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Featuring... By Jacqueline Chan Valencic
Press Coverage:
Mountain View Voice
Spring Valley View
Asian American Books
Welcome to a world where yo-yos and Hula Loops, Jell-0 and Kool-Aid, "Father Knows Best," "American Bandstand," drive-in theaters, and homecooked meals are the norm.
Welcome to a time when e-mail and cell phones don't exist; when girls can't wear pants to school; when houses mustn't stay bright pink...
To buy an autographed copy with free shipping:
About the book
When the House was Bright Pink
This collection of short coming-of-age stories in verse travels to a 1950's, 1960's America, where the world seemed safer--at least in Mountain View, California.
These stories, though reflecting a bygone era, speak to us in the present. For the need to be heard, to be seen, to be recognized are as the perennial as the stars in the sky, as eternal as time flying by.
Follow a "homely" middle child's observations and struggles while growing up in a nine-member family. See how family provides the foundation for an overall happy, memorable childhood. See how family buoys her from drowning in a larger, harsher world--a world torn between rejecting her and molding her into a "proper" American. The center of this world is pre-Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Region.
These verses were written for grown-ups, but can be read by children twelve years and older.
Book's excerpt:
They called me Skinny.
Yes, Skinny Minnie.
I wasn't shapely.
They couldn't see me.
Was I a girl? Boy?
A thin freak toy?
Something in-between?
A stick-species queen?
I tried to gain weight.
It wasn't my fate.
No special drinks worked.
Got me really irked.
I tried to move less,
Which turned out a mess.
My friend Judy Ann
Yelled, "Walk!" -- but I ran.
A Linda at school
Saw me as a fool.
Didn't call my name
To put me to shame.
"Hi Skinny," she'd say
In an ugly way.
She spoke like a twit.
Her nose had a zit.
She made me batty.
I called her Fatty.
She started to chat.
We ended our spat.
About the Author
Jacqueline Chan Valencic didn't become obsessed with writing "rhymes" until she was laid off from a high tech company in 2001. The rhymes kept coming; she couldn't stop--It was too much fun. She was 53 years young.
Since childhood, her writing was a natural extension of the self: in diaries, letters, short stories, essays, free-verse, and even an unpublished novel. None, however, exhilarated her as much as writing poems that rhyme. To her, it was and is the most challenging and stimulating.
Her poetic heroes?--Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ogden Nash, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein.
Born in China and raised in Mountain View, California, Ms. Valencic now works and lives with her husband, Jay, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Since childhood, her writing was a natural extension of the self: in diaries, letters, short stories, essays, free-verse, and even an unpublished novel. None, however, exhilarated her as much as writing poems that rhyme. To her, it was and is the most challenging and stimulating.
Her poetic heroes?--Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ogden Nash, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein.
Born in China and raised in Mountain View, California, Ms. Valencic now works and lives with her husband, Jay, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Floral photo of the month:
Bird-of-Paradise
Did You Know...?
Shel Silverstein was not only a renowned poet, playwright, screenwriter but was also a songwriter with credits that included "A Boy Named Sue" (for Johnny Cash), "Unicorn Song" (for the Irish Rovers), and "I'm Checking Out" (for the film "Postcards from the Edge" and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991).
Why Should kids have all the fun? Read Shel Silverstein's Weird-Bird.