Natalie Dias Lorenzi is a teacher, librarian, mother, wife and traveler. She has lived in seven US states, Germany, Italy and Japan, and traveled to more places than she can count (and she can count pretty high). Like Skye and Hiroshi, the main characters in her debut middle grade novel Flying the Dragon, Natalie knows what it's like to make a complete fool of herself in another language. That said, she highly recommends the technique of throwing yourself into a new language, even if you're not ready.
Links:
Website: http://natalielorenzi.com/
Blog: http://bibliolinks.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NatalieLorenzi
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flying-the-Dragon-by-Natalie-Dias-Lorenzi/282036541848682
Interview:
When you were little, what did you want to be when you
"grew up"?
In 4th grade, I had the world’s all-time best
teacher, Mrs. Smith, at Bitburg Elementary School on an Air Force base in
Germany. She read aloud to us every afternoon, which was my favorite part of
the day. Learning was fun in her class, and I wanted to grow up and make learning
fun for other kids, too. I became a
classroom teacher, then specialized in English language acquisition. I’m now
almost finished with the coursework I need for my LMS (library media
specialist) endorsement so that I can become a full-time school librarian. At
the moment I’m a half-time ESL teacher and a half-time librarian at an
elementary school.
If you could travel in a Time Machine would you go back to
the past or into the future?
I would definitely go back to the past. I love the
television show Who Do You Think You Are?,
where genealogists help celebrities trace their family histories. I’d love to
go back and meet my ancestors, especially one of my grandmother’s aunts who was
a missionary doctor in China in the early 1900s. Her history in our family is a
bit fuzzy, and I’d love to meet her and find out her story!
If you were stranded on a desert island what 3 things would
you want with you? Okay, so the romantic version would include a book, a
hammock, and a fruity drink. The realistic answer? A satellite phone—fully
charged with a tracking device so someone would know where I am, sunscreen, and
a bug-proof, critter-proof tent with air conditioning and a fully-stocked
fridge and bathroom!
What's one piece of advice you would give aspiring authors?
That depends on which stage of their career they are in.
For someone just starting out, join SCBWI (www.scbwi.org) and get to know other writers at conferences and in online
communities like the one author Verla Kay has created (http://www.verlakay.com/boards/).
For someone who already has already written something, my next piece of advice
would be to join a critique group and sign up for manuscript critiques at
conference. My critique group has been together for about 7 years, and I can’t
imagine going on this journey without them. For someone who has been writing
for awhile and has started to get “positive rejections” (personalized notes
from agents and editors, invitations to sub again, etc.), my advice is to be
patient and KEEP writing. Patience is not one of my own virtues, so I know how
hard it is to be in a business that seems to move at a glacial pace. But when I
feel like a manuscript just isn’t clicking, I leave it alone, start something
new, and come back to it later. It’s tempting to call it “as finished as it
will ever be,” as sometimes it is. But try to discern if that’s really true, or
if you just want to get it out there in Sub World. If it’s the latter, put it
aside for a bit (a month or more, if you can stand it) and then come back to
it. I can guarantee that you’ll see it differently once you’ve had some
distance.
If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
I've lived in many places, both as a kid and later as an
adult. My dad was in the Air Force when I was growing up, so I’ve lived in
Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Virginia and
Germany. Once I graduated from college, I thought I would stay put in Virginia,
but it wasn’t long before the travel bug bit. The summer after my first year of
teaching, I backpacked around Europe, and the following summer I went on a
7-week trip across the United States. They were both amazing experiences, and I
decided that, instead of waiting each summer to travel, I’d like to live somewhere
where it felt like I was traveling every day. So I got a job teaching
Kindergarten at the International School of Trieste in Italy, where I met my
future husband. When my two-year contract was up, I went to Japan where I
taught first grade for more two years before returning to the States.
Two kids and six years later, my husband and I decided
to move back to Italy for two years so that our daughters could learn Italian,
get to know their Italian relatives, and I could stay home with our girls. When
our son was born, two years morphed into five years, and we didn’t return to
the States until 2008.
Even after all of the traveling I’ve done, I’m living
right where I want to—in Virginia near my family during the school year, and in
Italy near my husband’s family in the summers. I still love to travel—the two
continents I’ve never been to are Australia and Antarctica. But being near
family is the best place for us to live for now.
Can you see yourself in any of your characters?
There are definitely elements of myself in both Hiroshi
and Skye. Hiroshi is completely out of his element when he moves from Japan to
Virginia. He doesn’t know the culture or the language, and feels totally out of
place. When I was his age (in 5th grade), we moved from an Air Force
base in Germany to San Antonio, Texas. While I didn’t struggle with the
language, like Hiroshi does, I was definitely out of place culturally. These
were the pre-Internet days, so those of us who lived on the base in Germany were
pretty out of touch with what was happening back in the US. When I moved, I had
no idea what the latest songs, TV shows and movies were, and I was pretty
miserable for the first few months of that school year.
Like Skye in her Saturday Japanese class, I felt like I
was expected to know the culture, when I actually I was clueless. When I moved
to Italy and Japan as an adult, I had a taste of the bewilderment that Hiroshi
and Skye felt with English and Japanese, respectively. Not being able to
express yourself is frustrating and humbling, but at least my days were spent
teaching at international schools where the staff and most of the students
spoke English. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for my ESL students to sit
through an entire day of school and only understand a few words!
If you had 24 hours alone how would you spend it?
This probably won’t sound very surprising, but I would
definitely spend a good chunk of the day writing. As a full-time
teacher/librarian, wife and mother, I don’t get big blocks of writing time very
often. I would go someplace beautiful and peaceful, like the beach or the
mountains, where I could think and walk and work on stories!
In your wildest dreams, which author would you love to
co-author a book with?
The chapters in Flying
the Dragon alternate by viewpoints, Hiroshi’s and Skye’s. As a result, the
reader sees elements of Hiroshi and Skye that would have stayed hidden if the
story had been told from only one of their points of view. For example, when Hiroshi
has a cold, he shows up at school with a white cloth mask that covers his nose
and mouth, as is done in Japan. The mask wouldn’t even warrant a mention if
Hiroshi had been telling that part of the story. But to Skye, it’s a source of
embarrassment.
I’d love to co-author a book with an author who was
raised in a culture that’s different from my own. That culture might be right
here in the US; our country has numerous cultures within its borders. Linda Sue
Park, Sherman Alexie, and Mitali Perkins come to mind. All three of them are such talented writers,
and it would be an honor
If you could jump in to a book, and live in that world, which
would it be?
I’d love to jump into the world of the Penderwicks and
stay in the summer estate of Arundel in Massachusetts. Although the girls
frequently seem to find themselves in heaps of trouble there, the place seems
so lovely—peaceful and beautiful.
What is something people would be surprised to know about you?
American-born Skye knows very little of her Japanese heritage. Her father taught her to speak the language, but when their estranged Japanese family, including Skye's grandfather, suddenly move to the United States, Skye must be prepared to give up her All-Star soccer dreams to take Japanese lessons and to help her cousin, Hiroshi adapt to a new school. Hiroshi, likewise, must give up his home and his hopes of winning the rokkaku kite-fighting championship with Grandfather. Faced with language barriers, culture clashes and cousin rivalry, Skye and Hiroshi have a rocky start. But a greater shared loss brings them together. They learn to communicate, not only through language, but through a common heritage and sense of family honor. At the rokkaku contest at the annual Washington Cherry Blossom Festival, Hiroshi and Skye must work as a team in order to compete with the best.
Giveaway Details
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Great interview. I loved hearing Natalie's advice to authors. And I loved Natalie's book. It's such a great multi-cultural story and I got completely sucked into both Skye and Hiroshi as characters.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Natalie :-)
DeleteThanks so much for hosting me, Kathy!
ReplyDelete