Now here's something new and cool.

It’s Jacket Flap, the best and most extensive database of statistics and information on children’s book publishers. This searchable website helps writers check out the publishers that are publishing new authors and that publish titles in the writer’s category of work. It also tells stuff like number of titles per year, number of new authors published, and number of titles published by category, which is more important in larger publishing houses. A little more research on a writer’s part yields that all-important information about agented or unagented manuscripts, slush pile rules, and more. Together with some good info from our friend Google, a children’s writer has some great tools at their disposal.

This site is really primo — it’s updated regularly and the information is kept current by the book publishers. Site’s users are encouraged to participate and are bribed with Amazon gift certificates for keeping the site up-to-date. It also has children’s book news, which is really nifty — industry updates and everything. A lot of the information requires you to be a logged-in member — but that’s free and relatively painless.

I’m really kind of excited about this! I can’t find information about the number of printings runs per new novel or any of that deeper information, but it’s something individual publishing house websites will have. Jacket Flap is still a great tool to have on hand.

Now here’s something new and cool.

It’s Jacket Flap, the best and most extensive database of statistics and information on children’s book publishers. This searchable website helps writers check out the publishers that are publishing new authors and that publish titles in the writer’s category of work. It also tells stuff like number of titles per year, number of new authors published, and number of titles published by category, which is more important in larger publishing houses. A little more research on a writer’s part yields that all-important information about agented or unagented manuscripts, slush pile rules, and more. Together with some good info from our friend Google, a children’s writer has some great tools at their disposal.

This site is really primo — it’s updated regularly and the information is kept current by the book publishers. Site’s users are encouraged to participate and are bribed with Amazon gift certificates for keeping the site up-to-date. It also has children’s book news, which is really nifty — industry updates and everything. A lot of the information requires you to be a logged-in member — but that’s free and relatively painless.

I’m really kind of excited about this! I can’t find information about the number of printings runs per new novel or any of that deeper information, but it’s something individual publishing house websites will have. Jacket Flap is still a great tool to have on hand.

The Mouse that ROARED. At seven.

Wow, now here’s a first. Okay, it’s not the first time an author’s work has been banned, but um, she’s …Seven. The New York Post reports that home-schooled and multi-lingual Autum Ashante’s poem “White Nationalism Put U in Bondage” was seen as a bit, um, excessive for the Westchester middle and high school in Peekskill, where she was asked to perform. She’s a poet, and has already shared the body of her work at the Manhattan African Burial Ground and on television. But, there’s nowhere like school districts to help artist get their work banned, and it was the school performance that tore it.

You’ll have to make the call as to whether Ms. Ashante is only parroting what she hears at home in her heavy and dramatic blank verse — how many times does a seven-year-old get to use the word ‘paradigm’ in her poetry? (How often do you?!) — and you may disagree with her only addressing certain students with her call to action and pride – I know I do – but no matter what you think of her personally, it’s pretty ironic that it took a SCHOOL to shut her up, a school to make phone calls to parents, a school to apologize for the words of a 7-year-old, just in case her art offended. Open wide the halls of learning, that all may enter in… and maybe be offended and sue.

Of course, now she’s got visits scheduled with Al Sharpton. And may I just say that New York will now never hear the end of this? Be careful of mice with keyboards.

Monday Musings

The oddest things occasionally drift past as flotsam and snag on a twig of memory in my brain.

I was retrieving something from a friend’s house the other day, and his children tend to act like all adults are visiting celebrities, and youngest son was climbing my leg and asking, “Did you ever hear of a fish called Seaweed?” as if it was a children’s book that I had somehow missed. He made up the story, right then, to tell me all about it, three confident years old, and full of himself, happy to interrupt his father speaking to me, and to generally disrupt all adult conversation entirely, but I was captivated, because suddenly, his scrunched up little face reminded me…

…when I was nine, his father called me Seaweed. As suddenly as I remembered that, I suddenly ‘remembered’ a whole story to tell. “You started this,” I accused the child’s father, but he had no idea what I meant.

Actually, lots of things started ‘this.’ Enforced silence, internalized rejections, working things out, seeking greater expression. Someone asked me the other day when I “knew” it was my life’s destiny to write. Oh, yeah, because this person is somewhat freakocious (thanks, a.fortis, for the encouragement of more imaginary words in the world), my first thought was to just do some sighing and eye rolling (life’s destiny!? Come on!), but now I, too, want to know when I first knew I wanted to do this. As early as I can recall, it was about four … when my mother would tell me to shush now, her ears needed a break. She would hand me a piece of paper and a pencil,and tell me to write everything I needed to tell her for now.

And so I still am.
I am writing everything I need to tell her, not that she’ll understand if/when she reads it.
I am writing everything I need to tell her about myself. It is in puzzles and mysteries; others will ‘get it’ before she does, but I am writing everything I need to tell her, tell you, tell the universe; sky-writing, Pony Express, signal flares, crop circles; the messages keeps coming.

I only hope that I get through.

NPR reports, February 27, 2006 · Author Octavia Butler died on Friday. Butler was a leading science fiction writer who won every major award in her field. In 1995, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Oh my goodness! She was only 58!!!! And I hadn’t yet read all of her books!

Literary Pursuits

(February 24th was Happy 1 Year Blogger-versary to US!)

The SF Chronicle Book Page had a great little review of Monkey Town by Ronald Kidd. It’s a retelling of the 1925 Scopes trial during which the town of Dayton, Tennessee put science teacher John Scopes on trial for teaching evolution in their public school, as seen through the eyes of Frances, the 15-year-old who has a mad crush on him.

Wow. What a stroke of genius it was for Kidd to take on this topic. He claims to have gotten the idea from the son of a woman who lived in Dayton at the time. He took advantage of her memory and recreated a wonderfully imaginative yet historically accurate tale of the town, the time, the craziness of the religious fanatics and the breathless reporters. It evokes a sort of Southern coming-of-age feel that brings to life Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan and the irrepressible and often quoted H.L. Mencken.

It’s a great time for the YA set to be reading about this as the debate over evolution continues, since many of them who actually notice there’s a debate have no idea what all the fuss is about. The funny thing is, this novel is all about that — the fuss. The whole thing was thought up as a publicity stunt. But what a great one! The words of the trial are still debated today.

I am always intrigued by the length and breadth of the stories we have in our country, and by the stories that we choose to tell. NPR has a little story spot in their Morning Edition on Fridays, and it’s a treat to hear the stories people record for them – really, give them, using the medium of sound to offer the public a piece of their lives. StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound, and if you’ve got a minute, or an hour, sit and listen. The stories always strike such a chord in me — hearing the voices of the lives of others gets the writing juices flowing. They are multi-ethnic, multicultural, they are stories of the past, of the present, and dreams for the future. They’re just little squares in the quilt of the world, told sometimes through tears, or in disjointed conversation… but the story’s the thing, people. Some amazing stuff that reminds me of the projects done in the 1960’s by college-aged historians trying to make sure the tales of slavery, and the Appalachian and Dust Bowl stories didn’t get lost from our history forever.

Another great public venue for books – not YA, but just for hearing excerpts of stories – is Writer’s Block, the Bay Area public television podcast space for local writing.

Randomly

Thanks to Nat for a great ‘starving artist’ way to support the survivors of the Katrina mess. As the New Orleans libraries are restocking, consider giving them a book. Or six. Or the twelve stacked on the stairs because they won’t fit on the shelf. They could really use a hand, and it costs less than you think.

Children’s books are still needed. SCBWI primarily concentrated their ‘Comfort Kits’ (which included books, a soft toy, toothbrush and flashlight) on the outlying states who needed hurricane assistance, like Mississippi or Alabama, but the Louisiana Department of Education has information to help you find out how to help New Orleans schools and kids too.


Did you know that for every fifteen books a teen reviews on Young Adult Books Central they have the opportunity to win books? Not a bad idea, that. This site also alerts readers to publisher-sponsored giveaways and contests, which is a great reason to check it out.

Meanwhile, HarperCollins has a new YA lit newsletter as of January. At least I think it’s YA lit… it looks like it’s Chick Lit Lite, since it’s a.) pink and b.) doesn’t seem to have too much for the guys… but anyway, it’s HipLit, the latest offerings that people are talking about, so check it out.

A fun and funny theme for the Fourth Annual Arne Nixon Children’s Center Secret Garden Party — cats. They’re even celebrating bad kitties (as found in Nick Bruel’s picture book of the same title) and the fact that their comparative literature collection has just been gifted with hundreds of children’s books about cats. No one knows what else is going on (thus the ‘secret’ part of the “secret garden” title), but you can find out if you go. It’s a fundraiser – so the starving artist thing doesn’t quite work, but if you love children’s books (not YA, but children’s), this is the gig for you.

Epiphany du Jour

You know, I had kind of a strange thought while I was emailing a friend today on a completely non-writing-related topic. (And if you’re reading, Lj, sorry, but you know how people with blogs are.) We were talking about moving, and how some people we know move. A lot. And how psychotically disarranged it makes your inner life, and how some people seem to relish bemoaning the discomfort, and the inevitable little losses, etc. And then, I said something which showed just how much of a writer freak I have become:

I do think we get conditioned to move. Or to run. Or to turn the page to a blank sheet if we don’t like the story we’re writing on this page. The only problem with that fresh start/fresh sheet is that we never finish the story we’re on. In writing, that sucks – we miss writing our way out of potentially difficult passages to see how the complexity and beauty of the finished product hinges on those chapters we rewrote and tightened up umpteen times. We miss knowing that we can, when we must, face deleting entire sections of the work and reworking it again. And again. And again. In life… well, there’s no delete button, but I do wonder sometimes if some mental files don’t get lost, like our inevitably mislaid box of knives, if we never allow ourselves to get past a certain point where we are.

Wow, I scare me.

But then I thought, SERIOUSLY. This is true. How much have I grown as a writer, just in the last two months, from editing and re-editing the veriest piece of crap ever written that I used to call my novel? How good was it for me, back in undergrad days to lose entire papers, and be forced to replace said essays from memory, assignments that were always even better the second time around? While I wouldn’t advise this for anyone – our blood vessels can only take so much pressure before the inevitable Jake Morgendorffer style eruptions – it does go to show that tight spots can sometimes be good for you. Tremendously good.

Typical, huh? What doesn’t kill us makes us heck of good at ad libbing.

My two cents before the long weekend.

Writing, Randomly

Lots going on to post this week in the world of words. First, I’ve read a lot of reviews of the Curious George phenomena, and the brouhaha from animal rights and parent groups reminds me a bit of the discussions/arguments that came up over the Little Black Sambo and Uncle Remus tales we discussed at the Alma Mater. When these books were written, it was definitely a different world, both in terms of what people thought was okay to do with people and with animals. The discussion is good, but the outrage and theater picketing, completely incomprehensible to children, is somewhat pointless…

Meanwhile does anyone know if Michelle Tea’s latest is supposed to be a YA novel? The Chronicle review of Rose of No Man’s Land talks about a 14-year-old narrator, and gives it really positive reviews for a “singular voice in a coming-of-age novel.” Hmm.

All right. Back to the grind.