He can stay!

So, we had the conference with the boys' teachers this morning. Kid 2's went just as I'd expected. Kid 1, to my relief, seems to be doing better. His teacher says he can stay in 3rd grade, and she just won't give grades for him, at least not for the first half of the year. Both boys have the specific assignment to play on the playground as much as possible, and to make some real friends. The older boy should also watch more TV. And, they should get more sleep (they haven't been doing too badly, but foreign languages can be very exhausting). I wish I'd had that kind of homework assignment! So I am very, very relieved at the report.

Martinstag (German holiday)

This afternoon I went to the kindergarten with child #3 for Laternenbasteln--making paperboard lanterns for St. Martin's Day. My knowledge of St. Martin comes mostly from El Greco (I saw the original painting in 6th grade--very cool), but here in Germany it's a big holiday. Kids make these lanterns with tissue paper "windows," hang them on a stick (think of the standard picture of a kid running away with his stuff tied in a kerchief and hung over a stick) and light a candle inside. Then the kids parade through the neighborhood on November 11, singing. I think they collect money from the neighbors, which gets donated to a charitable cause (in this neighborhood, to last year's earthquake victims in Pakistan). I asked the teacher how often the lanterns caught on fire. She admitted that it happens, "but the parents will be there to put it out." We used the precut patterns of moon and star on one side (it looks like the flag of Turkey, which isn't too far from Pakistan, I suppose) and I freehanded a flying unicorn on the other hand. Daughter is very excited. Now we just have to keep the thing from being loved to death between now and November 11.

More on emotional connections (writing)

Still trying to puzzle out the emotional connection thing. I've done some serious chopping in my first chapter--hopefully this helps. I said before that I thought it was a writing problem, but something less easily-identified than adverbs and "she felt sad." I'm brainstorming for ways to make that emotional connection stronger. Don't know if any of these work yet, but maybe they at least won't make it worse. Some of these are from other people's comments; I certainly don't claim them to be all my original ideas. Feel free to add to the list.

1. Avoid excessive reliance on sight descriptions, to the exclusion of the other senses.
2. Use more specifics as opposed to generalities. (Think of Cheryl Klein's use of specific details, even in her blog.)
3. Avoid letting too much time pass before something significant happens. Keeping the pacing tight heightens the tension (or so Elizabeth says, and I'm sure she's right!)
4. Not sure how to avoid this problem, but sometimes I think it can be a problem if you start with something that's supposed to be emotional, only the reader has nothing to compare it to, so it doesn't have the intended effect. This example is from later in the book, but in Dairy Queen, the author does a great job of throwing out questions and hints while waiting until the ripest moment possible to explain why the family doesn't talk. I'd like to figure out how to do this in a beginning-of-the-book scenario. Leave more unanswered questions at the beginning, especially of an emotional nature? Immerse the reader into a situation where the character acts and has to make hard choices early on? And the emotion happens as the plot plunges forward?

I'm open to more ideas.