[fiction, instead of lies]

Remember that bit in MARE’S WAR when she meets the little girl who stares at her? Later we read that she was also supposed to be working a bit in the garden –? Well, I’ve just found a museum celebrating that gardening effort — the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England is having an exhibit that shows just what all those kids had to do during WWII. The museum is supplying a “genuine 1940′s farming experience,” to anyone who comes along to visit them, as well as an exhibit which highlights the Ministry of Food, which is the British equivalent of the FDA, and which passed out food stamps and recipes in an effort to help people cope with the food they had and make do with the foods they couldn’t have.

Much like American 4-H Clubs, there were British kids in Pig Clubs and London transplants living on farms and in small villages, competing about who had the largest hens and the best egg yields. And best of all, they both had fun and kept their country fed and self-reliant.

Which is just awesome, of course.

I know the cartoon is a bit of a joke… however, it is so very good to find those rare people for whom what you see is exactly what you get.

And man — I still love Mr. Rogers.

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.

Tech Boy: (waking up from a nap) “I was just lying here, dreaming that there was this story, where this guy was being held prisoner. And I was just trying to remember, ‘Wait, what happened at the end?’ Then I realized… it’s the book you’re writing.”

Fictioneer: (at computer) :smirks:

Tech Boy: (mildly piqued) Well, you need to finish writing it.

Fictioneer: (at computer) :smirks:

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.

What can I learn from you – In your lifetime,
What you’ve been through?
How’d you keep your head up and hold your pride
In an insane world, how’d you keep on trying?

One life can tell the tale – that if you make the effort
You cannot fail.
By your life you tell me it can be done,
By your lives, the courage to carry on.

What can I learn from you?
That I can do the thing I think I cannot do.
That you do what’s right by your heart and soul,
It’s the imperfections that make us whole.

– Anne Reed, Heroes

This beats “Wind Beneath My Wings” by a hundred miles or so, doesn’t it?

I don’t know where I found this poem, or fragment of song — it was sitting in an unfinished blog post from last year. But the words still strike me, as they must have when I copied them, and I give silent tribute to the many, marvelous people the words bring to mind.

One life can tell the tale… if you make the effort you cannot fail.

Go forth and do the thing you think you cannot do.

10AM Like Texans Still Do?

Boss on phone: Do you think when Jesus comes back he wants to see himself on the cross? It's like going up to Jackie O with a rifle on a chain and saying, “I'm remembering JFK!”

Atlanta, Georgia

Overheard by: Ren

via Overheard in the Office, Oct 19, 2009

Justice.

Reading is Sexy Again!

Via Booklust. Illustration by Seymour Chwast.