Letters about literature: lacie craven
Lacie Craven’s family owns and operates Wild Wind Farm on the coast of Maine, in Bucks Harbor. It’s a long way from there to the Florida hamlet where The Yearling is set, but Lacie has no trouble imagining a farm dotted with citrus trees rather than pines. Both are “wild country,” where families live off the land and children grow up with animals as their closest companions. When asked if The Yearling would appeal as strongly to children raised in cities, Lacie responds with an emphatic yes. “Before Flag dies,” she explains, “Rawlings has already made you feel close to the characters and animals. You’re right there with them in the story. That’s what good writers do.”
Since she is educated at home, Lacie selects her own reading material for her curriculum. “Mom has never had to push me to read,” she says. “I’ll read anything that’s written down.” After watching the film adaptation of The Yearling last summer, Lacie spotted the novel on a bookshelf in her house and tore through it, sensing from the beginning that “Jody was pretty much like me.” (“It was much better than the movie,” she says. “Books always are.”) She mentions The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as another recent favorite, but she certainly doesn’t limit herself to coming-of-age stories set in the rural United States. She feels equally at home in a Missouri river town and in the forests of Narnia. Last year, her entry in the Letters About Literature contest was a letter to J.R.R. Tolkein.
As the deadline for this year’s contest approached, Lacie did not review a list of Pulitzer Prize winners to find the perfect subject (though The Yearling did win the Pulitzer for fiction in 1939). She did not research Rawlings’ life or read her other books. She simply consulted her handwritten list of Favorite Books and set out to thank the writer. Below is Lacie’s winning letter:
Dear Mrs. Rawlings,
I live near the ocean, under a mountain, on a farm. We raise a lot of different animals, but mostly sheep. We also hunt for our food. These things made me feel very close to the characters in this book. If you have sheep, you have orphaned lambs, if you have orphaned lambs, you have true friends. They get into a lot of trouble (A lot like Flag!) but it’s all worth it to have a little lamb that follows you and is dependent on you.
I remember Mattie, a lamb whose mother had refused to take her. I had heated up her bottle and fed her every two to three hours every day of her life. She would kick up her heels and run with me down the road, then push her little plush head into my hand. We would lay in the grass, and I talked to her about everything, and she listened as I felt her fragile little hoof and followed her tiny, warm curls. One day she got sick. I kept watch over her the whole day, praying hard and making her as comfortable as possible. I picked her up and held her tight, tracing a little swirl on the side of her face. I hoped to feel her lean her head against me. She didn’t. She was dead. I reluctantly put her down and looked at her for the last time, covered her with a towel, stepped back, and said goodbye through tears to my lifeless friend. Afterwards I ran to the barn in secret and cried into my sister’s lamb until it was time to feed him. After each death it feels like you lost a child. It is so devastating, I cry and feel like I did something wrong, like I could have prevented their death. I felt like I had trusted in God and he let me down, like He had forgotten about me. Why did He give me something only to take it away? Why didn’t He heal her when I asked?
The answer came in your book. When I read about Jody and his fawn at first I asked the same question. Why does this happen? Then I saw what Flag taught him. All my lambs had been working unintentionally to help make me who I am today, and who I will be. They taught me how to deal with challenges in my life, how to overcome, and when it seems like I’m all alone, I’m really not. If I could have changed the past and brought Mattie back to life, I wouldn’t. I look back now and I only smile. I continue to raise sheep, and always happiness prevails over death. In every way when it seems like there is no good left in the world, you see it displayed in indirect ways. For every sad thing, there’s a happy reason behind it and it makes us stronger people. We can find rest in this. Thank you for writing this book.
Lacie
Lacie mailed the winning letter without showing it to anyone. In fact, Lacie admits to stashing most of her writing under her bed. She works after dark, tucking songs and poems and entire books away from prying eyes. Is she uncomfortable now that the entire country is reading a letter too personal for her own parents to see? “It’s different when it’s people I don’t know,” Lacie clarifies. It’s a felicitous distinction for a young writer to be able to make, especially one who is already receiving significant accolades. While Lacie envisions writing in her future, she doesn’t count on it as a career. “Writing wouldn’t seem like a job to me,” she says. “I could have a normal job and still do it.”
In fact, Lacie has other plans entirely. Prior to any “normal” job, she hopes to travel the world as a missionary. When she does eventually settle, she can’t imagine doing it anywhere but in Maine. “Maybe I’ll keep on with the family business,” she muses. “Improve the land a little, cut down some trees.” She’s already a talented farmer. This year, she bottlefed seven lambs, all named after characters in books—and all survivors. (For the record, Lacie has friends who are neither fictional nor four-legged: Mattie was named for the Cravens’ 95-year-old neighbor, who lives alone and enjoys Lacie’s company when she drops by for tea and candy.)
This fall, Lacie will enter the ninth grade at Washington Academy. For the first time, she’ll have assigned reading, but she’s determined to continue to read in her own time. “I’ll read at all hours of the night if I have to,” she vows. “Reading is top priority.”
The Library of Congress Center for the Book (Washington, D.C.) has named Lacie Craven, an eighth grade student from Bucks Harbor, Maine, as one of six national first prize winners of the Letters About Literature writing contest, sponsored nationally in partnership with Target. To enter, young readers write a letter to an author, living or deceased, describing how that author’s work changed the student’s view of the world or of himself or herself. Approximately 48,000 young readers across the country entered the competition this year.
The Maine Humanities Council’s Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book provides local funding and program support necessary to bring Letters About Literature to Maine. The Council’s panel of judges selected three first place state winners, out of about 700 entries, to advance for national judging. Lacie’s letter to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling, was the state winner in the competition for children in grades 7 and 8. She is the first-ever national winner from Maine in the six years that the Letters About Literature contest has been held in Maine. Lacie will receive her national award during the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. on September 30, 2006.
