Penumbras by Braden Bell - A Blog Tour Review

One thing that I look forward to doing with this blog is reviewing books and plays for young people. There hasn’t been as much time as I would like to spend reading this year, but I did have the pleasure of reading The Kindling and Penumbras, the first two books in the Middle School Magic series by my friend, Braden Bell. Penumbras was released in July and I am happy to join the final leg of the Penumbras book tour with my first book review.

The Middle School Magic series focuses on Connor, Lexi, and Melanie, average middle school students who are quickly thrust into the epic struggle between the forces of Light and Dark when it is discovered that they are Magi-in-training in service to the Light. All of this while they struggle to find a balance in their rapidly-changing, pre-teenage lives. The Kindling introduces readers to the characters and the world of the Magi. Penumbras picks up where the first book left off and defines those factions in more detail and explores the grey areas where Light and Dark can intersect: often within the human soul. Much of the book tells of Connor, Lexi, and Melanie’s training under the guidance of Dr. Timberi, a master Magi who also happens to be the music and drama teacher at their school.  Penumbras has plenty of action and intrigue to keep an audience (young and adult) engaged throughout. Bell has a knack for infusing even the most intense action scenes with a great deal of humor. I particularly enjoyed the battle in a department store at the mall. Also, there are some interesting and controversial character developments (link here) and a surprise ending that will leave you wanting to get your hands on the next book as soon as it is published. But what particularly excites me about Penumbras is how the story is as much about the emotional development of its young characters as it is about the epic struggle between Light vs. Dark.

While Lexi, Connor, and Melanie work to understand their abilities and responsibilities as Magi, they must also navigate the treacherous emotional landscape of early adolescence. Bell shows the experiences of being a young person in the language of a young person with great skill and honesty, undoubtedly a result of his years as a middle school teacher. Within the narrative, the Light and the Dark become parallels for the “good” and “bad” that may exist within the human soul and continually impact the characters’ thoughts and actions. The narrative as a whole demonstrates the much larger implications that personal decisions and actions can have and, perhaps more importantly, shows that it is possible for a person to be more than just “good” or “bad” and that redemption and forgiveness are always possible. I can imagine such a message resonating with young readers as they struggle, often silently, to understand the numerous new and often accentuated thoughts and emotions that accompany the journey through puberty and into adulthood. Bell seems to say to our children, and to us, that sometimes you need to go through the Darkness to get to the Light. And that in the end, there is still the possibility that everything will be ok. That is a strong and encouraging message that all of us, young and old, need to hear.

I strongly recommend Penumbras (and The Kindling) to you and to the young people in your lives just as I have recommended the books to my students and my family. I hope that you find Penumbras and the rest of the Middle School Magic series as enjoyable as I have. And please let the author know how much you enjoyed it. As he says on his website, he loves interacting with his readers!

Please see the links below for further information about this series and its author, Braden Bell. There is a discounted rate on the book when you order through the author’s website.

Happy reading!

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Where to purchase Penumbras:

You can buy both Penumbras and The Kindling through the author's website at a discounted price - $9.99 (plus s/h).

The author also encourages readers to support independent bookstores and to order online through Parnassus, an independent bookstore in Nashville.

You can also find Braden's books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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Beginning a Life with Alopecia

On the morning of April 18, 1987, I came from a birthday party sleepover at a friend’s house and sat on the living room floor to watch TV. My mother was sitting on the couch behind me and noticed a small bald patch on the back of my head about the size of a quarter. Every morning for the next few days, I woke up to a pillow so thick with hair that I had to use a lint roller to remove it. Two weeks later, I had gone from having a full head of hair to a few weak patches near the top of my head.

This is me about a year before losing my hair.

Fourth grade can be tough enough for a child given all of the changes that begin to take place around that time. My fourth grade year was certainly an awkward one: I had new braces and glasses and adolescence with all of its glories lurking just around the corner. Just about everyone goes through those changes sooner than later, but what made it different for me was how quickly I morphed physically in front of everyone’s eyes. There were plenty of questions to be had. Some of my friends and classmates were genuinely curious and concerned about what had happened. Questions from certain others had a bit something less friendly about them. To make things worse, when I was eventually diagnosed with alopecia universalis (an autoimmune disorder resulting in the complete loss of body hair), the dermatologist prescribed a giant pill that was impossible to swallow and a cream for my scalp that stained my face several shades darker than my hands and arms. It is not necessary for me to go through the variety of ignorant and hurtful things that were said and done to me in the years that followed. It was not fun, to say the absolute least. Luckily, it was around this time that I was introduced to theatre and began to develop a love of stories both on the stage and on the page.

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I began to read a lot; saw many movies, plays, and musicals. I enacted the stories in front of a mirror in the shelter of my bedroom and wrote scripts for my friends and I to enact and occasionally film. To my knowledge, nothing but one of these scripts ever got produced: we filmed a movie with a friend’s VHS video camera, but that was more of a collaborative effort than an independent script. Nevertheless, writing and stories became a way for me to cope. I kept a collection of journals from fifth grade through high school, which I kept until recently. Some of the writing was about life with alopecia, but much of it was the accounts of the day, or ideas for a new story. No matter the subject, the tone of my writing in the journals was unfettered and real. Writing in those pages helped me to reflect on and express emotions about everything that I was experiencing and, as the stage would later provide, provided a comfortable place to be myself and share my voice.

Now, through my professional life in theatre and in academia, I understand how important this involvement in story was to the development of my maturity and personality. I enjoy seeing that same development in the young playwrights that I mentor and/or whose work I produce; in the energy and confidence with which college students assert their artistry independently for the first time. There is something very powerful in a young person sharing their voice and there is little that can benefit the young writer / young artist more than having their work read and discussed. It is my hope that with the establishment of the Alopecia Writers Club other children with alopecia can find joy and encouragement similar to that which I experienced when I was in their shoes.

The Alopecia Writers Club is currently accepting new members and I hope to have writing prompts and tips going for Club members by the time Alopecia Awareness Month starts up in September. If you know of a child with alopecia, or a sibling of a child with alopecia, who would be interested in developing and sharing their creative writing, please see the Club section of my website for more information, or contact me at jim@jimdevivo.com. (April 2016: Please note that the Alopecia Writers Club is currently on hiatus.)

Defining TYA

It can be difficult to discuss a topic when there is little consensus on the definition of the topic(s) being discussed. I've recently been involved in dialogue in which words that seem to have a concrete meaning, but really identify a more general area that allows for multiple interpretations dependent upon individual contexts and experiences that each discussion participant has with the term. One term that often falls into this realm is "theatre for young audiences" or "TYA", which typically defines those performances intended for "young" people. But what exactly does that mean? How young is "young"?

Last year, I was a member of the planning committee for a Forum on TYA (theatre for young audiences) at NYU and considered this topic in the Forum blog ahead of the weekend sessions (link here). The question I still have is "What is TYA?", or as the Forum sought to explore it, "Which way TYA?" The Forum sessions and workshops addressed these questions with a variety of examples of the direction and form that many productions for young audiences can take; however, I am still curious about the definition of the term.

During our planning, a colleague posed the the following questions to the group: "Does the category of 'Theatre for Young Audiences' create more problems than solutions for us? Does it carry a stigma? Are we too separate from the rest of the theatre movement?  In Germany, they talk about Young Theatre - a spirit that pervades young work, young performers, and a young/less conventional attitude to making theatre. This allows repertory theatres and main houses as well as what we would call more traditional TYA to share the same umbrella. And it means that there are fewer preconceptions."

I like this idea of defining the spirit of a theatre movement as opposed to the tangible qualities of the work. It also speaks toward the similarities among the various definitions of TYA as opposed to highlighting the differences. Whether we call it "Theatre for Young Audiences" or "Young Theatre" or some other incarnation of that phrase, what similarities exist among our work? Can we come to a consensus definition? Should we?

These are questions that are likely not new to your work. What similarities do you see in theatre that is labeled as "TYA"? What is your definition?

Welcome & Happy Independence Day!

Tonight, I am taking a break from my traditional July 4th routine to welcome you to my new website. I am excited to launch this page and to share my past and future work with you. More to come, of course, but for now I am headed to the couch for the annual viewing of 1776. I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Fourth of July and I look forward to seeing you back here soon.