How to use this Page

Add a Comment

I hope Irene is still celebrating her 10th bloggiversary over at Live Your Poem, because my I don't want to miss the party and my life has been--well, a little wild lately.

wild, all right--
in all the most ordinary ways:
the wild,
mild weather,
the threat and wet,
the unexpected,
microclysmic climate
change

wild, all right--
the wild
child changing,
the wrest and test,
unapologetic
shut-the-door-I'm-changing
change

wild, all right--
the wild,
piled letters,
the "better," "best,"
the unrelenting,
college-bound suggested
change

wild, all right--
the wild,
whiled passage
the ebb and flow
the unremarked
minute-by-minutiae
change...

all wild
all change
all right

Add a Comment

In two weeks, as students across the United States are enjoying their Thanksgiving break, StoryCorps wants to give us all a bit of homework. Calling it the Great Thanksgiving Listen, they are asking high school students to use their mobile app (available in iTunes or Google Play) to “preserve the voices and stories of an entire generation of Americans over a single holiday weekend.”

The post Getting to the core of StoryCorps, and other audio puns appeared first on OUPblog.

Display Comments Add a Comment

This poor guy is resigned to his fate.

The post Daily Drawing: Turkey 10 appeared first on rob-peters.com.

Add a Comment

As we near the end of the 2015 University Press Week blog tour, here’s a shorthand of what our fellow esteemed presses have in the works today under the umbrella, “Conversations with Authors,” in addition to all of the great posts other presses have contributed so far:

• Gary Kramer, publicist at Temple University Press, interviews Eric Tang, author of Unsettled, about his scholarly publishing experiences
• Columbia University Press editor Christine Dunbar discusses the new Columbia UP Russian Library series of literature in translation in conversation with translators and scholars from the series board
• the University of Virginia Press profiles one of their authors via an intimate Q & A
• at the Beacon Press blog, executive editor Gayatri Patnaik speaks with author Jeanne Theoharis about The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and the Rosa Parks papers
• Acquisitions editor Dawn Durante interviews Carol Stabile, editor of the Feminist Media Studies series, for the University of Illinois Press
• the University of Southern Illinois Press blog features questions and answers with Guy R. Hasegawa, author of Villainous Compounds: Chemical Weapons and the Civil War
• the University of Kansas Press hosts a discussion with Friended at the Front author Lisa Silvestri
• Marketing manager Marty Brown, of Oregon State University Press, talks with author Lawrence Landis about his writing process for A School for the People: A Photographic History of Oregon State University
• A Q & A between Liverpool University Press’s editorial director and the editor of one of their forthcoming open access e-textbooks, Using Primary Sources is in the works for LUP
• And finally, the University of Toronto Press sits down with one of their journal editors.

To read more about 2015 University Press Week—and see what you might have missed—click here.

Add a Comment

John Cameron Mitchell will direct an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s short story, “How To Talk To Girls At Parties.”

The cast includes Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Ruth Wilson, Matt Lucas, Jessica Plummer, and Alex Sharp. Gaiman himself will serve as an executive producer. Click here to read the full piece.

Here’s more from Deadline: “The story follows a shy teenage punk rocker Enn in 1970s suburban London, and his two closest friends. One night they all sneak into a party where they meet a group of intensely attractive, otherworldly girls; at first they think they’re from a cult, but eventually come to realize the girls are literally from another world—outer space. The leaders of this alien colony have a nefarious plan in mind, but that doesn’t stop Enn from falling madly in love with Zan, one of the colony’s key members. Their burgeoning romance sets in motion a series of increasingly sensational events that will lead to the ultimate showdown of punks versus aliens, and test the bonds of friendship, family, and true love.” (via ScreenDaily)

Add a Comment

Here's the cover for the 3rd book in the "Little Rhino" series by Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard and his wife Krystle.

Add a Comment

Let's resume the GJ Book Club with Harold Speed's 1924 classic The Science and Practice of Oil Painting, which continues where his previous book, The Practice and Science of Drawing left off.

I'll present his points in bold either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by comments of my own.

1. "Painting is drawing (form expression) with the added complication of tone and color."
One of Speed's great contributions as a teacher is to narrow the gulf in students' minds between drawing and painting. As he says, the key is to break down the problem into easy stages and to take one thing at a time. In his previous book, he talked a lot about "mass drawing," by which he meant seeing form in terms of tone. The jump from charcoal to monochromatic oil isn't that great. His book is a good lifeline for those who have been frustrated by all the variables of a full-color painting.

J. S. Sargent, portrait of Charles Stuart Forbes

2. The impressionist movement has required a reformulation of the course of study in art schools because of the new vision that the movement has given us.
From the standpoint of British art schools in the early 20th century, this impressionist way of seeing would have been regarded "Continental" or "beastly French" as Sargent joked. Eventually the British painters adopted the ideas of broken color and direct painting, but there were many in the Royal Academy who resisted it.

3. There are two modes of teaching: hard drilling on technical methods or leaving the student to figure out a technique on his own.
Some of the great teachers have come from both camps. Frank Reilly was more of the former, while Howard Pyle was more of the latter. But, Howard Pyle had the luxury of incoming students who had already been drilled on academic methods. The problem with the first method, Speed suggests, is that the student can get lost in technical issues and lose sight of their unique expressive potential. Later in the introduction Speed suggests that any art school should nurture the natural impulses of each individual student while providing the technical tools.

4. Every work of art starts with a nebulous idea.
This is true for me, and my thumbnail process is so important to work through. The buzzword for this process these days is "iteration." A lot of people seeing a finished painting assume the artist just sits down and renders out an idea fully formed.

5. "The best definition of a genius I have seen, is that he is described as the man most under the influence of these mental uprushes from the subconscious."
I know what he means, but I think the statement could be misleading. So many great geniuses like Michelangelo define genius as "eternal patience," or "the infinite capacity for taking pains" or "90% perspiration." Those uprushes from the subconscious only arrive, in my experience, in the context of steadfast effort. Patience, steadfastness, hard work, and an insatiable dissatisfaction. Who else but Sargent would have the intense application to wipe out a portrait again and again after 15-20 false starts.

6. Conscious / unconscious
Speed talks a lot about the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. I love the idea that we should study consciously and paint intuitively. His preoccupation with the unconscious was very much of his time, as Henry James and other psychologists were building on what Freud had posited about the workings of the creative mind.

More recently, neuroscientists have explained the process by which skills are internalized. Beginners focus consciously on each skill, and then gradually, through practice, the neural pathways migrate into deeper subcortical regions of the brain.

7. Practical / intuitive
In the later part of the introduction, he sets up for the analytical approach that he'll use in his course of study, without neglecting the value of intuition and elusive rhythms that are harder to dissect. He wisely chooses to avoid the mysteries of the origins of creativity and to stick with more practical and rational matters.

At the end of the chapter, he decries the loss of drawing as a commonplace skill practiced by non-artists, perhaps a consequence of mystifying the process and undermining the value of traditional skills.

He ends with a great quote: "It is only those you cannot discourage who are worth encouraging."

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Add a Comment

Happy Friday the 13th! But we usually don't think of this date as a happy one, do we? No, we associate Friday the 13th with dark places and scary events. And that darkness and fear is a very necessary part of being human...and telling a story.

Years ago, whenever I was creatively procrastinating upon a tough job at work, or doing my best to avoid a task that involved conflict, a guy in my office would give me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten in life: Go where it’s scary.

The only way to work through the problem, to get to the other side, is to face it head-on. Whimping out and avoiding it, as I liked to do, truly didn’t do me any good. It just prolonged the pain.

I’ve always remembered my colleague’s advice, and that phrase, “Go where it’s scary,” comes to mind whenever I find myself dragging toward something I dread but know I must do. This is especially true with my writing. Being the polite Southern girl that I am, I often hesitate to inflict conflict upon my characters, or even worse, have them confront and deal with their innermost pains and fears.

As in life, confronting and traveling through our fears is an essential part of being human, it’s even more so with our characters, our heroes. And no part of story construction addresses “go where it’s scary” more directly than the approach to the innermost cave of the Hero’s Journey.

The Hero's Journey

The Hero’s Journey and its Abyss, or Inmost Cave, is a concept described within Joseph Campbell’s groundbreaking The Hero With a Thousand Faces. A comparative mythologist, Campbell studied myths separated by continents, centuries, and cultures and discovered that most shared a basic framework, the hero’s quest, which he broke down into 17 steps. Christopher Vogler, a scriptwriter and film producer, simplified Campbell’s work into 12 steps in The Writer’s Journey, making it more accessible to writers and the film industry. Campbell’s and Vogler’s Journey have been used in storytelling in everything from Star Wars to About a Boy to Harry Potter to insertyourowntitlehere.

At the heart of the Hero’s Journey is the sending forth of the hero from his home clan to begin a series of trials and temptations that lead to his victory over their adversaries, which culminates in his triumphant return with a reward that enriches the clan as a whole. You can see why this basic story structure would have primordial appeal to the human psyche — it is how any human unit, whether that unit be a clan, a family, or a nation — has survived and prospered throughout millennia.

The Abyss:

The Abyss is the point in this journey where the heroine approaches her most intense conflict, her Ordeal. It is in the innermost cave that she must face and conquer both her outward foe and her own personal demons. Cave analogy harkens back to our days when the darkest places we had to fear held deadly creatures that often lurked deep in the places we called our homes. The abyss, or underworld, was the place of loss, where all bodies must eventually travel…that final, unknowable journey.

Whether in the underground, snake-filled “Well of Souls” where Indiana Jones recovers the ark but loses it to the Nazis, or the lonely, cave-like home of Will Freeman in About a Boy where Will must confront the emptiness of his life, to the underground chamber beneath Hogwarts where Harry confronts Voldemort and the loss of his parents in Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone — modern storytellers are still going underground/deep into their cave to set their Ordeal.

In the abyss, the hero meets death and triumphs over his deepest fears, which symbolizes his death to his old life and resurrection to the new. Victory is won — whether that triumph is achieved through vanquishing the antagonist or through atonement with his Shadow. Or, as Joseph Campbell said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”

Real Life:

And if our hero can do it in a story, then we can do it in real life. We live vicariously through our hero’s success. If done well, when the book is closed or the movie concluded, we then feel equipped to go back into our life and confront our own demons and monsters. This is the heart of catharsis, and this is why the bestselling books and best remembered movies are those where the hero triumphs over a tremendous obstacle with deep, personal ramifications. It does not matter whether those obstacles are pitched on the intensely personal level or the high-stakes world-wide scale.

As writers, we must remember to send our heroine into the heart of fear. She must go where it’s scariest for her to venture, face those fears head-on, triumph and be forever changed. Only in this way can she return to her world to enrich her clan and ultimately we the writer and our reader.

What abyss have you or your character recently faced and conquered?

Picture credits: National Geographic, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces and Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

About the Author:

S.P. Sipal

Born and raised in North Carolina, Susan Sipal had to travel halfway across the world and return home to embrace her father and grandfather’s penchant for telling a tall tale. After having lived with her husband in his homeland of Turkey for many years, she suddenly saw the world with new eyes and had to write about it.

Perhaps it was the emptiness of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus that cried out to be refilled, or the myths surrounding the ancient Temple of Artemis, but she’s been writing stories filled with myth and mystery ever since.

Website | Twitter | Amazon

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

At the time of its creation, the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, targeted at ‘dangerous offenders’ considered likely to commit further serious offences, elicited little parliamentary debate and even less public interest. Created by the Labour government’s Criminal Justice Act 2003, the sentence was subsequently abolished by the Conservative-led coalition government in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

The post The politics of the ‘prisoners left behind’ appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

This blank sky

between parallel wires

reserved

for penmanship

practice.

- the beginning of Followers by Rae Armantrout

Read the poem in its entirety here.

View all posts tagged as Poetry Friday at Bildungsroman.

View the roundup schedule at A Year of Reading.

Learn more about Poetry Friday.

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

   In all, children who look at this book will visit fourteen places in the United States, all of which are unique and interesting in their own way. Poems written in a variety of styles by Nikki Grimes, J. Patrick Lewis, Linda Sue Park and others are accompanied by marvelous illustrations, and in the back of the book readers will find further information about the Amazing Places featured in the book.

Add a Comment

By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

Five Questions for Tim Wynne-Jones by Elissa Gershowitz and Sam Bloom from The Horn Book. Peek: "For years I had wanted to write a World War II book to honor my father, whose experience of the war in Europe scarred him."

Someone Is Publishing Your Idea by Mary Kole from Kid Lit. Peek: "...you can’t really know a book from a paragraph of description. The voice, the tone, the plot, the sense of humor, the lightness or darkness, the literary quality. All of these things happen in the execution, not the pitch."

Publisher Eileen Robinson of Move Books from Emma D. Dryden at Our Stories, Ourselves. Peek: "I want to help children see themselves in books, be changed by them, and find confidence and solace in reading, giving them an experience that might inspire them or help them inspire others."

Redefining Heroism by Jennifer Bohlman from Disability in Kidlit. Peek: "There are very few chronically ill fantasy and science fiction heroes because it seems impossible for 'chronically ill' and 'hero' to describe the same person." See also Thinking Critically, Thinking Positively by Corinne Duyvis from Nerdy Book Club.

Comment on the #17Days of Mindfulness Challenge at Shadow Mountain's Facebook page for a chance to win Silence by Deborah Lytton.

What Does Thanksgiving Make You Think Of? by Angie Manfredi from Reading While White. Peek: "...at my library, instead of another story about sharing maize, we make a conscious effort to spotlight and celebrate books by Native American authors. You can too..." See also Urban Tribes: Native Americans in the City from Rich in Color. 

Review & Recipes: The Little Kids’ Table by Mary Ann McCabe Riehle and Mary Reaves Uhles from Jama Kim Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Peek: "They all know that deep down, the grown-ups would gladly trade their fancy dishes for a chance to sit at the table that always has the most FUN!" Note: Do you like picture books and/or food and/or art and/or...? Jama's Alphabet Soup is an adorable, creative and informative blog. Highly recommended!

Richard Van Camp's Whistle: a recommendation by Debbie Reese from American Indians in Children's Literature. Peek: "He felt so real, and people with troubles like his require me to slow down and think about young people."

Cynsational Giveaways

• Signed copies of Surviving Santiago by Lyn Miller-Lachmann. Author sponsored. U.S. only. 
• Bookplate-signed copy of The Safest Lie by Angela Cerrito.  Publisher sponsored. U.S. only.

This Week at Cynsations

• Angela Cerrito on The Safest Lie
• Danica Davidson on Attack on the Overlord
• Tonya Bolden to Receive Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award
• "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" Trailer
• Book Trailer: Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies by Carmen Oliver, illustrated by Jean Claude 

More Personally

Congratulations to Greg Leitich Smith on the release of Borrowed Time (Clarion, 2015), a companion book to Chronal Engine. From the promotional copy:

In this time-travel dinosaur adventure, Max Pierson-Takahashi and his friend Petra return to the days of the dinosaurs, where they must survive attacks from mosasaurs, tyrannosaurs, and other deadly creatures, including a vengeful, pistol-toting girl from the 1920s. 

The fast pace, mind-bending time twists, and Greg Leitich Smith’s light, humorous touch make this an exciting, fun choice for readers looking for adventure and nonstop action.

Central Texans! Join us for the book launch party at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15 at BookPeople in Austin.

In other exciting news, I look forward to joining fellow Austin YA authors P.J. Hoover, Mari Mancusi and Cory Putnam Oakes for the advanced screening of "Mockingjay, Part 2" on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at Alamo Drafthouse South in Austin. Cory is hosting a giveaway of official film merchandise!



Personal Links

What College Costs This Year
Hollywood Sexism
A Teacher's Job
"Concussion" Movie and the NFL
U. of Missouri's Business-Minded Ex-President 
We Need Diverse Books on Scholastic Book Club Collaboration

Add a Comment

In 1861, just prior to the American Civil War, Harriet Jacobs published a famous slave narrative – of her life in slavery and her arduous escape. Two years earlier, in 1859, Harriet Wilson published an autobiographical novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, tracing her life as “free black” farm servant in New England.

The post Harriet Jacobs: the life of a slave girl appeared first on OUPblog.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Over at Watch. Connect. Read., Mr. Schu is unveiling the cover of Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions. That’s my upcoming picture book with Don Tate, the follow up to our first collaboration, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch. Whoosh!, a biography of the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun, comes out […]

Add a Comment

On Saturday 17th October, 16,000 people marched to protest against the new junior doctor contracts in London for the second time. The feeling at the protest was one of overwhelming solidarity, as people marched with placards of varying degrees of humour. Purposely misspelled placards reading “junior doctors make mistaks” were a popular choice, while many groups gathered under large banners identifying their hospital, offering 30% off.

The post Junior doctor contracts: should they be challenged? appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

Eat Your U.S. History Homework. Ann McCallum. 2015. Charlesbridge. 48 pages. [Source: Review copy]

I love the premise behind Ann McCallum's Eat Your U.S. History Homework. I think it is a clever idea to write a cookbook with American History in mind.

The book only covers early American history. The first recipe--around the times of the Pilgrims settling America--is "Thanksgiving Succotash." The last recipe--around the time of the American Revolution--is for "Independence Ice Cream." There are six recipes in all.

The topics or subjects these recipes are supposed to supplement: Pilgrims at Plymoth, 1620; The Thirteen Original Colonies, 1607-1776; The French and Indian War, 1754-1763; Slaves and the Southern Planation, 1619-1863; The American Revolution, 1775-1783; The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Some recipes you might recognize under another name. For example: "Revolutionary Honey-Jumble Cookies" and "Lost Bread" are snickerdoodles and french toast.

I like the focus on food. I like the historical tidbits. I like everything but the illustrations.
© 2015 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Add a Comment

Title: Feeding the Flying Fanellis and Other Poems from a Circus Chef Written by: Kate Hosford Illustrated by: Coesei Kawa Published by: Carolrhoda books 2015 Themes: food, circus, chefs, Genre: poetry Ages: 5-8 Source: review copy from the publisher Opening: In The circus Kitchen I’ve never turned a cartwheel, … Continue reading →

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

At least two fun things are happening today! First, Cecily Milway is going to school for book week dressed as Astra from Cakes in Space. (Big thanks to her writer-illustrator dad for tweeting the photo!)



The other thing is that I've joined PopJam and they're going to give me a shout out this afternoon! If you're on PopJam, come find me at 'SarahMcIntyre'. And my co-author Philip Reeve joined just last night, so you can look out for him at 'Philip_Reeve'.



I found out about PopJam at Zoom Rockman's party from PopJam Content Producer Melisa Hasan ('melisa'), who encouraged me to join. And my first friends there were Zoom ('Zoom_Rockman') and Jamie Smart ('FindChaffy')! The app is free to download, and it's very creative and drawing-based. I haven't had a lot of time yet to explore it, but it seems really exciting. Also, PopJam has an 11pm bedtime, which is actually rather healthy.

Add a Comment

I just presented a session at an area conference of the National Science Teachers Association in Philadelphia (along with Janet Wong) and what a great crowd we had! Plus, walking the exhibit hall I learned about Science Friday, a weekly radio program (now with podcasts and more) that's been around for 25 years. We talked with them about linking POETRY Friday with SCIENCE Friday! I'll keep you posted on how that develops. We also ran into "Ben Franklin" and shared a poem about him from one of our books-- that was a hoot. He seemed to genuinely enjoy that moment too. He even asked to have our picture taken with HIS camera! We talked about how poets are like scientists in their careful observations, focus on details, and sharing of their "findings!" And of course, we shared tons of poems (and Take 5 activities).  One of the most popular was this one (along with the Take 5 activities):
Also this poem offers a perfect transition to NEXT week's presentation at the annual conference of the National Council of Teacher's of English. Next week, Janet and I shift gears at join forces with poets and authors Susan Marie Swanson (who wrote the "Jane Goodall Begins a Speech" poem above) and Laura Purdie Salas to talk about poetry and movement, "Into the Poem: Active Strategies for Engaging Kinesthetic Learning." More on that next week! Meanwhile, head on over to Wee Words for Wee Ones for the rest of the Poetry Friday fun and enjoy our closing slide from our presentation, "How is a Scientist Like a Poet: Connecting Literacy and Science."

Add a Comment

The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey is the next selection for Reddit’s new book club.

The book is about a bright young girl who lives underground in a dystopian future in which most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection. Carey will do an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Dec. 28 at 5 p.m. ET.

Beginning next month, Reddit’s book club will now read a book a month rather than a book every two months. The club will host threads about the book throughout the month and will have an author AMA at the end of each month.

“We’ve received many messages asking when the next bookclub will be announced so I think most people will prefer the shorter gap between books,” explained the Reddit book club moderator. “Changing it to one book each month means we get to read more books together and it’s much easier to schedule authors who we think you will enjoy.”

Add a Comment

Add a Comment