by Betsy Byars
6. Why is Pap so angry when he finds out that Vern and Michael have been in Mad Mary’s cave? Discuss whether this might be considered “breaking and entering” in the eyes of the law.
7. There are two major conflicts in the novel: Mad Mary is missing, and Mud is accused of murdering Scooty, the class hamster that Junior is keeping for the weekend. Discuss the speculations regarding each of these mysteries. What is Ralphie’s role in solving both mysteries?
8. What is the first hint that Vern and Michael have something to do with Scooty’s disappearance? How do they attempt to cover up their involvement by volunteering to be on the jury?
9. Junior thinks that it is scary to wake up and not know where you are. He learned this in The Not-Just-Anybody Family when he woke up in the hospital and in The Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady when he woke up in Mad Mary’s cave. Describe how Mad Mary feels when she wakes up in the hospital. Discuss how the Blossoms find Mary. Mary looks and smells different to Junior after her time in the hospital. How does he know that she is the same Mad Mary?
10. Discuss what Vern and Michael learn about humor. Discuss whether they should be punished for letting their “practical joke” develop into Mud being tried for murder.
Prepared by Pat Scales, retired school librarian and independent consultant, Greenville, South Carolina.
An Interview with Betsy Byars
Why do you think Mud is such a favorite character?
Mud is a lot like Mac, a dog I loved when I was growing up. One time Mac was actually put on trial like Mud. He was accused by some neighborhood boys of eating one of the chickens they were raising. I don’t remember the verdict of the trial, but my father did pay for the chicken.
Ralphie is famous for coming out with brilliant statements. What is the most brilliant statement your family has said you’ve ever made?
I have never said anything brilliant in my life. Here’s something I don’t understand about writing. I cannot write poems, but I can create a character who can and does. I can’t write songs, but I created a character named Shorty Anderson who could. Same with Ralphie. I can never say anything brilliant, but I created Ralphie, who came up with “I was looking for a Bible.” It doesn’t sound like much out of context, but in the situation Ralphie was in when he said it, it’s brilliant.
What is the importance of the Blossom books?
The importance of the Blossoms lies in the characters. They are actually ordinary—kids you might go to school with, people you might see around town. Yet each of them is a valued individual just as you are. You are an individual who has never been on this earth before and never will be again. Take care of yourself!
Writing Tips from Newbery Medal-Winning Author Betsy Byars
“When I was your age, I was like you—I read all the time. That was one of the main reasons I succeeded as a writer—I had developed an ease with words.
That’s my first tip—read!
“Since you are interested in writing, try to write about what you know—your cat, your dog, your experiences, or the experiences of your friend or your friend’s cat, etc. Don’t try to write about places you’ve never seen. When you write about what you know, you are writing with authority. The two words go together—author—authority, and what that means is that when you write with authority, you give your reader the feeling, ‘This author knows what he, or she, is talking about.’ That’s very important.
“Read what you have written aloud. I read my writing aloud as I go. If it doesn’t sound well, it won’t read well. When I first began writing, my kids would say, ‘Who are you talking to in there?’ because I spoke the conversations as I wrote them.”
Excerpted from the official Betsy Byars’ website—for more writing tips and lots more about the author, visit www.betsybyars.com.
A Biography of Betsy Byars
Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including The Summer of the Swans (1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for The Night Swimmers (1980) and an Edgar Award for Wanted . . . Mud Blossom (1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.
Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.
After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.
Between 1951 and 1956 Byars had three daughters—Laurie, Betsy, and Nan. While raising her family, Byars began submitting stories to magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post and Look. Her success in publishing warm, funny stories in national magazines led her to consider writing a book. Her son, Guy, was born in 1959, the same year she finished her first manuscript. After several rejections, Clementine (1962), a children’s story about a dragon made out of a sock, was published.
Following Clementine, Byars released a string of popular children’s and young adult titles including The Summer of the Swans, which earned her the Newbery Medal. She continued to build on her early success through the following decades with award-winning titles such as The Eighteenth Emergency (1973), The Night Swimmers, the popular Bingo Brown series, and the Blossom Family series. Many of Byars’s stories describe children and young adults with quirky families who are trying to find their own way in the world. Others address problems young people have with school, bullies, romance, or the loss of close family members. Byars has also collaborated with daughters Betsy and Laurie on children’s titles such as My Dog, My Hero (2000).
Aside from writing, Byars continues to live adventurously. Her husband, Ed, has been a pilot since his student days, and Byars obtained her own pilot’s license in 1983. The couple lives on an airstrip in Seneca, South Carolina. Their home is built over a hangar and the two pilots can taxi out and take off almost from their front yard.
Byars (bottom left) at age five, with her mother and her older sister, Nancy.
A teenage Byars (left) and her sister, Nancy, on the dock of their father’s boat, which he named NanaBet for Betsy and Nancy.
Byars at age twenty, hanging out with friends at Queens College in 1948.
Byars and her new husband, Ed, coming up the aisle on their wedding day in June 1950.
Byars and Ed with their daughters Laurie and Betsy in 1955. The family lived for two years in one of these barracks apartments while Ed got a degree at the University of Illinois and Byars started writing.
Byars with her children Nan and Guy, circa 1958.
Byars with Ed and their four children in Marfa, Texas, in July 1968. The whole family gathered to cheer for Ed, who was flying in a ten-day national contest.
Byars at the Newbery Award dinner in 1971, where she won the Newbery Medal for The Summer of the Swans.
Byars with Laurie, Betsy, Nan, Guy, and Ed at her daughter Betsy’s wedding on December 17, 1977.
Byars in 1983 in South Carolina with her Yellow Bird, the plane in which she got her pilot’s license.
Byars and her husband in their J-3 Cub, which they flew from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast in March 1987, just like the characters in Byars’s novel Coast to Coast.
Byars speaking at Waterstone’s Booksellers in Newcastle, England, in the late 1990s.
Byars and Ed in front of their house in Seneca, South Carolina, where they hav
e lived since the mid-1990s.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Betsy Byars
978-1-4804-0271-3
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