For a grand review of Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth, go to Planet Esme.
“Readers of all faith backgrounds and educational backgrounds will sympathize with and like Mary Mae, and find plenty to discuss. Provocative in the very best way, this is a brave and timely book that leaves you the better for having read it.”
Orlando Science Center
Lately I’ve been corresponding with Valerie First, whom I met on Facebook through a mutual friend. Valerie is a volunteer for the Orlando Science Center and the Central Florida Zoo. But instead of walking around with a live animal and discussing it she prefers to discuss her own collection of cast skulls. She points out the similarities among the chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, gibbon, and homo sapiens skulls—two bony eye sockets, a nose, and 32 teeth; and differences, such as tail or no tail, ability to walk upright, ability to use tools, make a fire, etc. But she lets her listeners—a wide variety of ages and backgrounds—draw their own conclusions. Often, she says, when seeing a progression from one animal to the next, someone will exclaim, “Why, that’s evolution. I didn’t realize that.”
I think Valerie’s method of “showing” is one of the best ways to teach, to lay things out so that students discover for themselves.
Orlando Science Center
Valerie also belongs to the Tampa Fossil Club , the Florida Paleontological Society and the FloridaFossilHunters and is running their Fossil Fair in Orlando, scheduled for Oct. 9 & 10, 2010.
Central Florida Zoo
I was born in Springfield, Missouri, “Gateway to the Ozarks,” where my grandparents called anything they liked a “dandy,” made “throwed biscuits,” and lived down the street from “The Poor Boys Market.” I loved the way they spoke, with a Missouri twang, and was always aware of the difference between their speech and mine because we left Springfield when I was only two. I think that’s what made me sensitive to language, able to imitate different kinds of speech and loving the sound. And probably why I have a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition, because I loved learning all about language.
In “Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth,” Mary Mae speaks Appalachian English, the speech of many of the kids I knew growing up in Norwood, Ohio. Appalachian speech is a “dialect,” a way of speaking common to a group of people from a certain place or of a certain group and differing from standard English. Many writers of children’s books use dialect. Sharon Flake writes stories in black English. Several characters in Because of Winn Dixie speak non-standard English. And in Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski, which I read when I was ten, I remember enjoying the backwoods Florida dialect of the Slater family.
My own character, Mary Mae, is 10 years old and excited about digging up fossils. One night she sees a crab swimming around in a restaurant tank: “There’s this little crab a-setting in the corner all by hisself. If you ain’t seen a crab, here’s what one looks like. He’s got a top like a mushroom, only it’s hard, and all these little legs that come sprouting out like a spider’s, and then under his chin, he’s got these two little feelers he’s a-rubbing together like he’s trying to think of what to do next. . . . And I know just by watching that crab that my trilobite was alive, whether Mama thinks so or not.” Mary Mae’s observations grow out of her voice (not out of my head) and when I was working on this book I would read aloud because the voice could send me further into the story.
A farovite building in my hometown--it used to be a locksmith's
Often, when I visit my hometown, I carry a notebook and jot down words or phrases I overhear. Sometimes I drive around with a tape recorder, reading the names of the stores: My Humble Abode—a second hand furniture store, Gabbie’s Home Cookin’, Riddle’s Tree Service. I like to soak myself in the language. It’s what feeds the voices of my characters.
Following are some exciting reviews, first from ”The Chicago Tribune” and second, from “Books for Kids Blog”:
‘Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth’
By Sandra Dutton
Houghton Mifflin, $15, ages 10-13
The year is 1988, the place southern Ohio, a location rich with fossils. Ten-year-old Mary Mae loves many parts of her world. There’s the Remnant Church of God, where “you can get up and sing and say what you’re thankful for.” Mary Mae’s great-grandmother sings, plays and writes songs. Granny is just visiting, but she is a supportive and kindred spirit to Mary Mae. Mary Mae doesn’t see how anything bad can come from the exciting worlds of the earth’s previous ages, opened up for her by her beloved teacher, Miss Sizemore, and revealed in digs in the schoolyard and her backyard. Her mother threatens home schooling. Sandra Dutton treats these divided opinions delicately, not making the anti-fossil group too monolithic or rigid.
God’s Good Time: Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth by Sandra Dutton
Review by Glenda Children at BooksforKidsBlog.com
When Granny asked me what we learned in school today, I tell her all about trilobites and how southern Ohio was right down by the equator. “We’re digging for fossils tomorrow, too,” I tell her.
God must have loved curious kids, because he made so darned many of them. Mary Mae Krebs can’t help being one. “What do we believe?” she asks her mother, and her mother tells her to read Genesis.
“Wish I could dig for fossils,” says Granny. “But I’m just an old fossil myself.”
“Digging?” says Daddy. “You know when I was in school, we didn’t go out digging. We stayed inside and learned our lessons.”
“Ain’t no different ages,” Mama says. “Tempting kids to believe in something that ain’t so!” Mama goes on. “The world is 6000 years old. You look in the Bible.”
That works for Mary Mae, whose Sunday School class is already practicing for a puppet play about the Creation right from the book of Genesis. She’s in charge of Mrs. Noah, whose job, she is told, is to look after all the animals on the Ark. Practical Mary Mae hits a snag right there. How could one woman, even with those daughters-in-law, clean that many cages? And what about the insects? They’re animals, but the Bible doesn’t say anything about rounding them up and housing them in the Ark in all those little bitty cages. And what about fresh meat for the lions and tigers?
When Mary Mae and her class study the Cincinnati Arch, a band of ancient rock filled with the fossils of the Ordovician sea which once covered the Ohio River basin, her teacher Mrs. Sizemore takes them on a field trip to the school grounds themselves where a construction project has uncovered a treasure trove of trilobites, ancient snails and starfish, and crinoid fossils. Mary Mae is fascinated by the “enrolled” trilobite she finds and as she writes her “Interview with a Trilobite” report, she and her great-grandmother write a song for fiddle and guitar about the little creature. Then Mary May spots hundreds of little fossils embedded in the rocks around her own backyard fish pond, and when she shows them to her mother, Mama’s protests fail to past muster even with Daddy, not to mention Granny.
“She oughtn’t to be learning such things,” says Mama.
“But this is our backyard,” says Daddy. “Can’t go walking around like an ostrich.”
“Them fossils was put in the ground to trick us, Farley.”
“Trick us?” says Daddy. “Who’s trying to trick us?”
“The Lord,” says Mama.
“If that’s what the Lord’s up to, you can go to church yourself. I ain’t going.”
Things come to a head when Mama finds her trilobite report and takes her out of school. Forbidden to read anything but the Bible, Mary Mae goes back to adding up the “begats” in Matthew to see if the generations total up to 6000 years, but she runs into the question of how to count those Bible folks who lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. Mama’s already overloaded, what with her job and distributing fliers for the church and everything else, and she finds Mary Mae’s endless questions about the Bible a trial and tribulation, And then, when Mama drives a young friend home to Indiana, the young woman talks her into stopping to see the famous local site, the Falls of the Ohio, in whose shoals millions of fossils are all around to be seen by visitors, “like the Lord’s science lesson.” Although Mama is gruff with her questions, Mary Mae senses that her mother is beginning to have some doubts about her interpretation of Genesis as well.
Then Mary Mae’s educational luck changes. A chance talk with a visiting pastor shows Mama that there are differences of opinion about the form Creation has taken even among the faithful at the Remnant Church of God.
“I can understand your concern,” Pastor Tilbury says to Mama. “but fossils is God’s creatures, too. The way I see it, they was all fossilized during Noah’s flood in 3500 B.C.”
“Now me, I believe they was fossilized in 90,000 B.C.,” says Mrs. Tilbury.
“I think you’re way off,” Pastor Tilbury says to his wife, “but everybody’s got a right to their opinion.”
With a reassurance from the pastor that fossils were mentioned in the book of Romans, Mama is convinced that it’s time Mary Mae went back to school so Mrs. Sizemore can take over the job of answering at least some of her questions.
In Sandra Duncan’s latest, Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth
“Now tell me about them fossils,” says Granny.
“They’re older than the dinosaurs,” I say…. “Miss Sizemore says the world is fifteen billion years old.”
Granny’s clicking her teeth. “Hmm… Well…My…”
“God takes his time,” I say.
“Yes, he does,” says Granny.
Diagram of the Cincinnati Arch
Mary Mae learns about the Cincinnati Arch from her fifth grade teacher in Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth. Here we see how the Ordovician strata is exposed. This is the strata on which the city of Cincinnati rests. It was once a warm, shallow sea basin, filled with trilobites and other sea life, but as continents shifted, the land was forced up. Now we have access to the fossils of that period, which ordinarily would be buried.
If you click on the diagram you can make it bigger.
Following is a nice review of “Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth” by “School Library Journal.”
Gr 5-7–Mary Mae has always accepted the conservative, religious teachings of her family, including a very literal interpretation of the Bible. However, the arrival of her granny and a new teacher cause the 10-year-old to question everything she has ever known. When Miss Sizemore starts to teach the class about fossils, Mary Mae begins asking questions of the adults in her life, and her mother decides it would be better for Mary Mae to be homeschooled. At no point in the story does the child ever question the existence of God; she only sees God doing things in a different way. While her mother chooses to see science as an enemy to her beliefs, Mary Mae sees it as an extension of God’s work. Miss Sizemore opens her up to a new world, where inquisitiveness is not only valued, but is key. Here the relationship with Granny is also crucial to the story; she is always there to listen to Mary Mae and does not discourage her. This simple act of support gives the child the confidence she needs to not give up her quest for knowledge. This is a great story with valuable lessons. Told in an Appalachian dialect, it not only depicts real feelings about religion, but also shows the people behind them as good. It is both a lovely coming-of-age story and a lesson in respect between religion and science.–Kerry Roeder, The Brearley School, New York City
At the beginning of Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth I quote from scientist Brian Greene’s This I Believe essay: “I believe that the breathtaking ideas of science can nourish not only the mind but also the soul.” So naturally I was interested in learning of a multi-media musical he has written, “Icarus at the Edge of Time.” in which he re-invisions the Icarus myth. Icarus, who is defying his father by flying too close to the sun, finds that his wax wings are melting, and plunges into the sea. Greene gives this a modern twist by putting Icarus in a space ship and defying his father by flying too close to a black hole. But rather than having him disappear for ever, Greene has him re-emerging, though many years later, learning of all that has happened during the time he was gone.
Greene, on the closing night of the musical, told the audience he always disliked stories that told children if they disobeyed their parents they would die. “People laughed. Children squealed,” says Robert Leslie, writer of the article.
If you would like to read more about this production, and a brief interview with Greene, click here.
“Dutton dives deep into the rural speech of the Ohio River Valley without turning her characters cartoonish, and the varying views of the people in Mary Mae’s life, including her pastor, her great-grandmother, and others her mother respects, represent a variety of ways to balance faith and science; nor is Mary Mae’s mother demeaned as a person for her concerns.”
For the entire text of this review, please click here.
Just wanted my readers to see this wonderful review of “Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth” on ReadtheSpirit.com:
“TODAY, we’ve got a great book for the entire family, especially if your family is related to evangelical Christianity. I can’t imagine a more engaging and compassionate slice of American life than the 129-page “Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth”—a novella for young readers by Sandra Dutton. Anytime we recommend books for “young readers,” we’ve selected them deliberately because we know adults will enjoy them as well. (If you don’t have a child at home right now, get this book and give it to a family that does—after . . . “ [Click here to read the rest of the review: ReadtheSpirit.com]