When I talked to Cynthia Voigt about the ideas of place attachment and our psychological connection to place, she said she uses maps to orient herself within a story because she doesn’t like to feel “geographically dislocated” as she writes. When we discussed A Solitary Blue she said, “I think of Solitary Blue as a […]
Dicey and her siblings were searching for home, but Jeff, the main character in A Solitary Blue, is not. This book is about the shadow side of place. Jeff lives in Baltimore with his father, the Professor, after his mother abandons them when Jeff is 7. Voigt only describes the home in Baltimore once, after […]
To explore these ideas of positive and negative place attachment, I chose to focus on middle grade settings, and home in particular. However, these concepts do apply across genres and across ages. Why middle grade? Between our childhood and teenage years, we begin to see the world through new eyes. We observe carefully, we make […]
Take a look at the room you’re in. If I asked you to write a story set there, which details would you use? The color of the walls? The way the light comes in through the windows? Maybe something about the chairs. With those details you could sketch out a pretty good picture of the […]