HUZZAH! The sticker at last. At least, it's on Amazon.

This is a better spot than where it was right after the ALA press conference - on the left, halfway on Mare's helmet. I'd hate to be the person who has to decide where all of the stickers go when the awards are over... but I think this works.

And now, I must tell you a funny: you see how on the cover of the book, my name has no capital letters? In the ALA news release, my name had... no capital letters. And I've started to see my name showing up in people's reviews and blogs and on the ALA website... with no capital letters.

I am now apparently related to e.e. cummings, thanks to the book designers for MARE'S WAR.

*snicker*

To be honest, I don't care, I just think it's funny that people are writing my name in a way I haven't since about the 8th grade. But - whatever. They're writing my name. I'll take it.

Labels: Random Notes and Errata

In this world of people plugged into their iPods, you will be horrified to note that I haven't had a stereo since we moved into this apartment last May. I have a laptop, on which I can play CD's, but I don't often (once you've had good speakers and lost them - ugh). I listen to streaming radio sometimes - not often - usually because I have to sing and bop along and can really get nothing else done if I'm listening to music that doesn't have a set time to begin and end. (I'm very jealous of all the people who can write while listening to music with lyrics. I can't.) Very, very soon I'm going to have access to my music again, because music is as necessary as circulation and breathing... and, this morning I was listening to some shiny-happy sugary pop music and thinking about music in general.

Okay, so I know I was a really weird child, obviously, as I've grown up to be a really weird adult-sized child. But, it warms me that someone else was just as weird, and this poem really struck me. How well I remember lying on the floor, sobbing in bewilderment as I listened to Bach's Komm, süßer Tod, or Ave Verum Corpus. (You may ask why a child was listening to these things. Because they were on a record that was on... and I stopped playing, and listened.) This is the best reason yet I've ever understood why those massive choral anthems struck me so hard -- they were a part of something so very, very big, and my smallness, at seven, was not yet large enough to hold it.

My smallness probably will not ever be.

Music

  --by Anne Porter

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother's piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory


My smallness could not hold



And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying



Why is it that music

At its most beautiful


Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country



I've never understood

Why this is so

Read the rest of this poem by Anne Porter, here.

I was eager to read more about the poet, and did a bit of digging online. I ran across this Wall Street Journal article from 2006... Anne Porter published her first book of poetry in 1994... when she was eighty-three.

Oh, my dears. We have no excuses not to do what we want to with our lives, do we? Really: no excuses.

Poetry Friday today is at Great Kids Books.

Labels: Poetry Friday

Pardon my silence - been getting back into the swing of writing while doing interviews and writing correspondence and trying to reassure an editor I'm good with writing a character down from YA to MG. Fingers crossed... I may get a chance to work with a new editor and a new house. Wow.

Meanwhile, frantically trying to catch up with many things (including the Wicked Cool Overlooked Books celebration!), whilst guiding people through the wreck of our boiler. It's always a bit stressful to try and get anything done with people wandering in and out of the house. Worse still, they're still in the gape-and-point stage, and no one is actually doing anything.

Yes. Week three with no central heating or hot water. I am deeply grateful for my canning vessel, and all the small plastic bowls I have. It's not easy to wash your hair that way, but standing in a bath pouring water over yourself does make at least cleanliness possible.

But, let's talk about something else. Something... nicer.

Remember last August, when I blogged about one of my favorite vintage children's books, and one of my favorite children's authors, Sesyle Joslin Hine? The intrepid Joyce D., who wandered to my blog all the way from Cedar Rapids, Michigan, actually did a bit of sleuthing and managed to find the author's daughter -- who assures us that her mother is alive and well!!

You know we needed to make a fanpage for her (and possibly Joyce D.), right? My cunning plan is this: we all get on the fan page, find copies of her books and read them and love them and chat about them on her fansite. And then, we'll contact her and give her the kudos due someone who wrote such charming, witty, entertaining books. If you're on Facebook, please come along and join the fun. And thank-you again, Joyce D. and all the other awesome people who've joined the fanclub!

Cover from Dear Dragon... and Other Useful Letter Forms for Young Ladies and Gentlemen Engaged in Everyday Correspondence by Sesyle Joslin Hine.

Labels: Random Notes and Errata

They call her The Grey Lady, because the New York times is pretty much grey/gray - not much with the colored newsprint or tons of pictures, except for the front page, and maybe the society pages, and even then, it's still pretty restrained in comparison to other papers.

In the past, a lady wasn't meant to appear in the newspaper, except when she was born, married and buried. Anything else, and she was flirting with becoming notorious. Well, not quite notorious yet -- I think if you get into the paper because you're being congratulated, you get a freebie from the Emily Post society.

Thank you, Editor E!

Labels: Author News

The 2010 Amelia Bloomer List has been up since Tuesday! The Amelia Bloomer Project, as I blogged in September when I was nominated, is part of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association, and being on their annual list is an honor MARE'S WAR shares with some awesome people. This honor has a special place of pride for me, as an MFA alum of Mills College, which is the oldest women's college west of the Rockies.

I'd like to especially congratulate Laurie Halse Anderson for WINTERGIRLS, Marilyn Nelson for SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM, John Scalzi for ZOE'S TALE and Sherri L. Smith for FLYGIRL. (Big WOOT for my friend Sherri!)

We're hoping to interview Gentleman Scalzi for our next series of Blog Blast Tours, and you don't want to miss Wonderland's interview with our Sherri. FLYGIRL, by Sherri L. Smith is a truly intense, insightful book about the American struggle with race and identity as wrapped up in the story of a fair-skinned African American girl who was light enough to "pass," and joined the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). The book simply deserves to be read and honored by thoughtful people, so pick it up.

Amelia Bloomer, Mare and all the other girls who brave the bloomers salute you!

Labels: What We Do, Who We Are

To say that it has been an unusual week is an exercise in the most blatant understatement. I have not really been awake, it seems, nor really slept. It is not just that I have a STICKER on my book now, and will be trekking to Washington D.C. in June to receive a national honor. It is not solely the notes from the courteous, the curious, and the genteel, all wishing me the best. It is my own small self, by turns stuttering and flushing, and wishing for grace, and my larger self, thinking ahead to opportunities and hopefulness.

No happiness - for me, anyway - is ever unmixed. Mine is already blended with terror and dread -- and meeting many of you in person is six long months away! But already I am in a bit of a spin, wondering if I have to say anything in a microphone. It's ridiculous. I know. What we imagine is always immeasurably worse than the reality, but my, what we can imagine. I am not yet dreaming of spilling food on myself, but I've dreamed already of tripping. (I blame my friend Jennifer who is already trying to suggest shoes to me. SHOES.Platform sandals!? Please. Shoes must be flat, to facilitate fleeing the scene, thank you. I am not my Grandma Mary with the stilettos.) My joy is spiked with a little panic; the sweetness brushed with a hint of tart. That's usually the way it is with my favorite things, and my poetry today reflects this. Today's selections are excerpts of two poems - both by men, both dealing, oddly, with fruit -- and the distillation of joy.

Cranberry-Orange Relish ~ by John Engels


A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days
macerate in a dark rum, then do not
treat them gently, but bruise,
mash, pulp, squash
with a wooden pestle
to an abundance of juices, in fact
until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in
two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-
chopped orange with rind, two golden
blobs of it, and crush
it in, and then add sugar, no thin
sprinkling, but a cupful dumped
and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,
then for two days let conjoin
the lonely taste of cranberry,
the joyous orange...

...

...let it be eaten
so that our hearts may be together overrun
with comparable sweetnesses,
tart gratitudes, until finally,
dawdling and groaning, we bear them
to the various hungerings
of our beds, lightened
of their desolations.

And you can read the whole of this loveliness -- as well as get a boozy cranberry relish recipe -- right here

Now, that is a Thanksgiving poem, but it seemed appropriate for today. I'm grateful - and nervous - and feeling those tart gratitudes for the sweetness that has been offered. And now, on to summer:

- excerpted from From Blossoms, by Li-Young Lee

...
...
...
... O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

I can't wait for summer sun and peaches again. Maybe in June, in D.C.... Please, read the whole of Li-Young Lee's poem here.

Poetry Friday today is brought to you by Liz in Ink, where you'll always find sweetness and joy. Liz has had a surprising week as well - can't wait to cheer for her as she and Marla collect that well-earned Caldecott Honor.

Happiness, calm, and joy unalloyed to you this day. Happy Poetry Friday.

Labels: Poetry Friday

They DID try and call me.

I don't know what phone number the Coretta Scott King jury used, but it now connects to an office. Sometimes it's just a bit awkward to be out of the country when these things occur, but they DID try and phone me, they DO call ALL winners, and they LOVE IT. Ms. Smith said so. (And how sweet was she to care enough to send a note to clear that up for me?)

Which is its own particular joy. Can you imagine being one of the callers at 6:30 a.m. Eastern time, waiting for that fuzzy-voiced "Hello?"

What a feeling.

Labels: What We Do