXGK2/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_top?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews

   

  http://kerrymagro.com/blo

• And You Can Love Me

  Date: 2019.04.01 | Category: Book Reviews | Response: 0

  a story for everyone who loves someone with ASD

   

  “As a mother and grandmother, this story speaks to me about the power of unconditional love we bring to any situation. This book is an excellent resource for adults who have a child or grandchild with autism. It acknowledges the different ways my loved one with autism may communicate and reminds me that we love completely. As a former special education teacher, this story gives me words to be able to keep sharing with people about the wonderful diversity that we see in the world. Everyone has gifts.”
  —Deb Holtz is a former special education teacher, a current end-of-life doula, and a mother and grandmother.

  “In You Can Love Me, Sherry Lee gives us the world of Ethan, a little boy with autism. Although Ethan is mute, his daily routine of bouncing a ball and expressing his needs, as well as his interior life are revealed through simple sketches and lovely lines like Today I am another year of being me. A welcome and wonderful addition to the as-yet-tiny body of work about children with autism, You Can Love Me is a beautiful, profoundly moving book.”
  –Alison McGhee, New York Times bestselling author of many books for children and adults.

  

• MIDWEST MIXED WRITING WORKSHOP

  Date: 2019.03.27 | Category: Events, The Art of Writing, Workshops | Response: 0

  Here, We Are Writing Workshop with Sherry Quan Lee:  April 13 1-4pm at Eastside Community Co-op

  “The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.  They make one story become the only story.”

  — Chimamanda Adichie’s, “The Danger of a single story,” TED Talk, 2009.

  Storytelling.  It’s monkey mind.  It’s conversation.  It’s crafting our lives by crafting our words.  It’s claiming the past and imagining the future with no rules of craft or politics except the ones we, individually, choose, the ones that work for us.  Stories that save our lives and enter our world like angels flapping their wings, creating music, something like jazz. Our goal is to break silence and invisibility by reading, writing, contemplating, and conversing; and, to imagine a future by breaking through barriers that have shut us out and shut us up-that have tried to define us. We will look within and without–and shout out, bringing our mixed race stories of intersectional identity to the surface. We will embrace our stories in all of their complexity in order to understand and challenge social or cultural obstacles to loving who we are.  We will look in a mirror and see beauty, strength wit, and wisdom.  We will look at each other and see the same. Participants will summon the past, witness the present, and invoke the future using literature, historical records, photographs, maps, and memorabilia to remember, reveal, confront, embrace, and document their stories.  – Sherry Quan Lee

  Read Sherry’s Community Spotlight https://www.midwestmixed.com/community/midwest-mixed-community-spotlight-sherry-quan-lee )

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” TED Talk, 2009.

  Date: 2018.09.08 | Category: Words of Wisdom | Response: 0

   

  “The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.  They make one story become the only story.”

  “The consequence of a single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

  “Stories matter.”

  –Chimamanda Adichie