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This October, look for the Heartbeat paperback edition, loaded with EXTRAS! Like the special features of a DVD or bonus cuts on a CD, the EXTRAS section gives the reader new material from the director -- in this case, the author. In this EXTRAS INSIDE find out how Sharon Creech is like Annie, the journey as a motif, and more!
Heartbeat is the story of twelve-year-old Annie, who loves to run for the sheer pleasure of running. It's when she feels the most free in a year when everything seems to be shifting. Her mother is pregnant, her grandfather is aging, and her best friend, Max, is increasingly moody. Everything is changing, just like the apple that Annie has been assigned to draw one hundred times.
The story is told in free verse, exploring the friendship between Annie and Max, and Annie's changing relationships with her mother and grandfather. Annie is attempting to understand not only herself and her place in her family, but also to understand those around her. At the same time, she is attempting to understand larger, more complex questions: how we become who we are, and to what degree we should conform; how we are unique and yet how we are all alike.
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Annie's art teacher gives an assignment to draw one apple a hundred times. My daughter was given this assignment in school. She said she learned more about drawing from that one assignment than from anything else!
Like Annie, I used to run for the pure pleasure of running. It made me feel free, and it calmed my mind. I no longer run very much, but I take long walks, and it is often during these walks that an idea for a scene or a whole book will arise.
Read more...
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When I learned that my daughter was expecting her first child, I wondered what it would be like to be a grandparent, and out of those wonderings came Granny Torrelli Makes Soup. After I finished that book, and after my granddaughter was born, I continued the exploration of grandparents--and a new baby--in Heartbeat.
As I was writing this book, I felt as if I were taking the pulse of this young girl, Annie, who is trying to place herself on this spectrum of life. Where does she fit in? She wonders what it would be like to be old, and what it would be like to be an infant, and how she became who she is, and who exactly is she, and why is she here?
These are questions I had when I was Annie's age, when my grandparents were aging, and when my mother was expecting my youngest brother. I felt as if I were balancing on the cusp of some important life thread, and it was essential to try to understand where I was, in the larger scheme of things.
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