Category: Saving the Griffin
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Pronouncing the Griffin
I’ve noticed on my blog stats that people have a few concerns about pronouncing Italian words from SAVING THE GRIFFIN. Here’s a quick guide. If you’re familiar with Spanish, it should be extremely easy because the vowels are similar. A: ah as dog E: ay as in day I: ee as in need O: oh as in…
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The Reading Bowl Rap
It was so fun to find SAVING THE GRIFFIN in the first verse of the Georgia Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl 2009-10 Rap. A clever person from the DeKalb County Schools managed to work the titles for of the various books into a few short stanzas. We’re Deep and Dark and Dangerous And you don’t need to mess with…
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The Origin of Prince Eduardo’s Tale
Three nights ago, Michael had asked for an extra bedtime story when she’d walked past his room. So Kate had leaned against thedoorway and started in on another one of her fantastic tales. “Remember how you and Mom decided not to climb all the way up to the monastery ruins with me and Stephen this…
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Uaou! Che bella!
My blog stats showed an unusual search for the Italian phrase in the post’s title. But it looked like a phrase straight from DEFENDING IRENE, so I’m going to give a short pronunciation guide. Uaou is like “Wow” with a bit more of the “oo” sound on each end. Che sounds quite a bit like…
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Behind the Scenes of Saving the Griffin: The Illustrations
Typical authors don’t get a lot of say in what their covers look like. And frankly, award-winning authors often don’t either. For example, I heard that Richard Peck was less than excited about one of his covers. And that came after the Newbery win for A YEAR DOWN YONDER! The people in marketing had made their decision. …
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Behind the Scenes of Saving the Griffin: Working with an Editor
“…it clearly demonstrated where the old cliche of “breath-taking came from.”
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Behind the Scenes of Saving the Griffin: Signora De Checchi
“Signora De Checchi came around the bend a few seconds later with a leash in her hand. In her black leather jacket and blue and gold silk scarf, she looked almost too elegant to be walking a dog.” As a casual Midwesterner, I couldn’t believe how nicely some of the other parents dressed to…
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Reading the Griffin…Out Loud
Perhaps one of my favorite writing tricks of all time is to read every single word out loud. I do this for short stories and articles, cover letters and query letters, nonfiction books and novels. Any novelist out there might be thinking that this would take a lot of time. Too much time in fact. …
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Behind the Scenes of SAVING THE GRIFFIN: Flying Lessons
“At least we can take care of him for a while,” Michael went on. “We’ll teach him how to fly and hunt for food.” Kate snorted. “How are we supposed to teach him something we don’t know how to do ourselves?” I know that either those lines or a variation of them were…
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Behind the Scenes: Building the De Checchi Estate
When I started writing SAVING THE GRIFFIN, I knew that I wanted to put Kate, Michael and Grifonino on an estate in Tuscany. Olive groves and vineyards are quite exotic in and of themselves, but I wanted to build up the otherwordly flavor just a bit more. I knew that various Italian villas had some…
Kristin Wolden Nitz 