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Denny Taylor

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.GarnPress.com

Twitter

DennyTaylorYes

Genre

Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy

Member Since

February 2015

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Denny Taylor is a researcher and novelist who regards art, literature, and science inseparable. She is a lifelong activist and scholar committed to nurturing the imagination and human spirit. She has received both national and international awards for her research and scholarship.

She has published thirteen books, is the recipient of the Modern Language of Association of America Mina P. Shaughnessy Award, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2004 she was inducted in the International Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame.

She is Professor Emeritus of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University, and the founder of Garn Press.
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Denny Taylor I started writing Rosie's Umbrella in the late 1980's. It began with a short story called "Rosie's Umbrella" that was based upon my own childhood expe…moreI started writing Rosie's Umbrella in the late 1980's. It began with a short story called "Rosie's Umbrella" that was based upon my own childhood experiences in the coal mining village in South Wales where my grandparents lived. I wrote two more short stories and by the beginning of the 1990's I began working on the novel. At first the only character that seemed real to me was Rosie Llywelyn, and so each time I worked on the story I focused on another character -- getting to know them -- and over a twenty year period they came alive. To me they are no longer imaginary. Isn't that what is supposed to happen? The characters in the books we read or write live in our imagination.(less)

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Aunt Sarah and Rosie both went on a search with the help of Daisy to find out more about the lives of Welsh coal miners. Did you run into similar problems when looking for primary documents? Did you receive help similar to Daisy's?

Denny Taylor This is such a great question Melissa. We are told so much and often what we are told is far from the truth. The problem is compounded because the tru…moreThis is such a great question Melissa. We are told so much and often what we are told is far from the truth. The problem is compounded because the truth is often hidden and people's stories are lost.

So when I went to the Boston library at the beginning of the 1990's there were only four books in the library's vast collection on coalmining in Wales. The books were old and very dry but filled with lost information. My first attempt recreating the scene for Rosie was also dry and while accurate it was very boring indeed. I spent many years writing and rewriting Rosie's visit to the library. Daisy Blake, the wonderful zany librarian, added so much to the scene and she opened up possibilities for more complexity in the story. It was after Daisy entered the story that I added the information about Sarah visiting the library. I won't say more. It might spoil the story for readers who have not read the book yet.

The whole idea of using primary sources comes from my research and teaching. Always go to the source! Don't rely on others to interpret what is happening for you! Secondary sources come with the biases of others. So, if I read a blog that comments on a research finding I always click on the link to the research and read the report for myself.

To find our own truth we must do everything we can to do our own research and decide for ourselves what is fact, what is fiction, and what is propaganda.

Even so, serendipty sometimes helps us out. A few months before Rosie's Umbrella was published I was in ABC -- the furniture story on Broadway in Manhattan, and on one of the upper floors where they have very old and much worn furniture there was a big leather book on a table. It was a bound copy of the1936 The Times (UK) newspapers. I opened the book and on the page in front of me was an article about coalminers and their families in South Wales. The town where my Nan was born and I visited as a small child was mentioned. There were four acticles and I took photos of them with my phone and then returned home to begin writing the information in the articles into the story. It was such an incredible moment to realize that Rosie had information that had been forgotten or hidden for so many years.

The other primary source was the mass observation in the UK which was really cool. For more than fifty years everyday people kept diaries of their daily lives and they were collected and for a long time housed at the University of Sussex. I flew to the UK a few years ago to get into the archive and I included quotes from the documents I found in Rosie's Umbrella.

I am sure I am writing too much but I want to share one last primary resource and that is my mother. Sarah's memories of when she was a little girl are actually my mother's memories of her childhood and mine from my summer visits to the Garn when I was a small child.

It is extraordinary to me that all these different primary sources (there are more of course) were used in writing Rosie's Umbrella. The most important message I think is that just like Rosie we have to find our own truth and we can't always rely on the interpretations of others. This is especially true when the interpretations are imposed on us by people of power and privilege who have their own agendas that very rarely are to the benefit of others -- neither young people nor the public.(less)

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Combine Editions
Denny Taylor’s books

Average rating: 4.2 · 162 ratings · 45 reviews · 31 distinct works

	Learning Denied by Denny Taylor (Goodreads Author), William L. Wansart (Foreword) 3.92 avg rating — 38 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rosie's Umbrella 4.38 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 2015 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rat-a-tat-tat! I've Lost My Cat! 4.60 avg rating — 15 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Split Second Solution 3.50 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Toxic Literacies: Exposing the Injustice of Bureaucratic Texts 4.36 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1996	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	United We Stand Divided We Fall: Opposing Trump's Agenda: Essays On Protest And Resistance And What We Can Do To Stop Him by Denny Taylor (Goodreads Author), Yohuru Williams, Jonathan Foley 4.36 avg rating — 11 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Family Literacy: Young Children Learning to Read and Write 3.67 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1983 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Many Families, Many Literacies: An International Declaration of Principles 3.89 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1997 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	From the Child's Point of View 4.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Split Second Solution

Split continues to predict -- main characters are unaccompanied minors hunted by super recognizers (sick reapers). Here's the new description:

Split Second Solution is a dystopian urban fantasy that is now frighteningly real. Set in New York City in 2022 Split predicted the rise of Trump (the Ginger Tom) and anticipates his fall. Here’s a review:

From the opening scene I felt I was reading something Read more of this blog post »

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Published on November 01, 2017 07:48

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Quotes by Denny Taylor (?)

“Our ways of seeing are democratic. Unfortunately, they are not bureaucratic. Except in rare circumstances, I no longer believe that it is possible to be both, because when it becomes bureaucratic the struggle is not about pedagogy, it's about power. About who controls the activities that occur in schools. About who controls who participates in American society. About who controls the power base of the twenty-first century.”
― Denny Taylor, From the Child's Point of View

tags: democracy, power, teachers

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“She couldn't put into words how desparately she wanted to know what had happened to Sarah. But she'd suddenly realized that Sarah was not the only one who had lost her memory of what happened when she was a little girl. Hundreds of thousands of people had lost their memories of what had happened to them ...”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

tags: loss, love, memory

2 likes

“Am I on your page?" Jesse asked.
Rosie knew Jesse liked her, loved her, maybe, but this was not about that.
"Yes," Rosie said, making eye contact with Jesse. "How could you not be on my page? ... (But) even though we are on the same page, we see the page differently," Rosie had continued, enjoying the moment, "my page -- which I admit you are on -- is not the page that you think you are on. You will never see the page the same as me. You cannot look through my eyes and see what I see.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

tags: identity, love, rivalry

2 likes

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Denny’s Quotes

“After centuries of silence, someone or something was lying outside on the stone step . . .

“Are you deaf?” Death asked arriving abruptly with screams and cries and a fetid smell of rotting matter filling the room.

“Why are you here?” the Old Crone asked, knowing the answer before she asked the question. “Go away.”

“When someone knocks you’re supposed to open the door!” Death said, coughing as though she had swallowed a lot of water.

“What are you doing here?” the Old Crone asked again “and why are you amorphous? Show yourself! I don’t like it when you look like nothing at all.”

“Open the door!” Death rasped, appearing as a drowned cat coughing up minnows and river detritus. “Our future depends upon it!”
― Denny Taylor, Split Second Solution

tags: foretelling-the-future, urban-fantasy

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“She had a sense of longing and loss that she had never had before. It was as if her family history had been erased and they'd been left unmemorable.She imagined that Rachel's family must have similar feelings, but she did not try to share these thoughts with Rachel.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

tags: friendship, longing, loss, love

2 likes

“This is the starting point, Daisy had said. It's the symbol for self. Its essence is water. Your relationship with yourself is primary, like water you must be willing to change. The Rune means to me that I must strive to live the ordinary life in a non-ordinary way. This is what it says in The Book of Runes. Take heart, in the spirit you are always beginning.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

tags: always-beginning, runes, self, take-heart, willing-to-change

2 likes

tags: loss, love, memory

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“A girl about her own age reached out and took hold of her hand. The girl was tall and thin. She had long black hair streaked with red, and the whites of her green eyes stood out against the black coal dust that covered her face. Her blue and white dress hung in tatters, and was blackened by coal dust and smeared with blood. The girl smiled and Rosie could see that in her other hand she was holding her red umbrella.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella