Stories That Stick

Once when I was in college, while I was supposed to be writing a paper about T.S. Eliot, I found a blog accidentally. I'm pretty sure it was less of an accident and more like a heist, in which my web browser clambered over top of Microsoft Word and kicked it in the kidneys and was like 'Look how she articulates!' and I've been following ever since.

Then a really cool thing happened. I got to watch the story of Kate's life unfold like a movie - except it's real life. She went through good things, bad things and finally, after her readers Googled 'skywriting' and decided it was reasonably affordable, they pooled their money so that Kate would look up and read: GET IT PUBLISHED. So she gave in and wrote a book. Apparently it's a slobbery mess of vocabulary words and scabs, and you might not understand it, but if you want to win your own copy, just answer the following questions for yourself. You know you love to voice your own memories and opinions as much as the rest of us!

1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?

I choose Strider as my companion. We’ll use his horse as a vehicle and that elf necklace that Arwen gave him as our tool. Even though I am pretending to be Arwen on this epic journey.

2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

Prince Edward Island. I want to eat bread budding from Marilla Cuthbert’s table.

3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

Pippi Longstocking. I would love to skate on soapsuds in my kitchen, but I need encouraging. If Amelia Bedelia joined us, even better.

4) Gone With the Wind is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?

Is it legal to have 3 answers for this one?

Reese Witherspoon’s character in A Far Off Place. Not only because we had the same hair, but also because she traipsed across a desert in Botswana and at the end of the movie, a guy gave her a bird in a cage. The same guy was later cast as her childhood friend in Sweet Home Alabama, and by then, he was gay.

I was also infatuated with Claire and Leo in Romeo and Juliet. If I had wings I’d have worn them to middle school. This film poked Shakespeare in the side and roused him to life for me.

And for those who knew and loved Sweet Valley Twins, I got two words y’all…Jessica Wakefield.

6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?

The one-armed man in The Fugitive. It wasn’t so much his Cuban Mafia look as it was the whole concept of prosthetics. Completely freaked me out.

7) Every time I read any part of the Bible I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.

8) It is imperative that Peace Like A River be made into a movie. Now. I am already picketing Hollywood for this—but if they cast Dakota Fanning as Swede, I will not be happy. I will, however, be appeased if they cast a no-name on the rise.

9) Frog and Toad Together is a book that should never be made into a film. (The illustration would be lost in animation).

10) After all these years, the scene in The Man From Snowy River where Jessica wakes up on the side of a cliff in New Zealand still manages to give me the queebs.

11) After all these years, the kissing scene between Eric Stoltz and Watts in the book/movie Some Kind of Wonderful still manages to give me a thrill.

12) If I could corner the author(s) Jan and Stan Berenstain here’s what I’d say to them in one minute or less about their book(s) series The Berenstain Bears: If Mama and Papa Bear had decided to give Brother and Sister Bear a sibling…what would you guys have named it?

13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is The Sacred Romance. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to take a dive into the deep blue that disguised itself in childhood but started to show its face when God interrupted me years later.