Happy Monday! Hope you get a jump on some good things this week.
Mondays are usually nonfiction day elsewhere in the blogosphere, but I spotted a couple of great sounding fictional pieces out today — first, Becker reviews The Saints of Augustine at GuysLitWire. An intense book about secrets, honesty, and friendship with two guys in trouble — sounds really, really good.
Next, Colleen’s got an excellent round-up of graphic novels at Bookslut in Training, which include the very intriguing sounding Skim, and Token, both coming-of-age novels focusing on girls, Holly Black’s The Good Neighbors: Kin, which is another happy scary-fairy tale, and a nonfiction from DK Publishing called One Million Things: A Visual Encyclopedia, which sounds like a Christmas gift to me.
Speaking of Holly Black, Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Reads reviews Geektastic! Stories from the Nerd Herd edited by Black Holly herself and Cecil Castellucci. This book sounds fabulous and includes geeky stories from Holly, Cecil, and the usual suspects, including Scott Westerfeld, John Green, M.T. Anderson and Sara Zarr. The sad news: August 2009 is the release date for this. Yes. I feel your pain. ::suffers::
It’s NaNo Month, which means our writing group is experiencing new and interesting fiction. (Go, S&K! Whoo!) Via Original Content, a great writing idea NaNo writers might try — writing the story backwards, from the ending.
I wish this would work for me, but a.) do I actually ever know how a story will end? Um, no. And b.) I’d have to rewrite it anyway, because my characters generally change too much from the beginning of the novel ’til the end. While this is good, in character driven fiction, it’s annoying for any kind of outlining/pre-writing purposes… would that work for any of you?
The Guardian had a piece today on Angry Arthur, by Hiawyn Oram, and the illustrations of Satoshi Kitamura. This book is part of “Get Glasgow Reading” this year for the 0-5 set, and it’s all about tantrums. The illustration really matches the fury of Arthur. Speaking of illustrations, via Chicken Spaghetti, the NYT has already chosen their 2008 Best Illustrated book list. A whole ton of them are Cybils picks. Yay, us.
The pink-tressed Laini (whose name I’m rather partial to!) is holding grudges in a way that totally makes me laugh — I have to admit that even three years on, I’d go in and FIND that waiter — which is probably a really bad use for a time machine).
Ooh, ick… Bookmoot’s been sick! She’s had an –ectomy or an –oscopy. Yikes! Go and wish her well while she’s on drugs and won’t remember! She might spill something good…
Book Evangelist Jen Robinson is guest blogging at ShelfSpace, which is part of ForeWord magazine. She talks about giving the gift of reading, and her number two suggestion in how to give kids the gift of reading really resonated with me:
2. Let the children in your life see that reading is important to you. Mention it when you encounter something interesting in a book or a newspaper. Turn off the TV, and let kids see you reading for relaxation. Bring books for everyone when you travel on planes. Listen to audiobooks in your car on road trips. Clutter up your house with books and magazines and newspapers. Demonstrate a culture that values reading, all types of reading.
I know too many people who only read TV Guide and don’t understand why their kids don’t just pick up the reading habit — and a habit of excellence in their schoolwork — just by osmosis. Go, Jen. Well said.
Like me, Sara’s always a little leery of books with big buzz, thus her enthused review of Graceling has gotten me on tenterhooks to come HOME and get some BOOKS already. This is killing me!
And on a personal writing note: Just got word from Secret Agent Man that my next book, MARE’S WAR, is being shopped to the UK, and is being offered to fifteen (!) houses. That seems… a bit… extreme to me, but here’s hoping something good comes out of it.
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed– Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek– And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean– Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home– For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay– Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again– The land that never has been yet– And yet must be–the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME– Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose– The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath– America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain– All, all the stretch of these great green states– And make America again!
“Success is counted sweetest,” Emily Dickinson says, “by those who ne’er succeed.”
I always assume she means that this is because the one who has not achieved success continues to struggle and strive, while the successful person relaxes into the lauds and laurels that are his due.
I guess that depends, really, on how one considers the nature of the success; if we consider a success for one person, then maybe they do relax and reflect on a job well done, and then the moment is over. However, if that success is a team effort, the satisfaction of the whole makes success doubly sweet as it echoes and reverberates between the most tepid members to the fervent and earnest.
Personal victories are extraordinary to watch, as gripping to hear as personal survival stories. Everyone has their “down in the valley” tale, which they may or may not ever share, but you can identify those moments when they have struggled to the mountaintop by their joy, despite the January chill.
in celebration of surviving
when senselessness has pounded you around on the ropes and you’re getting too old to hold out for the future no work and running out of money, and then you make a try after something that you know you won’t get and this long shot comes through on the stretch in a photo finish of your heart’s trepidation then for a while even when the chill factor of these prairie winters puts it at fifty below you’re warm and have that old feeling of being a comer, though belated in the crazy game of life
standing in the winter night emptying the garbage and looking at the stars you realize that although the odds are fantastically against you when that single January shooting star flung its wad in the maw of night it was yours and though the years are edged with crime and squalor that second wind, or twenty-third is coming strong and for a time perhaps a very short time one lives as though in a golden envelope of light
“In Celebration of Surviving,” by Iowan poet Chuck Miller, from Northern Fields: New & Selected Poems, Coffee House Press, 1993.
Poetry Friday is hosted by librarian Ms. Mac at Check It Out.
Pssst. Have you taken the Comment Challenge? Mother Reader & Lee Wind have cooked up a challenge to the YA and children’s lit blogosphere to become a more cohesive community and support each other in blogging, thinking and writing for the next twenty-one days. That ties in all too nicely with my commitment to lift weights and start working on that running thing again (all your fault, Colleen), only the Comment Challenge will have prizes. Okay, theoretically lifting weights has prizes, too. But mostly not.
What has changed for writers, now that the President-elect is a writer? From Dr. Susan,
The universal appeal of his books may help move work by other writers of color from the “ethnic” or “black interest” bookstore ghettoes into the mainstream where they belong. (Next on the agenda: recognition that books by women and LGBT writers are also real literature. But that’s another, post-euphoria post.)
Read more here, and add your own thoughts in the comments.
Unfortunately, it’s not fully the end for another seventy-five days, five hours, thirty minutes, and twenty-seven seconds, at this moment, but it’s close. It’s not the end of every error, doubtless. But one big one, anyway, which means we can begin to walk toward righting a few other big ones on the way.
We’ll be ready to take hold of the edges of our country again, and lift, when called upon to do so. Until then, in the words of the little happy pop tune, “Just enjoy the show.”
Now that Donal has made me cry, I thought I’d go ahead and borrow this from Bartleby. (You may read all 397 lines quietly to yourself here.)
785. The Building of the Ship
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’Tis of the wave and not the rock;
’Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
It’s not like me to be soppy (hah!), but this has been ONE. LONG. WAIT. Frankly, it’ll still be a long wait; we won’t wake up Wednesday — or even Thursday — with the world back to rights. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up then and know that soon we could make a start?
It is a strange thing to be far from home on Election Day. It is a strange thing not to get a sticker, or a sticker and a cookie, not to be “all braggy,” or a little flag pin to stick in your lapel, or just the feeling of *dusts hands* “Done!” when you come in from putting the flag up on the mailbox.
It is so weird not to be in the United States today.
Not that I obsessively watch election coverage, even during presidential elections. Generally it annoys the heck out of me, and this election coverage feels like it’s been going on since 1968. We’ve all gotten sick to death of spin doctors and pundits, but it feels so strange to be in a country where it’s mostly business as usual, and there are no flags.
I have work to do; edits to complete and a wedding to plan (on paper, anyway) in the next three weeks. I’m really hoping to FINISH. THIS. NOVEL. BEFORE. CHRISTMAS. But man, am I distracted today. And a little verklempt. Which is a surprise.
I’m neither particularly patriotic nor sentimental, but a friend of ours in Ireland posted an open letter to America on his blog this morning, and he closed it with words that made me catch my breath.
President Roosevelt wrote out these same words for Winston Churchhill, saying that the verse “applies to you people as it does to us.”
(I borrowed this from Bartleby. You may read all 397 lines quietly to yourself here.)
…Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Such a huge responsibility. And is it really ours?
O, Ship of state. You probably have barnacles, and your paint is worn, and some of your sailors are trying to throw things — and people — overboard for their own reasons. But, you’re our ship, and I miss being part of the team swabbing the decks today.
“For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.”
The previous quote is from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 6, 1941 State of the Union address to Congress (listen here), his “Four Freedoms” address. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear — those four became a rallying point for the United States during WWII. Because it was during a time of war, those freedoms were illustrated as ours to “fight for.”
I’d like to suggest that freedoms are something for which you vote.
Four essential human freedoms. Speech. Religious or irreligious expression. Financial solvency. Confidence that the country will not end under a nuclear cloud. Such big, big things that even now trickle down into smaller freedoms that everyday people have to remember that they possess.
Freedom to ignore intimidation and vote. Freedom to be accurately informed, and then make up your own mind. Freedom not to tell anyone for whom you voted for or why. Freedom to take a contrary path, to go your own way, and to do your own thing.
I’ve often been dismissed as an idealist. I believe in supporting the rights of other people to annoy the heck out of me and to be as weird as they are. So, I believe in voting for the same reason. Even if we don’t agree — and we probably don’t — I’ll vote for your right to utter strangeness, and hope that you vote for mine as well.
One of the most basic and cherished rights of any individual is the right to be left the heck alone. Rush to the polls, introverted people. Or, like me, mail in that ballot, and never even leave the house…
Read some other more erudite pieces on voting over at Chasing Ray’s Blog the Vote 2008. On the master list of young adult and children’s booksellers, authors, librarians, teachers and peers, people are talking about voting, the right to vote, and how this unique privilege has been a part of their lives.
I’ve always regretted that Norman Rockwell’s vision of Americans in the 1940’s was one of people of a single color and culture, and I remember as a kid straining to see even one light brown person in the bunch. The Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach recently reimagined this poster with their Thoughts on Democracy show (which runs through December 8th), and you can look at the results on Youtube, or check out the blog and read what the creative teams had to say about the four freedoms. The buttons are by the creative team of Kate Spade.
Speak up, speak out, and use your vocal superpowers for good!
Another reminder from the Blog the Vote contingent (Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray, Lee Wind and Gregory K. at Gottabook) that there’s still time to take part in this ground breaking and original blogging action. In a completely non-partisan way, the young adult and children’s literature blogosphere is blogging the vote — talking about why voting matters to them, and encouraging everyone to get out there and change the world. I’ll be interested to see how those who have been drumming up support for specific candidates truly put their money where their mouth is and make things happen on November 4th. Meanwhile, November 3rd is for encouragement, remembrance, and exhorting each other to make a difference.
Don’t miss Andromeda’s piece on time off for voting laws. Do they have them in your state?
Finally, via Smart B’s, SB Sarah gives us a head’s up on volunteering for LibriVox. Next to being asked to write for an anthology, this is the second coolest thing I’ve wanted to do; voice-overs and audiobooks! Whee!
(Nat Love, born in 1854) Every summer, the first week back at summer camp when all staff reported for duty, all of us worker bees had to help get the horses down from the winter pastures, and halfway re-break them so they remembered what it was like to wear a saddle and bridle, and didn’t thoroughly savage the campers and run amok on the trail rides.
It was only a week of riding and brushing and gentling, and after that week, those of us who taught water skiing or swimming or crafts or photography or worked in the kitchen or laundry or tutored the kids who were there for Math Camp — we all got back to our normal summer lives. But the dudes and dames who taught horsemanship and who lived all summer long in Conestoga-style wagons and used outhouses… they were in for the ten week long haul with the heat and the dust and the curry combs and hoof picks; the puckey shoveling, the hay baling and the feeding and the brushing and the whiny girls who thought they wanted a pony before they found out how much work they are, and the kickers and the biters and the very boring trail rides (and the trough dunkings), and each and every week, the rodeo.
It was a week’s worth of work that I remember well. It gives me, to this day, a deep appreciation for cowboys.
African American cowboys are also of interest to me, as every year, the first Saturday in October in Oakland there is a fantastic and fun parade celebrating them. It’s the only parade like it in California, at least, and it’s a big eye-opener every year for people who think the West was explored and settled only by people who looked like John Wayne, handsome as he was. Not only were there African American cowboys, there were vaqueros, too.
(1923, the Ritchie Lithography Corporation.) There’s a lot of fun and crazy history in the Old West, and the “colored cowboys” celebrated in that history were well known for not only their skill but for their crazy hijinks in the saddle — for instance Bill Pickett, who was born in 1870 near Taylor, Texas, and who left school in the fifth grade to ride the range after longhorns, if you can imagine it. Knowing that many cowboys used bulldogs to help corral the steers, Bill figured anything a little dog could do, he could, too. The bulldogs jumped up and bit the steers in the sensitive area of the upper lip and nose… and eventually, Bill taught himself to do that, too! It was called “bulldogging.”
We can only imagine how many times he fell off, was bloodied and bruised and battered in order to learn this skill — but the notoriety it gave him at county fairs helped him launch his own Wild West show with his four brothers — The Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association. In the 1890’s, a Wild West show made up entirely of African American men — was pretty wild stuff! They put on a great show, and Bill went on to star in several rodeo revues, and a couple of movies, too. The name Bill Pickett is even today still remembered in rodeo circles.
Helen Hemphill likes cowboys, too, and she has done a tremendous amount of research and exploration for her historical narrative, The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones. I got interested in reading her book after seeing her snazzy book trailer — it looked like the book had adventure and chaos and longhorns — which was good enough for me. In The Adventurous Deeds, I discovered a surprisingly gritty, realistic, historical narrative which reveals a realistic look at the lives of cowboys of all color in the Old West. (Here’s my review.)
Reminiscent of the “Deadwood Dick” dime novels which caught the imagination of junior cowpokes between 1877 and 1897, this novel has plenty of adventure, derring-do, heartache, and lots of time on the trail. This book is available today in bookstores all over. (Congratulations, Helen. It’s awesome!)
Happy Monday! Hope you get a jump on some good things this week.
Read some other more erudite pieces on voting over at Chasing Ray’s 
