The Fabby Fab Fab Georgia Nicolson

I should be totally bummed today because tonight is the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though it has been pretty lousy all year as anyone will tell you. However, I went to the library today and what should I see on the shelf but Knocked Out by me Nunga-Nungas by Louise Rennison! I love Georgia! She is every mother's nightmare, but what a great character. Who cares what happens to Buffy? (Personally, I think she is going to die. Again. Which will be okay because she likes being dead.)

Georgia has her own Web site! Go there! Immediately!

I love Georgia so much that I am not even jealous of her creator, Louise Rennison, who is "an internationally best-selling author" while even the people at the bridal shower I went to on Sunday one town over didn't know who I was.

Just Checking In

It's been more than two weeks since I've updated this weblog, and I don't have time to do much today. I just wanted to let all my legions of readers (I know one person read this thing because she e-mailed me) know that I have not abandoned the site.

So today I am linking you to a Teen Ink article, written by a teen, about Martial Arts because, well, I study tae kwon do. However, I wasn't wasting time surfing the net for my own personal interests instead of doing a real update for this weblog. No, I was looking for a way to describe a dobak, the traditional white tae kwon do uniform (Oh. Look. I just described it.) to use in Happy Kids!

Great Lois Lowry Article

The Boston Globe recently ran a great article on Lois Lowry. Lowry's most famous work may be The Giver, though it is not her only Newbery winner, and she is the author of a well-known humor series. The Giver is one of my favorites, though I will admit to not understanding the ending. That may be a big part of why it's one of my favorites.

One of the things Lowry talks about in this article is how children speak to her about publishing--how they can get their stories published, how they can get an agent. Lowry says, ''I tell them what they don't want to hear: They shouldn't even be thinking about that. If they want to be writers, they should be practicing writing; they should be reading writing;" To which I say, "Thank God. I thought I was the only person who felt that way."

Over and over again I'm hearing talk about "publishing" in grade schools. Sometimes they're talking about school papers, school literary magazines and literary boards, sometimes they're talking about "books" the kids make in class, sometimes they're talking about publishing in some kind of forum outside the school. Getting "published" seems more important than learning to write, learning to be open-minded about what's going on around you so you'll recognize writing subjects, and accepting that at the age of 8, 10, 14, 18, and, let's face it, 20 and up, you still have lots and lots to learn.

But don't take my word for it. Lois Lowry is a two time Newbery winner. Check out what she has to say about it.

Friday Night at the Movies

I saw a really good movie this weekend, Holes. I actually liked it better than the book by Louis Sachar . Sachar also wrote the screenplay for the movie. Personally, I think he did a better job of integrating the historical material with the present-day story in the movie then in the book. You absolutely do not need to be a child to enjoy this movie. I brought an adult with me who had never read the book. He loved the movie.

The History of YA Literature

I have actually read the latest issue of The Horn Book. It includes an interesting article entitled The Outsiders, Fat Freddy, and Me by Patty Campbell, a former YA librarian who speaks on YA literature. Her article describes how the YA field took off in the 1970s and the sense people working in YA lit at that time felt of being on the cutting edge, of doing something subversive and dangerous. At that time YA lit was not kids' stuff. They were definitely talking about readers in their later teens.

I found this fascinating because so many adults--at least the ones I know--feel just the opposite about YA fiction. They view it as a lame genre, written by second-rate people who aren't capable of writing for adults. In my experience the people who feel this way haven't actually read much YA lit, if they've read any at all. In fact, I feel pretty safe saying that most adults don't have a clue about YA maturity of content or sophistication of writing styles.

Campbell's article is worth looking up if you want to know more about the YA field.

Time Stops for No One

I just finished a clever book entitled (ta-da!) Time Stops for No Mouse. The book has so much to recommend it--a clever and satirical plot dealing with the beauty industry, something I don't usually associate with YA books, great names for characters, and lots of colorful clothes. Michael Hoeye, the author, has created a detailed and believable world filled with unusual yet believable characters. And an ending that surprised me, yet seemed to fall into place perfectly. Everything about it was wonderful, except...

...the characters were all some kind of rodent! It's not that I dislike rodents, because I don't. I've just never been able to get into the whole animals as people thing. I could easily forget these characters were animals, but then I couldn't.

Nonetheless, this book will delight those who like animals who talk like humans and take tea and at least be of interest to the rest of us. Particularly since it has a unique publishing history. Time Stops for No Mouse was originally published in 2000 by the author himself through his own publishing company. Through his own clever marketing (speaking as one who is not a clever marketer) he brought the book to the attention of many independent books sellers in the northwest. It was eventually picked up by Putnam, which published a second book The Sands of Time.

In order to understand the clever titles, you'll have to read the books.

More on Pages

I wrote the equivalent of four or five sentences, thus finishing a chapter in the new book so I'm feeling all smug and writery. I'm also feeling in the mood to blog.

I'm also going to wring another post out of the March/April issue of Pages. (See April 2 post.) Catherine Seipp writes a column called My View for Pages. (I believe she used to write for Salon.com, my favorite Internet site before I became addicted to Readerville). Anyway, Seipp's My View column this issue was all about...weblogs and all the information they generate. She listed a number of weblogs. I, of course, have to visit websites when I see them in hardcopy articles so I went to a bunch of these. Most of them seemed to be political in nature, and definitely of a ranting sort. If I didn't promise I would never write about politics when I started this blog, I should have. (Oops. Is being anti-politics in a column dedicated to kidlit a political stand?)

Anyway, Seipp, who does not even have a weblog, gets invited to weblog parties. Do I, a webloggerista, ever get invited to such gatherings? No. Never. Perhaps that's because here in the Land of the Bland I am the only person I know who has one. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a weblog party. In addition, Seipp says that many of the blogs she mentioned get thousands of hits. A day or a week, I can't remember. I can't tell you how many I get since I've always been afraid to attach a counter to my website. I'm guessing maybe I'll get a thousand hits in a lifetime. We're talking vanity press here, folks.

Well, the article didn't do a lot for my self-esteem, but what does?

I'm Going Out!

I have been invited somewhere, which happens seldom enough to rate as news. I've been invited to take part in Boats, Books, and Brushes in September. Evidently there will be children's lit tents, and it's rumored that Avi will be there that weekend, too.

I'll have a half hour of time to fill, and I'll be expected to do something besides stand there and chew gum. I was watching Comedy Central the other night, and I came up with a great idea. I thought, "Hey, I could do standup at a book event! Literary standup for kids! It would be totally unique and cutting edge!"

But I changed my mind and decided to do readings.

Something New

The folks at Readervilleexposed me to a new magazine (new for me at least) called Pages, which describes itself as "The Magazine for People who Love Books." The March/April issue included an article by Carl Lennertz called "Don't Let the Kids Have All the Fun" that dealt with a parent-and-student book group run by the author's daughter's sixth grade teacher.

A school run parent-child book group. What a great idea!! I would have loved doing that when my kids were in grade school. I would love doing it with my kids at any age, in fact, but we're talking about gradeschoolers here.

Why I'm Doing a Lousy Job at Updates

I haven't been keeping up on this weblog as well as I'd like (and I should) because I've been hanging out at a message board. Readerville has dozens of forums devoted to reading and writing, including some on Young Adult books. The Young Adult Reading Group is discussing Jane Eyre this month. I'm only half finished, but it is far, far better than I remember it from my teenage reading.

I tried an on-line reading group last year, but found the people there cliquey and mostly writers only interested in discussing their own books. At Readerville you find forums for writers but also plenty just on reading. People are much more willing to accept newcomers.

My son, who belongs to a couple of these things, says I fell hard for forums. I've been going back and forth to Readerville so often during the day that it definitely has been diverting me from working. I'm trying to exert more discipline and only visit in the afternoon. One of the positive things about this place is that I'm being referred to magazines--both hard copy and on-line--that I'd never heard of. Some of them I'll be talking about here.

That's assuming I can stay away from Readerville long enough to do so.