And What Did You Get For Mother's Day?

Okay, here I go talking about one of my kids again. I'd just like to point out that I've been keeping this blog for a couple of years, and I've only mentioned the little dears twice. Maybe three times.

The day before Mother's Day, Little Dear II, went to a used book sale, something he's very fond of doing. (In fact, this afternoon he's off to a going-out-of-business sale for a used bookstore.) Anyway, the day before Mother's Day, he buys me my Mother's Day present at this booksale. I should have been kicking his backside for waiting until the last minute, but he did buy me something cool.

What he got me was The Children's First Reader by Ellen M. Cyr. I've found very little on Cyr on-line, though she is supposed to be one of the first women involved with writing an instructional book for children, and eventually she had a line of them known as Cyr Readers. My particular book is dated 1893 and has one torn page.

I also have a reproduction set of McGuffy Readers that I received for Christmas years ago. I thought I was going to read them, but, guess what? I didn't. I'm hoping for a better fate for my new book from my son. I'm leaving it floating around the living room and sunroom hoping I'll read it.

A True Story

I make a big point of not talking about my family in this blog, but I have a story I think is so neat that I'm going to make an exception. Here it is:

I was talking to my son on the phone a few weeks ago. Sometimes we can talk on the phone for forty minutes or so. This was not one of those times. I was almost ready to sign off when I asked, "What are you reading in your lit class?" (Aside: Though I have a college age son, I, myself, am really young and cool. You will have to trust me on this one.) He says, "We just read "Feed." I say, "You mean Feed F E E D? Does it have a picture of a bald guy from the back on the cover." He said, "Yes. I have a signed copy." I said, "I can't believe it! I've wanted to read that for a couple of years, but our library doesn't have it and I'm too cheap to buy it. Did you like it?" He said, "I liked it the best of the books we've read." And I said, "You know it's YA?" And he said, "Yes." Then I said, "How did you end up with a signed copy?" And he said, "The author came to our class." And I'm screaming into the phone.

My son was home last weekend, and now I'm reading his book. I'll have more to say about this later.

Strange New World

It has been so long since I've posted that my host has totally changed its format. I have only the vaguest idea what I'm doing here folks.

The draft I was revising since the beginning of February went out in the mail last Friday. I won't go into what happens to me during the last few weeks I'm working on a revision except to say it ain't pretty. Among other things I have to finally become so focused to get it done that I just have to ignore most everything else in my life. Now I'm so far behind with my living I don't know where to begin. Plus there's all these new work projects I want to get started on.

Perhaps I should begin by cleaning my desk.

This morning I did do something new and positive. I registered this weblog with a site called Globe of Blogs, which should bring it to the attention of more readers. I am confident that something will come of it since, to my knowledge, only one person has ever read Original Content. Only one more person has to see it, and I'll have a one hundred percent increase in readership.

Another Neil Gaiman Book

I've been sick this weekend, which is why 1. I couldn't see Hellboy last night; 2. I couldn't go bicycling today; and 3. I'm back here so soon.

However, it was the kind of sickness that leaves you feeling that it's acceptable to read instead of cleaning, doing yardwork, and other weekend slave activities. So I finished reading Stardust. I thought the first two chapters were really ho-hum fantasy (little village near the land of Fairy, sometime in the past, lad of mysterious birth) and the ending was sort of flat. I prefer a big climactic scene like the ones in some other Gaiman books such as American Gods and Good Omens. However, the central material had lots of unique stuff that made me want to keep reading.

It was, though, one of those mythic journey stories about a guy finding his birth right and his beautiful maiden. While I know those have a long and honorable tradition in our culture, I do feel I've read it before.

I am still a Gaiman fan and will continue to make my way through his works as I stumble upon them here and there, now and again.

A Busy April

No more whining! I have nearly finished my scheduled school and bookstore visits. All things considered, everything went very well. I only had trouble getting to one place, a bookstore appearance, and the manager was just lovely about it. The school presentations have gone well so far, even though I had to do four different presentations in one day. By four different I do not mean that I had to do the same presentation four times. I do that all the time. No sweat. I mean that I was speaking to kids in such a wide range of grades that I had to come up with new material for some of them. Then I did an evening talk on the history behind The Hero of Ticonderoga. I've done that before, but not often so I did have to do some planning.

What I have learned this spring: A. from talking to a bookstore owner and a young woman who joined her PTA rep mom and me for dinner, it appears that teenagers do read YA. Conventional wisdom suggests that they don't, that twelve and thirteen year olds read YA and older teenagers read adult fiction or nothing at all. Which just goes to show you can't believe everything you hear. B. After reading the first few pages of Prince Whiskers (have I mentioned that here?) to two kindergarten classes I now know I need to make some changes. What's more, I know what some of those changes should be. and C. Grade school kids really aren't terribly interested in the Puritans and Enlightenment philosophy. Which is so sad, because it's fascinating!

Alex Awards

Here is something I found out about a while back and have been holding on to so I could post it here. (What an elegant lead in, huh?)

The Alex Awards are given for the 10 best adult books for young adults. That doesn't mean they were written for young adults. They are adult books that either the award committee members think young adults would like or would be suitable for them or improving in some way or something. I can't tell from the description.

I like the idea, though. And I like going through the list to see what I've read.

I have this fear that I've written about this award before, but I couldn't find a reference to it when I did a search. And, let's face it, who's going to look?

Getting Out and About

I am having the busiest school presentation season ever. I did two days at one school along with a one-shot presentation at a second school last month. And a bookstore appearance that went quite well, if I haven't mentioned it before. I have two days of work lined up for this month, one of which involves three different presentations. One of those presentations I still have to plan and the third one I've done before but not recently. And I have a store appearance this Saturday. Then today I got another request for another school for this month.

Why is all this sudden popularity a problem? Because I still haven't finished writing that book!!

Sorry About That

This is day two of We have DSL on the second best computer and I can do all kinds of things when the family is hogging the good one! I was going to do another update, but I got distracted when I read in Newsweek about these cool sites to visit. So I did that instead. I would do an update now, but I have to A. Read Virginia Wolfe's To the Lighthouse B. Watch American Idol Try to choose the correct answer.

Think Geek!

Oh, brave new world! We have DSL! It's not as fast as I'd hoped, but I'm connected all the time. And, what is better, the second best, so-called "Doom Computer" (don't ask) has been networked to the good one so we can go on-line from both of them! That means I can spend a couple of evening hours each week while other family members are hogging the good computer updating my blog, ordering things, ego surfing, and generally doing all the things I waste time doing during the day. This should change my life. I should now be able to work harder and faster and do wonderful things.

Yeah. Right.

I finished Postcards From No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers. I found the book disappointing. I loved the idea of a boy "finding" his grandfather who had died in another country during World War II. Family members meeting across generations and particularly from beyond the grave always grabs me. But I didn't really feel Jacob II found Jacob I. He found out something he did, but not the man. Was he funny? Serious? Business-like? I didn't feel any of that. The World War II part of the story seemed extremely traditional. And the modern portion of the book seemed an excuse for the author to air his views on sexuality and euthanasia. I also felt the dialogue was stilted and unrealistic.


I know. I'm a witch.

Good Times

I am still swamped with this manuscript I'm working on. Yes, I am very slow. No apologies. I have accepted this about myself.

I am doing a few other things, though. Last week I spent two days at an elementary school. Two days in a row, which was a first. Almost like working, for real. Over the course of the two days I gave presentations for every kid in the school. I also got to hang out in the cafeteria during lunch.

And then, on the following Saturday, I did a bookstore appearance in the same town--the most successful I've ever had.

Next week I'll be in another school talking about how writers use reading in their work. Which I've never done before so I'll be spending part of this weekend planning it. Yup, that's time I could have been writing in my blog.