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In 2008, Feiwel & Friends published my first hardcover novel, Six Innings, a book that was eventually named An ALA Notable. The cover was fabulous, featuring the work of gifted illustrator Chris Sheban, whose style you might recognize from the covers of Because of Winn-Dixie, Brooklyn Bridge, Punished, The Tiger Rising, and more.

Six Innings sold reasonably okay, earned some kind reviews (and a Judy Blume comparison!), and nobody got rich; we were happy. When it was time for the book to go to paper, my publisher had to make a decision. Come up with a new cover, or simply reproduce the existing cover in a paperback format, which is what they did.

And the paperback edition did not sell. Understatement. It struck out, looking.

This could be for a variety reasons, but one line of thought was that we were dealing with two different markets. The hardcover, with awards and good reviews, sold well in the institutional market. Paperback was a different animal, targeted more directly to the reader. I want to say the less sophisticated consumer, but that’s not right. Children these days are plenty sophisticated, it’s just that their tastes are their own. To them, these days, the photographic approach seems to hold more immediacy.  At least that’s the current thinking.

So check out the new look (the original is up top in the header):

While I’ve got you (as my dad used to say), Linda Sue Park’s Keeping Score was another baseball-themed book that came out at the same time. And I confess: I hated the cover. That poor book, I thought. It just struck me, a former 10-year-old boy, as all kinds of wrong.

Someone must have agreed. Take a gander at the paperback.

Quite a difference, huh? It doesn’t look remotely like the same book. Curiously, in this case, the publisher went from a photographic to an illustrative approach, but more significantly re-thought the cover content and updated the design. A successful change, I think, though a dog and a fire hydrant makes me think of only one thing. Was that the idea? Dog pee? Maybe dog pee figures into the book somehow (I have not read it). The ex-boy in me wouldn’t have picked up that cover, either.

It’s also possible that the book was rewritten, with the girl character replaced by a black lab.

Guest blogger Linda Sue Park is the author of A Single Shard (Newbery Medal winner), Kite Fighters and her latest book, Keeping Score . In addition, Linda Sue has published several other novels, as well as picture books, poems and short stories. Linda Sue recently visited a First Book school and kindly agreed to share her impressions.

I recently visited a Title I school in Washington state to share some of my books with students there. I met with 83 fifth-grade students in the library.  It was clear to me from the moment I arrived that the students and the staff took pride in their school and were eager to welcome me.

The librarians and teachers had done some wonderful preparation before I arrived and the kids were already familiar with my picture book THE FIREKEEPER’S SON. I talked to them about my own family background; my love of reading; my early efforts at writing; and of course showed them photos of my dog. Then I booktalked a few of my titles, including KITE FIGHTERS, and finished up by talking about revision and rewriting, rejection, and the importance of reading. After that we had a few minutes of Q&A.

The kids were terrific. I didn’t see a single one of them wiggling or acting distracted–it felt like all their eyes were on me every minute. It is a K-8 school, and several eighth-graders were studying in the library at the time; I was tickled to see that by about halfway through, they had all abandoned their carrels and were standing at the back listening to my presentation!

At the very end I talked about First Book, and when I advised the assembled group that individual classrooms could register in addition to the school as a whole, I was encouraged to see the teachers and librarians in the room scribbling down the web address.  I then brought out boxes of books and told the kids I had made arrangements with First Book to provide each child with a copy of KITE FIGHTERS. I wish you could have heard the squeals in the room! Then I told them that I had already autographed the books for them and got a second chorus of squeals. We did a round of applause for First Book, then we handed out the books as the kids left the library.  The best part was that as the students went down the hall, most of them already had the book open, reading as they walked!

I hope everyone involved with a school or program serving children from low-income families will visit www.firstbook.org/register to connect  with your great organization!

Happy Valentine's Book Giveaway Day!  In the spirit of sharing the book love, I held a contest on my blog to give away a signed ARC of Linda Sue Park's incredible MG novel Keeping Score. 

And in the spirit of entertaining my children, we devised a fun, Valentine-loving way to pick a winner.

First, I wrote the names of everyone who entered on little foam heart stickers.  If you entered, you're on one of these.  I promise.



Then we stuck all the hearts to the dartboard in the basement. 



Then the kids closed their eyes and took turns shooting darts at you. 

You can be assured that it was done fair and square, even at great risk to our personal property.  E almost threw a dart through the door window you see next to the dartboard.  When I suggested that she open her eyes and just try to hit the board, she vehemently refused.  She would NOT compromise the integrity of the random selection process.

This took longer than I thought it would.  Bedtime was late. There were many near misses.  Many darts that just grazed the edges of some of your names.  But we were looking for a true piercing of the heart, Cupid style.  Finally, J was successful.



Can you read this?



How about now?



Congratulations, newport2newport!  Please email me your address, and I'll mail out your signed ARC of Keeping Score.  Happy  Valentine's Day, everyone, and thanks for entering!

Edited to add a special LJ "Sharing the Love" note...  newport2newport has requested that her prize be sent along to whiskersink to help her recover from a knee injury (and I know it will help!).  So, whiskersink, please send me your address, and newport2newport....thanks.  Your kindness this morning made me smile a huge smile. I love this community. 

~K

Sometimes I try to make soup out of all the leftovers in the refrigerator.  Today's post is blog soup -- all the little notes I've been meaning to mention but haven't had time. 

One of my favorite indies, Flying Pig Books in Shelburne, VT,  was nominated for the Lucille Micheels Pannell Award honoring bookstores that "excel at inspiring the interest of young people in books and reading."  If you've ever been to see Josie & Elizabeth at Flying Pig, you know  their children's section is fabulous, and they have a steady stream of guest authors (I'll be there on April 5th!). The nomination is a well-earned honor!  (Congrats are also in order for winning stores, Books & Books of Coral Gables, FL and Wonderland Books of Rockford, IL. The descriptions of these stores make me want to visit them all.)
      
Laurie Halse Anderson (halseanderson ) and her husband are training tirelessly for the Lake Placid Half Marathon.  They're running with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training to raise money for cancer research.  Even if you only run when being chased, you can click here to contribute to their efforts.

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting...and this Thursday, the Cybils Award Winners will be announced.  I served as a panelist for MG fiction, and I can't wait to see what one of our eight finalists the judges choose.

Kerry Madden (mountainmist) is having a cool school picture contest on her blog, and she's giving away signed copies of Jessie's Mountain.  Here's your opportunity to profit from that 3rd grade school photo where your collar was tucked in and your hair looked like devil horns.

Speaking of contests, don't forget that I'm giving away a signed ARC of Linda Sue Park's Keeping Score.  Check out this post for the details. You have  until 6pm EST on Wednesday to enter.  The winner will be announced on Valentine's Day.

And finally, have you checked out Nonfiction Mondays?  I love the idea of a blogging day devoted to nonfiction.  I missed today's roundup, but I'll be participating next Monday.  I hope you'll stop by to check out my interview with Jim Murphy, award-winning author of fantastic non-fiction titles like The Great Fire, Blizzard,  An American Plague, and most recently, The Real Benedict Arnold.

Sometimes it can be hard to wait.  I'm feeling a little impatient about the books of 2008 for a few reasons.

As a writer, I'm feeling impatient because my second MG historical novel, Champlain & the Silent One,  is still seven months away from the shelves.  It's off being edited and illustrated now, so all my work is done, except the waiting.  I can't wait to see the illustrations and the cover, and I really can't wait to start talking with kids at schools & libraries about Samuel de Champlain and the tribes who guided him on his voyage from Quebec to Lake Champlain 400 years ago.

As a reader and teacher, I'm excited for a whole roundup of 2008 titles from favorite authors & friends & other writers whose work I've heard about and can't wait to read.  I've been lucky enough to get sneak peaks of some of them, like Linda Sue Park's Keeping Score, which I reviewed here. This one is so unbelievably good that I've decided it's a crime not to pass it along so someone else can read it and love it and hopefully talk about it, too.

So here's the contest.  I'm giving a way my pre-read and somewhat well-traveled ARC of Keeping Score.  I won it in a drawing on cynthialord's blog a few weeks ago and asked Cindy if she'd be okay with me giving it away again.  The ARC traveled with me to the Kindling Words retreat in Vermont last week, where Linda Sue Park (lsparkreader) graciously signed it for the giveaway.  It's not a shiny, perfect, unread-by-human-eyes ARC, but it is signed and got to hang out with the likes of Linda Sue and Laurie Halse Anderson and Sara Zarr and Katie Davis and Jane Yolen and other wonderful people.  It's an ARC with lots of good karma.

If you'd like to be entered the drawing, just leave a comment below with the title of one 2008 release that you can't wait to read.  The contest ends at 6pm EST on February 13th.  I'll figure out some bizarre and random way to choose a winner and announce it here on my blog on Valentine's Day.

Linda Sue Park just hit another one out of the ballpark.



Watch for this book.  It's due out from Clarion in March, and I predict It’s going to win awards.

Keeping Score is the very best kind of historical novel – one that first introduces kids to funny, dynamic characters they’ll love and then brings in historical elements that are so much more meaningful as they affect the lives of those characters.

Ten-year-old Maggie Fortini loves the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Loves them with a big, fat capital L.  When Jim, a pal at her dad’s firehouse, teaches her how to keep score, she finds a way to be an even better fan and believes she’s helping the team when she keeps track of every play.  But as Maggie cheers the Dodgers in the early 1950s, the Korean conflict rages overseas. The war that isn’t called a war comes crashing into Maggie’s life when her friend Jim is drafted and suddenly stops communicating with her.

Knowing Park’s work, knowing that she’s a Newbery Medalist, I expected this book to be fantastic. Still, there were some passages that took my breath away, some that made me cry, and some that made me feel like I’m missing out on something spiritual because I’m not much of a baseball fan.  Readers will feel like they’ve moved right into 1950s Brooklyn, especially when Park describes Maggie’s walk through her neighborhood on game day:

She would walk past the row of houses that looked just like hers, all built of dull brownish-yellow brick, one window downstairs, two windows up – to Pinky the butcher, or Mr. And Mrs. Floyd at the bakery, or the drugstore, and she wouldn’t miss a single pitch.  Everyone would have their radios on, the sound of the game trailing in and out of each doorway like a long thread that tied the whole neighborhood together.
 
Keeping Score does for the Korean War what Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars does for Vietnam – contextualizes it through a funny, poignant story of life on the home front, told from a young person’s point of view.

This is a perfect book for baseball fans, so Clarion’s plans to roll it out in time for the first pitch make perfect sense.  But you don’t have to be a baseball fan to love this one.  Like so many great kids’ books, baseball may be the hook, but there’s so much more here.  

Keeping Score is full of colorful characters, like George at the firehouse, who shares his roast beef sandwiches with Maggie, her dad, who worries about crowd control, and her mom, who prays for the Dodgers while she knits.  It’s about baseball, but it’s also about family and friends and war.  Most, though, Keeping Score is about holding on to hope – something that old-time Dodgers fans knew all about.


PS - Thanks, cynthialord!  I loved this book almost as much as Maggie loves the Dodgers!

Good Morning:

I'm up and about and looking forward to a new day. I'm hopeful that it will be a better day than yesterday was.

Thinking back on my day yesterday, I can find it intriguing, but in the heat of the happenings, it wasn't such an intriguing day.

It was a nice enough morning, and I found my way to the back gardens as usual. I thought I would check the strawberries for any signs of buds. Generally, I'm not a glove wearer, so I blindly stick my bare hands into the strawberries. I did find a few buds, but I also pulled out a freshly dead goldfinch with a broken neck. Seems she flew into my sliding glass door and dropped dead into the terra-cotta pot full of lush, green strawberry plants.

I didn't really think much about it, as I often come across death and rat skulls and such, in my garden. I threw her on my hill to let nature take her. I always think this is a much better option than the trash can method. So, on with my day.

Next, I'm off in my car to my daily destinations. Driving on a street that I'm familiar with, but has unrecognizable construction work going on. Part of the street was roped off and I needed to make a left turn onto a smaller street. I did manage to make my left turn, but in doing so, I absolutely cut off a police officer. Just like that. I saw him across from me, but I wasn't sure if he had a stop sign because of all the construction hullabaloo. Like the "polite" person that I am, I look directly at him, put my hand up in a little wave and mouth "sorry" to him. Well...of course, he pulled me over. From that point on it was just surreal. I had never been pulled over before!! It really was just like the show "Cops". He asked me to turn off my vehicle and if I had any weapons or drugs in my car or on my person, and asked if I had any outstanding warrants. I showed him my driver's license, which I had to fetch from my purse, which, of course, was in the backseat. I knew enough not to reach behind me without first asking him. So, I had to turn my car back on, roll down the back window so that he could "get a visual" on my purse, and then he allowed me to reach back and get it. He took my license and "ran" it through wherever they "run" it through. Then, he came back, handed me my license and said to slow down a little and have a good day. What??? No ticket?? Thankful of the outcome, I was on my way.

Well...as I'm carefully driving on to the bank, probably a little too carefully, I decide to take a backstreet that goes through some horse property. There's a charming old barn and hundred year old Cacti. So, I'm driving along and in a simple heartbeat, a bird flies right into the front of my car. He hit with enough force to kill him instantly and fall to the side of the road. Two dead birds in one day. What the heck is going on? I continue on, as there's nothing I can do for the bird. I find my way to the bank, although slightly shaken and a little confused. Once inside, I'm immediately helped. I sit down to get my paperwork together. I open my wallet to grab my debit card....it's gone. Yep, gone. I think to myself "What the heck is going on?" I looked through every nook and cranny of my wallet. Emptied my purse. Checked my pockets. Nothing. My debit card had vanished. I finished my banking and carefully, very carefully journeyed home.

I spent the rest of yesterday mentally backtracking my steps. Trying to figure out when the last time was that I used my bank card. Needless to say, I haven't found it yet...

All in all, it was an odd and curious day yesterday. I seriously hope that today is calm and predictible.

I'll leave you with a few photos today. A picture of the progress of the garden path, a few pictures of our herbs and edibles and...yet another picture of my sweet Jr. doing what he does best....

Jr. staring at "ground fairies"


Making progress on my garden path


My daughter's kitchen garden


Cinnamon Basil


Yellow Crook Neck Squash


Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls
Kim's Kandid Kamera