The Grand Plan to Fix Everything

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything

by Uma Krishnaswami and illustrated by Abigail Halpin

Ages 8 to 12

Dini loves movies—watching them, reading about them, trying to write her own—especially those oh-so-stunning Bollywood movies where you don't even need to know the language to get what's going on. But when her mother reveals big news, it does not jive with Dini's script. Her family is moving to India! Not to Bombay, the "center of the filmi universe" (and home to Dini’s all-time favorite star, Dolly Singh). No, they're moving to a teeny, tiny town that Dini can’t even find on a map. Swapnagiri. The name means Dream Mountain: a sleepy little place where nothing interesting can happen…. But wait a movie minute! Swapnagiri is full of surprises: rose petal milkshakes, mischievous monkeys, a girl who chirps like a bird. And is that...?Could it be...? Dolly herself?

Check out the activity kit for The Grand Plan to Fix Everything:
http://www.umakrishnaswami.com/sites/default/files/GrandPlan_activitykit.pdf

“A Grand Plan, a grand read! A modern-day fairy tale whose crazy threads tie up perfectly in the end. Truly a delight!” Linda Sue Park, Newbery Award-winning author of A Single Shard.

Fiction contains large helpings of both truth and make-believe. What’s real? What’s invented and why? How do you make it all come together? How do you know what to show and when to tell? Whose story it is or what voice to tell it in? How do you decide where it takes place? Finally, how do you choose words and sentences with energy, to create images that move through space and time in a reader’s mind?

Uma Krishnaswami speaks by invitation to school and community groups all over the country and overseas. She reads, and draws connections between finished work and the ideas, sounds, music, and memories that went into making it. She uses writing exercises to get her audience to reflect on their own words and ideas. Gr. 3-7. Other presentations are also available across the age range.

 

Uma will be appearing at the National Book Festival and Politics & Prose in September 2011. She will be available for author visits in the DC area at that time. If you are interested in having Uma visit your school or organization please contact Emily Griffin at Children's Literature, emilyqgriffin@gmail.com.
 
Uma has written many books for children. She was born in India, and when she was young, she lived in a house named Sunny Villa with blinky-looking shutters, just like the house in her new middle grade book, The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Now she lives and works on fixing plots in Aztec, New Mexico, but like her character Dolly, she is all over the place. She also works for the Vermont College of Fine Arts, teaching grownups who want to write for children.

For more information about Uma visit:
http://www.childrenslit.com/bookingservice/krishnaswami-uma.html
http://www.umakrishnaswami.com/
http://umakrishnaswami.blogspot.com/