30 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MAY 16-22, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com LIT For years, Anne Ylvisaker has collected words in a jar. She’d cut them out, selecting “words that are fun to say out loud, just how they feel in your mouth.” It’s a practice she adopted years ago as a member of a writing group in St. Paul, Minnesota; the group would do exercises based on selecting words from the collection. Her own jar kept expanding, over years and a move to Monterey. And in 2013, fresh off of writing The Button Series novels, a young adult trilogy, she did another writing exercise, this time crafting a scene without punctuation. The sounds factored in prominently as she wrote about children jumping rope: “And we swing that string round and around / over and over / slap slap slap on the alley / slap slap slap.” It began as writing for her love of words, but after she’d put characters on the page, Ylvisaker knew there was more to unfurl. What unfurled over a decade was a novel in verse, culminating with the jump rope scene that originally started it all. (“I would think of some rhythm of summer and I would write it down,” she says.) The resulting book, One Alley Summer, was published on May 6 by Marble Press. The story unfolds in one neighborhood’s alley as the narrator, Phoebe, reckons with a life transition: She’s about to start middle school, and is caught between friendships, between childhood and teenagerhood, and trying to make sense of her place in it all. Phoebe is a poet, writing surreptitiously in a journal in a treehouse. There’s plenty of action—a nasty neighbor’s nasty dog, a rescue attempt to save baby mice crossing big streets. But the book is largely a swirl of sounds that capture a feeling of youth and of questioning oneself. “I want to be fog / and evaporate,” Phoebe writes. Although it’s marketed to young adults, it’s a book for adult readers too. “We all are still that 11-year-old,” Ylvisaker says. “We all went through this period, for the first time realizing that we could grow and change, and asking, will our friends still accept and like us when we do that, and will we be able to accept our friends when they change? We keep going through that.” One Alley Summer is available at local bookstores. Launch events take place 10am-noon Saturday, May 18 at Friends of the Pacific Grove Library 50th anniversary celebration in Jewel Park, Grand and Central avenues; 3-5pm Sunday, May 19 at Open Ground Studios, 1230 Fremont Blvd., Seaside; and 1pm Friday, June 7 at Olivia & Daisy, 13766 Center St., Carmel Valley. DANIEL DREIFUSS Summer Living With a novel in verse, Monterey author Anne Ylvisaker captures the feeling of adolescence and transition. By Sara Rubin One Alley Summer is loosely biographical, modeled on the Minneapolis alley where Anne Ylvisaker grew up. Sidewalk chalk and more fun toys come out for a launch party.
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