ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: SALLY HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Lou Kassem has always been a storyteller. From the days when her children were young and she was spinning stories at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, people had been telling her she should write her stories down. After the children moved away, she did.
She started with "Listen for Rachel."
"I got sick of "Beverly Hillbillies,' 'Deliverance,' 'Dukes of Hazard,'" she said. "I wanted to tell the true story" about her own people - dispelling the caricatures of Appalachia.
The third novel she wrote, "Middle School Blues," was based on her own children and the parade of neighborhood youngsters "using my bathroom, my Band-Aids, and my refrigerator," she said.
Her other books, however, required research. "I love to do research so much that I sometimes forget to write the book, or I start out writing a textbook, which you can't do for young people," Kassem said. "The last thing you want to do is sound like a textbook or preach."
Her young readers are quick to let her know what they like and don't like about the books. "In 'Middle School Blues," they didn't think [one of her characters] Brandy got her due, so in 'Secret Wishes,' she did," Kassem said.
Children relate to different things in her books. One related to the deaf person in "A Haunting in Williamsburg," another to the dyslexic child in "The Druid Curse."
"You never know what will fascinate people," she said.
Kassem gets ideas for protagonists from newspaper articles, people she passes in the mall, her own memory. Once the story's main character is shaped, the author finds herself living in that character's world, Kassem said, "and the people just pop up. It's magic, another world I tap into, and it's hard to come back sometimes."
When she tours in schools, she encourages the young people to read and write. "I want them to know all writers aren't dead, that they're nothing special. They don't have to live in New York City. They're maybe a little whacky, but just normal people," she said.
Kassem is merely returning the encouragement and help she received from many people. Friends such as Rachel Fordyce, a former associate dean at Virginia Tech, Ann and Art Eastman, who were members of the Tech faculty, plus her family, have provided support, introduced her to the publishing world, provided criticism. In turn, Kassem has helped launch a couple of other writers' careers, including those of former Roanoke Times reporter Erin Flannagan, who has published several children's books, and Connie Jordan Green of Tennessee, who has had two children's books published with one of Kassem's publishers.
Kassem also has judged festivals for young authors and has been a speaker for the National Council of Teachers of English in Atlanta.
She visited 30 schools last year to talk about and read from her books. She spends most of April, May, October and November touring. She gets boxes of letters that have come from every state - except North Dakota - as well as from Canada, South Korea, Morocco, etc.
She visits the locations in which her books will be set - Scotland, North Carolina, Powder Creek, Tenn. - to get those details children value so much.
Still, she says, she couldn't support herself with her writing. "Children's books don't bring a great deal of wealth," she said, adding that only 3 percent of all writers make a living writing.
She might be able to support herself writing if she published her books in hardback, she said, "but children can't afford hardbacks. Most places I go, children save to buy one book at $3.50. I couldn't go there and have the library have one copy and only one or two of the rest could buy the books." Besides, she said, "I love seeing my books in children's hands, getting letters, hooking them on reading. Then they can buy expensive books."
Writing children's books takes desire, determination, believing in yourself, and, most of all, "having a story to tell," Kassem said. The children's book market is good for established writers, she said, but a beginner who thinks that's the way to break into publishing "will get squashed" because writing for children is very difficult.
Those who want to write for children should talk to librarians and check out 10 children's books to study. "Did they hook you at once?" Kassem asked. "Children only give us three minutes. They look at the jacket cover, read the blurb, and read the first page."
Her 11th book, "Sneeze on Monday," will be out this month. She rewrote her first draft because her older daughter did not like the characters. "She was right," Kassem said.
Blacksburg children are among Kassem's fans. Kipps Elementary School pupil Isha Mehmood said she looks forward to reading the book because of its title. Isha and her classmates said Kassem has a knack for naming her books.
"The titles she comes up with are really captivating," said classmate Sunita Perumpral, 10. "If it has a boring title, it won't captivate you. But "Middle School Blues" sounds funny and 'A Haunting in Williamsburg' sounds scary."
Kassem's most recent book, "The Innkeeper's Daughter," is just out. The book is about how the the American Revolution was fought out in Southwest Virginia. A famous battle at Kings Mountain near Charlotte, N.C., fought by many Virginia soldiers, was called the turning point of the war by Thomas Jefferson.
But it is "A Haunting in Williamsburg" that won Kassem her first major award, the Virginia State Reading Association Young Readers Award. She had been nominated for several others, including the Mark Twain Award in Missouri, the Sequoyah Award in Oklahoma and the Texas Blue Bonnet Award; but the young Readers Award is her first recognition from her own state.
Although the book was published in 1990, it is still being studied in schools. The fourth-graders in Trula Byington's class at George Washington Carver School in Salem have just finished reading it and recently met Kassem. "I want the kids to meet a real live author," Byington said the day before Kassem's visit. "The students like her book very much and are excited about meeting her. They don't often get to meet the people who write the books."
Hallie Torrence, a fourth-grade teacher at W.E. Cundiff Elementary in Vinton, team teaches with four other teachers. Last year, they built courses around the theme of the state of Virginia and chose "A Haunting in Williamsburg" as one of four novels to read. "We developed an integrated approach to teaching reading skills" using Kassem's [book] and three other books instead of basic readers, Torrence said. They also incorporated the Standards of Learning into study of the book.
Torrence developed several projects around Kassem's novel. In the first chapter, when one of the characters flew into Richmond and drove to Williamsburg, Torrence had students find all the locations on a map. When the cook prepared dishes, Torrence had the students cooking the foods of the time. In one chapter, the heroine, Jane, listened to 18th-century music, so the students listened to a tape of that music. They also did research about the Revolutionary War.
Then the students actually visited Williamsburg and the places of the novel - including the Bruton Parrish Church cemetery visited by Jane in the novel. "The kids got really excited about it," Torrence said.
Kassem likes the fact that schools are teaching writing along with reading at earlier grades so that writing is not a chore for students. "When children in the fourth grade can discuss alliteration, irony, satire with me, that school is moving," she said.
When more than 100,000 of Virginia's students were given a list of 10 books chosen by a committee of the Virginia State Reading Association, the elementary pupils chose the book as their favorite.
"I've always liked telling stories, and now I get to do it on paper for the whole world," Kassem said. "I think I'm a ham Virginia will never cure."
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM STAFF. 1. Lou Kassem, in the study at herby CNBBlacksburg home, where she handwrites her stories on notebook paper
using pencils. Her desk faces the inside wall so she can't be
distracted by the scenery outside the window. A teddy bear
collector, Kassem usually takes one with her on her speaking
engagements. 2. Her 1990 book, "A Haunting in Williamsburg," was the
favorite in a survey of 100,000 Virginia students. color.