I just can't take LJ anymore. It doesn't call. It doesn't write. Or, more accurately, it won't let me write! Between all the system hacks and the fact that posting something takes forever because LJ constantly decides I am not allowed to choose a text size or add an image or--gasp--make some words a different color.

So I've moved to Wordpress. I'm brand new there and have basically no idea what I'm doing! But I am posting, so there will be no interruption of service--whether that's a good or bad thing is your call:>)

And over the next month or two, I'll get the blog all set up and prettified! I hope you'll join me there and bookmark the page or add it to your blogroll or reader.

Meanwhile, if you're an LJ friend, I've set up a feed so that you can still read my posts on your Friends Page: laurasalas2. (Thank you, Jama Rattigan of Alphabet Soup, for answering my Wordpress questions and telling me how to set up this feed. Like I said, I'm clueless about lots of blog things! Jama and Susan Taylor Brown have saved me many hours with their help!)

See ya here, there, or somewhere, I hope! (Perfect example: LJ did not want to let this last line be Medium size. Why? No idea. Grrr...)

It is a well-documented fact that J. Patrick Lewis can write a poem about anything! And so today, in honor of National Chocolates Day (who knew?), our U.S. Children's Poet Laureate shares this poem about chocolate-covered ants. I was looking for a photo to put here, but then I realized I don't enjoy looking at chocolate-covered ants. So you'll just have to use your imagination!

Chocolate-Covered Ants

You start with that ant mandible—
Completely understandable—
      A chocolate jaw has never tasted sweeter.

Then bite of bit of abdomen
Before you’ve finally grabbed a min-
      i-leg, an itty-bitty centimeter.

But ants despise a holiday
That is their grand finale day
      When you become a Chocolate Anteater.

Today is the pub date of my second poetry collection with Clarion!

Happy Birthday, BookSpeak!



In BookSpeak!, 21 wild, wacky, and winsome poems showcase the magic on a single bookshelf. Characters plead for sequels, book jackets strut their stuff, and a raucous party starts when the lights go out at the bookstore!

You can watch my book trailer here. (Click on the 360 and change it to 720 to watch it in hi-def.) On my site, you can read sample poems, see some of the interior art, etc. A teaching guide will be available by next week, and more extras are planned.

And if you'd like to use this occasion as an excuse to eat a piece of cake, go for it!

I spent Friday evening and all day Saturday with 7 talented pre-published picture book writers. As the Shabo Award mentor for this year (for the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis), I chose the manuscripts and spent all day critiquing, talking, laughing, and listening. It was really a great day. As usual, I learned a lot even though I was the leader of the class. The participants brought a lot of talent, effort, and diversity of opinions and writing backgrounds. I can't wait to hear good news from each one of them regarding their publication futures!


l to r, top row: Jen, Katy, Kristin, Laura, Jennifer
l to r, bottom row: Cindy, Terri, Rachel

Thank you to Bridget Levin, who established and funds this award for the Loft; to Jerod Santek, who oversees the administration of the award and who made Friday evening and Saturday run smoothly and very tastily; and to the writers themselves: Jen Zolot, Rachel Smoka, Katy Jensen, Terri DeGezelle, Kristin Johnson, Jennifer Kirkeby, and Cindy Rogers!

Stories told in haiku often don't work for me because in needing to move the plot forward or summarize a lot of stuff in one short poem, the haiku become prose-y and very distant from the qualities I love about them--their photo-of-an-instant feeling and their imagery. But here's a haiku I love from Andrew Clements' Dogku (Atheneum, 2007).

Morning brings children.
Hugs, licks, barking, and laughing.
Warmer than sunshine.

--Andrew Clements, all rights reserved

At the back of the book, Clements explains the appeal of haiku to him, how this small form feels comfortable when you're overwhelmed with too many words and so many choices of what to do with them.

In the wide garden,
I am dizzy with flowers.
I choose a small vase.

--Andrew Clements, all rights reserved


It's a perfect day for soup (I made white chicken chili last night, in fact), so it's perfect that The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup! Have fun!

Bonny Becker's latest Mouse and Bear book, The Sniffles for Bear (Candlewick, 2011), had me laughing the other day.




The very first page clues in the careful reader to the conflict:

Bear was sick, very, very sick.
His eyes were red. His snout was red.
His throat was sore and gruffly.
In fact, Bear was quite sure no one
had ever been as sick as he.


So the problem isn't that Bear is sick, it's that Bear is just a wee bit over-dramatic about it. The sly humor throughout will have kids and adults laughing and comparing Bear to people they know. Bear's expression as Mouse tries to "help" him up the stairs is priceless (illustrations by Kady MacDonald Denton). And I think the time for this book is right this second, since at least 70% of the world seems to have a cold or allergies right now.

I know any publicity is good publicity, and I'd love my books to be on special display table at B&N, but...

After a tragic budget session yesterday, my husband and I realized we are in big trouble. Lots of causes: not sticking to our budget; a decrease in work-for-hire assignments this year; and a long series of big, unexpected expenses (in fact, I'm waiting for the plumber to arrive this morning). Anyway, the upshot is we're broke, and my writing/editing is not bringing in the money it needs to. My income is just way down this year.

So, this week, I'll be doing two main things. I'll be looking into how complicated it would be and what the tax implications would be of my selling my author copies of my various books online (something that was on my 2011 to-do list, and I'll be touching base with clients to see if they have any writing or editing assignments available. If I don't drum up some work quickly (this week), I'll try to find a holiday retail job. I'm stressed about money, and I'm not going to be able to concentrate on the writing I love if I'm worried about how we can pay our bills.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Marilyn Singer's latest free verse poetry collection, A Full Moon Is Rising (Lee & Low, 2011), is framed by a set of lovely poems about a girl watching the "Broadway Moon" from New York City. In between the opening and closing poem, customs and celebrations and dreams of the moon are brought to life in poems set across the world.

Here's one of my favorites.

Desert Moon
The Sahara, Moroccco

In this tent a boy dreams of traveling.
But it is not the familiar desert he is crossing.
It is the moon.
Astronauts less familliar with heat and dust
   have walked there.
Why not one day
   him?

--Marilyn Singer, all rights reserved

Beautiful, right?

And tomorrow is the last day for Cybils nominations! I'm embarrassed to say I haven't nominated one yet. I went early on to nominate one of several, and they were already nominated (which is great, of course). I just checked again with a list of several again, and now they've been nominated, too.

So, help me out, please? What's the children's poetry collection/anthology that should be on that nominated list but hasn't been nominated yet?

David Elzey at Fomograms has the Poetry Friday Roundup!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a reception for a poetry/photo exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Lovely poet and visual artist Georgia Greeley had paired up with photographer Anna Botz for Shared Space: An Exhibit About Neighborhood and Sharing Space in a Community. It's a terrific exhibit, full of warm photos of Anna's neighborhood in St. Paul and funny and sometimes heartbreaking poems by Georgia. The exhibit goes until January 3, 2012. If you're a Minnesotan, I hope you'll get to check it out.


Georgia and Anna

Part of the exhibit was a broadside Georgia created for one of my poems.


Here I am with the broadside of my poem behind me.



There's the broadside--isn't it lovely? Georgia created 40 prints of it, and I got four of them. It was really cool to do this, to see one of my poems treated in a different way and turned into visual art.

And at the reception, I also read a few poems from BOOKSPEAK! POEMS ABOUT BOOKS. I get really nervous reading my work, but it went well (I think).

I received the very fun news last week that one of my books, Eight Great Planets (Picture Window Books, 2010), won the 2010 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award - Children's Category.


This is one of my Science Songs books, which each cover a curriculum area via a song written to the tune of an old folk song, in this case, "Where Is Thumbkin?" Nonfiction verse brings up some interesting questions. In this case, I remember having to ask my editor what Capstone/Picture Window Books' official pronunciation of Uranus would be, since it would affect the meter and rhyme of the spread on that planet. Anyway, these books (I did 8 of them) were a blast to write, and it's wonderful to to get recognition from such a prestigious organization.

Here's my What's New page on my website for October. What's new with you?

And I'm having display issues on my laptop (or problems with my site--not sure which). Can you visit my About Me page and then tell me here if the grid looks normal/correct or if it's all messed up?

Thanks!

It's October, and you know what that means. What? You don't?

It's CYBILS time, people! Time to nominate your favorite children's/young adult books, e-books, and book apps for a CYBILS award. Go here to read about the CYBILS and nominate books (one nominee per genre, and a book can only be nominated once). You have from now until October 15, when nominations close. Goodreads is going to be so handy for me! I will look through at my 4- and 5-star books I've read this past year and get nominating today.

I'm going to be a Poetry judge, and this will be my third (non-consecutive) year of doing it. This year, I'll be a Round Two judge, which will be a new experience for me. Check out this great Poetry judges' list! Please note that Jone Rush MacCulloch is not only a Round One judge, but she is also the Poetry Overlord. Dang. I want that title:>)

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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 10/4/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 10/3/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  author photos, Add a tag

With my new book, BookSpeak!, coming out, I knew it was time to update my official author photo. The last time I put one up was just before Stampede came out in 2009. (Fiona Bayrock and I posted our thoughts on author photos then on our Bubble Stampede blog.) I hate having my picture taking. Group photos are OK. Individual photos, not so much. I look bad in most pictures.

I got out our digital camera with timer and spent a couple of hours one morning messing around with it, trying to get a decent shot. I wanted an outdoor shot, but with the camera perched on a deck post and me running around to the yard estimating where I thought I needed to be in 10 seconds...um, the results were iffy, at best. Here are some of the better fails.









I moved indoors for the shot instead!

I also went to the arboretum down the street to try to get a few pix of me with leaves. When my spring book comes out, about leaves, the publisher will have a webpage for me, and I thought it might be fun to have a leafy picture. I had seen a few cool pictures recently of faces mostly hidden by leaves and thought that might be fun to try.

Wrong again. I stalked around the arboretum like a fool, standing almost inside small trees, taking pictures of myself.





Not artsy. Just creepy and/or lame. Then, to make matters worse, I uploaded these images to Facebook last night and didn't Publish them. Just wanted to be able to copy them to use here. But I forgot to set the Album Privacy to me only. Oops.

Anyway, I did put new author photos on my site. I don't love them, but I don't hate them enough to mess with the whole thing anymore. I'm safe for another couple of years!

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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 9/30/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  poetry friday, marilyn singer, Add a tag

 

Marilyn Singer comes up with the best ideas. Hello! Reverso fairy tales in Mirror Mirror? I often read her books and think, I wish I'd thought of that.

I just read Twosomes: Love Poems from the Animal Kingdom (Alfred E. Knopf, 2011). Each poem is a piece of pun-filled perfection from one animal to its mate. And the form is...(wait for it) couplets! Of course!



Here are two of my favorites.

Elephants

I like your tusks. I like your trunk.
I like your size--you're quite a hunk.

--Marilyn Singer, all rights reserved


Pigeons

We'll spend the day wooing, dodging the cars.
We'll spend the night cooing, under the stars.

--Marilyn Singer, all rights reserved


Sara Lewis Holmes is back to her blog--yay! And she's hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup! 

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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 9/29/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  15 words or less, photopoetry, Add a tag

 




Image: Franconia Sculpture Park

Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)!

I was driving home from the Redbery Writers' Retreat Sunday afternoon and passed by what I thought was just a huge lot with some huge sculptures in it. Thought I'd check online to see if by chance there were any pictures of this place, labeled the Franconia Sculpture Park (in Franconia, Minnesota), and I was surprised to find a a great website with all sorts of information and media. This community sculpture garden is very cool--a great concept! This image makes me think of:

*  A stiltwalker who got separated from his troupe and is wandering the countryside
*  How we put our heroes on pedastals (which always causes us heartache)
*  Even the biggest, strongest fighter can be vulnerable to something as wispy and formless as fog--maybe it's biological warfare!
 
Here's my poem:

Industry

Iron boots
trample countryside

Only your
foglike love 
of wild
spaces slows
my rusty
advance

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved


What does the image make YOU think of? Write a quick 15 words or less poem and share it in the comments? Feel free to share what you like about other people's work, too!

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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 9/28/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  book trailers, bookspeak, Add a tag

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By: Laura Purdie Salas, on 9/27/2011
Blog: laurasalas (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  retreat, Add a tag