As some of you may have read on lisayee's blog, I spent last weekend enjoying myself at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and speaking on a Tween Lit panel with Lisa and Gennifer Choldenko (of Al Capone Does My Shirts fame).

We talked about writing for kids, how kidlit has changed since our own youth, and our journeys to publication. My favorite part was our discussion of humor. Both Lisa and Gennifer are past recipients of the SCBWI's Sid Fleischman Humor Award and both are masters at the funny. I loved hearing Lisa admit that until she won the award, she hadn't really thought of her book as funny. To her it was a story of a lonely kid. Of course, that's part of what makes Millicent Min such a wonderful character. She doesn't know she's funny either.



The question was posed about why we use humor in our work and this is what I think about that:

1. Most of the time, I wasn't trying to be funny when I wrote Crooked. All I was trying to do was illustrate the difference between Zoe's hopes and her realities, and recognize the odd quirks in all of us. If people laughed when they read it, then I'm really glad about that.

2. Humor cuts through cliche. It takes the expected, turns it upside down, and shakes it till the change falls out of its pockets. It makes us see things new -- and isn't that one of the great tasks of any kind of writing?

Can I tell you the story I told at the panel? My dad was never one for dramatic displays of affection. When he got cancer and the prognosis was terminal, a good number of folks showed up at the hospital with rose bouquets and important declarations of love and appreciation. My dad wanted none of it. He cut them off mid-declaration. I have no doubt that the flower-bearers were sincere in their affection, but to my dad it felt phony -- like what you were supposed to do if someone was dying. And as such, it was more a reminder of his mortality than a celebration of his life. Most of the flower people did not stay long by his bed.

Then his business partner came into the room with an old soda bottle into which he had shoved one limp dandelion. My dad laughed until he cried. Humor cut through the cliche and the defenses and let these two men connect. I can only hope that my writing can do that half as well.

Lisa Yee lisayee and Gennifer Choldenko and I will be on a tween lit panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. The panel is at 10:30 on Sunday, at UCLA at Humanities A51. I can pretty much guarantee you that Lisa and Gennifer will be smart and funny and that I will be doing a lot of head nodding.

I have mentioned in interviews and even in this blog someplace about how the moment I start to think ABOUT my writing, it is doomed. But when I am IN it, the potential is there for honest, real work.

Some people nod and agree. Some people nod, but only because they think I'm a lunatic and don't want to anger me. Other people just shake their heads, knowing I'm a lunatic, but also knowing I am miles away in still-snowy Vermont and can't do a thing to hurt them.

For all of you, nodders and shakers alike, I will now quote the immeasurably more articulate and persuasive Madeleine L'Engle who says this in A Circle of Quiet:

"The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing. A child playing a game, building a sand castle, painting a picture, is completely in what he is doing. His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself."

BTW, those italics are hers, not mine. She goes on a bit later to say:

"When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves."

She talks for a bit about hubris and discovery and babies and writing workshops and then she says:

"A writer may be self-conscious about his work before and after but not during the writing. If I am self-conscious during the actual writing of a scene, then it ends up in the round file."

Don't I know it?

Right now I am backtracking a bit in my WIP because so much of the early drafting was done thinking ABOUT the book. Was it a book? Was there enough at stake? Was this character's motivation exactly clear? What, exactly, is this story about anyway? They are all fine questions for later. For after there is writing on the page. But for me, they can't be asked as words first meet white.

Not only are those work-specific questions damaging to my drafts, but they tend to bring with them their mud-footed cousins: Who do you think you are? Who are you trying to kid? Why don't you quit while you're ahead?

Hello, round file. How you doing?

The backtracking, though, has been good. I'm having fun again. The characters and I are playing. Don't ask what game. I don't know. I don't want to know. I just want to play. I just want to be IN.

Hey folks -- I'm working on what some might call a transitional reader, others might call a very early chapter book, and still others might call an uncategorizable bit of folly. (Pif on the last bunch, eh?)

I'm thinking of books in the 4k range, with reading levels just beyond FROG AND TOAD, but maybe beneath CLEMENTINE.

I'm especially interested in reading great stand-alones or short series (3-4 books) rather than many, many book series like Junie B. or Magic Tree House.

Books that first come to mind for me are STUART'S CAPE and STUART GOES TO SCHOOL as well as the MOKIE AND BIK books. Any of you have recommendations?

Just a quick Happy Birthday -- no foolin' -- to Kelly Fineman, rhymes with . . . um . . . lineman?

Dang.

I'm leaving the poetry to you, toots.
Happy Birthday!

Do you know about the Too Perfect theory?
It's a magician's term and the theory goes like this: Any trick that is absolutely astoundingly perfect gives itself away. Pass a cigarette slowly, carefully through a quarter and the observer can only think: Cool quarter with the hole in it. There is no room for doubt, for other possible "solutions" to the trick.

I read about the Too Perfect theory in the March 17th issue of The New Yorker in a piece by Adam Gopnik called "The Real Work: Modern Magic and the Meaning of Life" and I've been thinking about its applications to fiction writing ever since.

Gopnik explains the theory and also the two prevailing methods for dealing with a Too Perfect trick.
1. Reduce the Claim: which means "roughing up the illusion so that the spectator isn't even sure she saw one". With his cigarette trick example, this means passing the cigarette through so quickly that the viewer wonders if it might just be her own eyes deceiving her.

2. Raise the Proof: which Gopnik says is more difficult, and might, in this example, require the magician to replace the trick quarter with another -- maybe even another trick quarter that, while maybe having a hinge or some other mechanism, still doesn't explain how a cigarette might pass through it.

The point of both of these strategies, though, is to give the spectator the impression that there are a variety of ways this trick might work. Leaving enough possibility for the spectator to participate, actively, in her own deception.

How about that? Is that not what the best books do? Do they not open multiple possibilities so that even if we suspect a particular outcome to a plot, we are engaged with the novel because of what might happen? And how it might happen? And why? And we all know that novels which seem to have only one possible outcome without allowing us to imagine others are no fun at all to read.

Think about what we might call a romance novel formula -- the genre convention REQUIRES that the heroine will have a happy ending with the man of her dreams. And yet, if that was all that a romance novel did, it would be Too Perfect, too obvious, and not at all satisfying. Instead, great romance novelists reduce the claim (is he the real love interest? or is it that other guy? things started out so badly, how can they really be right for each other?) or raise the proof (turns out she really falls for him not because of his good looks, but because he runs an orphanage, or it isn't really that their first fight was about her lipstick melting on the dash, it was about this other thing -- but that really doesn't explain it either. My, aren't they complicated?*)


But there's more. Listen to the way that Gopnik expands on the Too Perfect theory:

"At the heart of the Too Perfect theory is the insight that magic works best when the illusions it creates are open-ended enough to invite the viewer into a credibly imperfect world." He relates this to other arts, including cinema special effects, and then he says: "But the Too Perfect theory has larger meanings, too. It reminds us that, whatever the context, the empathetic interchange between minds is satisfying only when it is 'dynamic,' unfinished, unresolved. Friendships, flirtations, even love affairs depend, like magic tricks, on a constant exchange of incomplete but tantalizing information. We are always reducing the claim or raising the proof."

And here's the part I really love. Substitute novel writing for romance, won't you?: "The magician teaches us that romance lies in an unstable contest of minds that leaves us knowing it's a trick, but not which one it is, and being impressed by the other person's ability to let the trickery go on."

Ain't that right? Writers and readers need each other to make the trick of a novel work. The writer must create an environment in which it is possible for the reader to suspend her disbelief and to actively engage in the fiction, specifically by attending to all the ways it is not a perfect (that is schematized, exclusively formulaic, airless, etc.) book.



*I'm still sorting out about raising the proof as regards fiction -- if you have a better understanding of this, I'll listen.

There's a whole lot of great stuff in this week's PW Children's Bookshelf So many friends with such good news. Hooray for all!!!!

It is official! A Crooked Kind of Perfect has made Vermont's children's choice list for 2008! (And look! There's Loree, too!)

2008-09 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Master List

*
Applegate, Katherine. Home of the Brave (Feiwel)
*
Avi. The Traitors' Gate (Atheneum)
*
Babbitt, Natalie. Jack Plank Tells Tales (Scholastic)
*
Barakat, Ibtisam. Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (Farrar, Straus Giroux)
*
Burns, Loree. Tracking Trash (Houghton Mifflin)
*
Clements, Andrew. No Talking (Simon & Schuster)
*
Curtis, Christopher Paul. Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic)
*
Freedman, Russell. Who Was First? Discovering the Americas (Clarion)
*
Grandits, John. Blue Lipstick (Clarion)
*
Haas, Jessie. Chase (Greenwillow)
*
Hale, Shannon. Book of a Thousand Days (Bloomsbury)
*
Hill, Kirkpatrick. Do Not Pass Go (Simon & Schuster)
*
Holm, Jennifer. Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf (Simon & Schuster)
*
Hulme & Wexler. The Seems: The Glitch in Sleep (Bloomsbury)
*
Jonell, Lynne. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat (Henry Holt)
*
Kadohata, Cynthia. Cracker! (Atheneum)
*
Kinney, Jeff. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Amulet)
*
Korman, Gordon. Schooled (Hyperion)
*
Rex, Adam. The True Meaning of Smekday (Hyperion)
*
Rumford, James. Beowulf (Houghton Mifflin)
*
Schlitz, Laura Amy. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Candlewick)
*
Schmidt, Gary. The Wednesday Wars (Clarion)
*
Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic)
*
Smith, Roland. </b>Elephant Run</b> (Hyperion)
*
Sturm & Tommaso. Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow (Hyperion)
*
Thomson, Sarah L. The Dragon's Egg (Greenwillow)
*
Urban, Linda. A Crooked Kind of Perfect (Harcourt)
*
Varon, Sara. Robot Dreams (First Second)
*
Wells, Rosemary. Red Moon at Sharpsburg (Viking)
*
White, Ruth. Way Down Deep (Farrar, Straus Giroux)

For the next year, Vermont kids will be encouraged to read at least five of these books and then vote on their favorite. Winning is, of course, an honor -- but the real excitement for me is thinking that kids all over the state will now see my book in their school and public libraries!

Having served on this committee once myself, I know what a big job it is to sort through the 300 or so best books of the year and narrow that down to your favorite thirty. Thank you, thank you DCF Committee.

One of my great heroes is Fred Rogers. He was strong enough to be quiet. He was brave enough to do what he believed in. And he found a way to use his talents to make a difference in the lives of millions of children.

This is one of my favorite Fred Rogers quotes:
"The greatest gift we can give to anyone is the gift of our honest self."

It isn't an easy gift to give, but he managed to do it every day.

Isn't it an inspiration? And isn't it great to know on those hard writing days, when we are not certain anything we are doing is right, we will have accomplished something important if we have at least shared our honest selves?

On March 20th, people all around the world will honor Fred Rogers on what would have been his 80th birthday, by wearing sweaters as he did in every episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. You can bet this Neighbor will be wearing one. Will you?

Here are some details: Won't You Be My Neighbor Days

I posted a rather incoherent response on Verla's boards today. (here it is, if you want proof) Some folks seem to be arguing that product placement* in books is a necessary evil, a result of our times, another way of making money that we all just have to accept.

I don't accept it.

Reading -- unlike watching television or a movie -- is intimate. It is a relationship. We ask readers to open their hearts and their minds to new ideas. We ask them to trust us as we take them on a journey that challenges them, that might even change who they are just a bit. We even ask them to do half of the work -- taking our prose and internalizing it enough to see and hear and feel what we can only point to with our words. For books to work, both sides need to admit some vulnerability and to engage without reservation in the creation of story. It is a betrayal to ask readers to become vulnerable in that way and then slip in an ad for Diet Pepsi. And it is especially corrupt to do this to kids.

DocStymie posted a lovely YouTube clip from Mr. Rogers on this, the Neighborhood's 40th anniversary. I don't know how to post a clip, but I ask you to do me the favor of clicking on this link: Mr. Rogers Testifies . Listen to this brave and honest man talk about programming for children -- what it can do and how it can change the world.

That is what we owe kids.




*Product placement, I should add, is not the use of brand names in a story -- but is the agreement to put such names in a story in exchange for financial renumeration or marketing support. Saying Joannie drinks a Coke is not a problem. But if Coke pays for such inclusion, that is product placement.

Well.
Now.
Is there any better way to start a Valentine's Day, but with a whole panel of smart, well-read, thoughtful people showering the love on your book? I don't think there is.

Thank you to the Cybils nominating committee and judges for honoring A Crooked Kind of Perfect with the Cybils Award for Middle Grade novels. I don't know how you were able to choose any one book, frankly. Some of my very favorite books of the year were on that finalist list and I'd have had an awful time choosing just one of them.

I'm particularly flattered because the folks on this committee are such stellar examples of what an advocate for kidlit should be. They know kids. They read books. They talk about books in ways that are both learned and accessible. Here's a big candy heart back at you, Cybils People. Thank you for all that you do for kids and books!

1. I'm almost finished with the Australian edits for Crooked (which will be called Kind of Perfect when it is released by ABC Books). I still have a little seasonal adjusting to do. Those of you who have read the book may remember that Zoe's mom is surprised that her peers don't wear socks in March when there is still snow on the ground. Well, there is no snow on the ground in March in Australia. In fact, there is almost never snow on the ground in Australia. And the school year is structured differently, too. The changes won't be major, but I do need to attend to them if Australian kids are actually to believe that Zoe wants someday to play the Sydney Opera House.

2. We are out of places to put the snow we shovel off the patio and steps. The banks we have made shoveling are too high to reach. And more snow is on the way.

3. My daughter, Six, informed me this morning that on Tet (the Vietnamese New Year which her school will celebrate today) one must not sweep the floors as it also sweeps away the year's good luck. And I was just about to break out the Swiffer, too . . .

4. I am so relieved that Ricky is no longer on Project Runway. I'm all for expressing emotion, but if I had to watch him cry one more time I was gonna have to bust through my TV and smack him with one of his awful hats.

5. I love the people at Bank Street College of Education. Not only did their 5th & 6th graders honor Crooked with a Mock Newbery mention*, but this month the Bank Street College of Education Book Committee selected Crooked as the Read Aloud of the Month. Look.


*I thought I had mentioned that Mock Newbery here, but I guess I haven't. SO, the kids gave the award to Adam Rex's hilarious The True Meaning of Smekday and Crooked took an honor, as did This is Just to Say and Book of a Thousand Days. The honor was exactly that, of course, but the best part was reading what the kids had to say about the book. My favorite comments:
"the characters were three dimensional, funny and interesting"
"not a word was wasted, the ideas were grown up"
"you got to know the characters by what they said to each other"
"This book was funny, sad, and real"
"I play piano and I could really relate to her. Feelings were described well"

First of all -- are those some sophisticated readers or what?
Second -- does it get any better than this? I don't think so.

Hand selling is one of the great joys of bookselling. You know how it feels when you introduce your best pal to that really great guy and you just KNOW they're going to hit it off and hitch and have 2.5 kids and that one of those kids is going to be named after you? That's what it feels like to put a book you adore in the hands of the exact right customer.

I had some favorite books to hand customers back when I was in the biz. No academic left the store without a copy of Richard Russo's Straight Man. Liked Plainsong? I made sure you took a look at Wendell Berry's A Place on Earth. Like funny? Sure, sure, Sedaris, but have you tried Ian Frazier's Coyote v. Acme?

And customers left happy -- excited to have a secret treasure in their shopping bags.

So, of course, reading The Cuffie's list and seeing that my book was one of those treasures this year was a really great thing.

Want to know more about handselling? Check out Sarah Miller's blog or read Alison Morris' ShelfTalker blog for Publisher's Weekly. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm now in love with Alison for all that she did for my book this year. Here's her post all about that: Oh, The Power of the Handsell

Leave it to The Longstockings to post this before I saw it with my own eyes. The Cuffies are out -- Publisher's Weekly's Children's Book Awards as determined by "Off the Cuff" responses from Children's Booksellers. I'm a-cutting and a-pasting here, folks, but not before I let out a tremendous THANK YOU for both the Promising New Author and Favorite Handsell nods. (Particularly the Handsell. . . more on that tomorrow.)

Favorite Picture Book of the Year
Toy Boat by Randall de Sève, illustrated by Loren Long (“a beautiful and timeless new classic”)

Favorite Middle Grade Novel
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (“it made me laugh, made me cry, and begs to be read aloud”)

Favorite YA Novel
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Most Unusual Picture Book of the Year
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (“it’s very sophisticated, but almost entirely visual”)

Best Book Title
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Honorable mention: I’d Really Like to Eat a Child; Do Unto Otters

Most Memorable Character in a Lead Role
Kek in Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (“he has such an unusual voice, and its cadence stays with you”)

Best Sequel
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (“no contest!”)
Honorable mentions: Knuffle Bunny Too by Mo Willems;
Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy by Jane O’Connor, illus. by Robin Preiss Glasser;
The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan (“hooray for Percy Jackson! he’s the new Harry!”)

Favorite Book Jacket
How to Paint the Portrait of a Bird by Jacques Prévert, illus. by Mordicai Gerstein

Funniest Book (tie)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (“good slice of middle-school life”);
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Most Promising New Author (tie)
Linda Urban;
Jeff Kinney

Most Promising New Illustrator
Kevin Sherry, illustrator of I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean! (“so bold, so simple, and so funny”)

Favorite Series
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
Honorable mentions: The Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer; Harry Potter

Best Nonfiction Treatment of a Subject
The Wall by Peter Sís

Most Innovative/Unique Book (tie)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick ('different, imaginative and stunning”);
Gallop! by Rufus Butler Seder

Favorite Book to Handsell
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Honorable mentions: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (“it’s so great to convince both teenagers and their parents to read it!”)

Best Novel for Young Readers That Adults Would Love If They Knew About It (tie)
The Wednesday Wars (“every child of the ’60s would love this book”);
Spud by John van de Ruit

Hottest Selling Book to Go Out of Stock
Gallop!
Honorable mentions: Diary of a Wimpy Kid;
The Arrival,
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Book We Could Have Sold More of with a Better Jacket
The Wednesday Wars;
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (“I couldn’t get customers past it, no matter how much I enthused”)

Oddest Request by a Customer
“A customer brought the Fancy Nancy standee to the desk and said she was offended by the explicit nature of the drawing.”

Most Unusual Complaint
“These books are printed in China. Can’t you get them printed in the U.S.?”

Funniest Thing a Kid Said in Your Store
“A child said to a staff member, 'Do you live here?’ ”
“Our storytime reader greeted the children with 'Does anyone want to come and listen to some stories?’ and a four-year-old boy replied, 'Yes. I watch too much TV.’ ”

Thank you Huntsville Times, for this article about great books for kids that grown-ups will love. Among the books included in the piece are Deb Wiles's Each Little Bird That Sings, Christopher Paul Curtis's Bucking the Sarge, and A Crooked Kind of Perfect. (Hooray!)

I've given my husband Wednesday Wars to read, but he hasn't yet. He did, however, find A Single Shard in my library bag a few years back and was bowled over. Even though I write nothing like the amazing Linda Sue Park, the fact that what I was trying to write was in the same category of fiction as A Single Shard gave me cred. I've recommended Cynthia Rylant's Missing May before and have twice handed Sarah Pennypacker's Stuart's Cape to mopey adults. I've given grown-ups Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius as a gift, and Linda Smith & Marla Frazee's Mrs. Biddlebox, too.

I'm curious -- do you ever recommend kids books to grown-ups? Which ones?

CONGRATULATIONS TRACIE!!!!!!

And to all of the winners. What an exciting morning!
(Is there anything more wonderful than hearing a bunch of people cheering books? I don't think so.)

My theme for 2008

When I was trying to figure out just what I'd put on my website, I talked to my smart friend Marla Frazee. I was blabbing about all that marketing stuff: who is the intended audience, what do I want it to do, etc. Marla listened patiently (as Marla always does) but when I started saying things like: "I guess I'm supposed to have x, y, and z, but I . . . " she stopped me cold.

"Never let 'supposed to' be your guide," she said.

Supposed To.
Those words.
Not in the sense of Destined To or Called To or anything so noble, but Supposed To as in what you think is expected of you. (And it is that think part that is so insidious.)

How often have I forced myself to do something that wasn't in my heart, just because I thought I was supposed to do it? How often have I shut down an idea or a story because it wasn't coming out the way it was supposed to? Ugh. Supposed To. Such an ill-fitting shoe.

So this year I am determined to listen more closely to my own heart, to follow my own path, to write what I am Destined To write, what I am Called To say. I will kick off those Supposed To shoes. I will slide around in sock-feet all winter and dance barefoot in the grass come spring.

The Cybils Middle Grade finalists have been posted: here

Take a look at the list of nominating committee members -- some great readers, those. Thank you all for considering Crooked and for placing it among the finalists.
What an amazing way to start off the New Year!

HOORAY!
I am so pleased that this list is finally online: The New York Public Library's 100 Best Books for Reading and Sharing. I am thrilled to see A Crooked Kind of Perfect on the list, along with some of my other favorites of the year, including Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary, Mokie and Bik, Elijah of Buxton, The Wednesday Wars, and Nothing But Trouble.

Thank you NYPL librarians!

Also: You have got to see this video posted over at ProfessorNana's place: This girl ROCKS! Zoe would be in awe.