My Fame Spreads--Just A Little

I've been mentioned in another blog! This is the second time this has happened. Check out the May 29th entry in Kids Lit. I feel so in the loop.

I mentioned Kids Lit a while back when I did my search for weblogs dealing with children's literature. (And then, I'm embarrassed to say, I forgot about it.) I really do feel that weblogs are significant. Weblogs dealing with specific subjects are ways for others to stay abreast of what's going on in their field. I've been going to some literary weblogs daily and have felt a loss because they didn't deal with children's literature. I mean there's just a limit to how long I can maintain an interest in that guy who popped the literary critic in the face while they were both in a restaurant.

Kids Lit is kept up to date, and I'm going to be visiting it regularly. I'm guessing you'll be hearing about Kids Lit here again.

The Soul of a Blogger

You know you've gone over the edge with blogging when you surf other blogs and post snide comments about them. Actually, I'm not being snide. I'm being sympathetic about this. I would be really embarrassed if this happened here. Actually, it may have for all I know.

By "this" I refer to a site called bookmunch making an embarrassing error in a title. It did a review of How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague and spelled Jane's name Yolden.

How would I feel if some blogger picked up on my spelling error? Actually, if any other blogger noticed me at all, I'd probably be delighted.

And if you think I'm being familiar by referring to Ms. Yolen as Jane, well, I've almost met her. I've heard her speak at conferences twice, and at one of them I asked her a question. Which she answered. We interacted. She can call me Gail, if she'd like.

I Wouldn't Dare Do This

I keep reading about authors running contests to help promote new books.  I wouldn't dare.  What if you give a contest and nobody comes? Aren't there enough ways for me to be humiliated in this life?  I do not see any reason why I should go out looking for trouble.
 

What's Happenin' With Gail This Week
Her manuscript came back from the editor.  I'm going to need to do a fourth draft, but it doesn't look like too rough a job.  Today went okay. 
 
But guess what?  You know how I started cleaning my desk after I finished the third draft?  Well, I never finished!
 

Why Doesn't This Kind of Thing Ever Happen With Kidlit Writers?
The literature weblogs have all been abuzz with this story about an author who walked up to a reviewer in a restaurant and popped him in the mouth.  If only a children's writer would do this kind of thing so I could write about it.
 
After a couple of years of blogging I am finally doing a multiple topic post.  I am so into this.  And wouldn't you know it?  Blogger seems to have changed all its stuff again.  Can't wait to see how this looks when published.
 

 

And the Award for Best Book About Boogers Goes To...

Marvin Redpost: Why Pick on Me? by Louis Sachar!

If you're a regular reader (yeah, right), you know I've just discovered Sachar's Marvin Redpost series. I've only read two of these books for younger readers, but they were terrific. This guy takes offbeat, yet realistic, things that happen to kids and creates books around them.

I am absolutely in awe of what he did with the subject of boogers in this book.

Yep, classy books like The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (see yesterday's post) don't make that big an impression on me. But give me a book about boogers...

Another Series of Improbable Events

The second book I started reading on my trip (and had to finish after I got home) was The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E. L. Konigsburg. Konigsburg has won the Newbery Medal twice, for From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler , which I remember liking when I read it years ago, and The View From Saturday. I liked that book, too, though I found it very adult oriented.

But what about 19 Schuyler Place? you may ask. Well. Well. Well, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place starts out with one of those wise- beyond-their-years narrators. Adults (myself included)love wise-beyond-their-years narrators, mainly, I think, because we meet so few wise-beyond-their-years kids in real life. So I liked Margaret Rose. But then the mean girls at camp entered the story. And the eccentric uncles. And the big bad lawyers who were going to destroy the uncles' backyard. It just seemed as if I'd read it all before. Then Margaret Rose does all these improbable things to save the day. And more unlikely things happen, too. I just didn't buy it.

There was also lots of talk about art and literature. I have nothing against art and literature talk in kids' books. Really. I'm all for it, in fact. Can't have too much of it. It just seemed so educational here. Not that I'm against education, either. But in a work of fiction, the educational stuff isn't supposed to sound educational.

I liked Margaret Rose, and I would have liked to have read a story about her having a crush on the camp handyman. That was a situation that seemed filled with possibilities but it wasn't pursued all that much.

This is a companion book to Silent to the Bone, which I haven't read. But I will.

My Travel Reading

In twelve plus hours of travel I only read one and a half books. How lame is that?

The one I finished in the car was Target by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, which has been named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. A best book for 2004, by the way, which means I met my goal of reading something very currant.

Well, Target is sort of a Speak for guys. It's about a teenage boy dealing with the aftermath of having been raped by two strange men who attacked him on the street. He's devastated by the experience, of course, and is consumed with anxiety because he's afraid that somehow he did something that made him a "target." On top of that, he was so stunned by what was happening to him that he didn't put up a fight at the time of the attack, even though he was a big kid. This leads the investigating cop and the reporter who covers the story to suggest that he didn't really object or was having some kind of conflict with a male lover. (He was seriously beaten, by the way.) The emergency room doctor is repulsed by what happened to him and his parents are ashamed. He can barely speak or eat, and is clearly wasting away.

This is an interesting setup. However, a series of improbable events leads to the conclusion. He changes schools and happens to meet a wiseguy African American kid who takes an interest in him as well as an overweight girl and a gay boy. The connections just don't seem very likely.

Plus, this is the 21st Century. It seems unlikely that so many of the adults who should have been helping him--police, doctor, parents--would have such unenlightened attitudes. One or two, maybe. But everyone? Having the adults shunning their responsibilities toward the main character makes it possible for the kids in his life to take over, of course. Still, it seems like an artificial situation.

Grady, the main character, is suffering horribly and readers ought to feel for him. But it's hard to believe that someone in such bad shape would be ignored by all the seemingly decent, middle class adults around him.

Target is a readable but not believable book for older teen readers.

My Plans for the Immediate Future

Meaning the next few days. Tomorrow I leave for a three-day trip, the first and last day of which will involve six hours in a car. Though I will get stuck doing my share of the driving, that will leave me with some chunks of time for reading. So in my quest to keep up with what's going on in the kidlit world, I made a trip to the library Saturday and picked up a bunch of books from the YA section with "New" labels on them. They had to say "New" with a date sometime in 2004. Sometimes libraries will trick you by putting a new label on and leaving it on long, long past the time anyone would have considered the book new. I am on to them.

So I already have a stack of books out in the car, a few of which I hope to polish off while I'm riding in the car with nothing to do but listen to the AM radio station one of the other drivers is...sadly...devoted to.

Reading in the car is a big, exciting deal for me because up until maybe five or six years ago I couldn't read in a moving vehicle. Yup. Travel sickness. Then, on a long trip, perhaps along the whole east coast, maybe just to Virginia, I don't know, I "trained" myself to read. The trick, I've learned, is to try not to read while the car is speeding up or slowing down. I'm passing that on.

I try not to be bitter about all the years of reading time that were lost while I couldn't read in a car without wanting to toss my cookies.

How I Spent My Holiday Weekend

Well, I didn't see any fireworks but I did see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And I actually liked it. Can you believe it? Because I really didn't care for the first movie at all.

The Prisoner of Azkaban happens to be my favorite of the Potter books because I really liked Sirius. (Imagine how I feel about the most recent one--Order of the This or That). Even so, not being a Potter uber-fan I couldn't remember every detail. This actually added to my viewing pleasure because there were surprises for me. For instance, I'd forgotten all the messing around with time at the end. I enjoyed that part of the movie quite a bit.

I saw two good previews, too. One was for The Polar Express, a classy-looking animated version of the picture book. The other was for A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I thought also looked good.

Speaking of the Lemony one, I've been told that there is a baby on my street whose pediatrician's daughter is married to the one and only Lemony Snicket. It's almost as if...it's almost as if I have a connection to him, isn't it?

Keeping Up on What's Happening

As I said in yesterday's post, I see no reason in the world why older books shouldn't be discussed in the media. However, I do worry that I, myself, don't keep up to date the way I should. I mean, I ought to more than that there's a new Harry Potter book in the works and that the title has been released, right?

So to help me keep up on what's happening, last month I subscribed to teenreads.com's and kidsreads.com's newsletters. These are both sites I've linked to many times over the years. I'm hoping that having them nudge me each month with something in my e-mail will keep me au courant. (Sure hope I spelled that right.)

Anyway, teenreads.com reports that Janet Tashjian has a sequel to The Gospel According to Larry called Vote for Larry. Now, I wasn't a wild fan of the first Larry book. I found it a little preachy (mmm, maybe a lot preachy) even though I very much liked the anti-consumer sermon. However, I am very much in the minority. The Gospel According to Larry was well-reviewed and I'm aware that it was popular with a lot of teen readers. And since they are the people the book was written for, their opinion should count more than mine.

So Vote for Larry should be worth a look. Even I will look at it.

Perhaps Someone Should Try This in Other Cities?

I was ego-surfing this spring (something I don't do all that often because, really, I don't find that much about me) when I stumbled upon a review of one of my books in a publication called YoungSaintLouis.com.This is a 'zine that describes itself as a local newspaper for kids between the ages of 8 and 13 living in the St. Louis area and a tool adults can use to help kids become better readers. In addition to news articles on kids in the area, it has book and movie reviews, games, and articles on things to do in St. Louis. For adults it has lesson plans around the articles in the current issue, which I thought was interesting.

As a writer, I found the book reviews interesting, too, because the staff members don't limit themselves to new releases. This month's issue includes a review of A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck, which has been out for a few years. But it's a very decent book (yes, I actually liked it) and why shouldn't it be brought to the attention of people who've never heard of it or may have missed it when it was fresh off the press?

There's lots of talk among book people about the short window of opportunity for selling new books. We're talking months, here. I think that's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People in the book business believe they have only a few months to bring a book to the publics' attention so that's what they do--spend a few months on a book and move on to something else. But publications like YoungSaintLouis.com can keep titles out in front of the public indefinitely. So long as journalists read something and want to write about it, they can.