Not Wild About Harry

Okay, I will not keep you in suspense any longer. The article I read in the November/December issue of Pages that set me off was "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste" by Ellen Kanner. And it was about Harold Bloom, who gets an enormous amount of press for an academic and literary critic who has never made a movie or dated a starlet.

I am going to be up front with the information that I have never read anything by Bloom (though I may take a stab at How to Read and Why, since I've been reading How to Read a Book for six months now and would like to have something to look forward to when I finally finish it). I've only read about him. And I do wonder if the guy doesn't spout off the way he does just to get attention. If he does, it's working. I wrote about him twice back in 2003.

Nonetheless, whenever I see him quoted, all I can think is "Who died and left you boss?"

Kanner quotes him as saying "If you've read Shakespeare and Milton and so on, then you'll be able to think, but we are no longer a nation that reads...We read Harry Potter, if you call that reading, Stephen King, if you call that reading."

To the general public, Bloom is more well-known for hating Harry Potter and Stephen King than he is for anything else he's done.

Reading is an individual, personal, and highly democratic activity. I, for one, don't appreciate Professor High and Mighty telling me what I should and should not read. I don't even like Harry Potter. This crank makes me want to go out and reread the whole series.

"The deepest motive for reading has to be the quest for wisdom," he is quoted as having said in Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?. I totally disagree. The motive for reading doesn't have to be anything. Personally, I think we read because we are all looking for a feeling of community, we want to feel connected to others, authors who share our world views or address our problems and interests in some way. Wisdom might come, but as a result of having lived through the experience of reading, not because it was spoonfed to us by the Book Police who make sure we're reading the right books.

A Break From Vacation Talk

Though I am sure everyone is sitting on pins and needles to hear what I'm going to complain about (see end of yesterday's post), I've decided to put it off until Monday because I'm tired of talking about myself.

Not really.

If you scroll down to the January 13 The Doctor Is In post at Buzz, Balls & Hype, you can read about a writing problem I suffer from. (See, I am still talking about me.) I didn't read every word of this entry, but I should.

Fortunately, I was reminded of this year's Bloggies after the nominations closed, so I don't have to worry about humiliating myself by begging people to nominate me. After Friday, January 20th we can all see if anyone we know is up for an award.

Creative Non-What?

I wasn't going to mention the whole Million Little Pieces mess because what can I possibly have to say about this that someone hasn't already said? Particularly since I haven't read the book? And what does it have to do with kidlit?

However, I saw this article on memoirs and creative non-fiction, and all of a sudden I got interested. Because I've always wondered what creative non-fiction is and how you write it. I took a graduate-level essay course. I grilled a young relative who took an undergraduate personal essay course. I've never been able to get much in the way of answers.

You may have noticed that I am sometimes sensitive about being nit-picky, wanting things defined, etc. But, people! Look what happens when terms aren't clearly defined! Everything goes to pieces. A million of them.

(Thanks to ArtsJournal.com for the link.)

And now, for the first time in perhaps 5 or 6 months, I must make an effort to clean my desk. Yes, that means that sometime next week you'll probably be reading about what I find there.

My Favorite Pages

While on vacation I managed to read the two magazines I received for Christmas. (The giftgiver wasn't cheap--I asked for them in order to try them out.) My favorite of the two was Pages. I got the November/December issue, in which I read one fascinating article after another.

For instance, the article about The Lit Blog Co-Op, which is a group of lit-bloggers that bands together to help promote four books a year that they feel aren't getting enough attention, was thought provoking. The thought it provoked in me was, "Hey, there are more and more kidlit blogs being created all the time. Maybe some of us could get together and do something like this."

Then I remembered that I don't liked maybe 75 to 80 percent of what I read, so I decided that probably wasn't one of my better ideas.

Attention, Please by Jennifer Nelson involved kids with ADD/ADHD and reading. Kids with ADD/ADHD often have trouble learning to read. They mature like any other kid and are ready to learn about more sophisticated concepts, but they can't learn about them through reading the way other kids can. The author suggested that parents continue reading to these children so that they don't fall behind in learning concepts or vocabulary just because they can't read the words themselves.

I thought that article was so good that I'm planning to make copies for a couple of relatives studying education.

Another article I liked was about The Jungle Law by Victoria Vinton, a novel about Rudyard Kipling's life while he was living in Vermont. I'm not a particular Kipling fan, but I have always been interested in what the heck he was doing in Brattleboro, which I've driven past a few hundred times.

One last article in the magazine, ticked me off the way articles about its subject always tick me off. You'll have to read tomorrow's post to hear about it.

Escaping From Ember

So here's some more about my trip:

Since I can't read and drive at the same time, I decided to bring an audio version of a kids' book so I could multi-task. I chose The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau because I've heard about it on-line, and because I probably wouldn't have read it myself because I thought it was about a dystopian fantasy world. I've already read a couple of those in the last year, and I figure that's about as much as I can take for a while.

Well, I was right. The City of Ember is about one of those societies that's controlled and no one in it knows what end is up. I find those cultures very stagnant and noncreative. Come on. In a couple of hundred years no one thought of trying to create a flashlight or a match? The best form of communication they could come up with was hiring people to run from one end of the city to the other with messages? And accepting twelve-year-old main characters required a suspension of disbelief that I wasn't entirely willing to buy into.

I did think the book was well-written, though, and DuPrau does something interesting with point-of-view. I didn't notice it until toward the end of the book. (Remember, I was listening to it, not reading it.) The book was written in the third person with the point-of-view switching between the two main characters. Every time the point-of-view switched, the author backtracked a little bit so that we saw what had been happening recently with the other character. I'm very self-conscious about point-of-view problems, and I thought that was a neat device.

The book also involves a mystery of sorts and a puzzle that these two kids have to work out. As far as that aspect of the story is concerned, it was far, far superior to, say, Chasing Vermeer, which also involved two kids who had to work out a puzzle to solve a mystery.

Nonetheless, I wasn't crazy about the book, but I wasn't the only person in the car. After the first CD, I was willing to turn it off for a while because I didn't want to force the book on the other traveler. Not to worry. He was very taken with the story, and fed CDs into the player as fast as it would take them.

Now, he's an engineer and the City of Ember involves engineering problems--a generator that keeps failing and pipes that keep springing leaks. (Not my idea of compelling subject matter, but this guy ate it up.) He's so involved with the story that he's going to look for the audio version of the sequel, The People of Sparks, for a daytrip we're taking this weekend.

My fellow traveler had a terrific insight about this book. He said, "You know, this book didn't have to be about twelve-year-olds. The main characters could just as easily have been recent college graduates instead of just getting out of (what we would call) sixth grade and that would have made the story more believable."

He was right. The book could easily have worked as an adult novel, an adult movie script.

This raises a question for me: What is a children's book? Is it merely a book with child protagonists? Does there have to be something else that makes the book a children's book?

Really, I just had an incredibly terrific trip this past weekend.

I'm Baaaack

I've returned from a great short trip, and I'm full of all kinds of book thoughts that I feel compelled to share.

First off, I visited a number of bookstores while I was in Vermont this past weekend. And I mean I truly visited them because that's the kind of thing I do while I'm on vacation. I wasn't there to make appearances.

My first stop was the Briggs Carriage Book Store in Brandon. Let me give you a little background on Brandon and myself. I almost grew up there. I actually lived in Sudbury, which is maybe 9 or 10 minutes from Brandon, from third grade until after I graduated from college. But Sudbury was so tiny that Brandon was where Sudburyites went for groceries, library books, and to attend high school. In fact, for many years Sudbury didn't maintain any kind of schools and sent its offspring to Brandon's.

Up until six or seven years ago, I was up in Brandon 3 to 5 times a year because my mother was still living there. She had moved even closer to the town. So I felt I had a relationship with the place.

The Briggs Carriage Book Store opened about 9 years ago. It's an attractive shop, and I've always liked what I've seen of it.

Okay, so I go in there last Saturday, and my husband, as he always does, goes right to the children's department to see if they have any of my books. They do. Two of my books that are now out of print, as a matter of fact. How interesting, I thought. Then I noticed that I'd signed them. This would be lovely, except...I signed them the last time I was up there for my high school reunion, four and a half years ago!!!

Do you get it? The bookstore in my own almost hometown couldn't sell my signed books in four and a half years!!!

I've got to hand it to them, though. The store used to be located on the other side of town. Bless their hearts, when the owners relocated, they brought my books with them.

Well, why was I upset about this? Only because I was so attached to my perception of how sales should go for a hometown girl. That's all about ego. I can give that up.

Yeah. Sure, I can.

So, we continued up Rte. 7 to Charlotte, hoping to stop at Flying Pig, but it was closed. Believe it or not, I tried to go there once before a few years ago, and it was closed then, too.

It is a really tiny place.

A few days later we went into Burlington, where we stopped at two lovely used bookstores, Crow Bookshop and North Country Books. (I can't believe that second place doesn't have a website.) I have a family member who loves used bookstores so I've been in more than a few, but I'm not a big fan because...well...a lot of them are, uh, kind of crowded...dusty...mildewy. But both these places were very attractive. They definitely looked as if their buyers were discerning, not bringing just anything into the shops.

We then went across the street to...Borders!...because I had a gift card I wanted to use on vacation. This time I went to the children's department to see if they had any of my books. Sure enough, they had two copies of The Hero of Ticonderoga. For the second time in my life I offered to sign stock, and for the second time the offer was accepted.

Finally, I went to Bear Pond Books in Stowe. They had two copies of Hero at the front of the store. Lo and behold, they seemed happy to have me sign them, too.

So, really, I am over that first unhappy experience with the unsold books in my hometown.

And did I spend all my time in bookstores stalking myself? No, I bought my first Terry Pratchett novel. After discussing my first foray in Discworld with another shopper in the sci-fi section at Borders, I settled upon The Color of Magic.

I also discovered Sabra Field at a gallery in Burlington and picked up a package of her notecards (utilitarian art) at Bear Pond Books.

Oh, I have so much more to talk about. But another day.

Author I've Never Heard of Starts Column I'm Going to Read

Louise Doughty, who I'm sure is a very fine writer even though I only heard of her two or three minutes ago, is starting a column called Write a Novel in a Year. She estimates it takes three years to write a novel and that the material her readers will have after following her advice for a year will be just the beginning.

Hey, I'm going to read it. I hope it's not a daily column.

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for the link.

By the way, Blog of a Bookslut is a great blog. I've never actually used the term "Bookslut" in this blog, because this blog is part of my website which is directed to readers of all ages. In the unlikely event that kids read this blog, I felt I should protect them from the word "slut." I'm not protecting anybody anymore! Oh, wait. Yes, I am. Because I'm not linking to Blog of a Bookslut. The content there is mature, and in the unlikely event that kids read this blog, they'll just have to find Bookslut on their own.

A Holiday I'd Like To Celebrate

Years back when I was a Sunday school teacher, I finally learned what Epiphany is. In the Christian calendar it's the observance of the day the Three Wise Men or Three Kings found the Christ child. In Hispanic cultures it's known as Three Kings' Day and is celebrated to a greater extent than in other parts of the world.

In my neighborhood it isn't celebrated at all. I really got into it for a while, though. One year when we were celebrating a particularly late Christmas get together with family members, I had an Epiphany tea complete with Wise Men candles and a Three King Bread. I wasn't watching the candles, they melted all over my Christmas table cloth, and burned a hole in it.

Great times, great times.

Anyway, when I saw Hurray for Three Kings' Day by Lori Marie Carlson at my local library, I had to snatch it up. I definitely was left feeling that I was right all those years ago. This is a holiday I could really enjoy.

I'm Traveling

I'm leaving tomorrow for five days. This, of course, means that I'll be able to read in the car. I should have much to report on my return.

It Wouldn't Take Much For Me To Be Overwhelmed

My fellow kidlit bloggers are full of news about more kidlit blogs and websites. Big A little a directed me to the Planet Esme Reading Room (which I don't totally understand)and I also discovered Planet Esme. From there I found Jim Trelease's website. Jim Trelease was speaking and writing about children and reading a good two decades ago.

As I've whined about before and will probably whine about again, there is now just so much about kidlit on the web. I'm thinking about dropping a couple of blogs that aren't updated very frequently from my list of daily reads. When that happens, I can add another.

"Our Dominant Culture Is Visual, Not Literary..."

In a slide-show essay on how Pixar's animated films became the best literature around, Lee Siegel Slate's art critic says that sophisticated animated films are filling a literary void. Siegel claims American novelists often write contrived stories with cartoon-like characters. Pixar's cartoon characters have more depth.

Siegel is talking about adult fiction, not kidlit. He's also talking about writers I haven't read so I can't agree or disagree with his argument. Nonetheless, as a serious reader who has many family members who have rejected the activity, I found the essay thought provoking. Are young people turning to visual "literature" because of some kind of failing in the written kind? Maybe TV isn't the bad guy in our culture's turn away from reading. Maybe it's us. Maybe we're not creating a written word that's compelling enough to keep readers.

And if you start thinking of film, which does have story lines, characters, settings, themes, etc., as a sort of literature, is the moving away from the written word to the "visual word" are a major tragedy? Maybe we're just talking about evolution.

I Almost Made It

Tomorrow night is Twelfth Night, if I've counted correctly, so I almost made it through Advent and the Christmas season without mentioning a Christmas book. However, on New Year's Day the family got into a discussion of the story line for The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg. After I checked at the library today, I discovered that the others at the table were right, and I was totally wrong in my recollection of the book. Why am I bothering to blog about my own inept memory?

Because I was recalling a totally different book, one I love and want to direct some attention to.

Santa Calls by William Joyce is not your traditional Christmas tale in which a passive child protagonist experiences the North Pole or Santa or the mysterious spirit of Christmas through the intervention of adult characters. No way, Jose. Santa Calls is a Tom Swift type adventure in which the action is initiated by a child (though we don't know that right away) and undertaken by children. Yes, Santa and his very nonstereotypical assistants are there watching over everyone. But it's a kid who comes up with the candy bomb! The kids resolve the action. The story is about the kids, not the adults.

That's what kids' books are supposed to be, by the way.

Santa Calls doesn't trot out that tired old Christmas theme about childhood being a magical time that is lost when the child grows up, either. Instead, Joyce suggests that real relationships and real happiness in this moment right now are gifts, too.

Why am I now able to recall so much about Santa Calls when just a few days ago I had it confused with The Polar Express? Because while I had to go to the library to refresh my memory on The Polar Express, I was able to just pull my copy of Santa Calls off my bookshelf. Rereading it on the Eleventh Day of Christmas was a real treat.

I Still Don't Have a Chance of Getting My Own Stamp

According to Book Kitten, we can soon buy Favorite Children's Book Animal Stamps. I think Curious George should get his own plate block with stamps of him in different poses.

But I Do Have a Chance of Going to This Conference

I just received a brochure for the Perspectives in Children's Literature conference at the University of Massachusetts. If I ever get my new three calendar system going so I can figure out what I'm doing in the next few months, I'll check to see if I can go to this thing.

How I Spent New Year's Day

We did another Christmas yesterday. This involved driving to a relative's home in another state. I was able to hole up in the back seat and read a big chunk of Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers by Louise Rennison. Marvie, fab, fab!

As I started reading this book, I felt the same way I felt as I started reading the last Georgia Nicholson book. I thought that maybe Georgia's confessions and adventures had gone on a little too long and ol' Louise was going a little over the toposity in the weirdie vocabulariosity. But, after a while, I was sucked right into Georgia's world again.

I was reminded of reading Billy Shakespeare when I was in high school. I'd start reading a new play and think "Now, is this written in French or Russian?" and "What the heck is this about?" Then after a few pages, I'd get the hang of the language and could follow it just fine--so long as the info in the first few pages wasn't necessary to the play because it was pretty much lost to me.

That's how I've felt reading the last couple of Georgia Nicholson books. It takes a while to get into Georgia's mindset, but once I do, I enjoy being there very much. (Much more than I ever enjoyed a Shakespearean play, to be honest.)

I don't know if I could stand Georgia in the flesh, though. She makes me most grateful I didn't have daughters.

More Thoughts on How I Live Now

Chris Barton got in touch with me after my last posting on how i live now. To refresh everyone's memory, I liked the book very much, but felt that a relationship that young readers are said to find objectionable was unnecessary. Chris said that he was aware of the relationship before reading the book (same here) and found it a reason to dislike the main character, Daisy, who he loathed in the early chapters, anyway.

"But," Chris said, "I came around to liking her quite a bit, and I don't know that her transformation would have happened without the relationship... Entering that
relationship was the selfish, unconscionable act of a highly messed-up person...However, I bought the notion that during a war, in a war zone, the usual rules of civilization don't apply, and that the relationship was no less appropriate
than war itself."

Chris also thinks that Daisy's finding the resources to save herself and a young cousin came about because Daisy had already had this intense relationship with someone else. The deadened Daisy of the opening pages of the novel couldn't have done it.

I can't remember whether the relationship occurs before or after the war started so I can't fully buy into the "rules of civilization don't apply" argument. Certainly I agree that what was going on during the war chapters was far worse than what went on between Daisy and...well, I don't want to ruin the story for anyone.

In fact, as I'm writing this I'm wondering if that's the point. The "shocking" relationship occurs in the early part of the book and then is pretty much over. What shocked us is pretty much blown away by unrelated shocking things that happen later.

On the other hand, I'm told that people outside the U.S. don't finding the "shocking" relationship all that shocking. For them I guess it's just a romantic interlude that's sadly broken off by war.

Which leaves me wondering now, which is better? To be shocked or not to be shocked? Right now I'm thinking I might prefer the shock to just another little war romance.