Our Enchanted Spaces course took us from London to Paris on the Eurostar train that speeds at 180 mph under the English Channel, by far the quietest mode of transportation I have ever experienced. We checked into our very French hotel, the Hotel Claude Bernard on the Rue des Ecoles, in the Latin Quarter, just beneath the Pantheon.

Mine was the room at the second floor (the lowest set of windows with balconies), at the end of the hall, just before the corner. Here is the view from my balcony.
We didn't have the ambitious day trips we had enjoyed in London. Instead we caught glimpses of various authors and their texts as we roamed the streets of Paris.

In Montmartre, we stood in front of the hotel where H. A. Rey and his wife Margret lived as they were working on the manuscript that became Curious George, then called The Adventures of Fifi. When the Reys, as Jews, had to flee Paris on bicycle to escape the occupation by the Third Reich, they had Fifi with them in their bicycle baskets. And when their German accents attracted unwelcome attention - might they be German spies? - one glimpse of Fifi/George was enough to reassure.
 We saw the clock in the Musée D'Orsay, the railway station now turned stunning Impressionist art museum, which inspired the Caldecott-winning book The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the subsequent film, Hugo, by Martin Scorsese.
One afternoon we did a self-guided walking tour of the Parisian neighborhood of Belleville, the second highest point in the city after Montmartre, to enter into the magical world of the 1956 Albert Lamorisse film The Red Balloon.

I should have brought a red balloon with me that day, but I didn't want to embarrass my students.

But perhaps they wouldn't have been embarrassed. We spent much of our time tracing the progression of Madeline and her fellow little girls, who walked all over Paris. We tried to visit the locations where "They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad." It was at the Hotel des Invalides, seeing a wounded soldier limp by, that the "twelve little girls in two straight lines" were "very sad." When we visited there, my students obliged me by letting me pose them into two groups of twelve, with appropriately very sad faces.

And here I am, standing beneath the Eiffel Tower, Madeline cover in hand. Not very very sad, but very very happy.

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Most of my friends know that of all the books ever written in the history of the world, my most beloved are the Betsy-Tacy books of Minnesota author Maud Hart Lovelace. The books take the characters of Betsy and Tacy (based on the author and her real-life best friend), from their initial meeting at Betsy's fifth birthday party through to Betsy's Wedding. Unlike many series that trace the development of a character from early childhood to adulthood, there is no falling off in appeal as Betsy ages. Fans of the ten-book series adore the grown-up Betsy books every bit as much as they enjoy little-girl Betsy, in some cases even more.

The penultimate title is Betsy and the Great World, in which Betsy spends much of a year in Europe on the eve of the First World War: Munich, Venice, Paris, and London. So as I was leading my students on our Enchanted Spaces tour of children's literature sites in London and Paris, I snuck away for my own private moments revisiting Betsy Ray's journey a century ago.

In London Betsy stays in Mrs. Heaton's boarding house on Taviton Street. So I found Taviton Street on my map (note: not app!) and headed out to locate Betsy's London dwelling.

Mrs. Heaton's is "one of  a row of attached houses, all tall and thin with neat door plates, bells, and knockers." I suspect the houses there now are a result of postwar rebuilding, but tall and thin they are.
The house "overlooked a green square," and I walked through that green square. And what a lovely green square it was.

I also made sure to worship at Westminster Abbey as Betsy does: "She attended church every Sunday in Westminster Abbey. 'Why not?' she defended herself at the storied portal. 'That's what it's meant for.' You soaked in more of the dear gray old place, kneeling in the candlelight, than you did walking around with a guidebook." I sought out an Evensong service, glorying in the boys' choir's angelic voices and glad that I was praying there rather than clicking away with my camera after paying the hefty admission fee for tourists; worshippers are admitted free (but any worshipper who whips out a cell phone - which was NOT me - is scolded instantly).

In Paris, Betsy and I both visited Victor Hugo in the Pantheon and the Venus de Milo in the Louvre.
 "'I never dreamed she would be so beautiful,' she said to Miss Wilson. "I never expect to like famous things. But I guess they're famous because they give everybody this wonderful feeling.'"

I was surprised, though, that Betsy doesn't mention seeing the original of the Winged Victory, given her younger self's thrill at a reproduction of it in Deep Valley's Melbourn Hotel, which inspires her story, "Flossie's Accident," about another headless girl who loses her head in a bobsled accident but goes on to have various subsequent tragic and romantic adventures (!).
 Betsy visits the statue of Henri Quatre on the Pont Neuf, making her own literary pilgrimage in the footsteps of her favorite character, Paragot from the 1906 novel The Beloved Vagabond by William John Locke. At a crucial juncture in his life, Paragot asks advice of the statue and gets, from the king's gesturing arm, an answer, that he should go to the Gare de Lyon. Betsy asks Henri Quatre for advice about how she can reconcile with her estranged boyfriend Joe, and gets, indirectly, her own answer, too. (The next title in the series, after all, is Betsy's Wedding.) I so wished I had some crucial life topic on which I could solicit Henri's advice, but I really didn't, so I just returned his wave and said "Au revoir."
Betsy's stay in Paris culminates in "one good bat" when she and her chaperone, Miss Wilson, are taken out for a decadent dinner at the Ritz by the wealthy American author Mrs. Main-Whittaker, whom Betsy met on her ship voyage at the start of the book and encounters in Paris at the American Express office.

On my last day in Paris I took myself on my own "bat" and treated myself to decadent hot chocolate at elegant Angelina's on the Rue de Rivoli, even though, unlike Mrs. Main-Whittaker, I hadn't just "had a check for royalties big enough to float a bond issue."

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Confession time: I've never liked the children's books of Roald Dahl. With the exception of The BFG, which did win me over with its sweet friendship between Sophie and her Big Friendly Giant, the other titles I've read seemed unpleasantly exaggerated and frankly mean-spirited in many ways (glorying in the depiction of nasty people receiving nasty consequences for their nasty behavior). But he's such an enormously popular recent British author, second only in popularity to J. K. Rowling, that a visit to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre seemed an important part of our Enchanted Spaces travel itinerary.

The museum is situated in the charming village of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, about an hour's drive from London. It wasn't open yet when we arrived, so we set off on the lovely walking tour that veteran researcher Tiffany found for us online.

We entered the small public library where Matilda, in the book of the same name, would have come to get her library books. The children's room is now named "Matilda's Library."

 Across the street is the post office where Dahl would receive his staggering volume of fan mail, prompting him to write this poem:

Dear children, far across the sea,
How good of you to write to me.
I love to read the things you say
When you are miles and miles away.
Young people and I think I'm right
Are nicer when they're out of sight.

The nearby Crown House was the inspiration for Sophie's "norphanage":
The museum itself is small but delightful. Even the trash cans are delightful!
Best was Dahl's "writing hut," with its oversized shabby armchair and special writing desk he designed for himself to alleviate the constant pain he experienced from injuries sustained in a crash when he served as a RAF pilot.
The Twit Cafe served themed foods from the books such as this Whizzpopper, which, yes, I ordered and greatly enjoyed.
A short walk from the town led up to the church where Dahl is buried, with large Big Friendly Giant-sized footsteps leading to his grave:



The day left me with a fondness for Dahl that I hadn't expected (helped also by the excellent West End production of Matilda the Musical that we saw on the trip, enjoying analyzing the different choices made in film versus stage adaptations of the book).

I came away thinking that while those who love an author set off on pilgrimages to follow in his footsteps, pilgrimage can also work in reverse: following in someone's footsteps can lead to, if not love, at least a certain affection - here, for an injured, curmudgeonly man who sat daily in his writing hut scribbling curmudgeonly stories that generations of children have adored.

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On our day trip from London to Oxford, we went in search of a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Well, we went in search of the shy, stammering mathematician at Christ Church College who formed a warm friendship with the three young daughters of Dean Henry Liddell: the middle one was named Alice. A devotee of the new art form of photography, he also photographed the girls. Here, Alice posing as "The Beggar Maid."

On the "golden afternoon" of July 4, 1862, Charles Dodgson, who wrote witty verse under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, took the Liddell girls on a boat ride on the Thames. As they drifted along the river, he told them the story of Alice's adventures "underground." Alice begged him to write it down for her, and he did, giving her a handwritten copy of the story, with his own illustrations, for Christmas, 1864. It was then expanded and published with the illustrations by John Tenniel (Alice now blond instead of brunette) in 1865, under the title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The students and I saw the continuing 150th anniversary exhibit of Alice at the British Library, with original manuscripts of both editions on display.

At Oxford we toured Christ Church College:
The grand staircase and great hall have a non-accidental resemblance to Hogwarts:

Here is the quad where lifelong bachelor Dodgson had his rooms (it was a condition of his academic appointment that he remain unmarried).
Later in the day I also remembered C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien when I treated myself to hot mulled wine at the Eagle and Child pub where they met together every Tuesday with their fellow Inklings for decades.

But it was this moment of the day that meant the most to me, when I wandered alone down to the river, in the fading glow of this wintry afternoon, and remembered the summer afternoon boat ride where the story began.

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Even though my students were wild with excitement about our visit to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter film studios west of London, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. I thought it would all feel fake, over-hyped, crassly commercial.

I was wrong.

It was magical. And really doubly magical, because to the magic of Harry Potter was added the magic of film-making: magic squared.

When our tour bus pulled up into the parking lot, I wasn't reassured.

But from the moment we stepped in, the magic began. Before we even entered the tour proper, here it was, Harry's cupboard under the stairs.
And once we did enter, the door to the Great Hall of Hogwarts opened for us by a little girl in attendance who happened to have a birthday that day, there we were, in that long room flanked by tables groaning under the (plastic, but so real-looking) holiday feast.
Our tour was hosted, via video welcome, by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, sharing stories of how they had grown up over a period of ten years on these sets together. Already, I felt a lump forming in my throat. I've decided that there is little that gets me teary-eyed faster than evidence of the sheer passage of time: how young they looked then! how much older they look now!

The tour was so well designed, with the chance to stand before sets of exactly the locales we most yearned to inhabit.

The cozy Griffindor common room, decorated for Christmas:
Dumbledore's office.
The Weasleys' homey burrow, where a sweater magically knit itself as a knife magically chopped carrots for dinner.
Throughout there was abundant evidence of the extraordinary care and attention to detail that had gone into every set, prop, and costume, to recreate this beloved world for millions of fans across the globe.

We rounded a corner, and there was the Hogwarts Express, ready for us to board.
In the car we could walk through, each railway compartment represented one of Harry's years at Hogwarts, the seats strewn with whatever items he, Ron, and Hermione might have left behind.

After a stop for lunch in the cafeteria, where butter beer was for sale (tasting very like cream soda), we went outside for a look at Privet Drive
and the home of Harry's parents:

The exhibits on the last third of the tour were perhaps the most meaningful: a close look at how the magical creatures were created for the film through elaborate makeup and use of prosthetics on live actors or fashioning of birds and animals operated through remote control machinery. We saw the detailed architectural drawings for each set, including the white card models made of them. Oh, the extraordinary effort made by thousands of talented behind-the-scenes artists for so many years.

And then, in the final room, there it was : an enormous model of Hogwarts (large enough that perhaps fifty of us could have formed a ring surrounding it) used for many shots in the film.
As we stood there, the soaring score from the films played. Some students wept. We all lingered for as long as we could, hating to leave Hogwarts behind to buy our Ravenclaw sweatshirts and chocolate frogs in the gift shop.

We also had a chance on other days to visit the actual King's Cross Station where Harry departs for Hogwarts on Platform 9 3/4. Although those scenes were filmed in the next door and much more architecturally gorgeous St. Pancras Station, King's Cross now has its own replica of the famous platform:
In our "debriefing" session in class yesterday, where we shared which moments of our "Enchanted Spaces" trip had been most enchanted for us, one student cited approaching Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross. To her, it felt more "real" than the platform at the film studios. Of course, they are in a sense equally fake. But also equally real. The very day we visited the Harry Potter studios, Alan Rickman died, the actor who played Snape in the series. Students who made their journey to Platform 9 3/4 later in the week reported that it was heaped with flowers left by grieving fans.

It that isn't real, what is? I'll give the last words to J. K. Rowling, from this inscription posted at the entrance of the studio tour:
Few authors have made us want to listen as long and as hard as she has.

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I'm back from my two weeks of adventures abroad co-teaching my Enchanted Spaces winter term course for DePauw. So expect my next few posts to be sharing installments of my magical literary pilgrimage.

Of all the days on the trip, the one that meant the most to me was visiting the actual forest where A. A. Milne's young son would set off for his imaginary adventures with his real-life stuffed animals: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo. The Milnes acquired Cotchford Farm in East Sussex as a holiday home in 1925, when their only child, Christopher Robin, was five years old. It was in nearby Ashdown Forest that Milne set the bedtime stories he told Christopher Robin and his faithful bear, Pooh, every night. So it was to Ashdown Forest that we headed for our visit to the Hundred Acre Wood.

The forest is completely unspoiled, "unimproved," uncommercialized, and, on the day we visited, very muddy. There is a small, charming Pooh's Corner gift shop in the nearby village, but the forest itself wears its fame lightly. There is one sign pointing the way to the Poohsticks bridge; there is a plaque in Milne's honor at the top of the forest. But there are no recreations of the houses of the animal characters, except for an Eeyore house here and here, made by visitors.

The twenty-four students trooped along to the bridge to play Poohsticks: the game that involves dropping sticks from one side of the bridge and then looking over the other side to see which stick emerges first as the winner. I had read in a guidebook that it isn't respectful to the site to denude it of every available stick, so I brought sticks with me from the DePauw campus in Indiana, the sticks I'm clutching here.
Our guide, Simon, asked where I had gotten the sticks, and when I told him "Indiana," he was flabbergasted. "You're pulling my leg!" "You have to be kidding!" "Really?" I guess we were a little more zealous than most of his visitors.

And so we played, and I hope it isn't bragging too much to inform you that in the round I entered, my stick did win. (Fatter sticks tended to prove victorious). You can't see my stick here, so you'll have to take my word for it.)
Our next stop was Gills Lap, Galleons Lap in The House at Pooh Corner, the very top of the forest. 
There we peered into the heffalump trap (my colleague Tiffany's daughter, Rebecca, pictured here). 
And there we entered, with hushed voices, the Enchanted Place, where Christopher Robin says goodbye to Pooh at the end of the second book: 

Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out "Pooh!" 
 "Yes?" said Pooh.
 "When I'm--when-- Pooh!" 
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
 "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." 
"Never again?" 
 "Well, not so much. They don't let you."
 Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. 
"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. 
 "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?"
 "Just Me?"
 "Yes, Pooh." 
 "Will you be here too?"
 "Yes, Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be, Pooh." 
"That's good," said Pooh. 
 "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." 
 Pooh thought for a little.  "How old shall I be then?"
 "Ninety-nine."
 Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said.
 Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite" he stopped and tried again --"Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" 
 "Understand what?" 
 "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
 "Where?" said Pooh. 
 "Anywhere," said Christopher Robin. 
 So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

I stayed behind after the others left, wept a few tears for my own lost childhood, and for the beauty of this scene and its lasting power. I took one pine cone with me, as Simon had said we could.
And then I said my goodbye to the Enchanted Place, and we were off to the seventeenth-century Gallipot Inn in Hartfield where we warmed ourselves by the open fireplace and ate platters of dripping cheese toasties, and remembered a boy and his bear, in the forest together forever.

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Today was the first day of the winter term study abroad class I'm co-teaching for DePauw with my brilliant librarian friend Tiffany Hebb, who just might be the world's most organized person (and also a person who maximizes joy at every opportunity). She's the one who masterminded the whole scheme a year ago and emailed to ask if I'd like to join her in teaching a course that would involve taking university students to Europe to explore the origins of and inspirations for classic children's book texts. Why, yes, I would! And so together we put together the course: "Enchanted Spaces and Protected Places: Children's Literature Sites in London, Oxford, and Paris."

Today we opened the course with general readings on place in literature: Eudora Welty's classic piece "Place in Fiction" and another essay called "Geography Lessons" by Leonard Kriegel. Welty writes, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else." She goes on to say that "place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point." Kriegel notes that literary geography "has less to do with the actual shape place assumes in the mind than it does with how the idea of place feeds the imagination." 

After discussing Welty and Kriegel's insights, we had an outing to the Putnam County Public Library, a mere block away from our campus building, and pored over a score or more of picture books set in London and Paris (many more in the latter than in the former, itself fodder for discussion). We looked at the ways in which these books create a landscape of the imagination for young readers.

Our focal texts for the course are Alice in Wonderland, the two Pooh books of A. A. Milne, Harry Potter (clearly the students' favorite), Roald Dahl's Matilda (chosen as our representative Dahl text as we'll be seeing the musical of Matilda in London), Brian Selznick's dazzlingly innovative The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the iconic film The Red Balloon, and of course Madeline, with its twelve little girls roaming around Paris in two straight lines. We'll discuss these together over the next two full days, drawing on some of the extensive scholarly literature on each, especially literature examining the role of place.

Then, on Friday, we fly to London. A week later we'll take the train to Paris. A week after that we'll fly back to Indiana to process what we've seen. The students will will write a final analytic paper for the course, or perhaps take the option of creating their own children's story set in these fabled places. They'll also give a presentation on their adventures to Greencastle children and their families at the public library.

And I'll be able to say, well, THERE was a lifelong dream now come true.

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Tomorrow, before dawn, I start driving to Indiana to teach one more semester at lovely little DePauw University, where I've taught on and off now for the past five years (2011-12, 2012-13, Spring 2015, and now Spring 2016). I love it there so much, but it's always wrenching to tear myself away from my happy life in Colorado for months at a time, and then tear myself from my happy life in Indiana when it's time to return home.

But this time I'm leaving with even more heartache than usual. This time it's harder to leave home, as now I have a beloved little almost-two-year-old granddaughter, and the two of us are desperately attached to each other. And this time Indiana feels a bit more daunting than usual. In the past I went as the Robert and Carolyn Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics, a position that had a generous salary and light teaching load so the the visitor could immerse herself fully in the intellectual and creative life of the university. But after five full semesters of being a pampered visitor, it's time for someone else to have a turn; the whole point of a visiting professorship is to bring visitors to campus. So this time I'm a lowly adjunct, paid per course, teaching three courses, two of which I've never taught before, and teaching five days a week, which I've never done before in my academic career. Will I even have time to attend all the fascinating lectures and enthralling concerts that are the reason I've so loved my time at DePauw?

Heartsick or not, I'm leaving tomorrow. So this is the only resolution I'm making this year:

I'm going to love every minute of my time at DePauw as fiercely and fully as I can. And when I come back to Colorado come May, I'm going to love every minute of my time here in the same way.

That's it. I'm just going to love my life, wherever I'm living it.

I'm going to have fun in the car tomorrow. I have a David Sedaris collection of comic essays to listen to, and NPR on the radio, and I just bought a little Blue Tooth thing so that I can talk on my cellphone, hands free. So I can catch up with old and dear friends as the miles roll past. I drive on 36, not I-70, along the northern edge of Kansas, where the highway is just one lane in each direction, and the small towns of American's Heartland are fifty miles apart. I'll stop for lunch at some local eatery, ditto for dinner. I'll stop for the night when I'm tired of driving. The weather looks good for the entire thousand-plus-mile journey.

My only task for the next two days: drive, and love the driving.

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 Recently I've been waking up at 2:30 a.m., writhing in bed consumed with anxiety and dread over course preparation for my upcoming spring semester at DePauw. I'm set to teach three courses, two of which I've never taught before, and one of which is particularly stressful for me to prepare, as it's a subject I think is so important but about which I currently know relatively little: ethical issues involving immigration policy. I've had months to prepare this course, but I've put it off, and put it off, and put it off. And put it off some more. Finally, three days ago, I sat down and just started to DO the darned thing.

Oh, the bliss, the joy and rapture, when a dreaded task is actually DONE.

So why on earth would anyone live for MONTHS in the dark, tormented space of dread rather than spend a few short DAYS chugging along to make some actual progress on moving the dreaded task forward?

I think I've come up with one answer, or at least an answer that explains why I procrastinated so mightily on designing this immigration course.

For some tasks - many tasks - most tasks? - there are two ways to do them:
1) a careful, thorough, detailed, thoughtful, conscientious, and extremely labor-intensive way
2) a quick, slapdash, corner-cutting, but in the end, remarkably adequate way.

I always feel I should do the former: the long, hard way. But what I really want to do is the latter: the quick, easy way. Down deep, I think the task will turn out perfectly well if I go with speed and ease. But guilt still draws me toward slow, laborious toil. And so I put off the task until the last possible minute to make sure that all I have time for is the option I secretly preferred all along.

In designing the immigration course, I could have spent months reading widely in all the available philosophical and public policy literature to search for the best possible readings. I could have watched dozens of immigration -themed films to select the one or two most worth sharing with my students. I could have made myself into a true expert on immigration - not a bad thing to be, for a professor about to teach a course on the subject.

Of course, if I had taken that route, I wouldn't have also worked on the proposal for a new children's book series for my publisher, or written my article on children's author Eleanor Estes, advised SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) mentees, read intensely for my judging of the Children's Literature Association's Phoenix Award, or sent out so many Christmas cards or baked so many Christmas cookies.

Or I could have taken the route I actually did. I emailed a few former graduate students who wrote dissertations on immigration and are now professors at various universities around the country, asking if they had taught immigration policy and had a syllabus they could share. Two did. Others offered terrific suggestions for readings. I found almost all the readings - journal articles, chiefly - by sitting at my computer searching the CU library catalog; I skimmed them to see which ones would be most engaging and accessible to sophomore-level students. I put out a call on Facebook for film ideas and got a dozen fabulous ones. I'll show in class the one or two with most Facebook votes and give students the choice of watching one or two of the others. I emailed several DePauw colleagues with expertise on immigration to see if they'd come to give a guest lecture and got affirmative replies.

Three days later, the course is put together, and I must say it looks terrific. How lovely not to wake up at 2:30 this morning with that knot of horror and loathing in my stomach! But how glad I am I didn't spend all of the past autumn lost in this one potentially all-consuming project.

Advice to self: Next time, just do the quick, easy route first. You know you're going to take it anyway. You know it's a perfectly good route to take. You don't need the sanction of desperation to go in that direction.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
Take the easier, quicker, simpler one.
And go ahead and just take it NOW

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Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, but lately it's feeling that all my days are far too short.

There's the coming of Christmas, of course, which stresses most of us. I've just finished organizing our church's Mitten Tree for the homeless and caroling to neighboring retirement communities; I decided to send Christmas cards for the first time in a few years; holiday baking has begun. But I'm also facing yet another relocation to Indiana for the spring semester. I start driving on January 2. I'll be teaching three courses, two of which I've never taught before. Ordinarily I'd devote January to getting the courses prepared. But this year I'll be spending January teaching a study abroad course called "Enchanted Spaces: Children's Literature Sites in London, Oxford, and Paris" - how thrilling is that? But it means that I have no time for course prep in January. Course prep needs to be done now, in these short, short days.

I like mixing up my time management strategies, so they don't lose their efficacy. My most recent one involves focusing not on my time-tested unit of the hour, but the even more manageable and less threatening unit of the half hour. (I own both an hour glass and a half-hour glass to use for timing). For the past week, I've told myself each morning upon waking that I needed to do four half hours of work, on four different tasks. The tasks on the menu were a mix of hard and easy, challenging and comforting. I could choose which four to do. And then I had to pick one of those four tasks and give it a follow-up hour, capitalizing on the first half hour's momentum.

So a typical day went like this:
1/2 hour handwriting messages on Christmas cards (easy, but tedious, as the messages begin to get repetitious, so half an hour is plenty - usually I can get five cards done in that span)
1/2 hour reading books for my judging of the Children's Literature Phoenix Award (it's criminal to use a prime half hour of the day for a task like reading, which is perfect for curling up in bed in the evening, but desperate times call for desperate measures)
1/2 hour working on the sermon I'm giving on December 27: my son Christopher and I always lead the worship service on the Sunday after Christmas - I adore writing sermons! Working on it only for half an hour a day allowed ideas to percolate for the other 23 1/2 hours, giving it greater richness and depth
1/2 hour working on reviewing an article on "The Ethics and Politics of Child Naming" for a philosophy journal. I meant to say no when they asked me, but the topic was so cool I couldn't refuse.

Little by little, through the week, I finished and mailed the Christmas cards; I then substituted that half hour for wrapping presents; when all the presents were wrapped, I (sadly) turned to course prep in that slot. Little by little, I finished my sermon, finished my review, read a friend's manuscript, and made solid progress on two of the three courses, with only (naturally) the most heinously difficult one awaiting (I always go first for low-hanging fruit to keep myself encouraged).

It's all getting done! It really is! Now all that is left, alas, are the two biggest tasks on my list: finishing a book proposal for my publisher and tackling that third course for DePauw. I'll need a different strategy for those two, as the half hour system has played itself out on this go-round. But I'm ready to think of one now. And to start baking cookies!

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Twice in the past couple of weeks I've gotten stuck in long lines in our local post office.

Twice, I had a wonderful time  standing there.

It's definitely disheartening to see a line snaking out the door from the post office proper into the cramped lobby, with perhaps twenty people waiting, each one clutching half a dozen packages to weigh, price, and ship, with one - yes, ONE - window open. I debate leaving and coming back another time - but what guarantee do I have that another time will be better? And I have my heart set on crossing off this postal errand today. I debate driving to another, larger post office on the outskirts of town, where lines are reputed to be shorter, but it's a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive each way, so how much time would I save, really?

I was having these thoughts in line two weeks ago when I noticed the person in front of me was someone I had worked with in the University of Colorado Philosophy Department's Center for Values and Social Policy when I arrived in Boulder back in the 1990s; I hadn't seen her in years. "Jackie!" I exclaimed. "Claudia!" she replied. We talked long and hard and fast and joyously for the entire 25-minute wait.

Then as I was preparing to depart, errand accomplished, I heard another voice: "Claudia?" A woman who looked vaguely familiar had just joined the end of the still-long line. "Barb?" It was someone else who had worked with Jackie and me in the philosophy department all those years ago. Barb had moved to Utah many years before; I had no idea she had recently moved back to Boulder. We all fell into each others' arms. And, to complete this tale of postal serendipity, why was Barb there in line at the post office? Because she was mailing off a special card to Sara, who had also worked with us, and is now a professor in the philosophy department at University of Washington. Jackie and I scribbled our greetings to her on the back of the envelope.

So last week, when I saw an even longer line at the post office, I didn't despair. First, I remembered my oft-broken commitment to myself to stand on one foot for two minutes a day - two minutes for each foot, or four minutes total. Spending four minutes a day in this way is supposed to make a huge difference in maintaining balance and avoiding falls as we age. It's probably the single most important thing I can do for myself at this time in my life, given a family history of falls. But it's such a boring thing to do! I mean to do it every morning as I heat up the water for my Swiss Miss hot chocolate in the microwave, but I almost never do, as I'd rather tackle something more visibly productive, like unloading the dishwasher. I could do it when I watch TV, but I almost never watch TV, and if I do, I'd rather be curled up on the couch with a cat or dog on my lap. But it's the absolutely perfect thing to do while standing in line.

I began to balance on my right foot. To make conversation with my line-mates, I explained what I was doing. As we started to chat, one of them squinted at me and said, "Do you teach philosophy?" Why, yes, I do. "I took your class!" she said. As we talked, I began to remember her, from perhaps a dozen years ago, as she told me that she still had the paper she wrote for me on Plato, presenting her argument in the form of a Platonic dialogue, and how I had pronounced it "charming." She's now a professor at CU herself, teaching in the humanities program in the College of Engineering, with a master's degree in piano performance and a doctorate in musicology, as well as a three-year-daughter and another child on the way (the reason she declined to do the one-foot-balancing as she waited). The 45-minute wait flew by.

Later today I'm off to the post office again. I no longer dread long lines. I can balance on one foot as I wait and increase my chances of a long and happy life. And odds are that I'll meet up with someone fascinating as I shift my weight from one foot to the other. After all, right now I'm two for two.

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So here's something I never in my life thought I'd be doing: walking around the poshest mall in Dallas with six grown nieces and nephews I barely knew, all decked out in the most garish Christmas sweaters we could find, stopping strangers to ask them to judge us in an "ugly sweater contest." But that's exactly what I did this past weekend.

One of the judges was so pleased with her task that she posted a picture of her moment of glory on Facebook:

My sister and I never knew one of our half-brothers, my father's younger son from his first marriage, and we never knew his six children. The brother died many years ago, but one of his sons, discovering that we happened to live near each other in Colorado, contacted me a few years ago to see if I wanted to get together for breakfast. I did. And as soon as we met, truly from the first moment I saw him waiting outside the restaurant for my arrival, I felt a deep connection with this man who is my father's grandson.

Little by little I got to know the rest of the huge-hearted Mills family clan, and this year they invited my sister and me to join them in Texas for what they were calling "Thanksmas." We celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, sharing a huge feast served upon a groaning table, with sixteen of us present (including two neighbors who carried over a table needed at the last minute, and were invited to sit down to dine with us). Friday was devoted to a "National Lampoon Christmas Vacation" shopping trip, with all of us wearing the  aforementioned holiday sweaters. Saturday counted as Christmas, where we exchanged the gifts we had purchased on the marathon shopping day for names we had drawn the day before.

What a strange thing family is. I've never wanted to fetishize genetic connection; I've been puzzled by adopted friends who spent years searching for their birth parents; I've always believed that what makes a family is shared history, lived history, not the mere, almost accidental facts of biology. And yet I love these people I just met, whose only tie to me, before our meeting, was the fact that we are related. (Of course, it helps that they themselves are the most loving people I've ever encountered.) I loved being part of this big clan dazzling the upscale Galleria mall in our loud, proud sweaters. I loved belonging to them and having them belong to me.

When my sister and I returned to our nearby motel on "Christmas" evening, to pack for our crack-of-dawn departure the next day, my niece Rene, the one who hosted Thanksmas at her home, texted me that she had forgotten something and was on her way to the motel to give it to us. Could we meet her in the lobby in a few minutes? We did. And what had she forgotten? To give us a full-fledged hug; the one she had given earlier, she had decided, only counted as half a hug.

There is nothing sweeter than a heart-hug from a newly discovered niece at the close of my first-ever Thanksmas.

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A week or so ago, I took myself to Union Station in Denver and spent a blissful morning curled up on a cozy couch in front of a friendly elf, sipping a vanilla steamer and getting unblocked on a new project. I wrote the first page of chapter one! I wrote the second page of chapter one! I wrote the whole darned chapter! The book was begun, and begun is everything in writing!

Well, not quite everything.

The next day I read over what I had written, eager to preserve my newfound momentum.

I didn't like what I had written.

I didn't like it at all.

My main character was whiny and victimized; she opened the chapter with a sigh, sighed twice more on the first page, and ended the chapter with a sigh huge enough to eclipse the previous three. Her mother was an overbearing cliche; it was unpleasant for a reader to have to be in her company. My poor character has no choice, it's her mom; but readers DO have a choice. So why wouldn't they make a choice to close this book and open one that is funny and fun? Did I have anything at all in this first chapter that was funny and fun? Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I didn't write for the next few days, because why throw good pages after bad? Why keep going on a project that is doomed from the get-go?

But then I re-read Elizabeth Gilbert's beautiful new book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. She recommends the following strategy to take regarding writing, or any other creative activity: "My ultimate choice . . . is always to approach my work from a place of stubborn gladness." She said that she's held on to her "stubborn gladness" when her work is going badly, and when it's going well. She said she's learned to trust that inspiration "is sitting there right beside me, and it is trying. . . . Inspiration is always trying to work with me. So I sit there and I work, too. That's the deal. I trust it; it trusts me."

So yesterday, I got into bed with a mug of hot chocolate made more festive with two outsized dollops of leftover Cool Whip on top (I had to do something with it now that the pumpkin pie was all eaten). I sat there for hours scribbling notes about how to fix my fatally flawed chapter one - or, rather, how to put it aside, richer from all I learned in writing it, and write a completely different chapter one that will have fewer sighs, a more three-dimensional mom, and at least something in it that is funny and fun. I haven't written that chapter yet - it's number one on my to-do list for tomorrow-  but Elizabeth Gilbert reassures me that inspiration will be sitting beside me when I do.

I'm going to trust inspiration and be grateful that it trusts me. If this new chapter is still unusable, I'll write another one, and I have a hunch that one will be pretty darned good, or at least pretty darned okay. If I need more Cool Whip, I'll buy more. And I'll keep on writing.

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When I do author visits at elementary schools and it's time for Q & A, some of the more sophisticated kids like to ask me, "What do you do when you get writer's block?" My stock answer has always been: "I don't GET writer's block, because I write for a short, fixed amount of time every day, first thing when I get up. It's not an intimidating task to write one puny little page. And writing it first thing in the morning means that I don't even have time to arouse my resistance. My page is written before I'm even fully awake!"

But then this year, I got writer's block. Previously I had secretly doubted that any such thing existed. Now I actually had it. I hadn't written a page since my heroic revisions on two books last August, if you don't count the equally heroic work I did earlier this month revising my scholarly paper on Eleanor Estes's 1943 children's book Rufus M. And I don't count work that isn't creative work. So for the past three months, the queen of the hour-a-day writing system has written precisely nothing.

I think the biggest part of my block has to do with, not jealousy exactly, but awareness that a number of my writer friends have been getting extraordinary critical attention for their recent books: four starred reviews for one, an unheard-of five starred reviews for another. I want four starred reviews! I want five! I want six! And in order to get six starred reviews, I knew I had to write a different kind of book from the sweet little chapter books I've been writing. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. I needed to write a big book, a deep book, an important book. But I had no ideas for anything big, deep, or important. So instead I was writing nothing at all.

This had to change. Because if I don't write, I won't be a writer. And I love being a writer.

I started curing my writer's block by re-reading the scene in Maud Hart Lovelace's Heaven to Betsy, where Betsy has lost the freshman essay contest because she spent her winter in a doomed crush on Tony plus lots of parties with the Crowd where great quantities of fudge were made and consumed, rather than on essay preparation:

She looked back over the crowded winter. She did not regret it. But she should not have let its fun, its troubles, its excitement squeeze her writing out. 'If I treat my writing like that,' she told herself, 'it may go away entirely.' The thought appalled her. What would life be like without writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it it purpose. . . and promise...

Then I made a plan, an excellent plan, if I do say so myself.

Yesterday I took myself on the bus to Denver, planning to spend the morning writing on a cozy couch at the legendary Tattered Cover bookstore, just steps away from Union Station. But when I got to Union Station, its cozy couches beckoned so powerfully that I ended up staying right there, on this couch in front of this holiday elf, which I decided must be a writing elf.

I bought myself a vanilla steamer and an unusually excellent muffin at a station coffee shop.

And then I wrote for two hours. I plunged right in, scribbling down the first page of a new book, which grew into the first chapter of a new book, not, I must say, a big, deep, important book, but one of my usual sweet little chapter books, in other words, the kind of book I love best to write.

So: if you have writer's block:

1. Give yourself Betsy's pep talk. Don't regret any of the things that have kept you from writing, but remind yourself that if you squeeze writing out of your life, you'll have a life without writing in it. Maybe that's okay for you. But if it isn't, you need to write.

2. Take yourself on some lovely writing adventure. Go someplace special, either with a writer friend or by yourself. For me, the place has to have couches and creamy hot beverages.

3. Then, well, write. You don't have to write a book that will get five starred reviews, or four, or any at all, or that will ever get published, or read by anyone else in the world. All you have to do is curl up, sip on your creamy hot beverage, take nibbles of a tasty muffin, and write something that you want to write. Remember, you like to write. You really do.

That's all. And if you can do it in front of the Christmas tree in Union Station, Denver, all the better.

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Last weekend I was lucky enough to be one of nine authors invited to take part in the first ever EpicFest, a "literary festival for kids of all ages" held at ImaginOn, an astonishing structure in downtown Charlotte, NC, which contains an enormous children's branch of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library plus two beautifully appointed performance spaces for the Children's Theatre of Charlotte.

Each author did two school visits on Friday. I had a lovely time at River Oaks Academy and Chantilly Montessori. On Saturday, the day of EpicFest itself, each author gave a talk, sold and signed a lot of books, and had the chance to hear some talks from our fellow presenters. If we had wanted to, we could also have built Lego creations, made all kinds of  crafts, and dipped apples in white chocolate and then covered them with sprinkles. My biggest regret of the festival: not finding time to dip that apple!

Here is the "book house" I saw at one branch of the library during my lunch break on Friday:

Here I am with new friend Sheila Turnage, whose debut novel, Three Times Lucky, was named a Newbery Honor Book. (Also pictured: Pete the Cat.)
And here is the "book mobile" made by my old friend Mark West, professor of children's literature at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. It hangs on the front porch of his home, books swinging gently in the Carolina breeze.

I came away from the festival thinking: I love being part of this world, the world of people who write books, read books, teach about books, love books. I want to be part of it in every way, forever.

Guess I'd better start writing my next book soon... Read the rest of this post

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Today is the pub day of my newest book child, Simon Ellis, Spelling Bee Champ, the fourth title in the Franklin School Friends chapter book series.

Simon appears as Kelsey's reading contest rival in Kelsey Green, Reading Queen; he's Annika's Sudoku contest rival in Annika Riz, Math Whiz; and he is a competitive racer in Izzy Barr, Running Star. When it was Simon's turn to star in his own book, I asked myself: "What problem could a kid have who is good at everything?" And the answer was immediately clear: "That he's good at everything."

Simon is a very bright kid who has a wide range of intellectual and creative interests. He genuinely loves to read, and adores math, and savors playing the violin. And he shines as a speller because of his love affair with words, the longer and harder the better. But his best friend, Jackson, is getting tired of losing at everything to Simon - and when Simon tries letting Jackson win, Jackson gets even madder. Other kids start calling Simon "Super Simon" and then "Super Duper Pooper Simon." What is poor Simon to do? Hide his talents from his classmates? Pretend not to care about all the things that are dear to his heart?

His story ended up being very dear to my own heart. I wrote it during the blissful summer of 2014 when I taught at Hollins, sharing it with the students in my graduate chapter-book writing class. My son Gregory helped me come up the "longest-word-in-the-world" that Simon exults in spelling, and Gregory also served as the only ghost-writer I've ever employed, providing some language for the video gaming action in two scenes; the book is dedicated to him. And Simon is just so sweet, so eager to learn and perplexed that others don't share his affinity for the life of the mind.

So I send him out into the world with an extra-protective hug today.

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Yesterday I taught a writing workshop for young authors, hosted by the Education Nonprofit Corporation and held at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Mine was the two-and-a-half hour class for eighteen bright, motivated third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. They were a delight.

One of the sweetest moments in this sweet day came when one of the other presenters there stopped me to say that she still remembered a motivational talk I gave for a Society of Children's Book Writers conference well over a decade ago. In that talk I shared how I juggle being a professor of philosophy with being a prolific author of children's books,  with my beloved hourglass as a prop to demonstrate my "hour a day" writing system.

As this person heard my talk, she told herself, "I want this woman's life!" And then she proceeded to go out and get it. She went back to graduate school, earned an advanced degree, teaches classes at CU-Denver, and has published her poetry.

I was touched and thrilled. For I so identify with her desire to change her life on the model of another life she found herself coveting. I do this myself all the time. I even "collect" lives in my little notebook, so I'll have touchstones at the ready for the kind of life I want to live. My motto has long been "Don't envy, emulate."

When I look at the people I most want to be, one commonality is that they all fill their lives with creative joy. In fact, the person I envy most is a fellow writer who has published very little, as she works full-time as a teacher, has a young child, and is pursuing extremely ambitious and complex writing projects. What I envy her for is that she teaches with out-of-the-box originality, mothers with dazzling creative energy, and prioritizes her writing even if she doesn't prioritize seeking publication. I look at her and think, "I want that person's life!" And then I make lists of things I can do to try to come closer to my ideal.

So I'm grateful I got to be a life role model for someone else, as so many other creative souls have been life role models for me.

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My church here in Boulder, St. Paul's United Methodist Church, has this as its mission statement: To openly share creative opportunities to grow in Christ's love through worship, fellowship, service, and learning. The word "creative" is important to us. Our church is filled with people who love using their creativity to get closer to God and to one another. One of the most creative is my pew mate, Rebecca Glancy. (Church members are NOT creative about where we sit: we all sit in the same spots every single week, and my chosen spot is with Rebecca and her family.)

Rebecca writes and directs original Christmas programs for our youth each year. She preaches inspirational guest sermons for our congregation and at twice-a-month services held at the nearby Meridian retirement community. She and I both wrote many puppet scripts for several years for a children's program called "Where the Wild Things Worship." And she also writes delightful devotions which she shares on her blog.

Her current meditation series is called "Walking the Dog, Walking with God," daily reflections on what she's learned about faith, and about herself, from walking her family dog, Lexi. Here's one of my favorites (I always love when people find seemingly contradictory passages of Scripture and probe them to find a deeper underlying truth):
____________

Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.” –Luke 10:4

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I've been trying to make it a priority to maximize creative joy in my life, and actually, just to maximize FUN in any form. I learned this from a student at Hollins University when I taught there summer before last. You can either meet with a student to talk about her chapter-book-in-progress (fun in its own right) in your bare little office, OR over ice cream at the sweet place up the road, sitting outside on a bench under a tree on a perfect summer afternoon. Which should you pick?

My life strategy now is to pick the option that involves ice cream.

So when I received a grant to do research on the manuscripts of Eleanor Estes at the University of Connecticut (fun in its own right), I asked myself: how can I make this fun thing even more fun?

Answer: time the trip so that I could head down from Storrs to NYC afterward on the very weekend that a friend's play was being produced there. My friend Sandy Asher, whom I see every year at the children's literature festival sponsored by the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, had her one-act, one-actor play, Walking to America, selected for performance in this year's Solo Festival. Her goal was to sell out the theater so she could obtain a second night: she ended up with SIX. And I was there for one of them.

I took myself to the city from Hartford via Peter Pan bus. I stayed two nights with another writer friend, whom I first met at the poetry writing retreat I attended for many years, in her adorable, tiny book-and-teapot-filled apartment on York Avenue and 64th Street. We attended Sandy's fabulous play together, as well as wandering all around Central Park where I paid a visit to Hans Christian Andersen.

For extra fun, I reconnected with a former CU student whose brilliant creative writing thesis I advised over a decade ago; we spent hours at two different vegan cafes talking, talking, talking. I had lunch with my editor, Margaret Ferguson at FSG, and iced chocolate with my agent, Steve Fraser (meeting him under the clock at Grand Central Station, something I've always wanted to do). I spent one night with my dear grade-school friend Kim at her cozy home in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. And I took myself to the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland exhibit at the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue.



I even watched the lunar eclipse on an esplanade overlooking the East River. I really can't take credit for what the moon chooses to do, or not to do, but I watched it with eyes ready to feast on any fun that comes their way. Because fun plus fun equals more fun.

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In my career as a children's literature scholar, I have published several articles on the work of mid-twentieth century children's author Eleanor Estes, who received three Newbery Honor awards (for The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and The Hundred Dresses) and the 1952 Newbery Medal for Ginger Pye. In fact, it is fair to say that I am the world's foremost living Eleanor Estes scholar - simply because hardly anybody else is doing any work nowadays on Eleanor Estes at all.

But you can't call yourself the world's foremost living Eleanor Estes scholar unless you've done archival work on Eleanor Estes, poring over her manuscripts and her editorial correspondence for insights into her creative process. So I needed to do that. And the last golden week of September, I did.

Many of Estes's papers are housed at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut; Estes was a native of West Haven, Connecticut, which became the fictionalized Cranbury of the Moffat and Pye books. My friend Lisa Rowe Fraustino, who always has excellent ideas, told me to apply for one of their travel grants for visiting scholars. I did, and received one, thanks to two scholar friends who wrote generous letters in support of my application.

So off I flew to Connecticut for a delicious, delightful, delectable week of doing nothing but reading box after box after box of Eleanor Estes materials in the lovely, peaceful reading room at the Dodd Research Center.

Every day I would arrive precisely at 9:00 and enter the reading room, taking with me only my pad of paper, paper, and cell phone (for taking photos of certain documents): no pens allowed!

The special collections librarians would bring one box at a time to my little table:
And I'd sit there hour after hour, taking notes:
Here, a few snippets:

Letter from Elisabeth Hamilton, Estes's first editor at Harcourt:
"I do agree with you about Disney. .  I've never seen many Disney pictures, but judging from one or two I can't imagine he would do anything nice with The Hundred Dresses."

Western Union telegram from Margaret McElderry, Estes's second editor, August 31, 1950:
GINGER ARRIVED SAFELY LOOK FORWARD EAGERLY TO READING

Oh, why don't editors send authors Western Union telegrams today to acknowledge a book's arrival?

And, finally, this from one of Estes's speeches:
After showing the manuscript of her first book, The Moffats, to her New York Public Library supervisor, the towering and terrifying Miss Anne Carroll Moore, Estes received this response: "Well, Mrs. Estes, now that you have gotten this book out of your system, go back to being a good children's librarian." !!!

I read, and I read. My notes grew to 25 pages, with dozens of photos taken as well. Whenever I needed a break, I wandered over to the Bookworms Cafe in the UConn Babbidge Library across the plaza and bought myself a raspberry croissant or yogurt parfait. I also had lunch one day with two UConn children's literature faculty, guest-taught my friend Lisa's creative writing course at nearby Eastern Connecticut State, and gave a "University Hour" lecture there. Friday afternoon, my work completed, I celebrated by taking myself to tour the adjoining Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe houses in Hartford:
Alas, there is no Estes house open to the public to visit. If there had been, you can bet I would have been there, clipboard poised, ready to do my duty as the world's foremost (well, just about only) living Eleanor Estes scholar.

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Today is the pub date for my newest book child, The Trouble with Ants, the first title in my new three-book series from Knopf, The Nora Notebooks.Nora is a serious, scientific girl who is in love with the ants she studies in her ant farm. But she knows that even as she loves her ants, they don't return her love. That isn't what ants do. And it's hard to get her parents and her classmates at school to love her ants. Apparently that isn't what most other human beings do, either.

I've had a lot of book children now. I think Nora is my 52nd child. As families get bigger, the fuss made over each new arrival tends to get smaller. Few people would host a baby shower for their tenth child, not to mention their 52nd.

And yet. . . . each child, each book, is still special and precious.

This is why I was touched and thrilled when my writing group, The Writing Roosters, had a meeting earlier this month that turned out to be . . . a surprise party for Nora!

There were ant-themed snacks.



There was a splendid ant centerpiece.



There were glasses of wine raised to toast ants.

And my heart was filled with love for my writer friends, who do love ants. Or at least love my book about a girl who loves them.

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One of the most satisfying experiences of my long and varied writing career has been participating in the Michelle Begley Mentor Program of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Editors. Michelle created the program a number of years ago to foster interaction between established and aspiring children's book authors. She died in a tragic car accident last year, and the program now bears her name.

Here's how the program works. It's for serious writers who have already completed a full-length book manuscript and now want to revise it into publishable form with one-on-one guidance from a professional in the field. If accepted, you work for several months closely with your mentor, who reads your work and gives extensive supportive but critical commentary on it, working with you through multiple drafts until it's as good as you can make it right now.

I've lost track of how many people I've worked with over the past four or five years: maybe a dozen? I've loved each one so much. I just spent four hours one day this past week giving extremely detailed comments on fifty pages of the second draft of one's hilarious middle-grade novel, commenting on everything from lack of clarity in the character arc to implausibilities in details of the classroom setting to comma errors - with tons of comments on every page like "Ha!"and "So great!" and "OMG!!"

I don't consider myself to be a great writing teacher. I don't really know how to tell someone how to write a book. But if someone has already written a book, and hands it to me, then I'm on fire to offer all I can, distilled from thirty-five years of experience, to make it better. I feel that I can instantly see what a book needs to move it to that next level of greatness. Well, sometimes instantly. Sometimes I need to ponder for a while. But, oh, the joy of seeing the stronger, clearer structure of the story emerge - to add missing scenes that were needed to give emotional depth - to cut superfluous scenes that were mere distraction - to fix up those commas!!

The application window for this year's program is NOW: September 15-October 15. Information on how to apply is available here. I know most of the other mentors: they're all wonderful.

So if you want a mentor to move forward in your writing, and you're an SCBWI member, apply! (And if you're not an SCBWI member, join and then apply!) Magic can happen.

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In a life that has been spent falling in and out of love with philosophy, over and over again (see "Unleaving Philosophy"), I just spent a few days back at DePauw University falling in love once more.

I flew back to Indiana for the "Young Philosophers Lecture Series," created by Prindle Institute for Ethics director Andy Cullison when he was a faculty member at SUNY-Fredonia. It's a competitive lecture series, with four philosophers in the early years of their careers selected by blind review from a good-sized pool. The winners come to campus to give both an intro-level talk accessible to students and colleagues in other departments, and a research talk aimed at specialists in the field.

Last year when I attended my first Young Philosophers event, I was initially skeptical. I've spent so much of my own career sitting in the back of a room listening to incomprehensible, jargon-filled, needlessly technical, and frankly boring talks, just to be a good citizen of my academic community. I would avoid asking questions during the Q&A period for fear I'd look dumb in front of colleagues who excelled in dazzling thrust-and-parry argumentative sword play. (I did, however, get a lot of sonnets written as I tuned out and thought my own thoughts about other things.)

But Young Philosophers was fun. Tons of fun, actually. So I was pleased when Andy asked me to serve on the reviewers' panel this year: I could pick papers that I'd know in advance were NOT incomprehensible, jargon-filled, needlessly technical, and boring. I'd have an excuse to come back to my beloved DePauw, not that I needed an excuse, but still, it helps to have a reason to come some particular week rather than some other random time. And I could spend two days luxuriating in philosophy.

This year's four speakers were: Nina Emery, Brown University; John Pittard, Yale Divinity School; Jason D'Cruz, SUNY-Albany; and Samuel Kahn, IUPUI. Here are a few titles from the eight talks I heard over a period of two days:

"What's the Big Deal with Lethal Injection?"
"How Is It Possible to Deceive Yourself?"
"Two Very Different Reasons to Believe in Multiple Universes"
"A Scientific Realist's Guide to Objective Chance"

I listened, I learned, I asked questions as good as anybody else's questions, I ate delicious free Prindle Institute food and had wonderful wide-ranging conversations with fascinating visitors and colleagues.

I found myself thinking of the lyrics of my favorite Dolly Parton song, this time sung by me to philosophy: "Here you come again, lookin' better than a body has a right to, and shaking me up so, that I all I really know, is here you come again, and here I go..."

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One of my hobbies is judging awards. Over the past few decades I've judged so many. During my time at the University of Colorado I was a judge of the Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award, which allowed me to observe classes by stellar nominees in dance, studio art, theater, French (I always tried to be the first judge to sign up so I would get dibs on all the classes that looked most delicious). As a writer, I've judged the Golden Kite Award for fiction from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (winner my year: The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw), a manuscript-in-progress grant from the Utah Arts Council, and in 2005 (the crowning glory of my judging career), the National Book Award in the category of Literature for Young People (winner: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall). 

Often the judging involves a huge amount of poorly paid and all but unrecognized work. So why do I love it so much? I just do. I love the power to be somebody's fairy godmother, giving them this lovely boost to help them achieve their dreams. I love visiting all those classes, reading all those books - after all, I loved being a student, sitting in class with my notebook open in front of me, and I love reading books, and having an excuse - nay, an obligation - to read so many. I love turning on the discerning part of my brain. I love it all.

Right now I have one of my most demanding judging gigs ever. I'm serving a three-year elected term as a judge of the Children's Literature Association's Phoenix Award: an award given each year to a children's book published 20 years previously which did not win a major award at the time but is now judged worthy of winning one. Our committee is currently working on the award for 2018, which means that I'm immersed in reading heaps and heaps of books published in 1998.

To make the task more manageable (there is no way we can read every children's or young adult book published in the English language in 1998!), we start by generating a list of contenders from books that received at least some critical acclaim at the time, from end-of -year best books lists to starred reviews. This year we ended up with a list of 170 titles which we now need to cull to a list of 20 or so, which will then receive extremely close reading and discussion. Oh, and we have two months to do this round of culling. Two months! To procure those 170 titles from various libraries (I'm lucky that CU has an excellent children's literature collection, and the Boulder Public Library is also outstanding) - and then to read them - or at least skim them - or otherwise form a basis for judging whether any given title is a contender.

I get up in the morning and read Phoenix books. I read them through the day. I read them before I go to bed at night. I am living my life in 1998. People in these books call each other on land lines (not under that name, of course). They fly on airplanes in a pre-9-11 security climate. But in other ways their world is all too much like ours: in Jacqueline Woodson's If You Come Softly a high-achieving black kid, son of a prominent filmmaker father and novelist mother, is gunned down by police as he is out jogging in the park).

There are other ways I could be spending my time. Writing my own books. Preparing my courses for the fall. Revising and expanding three scholarly articles into publishable form. But I'm a woman obsessed. I just want to read one more Phoenix book - and then another - and then another - and then another.

After all, this IS my hobby.

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Sometimes life brings with it sweet moments where all the different facets of our existence come together in lovely, unexpected ways.

Yesterday afternoon I was babysitting for Kataleya while her parents had a movie date. Addicted as I am to progress, I decided to take Kat with me to the local branch of the public library to pick up a book I had on hold: the YA novel Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I had wanted to read it, anyway, as I had already read and enjoyed her Eleanor and Park, but now I actually needed to read it, as I've been asked to review an article on girl writers in Fangirl and Little Women, submitted to a children's literature journal. How delightful to have a double reason to spend an hour at the library: play time for Kat and Mimsie, and another item crossed off my long to-do list.

At the library, Kat was busy playing in the children's area, thick stubs of chalk clutched in each hand for scribbling on the chalk table, as I chatted with the parents of another little boy playing there as well. A mother and her two daughters approached us: "Excuse us for interrupting, but are you. . . Claudia Mills?" I spied a copy of my Kelsey Green, Reading Green in the huge batch of books they were preparing to check out.

Why, yes, I am Claudia Mills. And what is nicer than to encounter eager readers of my books? It turns out that Kelsey was being checked out for the younger sister; the older one had already read it, as well as Annika Riz, Math Whiz, and now had Izzy Barr, Running Star on hold for a future library checkout. Her mother recognized me because they read my blog - this blog! She had seen the picture of me by the world's biggest ball of twine. She's the kind of mom who not only takes her girls to the library every week for two bulging shopping bags filled with books, but devours author blogs as well to immerse them fully in the world of children's literature.

I told my young fan about my forthcoming Nora Notebooks series, mentioning the launch title, The Trouble with Ants, which tells of Nora's enthusiasm for her ant farm. "Nora, of the Mason Dixon books? she asked. Yes! I hugged her, overcome with love for someone who had read my books so closely and remembered them so well.

The parents of the first adorable little boy joined in the conversation. That dad is a third grade teacher, who now plans to look for my books to share with his students.

So as I was there at the library to check out Fangirl, I met my own young fangirl, and her wonderful family, and gained an opportunity to connect with yet more kids who might become future fangirls and fanboys. I ask you: What could be more perfect than that?

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