Month: September 2006

When a YA novel with religious content is accepted for publication, I believe that somewhere a bell rings in a tiny, stuffy office deep inside an undisclosed location, and the word goes out to undisclosed parties to keep a look out. They’re not librarians… they’re people who have Opinions. Now, people know I have Opinions. I have Opinions about everything, including God, in his or her many incarnations. But, the thing about religious Opinions is that some people’s are set in cement. And if your opinions don’t jibe with their opinions: woe.

Trinity High School (what an ironic name!) is a fictitious Catholic all-boys school where protagonist Jerry Renault of the The Chocolate War spends a miserable year, bucking the system by refusing to be a good boy and chocolate to raise money for some cause or other, like everyone else. He is harassed by sadistic administrators, verbally assaulted, hassled by bullies, and in the end, physically assaulted.

Welcome to the Christian community.

This was my introduction to Robert Cormier, and it was downright scary. As a student at a private Christian school myself, the story was, to me, mindblowing. I thought, Nobody would do that at MY school. And then I thought, Would they?

I can’t say that I loved it. It bothered me. It haunted me. It taught me. And I think that’s a lot more important than “loved.”

First published in 1974, the Chocolate War still last topped the list of banned books in 2004. And though I read the book many, many years ago (in high school), what is burned into memory still is the horrific bullies and the apathetic teachers in that ostensibly Christian environment. Not the “swearing, masturbation, violence and a depressing, dismal ending” for which the book is continually challenged and banned.

I’m going to avoid making a bunch of huge statements and using titles like ‘fundamentalist,’ or ‘conservative,’ because I believe that there are people with Opinions of every stripe. They’re not all from color-coded states, in other words. But as more and more YA people explore their cultural mores by writing novels which deal with theories and positions on religious themes, it’s ironic that it’s religious people who are showing their vocal, vehement intolerance – for the sake of God. So people don’t mock Him/Her. So we can protect God.

Bizarre.

(I know that’s not the only reason, but it’s one of them.)

When we religious types use vague, inflammatory rhetoric to promote a point, we miss the point. We cannot protect everybody from everything. No teacher I know (and I know plenty) would fault a parent for determining that they are uncomfortable with their child reading a certain book or novel in a class. A teacher would respond positively, even, to a well-reasoned and mature conversation with a student who preferred not to read something in his or her English class (and if the teacher did not respond positively, students have parents and school boards, etc. to back them up), as long as the student could give solid reasons and produce an alternative reading that is on the same topic and equally challenging. But for that parent to determine that every child in the classroom — the school — the district should also be raised according to their standard of ethics? Come on.

Another book that deals with religion as part of the scope of its storyline is Rats Saw God, by Rob Thomas is one of my all-time favorite books. I read it again and again as a sort of blueprint on how to deal with major subjects in YA literature, completely blown away by the sophisticated exploration of some really deep theories. And just this month, it was challenged again in Florida for profanity and graphic sexuality. The story deals with an 18-year-old who is flunking despite his astronomically high IQ and Honor Roll status the first two years of high school. The character, Steve, is in the process of writing an 100 page English paper in order to graduate high school, and is looking back over how he’s dealt — or not dealt — with his parent’s divorce. The subject matter in the story is immense. Thomas writes about God and Dadaism, divorce, siblings, and falling in love. The book goes through the entire scope of human emotions, and the character comes out on top. The author, in defending the book, says it’s about “getting better.”

It occurs to me that in my brief reviews of many of the books on the Banned list that the phrase “the character comes out on top” recurs. This isn’t what makes a book a positive thing. I don’t believe that a ‘kernel of hope’ is what’s necessary to keep the books from the banned list, especially since specifically in the Chocolate War, that isn’t the case. I’m just maybe more surprised when those books are banned. I keep wondering, “Did they read a different ending than the one I did?”

And then I realize I’m asking if they read the book.

Never mind.

In honor and celebration of e.lockhart’s newest book, take the Boyfriend List Dating Destiny Quiz ! Bwa-ha-ha-ha to the Sex Kittens. Apparently, I will:
Live in a Apartment.
Drive a Green Rickshaw bicycle.
Marry Matthew Dwyer (Horn Dawg) and have 10 kid(s). (!!!!)
Be a English teacher at St. Sebastian’s in Oxford.

What’s your (dubious) dating destiny?

Also just found out the list of speakers for 2007 SCBWI Asilomar Conference next year. They are Linda Sue Park and Suzanne Guevara. Editorial speakers are Erin Clarke from Knopf
(Random House), Namrata Tripathi from Hyperion (Disney), and Kristen Pettit from Razorbill (Penguin). Nicole Geiger from Tricycle isn’t speaking, but is coming to critique manuscripts. Many people want to go to these things, but just a head’s up — registration is opening probably the first week in October, so if you’re even thinking of going, think fast! It’s a gorgeous place, and plenty of people want to go. I’m also just jazzed about the number of mini-conferences happening in my area. SCBWI is always cool about putting quite a few together, but this year, they’ve been even better. Check out this quarter’s Northern Cal Acorn to find out what else is going on.

When a YA novel with religious content is accepted for publication, I believe that somewhere a bell rings in a tiny, stuffy office deep inside an undisclosed location, and the word goes out to undisclosed parties to keep a look out. They’re not librarians… they’re people who have Opinions. Now, people know I have Opinions. I have Opinions about everything, including God, in his or her many incarnations. But, the thing about religious Opinions is that some people’s are set in cement. And if your opinions don’t jibe with their opinions: woe.

Trinity High School (what an ironic name!) is a fictitious Catholic all-boys school where protagonist Jerry Renault of the The Chocolate War spends a miserable year, bucking the system by refusing to be a good boy and chocolate to raise money for some cause or other, like everyone else. He is harassed by sadistic administrators, verbally assaulted, hassled by bullies, and in the end, physically assaulted.

Welcome to the Christian community.

This was my introduction to Robert Cormier, and it was downright scary. As a student at a private Christian school myself, the story was, to me, mindblowing. I thought, Nobody would do that at MY school. And then I thought, Would they?

I can’t say that I loved it. It bothered me. It haunted me. It taught me. And I think that’s a lot more important than “loved.”

First published in 1974, the Chocolate War still last topped the list of banned books in 2004. And though I read the book many, many years ago (in high school), what is burned into memory still is the horrific bullies and the apathetic teachers in that ostensibly Christian environment. Not the “swearing, masturbation, violence and a depressing, dismal ending” for which the book is continually challenged and banned.

I’m going to avoid making a bunch of huge statements and using titles like ‘fundamentalist,’ or ‘conservative,’ because I believe that there are people with Opinions of every stripe. They’re not all from color-coded states, in other words. But as more and more YA people explore their cultural mores by writing novels which deal with theories and positions on religious themes, it’s ironic that it’s religious people who are showing their vocal, vehement intolerance – for the sake of God. So people don’t mock Him/Her. So we can protect God.

Bizarre.

(I know that’s not the only reason, but it’s one of them.)

When we religious types use vague, inflammatory rhetoric to promote a point, we miss the point. We cannot protect everybody from everything. No teacher I know (and I know plenty) would fault a parent for determining that they are uncomfortable with their child reading a certain book or novel in a class. A teacher would respond positively, even, to a well-reasoned and mature conversation with a student who preferred not to read something in his or her English class (and if the teacher did not respond positively, students have parents and school boards, etc. to back them up), as long as the student could give solid reasons and produce an alternative reading that is on the same topic and equally challenging. But for that parent to determine that every child in the classroom — the school — the district should also be raised according to their standard of ethics? Come on.

Another book that deals with religion as part of the scope of its storyline is Rats Saw God, by Rob Thomas is one of my all-time favorite books. I read it again and again as a sort of blueprint on how to deal with major subjects in YA literature, completely blown away by the sophisticated exploration of some really deep theories. And just this month, it was challenged again in Florida for profanity and graphic sexuality. The story deals with an 18-year-old who is flunking despite his astronomically high IQ and Honor Roll status the first two years of high school. The character, Steve, is in the process of writing an 100 page English paper in order to graduate high school, and is looking back over how he’s dealt — or not dealt — with his parent’s divorce. The subject matter in the story is immense. Thomas writes about God and Dadaism, divorce, siblings, and falling in love. The book goes through the entire scope of human emotions, and the character comes out on top. The author, in defending the book, says it’s about “getting better.”

It occurs to me that in my brief reviews of many of the books on the Banned list that the phrase “the character comes out on top” recurs. This isn’t what makes a book a positive thing. I don’t believe that a ‘kernel of hope’ is what’s necessary to keep the books from the banned list, especially since specifically in the Chocolate War, that isn’t the case. I’m just maybe more surprised when those books are banned. I keep wondering, “Did they read a different ending than the one I did?”

And then I realize I’m asking if they read the book.

Never mind.

In honor and celebration of e.lockhart’s newest book, take the Boyfriend List Dating Destiny Quiz ! Bwa-ha-ha-ha to the Sex Kittens. Apparently, I will:
Live in a Apartment.
Drive a Green Rickshaw bicycle.
Marry Matthew Dwyer (Horn Dawg) and have 10 kid(s). (!!!!)
Be a English teacher at St. Sebastian’s in Oxford.

What’s your (dubious) dating destiny?

Also just found out the list of speakers for 2007 SCBWI Asilomar Conference next year. They are Linda Sue Park and Suzanne Guevara. Editorial speakers are Erin Clarke from Knopf
(Random House), Namrata Tripathi from Hyperion (Disney), and Kristen Pettit from Razorbill (Penguin). Nicole Geiger from Tricycle isn’t speaking, but is coming to critique manuscripts. Many people want to go to these things, but just a head’s up — registration is opening probably the first week in October, so if you’re even thinking of going, think fast! It’s a gorgeous place, and plenty of people want to go. I’m also just jazzed about the number of mini-conferences happening in my area. SCBWI is always cool about putting quite a few together, but this year, they’ve been even better. Check out this quarter’s Northern Cal Acorn to find out what else is going on.

What happens when we’re growing up, with our bodies, with our souls, and with our sexuality, can change the way we look at things and who we are, forever…

Especially if that something that happens is negative, bad, and sad.

Reality and survival, in YA literature is a serious thing to explore. The truth is, stuff… happens. It’s important to know that others have survived. Period.

Many people prefer to pretend that stuff doesn’t happen, so they cultivate a community of silence — maybe in their homes, certainly in their schools, and it reflects on the bookshelves they want within their schools. Uncomfortable people trying to control reality…encouraging silence, figuring that some things are too horrible for YA readers to know about or to talk about… and so, we get true-to-reality stories being smushed away, hushed up, and put in a box.

No matter that this is important work, and that any work that says, “Hey, this happened to me, to someone I know, maybe to you. It was sucky/hard/weird/breathtaking. But I survived. So can you” is vital. It’s important to tell truths, and let in the light about the real facts of life. Yet books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou and The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer by Gary Paulsen, have been challenged, taken off of reading lists, and banned.

Though it was first published in 1969, Maya Angelou’s novel received its most recent challenge from an Annapolis, MD high school in 2006 when it was removed from the freshman English reading list. The challenges for this book are because of sexual exploration by teenagers, rape and homosexuality. In 2003 it was challenged in Fairfax (VA) school libraries by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools (such a group, yes, Virginia, exists!) for “profanity and descriptions of drug abuse, sexually explicit conduct and torture.”

“Bad.” Such a thoroughly non-descriptive word. Bad books. Misbehaving storylines. Errant facts. I didn’t find this ‘badness’ morally degenerating, when I read this book. I found what happened to Maya shocking, indeed. I read of a girl becoming a woman who faced enormous setbacks to becoming an adult, a sane person, an artist, yet who endured, came away strong, and better still, walked away with her scars to be an inspiration to others. Maya Angelou did more than merely survive. She kicked butt.

The troubled boy who wakes up with his mother in his bed and flees to become an agricultural laborer is based loosely on Paulsen himself. This book has been challenged because the narrator is a runaway, has disturbing thoughts about his mother’s “wrong” need for him, graphic lustful thoughts about a sleazy carny dancer, and eventually describes intercourse with her. Though the phrase is tired, it is a coming of age novel, and is a realistic portrayal of a boy with few positive role models from which to choose. In a parallel with the first novel, this narrator, too, goes on from that precarious, hurtful time in his life to grow stronger in time. He stumbles, but he gets up and keeps on ticking. Those are the facts of life:

Stuff happens, but we can choose to survive.

To us, the YA Readers, Young, Adult, or Young Adult:
May the books you read add titanium steel to your backbone.
May they get you through a dark night.
May they let you know that someone else has been there, too.
May they tell you the whole truth when you’re ready to read it.

Celebrate the freedom to read books about things so bad it’s hard to talk about them… Celebrate being free to read!

“Putting children in jeopardy.” That was the topic of the conversation this morning between The Great Maurice Sendak and NPR affiliate Steve Inskeep on today’s Morning Edition. The conversation is fascinating, as Sendak gives his opinions on childhood, on pop-up books, and the danger in our world as a byproduct of a chat about his first pop-up book of beautiful but spooky drawings entitled, Mommy? which is being released in bookstores this month.

When he was a younger artist, many adults were unhappy with Sendak for his dark worldview, where wild things and various “monsters” lurk in night kitchens and under the bed, yet he only responded from his own imagination, which is a theme in Sendak’s work: a dark, shadowy world which children had to make it through. Fiction in the United States for children where the child was unsafe was taken poorly, as Americans were offended that their children could be unsafe in this great country. (Interestingly, Europeans seemed to have had a different worldview… The Brothers Grimm, anyone?) This was always a surprise to Sendak, but he maintains,

And Sendak, with his newest book, is choosing again to deal with the darkness and the fearfulness of his childhood in his typically humorous and plucky way. ART ALERT! A little slideshow of Sendak’s older and most recent work can be found right here — and the show is narrated, and well worth checking out!

Darkness in children’s fiction is a great theme for today’s Banned Book rant!

I was just mentioning to Jen Robinson that I never understood why Lois Lowry’s The Giver was a challenged and banned book. Described poorly in a USA today article in 2001 as a ‘suicide book’, the Giver has been maligned and misunderstood since its 1993 publication. In Denver, parents approached the school board to challenge the book because they claimed it showed ” suicide, euthanasia and infanticide in a neutral to positive light.” In that post-Columbine community, parents felt that discussing such things should be re-evaluated. The state of Colorado at that time had the fifth highest suicide rate, and angry parents demanded to know why they had not been notified that such a controversial book was being read to their children.

Yet, when I read it, I didn’t see a suicide positive book, or a ‘Release’ positive book, in dealing with infanticide or euthanasia. If anything, I saw instead a mystical boy who had been given a huge task, which changed him, set him apart from his other peers in the Twelves, and really opened a door within him to something huge and weighty. I saw a boy whose reality changed before his eyes, who was weighed down and entrusted with so much that he had to act.

Ironically, in light of the banning, the sentences that stick out the most in my mind from Jonas are these:

“I thought there was only us! I thought there was only now!” and “We don’t dare to let people make choices of their own. … We really have to protect people from wrong choices.”

Wow.

Lowry was making a statement with this book — a statement brought on by a childhood of knowing about people who are different, and knowing about shutting people and certain thoughts out, and thinking, believing, hoping you are safe. It’s about learning that other people outside our charmed circles matter, it’s about looking outward and acting to affect the good of all. It’s a beautiful, meaningful and deep concept, and our young readers deserve to read and know and think about that. Are we coasting? Are we insulating ourselves at the expense of opening the gate to freedom and inquiry? If so, isn’t it time to change?

Timely thoughts.

And so, I leave you with the closing statement from her Newbury speech and with a few sympathetic chills and sniffles:

The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing.

It is very risky.

But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom.
Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.”

Free people read freely.
Now, wipe your nose and go celebrate the freedom to read any old book you choose!

My Challenged Book of the Day is cute and funny Sex Kittens & Horn Dawgs Fall in Love, by Maryrose Wood; my Banned Book for today is Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher. Check out the American Library Association’s website this week to learn the difference between banned and challenged, and find out what this book-banning, book-burning thing is all about. Speak, think and read freely!

The ALA lists the ten most challenged YA books as:

• Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
• Deenie, by Judy Blume
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
• Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
• Forever, by Judy Blume
• The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
• The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
• The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
• Lord of the Flies, by Wiliam Golding
• Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

I am proud to say that I have read all of these books! Go, rebel readers!

A very cool opportunity for those who are great reviewers (and you know I mean YOU!): not only is the newest Edge of the Forest up and running (and do drop in to peruse the interview with the fabulous Rick Riordan as well as the other great pieces by the very talented writers and reviewers in the blogosphere), our Kid Lit Kelly is looking for reviewers for October. Give her a holler if you’re interested!

Another great list over at Bildungsroman: Sassy Sidekicks of Children’s Literature. Who’s the best Hermione to your favorite Harry or the helpful Diana Barry to your Anne? Add to the list, keep the ball rolling. And I’m late with this, but the Seventh Carnival of Children’s Literature is up, which is a great round-up of book reviews, as well as bloggings on topics from the troubles of to writing an algebra comic book (yikes!) to racism in literature, and more. Give yourself a few hours, and read through! You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll discover new bloggers whose musings you won’t want to miss. Meanwhile, heads up: next month’s book carnival is Halloween themed, and Scholar’s Blog says submissions are due October 15th.

And finally, via e. lockhart’s site, The YA Writer’s Cafe is back, Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. Pacific, 8:30 p.m. EST! It’s a chance to hang out with YA authors and listen and ask questions as they talk shop. The list of featured guests will knock your socks off. You don’t have to register, or be an actual author to hang out, listen and learn. Check it out!

Via Big A little A, the UK Guardian blog Culture Vulture is publishing the blog diary of their theater critic and first time children’s novelist, Lyn Gardener. She describes publication, so far, as like ‘ having been pregnant for a monstrously long time’ and that the whole thing has ‘crept out to resounding silence.’ Members of her own family haven’t even called. Oy, people. OY.
She goes on to say,

“I know that I am not young enough, pretty enough or well enough connected to attract media attention. What’s more, Into the Woods isn’t a roman a clef or a chick lit bonk-buster. It is a novel for children. When you tell people that you’ve just had a novel published they beam “congratulations.” When you inform them that it’s for 8-12 year olds their eyes glaze over and they say brightly: “So you’re the next JK Rowling.” Probably not, as I have no desire to write a seven novel series or ever holiday in the Hamptons.”

Yikes!
Part of me knows I don’t have the looks, the style, or the verve to be a Celebrated Children’s Author, and you have to admit that there is a certain type of cachet that some writers seem to sport. (However, they mostly hobnob in New York. Hmm!) Frankly, I don’t care. I’m not cool, and never have been, so being a Celebrated YA Author is not high on my list. Just being a Published YA Author would be good. Yet, though I know how Gardner feels, she does have a book out (and her fellow Brits certainly give her no pity! Those who have commented on her blogging have been… well, sort of nasty, in that crisply spoken, don’t-let’s-pity-ourselves British way), and though it isn’t being celebrated with parades, I can imagine the silence is eerie and foretells bad things to come.

On the other hand, it’s kind of a way of life for some of us. The looks you get when you finally, reluctantly tell people you’re a writer? The responses range from saying “it must be nice not to have to work,” to telling you their sad tale of not getting published to asking you to look at something of theirs, to asking, facetiously, where they can find your book. “Amazon?” is my least-favorite query in that line. (I mean, come on. If they have to mock me, could they at least mock me with the name of an independent bookseller?)

At any rate, I look forward to reading more of this blog diary (and then lying down and sobbing quietly as I take it all in). The Guardian makes it a pain in the butt to sign up, but you’ll want to stop by and read, if not post your two cents to give the lady some encouragement.

Party list: Banned Book Bracelets? Check. Dish of spicy sweet apple sauce? Check. Library stack? Check. Then it’s time for the big bash to begin! I know — nobody has a party by themselves with a stack of books and some applesauce, but you celebrate Banned Books Week, September 23-30 your way, and I’ll celebrate mine!

The ALA wants to know: What’s your favorite book? Was it banned? Vote for your favorite banned books, and tell the ALA why it was a great find for you!

Happy Weekend! Celebrate~!

Celebrity, shmebrity. Okay, OKAY, Jamie Lee Curtis writes some decent children’s books. However, I still maintain that celebrity authors suck up all the air in the room. Book number seven’s probably great. Probably fabulous. Look how quickly she heard from her editor. Look how fast the newest one hit the bookstores. It’s probably wonderful, marvelous. But still. Okay, I just read The Jealousy Book last night. I’m over it. Ignore the green eyes.

Sister Mary Wookie Explains It All. Via Bookshelves of Doom, author Maureen Johnson, author of the upcoming YA novel, Devilish, has an hysterical piece on her blog that ties in to the book. From her Protestant-in-a-Catholic-school upbringing, Maureen Johnson learned so much. About wasps. About… the solar system... About life. Or some facsimile thereof. I imagine Sister Mary Wookie has a new illustration, now that Pluto isn’t even a planet anymore…

Um, what, Chris? From the cover blurbs from author Laura Ruby’s newly released novel Good Girls, a quote: “You can’t write an authentic book about adolescence without including sex and sexuality, and Laura Ruby does a masterful job.” —Chris Crutcher, author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Um. Really? You can’t write an authentic book about adolescence without including sex and sexuality? Honestly? I appreciate the sentiment praising the book, but is the rest of that statement really true? As I tend to be at this point, waiting to hear something from S.A.M. or the editor we’re working with, I am questioning the nature of the world and the unfolding of the universe… and I want to ask, “Oh, is that what’s wrong with my book? I just need to include sexuality and sex, and it’ll be authentic? Then editors will knock on my door and actually return my agent’s phone calls? Hm??? Forgive me, Mr. Crutcher. I’m being snarky. But if I include sex/sexuality in my work, my books will be awkward, hackneyed and awful…much like the adolescent me, I’m afraid! Maybe I’m just not comfortable enough with my sexuality to be authentic. I admire authors like you and e. lockhart, Nick Earles, Tanya Lee Stone, and even Meg Cabot who can effortlessly segue first kisses and first flirts and first… other stuff into their work, but that’s just not me. Am I then doomed to a life of inauthenticity? Or, maybe, can I just be authentic for ME!? Can we agree that not everyone’s adolescence includes acknowledging sexuality? Maybe if we had a definition of the sexuality in adolescence with which we’re supposed to be conversant?
Sigh.
Speaking of my books, I’m hoping that a friend won’t have the same J.K. Rowling experience… he’s printed out one of my manuscripts and is bringing it with him to read on a plane. As he has been bugging me and bugging me to read one of my novels, it would serve him right to be stopped by airport security! However, even if he is flying out of SFO… on the way to Nebraska? This is not going to happen. But still.

All right, to work.
Happy Wednesday, people.

Though it was written in 1963, years before I was born, one of my favorite Beverly Cleary novels has always been Sister of the Bride. I related to it very much, as the youngest of three sisters. And now I’m making frantic phone calls and arranging menus, and trying to get my sister to speak English, I realize that only twenty or so years later, I’m living my favorite Cleary novel… the arguments, the drama, the sneaking thoughts that my sister would be better off single… Two more weeks. Yes. This is going to be fun. Let’s all say it together: FUN!

More fun — real fun, this time — to be found at Book Divas. From Sept 27 to October 11, you can leave any question you want for e. lockhart, and she’ll actually answer! How rad is that!? Check out the dates for other YA authors with whom you might want to chat. What a neat and fun opportunity! Also via e. lockhart’s blog I’ve just found out that there’s a NEW JACLYN MORIARTY NOVEL due out October 1st. If you’ve never read Feeling Sorry for Celia or The Year of Secret Assignments, now is the time to check those out. Though the new novel is a stand-alone, it takes place at the same school. I am hoping this newest novel involves letters as well! And speaking of great Aussie writers, Nick Earls, with whom you may not be familiar, is highlighted in an interview. If you haven’t read any of his books, you’ll find them funny and heartening; stories about flawed young men and their truly good hearts, despite their truly odd behavior.

I don’t usually write about the non-fiction I read, but since my undergrad degree is in 19th century British and American literature… I had to give a shout-out to old William Blake. A sort of crazy, maybe sane, possibly delusional poet and visionary, Blake‘s life and poetry is highlighted in a nonfiction book for Young Adults that actually sounds like it’d be great reading for adults, too. Beyond “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” there was a bit more to the man. Check it out.

And, to my mind, this is both exciting and worrisome: There’s a new Tolkien book in town. CNN reports that Tolkien’s son has finished a book his father began and abandoned in 1918, and it will come out next Spring through Houghton Mifflin.

Wouldn’t you hate for someone to be digging through your computer files for all of the story fragments you’ve begun and abandoned, to be published posthumously? What kind of critical reading could anyone give these works? Will readers be mostly reading Tolkien senior, whose work we know and love, or Tolkien Junior, trying to guess what his father intended, and to imitate that voice? And one wonders if, like in the case of C.S. Lewis, specific injunctions against certain usages, and making the estate and the private writings of this author were given, and are being ignored. … I cringe when I recall that Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson destroyed many of their letters and early manuscripts, firmly, decisively wanting no one to take that part of their private lives and make them public. We have lost a lot with their decisions… but maybe what is gone was never ours to lose.

Happy International Literacy Day!