Month: October 2006

Kudos, kudos, kudos to the cool kids at Not Your Mother’s Bookclub who are mentioned with many props in this week’s PW! NYMBC loves YA authors and YA readers and bring the two together in some truly innovative ways. This week they’re supporting San Francisco’s literary festival, Litquake with a meet-the-author thing that looks like fun. Congrats, NYMBC – may your tribe increase.

Further kudos to the proud Mommy over at Wands & Worlds, whose son’s imagine-the-ending to the Snicket Saga was chosen to be printed by the Washington Post. The kid not only writes in complete sentences, he’s … hilarious! Cheers! Another writer on the horizon! Mazel tov to both!

I don’t know from manga, but…Via A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy, this Anne Frank edu-manga thing looks like a big, fat, NOOOO! to me. And I am a little stunned, too, at the idea of a pop-up book on the Irish potato famine… Exactly what could you pop-up to make it more… um… readable? In my mind, pop-ups are supposed to be …fun? However! I will wait like everyone else and read the book before I comment. Any further. Ahem.

A post I’m late discovering is via Tockla’s World of Children’s Lit and it’s on mixed-race kids books. This is of special interest to me because my book originally had a mixed-race protagonist, and my agent suggested that since I’m “plain old African American” I should take that out.
Hmph.
I was fairly steamed, to say the least, especially since a nice letter I got from a senior editor at Jump at the Sun who called it “refreshing” that the character was not in any way concerned that she was mixed race, and that the novel did not necessarily concern race. But the real question? Is anybody really “plain old” anything? And I wonder now if I did wrong to change my character. Oh well. As I write more, I learn more, I guess…

An interesting discussion at AS IF on manga and graphic novels and their, er, graphic content. Some want to ban all graphic novels. Not really the answer!? Also on this same fascinating weblog, Laurie Halse Anderson posts her approach to dealing with challenges to her book, Speak, and states she has “no business insisting” that her book is taught anywhere. Very enlightening and enlightened thoughts.

One of the things I love deeply about literature is that it can bridge cultures and traditions and backgrounds and people, and bring together humans in a commonality of experience that transcends political rhetoric and polarizing speeches. Music, too, can be as fluid and versatile as literature, so today’s “check it out because it is heart-touching and energizing and hopeful and positive” site of the day is NPR, whose lovely pieces from Lullabies from the Axis of Evil will make you want to add this CD of Iranian, Iraqi and North Korean lullabies to your repertoire so you can do some peaceful meditative yoga stretches and deep thinking while it plays (if you have no babies to sing to sleep). The CD is about a year old, but the short stories and poetry found in the book by the same title (and aren’t YA) was just released today. The sample story I read is equally beautiful, and pulls my heart to a world that I don’t quite understand, yet is so close to my own understanding of things that I feel I can reach across the chasm and touch it. Music and books: just another way to save the world.

Cheers! I’ve just discovered the Neil Gaiman interview at Bookslut! And it’s just another click to the montly Booksluts in Training piece, which features some great YA titles ” that fit perfectly into the October sensibility. Adventures, mysteries, even thrillers are here but all have one thing in common: something wicked lurks within their pages and makes the readers cautious about turning each and every page.” Good reads for crisp autumn nights.

Book Buds is relaunching and having a drawing for two cool books to celebrate. Enter the drawing by answering this question: What would you say upon climbing down from the hatch of your space rover, and setting foot on Mars? (And no, you can’t say that “One small step” thing, that’s been done.) This ‘out of this world’ contest ends October 18th, so start thinking now…

Hey, have you dropped by Competizione? I love web contests, and these guys advertise them all. Check frequently!

The Guardian has a round-up of the Top 10 Characters from Children’s Historical Fiction. I find myself a bit chagrined at how many of these books I’ve never even read! Meanwhile, if you also haven’t read any of the novels up for the UK’s Man Booker Award, never fear – there’s the Guardian’s Digested Version to boil them all down to a couple of paragraphs for you. That, of course, would never work with a YA book…

Sigh. Yet another celeb writes a kid’s book — this time Gloria Estefan is throwing her spangled spandex um… hat into the ring. AND her book comes with a CD. Of course it does.

Via Bookshelves of Doom, what’s got to be the oddest book challenge, EVER… Truly. Pre-Christian, Sumerian texts, now newly translated into English aren’t stories of stick figures and dirt. Who knew?

If you haven’t read Pam Coughlan’s piece inThe Edge of the Forest on booktalking middle school-aged kids, do. Her tips can carry over as good info for doing author visits, too.

I don’t often get to read the School Library Journal, but an article by Caroline Lehman discussing depictions of sexual abuse in YA literature really caught my attention. Lehman’s new nonfiction book, Strong at the Heart has given her some insights into these hurtful incidents in the lives of young men and women, and I appreciated her taking a look at the literature we write that speaks about these topics. As YA authors, some of who want to write about these things in a fictionalized way, it’s important to, as Jane Yolen says “write the true…” Is YA literature on sexual abuse really helpful? Does it present a true reflection of the lives and the stories of the abused? Does it perpetuate stereotypes in its depictions of “victims” and “heroes”? There’s a lot in Lehman’s thoughtful piece to consider. Check it out.

Thank God it’s Monday and all the partying is over. I go away for a long and torturous wedding weekend (Sister of the Bride and Coordinator of Darn-Near-All — how the heck did that happen!?) and there’s so much I’ve missed!

First, Yay for Jay at Disco Mermaids. There was a bidding war for his novel, and he’s a happy, happy man… Via Book Buds, a funny new website called Three Silly Chicks is hosting a contest for a book giveaway. This blog is dedicated to books of humor, which is really fun. Meanwhile, Bookshelves of Doom rightly mocks the charm-free prose stylings of Kylie Minogue’s Showgirl Princess, which sounds awfully like a horse’s name, only her book doesn’t have the ability to jump that high, or be nearly as entertaining… And speaking of entertaining, Mother Reader, dead batteries, the National Book Festival and Mo Willems makes for quite a funny read.

Via Wands and Worlds, the last of the hilarious Vile Videos are up. Sing along with the cue cards, kids! The End is nigh… Friday the 13th!

NPR reported this weekend that though author Daniel Pinkwater’s novel won’t be out until next April, since August, he’s been posting a new chapter of The Neddiad online every Tuesday! The book includes “swashbuckling actors, omniscient shamans, hungry ghosts, mysterious turtles, and an elephant or two,” which sounds promising. What’s posted is Pinkwater’s his actual manuscript – with a few typos and all, but what a great way to get readers excited!

Another giveaway of YA books, listen up! Via E. Lockhart’s blog — the fabulous people at YA Books Central are having a drawing by Oct. 31 to give away 10 copies of The Boy Book! Just click on the link, answer a simple (but fun) question, and you’re in the drawing.

And finally, just because it’s cool, check out the Garden Bubble Cam. During daylight hours, you can push a button on your keyboard, and make the bubble machine work, miles away in South Florida. The site tells you how/why it works.

Happy Monday!

I’m thinking about preschoolers…

Now, there’s a topic which doesn’t often get broached on Writing YA, but preKindergarteners are young adults… just very, very, very wee ones. I have the opportunity to support a nonprofit Early Childhood Education Center by buying books for these wee young adults, ages 2 – 4! Buying books is my absolute favorite thing to do, and this Center, which serves low-income families, some of whom are non-English speaking or developmentally delayed, has a small operating budget and a bigger wishlist, as so many schools do. Now, here’s where you come in — I need help with some titles to pick up and research! Because the Center has purged itself of commercially related books (no Elmo, nor Clifford, nor any licensed character who has a doll, cartoon, video, or TV series, in other words), and is concentrating on multicultural books, including those about Earth Sciences, Social Studies, Physical Sciences, Numbers and Colors — all those good things kids need to help them get a grip on the world, this is going to take a little more research on my part.

If the Librarians Fabulosas and others have any thoughts on this, please reply — I’m making a list and already have: And Here’s to You, David Elliot, Candlewick Press; The Big Orange Splot, and a couple of others which have impressed me… but I don’t really know from PreK, so any input welcome!

Cranky and sore, I greet the new week! After yanking out the summer garden this weekend to prepare for the autumn kale, all I want to do is sit down with a book and a bath. Instead, I am gadding about online yet again… still trying to take in the latest information from my Secret Agent Man about a possible sale by the end of the week (cross your fingers with me, blogsphere!) Meanwhile, other things on my mind:

Ooh! Yet another online bookfair! Author interviews, new books to explore and more blogs – check it out!

You’ve likely heard by now that there’s been a new Robert Frost poem discovered! I was very excited to hear this, since memorizing Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening was a big deal to me in junior high. Take a listen!

Hilarious picture via Big A little a, which shows, of all things … a Discworld wedding cake!!! It is gloriously wacky. Apparently, this lady runs Jane’s Cakes and lives in North Hampshire, and bakes these fabulous cakes of all kinds… Now, why can’t my sister do something interesting like this!? Who needs sheet cake when you can have a universe on the back of four elephants and a gigantic turtle!?

Finally, a good discussion about SCBWI over at Fuse#8. I guess a lot of people have never heard of SCBWI, but someone is raising some questions about the whole structure and body of the group, whether or not it is non-profit or for-profit, and what the Directors get out of it. Because this group is a governing body which also gives away Golden Kite Awards each year, which may be instrumental in propelling certain authors and/or certain houses to prominence, this question is of merit to some. The prevailing attitude seems to be that one can get out of an organization what one is prepared to put into it… which means I should do a bit more networking!

Happy October! Happy Autumn!

Technically, this is the end of Banned Books Week, and you may wonder why such a big deal is made of the one week a year where everyone reminds us of that we should honor and strongly support our Constitutional right to read. I will egotistically state that the ALA does this week for me… because I wasn’t allowed to read everything I wanted to read when I was growing up.

Not an unusual lament; parents are the gatekeepers of their children’s reading habits, and my parents were all about nonfiction and “truth.” National Geographic: fine. Amazing Stories: not fine. But, as a high school student (see how long I was obedient?) through my undergraduate years and later as an MFA, I learned over and over again that a.) unvarnished facts don’t necessarily tell all the truth, and b.) fiction doesn’t necessarily contain no element of “the true;” even fairytales have their own truths.

Truth: it’s something we’d all like to think that we have, or know. The truth about everything. It’s also something many parents believe that they must impart to their ‘tweens and teens about the world around them, only young adults, in the way of things, think they know well enough what is true for them… and many years of their adolescence are spent being pulled one way, and pulling back the other. The problem with truth is, you don’t tell it by not speaking it. You don’t tell it by trying to force people to see only your truth. You don’t tell it by squashing it, hiding it, and not trusting it to come to the light.

I don’t want any of my books to be banned. Ever. I don’t want to be a writer whom a parent sees as an enemy to their child, nor can I imagine any author courting the banned bandwagon, nor wanting to be labelled as having “a liberal agenda” — or any agenda to peddle to children. It’s not enjoyable to be put in the place of defending oneself in any case, but to a writer, our books are close to our hearts. It is wrenching to imagine that a parent will teach a child that you — and your books — are the enemy. Thoughts divergent from our own are not our enemies. FEAR — fear of thinking, fear of listening, fear of trusting our kids to formulate their own thoughts and opinions, fear of a too-tolerant moral stance — that’s the enemy. And if parents are teaching kids to fear thoughts… how are they teaching them to listen to themselves and to learn to think?

A parent’s, a school district’s, a teacher’s or a librarian’s trusting a child to read intelligently, to be discerning and personally opinionated is a gift to that child. It teaches them that adults don’t think they’re so stupid that they must be protected, at all costs, from growing up. I know that’s not the message my parents meant to send to me. They were, after all, trying to preserve my soul , and I thank them for the love. Perhaps someday I, too, will so deeply want to protect someone’s mind. But I believe that there are other ways to go about it… ways that involve reading widely and discussing openly. Ways that involve parental bravery and hours of time, hours spent discussing what’s right with something instead of what’s wrong.

Idealistic? Probably. Well-meaning but frightened adults exist. But even they can learn and grow and change. It’s still a dream worth keeping.

Call it a new American dream – freedom of mind for every mind.
Thanks for the reminder, Banned Book Week. See you again next year.