Monday, June 9, 2008

Mommy She Wrote

Mahwah author shares her craft with young writers
Monday, June 9, 2008
Last updated: Monday June 9, 2008, EDT 8:24 AM
BY EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
Left: photo by staff photographer Tariq Zehawi.

As a teenager in Georgia, Leigh-Anne Kidwell loved to read. She knew what she liked – Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" was her favorite — and she dabbled in writing short stories and poems.

Blume was her hero, but Kidwell never thought she could be "that person."

"I did not seek out writing as a career," said Kidwell, who now lives in Mahwah. "Because it wasn't touchable."

Fast-forward to her 30s. Now a published author of two books for the tween and teen sets (ages 9 to 15), Kidwell teaches creative writing. Her mission: to show kids that their dreams of becoming writers are within reach.

"I want to let them know, 'You can do this,' " she said. "... There are a lot great young authors out there."

Kidwell will be reading from her books, 2005's "The Year I Lost My Popularity" and 2006's "Summer Vineyard," at the Mahwah Public Library on Tuesday afternoon. She also will be signing up students for a free once-a-week writing workshop at the library during July.

The workshop is a version of a program Kidwell created in Tennessee, where she and her family lived until a year and a half ago. Unlike most creative writing classes, which focus on generating finished stories, Kidwell also teaches kids how to get published.

"There are many avenues they actually can go through at their age to get their work in print," she said.

Kidwell deviated from the writer's path for about 15 years — through college and then 10 years in the fashion merchandising industry — before she finally sat down again and put pen to paper.

And when Kidwell sat down at the drawing board for her first book, she set tweens in her sights.

"I call it the innocent before the trouble," said Kidwell of the middle-school years. "... It's when I started knowing about the reading world and was reading books all the time."

It was also when her world changed. At 13, Kidwell's family moved to a different town in Georgia, and the experience stuck with her. Her first book, "The Year I Lost My Popularity," is loosely based on her own process of fitting in at a new school.

But the appeal of middle-grade books isn't limited to kids the same age as the protagonists, Kidwell added.

In fact, the fans tend to be much younger.

"When they're 9, they're thinking about being 13," she said. Kidwell is writing a third novel, "The Power of Three," which chronicles the troubled friendship of three teenage girls. Her life as a full-time mother of a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old provides ample inspiration.

"I go to the mall or the park, and I hear teenagers talk," she said. "I listen to my baby sitters. In my workshops, I like to have students treat me as one of them as much as possible."

Friday, June 6, 2008

Chuck Mangione!

Hats off to a jazz master
Friday, June 6, 2008
Last updated: Friday June 6, 2008, EDT 5:47 AM
BY EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
WHO: Chuck Mangione and His Feels So Good Band.
WHAT: Smooth jazz.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main St., Tarrytown, N.Y.; 877-840-0457 or tarrytownmusichall.org.
HOW MUCH: $38 to $58.
WHERE TO HEAR: chuckman gione.com.

Smooth jazz legend Chuck Mangione had two dreams as a youngster: playing for the Yankees and playing for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Image courtesy of scaruffi.com

He thought that perhaps he could do both, a day job and a night job. After all, he sometimes played several baseball games a day before his mother drove him to an Italian wedding or a bar mitzvah, where he entertained guests with his trumpet.

Only one dream ended up coming true: Mangione did play with the Jazz Messengers after a stint with his brother Gap in a band they called the Jazz Brothers. The Messengers experience launched his career as a jazz superstar, though he soon switched to the flugelhorn.

More than 50 years after he picked up his first instrument, the Grammy Award-winning musician is still on tour, and he's coming to the Tarrytown Music Hall with his Feels So Good band. The band name refers to one of his best-known tunes.

"When we go to Tarrytown, I'm sure I'm going to see people who attended every performance that I had at Tarrytown," said Mangione. "We've existed for a long, long time. People have a connection to your music. ... I have people tell me how important this particular record was to them. How they fell in love to this particular music. When they were down, another composition lifted their spirits.

"It's a very humbling experience to hear the stories and experience of people who have been touched by this music," he added.

Although he reached the zenith of his fame in the '70s and '80s, Mangione experienced a resurgence after his animated cameo in the television show "King of the Hill."

"Not long ago, this guy comes dragging his kid over and says, 'You're Chuck Mangione, right? I'm a big fan.' And the kid says, 'Hey, you're that guy from 'King of the Hill!' " Mangione said with a chuckle.

The character was drawn with Mangione's trademark brimmed hat, which has unintentionally become his iconic accessory.

"Way back in 1970, I got it as a gift from two good friends," said Mangione. "I wore it occasionally. Then it became the cover for an album of mine called 'Friends and Love.' ... I went out on tour, and the record company said, 'Where's the hat?' So I started wearing that, and that became part of the image.

"It's not the same hat, and certainly I don't wear it all the time," he added. "It would be hard to shower."

With that same serendipity, Mangione accidentally returned to the dream that he left behind. His music gained a staunch fan: Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

"George asked me to play the anthem at Yankee Stadium," he said. "Then we would be playing at Fort Lauderdale when they had spring training. We would go to the games, and the ballplayers would come to our concerts. They got to know us."

Like any other Mangione performance, the anthem is played with his unique aesthetic.

"Play it clean, play it straight from the heart," he said.

It's his simple, crisp tone — and his irrepressible playfulness — that keeps bringing fans back to a song he wrote. You might even call it his personal anthem.

"I'd just love to have people come out to Tarrytown," he said. "It's a wonderful, intimate setting. I guarantee that they're gonna feel so good!"
Copyright Northjersey.com

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Parents Flock Online

Gen-X parents have their space online now
Monday, June 2, 2008
Last updated: Monday June 2, 2008, EDT 6:09 PM
BY EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

Left: Famzam.com. 
Chris Schwartz’s child isn’t due until September. 
But girl or boy, Virgo or Libra, the littlest Schwartz has already been the subject of adoration in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas and New Zealand.

Schwartz has been posting sonograms on his personal page at Famzam.com, a new family-friendly networking site founded by Anthony Lamme of Oakland. Like many Generation-X parents, the 35-year-old Schwartz has incorporated the Internet in his parenting — even before his child is born.

“I like to think we have the youngest social networking child in the world, at five months before birth,” said Schwartz, a Linden native.

For Gen-X parents in North Jersey, it’s no longer enough to use resources on the Internet passively. Several thirty- and fortysomethings have used their Web savvy to create sites that are a new space for their generation, apart from that of the dominant youth culture.

Partly, they are being forced to actively engage with Web culture because their children are (or will be) in the cyber world as early as 2 or 3 years of age. But mostly, the Internet is starting to become a new frontier for Gen-Xers who want to claim niches for themselves.

“I was in my early 30s when MySpace and the other sites became popular,” said Lamme, 35. “But I only want to communicate with people I know. I have absolutely no interest in going out and meeting strangers.”

What’s more, teens and twentysomethings consider older people encroaching on “their” space “creepy,” he added.

The former Wall Street trader decided to team up with Indian Hills High School classmate Mark Murphy and create a social connection site that made it easy to share things such as recipes, pictures and videos — and difficult for potential stalkers to ply their trade.

The site is intended as a way to connect far-flung family members. Lamme’s mother-in-law, Betsy McIntyre, lives in North Carolina and sees his twin daughters, Ashley and Haley, only twice a year in person. But with Lamme’s video blog, “she gets to see them grow up online,” he said. Lamme hopes to reach the boomer generation and beyond with his twist on social networking.

There is a strong demand for safe socializing spaces online — especially for children under age 10 — because of the rapidly changing rules of cyberspace, says Lauren Trudeau of Franklin Lakes. Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are in easy reach of any finger big enough to click a mouse, and children are becoming socialized online earlier and earlier.

In order to protect and monitor her two children, Trudeau founded Yokidsyo.com, a parent-monitored e-mail and instant-message portal for kids. Eighteen months ago, at ages 7 and 8, Mark and Cassandra Trudeau were “a lot more advanced than we thought they would be,” said Trudeau.

“They wanted e-mail, they wanted instant messaging,” she explained. “They were headed toward Facebook and MySpace, which I felt was inappropriate for their age.”

Left: image courtesy of the Wired blog.

Trudeau and her husband, then in their mid-30s, felt compelled to create Yokidsyo as a private forum for their own kids and their friends. News of the site spread quickly by word of mouth, and today membership is at 25,000, mostly consisting of Bergen County children and their parents, according to Trudeau.

“Children that are my kids’ baby sitters, who are 15 and 16 — when they were younger, all this stuff wasn’t out there,” said Trudeau.
Yokidsyo, administered by Trudeau and a group of six local parents, is a way to keep kids from growing up too fast. But one Hoboken couple, Jonathan and Jennifer Rich, are trying to help kids grow more quickly — in their frontal lobes.

Jennifer Rich, a former public school teacher and reading specialist, writes all the content for children’s book review site Ethansbookshelf.com. Parents can find appropriate books by age and topic in the ever-growing database of reviews. The site is named after the couple’s 18-month-old son, Ethan.

“We’re lucky, because [Jennifer] knows good books,” said Jonathan Rich, 32. “But if you’re a young parent, and you don’t know what to get for your child, [other book sites] don’t give much guidance.”

Now staying at home with Ethan, Jennifer Rich, 30, makes use of her expertise and her son’s nap time to write about children’s fiction classics and new books that are sent to her for review. The Riches dreamed up the site after realizing how often she was asked by friends for book recommendations on an informal basis.

For all of these Web entrepreneurs, the end game is to be a better parent — and to help others do the same.


Copyright ©2008 North Jersey Media Group