Summer Reading Excerpt #1
In the coming weeks, my blog will feature periodic postings of “summery” excerpts from some of my books – starting today with a short snippet from – hot off the press! – Marie-Claire. All four of the original Marie-Claire stories appear in this handsome treasury edition.
“Lucille, do you mind if we find somewhere to sit down for a minute?”
“What’s wrong?”
“My head . . . ” Marie-Claire held it between the palms of her hands as Lucille led her to the shade of a circus tent. “And I feel so terribly hot.”
“Oh, Marie-Claire, this is how . . .”
“How what?”
Lucille shook her head. “Nothing. I am sure it is nothing.”
“I know what you were going to say.” Marie-Claire felt suddenly hotter. “You were going to say this is how smallpox begins, weren’t you?”
“Before my spots came I had a bad fever and the very worst headache,” Lucille admitted. “But does your back hurt, too?”
“No.”
“Then I am sure you are just suffering from the heat.”
Beside a circus tent Marie-Claire lowered herself to the dusty ground. “Oh, I do hope so, Lucille.”
Lucille put a protective arm around her cousin. “I hope so too.”
“Today is a very hot day.”
“Yes, very hot,” Lucille agreed.
“But I have had enough of the circus. Can we go home now?”
As much as possible, the girls kept in the shade of buildings as they made their way slowly through the streets. On many houses, tattered remains of placards hung listlessly in the heat. Above them, smoke from the city’s factories, hospitals, and manure fires continued to drift across the sky.
At home Marie-Claire gulped tepid water from the bucket beside the wood stove. The bucket was almost empty. Her head still pounding, she plodded downstairs to the tap in the laneway, refilled it, and hauled it back upstairs into the stifling house.
“It is so hot,” Marie-Claire said. “Shall we just have some bread and cheese tonight?”
At the sewing machine Maman coughed. “Papa may be hungry when he gets home if there have been many fires to fight today.”
But when Papa came home, he said no, there had been only two small fires, and the men of his station were not called. He had spent the day dampening down dusty streets. “I wished I was one of the little boys,” he said, “running along behind the hose wagon, soaking myself in the spray.”
Marie-Claire laughed to think of Papa doing such a thing…
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Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best, the award-winning The Man with the Violin, and the GG shortlisted The Rock and the Butterfly. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She has enjoyed the privilege of meeting with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. Currently president of CANSCAIP (the Canadian Society of Authors, Illustrators, and Performers), Kathy lives in a small town in southern Ontario.
I loved all of these books!
Thanks Janet. Especially nice to hear. These books have been out for a long time, and became even more relevant during the covid pandemic. Maybe it’s time for you to reread them! 🙂
What is Marie-Claire’s surname?
Apologies for the slow response, Grace. I was at the cottage and thought I would open a Marie-Claire book and be able to answer your question. (I wrote about her a long time ago and couldn’t remember it.) I was sure I’d given her a surname, but skimming through pages of the four books where I thought I might come upon it, I didn’t! As tempted as I am to read through the books more carefully — they sounded pretty good as I skimmed here and there 🙂 — I probably won’t. So many good books to read, so little time! But if you do and happen to find Marie-Claire’s surname somewhere, I hope you’ll let me know! (If you have time, I’d love to know why you were curious to know.)
Hi, Kathy Stinson, I looked at Marie-Claire’s fourth book, and her surname is Laroche. You can look on Page 8 and Page 63 of Angels in Winter.
1. How were you chosen to write for the Our Canadian Girls series?
2. What are Marie-Claire’s favorite colors, flowers, food, animal, and holiday?
3. What do you think Marie-Claire did as an adult?
Laroche, yes! A careful reader you are to have spotted it! Thank you for reminding me of what I would likely still have had stored in my brain twenty years ago.
1. I was given the opportunity to write for the series during the short time I had an agent. She knew Penguin was looking for writers to write these books and knew my work well enough to believe I could do a good job. I’d already been thinking of writing a book about someone growing up in Montreal during the 1885 smallpox epidemic, and this seemed the perfect chance, so I submitted a proposal and Penguin liked it.
2. I’m afraid I gave no thought to these questions when I was imagining her character, but I love that she feels real enough to you to know she would have her favourites. I like to think her favourite colour is/was red (perhaps you know why?) And that she might find Easter an especially uplifting holiday. What do you think?
3. I hope Marie-Clarie was able to get back to school and eventually become an elementary school math teacher. But if she wasn’t able to do that, I hope she and her cousin Lucille had the babies they chatted about and were happy with being mothers. How have you imagined Mare-Claire’s future, years after the series ended?
I like that you have decided for Marie-Claire to be a math teacher. And I also imagined she and Lucille both had children. I imagine that Marie-Claire became a very well-liked teacher at a Catholic elementary school by her students. Maybe she even later became headmistress.
Red is Marie-Claire’s theme color I can see that as her favorite color. Easter is a wonderful holiday, but I also think Christmas could be another favorite holiday for Marie-Claire. Marie-Claire could love larkspur, poppies, or petunias as her favorite flower. Her favorite food could be the cakes, breads, and other foods her mother makes.
Grace, I love what a thoughtful reader you are, and how engaged you got with Marie-Claire. I wonder, did she remind you of yourself in some way?
Yes! I think Marie-Claire is a nice character. She shows gratitude for Laura and wants to give her a Christmas gift to show her appreciation. I also love her hair. I love the end of her stories when she is having fun ice skating with snow falling down after receiving Laura’s gift. Marie-Claire loves the snow!
You “get” Marie-Claire so well. Yours is the kind of response to a character any writer would be thrilled with.
Happy reading, Grace, whatever is next up for you!