…and have much to say, but not much in terms of internet connection. Post-ALA Convention, I’m on a little Virginia vacation. I’ve visited the enigmatic Jama (long-a, kids: say, Jayma) Rattigan of Alphabet Soup, and now am pestering my dear friend Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library. We’re hanging out in downtown D.C., seeing the sights, visiting the museums, and discovering the East Coast.
Pictures, and further dispatches to resume this weekend.
< this is a rant >
There’s a stack of these on the hall table in the foyer of our building. They are ugly, and I was tempted to throw the whole stack away. I very much hate how advertising skews things by gender — and how many fitness and weight loss ads are slanted toward women. Women have historically been characterized as “the fairer sex,” or “the weaker sex,” as if there’s some kind of rule which states that we must be both vacuously attractive and unable to manage without external validation – and in these modern times, we know that’s just a lie. In spite of what we know, like clockwork, every January and every June the ad campaigns ramp up on radio and TV. It’s time to make New Year’s resolutions and promise to be more beautiful! or It’s summertime, and time to show off our bodies! It’s as if it’s all up to us to both beautify the world and to satisfy its insatiable need to commodify us. It’s demeaning and depressing, and makes me grumpy.
< / end rant>
The ALA Countdown is beginning! In just a few weeks, I’ll be sweltering in warmth and humidity, but more importantly meeting friends and fellow authors, poets, and illustrators whom I’ve only had a meeting of the minds with online.
Having never been to any conferences other than literary things I’ve either been part of giving or had to attend for a class, this is going to be a big deal for me. I am looking forward to seeing the exhibits and the museums in the Capitol, and also to finding a quiet place to step out of the stream of humanity and just observe. I’ll be taking plenty of pictures and reporting back on all of my adventures!
But before the Conference, we have houseguests! Our first guests in this flat will be friends of my parents, which means a.) wild house cleaning, b.) actual menu planning, and c.) that as soon as I finish this post, I will be back to writing as hard and fast as I can – because I’m going to lose three days to swanning around museums and tea shops and castles. I just hope it ceases to rain while our guests are here, and that all the stairs in this country don’t do them in!
Here & There: This month Paper Tigers has a fun little spotlight on play, with a great piece from the author of Retro Active: Skip, Hop and You Don’t Stop (Games We Played) , by Tom O’Leary. They also asked a bunch of other authors (and me) to join the fun and reminisce about our childhoods, which is a little funny to me, because I feel like I’m just getting started on the whole “play” thing. Anyway, it’s good fun. Check it out.
Right, then. Back to work.
Apparently, warm weather in Scotland is for the birds. Specifically, the black-faced gulls, the moorhens, the swallows and the swifts.
In the course of seeing wild animals from around the world – rhinos, lions, elephants and the like — walking around a park and otherwise enjoying the balmy weather on the weekend, I was seriously accosted by:
a.) a goose,
b.) a kestrel,
c.) a peacock,
d.) a duck, and
e.) a seagull
…at one point or another at the safari park where we went this weekend. All I can blame it on is that it was a broiling 78°F, and it seemed that everyone in Alba was outside, half naked, and grilling something.
I think the birds were somewhat resentful of this.
I tried to explain that I was a vegetarian.
It did me no good.
The kestrel was allegedly only doing its job, entertaining the crowd at a bird of prey show. It swooped through the crowd, leaving nervous shrieks in its wake, as it neatly skimmed the heads of many of us, zipping and banking and doubling back like a teensy stealth missile with a deadly hooked beak and talons. We were all bent double with our hands over our heads by the time it decided to return to its perch. The little bugger. Must’ve had its Wheaties that morning. (Or the bleeding equivalent.)
The peacock I’d mistaken for a wad of feathers and twigs in the top of a tree. I figured it was a faraway nest… until it moved. And moved again. And then fell fluttered, in the worst parody of flight I’ve ever seen, out of the tree and landed a little way away from me. And proceeded to stalk toward me. With intent.
It was… a bit unnerving. I always thought peacocks were scared of people. Apparently not.
The duck and the gull had the mistaken idea I was interested in feeding them. I explained that wasn’t going to happen. The goose was the only one that insisted.
I actually scared off the goose for a few seconds, because I mistook it for a duck.
I must explain: Ducks are occasionally… obnoxious. How many times have I seen small siblings and other children overwhelmed at the marina back home, when feeding ducks, by a sudden bum rush of all the ducks in the pond, plus seagulls? We all got used to shoo-ing them, and I was confident as I loudly berated the pair of large white birds stalking our picnic table. I ignored the sideways looks the one closest was giving me. “GO,” I told it. “YOU ARE BEING RUDE.” It backed up a single step.
I felt like I’d achieved some measure of success, and sat down and ate my lunch, keeping a wary eye out, and occasionally reinforcing my message with a brisk, “SHOO.” And then, the ducks came waddling out of the river. And I had a basis for comparison. (Yeah, yeah, I know we had ducks when I was a kid. That was a long time ago… and I seriously just wanted it to go away so I could eat. I admit to not really paying attention…) I realized that either the white “duck” must be the largest duck on the planet, or….
Geese, according to D., and my vet friend Jess, are generally evil, and will chase you, hiss, and “bite.” Jess dislikes Canadian geese, and D. was chased at the age of five by the regular barnyard variety. I’ve not had a bad experience with geese, but having heard so many horror stories, I would have been careful, if I’d bothered to look at the bird closely.
It worked out, though — I was aggressive and verbal, and the goose clearly thought I was insane.
Works for me.
*I have ZERO idea what that bird with the orange beak might be. Moorhens have orange beaks, but they look hennish. This thing does not. I therefore must conclude it is just another bird who was stalking me, trying to get mentioned in my blog.
YES.
To any of the following questions, you have now received your answer:
Yes, yes, yes.
March appearances look like they’ll continue to be a bit sparse, seeing as I somehow agreed to write an essay for the Hunger Mountain Journal and begin editing my church’s newsletter again, am doing long-distance book chats, still revising and writing and still getting all kinds of squirrelly new ideas for new books that I don’t need quite right now, and I’m trying to finish baby hats and baby blankets in my copious free time since everyone on the planet seems to be popping out a bairn, and I’ve fallen behind.
The essay I’m writing? Is on depictions of race on young adult book covers. I read this, and felt slightly ill.
I shall return. No guarantee whether or not I shall be sane at that time.
Bonne weekend.
Really, where would we be if all of our dreams had come true? No matter how dismayed or angry I am for having found myself in the middle of something unpleasant, I know so many times I would have missed so much if I hadn’t been there. Even the common, everyday things, like having to walk because I missed the bus, can gift me with sighting an ordinary magpie having an extraordinarily iridescent day.
Where would I be right now
If all my dreams had come true?
Deep down i know somehow
I‘d have never seen your face…
This world would be a different place.
Darling there’s no way to know
Which way your heart will go.
– Mason Jennings, Which Way Your Heart Will Go
I <3 Candy - a crazy-fun little store.
I’m back.
Some of you tried to stop by while we were hauling the blog out of the mess of Blogger, and I hope you weren’t too frustrated by not being able to comment! THAT wasn’t supposed to happen. Anyway, I’m blog-supported by WordPress now, so all should be well.
Technical difficulties aside, it’s been a rough couple of days. A person most dear to me passed away, and I remain six thousand miles away. Knowing that he had been ill for four years, I’d said goodbye before, but I was fooled by how well he was when I last saw him in January, and I misunderstood the speed with which cancer can move. His death caught me unprepared — so unprepared that I need to delay acknowledging the immensity of the loss in some parts of my brain. (That may not make sense to you, but …well, it’s how my head works right now.) That I heard on my birthday, and I had the devastating misfortune of finding out on Facebook just didn’t help. [Note to Facebooking People: Please. Social networking is not the place for every topic. It is just not.] So, I’m a little scattered at the moment, but I’m fine – no need for more concern. I’m fine. Thank you.
Kites and mobiles at Big Top, best toy store EVER
We’d planned for our dear person to visit us in Scotland, and for awhile, it looked like it was going to happen. And then last September we realized it would not. So, from time to time, I’ll just be posting a few pictures of the places we would have gone, “had we but world enough, and time.”
Café Andaluz, our special occasion tapas place, for when we feel a need for Mission style furniture and a California vibe.
Meanwhile, the revision continues apace! I have the dubious privilege of being what my editor calls a “clean” writer; I don’t always have major revisions to do. But this time there are some fairly significant changes I have to make in a character, including changing her passion. That’s hard — what we love, what drives us, makes us who we are, so now I am essentially looking at a single character, and rewriting her — which in turn rewrites the way she responds and reacts and relates with family and friends. And this is all because my editor is leery of too many musicians lately in YA fiction. Apparently there’s a violinist in When You Reach Me, which I haven’t yet read, and since it won the Big Dance (aka Newbery) my cellist has to go. Le sigh. But, it’s actually turning out just fine so far. I took away her cello, and gave her a blowtorch.
I am liking that change a lot.
Urquhart Castle ruins — Loch Ness in the background!
I’m also realizing — as I’m supposed to be revising — that science fiction has taken over a remarkable percentage of my brain. I am thinking all the time of things I could use, things I could add — I have two notebooks at my desk full of scribbles (plus the back of the odd envelope) and another one next to my bed. This is a very broad work, and it just goes deeper and gets bigger — And after reading the very brilliant Mr. Elzey’s Building Better Boy Books series, acronym-ed HEAVES, where the ‘s’ stands for SHORT? I am really fighting the temptation to write a Rowling-length (Books 4 thru to the end, anyway) sweeping epic. That’s not really my style, and I do kind of feel strongly about a well-pruned, tightly written …mini-epic. Enough to tell the story well, not enough to make camping (HP joke. Sorry.) seem like a lifetime achievement and make the book cost $30. That’s what I’m going for.
Well, enough talking about work, now off to do some.
Until next time…
Edinburgh, from the castle, on a dark, drear day.
Caution, falling people. Ya think?
Just a quick note before I go back to huddling over the heater…
MARE’S WAR is a 2010 Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice and also on the 2010 NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts List!
YAY!
The CBBC is The Cooperative Children’s Book Center — the examination, study and research library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is even colder in Wisconsin than it is here, and I’m sure the good people of the CBBC cordially invite me to suck it up with all the whining about the weather.
I’m especially excited about the National Council of Teachers of English. Having briefly BEEN one of those people in my previous life, I’m grateful that they felt Mare supported language arts appropriately.
Woot! And now, sorry, Wisconsin, it’s back to the heater.
I’m always a little grumpy that I’m not teaching anymore when I see the great book resources available now for those who work with young adults. I want to say, “No fair! They didn’t have that when I was teaching back in the dark ages!” Okay, so it was really only about ten years ago, and my last job was teaching fifth graders so some of it wouldn’t have mattered/applied to the age group anyway. But the point is: it’s awesome, and you need to know now. So, listen up, and pass it on:
I’ve previously mentioned the energetic and amazing Kay Cassidy, whose tireless efforts to pay forward the booklove she learned at her library as a kid has encouraged her to give back to librarians. By contacting over 150 authors and getting us involved in her Great Scavenger Hunt, Kay has created a free resources for librarians, enabling them to give away books and allow their readers to have more fun at her own personal time and monetary expense. Wow. And let’s all please repeat that little word together… F-R-E-E. This is a GOOD word for librarians, whose budgets are being eviscerated and bled dry. If you’re a librarian who hasn’t yet taken advantage of Kay’s Great Scavenger Hunt, find out how it works, and get involved!
Another great group of people working with classroom teachers are at Teachingbooks.net, an ALA affiliated website. They provide curriculum support in the form of book guides, links to author’s websites, little videos of authors, filmed in their homes, and probably the most fun thing, that great little feature about author’s name pronunciations — so now we all know how to say RYE-OR-DAN when we say Rick Riordan’s name, instead of the completely wrong REE-OR-DAN way I used to say it. (My all-time favorite is still Mr. Rhymes-with-Fresca, our former Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, but you can listen to mine here.)
The Teachingbooks Web 2.0 guru, Danika Brubaker, is corralling award honorees to become involved in the Coretta Scott King Book Award curriculum resource site. Have you ever explored this site? If you’re a teacher or librarian who works with older readers, it’s well worth your time. This site allows teachers to teach this year’s Coretta Scott King Book Award-winning books with extra help – a free online collection of primary source materials and lesson plans, including videos and audio clips from the authors themselves. Teachingbooks loves teachers, people. What a way to give back, and make their jobs easier!
(I sound like someone else, but here’s my little three minute reading from MARE’S WAR — and those in my grad school classes are now laughing at me, since I have successfully thus far avoided reading in public. I’m sure you can now hear why. I sound like I have a stuffy nose and I’m reading down a hole.)
(P.S. – Kay Cassidy’s book, The Cinderella Society is all about paying it forward… and comes out April 13, 2010.)
It’s nice to be right about how awesomely a book will be received by the larger world. I was awed and moved and impressed. And the Cybils Picture Book Award judges agrees.
Congratulations, Liz!
Congratulations to the rest of you fabulous writers as well.
Meanwhile, on the down side of Fortuna’s wheel, my corn snake died yesterday. I’d had him for eleven years — a long time for a normal pet, perhaps, but a very short time for a snake – they’re supposed to live for fifteen-twenty years or something. He was with me from my second and most challenging teaching job, and I’m feeling like an unfit mother for having left him behind in the States (first in a high school biology classroom, more recently with my horrified parents), and let him die. It’s likely very odd to cry over a reptile who never “felt” anything for me, but…one, I never claimed to be anything but very odd, and two, we don’t only love those things which love us, do we? Anyway, I’m not feeling chatty, so it’s a good excuse for me to dive into my work just now, and so I will. Ciao for now.
Psst! MARE’S WAR is a 2010 Notable Social Studies Trade Book!
If you’re saying, “Whaaa?” you’re actually not alone. Most people don’t have any idea that there is a National Council for the Social Studies… but there is! And these are the people who make sure that what kids learn about history and geography and diversity and cultures, etc., is correct and not biased. It’s an umbrella organization for elementary, secondary, and college teachers of history, geography, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and law-related education. Since we all know how much I love sociology and anthropology, knowing that Mare rates inclusion on a list with these guys makes me happy!
And this was the fine print on the list:
The books that appear in these annotated book lists were evaluated and selected by a Book Review Committee appointed by National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and assembled in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council (CBC). Books selected for this bibliography are written primarily for children in grades K-8. The selection committee looks for books that emphasize human relations, represent a diversity of groups and are sensitive to a broad range of cultural experiences, present an original theme or a fresh slant on a traditional topic, are easily readable and of high literary quality, and have a pleasing format and, when appropriate, illustrations that enrich the text. (Emphasis mine.)
Thank you, NCSS!