Kassem, Lou

Personal

Surname is accented on the first syllable; born November 10, 1931, in Elizabethton, TN; daughter of Edgar Roscoe (in sales) and Dorothy (a nurse; maiden name, Graham) Morrell; married Shakeep Kassem (a financial consultant), June 17, 1951; children: Cherrie, Dottie (Mrs. Cliff Riviere), Lisa (Mrs. Anthony Kummerl), Amy-Leigh (Mrs. Thomas Kubicki). Ethnicity: "Scots-Irish." Education: Attended East Tennessee State College (now University), 1949-51, University of Virginia, 1982, and Vassar College, 1984. Politics: Independent. Religion: Methodist. Hobbies and other interests: Golf, hiking, travel.

Addresses

Home and office—715 Burruss Dr., Blacksburg, VA 24060. Agent—Ruth Cohen, P.O. Box 2244, La Jolla, CA 92038-2244. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Writer, 1984—. Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Polytechnic Institute and State University), Blacksburg, laboratory technician, 1951-52; Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library, Blacksburg, librarian, 1971-84. Lecturer at Roanoke College, Christopher Newport College, East Tennessee Writers Conference, and Litfest of the Ozarks. Member of Blacksburg town council, 1978-84.

Member

Society of Children's Book Writers, Women's National Book Association, Writers in Virginia, National League of American PEN Women, Armed Forces Officers' Wives (president, 1955), Junior Woman's Club (president, 1961), Friends of the Library (president, 1965).

Awards, Honors

Notable Book Award, American Library Association, 1986, for Listen for Rachel; Virginia State Reading Association Award, 1996, for A Haunting in Williamsburg.

Writings

JUVENILE

Dance of Death, Dell (New York, NY), 1984.

Middle School Blues, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1986.

Listen for Rachel, Margaret K. McElderry (New York, NY), 1986.

Secret Wishes, Avon (New York, NY), 1989.

Summer for Secrets, Avon (New York, NY), 1989.

A Haunting in Williamsburg, Avon Camelot (New York, NY), 1990.

The Treasures of Witch Hat Mountain, Avon Camelot (New York, NY), 1992.

Odd One Out, Fawcett Juniper (New York, NY), 1993.

The Druid Curse, Avon Camelot (New York, NY), 1994.

The Innkeeper's Daughter, Avon Flare (New York, NY), 1996.

Sneeze on Monday, Avon Camelot (New York, NY), 1997.

Contributor to Chicken Soup for Kids' Souls, 1998, Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul, 2000, and North Carolina Education Center, Inc., 2002.

Work in Progress

Research on Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, a resort used as a hospital during the U.S. Civil War, for the novel with working title Ride the Wind; Saving Grace, about a young girl named Grace who "tries to find her place in the world."

Sidelights

Lou Kassem is the author of a dozen juvenile novels representing a variety of genres, among them humor, mystery, history, and the supernatural. In books such as Middle School Blues, Listen for Rachel, Secret Wishes, and A Haunting in Williamsburg, Kassem touches on topics from growing pains to death and loss to peer pressure. Often setting her novels in Virginia, where she has lived and worked for many years, Kassem has, according to Sally Harris in the Roanoke Times, "always been a storyteller." As the versatile author once commented, "For me, writing is like breathing: absolutely necessary. Reading is the bread that sustains me. Speaking about writing is my pleasure."

Appalachian Roots

Born in Tennessee in 1931, Kassem attended East Tennessee State College. Married in 1951, she had four daughters and began her storytelling career entertaining her own children. As a school librarian she further refined her storytelling skills, and once her children were grown, she began writing down her tales. One of her first novels, Listen for Rachel, "is the book of my heart," the author once noted, "because it gives a true picture of the proud, independent people who settled the Appalachians. That this book was selected for a cultural exchange program with Russia pleases me immensely." Listen for Rachel was Kassem's attempt, as Harris noted, at "dispelling the caricatures of Appalachia."

The protagonist of Listen for Rachel is fourteen-year-old Rachel Sutton, who has recently lost her parents in a fire. The novel is set during the American Civil War, and Rachel must go to live with her grandparents in the Tennessee mountains. At first resistant to Appalachian ways and customs, she ultimately becomes a medicine woman, taking after her neighbor, Granny Sharp, and learning the traditional mountain medicine. She takes care of pregnant women and sick farmers, riding through the hills to scattered homesteads. When Granny dies, Rachel takes over the older woman's work single-handed. At the end, Rachel falls in love with a Yankee soldier and a proposal seals her future. Following Rachel from her youth to early womanhood, the novel presents a balanced picture of Appalachia. Reviewing the novel in School Library Journal, Therese Bigelow felt that the "storyline is weakened by too many underdeveloped subplots." Diane Roback, however, writing for Publishers Weekly, had praise for Kassem's debut novel, calling Listen for Rachel an "absorbing, old-fashioned romance."

A Novelist for the Middle Grades

"With no apologies, I am a writer for young people," Kassem once remarked. "The laughter and tears associated with growing up have always fascinated me. [Fellow children's author] Jane Yolen described our profession best when she said, 'An author's real job is to tell a whopping good tale.' Telling a whopping good tale in my mystery, humorous, historical, and contemporary novels is my primary goal." With Middle School Blues Kassem turned from historical romance to contemporary issues inspired by problems her own children encountered while growing up. Cindy, who is starting the seventh grade, finds difficulty transitioning from primary school to middle school; she misses old friends, finds changing classrooms a challenge, and generally feels out of place. She begins to record these feelings in a notebook, creating rules to live by. Over the course of time, Cindy begins to adjust to her new environment, makes new friends, wins a creative writing contest, and even has a first kiss. "Cindy exhibits typical adolescent behavior," wrote School Library Journal contributor Pat Harrington, the reviewer also noting that Kassem's use of Southern phrases "reinforce[s] the Virginia setting."

More middle school fare is served up in Secret Wishes, a tale that reinforces the old saw that people should beware of what they wish for. In the novel, Margo, part of the non-cheerleader crowd, decides to slim down and get on the cheerleading squad. Once she does, however, she finds that her dreams are not what she expected. She is continually tricked by a malicious fellow cheerleader named Brandy, and also has to deal with the advisor/coach of the squad, Miss Cole, who badly wants her team to win the state cheerleading championship. When Miss Cole tells her cheerleaders to share their homework and tests, Margo at first reluctantly complies, but when it comes to stealing a math test, she finds the strength inside to say no, discovering in the process her own values and worth. Although Roback, writing in Publishers Weekly, felt that Secret Wishes "fails to convince," Doris Fong, reviewing the novel in School Library Journal, was more favorable in her evaluation. Fong described Margo as a "feisty and all-out delightful" heroine, and added that Kassem manages to portray the world of middle school with "amazing accuracy." For Fong, Secret Wishes is a "real sparkler that pulls no punches."

With A Haunting in Williamsburg Kassem again looks at cheating in school, blending her story with a touch of the supernatural. Jayne Curtis, age thirteen, is visiting her aunt for the summer at her aunt's colonial-era home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Jayne is still suffering from a misunderstanding at school: when she did not turn in a fellow student who copied one of her essays, the other students concluded that she was involved in the scam and turned their backs on her. During her summer in Williamsburg, Jayne has a chance to relive the situation when she stumbles upon another "person" who did not do well during a crisis situation. Sally is a teenage ghost who has been residing in Jayne's aunt's house since 1781. Sally's brother, Jeremiah, was killed during the Revolutionary War after being suspected of being a spy and a traitor when actually, he was only delivering a secret message for his sister. Frightened, Sally remained silent at the time, and then died before she could clear her brother's name. Now she wants Jayne to right this wrong for her, and attempting to accomplish this task puts the contemporary teen in danger. Roback, writing in Publishers Weekly, felt that, although the novel addresses a realistic teen dilemma, A Haunting in Williamsburg is "short on thrills." Another book set during the American Revolution, Kassem'sThe Innkeeper's Daughter, looks at the war in southwest Virginia, specifically the battle at King's Mountain, which Thomas Jefferson called a turning point in the war. Byroney Rose Frazer, a typically feisty heroine, wishes she could be a soldier. She ultimately has her chance to help out the war effort when she overhears enemy plans and then sets out on a perilous journey to save her family.

After penning several novels focusing on the American Revolution, the versatile Kassem returns to contemporary issues with Sneeze on Monday, in which a junior high student named Ellen must deal with major life changes. When Ellen's father loses his job, her family has to move from their suburban home to the urban home of their grandmother, and Ellen has to learn to fit in at a new school in a new and very different environment. With Odd One Out Kassem turns her attention to teen sex and gossip. Alison's boyfriend is football star Nic Chandler. One night he tries to make love with her, but when Alison says no, Nic's feelings of rejection lead him to tell lies that lead the couple's friends to believe that he and Alison really did have sex. When Alison exposes Nic's lie, she also learns some hard lessons about the cost of honesty.

In addition to problem novels featuring the dilemmas of typical teens, within her fiction Kassem has introduced young readers to children living with challenging disabilities. In A Haunting in Williamsburg, for example, one of the characters is deaf, while in the 1994 title The Druid Curse, set in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, one of Kassem's young protagonists is dyslexic.

Kassem has blended her writing career with public speaking, and has been a frequent visitor in schools. "Almost as much fun [as writing], is speaking in schools, libraries, and workshops about writing," Kassem once noted. "I firmly believe more authors should get out among their reading public. I do more than forty of these lectures and workshops every year and learn far more than I teach. Kids are great! And our teachers need all the help we can give them to promote reading and writing. Try it. I'll bet you like it." Such visits also inspire her books. "As for the writing process, it doesn't just take place at my desk or computer. I am always writing, collecting ideas, characters and conversations," Kassem further explained. "Visiting schools isn't a completely altruistic endeavor! Paper and pen are always at hand. But once I have a story line and a main character in my head, I write from 9 to 12 and from 1 to 3 . . . as often as routine chores (housecleaning, cooking, shopping, and laundry) allow. I admit these mundane tasks get a-lick-and-a-promise while I'm 'with book.' Somehow my family and home survive these births!"

If you enjoy the works of Lou Kassem

If you enjoy the works of Lou Kassem, you might want to check out the following books:

Kate diCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie, 2000.

Kevin Henkes, Olive's Ocean, 2003.

James Howe, The Misfits, 2001.

Louis Sachar, Sixth Grade Secrets, 1999.

"My first advice for aspiring writers is: Read, read, read," Kassem once counseled. "Read the good, the bad, and the ugly. Read for fun and read critically. See how other authors do things. Would you have handled the situation differently? How? Why? Books are excellent teachers. My second and best advice is: Just do it! No book was ever written by simply thinking about it."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, August 22, 1986, Diane Roback, review of Listen for Rachel, p. 101; December 9, 1988, Diane Roback, review of Secret Wishes, p. 65; April 13, 1990, Diane Roback, review of A Haunting in Williamsburg, p. 66.

Roanoke Times, January 3, 1997, Sally Harris, "Writer Gets Thumbs up from Pint-sized Critics," p. NRV-1.

School Library Journal, August, 1984, review of Dance of Death, p. 84; August, 1986, Pat Harrington, review of Middle School Blues, p. 101; February, 1987, Therese Bigelow, review of Listen for Rachel, p. 91; April, 1989, Doris Fong, review of Secret Wishes, p. 126.*