Original Content

You Know Any Fake Readers?

2008-10-10T19:43:00.002-04:00

The Book Whisperer in Teacher Magazine talks about "fake readers" in her post Fake It 'Til You Make It. She talks about fake reading as a coping skill used by students who have trouble with reading comprehension.

However, I've known excellent readers who did the first type of fake reading she talks about while in college. We're talking Dean's List students.

Not that I read every word of every assigned text while I was a student. I just wasn't that good at covering up.

Maybe I Should Seek Therapy

2008-10-10T18:42:00.004-04:00

I had a pretty decent day of work today, rewriting work I'd done earlier in the week and getting a little further, though not as far as I'd hoped. I realized that one reason I may have such difficulty sticking with work and keep escaping to play games of solitaire or to see what Sarah Palin is doing or to check to make sure we still have a stock market is that every single word matters.

I thought I was getting bogged down because I knew that I was going to do draft after draft and just knowing that the draft I was doing was not going to be the last sapped my strength. But it's more than that. Finding the exact word and creating the perfect moment in a storyline is a major responsibility. Talk about a load on your shoulders. Just a line can make all the difference in whether I can move on or not.

I keep looking for various methods to make the work easier. I've hoped that my martial arts training would somehow transfer to writing, but it's been six years so I don't think I should expect much to come from that. Plus, let's face it, I'm not that great a martial arts student so even if something did transfer how much good would it do me? A number of years back I had a six-week period when I thought that writing in a journal each morning was going to turn my life around. I was wrong. Then this past summer I read that meditation can improve concentration. So I tried that a few times. I thought it helped once, but then I couldn't remember to meditate each day. So, so much for that.

Then today I was wondering about some kind of word anxiety therapy. I was thinking that the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators could run some kind of therapy salon.

I'd pay to go to that if it included lunch.

Now Everyone Is Going To Want To Shop In Ireland

2008-10-09T19:34:00.002-04:00

In case you think of bookselling as a job in a big box and not an exciting international profession that will make you loved in foreign corners of the world, check out The Adventures of an International Bookseller at Shelftalker.

Three Reasons To Get Excited For Cybil Season

2008-10-08T19:04:00.007-04:00

You have one week left to nominate a favorite book for a Cybil. Here are three reasons why you should.

Reason 3: It's Free

No, I'm not making some kind of joke. Some book awards require a nomination fee. The National Book Award for instance, requires a $125 entry fee as well as a contribution of $1,000 from the publisher toward a promotion campaign if the book becomes a finalist. Some state awards (I'm not talking about the state readers' choice awards for children's books) also require a nomination fee.

I don't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong in requiring a nomination fee. There are expenses involved with running an award program, and, since many thousands of books are published every year, the fee probably helps keep the number of books in contention at a manageable level. Or nearly so. But I do think that the fee has an impact on awards. Of course a publisher that has to come up with $125 for every book it nominates for the National Book Award isn't going to nominate every book it published. Anyone can nominate a title for the Connecticut Book Award, but I don't think I have any fans who are so enthusiastic that they'd want to come up with $50 or $75 to do so. (There was a sliding fee determined by the number of copies published, two years ago, anyway.). So I'm guessing that people who want to use their money wisely, look at their books and decide what has the best shot of winning. That decision may be made on the basis of the book's quality or it may be made on the basis of the book's quality and its similarity to books that won the award in the past.

That's what I'd do, anyway.

So for a lot of book awards, the winner is not necessarily the best book of the year, but the best book that was nominated.

Reason 2: It's Your Chance To Influence An Award

You know all that talk about mavericks and outsiders we've been hearing lately? Well, that's sort of what the Cybils are because readers--any readers--have a hand in the decision making. Remember Reason 3, which you should have just read. Any book award is given to the best book of those nominated. You have a chance to nominate a brilliant book that the professionals haven't noticed.

Reason 1: It Gets Book Titles Out In Front Of Readers

Books disappear very rapidly from the public consciousness. Even award winning books. Within a month or two of the Newbery and Caldecott announcements, I see people on listservs starting to speculate about the next year's winners. This year's winner is so yesterday. It's time to go on to the next big thing.

Bloggers are the judges who make decisions about your nominations. And what do bloggers do? They blog. Unlike other book awards where decisions are made behind closed doors (not that there's anything wrong with that), the Cybils panelists and judges are allowed to talk about what they're reading. That means that nominated titles from back as far as January can get some attention again. The attention is good for the books, and it's good for you readers.

While only one book can win, there are thousands of good books out there. During Cybil Season, you'll get a chance to read about them. And one of the books you--and thousands of others--read about could be a book you nominated.

Parents And Teachers: Tell Your Students To Use E-mail

2008-10-08T18:45:00.004-04:00

Last week I received a letter by way of my publisher from a seventh grader who had written the letter in December of 2007 and mailed it in January of this year. Today I received another letter, this one from a seventh grader who had written his letter in 2005.

The lesson here is that publishers don't always foreward mail in a timely fashion. I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact. E-mail, on the other hand, is amazingly fast, as a general rule. I think it's a much better way for students to reach authors and suggest that teachers encourage their students to check to see if the authors they want to write to have websites, which often include a way to e-mail them.

Some authors (I'm thinking people like Rick Riordan, for instance) probably receive more e-mail than they can possibly respond to. But they probably also receive more traditional fan mail than they can possibly respond to, also. At the present time, I'm not one of those authors. If that changes, I'll be sure to let you know.

I suspect from things I've read that there are also authors who might get a little snitty over receiving e-mail because they don't believe it is a true correspondence. I'm not one of those authors, either.

I'll tell you what else I'm not--I'm not an author who would ever, ever not respond to a child who wrote her a well-mannered letter as both these young men did. The guy from 2005 even included a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

Yes, I will be writing back to him. I hope he'll be pleasantly surprised. Good heavens, he should be in tenth grade now.

Graphic Novel Imprint Stops Publication

2008-10-07T18:57:00.004-04:00

No sooner do I develop a new interest in graphic novels, then I learn that a graphic novel company publishing YA no less has ceased publication. Why a US alternative to manga failed in The Guardian suggests the problem was that "the quality wasn't actually very high." He singles out The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci, Minx's first novel, as an example.

The Comics Reporter has a more sophisticated account of Minx's demise. The author, Tom Spurgeon does say, "...it could simply be the books just weren't doing it for their intended audience. They were books you could convince yourself might be successful, not books that you were stunned to find out weren't." (The intended audience, by the way, was teenage girls.) But he also quotes a former inventory manager at Borders as saying the bookstores didn't shelf the books in the right place and that DC didn't ask them to. I'm not a hundred percent clear on where the right place was, though, and why a bookstore needed to be told by a publisher where to shelf books.

Link from Blog of a Bookslut.

A New Volume Of YA Short Stories

2008-10-07T18:31:00.005-04:00

In the Boston Phoenix article Ghost Writer, author Nina MacLaughlin says of Kelly Link's new YA short story collection, Pretty Monsters, "It�s amusing and perfectly captures high school, but is also smarter and funnier than any 11th-grader could articulate."

That struck me as an interesting observation. If it's smarter and funnier than eleventh graders can articulate, will they like it? Or will they be glad that the book is able to articulate the smart, funny things that they can't? I expect to read Pretty Monsters at some point, because I liked Link's earlier book of short stories Magic for Beginners. But I'm not an eleventh grader, so I don't imagine I'll be able to make a decison about the articulation question.

Pretty Monsters has received three starred reviews.

Link also has a short story in the science fiction anthology The Starry Rift.

Link from Blog of a Bookslut.

At Last It Can Be Told

2008-10-06T21:24:00.002-04:00

I'm going to be a judge again for the Cybils! I'll be a Round II judge for the graphic novel category. Graphic novels--very hip and happenin' as one of my cousins likes to say. (Of other things.)

I think I've been very plain here that I can become obsessive when I get interested in something. I've felt obsession coming on ever since Kelly asked me back in September if I'd throw my lot in with the graphic novel folks. I don't believe my work for the Cybils will actually begin until after Christmas. But this fall I plan to be reading graphic novels and reading about graphic novels to get myself prepared for the rigors of judging.

You'll be hearing more about this, believe me.

Spread The Love Around

2008-10-06T09:45:00.004-04:00

You still have nine days to nominate your favorite books of 2008 for a Cybil award, the children's and young adult bloggers' literary award.

I was just over at the nominting site to see how things are going. The Fantasy and Science Fiction category already has more nominations than we dealt with when I was on the panel during the first year. YA and middle grade fiction already have serious numbers of nominations, too.

But I'm surprised to see that Graphic Novels is a little slow collecting titles. Some of the nominations are duplicates or for books published in 2007, so ineligible this year. This is a genre that I thought had really taken off in recent years, so I expected to see a lot more nominations.

And what about Easy Readers? This is a new category for the Cybils. We need to support the Cybilistas' willingness to promote books for this age group by nominating titles.

Here's the thing about nominating books in a category that doesn't have a lot of titles--your nomination won't have a lot of competition. The chances of your title winning are better with fewer titles to compete with.

So if you've been thinking that nominating a book wasn't worth the effort because nothing you like ever wins, you need to think again. Get over to the Cybils' site and throw your favorite title in the ring.

Ethan Allen On My Mind

2008-10-05T19:40:00.005-04:00

Next month I'll be taking part in a blog tour for Susanna Reich's nonfiction book, Painting the Wild Frontier: The Art and Adventures of George Catlin. I started reading the book and was soon reminded of my favorite nineteenth century guy,Ethan Allen.

Reich reports that George Catlin's father, Putnam, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut as was Ethan Allen. (Allen would have been around twenty-five when Putnam was born.) Putnam (a significant name in Connecticut) Catlin is described as having been descended from Puritans, and there's an implication that the strict way in which he ran his family may may have been the result of Puritan influence. That he could have been influenced by Puritan thinking makes sense to me because Puritans dominated Connecticut in the sixteenth century and experienced a resurgence (the Great Awakening) in the mid-seventeenth.

The seventeenth century Puritan mindset and world figures in Ethan Allen's life story, too, though he could be described as the anti-Puritan. He rejected all things Puritan.

So, that's why I had Ethan on my mind last week. Then I found that J. L. Bell at Oz and Ends wrote a post about my book relating to Ethan Allen, The Hero of Ticonderoga. And then he wrote another.

But that's not all!

Yesterday I was visitng a family member who had recently returned from Ireland where he had been in some coastal city where...the prison ship on which Ethan Allen was held after being captured by the British during the Revolution made port!

What are the chances that Ethan Allen would come up (okay, only sort of come up as far as the George Catlin book is concerned) three times in a week? Come on! The guy's been dead nearly 220 years.

Booky Events In Southern New England This Month

2008-10-04T19:34:00.002-04:00

Some members of the Class of 2k8 will be presenting a panel discussion called Networking for Writers and Readers, or How Many People Does It Take to Get a Book Written and Sold? at Barnes & Noble Bookstores in Massachusetts and Connecticut this month. The stores involved are the B&Ns in Enfield, Connecticut (Thursday, October 16, at 4 p.m.); Holyoke, Massachusetts (Friday, October 17, at 4 p.m); and Worcester, Massachusetts (Saturday, October 18, at 2 p.m.) All events are free and open to the public. (Info by way of the NESCBWI listserv)

On Wednesday, October 22 Leonard S. Marcus will deliver a talk called Wonder in the Wake of War: The Fantasy Tradition in American Children's Literature from 4 to 5:30 in the Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Marcus is the author of Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepeneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature. It's also free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. (Info from University of Connecticut Libraries)

Facebook--Another Marketing Tool Or A Quick Way To Make A Fool Of Myself?

2008-10-02T19:44:00.004-04:00

Getting back to my day out with the writers, which I found so incredibly stimulating:

I got into a brief discussion of Facebook with a writer who had just joined a month or so back. She said she was connecting with librarians. I wondered if joining Facebook wouldn't be an easier marketing effort than, say, driving around the state to visit booksellers who might not be that eager to see me. I was concerned about having to maintain another site, since I'm already blogging nearly daily and updating a website every few months, but she said I could just flip my blog posts over there. So I thought about it.

I've had two reservations about Facebook in the past:

1. I first heard about writers joining Facebook a few years back. Some close to middle-aged women YA writers were joining Facebook to try to connect with their teen readers. I found that mildly disturbing. You know, adults going where the kids are...marketing to young souls...kids figuring out you're old enough to be their mother and telling you to get lost...

In the intervening years, adults have been moving into Facebook in significant numbers (or so I understand), so I don't feel that kind of concern anymore. As my friend said (and I call her a friend because she said that if I join Facebook I can invite her to be a friend) on Saturday, she's connecting with other adults, not kids.

2. I don't like the way any of those social networking pages look. I'm all about communication. And I want quick communication. I don't even like those high-class websites with arty intros that take a long time to load. I don't have time to sit around waiting for that garbage. I want to see author websites with a coherent homepage that tells me who the author is right away and then clearly directs me directly to specific categories of information.

I don't see that happening at the social networking sites I've visited. I find them incredibly chaotic. I want to know what authors have written, when the next book is coming out, what led them to write what they wrote, how they got where they are. I find the social network sites' user interface, as my computer guy would call it, disorderly. What does the term "Posted Items" mean? And "The Wall?" What's that supposed to be?

Forgive me for being misanthropic but, quite honestly, I don't care who their friends are!

So, as you can probably tell, the beginning of this week, I was still on the fence about joining Facebook. Then I stumbled upon Old People Facebook Disasters at Salon, and the contest was over.

I'm not saying I'll never join FaceBook. But I'm definitely not joining it right now.

Understanding The Newbery

2008-10-02T16:45:00.003-04:00

School Library Journal carries a response to Has the Newbery Lost Its Way? called The Newbery Remembers its Way, or "Gee, thanks Mr. Sachar." The point of this second article is that the Newbery is awarded for literary quality. That isn't necessarily the same as readability, though it certainly can be.

Unfortunately, a lot of people outside the library and literary world aren't aware of what the Newbery is supposed to reward. Thus the disappointment when it goes to books that are well written but not necessarily of a type that will draw in crowds of readers. (Whatever that "type" is.)

Personally, I can accept that the award is for writing and not, shall we say, the kid appeal of the content. But I think the Newberyites need to also accept that some years there's going to be a gulf between their choices and readers.

That's not a bad thing or a good thing. It's just a thing.

The original article is being discussed at one of my listservs as well as at Read Roger.

Three Robbers Nominated For A Cybil!

2008-10-01T19:40:00.002-04:00

I was getting ready to send an e-mail to a bunch of relatives to try to hit someone up to nominate A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers for a Cybil. But someone already nominated it! And on the first day! And I didn't have to ask her to do it!

Seriously, all I needed was the nomination to make me happy. I'm very low maintenance.

Newbery Winners Aren't Big Draws

2008-10-01T19:31:00.004-04:00

I've been hearing rumblings about the Newbery for years. Others are beginning to hear them, too. Has the Newbery Lost Its Way, in School Library Journal, argues that kids, librarians, and booksellers have all found recent winners disappointing.

The link comes from cynsations.

This seems like a good time to remind you that you can nominate titles for the Cybils.

Science Fiction Short Stories For YA Readers

2008-10-01T18:30:00.003-04:00

I haven't responded to any books here in a while because I've been reading The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows, a rather hefty volume of short stories edited by Jonathan Strahan. The Starry Rift is one of those themed YA anthologies that are often very uneven in the quality of its offerings. I think this one is better than average.

A couple of the stories are a little preachy. And some might not technically be YA. For instance, is a consciousness that's been alive for hundreds of years but inhabits a body that looks to be in its late teens a YA character or something else? (Infestation by Garth Nix) One story that I liked a lot, The Star Surgeon's Apprentice by Alaistair Reynolds, takes your classic tale of the cabin boy forced onto a pirate ship and moves it into space. The protagonist, though, seems as if he doesn't need to be a teenager.

One of the big pluses with this book is that the stories really are science fiction, something that I think hasn't been getting a lot of attention in young people's fiction since fantasy became king of the hill. In fact, the Nix story I mentioned in the preceding paragraph involves vampires, which usually fall into the fantasy category. But he gives them a nice science fiction twist here. Strahan's introduction provideds a history of science fiction, particularly in the twentieth century, that I think new, young science fiction readers should be able to get a lot out of.

I also like the way some of the authors took classic situations from other genres--or from the headlines--and used them in science fiction scenarios. In addition to the pirate story, we have a story here about kids thinking they've found a spy and spying on him themselves, something that might be described as a whaling story (Whales in Space!), and a tale of illegal immigrants coming from the past.

Then there was the story set in a future, high-tech India. India was ruined as a setting for me after having to read A Passage to India twice when I was in school. The Dust Assassin by Ian McDonald may have opened a new world to me.

Really, reading this book was an experience. I only skipped two stories.

For a much more serious critique of The Starry Rift, check out this post from The Inter-Galactic Playground. The post's author, Farah Mendlesohn, is the author of Rhetorics of Fantasy.

Cybil Nominations Now Open

2008-10-01T08:57:00.003-04:00

The fifteen-day nomination period for the Cybils starts today. I'll be judging one category, but the announcement hasn't been made at their site yet, so I'll just sit on that news for a bit. Sort of.

The Marketing Gamble

2008-09-30T19:50:00.004-04:00

A few of us were talking at Saturday's NESCBWI Salon about how putting together some materials to give to independent booksellers and driving around to visit them is risky and not just because many of us are writers because we aren't outgoing enough to be salespeople.

Independent booksellers are hugely important. Many of us see our books in independent bookstores far more frequently then we see them in the chains. But any marketing effort--and visiting booksellers is just one of them--is gambling with time because the time you use to market is time you could have been using to write the next book. Under the best of circumstances, it's very difficult to tell if you're getting much of a response to an individual marketing effort, so you always wonder--what is the best use of Wednesday?

Then on top of that, there's the nothing sells books business we keep hearing, which tends to make me feel that I might as well just go hiking on Wednesday.

Oh, I So Needed That

2008-09-28T19:07:00.006-04:00

What I Did:

Yesterday I attended a New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators event in Massachusetts. It was a three-hour "salon" for published writers and illustrators on the topic of working with booksellers. Three very enthusiastic, professional booksellers discussed making connections with booksellers, bookstore events, and maintaining relationships with booksellers. At the end of the presentation, I was feeling really depressed (a couple of other people I spoke to seemed to be, too) because going up to strange booksellers in their stores for a cold chat, as they all advised, is probably not one of my best skills. But then I ate lunch and felt much better, so maybe it was just low blood sugar.

Who I Saw:

Toni Buzzeo, a children's author and librarian who is active in the NESCBWI. Several years ago, I attended a workshop she conducted on author presentations in schools.

Mary Newell DePalma, who I met nearly a year ago. I had dinner with her, in fact. She was one of the artists for Robert's Snow for Cancer's Cure last year.

Melissa Stewart and I had sort of met at an earlier NESCBWI event. I asked her yesterday if she had been published at that time, and she very modestly just said, "Yes." I'll say she's been published. The books' section of her website has to be divided into categories she's published so many.

Who I Met:

Loree Griffin Burns. I sat right next to her. I said, "Gee, your name sounds so familiar." Here's why.

Terry Golson, a food writer whose first children's book, Tillie Lays an Egg, comes out next year from Scholastic. Terry had an unbound galley with her. I didn't get a chance to read the text, but the illustrations are a hoot. They're photographs of chickens posed in tableaux. Terry collected the retro items in the pictures and trained the chickens to pose among them. She has a hen cam with an international following. She says there are troops in Iraq following her hens.

Alison Morris, the children's buyer at Wellesley Booksmith and the Shelftalker. Yes, people! I met another blogger!

Carol Chittenden from Eight Cousins Bookstore. I often see her name on the Association of Booksellers for Children listserv.

I believe a good time was had by all.

One Thing Led To Another

2008-09-26T20:06:00.003-04:00

Okay, so the Sherman Alexie poem led me to About failbetter.com, which led me to Margo Rabb, who is a contributing editor there, which led me to her blog, which led me to read that...She was at Bread Loaf this summer! See the meadow at the top of this post? I was there the summer a plane had to lane there!

You know how she says she was first there when she was 22? I was there when I was nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one. At the time I was there, I, too, had fantasies about going back as a published writer.

Not anymore, though.

For years, I had real dreams, the kind you have when you're unconscious, about Bread Loaf and about going back. But, as I've probably mentioned here before, they never involved going back as a writer. In my dreams, I always wanted to get back into the network of rooms that made up the kitchen.

But we never, ever, let anyone in there who wasn't staff. The people I'd most want to be with, wouldn't have me now.

I'm speaking metaphorically, of course. The people I knew there are all off somewhere else, middle-aged or dead.

Hey, Isn't It Poetry Friday?

2008-09-26T19:54:00.003-04:00

A poem by Sherman Alexie. Notice that he has a new book of poetry coming out next year.

By way of Blog of a Bookslut.

Trying Another Field Trip

2008-09-26T19:32:00.001-04:00

You may recall that back in July I went to a sci fi conference and left after three hours because that was all the intellectual stimulation I could take. Within days of coming home, days, I'd signed up for another event. Tomorrow's the big day.

The beauty of this thing tomorrow is that it only lasts three hours. Which, you will recall from having read the preceding paragraph, may be all I can take of being with other people.

Our Anne Of Green Gables Land?

2008-09-25T19:07:00.002-04:00

Could Forks, Washington end up being America's Prince Edward Island, which is all Anne of Green Gables all the time? And I mean all the time. Seriously. I kid you not. You can't make this stuff up. I can't, anyway.

This is what the folks in Forks need to do: Create Twilight potholders, magnets, souvenir playing cards, dolls (both expensive collectibles and hot fashion-types), pencils, placemats. They need to arrange for a whole array of snack foods with Twilight packaging--popcorn, chips, gummy candies, soda, come to mind immediately. They can sell dried game--venison jerky, for instance--because that's what the Cullens eat. Though, of course, they don't eat it dried.

There's a baby in the last book! They can do Twilight bibs and diaper covers!!! Twilight board books!

Seriously, I think it's nice that this town is able to get what sounds like some much needed

Some Nonprofessional Reading

2008-09-24T19:14:00.005-04:00

I still haven't finished the most recent issue of The Horn Book. But instead of working on it last night while I was on the exercise bicyle, I picked my way through a series of articles related to the mind in the September 22nd issue of Newsweek. One of them made me worry that some readers might perceive the main character in the book I'm devoting my life to writing as very, very ill. In fact, the article supported the statement from the one professional who has read the manuscript that went something to the effect, "Why aren't her parents seeking help for her?"

So today, I went back to work on Chapter 1 (which was already in its eighth draft) to try to deal with that little matter. I got Olivia a little help. Not that she needs it. Everyone around her just thinks she does.

If I'd read The Horn Book last night, maybe I would have finished chapter four today. Would that have been a good thing?

Anything that floats through my mind while I'm working on a project could end up in it.

Another Newsweek article mentioned flow, which I've talked about here in the past. The article described flow as "concentrated attention and the absence of self-consciousness."

What is "self-consciousness?" All the games loaded on your computer? The CNN website? On-line articles about Todd Palin and the clothes worn at the Emmy Awards ceremony?

I believe I was in a flow state for about forty-five seconds this afternoon. Maybe a minute and a half. Hooray!

A Little Professional Reading

2008-09-23T19:22:00.004-04:00

I haven't finished reading the September/October issue of The Horn Book yet--I'm not even close to getting to the reviews--but I did find An Interview with Pat Scales interesting. Scales is President of ALA's Association for Library Service to Children and has a long history in library science. In addition to discussing programs she's conducted in school libraries, she talks about Accelerated Reader and the impact she thinks it's having on reading.