I also want my literature to sometimes address action. Children will read it and feel optimistic about what they can do in the world."
Childhood Experiences Stirred Creativity
Bat-Ami once remarked, "My first and third books came from personal feelings about my own past. Sea, Salt, and Air, my first picture book, deals with the yearly summer trips my family took to the beach: how we packed for the trip, the long ride, our feelings of freedom when we swam in the ocean, and the whole sense of timelessness one feels at the beach. It also deals with my love for my grandparents, who welcomed us into their summer cottage. Mary O'Keefe Young, working in vibrant pastels, wonderfully captured that sense of freedom and love."
Bat-Ami's 1994 book, When the Frost Is Gone, marked the start of her venturing into fiction for older children. In this story, twelve-year-old Natalie recounts an eventful, if difficult summer. Natalie lives with her father, and carries with her a certain degree of anger toward her mother, a substance abuser who has left them. She resents entering her teen years without a sympathetic female figure to discuss things, but when her mother returns for a time that summer and tries to build a new relationship, Natalie cannot see past her own anger at her mother's former behavior.
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