A Report on a Hissing Match with a Dead Guy

For the Love of Narnia in The Chronicle of Education is being talked about at Child_Lit today. In Love of Narnia, Michael Nelson (a poli sci professor???) responds to criticism of C.S. Lewis from Philip Pullman.

Most of the quoted complaints from Pullman I've read before, though I can't remember where. I think I must have read the original article Nelson is responding to. Reading Pullman's opinions on anything can be fun because he isn't exactly a subtle debater. You don't have to guess where he stands on any subject.

In his article, Nelson places Lewis and Pullman at opposing ends of...uh...I don't know...the spectrum of religious writers for kids? Lewis is described as an "outspoken defender of the faith," meaning Christianity. Pullman is called "avowedly atheistic." "The Christian religion," one of Pullman's main characters blandly explains," (according to Nelson) "is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."

What I find so intriguing about all this is that, as I've admitted before, I totally didn't get Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is supposed to be a Christian fable. Nor did I get the second two books in Pullman's anti-Christian His Dark Materials trilogy.

They both lost me.

I Know Some Adults Who Are Going to be Really Upset About This

Stan Berenstain, co-creator of the Berenstain Bears, has died after a long and, I hope, very happy life.

The obit carried by
The New York Times included some of the complaints made about the books over the years. As usual, I missed a lot of that stuff while I was reading them to and with my boys. We used to pick up new Bear books after long trips to the grocery store. We've got a stack of them up in our attic now.

Once upon a time, happiness was a shiny, new Berenstain Bear book. If only that were still the case.

The Consolation of Reading

The last two days haven't been stellar (though I did get an offer to speak at an AAUW luncheon), but today, when I got home from a disappointing class, I knew I had a good book to finish reading. I just sat down with A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb and read until I was done.

A Certain Slant of Light is the story of Helen, a woman in her twenties, who has been dead for over a hundred years. Though she can't recall much about her life, she knows she did something horrible.

To get away from her suffering in the afterlife, she clings to human hosts to whom she also becomes emotionally attached. She must follow them wherever they go or she'll descend back into what to her is a dark, cold hell. Though they are totally unaware of her existence, she reads over their shoulders, learns through them about life in the generations after hers is over, and hopes she can follow them into heaven when they die.

Clearly that never happens, because she's on, I believe, her fifth host, a high school teacher, when our story begins. One day she's in his classroom with him when she realizes that a boy can see her. This boy's body, it turns out, was near death when it was inhabited by a spirit like herself. Soon Helen is inhabiting the body of a teenage girl who was spiritually near death.

And so begins their intense love story as these two out-of-place souls try to deal with the families of the bodies they now are living in and the guilt they are carrying with them regarding the lives they lived before but can't quite remember.

If a writer is really good, I've realized this past year, she can compensate for slip-ups in her story. I never quite understood how James came to inhabit his body in the first place. Why weren't most of the humans in the story inhabited by the spirits of the dead? And there's some kind of evil thing that tries to take possession of bodies that I never understood, either.

But it just didn't matter. Whitcomb is able to write emotion so well that every character in the book is real. Even the fundamentalist family is saved from being a stereotype by the pain and suffering the mother experiences.

Nothing is wasted in this book. If a character is introduced, he or she has an important part to play at some point in the story.

I do wonder why the book is being marketed as YA, though. The main characters are the adult spirits in the book, not the teenage bodies they inhabit. And the guilt that has kept Helen in hell all these years involves the fear of an adult woman, not a teenage girl.

I tend to be a little jaded, of course, so I wonder if the decision to market the book as YA wasn't made because the two teenage bodies engage in a lot of sex, some of the best sex I've ever seen in a YA book. Teens like sex? Adults won't be interested in sex if the bodies involved are teenagers?

This is a great book. It should definitely become a crossover for any age group.

A New Way to Waste Time

Jane Yolen has been talking in her on-line journal about a game called
Bookworm, which she has been finding a little addicting. I was hoping for something a little more sophisticated, something that would be about books and not spelling. But spelling did keep my attention for an hour or so today. And here's a hint--you actually do have to link the letters. They have to be touching. You can't just go all over the board hitting letters in order and figure you've made a word. Come on! Don't try to tell me that no one else thought that was how you played the game.

A New Way to Make Good Use of Time

The day after Thanksgiving I thought I was going to have some time to do some reading and do some outlining/planning. Instead I ended up spending two hours putting plastic up on a relative's windows. I couldn't believe it.

The next day I went to the Laundromat with a book and a notebook and slam! bam! I sat down and ideas immediately started coming. We've been having water problems here for the last month so I've been at the Laundromat a lot. Looking back, I realize I've done a lot of good work there. One day I brought a rough draft, made all kinds of changes and wrote a new piece to go with it.

Needless to say, I love the Laundromat.

Someone is coming out next Monday to fix our water system. What will I do then? I'm thinking of just going down to the Laundromat and hanging a few times a week. They have a soda machine, and there's a Chinese takeout right next door. I could go down, do lunch, and get some work done.

Narnia in The New Yorker

About a week ago, kidlit blogs were buzzing about The Prisoner of Narnia by Adam Gopnik in the Nov. 21 issue of The New Yorker. "Buzzing" is defined here as "announcing that an article about C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was in the Nov. 21 issue of The New Yorker." Original Content will give you more. Though not much.

As it turns out, I actually have that issue of The New Yorker because I subscribed to the magazine early this year. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that I really don't care for it very much. I'm two, maybe three, issues behind in reading the things. But I made a point of keeping the Nov. 21 issue out of the heap of periodicals and catalogs in my living room and actually read the article in question.

Prisoner of Narnia includes a lot of information about Lewis's religious attitudes and how he came by them. Don't panic! This is a kidlit blog so I'm not going to go on and on about that. What really interested me about the article appeared on the very first page, anyway, though I did read the whole thing. Honest.

Gopnik starts his article by talking about how Lewis is viewed differently in America and Britain. Then he says "None of this would matter much if it weren't for Narnia. The seven tales of the English children who cross over, through a wardrobe, into a land where animals speak and lions rule, which Lewis began in the late nineteen-forties, are classics in the only sense that matters--books that are read a full generation after their author is gone."

Point One: Lewis, an academic man who wrote a number of books, is known for his children's books. His children's books have kept his name in front of readers. I am moved.

Point Two: Ever wondered what a "classic" book is? "...books that are read a full generation after their author is gone." Whether they're good, whether they're bad, people want to read them. There's a democratic, power-to-the-people aspect to that definition that I love.

Makes me wish I'd liked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a whole lot more than I did.

Not Thinking of Myself for Once

I had an interesting experience while reading Walking With the Dead by L.M. Falcone. I was actually able to stop thinking about what I like and think, for a moment, about what a kid might like.

I've been talking about doing a mummy book for some time so when I saw Walking With the Dead, which I thought involved a mummy, at a local library, I worried that someone had beat me to my story. I immediately checked it out. I was reassured when I found out that this mummy appeared to be Greek, not Egyptian, so, of course, we were talking about two totally different things. I was also reassured because I didn't care for the book much. The realistic parts of the story seemed farfetched and weak, with the characters just walking from one incident to another.

However, once the book got to the "walking with the dead" part, things became more interesting. Alex, the main character, and his cousin, end up going to the Underworld as it is portrayed in Greek mythology. This should have been the really improbable part, but I liked it much better. I don't mind improbable things when they should be improbable.

I was reading along, recognizing some figures from my youthful studies of Greek mythology, when I suddenly experienced what for me was a deep insight: If I were a youthful person who was studying Greek mythology, I might really enjoy this book. To see a modern day kid interacting with all this old stuff that I was having to learn might make it much more attractive to me.

Not that mythology is unattractive. I seem to remember liking it when I was young. However, I haven't retained all that much, so I can't vouch for Falcone's accuracy. Nonetheless, this might be a title teachers and school librarians should take a look at and have on hand for students who find the Greeks a snooze. And even those who don't.

This book was published just this year. I mention that because as a general rule I miss new titles.

Thanksgiving Reading

I often feel badly because I can't begin to keep up with reading all the new children's and YA books that are published each year. I try to bolster my self-esteem with the knowledge that because I often read older books, I'm able to give some attention here to titles that aren't getting much press any longer. Today's post is a case in point.

I'm sure everyone recalls that yesterday was Thanksgiving. While other relatives prepared the meal, I was able to hunt through my six-year-old niece's book collection. I found a couple of incredible gems that were purchased long before the little girl was born.

Zoom Away and Zoom Upstream are two beautiful picture books written by Tim Wynne-Jones and illustrated by Ken Nutt. They both involve the adventures of a cat named Zoom and a human woman named Maria. They are the second and third installments of a trilogy (my niece's family doesn't have the first book), and they both involve Zoom and Maria hunting for Zoom's uncle, a sea captain who appears to have been lost at sea. In Zoom Away they search for him in the Arctic, which can be accessed through a room upstairs in Zoom's house. In Zoom Upstream Zoom and Maria head off for Egypt, which, again, they can reach through some spot in Zoom's house. The books are marvelous stories with marvelous award-winning black and white illustrations.

The two books, which I managed to read while I should have been mingling with relatives, were published in the 1980s and early '90s and are now out of print. I've heard of Tim Wynne-Jones, a big noise out of Canada who occasionally writes articles for The Horn Book Magazine. I most definitely will be looking for his other books now.

I'm Embarrassed for an Entirely Different Reason

The Superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona wants to ban The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky because it's supposed to include a hot, steamy scene. I say "supposed to" because the guy calling for the book ban has only read one page of the book. I have read the book, but it was so long ago, and I was so underwhelmed that I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember the scene in question. (Thanks to Blog of B.S. for the link.)

I'm Watching

I have two more kidlit blogs I'll be watching in the next few months--Your Fairy Bookmother and Finding Wonderland: The Writing YA Weblog. I'm not sure exactly what Finding Wonderland is. And, yes, I eliminated another blog from my list when I added these two. There are only so many hours in the day.

It's Not All In My Head

I believe I may have mentioned here that I feel overwhelmed by the number of book awards I've been reading about the last couple of years. Though I will admit that I am easily overwhelmed, it appears that in this case, at least, I have some justification. According to Debating the Rewards of so Many Awards in the L.A. Times, literary awards just in the U.S. are up from around 20 fifty years ago to at least 1,000 today.

With that many awards, shouldn't we all get nominated for something sometime during our careers? Is it an honor to be nominated when there are so many? Does the sheer number of them undermine their value?

I agree with Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica, which was a finalist for this year's National Book Award. Forget about recognition, forget about honor, forget about feeling one with your fellow writers while you're all attending a nice reception. (All mentioned in the L.A. Times article) Book awards and book award nominations sell books. At the very least, they get your book in general interest publications so the public might see the title.

I know that sounds crass, but there are a huge number of books published these days, while the number of book reviewing spots hasn't budged. It's extremely difficult to get anyone in book publishing to pay attention to a new title. The general reader hears about only a small percentage of the books that are published each year. An award nomination gets your name in the paper, which is what the average reader reads.

An example? My local city paper rarely--rarely--publishes reviews of children's books. No book I have ever written has received any attention from that paper's book editor. However, last year I was nominated for a Connecticut Book Award and at least got a mention in the article on the nominees. Pegi Deitz Shea, who won the award for children's literature that year, actually was given a couple of paragraphs in an article a week or two later.

I know that doesn't sound like much, but in the competition for press, which is as demanding as the competition for awards, we did good.

Thanks to ArtsJournal.com for the L.A. Times link.

November Disaster

No, I'm not talking about an election. I'm talking about my National Novel Writing Month experience. I did much better last year. I hit the 50,000 word goal, though I was nowhere near finishing the novel. I worked away every day, and I was all pumped up.

I got off to a terrible start this year, unable to even start until November 3. (Can't remember why.) I've been unable to work on weekends because of all kinds of family commitments. Relatives seem to be coming out of the woodwork this month. Well, the relatives weren't to blame for that 14 mile hike I did on the Airline Trail, I suppose, but that was only one day. And then there were distressing things going on on the street and appointments and on and on and on.

Of course, I was working on essays this year instead of a novel, which probably means I wasn't doing National Novel Writing Month at all. And therefore I have nothing to feel badly about? I do feel I'm doing some good work, though I've only finished two essays with big chunks done on two more and lots of bits and pieces of others. Here is what I've discovered about essays...it's all about the title.

Part of my plan for this month was to try to improve my work habits. To that end, I reread the portions of Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity by Susan K. Perry that I had underscored when I read it the first time. (I'm not linking to Perry's website because it's too cringe worthy.) I had all kinds of great ideas last week, thought I was making real progress, was going to start writing a book a year.

Then today came. I did a little bit of backsliding. Oh, yeah.

The rest of the week is not shaping up well. I'm thinking of throwing in the towel, and if I have any extra time spending it reading. Of course, by next week I'll be so out of essay writing mode that it will take me until December to get back into it.

Next year I think I'm going to do my month-long intense writing experience during a month when there are no holidays. And I'll plan better for it, making sure that I don't make any appointments during that period. Hmmm. That could work. Maybe March or October?

Uh...Who Was Here?

The opening pages of The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman have an elegy-like quality to them that made me think "Uh-oh. I see a dead person coming." I don't think it's giving anything away to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

We've all known people who no one notices. Some of us have been those people. Shusterman plays with the idea of a person (the Schwa) who goes so unnoticed that he's nearly invisible. The situation he creates almost goes too far. In fact, for a long time as I was reading this book, I thought it was science fiction. I was hoping that the Schwa's mother, who has disappeared, had been kidnapped by aliens and that he was the product of a human and alien relationship. Nonetheless, everything about the Schwa is intriguing and workable.

I actually like the Schwa and his friend Anthony, the narrator of this book. I like building a story around people who rarely have books written about them.

My complaint...you knew it was coming, didn't you?...is that I felt there were two separate stories in this book. It reminded me of Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does My Shirts. Both books have a really interesting premise, but then the authors feel they have to add another storyline about family problems. In The Schwa Was Here, it isn't even one of the two main characters'families. The boys get involved with a stereotypical cranky old rich man (a type that goes back to Little Women, and for all I know Alcott got it from someone else) who is isolated in his house. The guy has a spunky granddaughter...who is blind. These complications really had very little to do with the Schwa. They felt like filler.

I'm a big believer in staying on task. Decide what you're going to write about and stick with it.

Read The Schwa Was Here for the Schwa and ignore Old Man Crawley and his granddaughter.