Flower Power (Orca Currents)
ISBN: 9781551433868
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Pub Date: September/01/2005
Price: $9.95
Description:
Callie’s mother has chained herself to the neighbor’s tree and is living inside the treehouse. She refuses to come down until the neighbor, Mr. Wilson, agrees to leave the tree standing. Soon reporters arrive to interview Callie about her mother’s protest. Callie doesn’t want to talk to anyone. More chaos ensues when Callie’s grandmother invites the “singing grannies” to help save the tree, the neighbor’s biker friends come to her aid, and Callie’s friends show up to try to get themselves on TV. Callie needs to figure out how to get her mother to come down from the tree so that her life can return to normal.
About writing Flower Power
My mother was an environmentalist. She participated in the earliest recycling program in Vancouver (BC) in the 1960s. I used to fly down to visit her with a suitcase full of clean, squashed tin cans which she welcomed as if they were precious metal, not just fodder for the recycling depot. As mothers often do, Mom sometimes embarrassed me with her enthusiasm and outspoken opinions.
A few years ago, I began thinking about writing a series of books with a young heroine whose mother really embarrasses her. So I created Dian (short for Dianthus, a carnation-liike flower) a strong woman with definite ideas about what needs to be fixed in this world. Her actions make her daughter, Callie (short for Calendula, another flower) writhe with embarrassment, yet by the end of the book, Callie finds that she is oddly proud of her eccentric mother. The title comes from the characters' names (all the women in Callie's family were named for flowers, for generations back) and from the idea that everyone, even 12 year old girls with peculiar names and a more peculiar mother, can make a difference in this world.
About writing Flower Power
My mother was an environmentalist. She participated in the earliest recycling program in Vancouver (BC) in the 1960s. I used to fly down to visit her with a suitcase full of clean, squashed tin cans which she welcomed as if they were precious metal, not just fodder for the recycling depot. As mothers often do, Mom sometimes embarrassed me with her enthusiasm and outspoken opinions.
A few years ago, I began thinking about writing a series of books with a young heroine whose mother really embarrasses her. So I created Dian (short for Dianthus, a carnation-liike flower) a strong woman with definite ideas about what needs to be fixed in this world. Her actions make her daughter, Callie (short for Calendula, another flower) writhe with embarrassment, yet by the end of the book, Callie finds that she is oddly proud of her eccentric mother. The title comes from the characters' names (all the women in Callie's family were named for flowers, for generations back) and from the idea that everyone, even 12 year old girls with peculiar names and a more peculiar mother, can make a difference in this world.
