Alexandra on Lisa Sandell

Lisa Ann Sandell was born in Wilmington, Delaware on November 23, 1977. As a child, she spent most of her free time reading. She started writing short stories at a young age. She went to University of Pennsylvania where she took classes on English Medieval and Renaissance Literature about King Arthur, which became her inspiration for Song of the Sparrow. She spent her summer between sophomore and junior years in college in Israel which became the topic of The Weight of the Sky. After returning to the States, she became homesick and started to write poetry about Israel. One of these poems turned into the outline for The Weight of the Sky. She moved back to Israel for a year as an intern at The Jerusalem Report. 

She moved back to the States in 2000 and works as a children’s book editor in New York. I read both of Lisa Ann Sandell’s books, The Song of the Sparrow and The Weight of the Sky, in middle school. The Song of the Sparrow is a poetic twist on the story of Elaine, The Lady of Shalott, who floats down a river and kills herself after Lancelot falls in love with Gwynivere. This story takes characters from Tristan, who fell in love with Isolde, to Arthur. The Weight of the Sky is Sandell’s first book, and tells the story of a Jewish girl in high school from a small town whose parents have planned a trip to Israel to work on a kibbutz to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. This book goes through the hardships many teenage girls go through and how the main character, Sarah, grows and matures as a person. 

This is an excerpt from The Song of the Sparrow, the beginning of Chapter 18:

Morning dawns grey
and ominous, the sky
pregnant with indigo clouds.
As I rise from my bed,
I sense that I am alone
in the tent, my family
already gone to
the mock
battlefield. In these
moments of silence
I do my chores, sort through
my herbs and take stock of
what is needed.
Handling the colorful powders
and scented flowers calms me,
allows quiet into my head.
I must think on my plan.
A list begins to form in my mind,
and suddenly I wonder, how will
I ever manage to gather all that
I might need and prepare
a kit for the journey
without anyone seeing, guessing?
For I shall follow.
There are no hiding places in this
tent, no private spots
in this camp.
As I scan the room, looking
for a nook to secret away
a sack, my eyes fall
upon my mother’s chest.
Yes, there should be room inside
of it, to squirrel away medicinal
plants, some clothes and food.
And no one will think to look there.
The domain of woman.

This is the end of "Swallowed Up," an excerpt from The Weight of the Sky:

The features of my face
blur together
then crystallize for
a second. They
don’t seem to be organic parts
of me.
They come apart, like
pieces
of
                            a
              jigsaw
                         puzzle.
A nose floats away,   unanchored
from my cheeks,
and there it is, just a nose,
a funny-looking thing
with two holes in it,
hanging in the air.
And a pair of gray-green eyes,
the color of mud,
but I only see one, as the two
merge in the center of my forehead
like a Cyclops.
Who am I?
What am I doing?