Blog Insecurity

Here are two blogs that look way cooler than mine: The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog and rabbit blog. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue what they're about.

In case you haven't guessed, I don't have much time to do a decent posting and haven't for more than a week. But when I get back to this I'll have news about a forum I joined, my visit to a school, and a book I'm reading.

So even though this blog doesn't look way cool, you can tell what it's about. Or you can tell what it would be about if I did a better job of maintaining it.

Another Book I Wasn't Crazy About, But Some Fun Stuff, Too

After, literally, a couple of years of anticipation, I finally read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. Of course, I wasn't all that crazy about it because I'm not that crazy about anything, as my regular readers know. (My sons would say, "What regular readers?") I wanted the book to be more about the pants! The pants were supposed to be magical! But it seemed to me they were just used as a device to hold together four different "women's stories" for girls. And I don't like women's stories because I'm a traitor to my sex.

However, this is one of those books that teens are supposed to love. Go to Favorite Teenage Angst Books to a view a wonderful thread posted by readers excited by this book. Included is a discussion of whether or not Eric and B did something. They so did!!

You can also go here to read an excerpt.

Look What I Found

I can't even remember what I was looking for this afternoon, but what I found was Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists. I liked what I saw. Right now this site is prominently displaying a review of Feed by M.T. Anderson, a book I've been wanting to read. A lisit called Coolest Classics includes three favorites from my teen years: Cheaper by the Dozen (Get this--my mother-in-law met the mother in this book at a wedding); We Have Always Lived in the Castle (I was obsessed with Shirley Jackson, the author, when I was a teenager; and The Scarlet Pimpernel (Actually, I'm embarrassed to say I think I may have been past my teen years when I read this one.)

This site looks good and has an engaging voice. It's worth checking out.

Rebecca's Birthday Present?

I read in a recent issue of Newsweek that the Miss Spider books by David Kirk have inspired a line of products that will be sold by Target. I'd never read the books, but I have a niece who will be four next month, and I wondered if she wouldn't like a book and some type of Miss Spider item to go along with it. So I made a trip to my local library. They had four of the books there, and I checked them all out.

The illustrations are very sharp and intense and a little surreal. Some of them look almost three-dimensional. I don't think it will take long for Kirk's style to become "Kirkian"--identifiable. The text is interesting because it's all in verse. Aspiring authors are always being told that editors aren't interested in verse, yet, here is a well-known writer using verse. Go figure.

My favorite of the four books I read was Miss Spider's Tea Party. It's about both alienation and counting. How cool is that? I'll check out the Miss Spider products next. At the very least I think maybe Rebecca will get Miss Spider's Tea Party and some sort of tea set. That would balance the tool kit we got her for Christmas.

Here is a neat idea for a real spider tea party.

Look! A Post Two Days in a Row!

Well, I read a book a few weeks ago. Good for me. Philosophy Rocks by Stephen Law is a discussion of philosophy written for young people. When it was originally published in England, it was called The Philosophy Files, a far better title, in my humble opinion.

Philosophy Rocks doesn't try to cover everything about philosophy. Even someone who knows as little about the subject as I do was able to figure that out. The author seems more interested in trying to give young readers an idea about what a philosophical question is and how philosophers think. Most chapters end with the question "What do you think?" I would have liked to see more answers, not because I think young people need them but because I do. But that definitely was not Law's point. His point is the process. To illustrate this process he uses kids arguing about things or aliens trying to understand what's going on on Earth. I know that that was an attempt to make the concepts discussed more interesting to the reader, but I started skipping them and cutting to the chase, which came later in the chapters. As a result, I now know something about Plato and have thought about how definitions impact philosophical questions. (Read the book.)

Though I respect what Law is doing here, I wonder if this isn't one of those kinds of books that adults think is a great idea but kids won't actually read. Like using scripture in picture books.

Law has written a follow-up book, published in England, called The Outer Limits: More Mysteries from the Philosophy Files. He has a very readable article on why philosophy should be discussed with children called Natural Born Philosophers at The Humanist website.

How Did I Do?

Remember that class I took last fall on Creative Nonfiction? Sure you do. Well, I got an A on it.

Since I still can't really define creative nonfiction for you, here are a few sites with info:

The Age of Creative Nonfiction This is an interview I found very interesting because a lot of what the interviewees had to say pertains to any kind of writing. I say the same things to young writers.

Creative Nonfiction The website for the hard copy journal of the same name.

Writing Links: Creative Nonfiction Links to sites related to creative nonfiction, of course.

Running with the Muse

I did not plan to write about cartoons, comics, and graphic novels today. I didn't actually plan to update this blog today, either. I was supposed to do it last night. However, as a result of something that happened this morning, everything has changed.

I was working on a character for the new book (the really new book--the one that hasn't been written yet, which should not be confused with the new book that is coming out in June). The character is an art teacher. I thought it would be funny to have him teach only one thing--cartoons. So I went on-line to do some research, got all kinds of ideas, and found some interesting sites that I will now share with you.

Cartoon Art Part of "Art of Illustration" at the National Library of Canada's site

Planetcartoonist

YA Talk Graphic Novels Part of the Booklist site

I think I'm going to have this character write a graphic novel, since I have a modest interest in the genre (see Nov. 13, 2002 and Jan. 6, 2003 entries).

Glad That's Behind Me

I gave The Ethan Allen Connection presentation for the first time yesterday. The audience was 160 sixth graders. That was a little older group than I usually speak to and quite a bit larger. They were so mannerly I was afraid they'd all dozed off from boredom. Usually I have kids raising their hands and wanting to ask questions or offer comments during the talk. Yesterday there was none of that. Zip. Nada.

Maybe the problem is mine. Why do I assume something is wrong if people are being polite?

The Real Story

The real story on the January 6 entry is that it wasn't the January 6 entry, it was the January 2 entry. I was talking with someone on Instant Messenger while I was writing it, I went to reduce the blog screen so I could bring up the IM screen and somehow lost the whole thing when I was halfway through. So I rewrote the entry, this time finishing it, and when I went to publish it I got a message about the action being cancelled and everything was gone again. So then I rewrote the whole thing in Word but didn't have the guts to try to cut and paste it into the weblog for 4 days. The whole series of events was rather traumatizing, which explains why it has taken me another 5 days to write anything. This is being written directly into the weblog so we'll see what happens.

I'm well on my way to having the new presentation ready for Thursday. I practiced once, the timing seemed great; I practiced a second time and the thing seemed to run 15 minutes longer. I say "seemed" because I don't actually remember when I started. I've begun writing the speech for the lunch crowd. I've decided to speak on the subject of "profanity." It could work.

I’m in Trouble Now

I received a message from the library telling me that if I don’t return The Best American Nonrequired Reading toot sweet someone there will send the book nazis after me. So I am highly motivated to write this entry.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading is an anthology of articles and stories from “magazines, newspapers, and zines that publish material either for or of interest to readers ages fifteen to twenty-five.” I think the age range is interesting since older teens, in my experience, share interests with adults, which people twenty to twenty-five are. Or should be.

Nonrequired Reading is part of a series that will be edited by Michael Cart, a well-known YA editor. I’ve heard of him, at least. Oh, okay. I’ll come clean. He wrote a very nice review of one of my books a few years ago. This first volume of the series was edited by Dave Eggars of McSweeneys website and publishing fame, and just plain fame in general.

I like the concept behind the title—that here is what we read when we don’t have to. And I liked the way pieces with unusual structure were included in the selections. There is a graphic story, two journals, and a chapter from a “parenting” book. But the line between “creative” nonfiction and fiction is very fine, sometimes, and in this book I often had trouble telling which was which. I’m sure “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good” is nonfiction. I think. But I’m not at all certain about “My Fake Job.” Some journals and anthologies have started classifying their pieces as “Essays” and “Short Stories” for the benefit of folks like me. Nonrequired Reading could have benefited from a little of that.

I also found some of the selections a little predictable. You could see that there was an adult mind working away in the background. That would explain, it seems to me, including a couple of the “arty” huh? stories we’ve come to expect from mainstream (adult) literary journals as well as traditional fiction about “my awful parent” and “my tough, professional grandma.” Some of the works here seemed to be instructional. There were two good essays about other cultures. While I actually enjoy the whole multicultural thing, I wonder if it isn’t a subject that’s been beaten to death as far as the age group this book is addressed to is concerned. Even an essay by David Sedaris (I love David Sedaris) seemed to have an improving quality that isn’t particularly representative of his work.

I think The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a great idea. I just hope volume two gets a little less adult. Perhaps Michael Cart should try finding a younger editor for the next book. I hate to say it, but perhaps Dave Eggers, being in his early thirties and all, is a little too long in the tooth to be selecting reading for fifteen to twenty-five year olds.