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WORK TITLE: LOLA AND THE TROLL
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CITY: Cleveland
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
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PERSONAL
Born July 21, 1957, in Ashtabula, OH; daughter of Alvina Jane and Charles Craig Schultz; married (divorced); married Sherrod Brown, 2004; children: four.
EDUCATION:Kent State University, B.A., 1979.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, columnist, 1993-2011; Kent State University, Protage County, OH, professional in residence, 2015-23; Denison University, Granville, OH, professor, beginning 2023.
AWARDS:Batten Medal, 2004; Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting, Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Headliner Best of Show Award, and journalism awards from Harvard College and Columbia University, all for “The Burden of Innocence” series; Pulitzer Prize for commentary, 2005; Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, for commentary; National Headliner Award, for commentary; elected to Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame.
RELIGION: Christian.WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including USA Today and Creators Syndicate.
SIDELIGHTS
Connie Schultz is a writer and educator. Previously, she worked as a journalist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and as a professional in residence at Kent State University. In 2023, Schultz joined Denison University as a professor. She has received numerous awards for her journalistic work, including a Pulitzer Prize, a Batten Medal, a Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting, and a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award. Schultz has written two memoirs about her life and relationship with her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and she wrote a fiction book for adults called The Daughters of Erietown: A Novel.
In 2024, Schultz released her first picture book, Lola and the Troll. Featuring illustrations by Sandy Rodriguez, the volume tells the story of a girl named Lola with curly hair, a big smile, and an imaginary dog called Tank. In Lola’s neighborhood lives a troll named Tom, who insults people as they walk by him. Hurt by Tom’s comments, Lola changes aspects of her appearance to avoid his mean remarks. One day, Lola talks to her bookseller friend, Ms. Sneesby, about Tom, and Ms. Sneesby offers insight into bullies’ motivations. Her new knowledge inspires bravery in Lola, and she and her friends stand up to Tom. In an interview with Connor Ball, contributor to the Star Beacon website, Schultz discussed the message of the book, stating: “It’s about accepting that you’re great just the way you are. … You don’t need to change yourself for anybody who is criticizing you.”
A reviewer in Children’s Bookwatch commented: “With its important underlying message about remembering how to be brave, even when it’s hard … Lola and the Troll … is a fun and important picture book read for children ages 4-8.” A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that the volume featured an “earnest text” and “delicate artwork.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
BookPage, June, 2020, Karen Ann Cullotta, review of The Daughters of Erietown, p. 21.
Children’s Bookwatch, February, 2024, review of Lola and the Troll.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2007, review of And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man; March 15, 2020, review of The Daughters of Erietown; December 15, 2023, review of Lola and the Troll.
Publishers Weekly, May 14, 2007, review of And His Lovely Wife, p. 46.
ONLINE
ABC News Online, https://abcnews.go.com/ (August 23, 2020), Lesley Messer and Elisa Tang, author interview.
Creators Syndicated, https://www.creators.com/ (May 29, 2024), author profile.
Denison University website, https://denison.edu/ (March 1, 2022), Swasey Chapel, article about author; (May 29, 2024), author faculty profile; (May 29, 2024), Sophie LeMay, author interview.
Glamour Online, https://www.glamour.com/ (July 14, 2020), Sarah Stankorb, author interview.
Kent State University website, https://www.kent.edu/ (October 17, 2022), author interview.
Star Beacon, https://www.starbeacon.com/ (March 2, 2024), Connor Ball, author interview.
USA Today Online, https://www.usatoday.com/ (June 1, 2021), Kristen DelGuzzi, author interview.
Weekend Edition Sunday Online, https://www.npr.org/ (June 6, 2020), Scott Simon, author interview.
Connie Schultz
Professor of Practice
Journalism
schultzc@denison.edu
POSITION TYPE
Faculty
SERVICE
2023 - Present
ABOUT CONNIE SCHULTZ
Connie Schultz
CONNIE SCHULTZ
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and the author of the 2020 New York Times bestselling novel, The Daughters of Erietown. She is also Professional in Residence at her alma mater, Kent State University, in the school of journalism.
In addition to the Pulitzer, Schultz won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for commentary and the National Headliner Award for commentary. She was also elected to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame.
She was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for her series "The Burden of Innocence," which chronicled the ordeal of Michael Green, who was imprisoned for 13 years for a rape he did not commit. The week after her series ran, the real rapist turned himself in after reading her stories. He is currently serving a five-year prison sentence. Her series won numerous honors, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting, the National Headliner Award's Best of Show and journalism awards from both Harvard College and Columbia University.
In 2004, Schultz won the Batten Medal, which honors "a body of journalistic work that reflects compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog."
In addition to her novel, Schultz is the author of two memoirs, Life Happens – And Other Unavoidable Truths (2006), and … And His Lovely Wife (2007).
Schultz is married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. They have four children and eight grandchildren, and live with their rescue dogs, Franklin and Walter.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Connie Schultz
Schultz in 2010
Born July 21, 1957 (age 66)[1][2][citation needed]
Ashtabula, Ohio, U.S.[3]
Alma mater Kent State University[4]
Spouse Sherrod Brown (m. 2004)[5]
Awards Pulitzer Prize (2005)
Scripps Howard Award (2005)
Connie Schultz (born July 21, 1957) is an American writer, journalist, and educator. Schultz has been a columnist for several publications. After several years as a freelance writer, Schultz became a columnist at Cleveland's daily newspaper, The Plain Dealer, a role she held from 1993 to 2011, winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary[6] for "her pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged". She also wrote for USA Today and had a syndicated column for Creators Syndicate.
Schultz is also a journalism professor. After several years at Kent State University, her alma mater, Schultz now teaches journalism at Denison University.
Early life
Connie Schultz was born to Alvina Jane (née BeBout)[1] and Charles Craig Schultz.[7] She is the oldest of four siblings; her younger siblings are Leslie, Toni, and Charles.[8] In 1975, Schultz graduated from Ashtabula High School.[9] In 1979, Schultz received a B.A., Journalism, Political Science,[10] from Kent State University.[11]
Career
Schultz started her career as a freelance writer (from 1978 to 1993)[11] and then became a columnist for The Plain Dealer in 1993, a role she held until 2011.[10]
Schultz is married to Sherrod Brown, Democratic U.S. Senator from Ohio. Because of her husband's 2006 Senate campaign, Schultz took a leave of absence from The Plain Dealer to campaign for his election. She returned to The Plain Dealer in January 2007.[12] On September 19, 2011, Schultz again resigned from the paper, having written in a note to colleagues that "in recent weeks, it has become painfully clear that my independence, professionally and personally, is possible only if I'm no longer writing for the newspaper that covers my husband's Senate race on a daily basis".[13]
After leaving The Plain Dealer, Schultz wrote a column called "Views" for Parade.[14] She also contributed to the online political blog The Huffington Post.[15] For a number of years, she wrote a weekly print column, syndicated through Creators Syndicate.[16] In June 2021, Schultz became an opinion columnist for USA Today.[17] Schultz is a frequent guest on various cable news programs, including on C-SPAN (see "External Links" below).
Schultz taught journalism at her alma mater, Kent State University, for seven years, departing at the conclusion of the spring 2023 semester; as of the fall 2023 semester, she joined the faculty at Denison University, in Granville, Ohio. [18]
Books
Schultz's first book, Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths, a collection of her previously published columns, was printed in 2006. Her second book, ... and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, a journal of her experiences on the campaign trail, was released in 2007.
Her third book and first novel, The Daughters of Erietown, was published in June 2020. The novel is set in northeastern Ohio, and follows the lives of three generations of women.
In February 2024, Schultz's first children's book, Lola and the Troll, will be published. [19]
Recognition
Schultz won the 2004 Batten Medal.[20] In 2005, for commentary, Schultz won the Pulitzer Prize,[21] the Scripps Howard Award, and the National Headliners Award.[11]
On May 18, 2014, Schultz was presented with an honorary doctor of letters degree from Otterbein University. Along with her husband, Schultz gave a keynote address at the undergraduate commencement.[22]
Personal life
Schultz' first marriage, to a law school professor, ended in divorce. Schultz married Sherrod Brown in 2004; Schultz and Brown each brought two children to the relationship.[23] She has seven grandchildren, and is a self-professed practicing Christian.[24]
Works
Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths, Random House (April 18, 2006) ISBN 978-1-4000-6497-7
... and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, Random House (June 19, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-6573-8
The Daughters of Erietown: A Novel, Random House (June 9, 2020) ISBN 978-0-5254-7935-2
QUOTED: "It’s about accepting that you’re great just the way you are. ... You don’t need to change yourself for anybody who is criticizing you."
A conversation with Connie Schultz: Author, columnist returns home
By CONNOR BALL cball@starbeacon.com Mar 2, 2024
1 of 3
ASHTABULA — Connie Schultz spoke to a sold-out theater at the Ashtabula Arts Center on Saturday.
“This community raised me,” Schultz said. “Especially the arts community. Everything I am started here. I’ve always felt a great deal of loyalty to Ashtabula.”
The Arts Center was excited to host the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author.
“She’s our hometown girl,” said former Executive Director Lori Robishaw “We’re going to talk about growing up here and where she may have received some of her first inspiration to become a writer.”
“When you grow up in any small town so many people remember you from your parents,” Schultz said. “I received a private email from a longtime resident who said, ‘Can’t wait to see Chuck and Janey’s girl’. That was in reference to my parents who have been long gone. That is when I started to feel incredibly emotional.”
Schultz growing up didn’t realize writing could be an option for her as a career.
Joe Petro, who was the guidance counselor at Ashtabula High School, saw her writing potential and asked her if she ever thought about journalism.
When she started at The Daily Kent Stater, it became her life.
People regularly asked her, “How did you get that quote? How did you get the Sheriff to say that?”
“I look so harmless,” Schultz said. “It has definitely been my superpower. Now I’m 66 so I’m invisible too. People will say anything to you.”
The idea for her book, “Lola and the Troll,” came from social media. Trolls often share false information to create confusion or controversy. After blocking one in July 2021, an editor saw Schultz jokingly post on Twitter, “I think I’ll write a children’s book and call it ‘Tom The Troll Has Been Blocked.’”
Within an hour of this tweet, Schultz’ agent was in touch with her and asked her why she was writing a children’s book when she was supposed to be writing her next novel.
Schultz responded that she wasn’t and her editor said, “You are now,” after Razorbill Vice President and Publisher Casey McIntyre convinced her that it could, in fact, become a children’s book.
Lola loves school, recess and her imaginary dog, Tank. The one thing she doesn’t love is the walk to school where she has to pass the neighborhood bully, who wears a troll costume and mocks everything about Lola, according to a blurb.
“It’s about accepting that you’re great just the way you are,” Schultz said. “You don’t need to change yourself for anybody who is criticizing you.”
According to the National Association of School Psychologists and Together Against Bullying, more than 33% of elementary school students reported being bullied in school.
Parents and grandparents showed up with their own copies to get signed.
“Everybody needs to feel a sense of belonging and purpose,” said Ashtabula resident and Kent State sociology professor Jessica Leveto. “When you start to feel as though you’re an outsider, it’s really difficult to learn. As an educator and a mother, that’s my primary goal here. It’s important that they know that sometimes when people are saying things that are hurtful to you ... they are hurting themselves.”
“I loved the book,” said Mentor-on-the-Lake resident Judy Meador. “We bought it for our grandchildren that live in Kissimmee, Florida. I think Lola is a lot like our granddaughter Leila. She has big curly hair and gets teased a little bit. The book shows that you can stand up to a bully and maybe someday that bully will be your friend.”
A lot of people at the event had been following Schultz’s career as a columnist and that of her husband, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), for quite a while.
Everyone was happy that Schultz returned to her roots.
She said that she’d seen the road sign welcoming her back to Ashtabula.
Schultz received a letter from a mother with a 12 year-old-girl. In the letter she said, “We went past your sign for the first time today and I told her ... you see ... you can be a girl from Ashtabula and become a writer. If somebody had that kind of sign for me when I was 12 ... I would have dreamed bigger.”
Schultz said she saw that sign in a different light after that.
“That’s the message that I hope children get in particular,” she said. “You can come from Ashtabula and the world opens for you. Your dreams are just as important. Your dreams can be just as big.”
Connie Schultz, best-selling author, Pulitzer-winning columnist, to write weekly USA TODAY Opinion column
Kristen DelGuzzi
USA TODAY
SKIP
It’s the start of a new month, the unofficial start of summer.
That makes it the perfect time to talk about the newest voices on the USA TODAY Opinion team.
Starting this month is Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and New York Times bestselling author, whose latest book, "Daughters of Erietown," is released in paperback today. She’s a frequent public speaker and guest on national television and most recently wrote a nationally syndicated column. Her new weekly column will be exclusive to USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network.
Schultz writes about current events and policy and politics, but mostly, she writes from the heart, about life. Her time as a single mom and now as a grandparent, growing up in Ohio, where she still lives with husband Sen. Sherrod Brown. She calls out injustice, praises good deeds, honors her dogs and champions women.
Connie Schultz is an Opinion columnist for USA TODAY.
"One of the best parts of being a columnist is the relationship you build with readers," Schultz told me. "As a columnist for USA TODAY and its Network, I have the chance to engage with thoughtful readers across the country. We have so much to talk about, always. I look forward to those conversations."
Look for her first column this week.
Commencement keynote by Pulitzer Prize winner Connie Schultz
Commencement | Provost's Office
Denison University announces the 2022 Commencement keynote speaker: Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz.
March 1, 2022
Swasey Chapel
Denison Commencement keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz
Denison Commencement keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz will deliver the keynote address at Denison University’s 181st Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 14. At the ceremony, Schultz also will be recognized with the conferring of an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.
Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for USA Today and author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Daughters of Erietown. She also is a professional in residence at Kent State University’s School of Media & Journalism, where she teaches opinion writing, feature writing, and ethics.
“We honor Connie Schultz as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and educator, whose career has been dedicated to capturing the voices of people who are not being heard and exploring the issues that shape the communities we live in,” says Denison President Adam Weinberg. “I have long admired Connie for the quality of her journalism and her commitment to civic discourse. She exemplifies how liberal arts attributes of critical thinking, intellectual humility, and strong communication skills can make a positive difference in the world.”
Schultz was a reporter and columnist at The Plain Dealer for nearly 20 years, from 1993 to 2011, after working for a decade as a freelance writer. She was a nationally syndicated columnist from 2007 until 2021, when she joined USA Today.
In 2005, Schultz won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for columns that judges praised for providing “a voice for the underdog and the underprivileged.” That year she also won the Scripps Howard and National Headliner journalism awards for commentary. She has received six honorary degrees and has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize juror.
Schultz is a familiar figure at Denison, where students have learned from her writing expertise as the Nan Nowik Writer-in-Residence, a program established through the generosity of Denison Alumni Council Trustee Kathryn Correia ‘79 and Stephen Correia, as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Storyteller-in-Residence, funded through a combination of a grant from the Mellon Foundation and a gift from Denison alumna Sue Douthit O’Donnell ‘67.
In 2003, Schultz was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for her series, The Burden of Innocence, which chronicled the ordeal of Michael Green, who was imprisoned for 13 years for a rape he did not commit. A week after publication, the real rapist turned himself in after reading her series. Schultz won several awards for this work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting and the Batten Medal.
Schultz has been featured for her work in numerous publications and interviews, including The New Yorker, NPR, Politico, Kirkus Reviews Magazine, Glamour, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, and Ohio Magazine. Her book reviews appear regularly in The Washington Post, and she has also written for The New York Times, Politico, Parade, The Atlantic, Time, The Nation, Glamour, Democracy Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others.
In addition to The Daughters of Erietown, Schultz is the author of a collection of essays, Life Happens – And Other Unavoidable Truths, and a memoir about her husband Sherrod Brown’s successful 2006 race for the U.S. Senate, …and His Lovely Wife. She has contributed to several anthologies, including The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union, and more recently wrote the foreword to the 2020 anthology, Midland: Reports from Flyover Country, edited by Michael Croley and Jack Shuler. Her first children’s book, Lola Trains the Trolls, will be published by Razorbill Books in Summer 2023. She is currently working on her next novel.
Connie Schultz celebrates Denison’s new Journalism major
WRITTEN BY
Sophie LeMay '24
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Connie Schultz visits Denison
Connie Schultz visits Denison
Connie Schultz
Connie Schultz
The life of an award-winning journalist isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes, it’s a ripped stuffed bunny.
The seam of Bunny, Connie Schultz’s grandson’s favorite stuffed animal, ripped the night before she came to campus.
She made room in her suitcase for a sewing kit and Bunny with the promise of a healed animal upon her return. Despite a week of meetings with students and two public appearances, Schultz found time for the procedure halfway through the trip, sitting on the hotel porch on a sunny Ohio morning. People-watching as she closed up the patient, a mother-daughter pair walked by. Not even attempting to stay out of earshot, the daughter gestured to Schultz, saying, “See mom, that’s why I don’t want to do nothing with my life. I want a career.”
“Years ago, something like that would’ve really bothered me,” Schultz says. “Now, it’s just hilarious.”
Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, and this year’s Nan Nowik Writer-in-Residence, a program established through the generosity of Denison Alumni Council Trustee Kathryn Correia ‘79 and Stephen Correia, as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Storyteller-in-Residence, funded through a combination of a grant from the Mellon Foundation and a gift from Denison alumna Sue Douthit O’Donnell ‘67.
She’s spent her fruitful career providing a voice for the underdog and advocating for social justice through her writing. She now serves as both a USA Today columnist and a Professional-in-Residence at her alma mater, Kent State University, in the School of Media and Journalism, teaching ethics, journalism, and feature-writing.
With a healed bunny safely stowed in her hotel room, Schultz headed to campus to help kick off Denison’s new journalism major as part of The New Storytellers speaker series, taught master classes, worked with students, and discussed the promising future of the discipline.
As the Narrative Journalism concentration at Denison gained momentum over the last few years, the need for an expanded Journalism program led to the launch of the new major and minor. This year, then, has been a time of expansion, evolution, and celebration within the program and with visiting journalists throughout the semester.
Schultz’s journey into the discipline is surely a success story, but it means little without what’s below the tip of the iceberg. She was a working-class, single-income kid; her father’s mechanic job sustained the family of six for over a decade. It wasn’t until just before she became the first in the family to go to college that her mother picked up a job as a nurse’s aide.
“I am a born outsider,” Schultz says, “and it’s one of my advantages. I am not uncomfortable talking to anybody.”
This is why she does what she does. Schultz wants to tell the stories of the people who change the towel dispensers in an office building or who make the heat puff up from city grates.
“Every issue is a woman’s issue,” Schultz says,“If I can get into something, it’s my issue.”
A Changing Profession
She believes there’s a disconnect in today’s journalism. Being brazen and rude as a reporter doesn’t work for the work that needs to be done. Instead, it’s about trust. It’s about body language, eye contact, and most of all, it’s about making sure human beings feel like they’re talking to another human being. Often, to break through the habits of today’s media, it’s about being blunt and asking hard questions.
“You have to tell a mother, for example, that there will be objective stories about how her son was shot and killed. You then ask her, in the midst of that, what does she want people to know about him?” says Schultz.
“It’s hard, but that’s the reason it’s equally as rewarding.”
Journalism has arguably been important for decades, and even centuries. So, why is it even more important today?
Connie Shultz thinks it’s because we’re in an unprecedented age of exposition – of truth and representation.
Among her many journalistic interests, Shultz is drawn to political coverage in particular. In her freelancing days, there was a mayor she covered who had a very young second wife. Her minimal presence in the media explained that she loved to knit.
“A couple of minutes into our conversation I learned that she didn’t even know how to knit. What she did have were strong views on what marriage meant in the realm of politics and patriarchy, ” says Schultz.
The mayoral campaign had simply handed favorable sentences out to reporters, and they ran with it.
Now, Shultz believes the work is dismantling this structure of journalism, and it’s happening.
“I’m most encouraged by young journalists. I know we’re asking you to fix what the last generation made, but you’re doing it with the open minds much of my generation never had,” says Schultz.
She asserts that the journalism of the future can only grow from the journalism of the past, and this generation of writers is the conduit of that change.
“We teach journalism because we are often the last stop to expose the corruption of those in power. We teach it to connect and to close the distance with readers, to show them our common humanity. We teach being incredibly close to a life-changing event yet still having the courage to write about it,” says Schultz.
The Meaning of Journalism
Schultz began the pandemic with five plants, and, according to her most recent count last week, came out of it with 64. She’s only a morning person because of her dogs, but she prefers to write at night. In her years as a single mom, she only had time to write in the middle of the night. It became a habit.
Journalism runs through Schultz’s blood. It’s what she’s meant to do. Her high school guidance counselor first brought the field up to her, and after a few years at law school killed her writing, she finally found that niche again and ran with it. She says she ran through quicksand and beds of nails and rejection letters and rejections straight to her face, but she got to where she needed to be.
“It’s so hard to have a universal idea of advice to give to young journalists because you all have your own strong interests and your own unique journeys. That is the advice in some ways, though. What you care about most is what you should be writing about,” says Schultz.
In the end, journalism helps us dig into our place in humanity and come face to face with what it means to be human. It bares the ugliest parts of people and the most beautiful moments we have and appreciates them all.
Journalism at Denison events are funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a gift by Sue Douthit O’Donnell ‘67.
Posted date: December 14, 2021
Writer Connie Schultz shares the backstory of her viral message to ambitious working moms
Connie Schultz's tweet touched the hearts of overextended moms everywhere.
ByLesley Messer and Elisa Tang via logo
Video byElisa Tang
August 23, 2020, 4:23 AM
4:28
This working mom embraced her ambitions and she wants other women to do the same
Writer and journalist Connie Schult...Show More
Although coronavirus has upended life for everyone across the globe, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Connie Schultz can't stop thinking about the struggles it's caused for working mothers in particular.
For Schultz, who was a single mother for many years to two children, the nagging worry that she was in some way harming her family by working was constant, even though, she added, having a job was necessary, both personally and financially.
As she watches so many working women in her life battle the same feelings of inadequacy during the pandemic, she feels a responsibility to ensure them -- and women everywhere -- that despite their concerns, their children will be just fine.
"I've always loved what I do, and so I started thinking about all the times where I didn't allow myself all the joy [that my job brought me]," Schultz told "Good Morning America." "We've always worried that we weren't doing enough, and worrying that you're not measuring up robs you of the joy of your milestones, both career-wise and in your in child-rearing."
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Schultz, who just published her first novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," in June, has an adult son and daughter, and is the stepmother to two adult daughters from her second marriage to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. After countless conversations with her children, daughter-in-law, and many women like them, she decided that she would make it her full-time job to "make it easier for women ... who want to be ambitious about their careers." And then, last month, Schultz tweeted two images that went viral, along with a note of encouragement to mothers everywhere.
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One photo depicts Schultz in 1988, wearing a bathrobe and typing frantically with her daughter Caitlin perched on her lap. Beside it is a second picture of Caitlin, in 2016, testifying before the Rhode Island State House Committee on Labor for family leave with her infant son Milo strapped to her chest. "Feeling guilty about our ambition is such a waste of time. You’re doing all that you can. It’s enough," Schultz captioned it. The message struck a chord, and hundreds of women responded, thanking Schultz for sharing it.
"It was an emotional moment when I thought about the juxtaposition of them and I thought, 'All right, this is the story to tell,'" she recalled. "For years I didn't put up that photo [from 1988] because I was ashamed of it. I worried, 'This is what she's getting?' And now it's in a frame in my office because it reminds me of how much time I wasted worrying about the wrong things. It was of wonderful importance for her to see that not only did mom work, but mom loved what she did."
This reminder becomes especially important in the age of social media, when so many people project a curated view of their lives that can make others feel inadequate, she added. Life, Schultz said, "is always messy."
"I think you can never have too many toys on the floor," she said. "As a parent, people are gonna think you don't have it under control. I do not know a happy home with children that is immaculate."
PULITZER-WINNING COLUMNIST CONNIE SCHULTZ TO LEAVE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, who began teaching as a professional-in-residence in the School of Media and Journalism in 2015, will depart that role at the end of Spring 2023.
Schultz, a USA Today columnist and author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Daughters of Erietown, will be joining Denison University’s newly established program in journalism in August 2023 as Professor of Practice. Previously Schultz had served as Denison’s Andrew W. Mellon Storyteller-in-Residence and received an honorary degree from the university in the spring of 2022.
“My seven years of teaching at the journalism school that launched my career has been a dream come true,” Schultz said. “The time spent with our students and dedicated faculty has changed me forever, in all the best ways. I am looking forward to this next phase of my career, but that does not mean I am leaving Kent State behind. I will always be a loyal alumnus and look forward to returning often in support of the School of Media and Journalism. There can be only one home for this journalist's heart, and it will always be Kent State.”
In addition to teaching opinion writing, feature writing and ethics at Kent State, Schultz was a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate from 2007 until 2021 when she joined USA Today where she continues to write a weekly column. It was also during her years teaching at Kent State that she completed her debut novel The Daughters of Erietown, a multi-generational family saga set in a fictional working-class northeastern Ohio town.
“I have always admired Connie’s deep commitment to journalism and telling meaningful and important stories,” said Amy Reynolds, Dean of the College of Communication and Information. “She is an advocate for civil discourse. She is a talented writer, no matter the form. What I appreciate most, though, about Connie is her dedication to and mentorship of students. She knows how to empower and inspire them to find their voice. Her legacy at Kent State endures as both an alumnus and a professor.
“Students say that Connie ‘challenged me to think with every interaction’ and ‘she welcomed different opinions and... respected all of us.... She really cared about helping us learn.’
“I am grateful Connie will continue to engage with CCI and MDJ for summer programs and workshops for students. I wish her all the best at Denison.”
POSTED: MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2022 09:58 AM
Connie Schultz On Her Debut Novel And The Story Of American Women
JUNE 6, 20208:00 AM ET
HEARD ON WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY
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NPR's Scott Simon talks to author Connie Schultz about her debut novel, "The Daughters of Erietown."
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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Connie Schultz's new novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," is about a group of people who often seem to struggle to be their best within lives that can narrow their choices. It's a story of women in northeast Ohio who put dreams on hold, search for love and meaning and find each other in the clasp of family. "The Daughters of Erietown" is the debut novel - and I'm sure she's going to write more - of Connie Schultz, who won a Pulitzer Prize writing columns for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. She joins us from Cleveland. Connie, thanks so much for being with us.
CONNIE SCHULTZ: Thank you for this, Scott. It's good to hear your voice.
SIMON: Well, it's good to hear yours. Tell us about the two characters who begin as youngsters. Kind of - they're the spine of the story, Ellie and Brick.
SCHULTZ: Yes. Ellie and Brick McGinty have - as you said, they're young initially. They're in the 1950s. And because of the time and place in a very small town, Clayton Valley, Ohio, when Ellie gets pregnant while they're still in high school, the trajectory of their lives changes dramatically. Within months, Brick is working for Erietown Electric. Down the road, Ellie becomes a nurse's aide. And I picked those professions because those were the professions of my parents. And so those were the professions I knew best.
SIMON: It's often been my impression that when working-class characters are written about at all, it's often with a kind of stereotype. Was there something that you set out to change?
SCHULTZ: Working-class people are just like more affluent and luckier people. The difference is when the big problems come and there's no money to fix it. And that's when dreams derail. And the other point - which has driven my journalism as much as it did my fiction and because I come from the working class - our roots are our beginnings, but they are not our excuses. And if you grow up and you have racism in your family - and certainly that's an element in this book - that doesn't mean that you are now authorized to be a racist, as well. And while that's not a primary theme in this book, I wanted to be sure to include it because I've grown so weary of these arguments that you can dismiss everyone of our background as just not having enough sense to be anything other than what we were taught in the beginning.
SIMON: Connie, do you have your fine book there with you?
SCHULTZ: I do have my book here. Yes.
SIMON: Could I ask you to read a section? It's a charming scene when Brick is telling young Ellie and her brother what he does for a living.
SCHULTZ: (Reading) Brick tapped his pen again on the napkin. Well, those are called cooling towers, and there's a generator, too. It's connected to that turbine, to that windmill by something called an axle. The generator spins around the blades of the windmill. And the energy from that - it's called kinetic energy, makes the electricity. Sam leaned into him. Daddy, you are so smart. Not smart, Sam. Just doing the same job over and over for the rest of my life.
SIMON: Later in the novel, a character says nobody gets the life they planned. We get what God plans. And we spend the rest of our lives trying not to hold it against him (laughter). It sounds like the kind of thing you might have heard from someone at one point.
SCHULTZ: (Laughter) I think what it was is growing up in a town I loved, Ashtabula, Ohio, that was so full of broken dreams for a lot of people and never, though, ran out of hope for the rest of us. And, you know, this is not unusual. I'm sure you were the same as a child. So many people I know who are writers and journalists - we were full of questions at a very young age. And I was the oldest in my family, very accustomed to talking to adults. And so I spent a lot of my childhood talking to the grown-ups and learned a lot about their lives. And I never thought at that time I would become a writer. But I see now how much of it fueled the writer I am now today.
SIMON: Connie, while we have you, how do you feel about what's happened at The Cleveland Plain Dealer?
SCHULTZ: Well, I'm heartbroken. This newspaper launched my career. When I started there, there were more than 400 people in the Newspaper Guild. And as of the last month, they got rid of the entire guild. And we still subscribe because I care about a lot of the people who are still working there. But if we ever needed an active, vigorous place full of veteran journalists right now, it is in this time of not just the coronavirus but of the continued and deserved racial unrest that we have.
You know, when I grew up in Ashtabula - I should backtrack - half of my class all the way through elementary school was black. I didn't even understand, of course, the significance of that until I got older - that when your friends are people who don't have to look like you but you are certain that they are like you, it really informs who you are, right? It certainly has informed my work. What has concerned me in the conversations about it - even now as we're looking at what's happening around the country - is so many white people talk about what's happening in the black community. And as long as we call it the black community instead of our community, we're able to distance ourselves from what is actually happening.
I'll go back to Tamir Rice when he died - whom I wrote about this week in my column. And I was troubled by how few white people showed up for that funeral. And it made me understand that even though they may have felt sad to hear the news, it wasn't their child they had lost. It wasn't their community as they saw it, which brings me back to Plain Dealer coverage. It has all but abandoned local coverage in the way it used to for the Guild. They were told if they stayed in the Guild, they weren't going to be able to cover Cleveland anymore. And so the last of the veteran journalists who've been reporting on this community and in this city for so many years are gone. And I don't need to tell you what the lack of institutional memory in your journalists can do to your coverage.
SIMON: Connie Schultz - her debut novel "The Daughters of Erietown". Thank you so much.
SCHULTZ: Scott, you know how grateful I am, I hope. I really am, especially in this time. Thank you.
Connie Schultz
Getty Images/Random House
It’s difficult to trace back to when I first became aware of Connie Schultz. I was an overly opinionated bookish girl growing up in northeast Ohio, writing for the teen page of our local newspaper. I dreamed of college and escape from a landscape dotted by silenced steel mills and poverty generations of hard work couldn’t seem to undo. Schultz—a fierce reporter who turned her writing toward the working class—was everything I aspired to be in the world. Honest. Bold. Maybe I really fell for Schultz after I left, after I started to see how the struggles of where I came from kept informing who I became no matter where I went. I certainly knew Schultz’s writing by the time she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, for work in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the “underdog” and the “underprivileged,” code for the people who made each of us.
By then I was in awe of her.
For years now, in addition to serving as faculty at Kent State University and being a nationally syndicated columnist, Schultz has been a steadying force, demanding decency and justice. In hundreds of thousands of people’s social media feeds she daily manages a rarity—civil discourse online—even as our nation weathers political chaos. She is ever fair-minded, generous with dog photos when levity is needed, and firm in her hard-earned convictions.
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Since June, Connie Schultz has also become something else: a novelist. Her latest book and first novel, The Daughters of Erietown, fell into my hands like something written in a familiar love language. It’s a multigenerational yarn about a family rooted in the working class. It’s a book about how place and circumstance shape people, even as we try to defy life’s inevitable constraints.
Schultz recently sat down with me, via Zoom, to discuss her book. (This marked the fulfillment of one of my life’s dreams, speaking to her about her writing.) The Q&A below has been edited for length and clarity, and contains spoilers.
Sarah Stankorb: There is a line you include in the book—“That’s where you come from, don't you ever forget it”—which seems to inform a lot of who you are as a writer. And the book definitely makes clear how a person can be from somewhere and become something else and remain both those things, and yet straddle both worlds and never fit, really, in either one.
Connie Schultz: That is the perfect way to describe it, straddle it and never fit in, in my view, in either world.
I had a friend who grew up in a very affluent part of the country. And he said, “You know, you are a reverse snob. You are a working-class snob. You think your people are superior to all of us who didn't have to work so hard.” And I said, “There's probably some truth to that, but you all seem to be doing fine without our approval.”
Until I started hearing Bruce Springsteen's music, his songs, I didn't realize that our people lead lives of poetry too, and that we can actually put them to music. And it was such an affirming experience to hear his songs, to know that he understood the lives of the people I came from and that he understood something about the life I was living. And then to see so many people who don't come from that background revere him has been so interesting to watch.
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It's really hard to come from the working class, but I do think it gave me my chops as a writer, certainly as a journalist, because I was so used to working hard at a young age. I was so used to understanding, you know, [as in the book] when Brick doesn't let [his daughter] Sam go to Smith College because it would be a free ride, and he doesn't believe anything is really for free. That is so much what I was raised to believe. And so it never occurred to me that I should get an easy way out of anything or into anything. And I suppose that really helped to inform my work and helped make me the journalist I became, good and bad.
Did you ever fear forgetting or feel like you had to fight forgetting where you came from?
No, never, no. I mean, part of it is because of what I gravitated in coverage. I've written so much about working-class people and of all races. Of course, it's so important to emphasize that as I grew up, in my elementary school, half of my classmates were Black in every grade. When you grow up knowing your friends don't have to look like you to be like you, it really informs your work and it informs your life.
Your depiction of racial inequity and all these divisions were so familiar. I was so relieved to see their honest portrayal in this book. I thought Sam was really interesting, especially with all the discussions happening now about white fragility, and how to be antiracist, where you could feel she loved her father and still rejected his racism.
Well, I wrote for the Atlantic a few years ago about my dad's racism. Because as I have said for so many years, it's easy to hate the racist you don't know. It's different when it's also the person who made sure that you were the first to go to college in your family, who did believe in you in ways. And I wrote it back then because I was tired of hearing the commentary that implied that if you grew up in the white working class, you're bound to be racist. I hope one of the themes that comes through in the book is that our roots are our beginnings, but they're not our excuses. And that's where my initial feelings about [that idea came from], that's where the seed was for that.
That's probably one of the most true stories in the novel for me personally—the tension between Sam and her father. My father hated my Motown music. He broke my records at times, but what I came to understand better in writing the novel is he was that father who used to buy records with me. We would sit down on the floor and listen to them. So it wasn't just that I liked Black music like Sam. He could see that he was losing me, that we didn't have as much in common and music was one of those few things we could do together. I really didn't see that until I wrote about Sam and Brick.
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I thought I could not have a novel in small-town Ohio in the sixties or small town, period, in the country and not address the issue of racism. Racism is always an issue. It's our legacy. It's our heritage. And I wanted to show how often it can play out differently in white working-class families.
When people think of an area and especially what they call the Rust Belt—
A term I hate—
Yes—[but a place like this gets described] in terms of buildings or the shell of buildings. But I feel a book like this shows how often a place is linked to dreams. And whether that’s dreams that are nearly fulfilled or those that die, or those that kind of live around you and haunt you and make you want other dreams for your child. I wonder how much you see our part of the world, where we came from populated by these dreams.
I grew up with them. I was surrounded by them. I live the dreams of my parents. These empty buildings don't tell the stories of the hearts and souls and the people who still remain. That's why I hate “Rust Belt.” I see so many efforts in small towns and rural areas where they're still trying, because you never run out of hopes and dreams. Even if you run out of them for yourself, if you're of sound mind, you invest in them or perhaps inflict them upon the children in your lives. You're determined that the next generation will know a different life. That was certainly the story of my parents. And it is definitely the story of Ellie and Brick McGinty with their kids and what they hope.
And of course, nothing pulls on Brick more than when he sees the lunch pail in the truck of his son's car, because he had vowed his kids would never carry lunch pails, which was certainly my father's promise. But we must allow our children their own dreams.
Some want to do something other than college and college should not be the hallmark of a successful life for every person. It's just not how lives are lived. And we are very dependent—I hope we're seeing that a little bit more right now—particularly on the women who never went to college, but who are making sure our food is prepared and delivered, who are ringing up the sales, who are taking our orders or taking care of patients, including people we love, who are holding up for FaceTime, the last few images of a dying loved one because you can't be with them during COVID-19. These women are so heroic.
I hope The Daughters of Erietown is prompting more of those conversations in families and within the hearts of women who are reading them. I hope they see themselves in the book in this way.
The deaths that happened in the book, in a lot of ways they were familiar in ways that deaths in books often aren't. The people I grew up with, the deaths are often sudden. You know, it's a car accident. Your body has been worked and then it's done. And that's it. Was this something you did consciously in terms of how to shape what death feels like, or was that just by nature?
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Well, my mother was a hospice home care worker in the last few months of her life. So we had so many conversations about her work. And I also did a lot of stories, including a narrative series called Losing Lisa, which chronicled the last four months of a young mother who died and then a year in her family's life. I wrote a lot about death and dying. So I have been very aware, for good or bad, of the ways that people can die.
It was interesting because there is a suicide, as you know, in the book, or at least a perceived suicide, and an editor had some concern at one point: “I'm not sure we can believe it yet, that this person doesn't want to live.” And this was within weeks of my brother's suicide last July. And if I've learned anything in the last year is that you really can't predict it. And just because I can't see the reasons why doesn't mean somebody else, who's feeling that sense of desperation and hopelessness, doesn't feel it.
People want to imagine one of two deaths for themselves: Either they just don't wake up from sleeping or they have a chance to say goodbye to everyone in this wonderful scene around the bed. Most of us are somewhere in between those two. I wanted the book—and I mean, it's not full of death by any stretch—but I did want it understood that in a heartbeat, everything can change and we can be left with a lot of questions and regrets if we haven't done and said what we needed to do.
One last question. You had a line in the book that I wrote down and I keep writing down: "Even when you don't notice it, life is rearranging you." And I wonder how writing this book has rearranged you.
I started this novel years ago, and I finally got a lot more serious about it in the last five years. I think part of it was I had to live my own advice to my kids and to so many of my students now at Kent State in the journalism school there—that if you're never scared, you've stopped growing.
Growth requires that we get nervous and anxious because we're trying something new.
This is not a career pivot. This is a leap for me. What mattered most is that I didn't regret that I didn't write it. That would be the worst regret. There would be no fixing that. And so that's how I'm rearranged, I would say, because here I am already working on the second novel.
The thing I didn't expect—that I'm so accustomed as a columnist—is that I'm used to readers sharing their experiences based on the fact that they've read a column and they want to share a story from their lives with me. What I didn't anticipate was that people could read my novel and want to share their stories with me. That line you quoted—life rearranging you—for some reason that keeps getting quoted back to me a lot. And they start talking about things that rearranged them, that they'd never thought about.
I don't think I completely know how writing this has changed me. I think that takes time, right? The whole part of all of this is a process. I'll know more later.
Sarah Stankorb is an award-winning writer in Ohio. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Marie Claire, Glamour, O Magazine, and the Atlantic, among others
Schultz, Connie ...AND HIS LOVELY WIFE Random (Adult NONFICTION) $24.95 Jul. 2, 2007 ISBN: 978-1-4000-6573-8
Is Ohio's junior senator planning a 2012 run for president?
For someone who claims to have at one point been uncomfortable with campaigning, Schultz (Life Happens, 2006), a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and wife of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), sure does enough of it in this book. The story of her life during election season opens two years after Schultz and Brown married, and two weeks after Brown decided to give up a safe congressional seat to run against Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican incumbent in 2004's most famous swing state. One morning, as Schultz watched, two men in bespoke suits leap out of a car and attempt to steal the family's garbage. They were thwarted by Schultz and her disabled dog, but, clearly, the stage was set for drama. The campaign only got dirtier from there: Soon DeWine's attack ads were using images of 9/11; critics demanded to know why Schultz kept her name; and Brown's ex-wife had to clarify that, though they may have endured a bitter divorce, Brown is neither a bad man nor a wife beater. While Schultz delivers a chilling account of the hits she, her family and her career took, giving the now-clichd term "battleground state" new life, she often dwells too lovingly on minor slights--it seems every reporter, every senior citizen, every blogger who slighted her or her husband is mentioned here--and wastes time establishing salt-of-the-earth credibility for herself and her husband when she could be bringing their characters to life. The book has all the elements we've seen in the autobiographies of politicians preparing a big run: canned home truths; hard-knock upbringings; genealogies proving a connection to the common man; and--most irritating of all--attempts to humanize through small "quirky" details. We learn, for example, that Schultz likes Brown's hair curly, not cropped, and that Brown does romantic things for their anniversary--but Brown himself remains a cipher.
A book disappointingly devoid of substance.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Schultz, Connie: ...AND HIS LOVELY WIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2007, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A169082706/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a7b16a26. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man CONNIE SCHULTZ. Random, $24.95 (288) ISBN 978-1-4000-6573-8
Schultz (Life Happens) gives a frank and adoring account of standing by her man, Sherrod Brown, in his run for U.S. Senate from Ohio. Ashtabula-bred Schultz and Democratic Congressman Brown, both middle-aged, longtime divorced single parents, married in 2004, and by the middle of the next year had decided he would quit his congressional seat and oppose two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. While a supportive and loving wife, Schultz is also a feminist, devoted to her work as a journalist (she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005); she reluctantly gave in to the pressure to take a sabbatical from her Cleveland Plain Dealer column during the course of the campaign. However, she became a valuable tool to her husband's success, from forcing his handlers to give the exhausted candidate time to recoup to trotting out her working-class family's hard-luck story when convenient. There are many funny moments (Brown was criticized for his unruly curls and his "cheap suits"), and DeWine's negative ads (led by Republican strategist Karl Rove) prompted Brown's team, in Hillary Clinton's words, to "deck him" with an ad of its own. (Schultz's own newspaper didn't endorse Brown.) Eventually, he won, and Schultz could happily return to her column. Her diary is upbeat, sometimes overly but affably composed. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC
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"... And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man." Publishers Weekly, vol. 254, no. 20, 14 May 2007, p. 46. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A163739425/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a9890e03. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
The Daughters of Erietown
By Connie Schultz
Family Saga
Journalist Connie Schultz won a Pulitzer Prize for her columns in Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, stories that "provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged." So it should come as no surprise that her debut novel, The Daughters of Erietown (Random House, $28, 9780525479352), is a plain-spoken elegy to small-town, working-class women with big stories to tell.
The novel opens with a prologue set in 1975, as college-bound Samantha "Sam" McGinty is leaving behind her hometown, Erietown, but carrying plenty of emotional baggage along with her vintage suitcase. On the road trip to Kent State, she's accompanied by her parents, Brick and Ellie, and younger brother, Reilly. It's a trip that hints at Sam's childhood scars even before the story begins to unfold through a series of flashbacks, starting in 1944.
After being abandoned by her ne'er-do-well parents, Ellie is raised by her grandparents, kind and decent folks whose old age has been interrupted by the demands of another round of child rearing. The youngest of 12 children, Brick grows up with a violent, alcoholic father, who is mourning the death of his favorite son, killed in the war, and a loving mother, who is also a victim of the patriarch's wrath. By the time Ellie and Brick are teenagers--she's a cheerleader, he's the captain of the basketball team--the young lovers are inseparable and looking forward to college, careers and eventually marriage and a family.
But those dreams are dashed by an unplanned pregnancy, a quickie marriage and a move to a dilapidated rental house near the electric plant where Brick finds employment. Before long, the young couple and their baby, Sam, have settled into a routine, with Ellie raising their child and visiting with friends, and Brick turning to a corner tavern and womanizing--with catastrophic consequences.
While Schultz's compelling narrative and realistic characters will keep readers turning pages into the night, her eye and ear for real-life details set this novel apart from other domestic sagas. Part tragic love story, part powerful testament to shifting cultural norms and the evolution of the women's movement, The Daughters of Erietown is an impressive first novel with a big heart.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
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Cullotta, Karen Ann. "The Daughters of Erietown." BookPage, June 2020, pp. 21+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623795057/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=26856cd1. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
Schultz, Connie THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIETOWN Random House (Fiction None) $28.00 6, 9 ISBN: 978-0-525-47935-2
The evolving role of women in middle America in the second half of the 20th century is illuminated by the story of one Ohio family, its secrets and failures, its hopes and dreams.
The heart of this American domestic epic is expressed pretty neatly midway through by a delivery nurse tending to Ellie McGinty at the birth of her second child, an event missed by her troubled husband, Brick, and coordinated by a neighbor. Was it always like this? asks Ellie. Did women always have to rely on other women? "A woman’s world has always revolved around…other women," the nurse replies. "We love our men, and the idea of a husband is a good thing. What woman wouldn’t want that?” Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Schultz studies that question through generations of women: Ellie’s paternal grandmother, Ada, who raises the child her son abandoned; Brick’s mother, trapped in a brutally violent marriage that produced 12 children; Ellie herself, whose precipitous marriage to Brick in many ways marks the ruin of both of their lives; their daughter Samantha, who comes of age with Motown and career options. Like Jennifer Weiner’s Mrs. Everything, except with Catholics instead of Jews, the novel sharply illuminates evolving social mores and tucks in plenty of womanly wisdom. We go from Peyton Place (1956) to The Women’s Room (1977)—and, cleverly, both books make cameo appearances in the plot. More cleverness energizes the dialogue. How old were you when you fell in love with Grandpa? asks young Ellie in an early scene. “I’ll let you know,” Ada replies. “We only had five or six boys to pick from, and two got eliminated for inbreeding.” The minor characters in Schultz's fictional Erietown include some from central casting (a spinster aunt with a career, a caring basketball coach) and a few we haven’t seen as much of (including a somewhat sympathetic home-wrecker).
A masterful debut novel.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Schultz, Connie: THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIETOWN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A617193077/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4d93f267. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
QUOTED: "With its important underlying message about remembering how to be brave, even when it's hard ... Lola and the Troll ... is a fun and important picture book read for children ages 4-8."
Lola and the Troll
Connie Shultz, author
Sandy Rodriguez, illustrator
Razorbill
c/o Penguin Young Readers Group
https://www.penguin.com
9780593527634, $18.99, HC, 40pp
https://www.amazon.com/Lola-Troll-Connie-Schultz/dp/0593527631
Synopsis: Lola is a happy kid who loves recess and her imaginary dog, Tank. There's just one problem: the neighborhood bully. He hides behind a troll costume and says mean things to everyone who walks by, including Lola. Soon she starts wearing her hair differently, walking on her tippy toes to add a few extra inches to her height, and even putting cornstarch in her shoes because he said her feet stink!
But when Lola's mom takes her to her favorite place, The Bee's Sneeze bookstore, the owner, Ms. Sneesby, reminds Lola that she LOVES her curly hair, her bright smile, and her big eyes. And most importantly, Ms. Sneesby reminds Lola that she is brave.
Critique: With its important underlying message about remembering how to be brave, even when it's hard, and realizing that some-times all a bully really needs is a little kindness, "Lola and the Troll" by author/storyteller Connie Schultz and artist/illustrator Sandy Rodriguez is a fun and important picture book read for children ages 4-8. While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $10.99), "Lola and the Troll" is a welcome and recommended pick for family, daycare center, preschol, elementary school, and community library picture book collections.
Editorial Note #1: Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Professor of Practice in Journalism at Denison University. Her favorite job title is Grandma. She is the author of a collection of essays, Life Happens, and a political memoir, ...and His Lovely Wife. Her first novel, The Daughters of Erietown, was a New York Times bestseller in 2020.
Editorial Note #2: Sandy Rodriguez (https://www.studiosandyrodriguez.com) is a self-taught artist and illustrator. She grew up in Mexico surrounded by lots of family. (She has more than 30 cousins!) Inspired by everyday moments, Sandy loves creating playful characters with quirky personalities. Her favorite medium is watercolor and ink, but she also experiments with colored paper, gouache, and some digital magic. Sandy lives in London with her husband and two fantastic daughters. She is also the illustrator for Perla, the Mighty Dog! by Isabel Allende.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
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"Lola and the Troll." Children's Bookwatch, Feb. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786467185/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cb9689bc. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
QUOTED: "earnest text."
"delicate artwork."
Schultz, Connie LOLA AND THE TROLL Razorbill/Penguin (Children's None) $18.99 2, 6 ISBN: 9780593527634
A group of kids take a troll to task.
A troll named Tom lives in Lola's neighborhood. In Rodriguez's delicate artwork, he's tall and bizarre looking, with party hats for ears and oven mitts over his hands, and as kids walk past, he holds up signs plastered with insulting messages tailored to what he sees. No one likes the troll, but his comments cut. Most try to avoid Tom, but a light-skinned girl named Lola takes the messages to heart and slowly changes herself in an attempt to avoid criticism. After Lola has a heartfelt conversation with a bookstore owner about how bullies are the ones who are really afraid, she and the other kids stand up to the troll, revealed to be a short, light-skinned boy who's "new to this neighborhood" and "just wanted attention." Many pages are crammed full of text, and one central metaphor feels overexplained as Lola describes herself as "tall on the inside," which is apparently "what counts." This story attempts to deliver an old-fashioned message about bullying through the modern concept of an internet troll, but neither element works especially well in this earnest text that naïvely imagines that all conflicts can be resolved through conversation and that trolls can be scared away through honesty and confidence.
Too idealistic by half. (Picture book. 5-8)
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"Schultz, Connie: LOLA AND THE TROLL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A776005243/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bfcf1bcc. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.