Picture Book Month and NaNoWriMo

General, NaNoWriMo, Writing 0

Poor November! When people decide they should use a month to honor something, to do something, or just to get ready for December, they seem to pick November.

It’s already got that fabulous holiday Thanksgiving, and Veteran’s Day as well — almost the only holiday left that hasn’t gotten pushed to Monday, and thus the one it’s common for schools not to celebrate. My son’s school doesn’t. Instead they have this coming Monday and Tuesday off (when I will have to work) for teacher work days at the end of first quarter.

Even FlyLady, who is so wonderful about teaching you are not behind; you do not need to catch up, has you already preparing for Christmas in November.

Now, one I can really support is Picture Book Month. Their website is going to feature a post by a picture book author every day of the month — definitely worth checking out! In a related story, this manifesto written by several picture book authors is positively awesome! I would love to post a picture book review every day of November, but, alas! There are so many other things going on…

Like NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is a fabulous idea that has really taken off. It’s a challenge for writers everywhere to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. And since everyone’s doing it together, you can post your wordcount online and encourage one another.

I love the idea of NaNoWriMo. I wish someone had thought of it back before I worked full-time. I thought I’d give it a go this year. It seemed perfect, since I’m at a good place to start a new novel, and that’s one of the requirements. However, there are some problems for me.

1. I’m in this for the long haul; I want a sustainable goal.
It looks like I could get the 50,000 words written in 30 days if I were willing to spend two hours per day. I could probably spend two hours a day if I were willing to let everything else go — no blog posts, no reading, no hiking, no cleaning, no game-playing, no “fluff” whatsoever. Then when the month was over I could crash in relief and try to put my life back together. I greatly prefer the goal from the book The Weekend Novelist to write — and revise — your novel in a year. Then you’re actually done at the end of the process, not just with a big fat pile of words that needs to be pruned.

2. I’ve always preferred time goals to quantity goals.
I’ve memorized large quantities of Scripture in my life, and I fully believe that the key is that I set my goals by time not quantity. Some passages are harder to learn than others, so if you set a goal of a certain number of verses, you have no idea how long that will take, and you might have trouble meeting your goal. So with writing. The phrase “Writing is rewriting” is so old, it’s a truism. Using a word count goal doesn’t give you any credit when you cut an entire page and then write it better and shorter. I also find I write much better if I spend a little time planning — writing about my writing. But a word count goal doesn’t take that into account. For the last couple years, I’ve been semi-consistently writing at least a half-hour every day. If I don’t worry about quantity, that seems to go very well.

3. I would prefer to have the novel all done in a year than have the first draft finished in a big messy pile in a month and then be tired of it.

With these things in mind, here are my writing goals, in order of priority, for the upcoming month and onward:

1. Get enough SLEEP!

I had a stroke three months ago. And I was healing nicely when a couple of weeks ago I had a setback and was back to feeling light-headed whenever I stand or walk for more than a minute or so. The fact is, I need to get enough sleep if I’m going to function. I would really like to stop taking Sick Leave, though that may mean that some days I will have to go straight to bed after work. That has got to be my first priority, and is a big part of why I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo by the group rules.

2. Send one query per week to agents about my completed young adult novel, The Mystical Mantle.

If I get an offer for representation on this novel or any sort of request for revision, then it will be time to drop the new novel and work on getting my already-written book published. Whether it’s the middle of NaNoWriMo or not.

3. Spend at least 30 minutes per day writing the first draft of my new novel.

But this time can include planning. At this rate, I will hope to finish the first draft by February or March, but it’s fine whenever it happens. My goal will be to WRITE it. I will hope to completely finish it by the end of 2012. By that time, if I haven’t yet sold The Mystical Mantle, it will be time to market the new book.

4. Finish posting reviews of all the books I’ve read in 2011 before the end of the year.

This is one of the things I’m not willing to give up in order to blitz NaNoWriMo. I just got caught up writing the reviews, but I’m still quite a bit behind on posting them.

5. Finish posting about my vacation and other trips on my Sonderjourneys blog.

My last post was the middle of vacation, and I still haven’t blogged about the awesome wedding with ALL 12 of my brothers and sisters and me there.

So, I think I’ll still post my word count on the NaNoWriMo site, because I am starting a new first draft of a novel. But I’m not going to be daunted when November ends and I haven’t finished. Like I said, I’m in this for the long haul. I’m going to write another book. This new one will be my fourth book and my third novel, and I am determined to finish it. I am determined to cultivate a lifestyle of being a writer, not just a one-month sprinter.

Here goes! Write on!

Darkness and Oz

Classics, Commentary, General 0

There’s been another recent kerfuffle, albeit a relatively minor one, about darkness in children’s books.

What set it off was Maria Tatar’s Opinion piece in the New York Times, “No More Adventures in Wonderland.” A notable paragraph includes: “But the savagery we offer children today is more unforgiving than it once was, and the shadows are rarely banished by comic relief. Instead of stories about children who will not grow up, we have stories about children who struggle to survive.” In another section, she says, “Children today get an unprecedented dose of adult reality in their books, sometimes without the redemptive beauty, cathartic humor and healing magic of an earlier time.” Mind you, then she brings up an example that was definitely written for young adults, not children.

Her final paragraph mourns what she calls a lost tradition: “Still, it is hard not to mourn the decline of the literary tradition invented by Carroll and Barrie, for they also bridged generational divides. No other writers more fully entered the imaginative worlds of children — where danger is balanced by enchantment — and reproduced their magic on the page. In today’s stories, those safety zones are rapidly vanishing as adult anxieties edge out childhood fantasy.”

I’ve read some thoughtful responses to that piece from Monica Edinger, Nina Lindsay, and Betsy Bird, along with some insightful comments from their readers. I don’t think I have a lot to add to the discussion.

But I did read something this week that made me laugh, when juxtaposed in my mind with Maria Tatar’s article. Believe it or not, it’s the Introduction to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I was rereading this fabulous book for a meeting of the DCKidLit Book Club.

Bearing in mind Ms. Tatar’s article and that L. Frank Baum wrote this in 1900, see if you can see why this Introduction made me laugh:

Folk lore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old-time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.

— L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April, 1900

It’s funny in several ways. First, he was complaining that existing children’s literature is too dark. But also, he was saying the opposite of what people say today: That it’s “modern” to have sweetness and light in children’s books.

So perhaps critics have a point. But I’m thinking there were two camps then and there are two camps now. One camp thinks that childhood should be G-rated, and you should try to keep unpleasant things from the little dears. (I guess you can already tell which camp I’m in.) The other camp thinks that kids can handle unpleasant things, in reasonable context and as they grow.

To be honest, I love the Oz books, but they do have a sentimental, grandfatherly tone. This makes their best audience tend to be younger children, who don’t mind being talked down to. Mind you, they’re wonderful adventures. But the reader must not mind that the heroine is called a “little girl,” as in this passage: “Dorothy was an innocent, harmless little girl, who had been carried by a cyclone many miles from home; and she had never killed anything in all her life.”

I’ve been thinking about it, and Oz is a perfect family read-aloud for young children, as well as an ideal choice for early readers. The reading level is a little higher than the interest level, because as kids get older they are less taken by the grandfatherly sentimental tone. (Though if you once hook kids on the Oz stories, I’m convinced they’ll continue to gobble them up, and will take longer to outgrow them.)

Like J. K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum had an incredible imagination, and threw all kinds of bizarre countries, characters, and adventures into his books. As far as creating new, American wonder-tales, he certainly succeeded.

But how funny that he was trying to save the world from dark children’s literature of “heart-aches and nightmares”!

Actually, if everyone who finds children’s literature too dark would take his approach, I would have no complaints at all: Go out there and write something wonderful without the darkness. L. Frank Baum decided to write light-hearted wonder-tales, and did a magnificent job.

And whether or not you think L. Frank Baum was right that the tales before his time were too dark, you’ve got to admire his response. He didn’t just complain. He did something about it, and created the kind of tales he wanted to see. If today’s critics would only do the same.

Review of State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

Contemporary, Fiction Review, General, Literary, Starred Review 0

State of Wonder

by Ann Patchett

Harper, 2011. 353 pages.
Starred Review

I got to hear Ann Patchett read from this book almost a full year ago, when she spoke at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University in Fairfax, sponsored by the Fairfax Library Foundation. It’s been a long time to wait for it to come out! Though it didn’t exactly make me excited to read the book — the passage she read involved an Anaconda on a small boat in the Amazon, and it was portrayed all too vividly. But I did know from that reading that the book would be well-written, vividly described, and definitely exciting!

I was right about all of that. Her writing is so evocative. She deeply pulls you into the lives of her characters — who are definitely individuals, with very particular, very unique lives. But it doesn’t take long reading to feel like you know these people, to completely believe that their lives and complex histories are exactly as described.

The story is rather exotic, taking our character to a remote tribe in the Amazon jungle. The beginning sounds completely normal, but momentous:

“The news of Anders Eckman’s death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope. Who even knew they still made such things? This single sheet had traveled from Brazil to Minnesota to mark the passing of a man, a breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world. Mr. Fox had the letter in his hand when he came to the lab to tell Marina the news. When she saw him there at the door she smiled at him and in the light of that smile he faltered.”

Anders shared an office with Marina. They were doctors working for a pharmaceutical company. Anders had gone to Brazil to check on the progress of the elusive Dr. Swenson, developing a valuable miracle drug for their company, exploring the late-life pregnancies of a remote jungle tribe. He was supposed to hurry Dr. Swenson along and ask her to bring most of the work back to Minnesota.

But they got an aerogram that Anders died of a fever. They buried him there.

Naturally, that doesn’t satisfy anybody. So Marina goes to find out how he died and to check on the progress of the work while she’s at it. But Dr. Swenson’s work is so secret, no one even knows where she is, and the first step is to wait in a city outside the jungle until she comes in for supplies. What’s more, Marina has some baggage. Years ago, Dr. Swenson was her advisor in her medical residency. But Marina had an accident in performing a Cesarean section, and transferred out of obstetrics and gynecology to pharmacology. She, along with all the residents, idolized Dr. Swenson. But she understands that nothing but the work is important to Dr. Swenson. So she is not surprised when Dr. Swenson doesn’t even remember her.

And there’s so much more going on. I won’t tell any more, so you can enjoy discovering it all in the delightful way Ann Patchett gives it to you, as if you’re learning it from the people themselves. This book is so richly textured, with layers and layers of meaning.

The story is rather exotic, since it takes you to the Amazon. And, yes, Ann Patchett did go to the Amazon when researching this book. You can tell in details like the way an anaconda smells.

I see in my notes from her talk that she says that when writing “you have to know the characters first — like knowing people.” And her characters are indeed like real people, each with their own unique history and hang-ups and interests. You will be fascinated when these people you’ve come to know get plunged into extraordinary situations.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/state_of_wonder.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Didn’t I Say That Would Happen?

General, Library Links 0

Last week, I posted about the Digital Divide and how I think that will affect students in Fairfax County. This week, The Washington Post ran an article reporting that very thing is already happening.

Here are some pertinent paragraphs:

But questions remain about whether the least-privileged children will have equal access to required texts. Many don’t have computers at home, or reliable Internet service, and the school system is not giving a laptop or e-reader to every student.

A survey of the schools that piloted online books last year, including Glasgow, indicated that 8 percent of middle school students and 12 percent of high school students do not have a computer at home.

On a recent day at the Woodrow Wilson Library in Falls Church, she signed up for a terminal and dived into her homework — several pages of questions about the Reconstruction period after the Civil War that required visiting a particular Web site. She finished more than half of the questions before the library closed at 6 p.m.

The article links to an earlier article that expressed how difficult it was — even before textbooks were online — to get enough computer access to do homework. It frustrates me that this is the same county that drastically reduced library hours. I have no doubt that a large proportion of middle school and high school students who don’t have a computer at home also may not have a parent at home until after 6:00 — when their local library hours have been cut.

That seems to me an awful large number of students (ten percent of such a huge county is a big number) to make jump through extra hoops just to get their homework done. The article mentioned that some schools are trying to accommodate those without a computer:

At Glasgow, which is in the Alexandria portion of Fairfax County and where about 62?percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, Principal Deirdre Lavery has extended after-school computer lab hours and developed a way for students to check out laptops overnight. Other schools are making similar adjustments.

Now, for me, I’m relieved that even though he has his own computer, my son is a Senior. And AP Social Studies textbooks are not yet online. Aside from all the other issues, I don’t really want him reading from a computer screen that much more in a day. He already wears glasses.

Two thoughts spring to mind, for the whole county and the future, though:

1. It seems to me that Fairfax County decision makers need to think much harder about the kids who aren’t getting a fair shake out of this situation. You’ve just made their lives that much more difficult.

2. Please acknowledge that now the libraries in the county are more important than ever. The library hours and funding should be restored, because now more children than ever before need the library just to do their homework.

Percentiles, Gifted Education, and a Statistics Rant

General, Mathematical 0

Years ago, I taught Intro to Statistics college classes. I used to look for misuses of statistics to share with my class, and my radar is still out for them. Last night, a post on Twitter led me to a prime example in Education Week: “Early Achievers Losing Ground, Study Says.”

Here’s basically what the article says: They did a study of kids scoring in the 90th percentile or above in math or reading in third grade, then checked how many of those kids were in the 90th percentile or above in eighth grade. Then they drew some wild conclusions from the results, apparently not understanding how percentiles work.

Here are the results:
“Tracking the individual scores of nearly 82,000 students on the Measures of Academic Progress, a computerized adaptive test, the study found, for example, that of the students who scored at the 90th percentile or above in math as 3rd graders, only 57.3 percent scored as well by the time they were 8th graders. The MAP test was developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group based in Portland, Ore. As an adaptive test, its difficulty is adjusted to the student’s performance.

“Analysis of MAP scores in the study also found that of more than 43,000 6th graders who scored in the top tenth on the reading test, only 52.4 percent were scoring as well as 10th graders.”

Okay, those results are given clearly. But I claim that they by no means allow you to conclude that we are not serving gifted kids adequately.

Suppose you have a group of 100 students. At the start of a month, you test them on their basketball skills and rank them. The top ten students probably have some exposure to basketball, and there are some in the bottom ranks who have never touched a basketball before. Now give all of them a month’s intense basketball training. Is it reasonable to assume the top ten students will not change? What if some kids who never touched a basketball before end up incredibly talented? And that’s not to say the original top ten students aren’t still great at basketball or haven’t been served. It’s just that they aren’t still necessarily the ten best. If some of them went down in rank, someone else by definition moved up.

Because that’s how percentiles work.

You could use this same study to say, “Hooray! Our school system is doing great! Some kids who were not in the top tenth compared with others have now risen to that level!”

Look at this paragraph:
“‘Is helping kids at the bottom improve hurting kids at the top?’ he said, acknowledging that bringing up that point as a topic of discussion can be difficult, but arguing that it’s necessary. ‘Let’s be honest about the trade-offs. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a racist.'”

Let’s change his question slightly. “Does helping kids at the bottom get into the top ten percent mean that some of the kids who were in the top ten percent before now have a lower ranking?” Umm, yes. That’s a matter of math, not sociology.

The article actually says:

“The new study also found that while some high-achieving students faltered, other students developed into high performers as they got older, although those students were likely to have scored between the 50th and 80th percentiles in the first place. In addition, many of the initially high-achieving students whose test scores fell below the 90th percentile after a few years didn’t fall far. Many scored in the 70th percentile or higher years later.”

Did this actually surprise them? That’s the definition of percentiles. It’s just how you rank compared with the other students. If some at the top go down, that means others have gone up. In fact, maybe now EVERYONE is achieving really well. It doesn’t say anything at all about the top kids doing worse.

The following paragraph made me laugh out loud:

“The study, “Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?,” builds on a previous report from Fordham that suggests nationwide policies aimed at making schools more accountable for improving low-performing students’ achievement are hurting the brightest students. That 2008 report found that from 2000 to 2007, achievement for students who were the highest performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress was flat, while the lowest-performing students improved dramatically.”

If you’re measuring achievement by percentiles, how can you expect the scores for the highest performers to be anything but flat or dropping? What did you want? For them to reach the hundred-and-fifth percentile? Are they going to start giving extra credit on the SAT so the top scorers can improve?

Take my son as an example. When he was five years old, he learned that he could prolong bedtime indefinitely with the magic words, “Just one more math problem, Mommy, please?” I absolutely did not have the power to resist those words. So he learned to multiply before he entered first grade, and could multiply two-digit numbers in his head.

No surprise, he was tested in first grade in the 99.9th percentile in math. Other kids didn’t have such crazy parents. Now that he’s a senior in high school, if he’s not still in the 99.9th percentile in math, can I say the schools haven’t served him well? Nonsense! Other bright kids have had a chance to catch up. So he still does well, but not necessarily at the tip-tip-top. (And do standardized tests even really provide valid tests for the very top students? That’s a whole other question.) Less than the 99.9th percentile does NOT mean he’s achieving at a lower level in math than he was in first grade!

Here’s another statement made in the article that seemed a completely invalid conclusion from the study:

“NCLB’s emphasis on getting all students to reach proficiency on math and reading tests may have a negative effect on high-achieving students, he suggested, especially when combined with other policies such as those that encourage more students, regardless of their academic records, to take Advanced Placement courses. Teachers working with students with a mix of abilities, he said, may not be able to cover as much material or in as much depth as they might if a majority of students in a class are high-performing.”

Excuse me? In the first place, eighth grade scores don’t have anything at all to do with Advanced Placement courses. But let’s think about it more deeply. Couldn’t you just as well cheer that kids who were at lower percentiles are now breaking into the top?

Again, let’s look at an example. When I was in high school, many years ago, not too many students took AP Calculus. I did, and it gave me a nice big advantage on standardized tests and math competitions. Other students just as bright as me may not have had the opportunity to learn as much, so they may not have scored as well. For my sons, taking AP Calculus is much more common, so it’s not going to give them as much of an advantage. Does this mean they’re not as smart as I was? I certainly don’t think so!

With the study based on percentiles, all it’s really saying is that the group at the top has changed from third grade to eighth grade. The overall level may be much higher; we don’t know. All we know is that the ranking has changed. There are many, many factors that may have gone into this change of rankings. Maybe we’re not serving the gifted well. But maybe we’re doing a really great job with the late bloomers. There’s no way to tell by comparing percentiles. If some go up, others will go down, even if they are achieving just as well as ever.

I was ranting about this to my son, enjoying someone listening who understood what I was saying. He came up with another good example. It’s like baseball. Years ago, there were many outstanding performers who had much higher batting averages than anyone else. But over the years, everyone has gotten better, so all the batting averages are higher, and great performers don’t stand out quite as much — because the overall level has gone up. He’s currently taking AP Statistics, and he said, “The average has gone up, but the standard deviation has gotten smaller.” (That’s my boy!)

What would we conclude if the study had gone differently? What if we found that the exact same kids in the top tenth in third grade were also in the top tenth in eighth grade? That would not necessarily mean we were serving those children well. I think you could make a stronger case that we were being elitist and providing the best resources to those who bloomed early. We were deciding who was smart early and teaching them the most. It might support the idea that some kids are born “gifted,” and you can’t change that with teaching.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I believe strongly in differentiated gifted education. I think you should make advanced classes available to those who are ready for them.

I’m just saying be careful what conclusions you draw from statistics. Are they really saying what you claim they are saying? Look at the facts from several different angles.

Remember, when you’re working with rankings or percentiles, for some to go up, others absolutely must go down. Everybody can’t be above average. But the average can go up. And that is not something percentiles will ever show.

Flavor

General 1

At KidLitCon in Seattle a couple weekends ago, there was a session on reviewing critically, and lots of discussion about how a critical review is not necessarily a negative review.

But then a statement about reviewing critically on the Cybils site, and a comment about book recommendations vs. critical book reviews in an excellent wrap-up article had me feeling a little bit defensive. I do only review books I like. But I maintain that by no means disqualifies me from calling them “reviews.” Yes, I’m writing recommendations, but I try to tell the reader why I liked the book.

The word that came to mind was “flavor.” I want to give my readers enough information for them to figure out if they will like the book I’m reviewing. I want to give them the flavor of the book, so they know if that’s what they are in the mood for. This is why I so often include quotations from the books I review. Then my readers can “hear” the voice the author is using and see if it appeals to them. I want people to get a feel for the book.

As a librarian, my mantra is “every book for its reader.” I don’t like to write negative reviews, since I don’t want to imply judgment of the person who enjoys that sort of book. Now, I do think that every book I review on my site has some level of excellence. (And believe it or not, despite my volume of reviews, there are some books that I read but don’t review because I don’t really recommend them.) But I want to give you enough information about the book so you can decide if it is right for you at this particular time.

Mind you, judging for an award is quite different. I enjoy the Heavy Medal blog very much, which discusses potential Newbery books, and love debating in the comments the strengths and weaknesses of the books they mention. That’s a different kind of critical thinking. After all, choosing a book for an award requires different information and different discussion than telling a friend this is a good book and I think you might enjoy it; here’s what it’s like.

To me, it’s the difference between telling someone the flavor of a cookie or critically evaluating the skill with which the cookie was made. Both are a lot of fun, and I very much hope I’ll get to be on an award committee some day. But on this blog, I’m trying to let you know all the wonderful flavors that are out there.

2011 National Book Festival Report

Events, General 0

This year, I had to work on the Saturday of the National Book Festival, but that worked out nicely, because this year they decided to extend the Festival to Saturday and Sunday. I was happy to attend Sunday, since that was the day Gary Schmidt would be speaking, author of the book I’m rooting for to win the Newbery Medal, Okay for Now. Since events started at 1:00 on Sunday, instead of at 10:00, as on Saturday, the event ended up being less tiring for me this year. That was a good thing, since exactly two months after my stroke, I’m still not quite up to the same energy level I used to have.

So, right after church, I headed downtown. I did arrive on time for most of Susan Cooper’s speech.

Susan Cooper is the amazing author of the Dark Is Rising series and many others, like the Boggart books and a wonderful book about writing.

She talked about the magic of reading, and how a book is the ultimate door to the imagination. She talked about the magical connection that’s made between readers and writers. And she had the whole audience shut our eyes and she led us through the reading of a poem to see a unicorn. It was a lovely talk, and I was thrilled to hear her.

Next, I went to hear Terry McMillan.

She read from her work-in-progress, currently titled You’re Telling Me? It’s going to be good! I laughed in many places, but the only line I wrote down was: “You get used to men, just like you do a household pet.” (The main character’s husband has dementia.)

Then I waited in line to get two copies of Okay For Now signed by Gary Schmidt.

I had a chance to tell him a little story that a friend of mine told me: She is a girl scout leader and was discouraged about a poor kid in her troop with NO family support. She read Okay For Now right when she was most discouraged, and it reminded her that though she couldn’t change that girl’s family, she could touch that one girl’s life. (Such a great book!)

While waiting in line, I got a good view of Garrison Keillor, also signing autographs.

Then my plan was to go to the Teen tent and sit there for the rest of the afternoon. First up, I got to hear the end of Kadir Nelson’s talk.

He told the entertaining story of how he’d dress up like the historical characters he was going to paint if he couldn’t find a model. Even the women. He says, however, that those pictures have been burned.

Patricia McKissack is someone I probably wouldn’t have gone to hear if she hadn’t been in the tent where I wanted to be. But her talk was delightful! (And that’s one thing you can be pretty sure about at National Book Festival. The speakers will be good.)

She said that she writes to tell the different story. And that she’s a listener first. She gave us the background of some of her books, like The Dark Thirty, in a most entertaining way. Then she talked about writing her first science fiction trilogy by taking the news and doing some “What-Iffing.” She started with a news article about cloning bacteria that would eat oil spills and went on to think up an entire future society where human clones are created to do certain jobs. She made clone codes based on the old slave codes of the past. Don’t teach the clones to read. Don’t let the clones gather in groups of more than three or four. She made these books sound very fascinating.

Finally, it was time to hear Gary Schmidt, the author I’d particularly wanted to hear. My phone ran out of batteries just as his talk started, so I wasn’t able to Live Tweet his speech, as I had the others. However, before it ran out, I was able to connect with Sara Lewis Holmes and sit with her, which added to the fun.

Gary Schmidt was, no surprise, a wonderfully funny speaker. He told about the real things from his life that he put into his books — like having to be in Mrs. Baker’s class every Wednesday afternoon and scraping gum off desks until the principal intervened.

He said that his books answer one question: In times like these, how does a child turn his face to adulthood?

Particularly in a culture where we don’t want children to grow up?

For the humor, he takes real things, and heightens them.

For him, it’s all about voice. He has to hear who’s talking.

Why does he do it? In a world where we throw kids away, books are companions. He told a story about visiting a group of teens in a high-security prison. Books can reach kids like that. Books provide friends.

Someone asked if his faith affects his writing, and he said that it does. He believes that grace is given to everyone. That was why he gave the father at the end of Okay for Now a small moment of grace. He’s gotten all kinds of flak about that! But he believes there’s hope for everyone.

Afterward, my friend Sara talked about how Gary Schmidt’s books are like Shakespeare — they take the ordinary and make you believe in the extraordinary. She said that with both, you shouldn’t ask if this is realistic. They take you to a place where you believe the extraordinary can happen. We were talking so much, all the people clamoring around Gary Schmidt had left, so she told him about the Shakespeare Camp she’d just been to, and then I got a picture with him and Sara.

So it ended up being a lovely afternoon. I’d been feeling quite tired and fuzzy-headed in the morning, but National Book Festival perked me right up! It did help that I stayed sitting the last few hours. But it was a lovely time to stop and hear people talk about how wonderful books are.

KidLitCon 2011

Conference Corner, General 0

I spent last weekend in Seattle at KidLitCon and had a fabulous time!

KidLitCon is an annual gathering of bloggers who specialize in children’s books. I went when it was in Washington, DC in 09, and loved it. Last year, it was the same weekend as the Horn Book Colloquium at Simmons, and that was closer, so I went to Boston instead, and got to be a fangirl meeting Megan Whalen Turner. But this year, especially when I heard it would be in Seattle, I wanted to go to KidLitCon again.

What did I take away from KidLitCon?

1. Connection!

KidLitCon is the friendliest conference you could ever hope to attend. I figure it’s because almost no one who attends blogs for their job — they do this because they love it. So you’ve automatically got about a hundred people who love what you do. Definitely a bunch of kindred spirits!

This year, there was a special connection for me. You see, seven years ago, I posted a review of The Hollow Kingdom, by Clare Dunkle. Clare also lived in Germany at the time, and she got in touch with me, and we became friends. Clare was the one who put me in touch with Farida Dowler. Sure enough, our reading tastes made us friends and we became e-mail buddies. Later, when my marriage was falling apart, I needed friends to talk to about it who didn’t know my husband, so I could say all I needed to say without hurting his reputation. Farida provided a kind and helpful ear, and over the years I came to think of her as a dear friend.

So, at KidLitCon, I finally met her!

Here I am with my dear friend Farida, finally meeting in person! (And I was delighted when her round up of the conference also talked about how nice it was to meet!)

Some other lovely connection moments were meeting my roommate, Lisa Song of Reads for Keeps (we’d worked out the arrangements via e-mail, and she ended up being delightful); having a spontaneous dinner with Dorine White of The Write Path; and finishing off the conference with breakfast with Liz Burns, of A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, whom I first met at KidLitCon09, and saw again at two ALA conferences. But that doesn’t mention all the many interactions with so many wonderful and friendly people. From start to finish, KidLitCon is the perfect place to meet people who love what you love and are happy to meet you, too.

Here’s a lovely group of people I had lunch with:

Above are Lisa Song, Melissa Fox, Maureen Kearney, Liz Burns, and me.

Let me repeat that the people I met at KidLitCon (including the ones I didn’t get pictures of) are fantastic people! Passionate about books and reading and literacy and libraries, and just a wonderful community to be part of.

What else did I get out of KidLitCon?

2. Encouragement!

A lot of the panels were about doing what I believe I’m already doing: Blogging about both old and new books; writing reviews that tell why I reacted a certain way to a book; trying to do good with my blog. These panels were inspirational, and gave me additional ideas to do what I do even better. They rekindled my excitement about being a book blogger.

Chris Singer of Book Dads reminded us that the books you choose to review can make a difference.

The panel with Maureen Kearney, Melissa Fox, and Jen Robinson encouraged that blogging a variety of types of books can keep your passion alive.

The panel on Critical Reviews, with Kelly Jensen, Abby Johnson, Julia Riley, and Janssen Brandshaw, gave us some nice tools of things to look at when analyzing why a book worked or didn’t work for you.

Richard Jesse Watson talked about using your blog to play, to express yourself. He said, “Isn’t blogging like yodeling into the abyss?” He also said that play is one of the most important ways to rejuvenate your voice. He left me inspired to have fun with blogging and try new things.

3. Fascinating Information!

Friday night, we met a whole bunch of Seattle-area authors, as they got to talk for 90 seconds about their latest book. Of course my to-be-read list just got longer.

The Keynote Address by Scott Westerfeld on Saturday morning was wonderful. He talked about how he came up with the idea for the Leviathan series and how working with an illustrator changed how the story went. He talked about how technology changes our lives, but you can’t predict ahead of time how it will go. He showed some fan art and said that, thanks to fan art on the internet, we may be living in the age of the illustrated novel again. Another good quote: “In the west, we crazily think that illiteracy is related to pictures.”

In the panel “Moving Beyond Google Reader,” Jen Robinson gave some good instruction about how to set up a weekly or biweekly newsletter with your blog. Since that’s how Sonderbooks started, I definitely plan to follow her instructions to get back to that.

And the final panel, “Prejudice and Pride,” on Diversity, was simply amazing in all the good stuff that came out.

In the picture are Brent Hartinger, Sara Ryan, moderator Lee Wind, Justina Chen, and Sarah Stevenson.

Some quotables from that panel:

“What we are doing is art, not sociology.” — Brent Hartinger

“We’re writing a character, not an archetype.” — Lee Wind

“Do you have the right to write a character who isn’t you? YES!”

“This is a call for a plenitude of stories.” — Justina Chen

More than one author pointed out that the more stories there are about a group, the less tense people get. So the solution: Let more stories be told!

“You have tremendous power in what you choose to talk about.”

Also, we do need a certain distance from a topic, so sometimes people NOT in a particular group can tell a story better.

Remember: “People are not only one thing!”

So, that begins to tell you how wonderful KidLitCon was. I never would have gone if I’d realized I’d be recovering from a stroke, but I’m so glad I did! And it did not solve my problem of needing more sleep, and so getting way behind on blogging. However, it did remind me how much I love blogging and books and bloggers and book people. And it reminded me I’m doing it for fun, but I am also doing good while I’m at it.

Finally, big kudos to the organizers who put together a fabulous conference! Here are Jackie Parker of Interactive Reader and Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray:

Thank you so much, ladies, for planning a weekend I will never forget!

National Book Festival Tips

General 0

I’ve lived in Virginia for five years now, and I’ve been to the National Book Festival four times. The first two years weren’t as good an experience as the next two, so I thought I’d share some tips.

1. Purchase books you want signed ahead of time!

I just ordered two copies of Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt, one for me and one for a gift. This is what made me think of writing this post. This year, I have to work on the Saturday of the Festival (September 24), but this year they are extending the festival to two days, so I can attend on Sunday, which is when Gary Schmidt is speaking.

The reason for this tip? The tent where they sell books is a crowded, awful place. You will have a hard time looking at books and a long line to pay for them. They will be sold at full price. But if you are like me, you will see books you want and purchase them on a whim, only to discover that you can’t make it to the long line when that author is getting books signed. Much better: If you really want to get a book signed, purchase it ahead of time and bring it to the festival.

Last year, I didn’t get any books signed, and enjoyed the Festival tremendously, with more time to listen to authors. The year before, I got a book signed by Shannon Hale, and was unutterably thrilled when she knew who I was (from my website) as soon as I told her my name.

2. Plan your schedule.

The Library of Congress Festival website has the schedule of when each author will speak and when they will get books signed. Getting books signed will require waiting in line, probably starting before the scheduled time. If you just stroll around the festival, looking for what’s interesting, you’ll have trouble getting into a tent and you’ll miss out. And might get rained on.

3. Plan to get a good seat in a tent — and stay there!

Most years that I’ve gone to the National Book Festival, it’s been raining. Last year, instead it was blazing hot. Either way, you’ll be much much more comfortable in a tent. However, the tents do not have enough seats for everyone who wants to hear these incredible authors speak. So a couple years ago, when I very much wanted to hear Mo Willems speak, I planned to get in the tent to hear the speaker before him. Sure enough, you can usually find a seat up close when one speaker finishes, if you’re right there to grab a seat from departing people.

I discovered two years ago that if there are two speakers you want to hear who are speaking in the same tent, you will be treated to some fabulous speakers you might not have heard otherwise if you just STAY IN YOUR SEAT! Seats are gold — try not to leave once you snag one!

So those are my three big tips. I’ll see if I get new ones this year, when I’m only going to the half-day events on Sunday. Here is my post about National Book Festival from ’09, but it doesn’t look like I posted any last year, probably because I didn’t bring my camera and only took pictures on my phone. But I heard some great authors, just by sitting in a couple tents all day (in the blazing heat). I’ve got to share!

Here’s Rebecca Stead, not long after winning her Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me:

And here’s M. T. Anderson, talking about the Flame Pits of Delaware:

Anita Silvey, of the Children’s Book a Day Almanac and the book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book:

Katherine Paterson, our current distinguished Ambassador for Children’s Books:

Here’s Judith Viorst, the author of the classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, reading the new utterly delightful book Lulu and the Brontosaurus. (Alexander himself was in the audience!)

And finally, Jerry Pinkney, now a Caldecott Medalist. I’d discovered what a great speaker he is the year before, at the National Book Festival, and have now heard him speak three times, once receiving his well-deserved medal. I love it when he takes questions from the audience, because he does so well with the children who ask questions.

Oh, and one final tip! Last year, some local book bloggers got together and had dinner in DC after the Festival. That’s a super way to finish it off. Anyone going to the Festival on Sunday? Leave a message in the comments or contact me on Twitter at @Sonderbooks! It’s a great time to get together with other book lovers.

Ten Years of Sonderbooks!

General 0

I missed it! I was in the hospital dealing with the minor problem of a stroke, and I let my TEN year anniversary of starting Sonderbooks slide right by!

Sonderbooks was originally an e-mail newsletter. I preferred to call it an e-zine, which posted 107 “issues.” I began in August 2001, with Sonderbooks #1. I’m not sure on which day, but at the start of the month, because I posted four issues that month. At the time, I planned to make it a weekly e-zine, and planned to simply post all the books I’d read that week. Publication slowed down at times. Eventually, I tried to read a book from each category and include one Picture Book Pick and one Old Favorite in each issue.

It wasn’t long before I pursued my dream and converted it to a website. I had so much fun discussing the books I’d reviewed with library customers! I was working at Sembach Base Library in Germany, which is a small community, so I became friends with many of our customers, and posting the reviews got us talking to each other more. I loved doing it, and reviewed every book I read. I continued to post it in issues, updating the website at the same time as I sent out an e-zine with that week or month’s reviews. Here are links to all 107 issues of the e-zine.

At the end of the summer of 2006, my life was in major upheaval. My husband left me and moved to Japan. I had to leave Germany and move back to the States. My oldest son went off to college in Florida. I lost my job (because my husband’s term in Germany was up). I began graduate school in Library Science, deciding that if I had to support myself and work full-time, I’d like to do it as a librarian.

With all that going on, I got way behind in posting reviews. But then I got to take a class in Web Site Development. I decided it would be simpler to post reviews one at a time on a blog — and simply post them on the website one at a time instead of in issues. I revamped my site with a logo that my friend Deborah Gregory made for me, and started out with a new look. Here are the 1,250 reviews before the 2006 change.

Even though the blog format is perfect for reviews, I haven’t been willing to give up the main site. There you’ll see the covers of the two most recent reviews I’ve posted in each category. You’ll find links to authors’ websites and to related reviews. I also have links between all the books in each category. Each category also has a main page where I list all the books reviewed since the site revision. I may start having to separate out some categories (like Teen Fantasy), but for now I just keep adding them on.

Of course, as long as I was adding a blog, I also added a blog for Sonderquotes, quotations from books I was reading; Sonderblessings, a simple list to remind me to be thankful; and Sonderjourneys, my personal journeys and musings about life. In case you were wondering? “Sonder” is a German prefix that means “special.” (“Sander” doesn’t mean anything.) Also in case you’re wondering, as a kid I was very very tired of having my name confused with Sandra, so I was thrilled to find German words beginning with Sonder and claimed this German-English title as my own.

My biggest frustration with Sonderbooks? When I began, I was only working 20 hours per week, and I still struggled a bit to keep up with writing reviews for all the books I was reading. Now I’m working full-time, and I’m currently way behind. I know, I know — I should decide not to review some of the books I read. Honestly, if I don’t have much that’s good to say about it, I won’t review a book. However, right now I have quite a stack of books I really loved. Can I get them reviewed soon? Well, while I was out on sick leave, I did catch up and got all the library books I’ve read reviewed. So now I just need to catch up on the books I own. (Why library books first? They have a due date of course!) I’m going to try to blaze through them this weekend, but it’s probably too big a stack to actually finish. If the year ends up, and I still haven’t caught up, I will have to admit defeat.

Because at the end of each year, I love compiling a list of my favorites. There are now ten lists of Sonderbooks Stand-outs posted. Be sure to browse these favorites.

So — ten years from an e-mail newsletter to family and friends to a website and blog that gets as many as 10,000 hits per month! And I’m having so much fun doing it!

In the future, I’d like to get another list of all the reviews going, and I’d like to keep post lots more lists of Sondy’s Selections. But meanwhile, I’ll be happy if I can catch up on writing reviews! And I’m wildly looking forward to Kidlitcon11 in Seattle next weekend, where I hope to meet other like-minded bloggers. Back in ’01, I didn’t know anyone else like me, an enthusiast wanting to go on and on about books, particularly children’s books. Now the internet has acquainted me with a whole blogiverse of people like me!