The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [82]
That night, we sat out in our front yard to watch the bats swoop down over the rocky shoreline. The lake sparkled like gemstones in the moonlight, making me think of the dragon’s lair in the Hole in the Wall. The cave must still be out there somewhere, under the water.
I smiled to myself and leaned back in my seat to imagine tomorrow.
I began writing a very different version of this story in the 1990s when I was a graduate student at SUNY Binghamton, and I have many people to thank for help along the way as it evolved into the book you now hold in your hands.
First I must thank the people who read early drafts of the work, the writer’s group that will always be first in my heart: Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Laura Lee Wren, Clara Gillow Clark, Anna Grossnickle Hines, Gary Hines, Mary Joyce Love, and (God rest her) Norma Grula.
Over the years, the story came to be what it is now with the help of excellent suggestions by Alexandria LaFaye, Hillary Homzie, Han Nolan, Gail Carson Levine, and David Webster. I’m fortunate to have good friends who are also good writers.
The critic who has helped most of all, though, is the editor at Milkweed Editions who acquired the book and pushed me to write beyond better, Ben Barnhart. Thank you, Ben.
Thank you to Eastern Connecticut State University for granting me a sabbatical year during which I did the major revision that led to a contract on the manuscript.
Thank you to the Dougherty Family Foundation for sponsoring the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature and gifting me with that honor. My heart warms every time I think of it.
I thank my three children, Daisy, Dan, and Livvie, even though they grew up and moved out some time ago, because they inspired many of the ideas in this story. The same goes for all those fifth-graders I used to teach at Wyoming Seminary Lower School in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania.
And finally, I thank my husband, Jeff Meunier. For everything.
LISA ROWE FRAUSTINO is the award-winning author of the novels Ash, Grass and Sky, and I Walk in Dread, and the picture book The Hickory Chair. The editor of several anthologies for young adult readers, she teaches children’s literature and creative writing at Eastern Connecticut State University and Hollins University. She lives with her husband and four cats in Ashford, Connecticut, and Bowerbank, Maine.
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