Hi friend,
And happy November!
The darker months are here (in the North), and that means one thing: itâs time to get cozy. As you know, I tend not to go outside much when itâs dark out⌠so my evenings (starting at 4pm lol) will now be spent exercising, doing puzzles, and reading. Iâve been writing a long list of books I want to borrow from the library this season, and many of you shared that your own reading picks up in fall/winter. So, this feels like a great time to do another book giveaway!
Since I first started blogging in 2010, Iâve been in the practice of hosting book giveaways. They arenât sponsored by publishers (though that might be nice, haha). These are books I love written by authors I want to support. As part of this community, Iâm committed to hosting at least four book giveaways each year (one per season). So far in 2023, weâve given away copies of an adventure memoir (written by
) and a self-help book. If you read this weekâs post, you probably wonât be surprised to learn that the next book I want to share with you is a middle grade novel. âşď¸I have enjoyed a lot of books, since I started reading MG novels a few years ago, but thereâs one author who has quickly become my favourite. I only discovered Katya Balenâs work after moving to the UK (sheâs a British author). At first, I was seeing her book THE LIGHT IN EVERYTHING everywhereâand I have read that. But the first book of hers I read was OCTOBER, OCTOBER⌠and it is easily my favourite of all the MG novels Iâve read, so far.
I wonât tell you about the plot (the excerpt below will paint a picture of what the book is about). What I will tell you is that itâs not necessarily the plot that I fell in love with⌠it was Katyaâs writing. Fast-paced. Raw. Poetic. Vivid. The first time I read it, I couldnât stop taking pictures of the pages and sending them to friends and Tall Man, with captions like: âThis is so beautiful!â âOmg, what an incredible metaphor/analogy.â âThis is what kidsâ books can be like!?â
About her writing on the whole: I always feel as though I know exactly whatâs happening inside the mind/body of her protagonists⌠and I want to keep flipping the pages so I know whatâs happening in their lives. Lives that are deep and richâwith big stories and even bigger feelings. Sometimes itâs clearly labelled and sometimes itâs not, but many of her protagonists also seem to be neurodivergent and/or have siblings who are.
âI love writing stories about bold, brave, wild children who connect with nature and with each other. I find inspiration in landscapes - thatâs always where my books begin to grow and develop. I start with a place and everything follows from there.â
OCTOBER, OCTOBER is a kidsâ book that can be enjoyed by anyone. It is a book I read in 24 hours, and one I will re-read again and again. And I want to giveaway 2 copies to you! Paying subscribers can enter this giveaway by leaving a comment answering the question at the bottom of this post. Iâll randomly select the winners on Sunday, November 12th! In the meantime, if youâd like to get a taste of Katyaâs writing, hereâs an excerpt from the bookâŚ
EXCERPT FROM OCTOBER, OCTOBER
Our house sits in the woods and itâs made from the trees that frame it. Theyâve been chopped and planed and smoothed into a house, and so itâs not the same as looking at the twisted reaches of the branches but I like to be inside the woods. It feels like a secret because we are hidden away and forgotten about in the best way, even though people know weâre here. We have to go into the village every year or so and buy the food we canât grow or the clothes we canât make, which is nearly all clothes except for socks and even those arenât very good when I try. Dad can turn a ball of wool into a foot shape with a click-clack of needles and half an eye on the stove but I canât manage more than a tangle. We get all the things we need for another year and slip back into the woods while the village forgets us again.
The house was built by Dad before I was born. I wasnât born here though, because at the last minute the woman who is my mother said no way and she was whisked off to the hospital and she was pushed down corridors that were white and bright and treeless and blank and like nothing she remembered. But then she did remember. She remembered all the things like microwaves and internet and heating that happens at the push of a button and not from the roar of a stove that makes your clothes smell smoky and sweet. She remembered, and when she had her baby wrapped in a white blanket that matched the walls and the sheets and the pillows she said to Dad that she couldnât go back.
She did, for a bit. But she was floating off into the world that fringes ours, and when I was four she was gone. In my head I think I remember the day she left but the memory is like trying to hold water in my cupped hands and it trickles away before my eyes. There are wisps of a woman holding on to my hand and I feel my whole body being pulled along by the tide of another person running and my legs canât keep up. Thereâs crying and I know that I let out a shriek so loud it pierced the sky and the birds scattered.
I wouldnât let her leave with me. I wouldnât leave the woods.
When I try and remember her now itâs like sheâs been sliced out of the memory and all thatâs left is a person-shaped shadow where she should be, or sometimes sheâs there but then her edges fuzz and curl into smoke and nothingâs left. I hate her for leaving the wild and I hate her for leaving us and I hate her for leaving our perfect little pocket of the world.
She writes all the time but I donât ever read the letters. I donât know why Dad even bothers collecting them from the wooden letter box at the very edge of the track that leads out into the whole wide world. Sheâs the only person who ever posts us anything. Once Dad opened one of the letters and laid it out on the kitchen table for me to read, but I scrunched up the paper into a scribbled ball and watched it turn to ash in the fire and the inky words fade into the embers. When I was five she came to the woods and I hid up a tree and didnât come down until it was night, even when Dad climbed up to try to coax me out. She did it again when I was seven and then again when I was nine, and every time I scrambled into the safety of branches. Dad says sheâs not too far away and I should see her and see where she lives and talk to her and be her daughter again, but I stop scavenging and climb up to the top of a tree whenever he talks about her and he doesnât do it so much now. Everything is far away from here and thatâs exactly how I want it to stay.
Thereâs a word in German that I read about. German has all these strange and magical words that have a million feelings curled up in the letters, like being happy when someone else is sad or longing to be somewhere where youâre not right now. I only get that when we go to the village. My favourite one means forest solitude, and itâs the feeling of being alone in the woods and being calm and happy and safe, and she didnât want that. She wanted me to go to school and spend my weekends with her far away, but then when would I ever be wild and free and climb trees and scavenge for treasure and tell stories by a fire?
I donât want her.
Sheâs not wild like we are.
âpages 7-11 of OCTOBER, OCTOBER, used with permission from Bloomsbury Childrenâs Books.