The Ink Splat is our monthly activity letter filled with inspiration sparking challenges and resources guaranteed to inspire your creativity. In this Ink Splat, the book and author spotlighted is The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimes By Kelly Easton along with an author interview! Submit a response to a challenge and you may have a chance to be published online! What are you waiting for?
The Challenge: Animal Talk
If you could communicate with one animal in the world which animal would you choose? What would you ask this animal? Describe your conversation
Try using this new word in your writing:
Do you know what the adjective obscure means? Obscure is a word meaning difficult to understand or unclear. For example: Mr. Gold’s lesson on grammar was very obscure.
Submit your response HERE!
The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimes By Kelly Easton
Who doesn’t enjoy a story with a larger than life adventure?The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimesby Kelly Easton is a 224 page novel with Illustrations by Greg Swearingen for ages 9-12 as well as adults!Liberty Aimes lives in a “crooked” house: “If it could walk, it would limp. If it could talk, it would stutter. If it could smile, it would have rotting teeth. You get the picture.” This story highlights the adventures of Liberty, a daring and smart young girl and her goofy and strange parents. So strange in fact that they create potions for communicating with animals and for levitating! Liberty begins a unique quest to find the Sullivan school and along the way encounters quirky characters and sticky situations!
Tips from author Kelly Easton:
“It’s funny. The Outlandish Adventures is the type of book I’ve been meaning to write all along, but somehow, I needed to make my way through realism to get there. My inspiration for writing it is the love I had for my favorite books as a child, and wanting to give that type of zany delight and revelation to a reader that I had reading The Phantom Tollbooth; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; “Oz”; and James and the Giant Peach.
Back in my day, many centuries ago, there were not very many books like this: fanciful (as opposed to fantasy), wildly imaginative, funny, yet with an intellectual or philosophical undercurrent. I still remember the day I learned that there were no more books by Roald Dahl. I was crushed. He was still alive, but didn’t seem to be writing any more of them. As an adult, the closest thing I could find was the work of Kurt Vonnegut.
Underlying so many of the books I love, including more recent ones like Holes, by Louis Sachar, is humanism, a deep concern for human suffering and injustice.
Moving forward to the present, I can only envy young readers for the Smorgasbord of literature: Schools for Wizards, Greek Gods, Unfortunate Adventures; Wayside School, and Camp Green Lake where boys dig holes, among the many many I have yet read. What luck!
My tips for young writers:
- Daydream (even if you sometimes get in trouble for it).
- Spend more time staring out the window, or at the sky, or the sea, than on-line, texting, or watching You Tube.
- Read, read, read everything you can get your hands on.
- Be true to yourself.
- Be brave.
- Evolve your empathic skills so you can literally relate to anyone.
- Do not let anyone stop you.
- Be kind.”
Thanks Kelly Easton!
The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimes (Wendy Lamb Books) A Jr. Library Guild Selection is available at Amazon!
For more about author Kelly Easton and her books visit her website here.
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