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Alex at The Children's War reviews The Poppy Lady, a picture book about Barbara Elizabeth Walsh, who popularized poppies as a tribute to WWI veterans. Though I haven't read the book, myself, I like the idea behind it because many children see groups selling artificial poppies to support veterans groups. The Poppy Lady sounds as if it connects the past with the present.

I don't read a lot of blog book reviews prior to reading books because so many of them are favorable, sometimes over the top favorable. There's no need for me to read the reviews. The fact that a blogger is reviewing it means the review is going to be about how good the book is. I may try to skim the first para to see what the book is about, and if the book is reviewed at a lot of blogs, I'll probably recall the title and may pick it up and look at it if I stumble upon it somewhere. So blog reviews aren't wasted on me, I just don't use them the way most readers do. (Or maybe I do, I don't know how most readers use them.)

At any rate, I've been seeing the title Bomb, The Race to Build--And Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon for a while now. But it was only a few minutes ago, when I saw Tea Cozy's review, that it really hit me what this book is about and why I might be interested. As a young man after WWII, my father-in-law was involved in a study to determine what structures would withstand an atomic bomb. If I recall correctly, the group's conclusion was that there were none. He once told me that the work had paid well and been fun.  So now I'll probably be picking up Bomb when I stumble upon it. I may take a look at it and see if it would be appropriate for a "family gift" to pass around to relatives interested in reading about something connected to their Papa's work as a young man.

I actually found Defining Contemporary, Realistic & Historical Fiction at Stacked earlier this week. I had some thoughts about this post but was unable to post them there. (I'm often unable to post comments. Do these people see me coming?) Now I can't remember them! Though I do think I was wondering if  when a contemporary novel becomes dated it can become historical fiction. I think not. It's just dated, which isn't considered a good thing.

Sometimes it is going to be 245 posts or so behind in your blog reader. For instance, when you're too worn out to do much, but your time management plan involves writing a blog post. Parking your butt in front of a computer and just seeing what other people have been blogging about looks good on those evenings, and you're really happy to have a lot to look at.

What caught me eye:

An interview with Barbara O'Connor at Cynsations Best quote: "...alas, a book needs a plot."

Jane Eyre-related books! from Tanita Davis at Finding Wonderland

John Bell says at Oz and Ends that there is an article in Smithsonian on a Tom Sawyer who claimed to have inspired....Tom Sawyer. I may very well be able to get my hands on that issue of Smithsonian. It's either still in the house or with another family member. Oh. Wait. I can read it on-line. That doesn't seem as exciting. Or as likely to happen.

I have received the same Amazon Author Rank e-mail that Darcy Pattinson and every other author got. I just haven't read mine yet. I've been hoping to get Computer Guy to do it, because he likes that kind of thing. Seriously, he actually has some idea of how my books have done on Amazon. The bit in Pattinson's post on the subject that I liked is her point about authors knowing where they are in the pecking order. "But, as authors, we know exactly where we stand in the pecking order. Try signing books at a national conference, where your line is, well, one person and next to you is Kate DiCamillo, who’s line is out the door and down the street. Oh, yes. Authors know exactly where we stand." So true, so true. We don't need no Amazon Author Rank!

I stumbled upon another good blog for writers. My favorite part of C.S. Larkin's Live Write Thrive  is her guest post category Writing for Life.

I found both Larkin's and Janice Hardy's sites through the most recent Carnival of Creativity.

The write-every-day thing has become very hard for me over the last few years. Rather than beat myself up over it (I'm not big on the beat-yourself-up thing), I try to adapt work efforts to whatever situation I'm dealing with. Weekends? I'm often running all day. Earlier this year, I did a tour of the NESCBWI member blogs on weekends, which gave me an opportunity to keep up on what other writers are doing and make some professional connections. I was squeezing some work of some kind into the weekend. Now I'm trying to flip that activity into hitting some of the blogs in my blog reader on Saturdays and Sundays. Or on Saturdays or Sundays. Today you get a round-up of some visits I made last night, while another family member was watching a movie about giant spiders up to no good.

It seems appropriate to start with How I Wrote Every Day for a Year, a guest post by Krissy Bradfield at Fiction Notes.

Love Ms. Yingling's comments regarding one of the zombie books she blogged about in a post last month. "Most boys who want to read about zombies don't really want to read about a boy pining for his brother and dealing with a clinically depressed zombie. They want blood and guts and body parts dropping off, which this lacks. (Think Kloepfer's Zombie Chasers.) This one is the sort of zombie book that could be considered for a Newbery Award." Does that not speak volumes?

Later she reviews Splendors and Glooms, which I'm going to try to get hold of because she says "This was an enthralling book-- like watching a really good Masterpiece Theater." Plus I liked Laura Amy Schlitz's A Drowned Maiden's Hair.

It turns out The Atlantic has  YA column, which I learned about through Tanita Davis

A review of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a YA fantasy I actually liked

Is traditional publishing the new vanity publishing?  Found that at Cynsations.

Mitali Perkins has an interview regarding New Adult fiction. For what it's worth, I love the idea of a New Adult category, which I've heard mutterings about for a number of years. However, I thought the mutterings related to an age group of, say, late high school years to maybe early twenties. I agree with Mitali's interview subject. Fourteen to thirty-five is a "preposterous" age range. I believe he has other objections, but the twenty-one year span is enough for me.  For heaven's sake, I can remember seeing an article many years ago suggesting thirty-five was the beginning of middle age. That was ridiculous, too, but a little closer to the mark than "new adult."

French children's books. (I'm sorry. I can't remember how I found this.) These are books to read to children while they are petting their pet, Henri, Le Chat Noir.

I've said before here that there is value in reading poor quality writing. Avi says something similar in his blog post The Anatomy of Mediocrity. It's not so much that I read dreadful writing and think, as he does, “I can do better than this!” Or, “I write better than this!” In my case, it's more like,  I hope I can do better than this, or Dear God, don't let me write this badly.

But, yes, you can learn from reading writing you don't like. It becomes a model for what you don't want to do.

Jack Ferraiolo, who wrote Sidekicks, has written a blog post about the response to the "erection scene" in that book. He raises the question of whether male sexuality is less accepted in novels for young people than the more common female puberty talk.

I liked the book. I found the scene in question both funny (for me) and humiliating (for the character). Jack wanted to be careful not to get into "gender politics," so I'll do it. Why is it okay for girls to read about characters dealing with sexual issues that they face, and thus have the opportunity to "try out" responses to, but it's not okay for boys? Not that any boy reader is ever going to have to worry about "trying out" a response to being caught with an erection in public while wearing a Spandex superhero costume. But you'd think the lack of reality in the situation would make it more acceptable. What's the problem here? Could it be that there something about male sexuality that is aggressive and scary whereas female sexuality is passive and nonthreatening?

Oh, I really am getting into gender politics.

Quite apart from the whole gender thing, Jack's blog post is interesting because it gives some insight into how long an author might dwell on a situation or idea--and build upon it--before beginning to write.

I'm hitting the finish line on these blog visits I've been doing--for months--during Olympic Week. How perfect is that? It's very perfect, in case you can't tell.

Nicole Tadgell's Studio NT (I don't know what the NT stands for) is interesting in that, while it definitely is a blog format, it appears to be functioning as illustrator Nicole Tadgell's website. Though there's plenty about her on the Internet--at publishers' websites, for instance, and other blogs--she doesn't appear to have a real website. Links to the right of the page about her book titles or events take readers to blog posts relating to those subjects. This is a much better set up than many writers who rely on blogs for their main Internet presence use. Often times, there's just the blog, with no way for readers to find important information. Nicole's actual blog content appears to be  primarily about announcements relating to her work, though recently there have been posts that show her work as well.

Another illustrator, Jennifer Thermes, maintains both a website and a blog, Art, Words, Life. We get a lot more of Jennifer's work-in-progress at the blog, as well as announcements. Her website is very well organized, in my humble opinion, giving me lots of info very quickly.

Kip Wilson Rechea's blog, Write, Travel, Eat, Repeat, is interesting because of what she does. She writes and publishes short form work, both fiction and nonfiction. She includes at her blog a page on what she's querying and another on published and forthcoming work. A recent post deals with publishing work with magazines and anthologies.

And my final blog visit is so very, very meaningful because it is to...Jane Yolen's Journal. My first mention of Jane Yolen at this blog came on April 16, 2002, the second month of Original Content's existence. There was a long period when I was kind of stalking her, tormented by her accounts at her journal of the incredible stuff she did--the amount of writing and travel and shopping and visiting with friends. I finally was faced with the choice of either improving myself in an a la Jane manner or stopping the self-torture by staying away from her journal. I'm sure you have no trouble guessing which way I went.

Well, I just got back from taking a look at her journal, and it's the same old Jane. She's been writing a poem a day for a year and a half. It looks as if she's working on eight different projects in different stages of completion. She's got two speeches to prepare for later this year. She's also had a family come stay for three days and went to a bunch of places with a bunch of people.I tried to recall what I was doing during the same two-plus week period. I finished one lengthy revision, and I bought a new cooler. Seriously, hers is the journal of a person with a powerful work ethic and enviable self-discipline.

Talk about some self-discipline--I finished this tour.Oookaaay, it's true I started in November of last year, but I pride myself on persevering.

Have you ever heard stories about the good old days, when families would jump in the car on a weekend to go for a ride? Yeah, it seems wasteful in terms of time and limited natural resources to me, too. But that's what I think of each weekend when I pick up on my NESCBWI blog tour.

Kissing the Earth is described at the NESCBWI website as "A blog about landscapes and environments and our relationships to them as writers and human beings." I can't say that I totally understand that, but I do find this to be a well-done blog that is updated several times a month with sophisticated posts. In the "About" section sidebar, the bloggers talk about "The Art of the Flaneur--being present as you wander in your world, and taking note of the details," which I definitely would like to look into. Two bloggers maintain this site, the New England part of the team being Tamara Ellis Smith.

Melissa Stewart is a writer I actually know. For real. We've met. I have one of her books tucked away upstairs to give to a family member. She blogs at Celebrate Science, which "offers innovative resources for teaching science and tips for writing nonfiction." She also does some marvelous work for the NSCBWI.

I'm wondering if I haven't met Jane Sutcliffe. The name is very familiar. (Do I sound pathetic, or what?) She updates her blog, Whozits, a Kids' Biography Blog, a few times a month. The blog has an interesting focus. Each post is, at least in part, a biographical sketch.

Linda Booth Sweeney has written books and articles about systems. (From her website: "...systems – elements and processes interacting to form a whole – shape us and surround us.) Her blog, Talking About Systems, deals with "Looking for Systems in Everyday Life." Wow.

Some serious blogs today.

 

You can always squeeze in a few blog visits on a busy weekend so you can keep that Yes! I do work on weekends! feeling gone. The end of my personal tour of NESCBWI blogs is in sight. What am I going to do when I'm done? A plan is already forming.

But for now:

Leda Schubert is another one of my Facebook friends. We may have met on a listserv some years back. Yeah. That sounds right. She is not a wildly active blogger, indicating that she posted at Leda Schubert Writer and Teacher every six weeks or so, though it looks as if recently the schedule has been more like every few months. She refers to the blogosphere as the "Kingdom of Blog" and says, "I have said several times, I feel more like an occasional visitor to this kingdom than a participating citizen." When she posts, she often writes about writing process.

Anindita Basu Sempere is prepublished writer who has an academic background in writing and has been active in NESCBWI, co-directing regional conferences. She has recently published at The Washington Post. She often writers at her blog, anindita.org, about her reading.

When I said "You can always squeeze in a few blog visits," I meant, really, a few. That's all I can manage this family weekend.

The office is one of the cooler spots in our house, and visiting NESCBWI blogs doesn't require any sweat- inducing activity. So that's what I'm going to do.

Judy Mintz is working on a YA novel. What gives her gravitas as a litblogger, though, is her stint as one of the hosts of a cable show that involved interviewing authors. "Over the course of several years in the mid-90s I interviewed many of my favorite authors (Joyce Carol Oates, Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake to name a few) and many brand new authors who would subsequently disappear into obscurity (not, of course, due to anything I may have said)." An interesting point about her blog, Everywhere I Go, is that she describes her posts as short essays. And you know how I like essays.

Hazel Mitchell is an illustrator and one of my Facebook friends. As with many of my FFs, I do not know how that happened. I just enjoy finding that I already "know" people I run into like this. Her blog, Along the Right Lines, covers information about her books and her work travel and also includes illustrations.

Hazel also posts at the group blog, Pixel Shavings.

Laurie Smith Murphy is another FF. This year she's only done a half dozen posts at her blog, Random Acts of Writing, possibly because, according to her June 2 post, she's been working on a revision.

I actually know Mitali Perkins (though, yeah, we're Facebook friends, too). Her blog, Mitali's Fire Escape, is well known in the Kidlitosphere. She's a serious blogger. Read her and learn, people!

Tracy Porosoff is a pre-published writer whose blog A Bissel at a Time deals with incorporating Judaism into family life.

Katherine Rawson blogs at The Parrot's Point of View in the voice of a parrot. (She is the author of If You Were A Parrot.)

Joyce Ray writes for the America's Notable Women Series. Recently she's been doing book reviews at her blog, Musings.

Dreams du Dog is another blog written from the point of view of an animal, this time a Walker Foxhound. The blog doesn't make clear what it's connection is to writing.

Okay. I believe I am well over two-thirds of the way through this project. The end is in sight!

Ah, weekends. I actually have less time on them than I do on weekdays. For instance, I'd like to do a big post regarding last week's New York Times Book Review. However, it's only 8:30 AM, and I already know that's not going to happen.

Thank goodness I have that NESCBWI Blog Tour going and have developed just enough self-discipline (or habit or mental muscle memory) to keep plugging away at it. And who knows if I'll be able to get today's stops done in one pop?

Okay! Ann Haywood Leal. Her blog is The Backstory where recently she's been writing about getting around for work, to the New York SCBWI conference, for instance. She's also written about family and people she's met.

John Lechner's blog, The Untended Garden, is lavishly illustrated often with photographs or examples of other artist's work embedded within posts in which he writes about them. If I had time, I  would try following this blog for a while. But...  John has a second blog more closely related to his own work.

It's 8:44. As I foresaw, I have to stop for a while.

Six-thirty-four PM. I'm baaack.

Okay. Random Noodling has a terrific header illustration. It's Diane Mayr's blog and deals with "poetry, information to share, books to recommend--or not..."  Diane is interested in haiku, and she does something called Happy Haiga Day posts. I've no idea what that is. In addition to her books, Diane has published magazine articles. She's also one of The Write Sisters. I've seen that named floating around the Internet, maybe on Facebook.

Why look! The Write Sisters is Diane's second blog. The Write Sisters also have a website, though it just won't open for me tonight. They are seven writers who started out as a critique group, have published more than 100 books among them, and now offer workshops.

Laura Williams McCaffrey's blog, Here There Be Dragons, hasn't been updated since last year. She was doing a lot of writing prompts back then. She has some material at her website relating to plotting. Yeah. You all know how I am about plotting.

Dawn Metcalf's first book Luminous was published last year. Her blog, Officially Twisted, appears to be a mix of posts about her writing, specifically, and writing in general.

Enough for this weekend.

I'm getting pretty good at sticking to a weekend discipline/schedule of visiting NESCBWI blogs.

Jo Knowles is a Facebook Friend I actually met for real once in a parking lot before a NESCBWI salon. It was somewhere in Massachusetts. Don't recall the town. Don't recall what the Salon was about. The fact that Jo is from Vermont where I grew up is a big part of the reason I originally remembered her. She has a good blog where she writes regularly about her professional life. She's very active both in terms of writing (new book out this year), teaching, and making appearances.

Alison Kolesar is an illustrator. She describes her blog, Jumping in Puddles, as an illustration blog. It does look as if every post includes an illustration.

Jane Kohuth also has a book out this spring. Her blog, Jane Says, deals pretty much with news relating to her books.

Kathleen Kudlinski is another Facebook Friend. She's only been updating her blog, The Pond Side Place, once a month recently. That might be because her energy and time are going into her column, The Naturalist, at The New Haven Register.

I just finished reading all the posts included in the Unconventional Blog Tour. You remember the Unconventional Blog Tour. It was the blog tour about blogging. If you are a litblogger or thinking of becoming one or you are an author thinking of contacting blogs to try to arrange for reviews, you should consider at least skimming parts of the tour.

I see a recurring theme in the Unconventional Blog Tour--An attempt to set and maintain professional standards and to maintain independence of the publishing marketing machine. The professional standards issue is understandable. Anyone can put out a shingle and claim to be a blogger and, what's more, claim to be a literary blogger. There isn't any professional certification or licensing. For those of us who appreciate a rogue quality in life, a different voice and attitude, this is a good thing. But it also puts a lot of responsibility on readers to determine which bloggers favor straight opinion and which favor judgement, (see Objectivity and Transparency Online at Sophisticated Dorkiness), and to determine, moreover, how much professionalism we want in our blog reading. Readers really need to beware.

The attempt to maintain independence of the publishing marketing machine is a more interesting situation. It's interesting because back in the day, when lit blogging first started, it wasn't an issue. Blogs were totally independent of publishing. That started to change when the traditional publishing world, authors and publishing companies alike, saw that blogs could pull some of the marketing weight and moved in. Now publishing companies are trying to manage bloggers.  No wonder the FTC got involved a few years ago regarding whether or not bloggers are being compensated for reviews when they receive goods, such as books, from publishers (again, see Objectivity and Transparency Online).

Blogging started out as an independent act. Personally, I hope it stays that way. 

I'm finding the NESCBWI blog tour a relaxing thing to do during breaks in hectic weekends. That's what I'm on right now, a break in a hectic weekend.

Sharon Abra Hanen, the blogger who maintains The Well-fed Poet, has published primarily for adults. However, she does do posts on children's literature at her blog. 

Kourtney Heintz's Journal is the blog of an aspiring writer. She does book reviews and recently attended--and blogged about--the Mystery Writers' Association Symposium.

Jennifer Marie Hofmann is one of three writers who maintain the blog Damsels in Regress...bringing history back to life. They do author interviews, book reviews, and short essays on historical subjects.

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance writer and editor who maintains the blog Visible Thought.

And we will finish this week's relaxation with Lynda Mullaly Hunt's two blogs. Recently her personal blog has dealt with the launch of her debut book, One for the Murphy's, but she also runs a regular feature, Mentor Mondays. She's also one of the authors involved with EMU's Debuts, a blog maintained by debut authors at the Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

It's a holiday weekend, and I'm taking it easy for a few hours. Time for some NESCBWI blog visits!

I met Brendan Gannon last month. His blog, Brendan Gannon, deals with "writing, reading and technology." He hasn't updated since the NESCBWI conference, but if you scroll back a bit, you'll find the tech talk you crave.

Marlo Garnsworthy (a Facebook Friend) is a writer, artist, and editor. This past winter, she was writing at her blog, Wordy Birdie about her progress on a novel--she's writing it, not reading it.

A.C. Gaughen's debut novel, Scarlet, was published this past February by Walker Books, a division of Bloomsbury USA. Many of her blog posts this past spring have been about the launch of her book. Check out her charts relating to The Apocalypsies.

Caroline Gray is a student at the Rhode Island School of Design and a greeting card designer. Her blog, Caroline Gray Illustration, includes a lot of images of her beautiful work.

I am a fan of Tommy Greenwald's first book, Tommy Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading. (Tommy is another Facebook Friend.) His blog covers a lot of info about what's going on publishing-wise with his books, but there's also thoughts on writing.

Slice of the Blog Pie is a bit of a mystery. The blogger is Alicia Gregoire, but who is Alicia? What is the Campaigner Roll Call. Or, for that matter, what's the campaign? Recently, Alicia has done a number of reviews, but there are also posts on her writing and...ah...zombies. Those are written by a zombie expert.

Okay. That's enough Memorial Day relaxing. I need to go do some other kind of relaxation now.

Yes, people, it's time for some more NESCBWI member blog visits.

Today we're hitting Terry Farrish's blog, The Elephant Rag. Terry is a writer who is involved with the New Hampshire Humanities Council. The Elephant Rag "is about books for children and teens from many cultures, and follows the Humanities Council project to create a Nepali-English picture book with new Americans from Bhutan." Terry's book, The Good Braider, was published this month.

Shoshana Flax is a book seller and reviewer. Her blog, Walk the Ridgepole, has had a number of posts relating to the recent NESCBWI conference. She's also written about The Hunger Games, which is not at all surprising from a bookseller. Shoshana is also one of the contributors to the brookline booksmith's blog.

I met Deborah Freedman a few years back. She is an author and illustrator whose blog, logically enough, is called writes with pictures.

Words Not Taken, Bruce Frost's blog, has a lot of recent posts about his classroom. This looks like sophisticated writing on that subject. However, his site is divided into "paths."  The Picture Book Path is a compilation of articles, some he wrote for his blog, related to picture books and links to picture book biographies. This whole path or "way" thing, which he mentions in a couple of places--I so get that.

That's the "F" names. I would get started on the "G"s, but I'm kind of obsessed with Goodreads right now and want to get over there for a while.

I have doubts as to whether or not I will live long enough to visit all the New England SCBWI member blogs. It's not that there are so many (though it seems to me that there are). It's that I'm so slow.

Today I hit the forwordsbooks blog. forwordsbooks is "a website containing information about and access to Jewish books." The president also offers workshops on using Jewish children's literature. I'm not really seeing the writer connection with this blog, but it is listed at the NESCBWI site.

NESCBWI links to Anna J. Boll's LiveJournal blog Creative Chaos II. I prefer Creative Chaos, which is part of a more traditional website-type...site. At Creative Chaos, I can easily access info on Boll, whom I've heard of because she's the Northern New England Regional Advisor for SCBWI, and her name turns up in NESCBWI circles. She's done some posts recently on critique groups, which I hope to find time to read.

Freelance Ne'er-do-well is Ellen Booraem's blog. It looks as if she does book reviews, and she plans to be blogging about a recent trip to Ghana.

Ann Bedichek is a pre-published writer who blogs about historical fiction at Historical Fiction for the Classroom. Historical fiction! That subject keeps turning up here.

Do You Need a Social Media Intervention? provides advice on cutting back on social media. Unfortunately, now I want to follow the blog this post appeared at, The Bookshelf Muse.

Thanks to Cynsations for the link.

Marlo Garnsworthy has a point of view discussion going over at Wordy Birdie.

When I read about writing, I prefer to read what published writers have to say about the subject over the thoughts of unpublished writers. This is not a matter of caring about status. It's a matter of caring about experience. I'm not a big believer in untrained literary genius. Or untrained anything, for that matter.

I was going to tell you an amusing story that illustrates my point about me, but it would have meant taking too much time away from the actual subject of this post, Livia Blackburne's A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing. Livia Blackburne is what we call nowadays a pre-published writer, though she's a pre-published writer with an agent, suggesting she's perfected her work enough to be considered publishable by at least one publishing professional. She writes fantasy, but she's also a neuroscience graduate student, and she brings a wonderfully analytical approach to her writing about writing.

Her blog has a "Popular Posts" section (by the number of comments she gets, other readers are not at all put off by the fact that she hasn't published yet), and among them is one called Author Blogging: You're Doing It Wrong, in which she discusses why blogging probably isn't a great marketing tool for fiction writers. (Though there are other reasons beyond marketing for blogging.) It's hard for fiction writers to create a platform. On top of that, she says, "Sometimes in online platform discussions, someone will mention the elephant in the room, that we’re only blogging for other writers. Usually, that comment is met with thoughtful nods. Comments of “Yeah, we should think about that”. More awkward silence, and then we go back to our blogging....I‘ve never heard anyone come up with a thoughtful, generalizable, plan for reaching targeted fiction audiences through blogging."

I would go a step further, myself, and say that most bloggers are only blogging for other bloggers. It's a closed system. And, yeah, a lot of bloggers don't want to discuss it.

Livia, however, does. In Author Blogging: You're Doing it Wrong, but John Locke's Figured it Out she describes another author's strategy for determining his target audience. The idea being that once you've worked out your target audience for your fiction, you can try to write posts that will appeal to that group.

A children's author's target audience, for instance, is probably librarians, teachers, and booksellers, since most kids don't have large amounts of disposable income or a means to get to bookstores or order on-line.

A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing is a blog I'd like to spend a lot more time exploring. Ah, but, there's the time thing.

I'm still doing it, I'm still visiting the NESCBWI member blogs.

I just got back from hitting Shop Talk, The Eric Carle Museum's Bookstore Blog. As you would expect, this is a blog heavy on picture book coverage. It is also, very appropriately, heavy on illustrations. Nice ones. Eliza Brown posts "puzzlers," in which she puts up illustrations from picture books choosen because they share some sort of theme and lets commenters try to guess the titles. A particularly stunning one was the puzzler on maps.

Okay, folks, here is your next installment of my coverage of New England writers' blogs. Today's entry is the blog (or two) of A.C.E. Bauer, who was born in Montreal and spends part of the summer on a lake in Quebec, bringing to mind the close connection that once existed between New England and Canada. (And maybe still does.)

From her blog I'm Working On It, I can see that A.C.E. was involved with and continues to be involved with the Tassy Walden Awards. This may be of more significance to us Connecticut residents, since it's local. She does book giveaways, reviews, and hosts guest bloggers.

If I had more time, I'd really like to read her post on Tintin and King Leopold's Ghost, since one of my sons was a big Tintin fan when he was younger, and the other one had to (wait, I should say, was supposed to) read King Leopold's Ghost when he was in college as part of one of those freshman reading initiatives.

A.C.E. also blogs at Write Up Our Alley, a group blog for eight writers/illustrators who "decided to pool our experience in reading, writing, illustrating and teaching to provide resources to you — parents, teachers, librarians and booksellers — to bring a love of books and reading to children."

Just yesterday I was talking with a YA librarian about the strangle hold first- person narrators have on children's books. Then this morning I learned that Monica Edinger has a post at Educating Alice called Thought on Newbery: Third Person Omniscient Narration. In it she discusses third-person narrators that she describes as characters or "third person narrators who insert themselves occasionally into the reader’s consciousness." If you follow her referrals to other posts, you'll get to her own Whatchamacallit Narrators and The Personalities of Intrusive Narrators at Fuse #8 Production.

I don't recall the intrusive narrating in The Golden Compass, which Monica mentions somewhere along the line. And I liked the second The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place book, a series Betsy Bird mentions at Fuse #8, very much, though I never got a chance to blog about it. However, while I'm sure there are other exceptions, as a general rule, I am not a fan of the intrusive narrator.

I think of intrusive narrators as being the literary equivalent of breaking the fourth wall in television programs, something else I'm not a fan of. I want the illusion that the fictional world is a real one that I have entered and am experiencing somehow, even though there is no pretence that I'm a character. Breaking the fourth wall and speaking to me directly destroys that for me. If the characters in the fictional world know I'm there, then they know they're not part of a real world, right?

While I'm reading that book or watching that TV show, I want the characters to believe in themselves and not me.

Now, this is not to say I will never use an intrusive narrator. I would just need an incredibly compelling reason that I can't even imagine right now.

Over two weeks ago I announced my plan to visit all the New England Society of Children's Book Writer and Illustrator blogs listed at the organization's website. And here I am finally getting to a couple more.

I sort of know Jeannine Atkins (we're Facebook "friends"), who blogs at Views From a Window Seat. Hers is another blog that portrays a person living a real writer's life. She submits, she teaches, she attends literary festivals. And you can read about all that activity at Window Seat.

Nandini Bajpai has published short form work, which interests me, since I dabble in that kind of writing, myself. Interesting material from her recent posts: her experience with NaNoWriMo and her part in what she describes as a "Big Fat Indian Wedding."

Every now and then, when I think of it, I take a look at the child and YA fantasy and sci fi round ups at Charlotte's Library. I thought of it today because while cleaning up e-mail at a listserv, I saw a Charlotte message. (Granted, it was a few months old.) My reward was to find that this very day she had done a a post on new fantasy and sci fi releases for the rest of this month.

Notice that she includes Forever, the final book in the The Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater. While I found the second book in the series a little disappointing, I definitely liked the first one.

And here is another one of those fantastic trailers Stiefvater does for her books.

Stopping at Charlotte's Library was well worth the effort.