[fiction, instead of lies]

I’ve been consulting since last October with two students from the Singapore American School on their National History Day project. First, they politely approached me with a request for an interview, then they loaded on the questions, and finally they showed me their nearly completed presentation. Here, I’ll share it with you:

National History Day is a highly regarded academic study for students 6-12th grade. It gives the half a million participants a chance to research history deeply, reading it from new angles, and with a commitment to thinking critically and digging out all the details that they can. Each year the NHD team comes up with a broad theme to help guide the focused studies. This year’s theme is Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History. I very much think my guys from Singapore American School are getting it — the history of African American women in the military is all about revolution – out of the kitchens and back rooms and into the world – reaction – some men didn’t trust it and didn’t like it, but America needed everyone – and reform – the president, at the close of the war, deciding that enough was enough with a segregated military.

They’re through the regionals, and their project is going forward to the nationals, to be reviewed by actual historians and college professors! C & J from Singapore American School, I wish you the very, very best as you learn and represent your school! Woot! Go, history!

My poor mother.

Not only did I regale her, when I was five and six, with endless stories, when I was a high school sophomore and studying world history, I used to read her from my textbook. Well, heck, I know now it was probably kind of boring, but at fifteen, the stuff was exciting to me. My mother was valedictorian of her high school, however (and Homecoming Queen. And then beget me. Who is neither Homecoming nor valedictorian material. What is up with that?), and had already taken those classes. A long time ago. And sort of just blinked at me and let her mind wander whilst I regaled her excitedly with the mysteries of cuneiform and ancient empires.

I doubt Mom could let her mind wander during the Crash Courses, though. Put together by John Green – and his high school history teacher, natch – these funny, bizarre and informative brush-up courses are so much fun, and I would have probably been a history major if I’d run across them in high school.

I have way too much love for this project. I haven’t yet delved into brother Hank’s courses on Biology, but World History is supposed to be a forty-part series, and we’re already on part 3 – Catch up, next Thursday there’s a new one!

Good grief, these soldiers! Always sassy, that 6888th.

I thought I’d posted this about a year ago, but found that I never did! So – enjoy. And imagine Mare…

Yes, I am a little short. Should have pulled that mic down…

The Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast on the last Tuesday in June was a pageant of color and music and glorious words. And I sat and chewed off my lipgloss and sipped a glass of orange juice through most of it, scribbling frantically on a sheet of paper the words for a speech that I stopped reading as soon as I got on the platform.

If you get a chance, bug Kekla Magoon into telling you about her speech at the CSK Breakfast. It was so polished, so erudite, so thought-provoking that it completely freaked me out. Why didn’t I say something like that!?” I thought. (Answer from my subconscious: Um, maybe if your book was about brothers, militancy, the Black Panthers, and the 60′s, your speech would have been more like hers? Just a thought.) I started to panic. Of course, Kekla was before me. I scribbled revisions on my speech until Robin Smith got up to introduce me.

Uh-oh.

Thank God, it was well received. I was so nervous that I hardly remember the moment, except that the very gorgeous illustrator, E.B. Lewis, afterward said, “You were fantastic,” and I have to take his word for it, because I really sort of stepped out of time the minute I got in front of the microphone (and fortunately my mother forgot to film it! Bwa-hahahaha!). This is mostly what I said — I ad libbed, and only have my original notes to go on, but this is close:

By the time I was in junior high, it occurred to me that I hated history. I hated it because I was an African American student in a predominantly Caucasian school, and the only lives of African Americans to which I was exposed were people who were naked and poor, who were slaves and sharecroppers, who were lynched and beaten and victimized — at least, that’s how I saw it. Oh, how I wanted to see a people who did something other than work and die. I wanted to hear a story where my people lived. I wanted to see African Americans make history.

As some of you know, I first began researching and writing Mare’s War for my MFA thesis project at Mills College. Originally, the novel had all adult characters. Mare was a very old woman, lying on her death bed, reminiscing about days gone by. This was important, I thought. This was an African American woman surveying her own history!

And it worked. The story was well received by all of my thesis committee, and everyone was very, very polite.

And I …was bored.

…because, really, how original is it to write about an old woman who dies?

An old woman who lives, now, that’s a story.

And what a story — 800 African American women, sent across the Atlantic in stormy seas, to do a job they weren’t sure about in a country that most of them had never seen. They braved criticism from the male Army brass, slander from the newspapers back home, and their own fears to step forward and do something. They lived. They were real. They made history.

Every year in certain circles, the question is raised whether or not there’s really still a need for the Coretta Scott King awards; whether we still need to pay marked attention to the books that illuminate the stories of African American lives and history and futures. I maintain that as long as there are junior high students, starving for stories of African Americans who lived, and changed the world, this is necessary. As long as there are pieces of the American story and stories of African Americans which remain untold, this is vital. But more than necessary, this is a joy, is it not? This is a celebration.

I’m so grateful to the members of the Coretta Scott King Awards Committee who dedicate their time and attention to unearthing and celebrating those stories and to all of you who continue to read and share and support the making of great books for young people. I’m very grateful to my editor, Erin Clarke, Knopf’s fabulous book designer, Kate Gartner, and my agent, Steven Chudney, for all that they did to make this book possible. All of you, Thank you.

Librarian Robin L. Smith, Ensworth School Library, Nashville, TN, and me. (Both trying not to cry. I think we laughed as much as we sniffled that day.)

Afterward, I sat down with relief, and my thoughts ran along the lines of “I’m five feet from Charles R. Smith, Jr.!” and “Walter Dean Myers is right behind me!” and other fangirling nonsense. Boy was I glad the part where I had to say anything was over. I was tickled to listen to Vonda Micheaux Nelson (whose cute husband wore a ten-gallon hat and made cowboy hoots from the audience) and I really enjoyed Charles R. Smith, Jr., and his little riff on Twilight. (*snicker*) Snark is good, even that early in the morning.

I didn’t want to belabor the point on the platform when so many people were speaking after me, but I am so grateful to the Coretta Scott King Awards Jury. They were truly some of the nicest, funniest, most comfortable people EVER, and I got a chance to meet them on a one-to-one basis the morning before in our private breakfast. My editor remarked several times that, “Boy, that could have gone differently.” Not every committee gets on well, and not every author-committee breakfast is as comfortable and full of laughter and teasing as ours was. We sat and talked – seriously – like a happy family. So, thank you Carole McCollough, Eunice Anderson, Alan Bailey, Brenda Hunter, Jonda McNair, Martha Ruff and Robin Smith for generally being amazing and gracious people. I really, really enjoyed meeting you.

And I so much appreciated Editor E, who was doing all this schmoozing with me, plus getting up early with her two-year-old. I honestly do not know how she did it – but she was chipper and cheery every single day regardless.

Honestly, the ALA Convention was all the excitement I needed for the year. It was lovely, and I am so very glad it’s over.

…I am. I so, so am.

It’s been so much fun meeting people whose names I only knew from their blogs. We are a shockingly beautiful bunch of people; the Poetry Princesses are not only gorgeous but vibrant and lively, and kind of hard to keep up with. (Try walking through the Exhibit Hall with Kelly Fineman. It is amusing, to say the least; it’s like following the Pied Piper.) I find that people are quick-draws on reading name tags; I’ve heard my name shrieked by people who I think are strangers until I take that slow second to find their name tag. Then I say, “OH!” I stood next to Carrie Jones and commiserated about having to take a picture and had no idea who she was for the whole five minutes of our conversation. (Dork Alert: Hello? could I actually LOOK at people’s names? What else is the purpose of wearing the stupid tag?)

A few thoughts:

Judith Haut, the VP for communications for Random House, is really and truly one of the nicest people in the world. If you’re ever in a roomful of people you don’t know, she’ll stand in a corner with you and drink coffee so you don’t look quite so alone,

Librarians are the BEST audience. Speed dating them at the YALSA event meant that I fell in love with all of them again. Librarians you are truly awesome human beings.

Children’s lit authors are crazy. Well, most authors are crazy, but seriously? Stand in a room full of children’s lit authors and see how long it takes you to laugh. Stand next to Libba Bray and Carrie Jones and see how long it takes you to smile and shake your head. Talk to Mitali Perkins, and you’ll find a grin blooming.

I am as big a fangirling dork as anyone. I had a silent jump-up-and-down-and-point moment in the Exhibit Hall. “Oh, my GOSH, that was Cory Doctorow!!! And he was wearing striped shorts!” Fortunately, the moment was silent; I prefer not to get a reputation as That Weird Girl. Well, anymore than I already have that reputation….

I love to watch Christopher Paul Curtis’ family hang out and watch him. There is such love in their eyes, and smiles on their faces.

Bookish People hug you even when you’re sweaty. I am ALWAYS sweaty here; either through nerves, or the fact that it’s 100°F here today. I am literally taking two showers a day. I am exhausted, and completely sick of the sound of my own voice.

But it is so fun being with my tribe.

9:30 p.m.

2:35 a.m.

Summer in Scotland can be a gorgeous thing (once it stops raining). I grew up with the idea of endless summer and “California dreamin’” from the Beach Boys and whomever else covered that song, but you just have not seen “endless” until you’ve been in the far north and tried to go to bed at a reasonable time… and the sun was still up. An hour after the first picture was taken, the sun was still up – but trying to look responsible and sheepishly thinking about setting. Eventually. My friend P. in Estonia says the sun doesn’t bother even getting embarrassed about overstaying until about 11:30. Children play outside until they collapse. Good times.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I was packed, and I realized that I should probably get on that. All the lagniappe is wrapped and sitting and I have my shoes lined up… and that’s pretty much it. I’ve been advised to wear dresses because “it’s so hot.” Um… okay. The warmest it’s been here in Glasgow so far has been a toasty 73°F. Seriously.

So. If you meet someone looking lost, wearing a limp skirt, and perspiring profusely? That’s probably me.

Today’s emoticon: Sweating already.

Wow! And suddenly, I’ve just got a few days to toss things in my suitcase, hie myself to the airport, and come to D.C.!

For those of you attending the Kidlit Drink Night organized by the wonderful Sara Lewis Holmes, Susan Kusel and the other fab people from the DC Kidlit Group, have fun. My plane will be landing about the time you’ve been networking for an hour, and you’ll be leaving before I’ve collected my messages at the hotel. I’m both bummed and a tiny bit relieved; I’m sure I would love to see you all, but after a five hour flight, plus a two hour layover and before a shower? Not so much.

We will see each other around, however! I’ll be schmoozing with other YALSA authors on Monday, hanging around the Random House Booth (#2909), attending the Newbery Caldecott Award Dinner (YAY, Liz & Marla!), and otherwise doing what the folks at Random House have laid out for me.

I haven’t even really looked at who all is presenting. I just found out Gene Luen Yang is going to be there! There’s a whole TON of graphic novel people in the Green Pavilion (wherever that is) and so, so much to see!

Today’s emoticon: Slightly overwhelmed.

Every year, Aquafortis & I put out a call for people to get involved with RIF – Reading Is Fundamental – on our blog at Finding Wonderland. It’s a great organization (over 16 million books given to kids and counting) and the lovely staff always sends us a heads up on what campaign is going on. This year, they’re continuing the Macy’s link they started in 2007. Anytime in July and August, you can visit any Macy’s store in America and support RIF by giving $3 and getting a $10 off coupon for your next in-store purchase of $50 or more. Here are the details:

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2009 /PRNewswire/ — Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) and Macy’s have teamed up to launch Book A Brighter Future™, a national partnership to raise awareness and support of children’s literacy. The Book A Brighter Future campaign is an annual promotion held at Macy’s stores during the back-to-school season to help raise money for local RIF programs and to provide reading resources to the children who need them most.

This campaign provides an opportunity for Macy’s customers to join the effort and have an impact on literacy in their community. From July 1 through August 31, 2009, Macy’s customers can give $3 and receive a coupon for $10 off a $50 in-store purchase at any Macy’s nationwide. Macy’s will donate 100 percent of every $3 to RIF.

“Giving back to the communities where we work and live is a long-standing priority at Macy’s,” said Terry Lundgren, chairman, president and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. “We are proud that, last year alone, more than a million Macy’s customers participated in Book A Brighter Future helping to raise more than $3 million dollars for children who lack access to books. It is a great way for our customers to support the education of children in their own community while enjoying special savings for their back-to-school shopping at Macy’s.”

A pretty cool deal, all in all. Shoppers do more than just visit a store, and kids win big. But, there’s another reason that RIF is pretty special to me right now. It’s something their CEO, Carol H. Rasco, said, just this past Sunday while on the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog, where every week, people celebrate the top seven “kicks” that have happened with them. One of Carol’s kicks was …MARE’S WAR.

I started MARE’S WAR today, love it, Tanita! And a Mother stopped in front of me as I sat in a hotel lobby today to ask what I thought about the book, her two daughters read it last week and loved it also!

Thanks, Jules, for making sure I saw that. And thanks, Carol! I am… gobsmacked. And awed and grateful that Mare’s tale — and the story of the 6888th — is making little circles in still water… that grow larger, and larger, and larger still. History. Memory. Meaning. May someone reading the story have the realization that their time to make all three is now.

In August, my friend Laura is going to present her paper to the International Research Society for Children’s Literature at the University of Goethe in Frankfurt, Germany. I’m really proud of her, and hope that I can find a reasonably priced flight to get over and hear her in person. Laura previously worked for Lee & Low Books, so multicultural children’s fiction is a subject dear to her heart. The title of her paper is , “What’s the Story?: Reflections on the Publication of Children’s Books Written by Non-White Authors in the UK.”

(Though I love Laura dearly, my real reason for posting about this is so I could show you the cool logo.)

As Tali and Octavia discovered, Juneteenth is a holiday. Though the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 signed by Lincoln freed the slaves after the Civil War, it took a full 2 years later, on June 19, 1865, for a group of Union soldiers to ride into Galveston, TX and read a general order freeing 250,000 slaves in that state. Few, of course, were willing to break the news to the slaves before that date, so Texas was redeemed two years behind schedule. The bittersweet celebration was turned into an official state holiday in 1980, and GO TEXAS for making this something for everyone in Texas to enjoy. It’s one holiday I’m glad to cheer for as well.

May someday ALL slaves be free for real. Happy Juneteenth.