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It's one thing to read about censorship in a news article; it's another to become aware of the threat at a nearby library or school. For Banned Books Week this year, we reviewed hundreds of documented appeals to remove materials from a local public library, school library, or course curriculum. Below are 30 books that [...]

Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers has released 12 digital books by Robert Cormier, the author of the 39 year old YA classic, The Chocolate War. Did you discover his books as a younger reader?

The digital books include: Fade, Tunes for Bears to Dance To, 8 Plus 1, Beyond the Chocolate War and I Am the Cheese. Knopf Books for Young Readers will continue to publish Cormier’s hardcovers while the Ember and Laurel-Leaf imprints publish his trade paperback editions. Here’s more from the publisher:

A tireless warrior in the crusade for realistic young adult fiction, Cormier not only changed the landscape of young adult literature but also pushed the boundaries of what could be discussed in the classroom. He was ahead of his time in dealing with issues of bullying and the importance of independent thought. “I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations,” he said in an interview with School Library Journal. “I’m very interested in intimidation. And the way people manipulate other people, [as well as] the obvious abuse of authority.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.(Robert Cormier)

Illustrator Peter Brown...

I attended a session with the delightful young illustrator Peter Brown who talked about his work from the time he was six-years-old and created The Adventures of Me and My Dog Buffy to his recent work on picture books like Chowder and Flight of the Dodo. It was interesting to see how his illustration style evolved and the path he took finding his "visual voice."

Author/illustrator Brown said that for him, "writing is not a graceful process" and that his writing and illustration influence each other as a picture book project evolves.

Some fun Peter Brown facts:

• He's been pooped on by a bird seven times (but this gave him the idea for Flight of the Dodo).
• He spent a year traveling Europe alone.
• He loves to draw trees (and showed some amazing tree illustrations).
• Chowder has his own the dog blog.
  

08 CWIM Preview: Interview with Jo Knowles...

Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting previews of features and interviews that appear in the 2008 CWIM, which will be in stores in early August. (Just this minute Greg the Production Guy handed me two advance copies! A nice morning surprise.)

Today I offer an abbreviated version of my Q&A interview with debut novelist Jo Knowles. Jo's first book, Lessons From a Dead Girl, offers readers a powerful, often uncomfortable journey into the world of abuse and healing, chronicling the complex relationship between main character Laine and her best friend/tormentor Leah, who, Laine learns at the book’s opening, has died.

Jo's journey to publication was helped along by winning grants and awards including an SCBWI Work-in-Progress Grant for a Young Adult Novel in 2002, which attracted the attention of her agent Barry Goldblatt. And she won a PEN New England Children's Book Caucus Discovery Award in 2005, which lead to a contract with Candlewick. She's a member of the Class of 2k7 collective.

Would you recommend contests and grants to other writers pursuing publication?

Absolutely! There are so many good things that come out of applying for a grant. First of all, you have to write a synopsis, which is very hard but really forces you to think about your manuscript and what it’s about. I guess that sounds pretty obvious but when you do it for the first time, it’s like a revelation!

Second, I think submitting a sample of your work, say 10 pages, makes you look at those pages in a really intense way, through the eyes of the most critical reader you can imagine. Every sentence counts! Since doing this I now revise my manuscripts in roughly 10-page chunks, which usually translates to two chapters for me. I look at those chapters and work on how they stand on their own. It’s a great exercise.

Third, getting that call is the biggest thrill! At the time I got the call about the SCBWI grant I had been through some tough times in my personal life and was feeling pretty hopeless. I remember hanging up the phone and sitting on the floor and crying. It was wonderful! And then soon after that I received a letter from Barry Goldblatt (he’d read the notice about the grant in the SCBWI Bulletin) asking if I’d be interested in submitting my work to him. He’d only been in the business for about a year or so at that point, so I was really lucky! And then when I applied for the PEN award I’d sort of sunk to that hopeless place again. I’d had some close calls with revision requests, but I was beginning to feel like maybe I just didn’t have what it takes. A good friend of mine, Cynthia Lord (author of the Newbery Honor-winning Rules), encouraged me to give it a shot so I decided to take a chance on Lessons from a Dead Girl, a manuscript Barry hadn’t actually shopped around yet because I had nearly given up on it. I was totally shocked and thrilled when I got the call and found out I won.

Any tips on catching the eye of judges?

Hand in your best work. I know that sounds a bit simple, but really I think you have to make those first pages sing, just like the first pages of any book. How can your first sentence hook the reader? What would make the judge keep going? Read the pages out loud, have someone else read them to you, read all the first chapters from your favorite books and think about what it is that makes those resonate with you. Don’t just hand in any old thing for the sake of submitting. Respect the judges’ time and only submit if you have something you’ve put your all into. Also, follow the rules to a T. Don’t hand in more pages than requested. Follow the formatting guidelines. If the submissions say the excerpt should come from a completed work, don’t hand in something you’ve only written the first chapter of. Be professional.

As a first-time author, were there any surprises during the publishing process? What has your relationship with your editor been like? With your agent?

It’s funny but I don’t think there have been too many surprises. The biggest surprise was getting an offer! My editor, Joan Powers, is wonderful. She is very straightforward, asks lots of questions, and trusts me to answer them in my revisions. I certainly don’t think she ever shied away from asking tough questions, and I really appreciate that. My agent, Barry Goldblatt, is terrific. He’s become a good friend who knows and cares about my career and me. Barry has a reputation for being “brutally honest” but I think I should set the record straight right now and say he also has a huge heart. You have to be honest in this business. That may sound harsh but dishonesty will only lead to disappointment later. Barry knows that, and I think by being honest up front he is giving aspiring writers a huge gift. Writing is hard, hard work. But if you keep at it, if you keep revising, keep listening to the feedback rather than feeling it, you will get better, and you will succeed.

After receiving some parental complaints, an Australian principal pulled Stephen King's The Body from an eleventh grade class due to the sexual content and replaced it with Robert Cormier's We All Fall Down, which is one of the most disturbing books I'VE EVER READ.

And which also has plenty of sexual content, but whatever.

To my embarrassment, I forgot to check my list of author birthdays and have missed two recently, but have caught the third today ! Here there are, in chronological order:

Robert C O'Brien, author of (amongst others) Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Review), which won the 1972 Newbery Medal and was a childhood favourite of mine, was born on January 11, 1918.

I found out just too late in the day, yesterday, that Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War in 1974, which apparently became one of the fifty most frequently banned books in America's public libraries and schools in the 1990s, was born on January 17, 1928. I must confess I've never read The Chocolate War, but having learnt that fact about its banning, I'm curious to read it, just to find out why...

Finally, 18 January 1882 saw the birth of A A Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh. I don't recall reading Winnie as a child, but somewhere I possess a copy of Winnie the Pooh: Complete Collection of Stories and Poems, which I read with great curiosity when I was in my 20s.