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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Idolizing the Teacher

Today's excerpt from a work-in-progress comes from A SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, recently accepted as my second novel for Covenant, to be published in 2013. In this section, sixteen-year-old Emily Burnett is discussing her choir teacher, Ms. Wendy Nguyen, and demonstrating more than a little hero worship.


Ms. Nguyen, our choir teacher at the high school, is awesome. She loves to sing as much as I do – and she’s SO smart! She’s pretty, too, which is why we have more boys in the choir this year. When they saw the new choir teacher, guys started transferring in – even the ones who used to say choir was for losers.

She’s had us singing some complicated songs for this special three-week summer choir gig; she calls them “pieces.” My favorite is a five-part madrigal. Five parts! Mr. Peavey, the cross-country coach who directed the choir last year, was lucky if he could get us to do two-part harmonies, usually just soprano and alto with three or four guys singing the melody an octave lower. But Ms. Nguyen knows how to present things and she found this really super awesome five-part madrigal that used to be sung by traveling minstrels in Europe… Finally we get to sing some decent music!


I enjoyed writing this novel, and I very much enjoyed getting to know Emily. Like her, I've had teachers and leaders that I looked up to, admired, and emulated. And you?

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