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Warner Bros. Pictures has unleashed a second trailer for Pan. The video embedded above offers glimpses of Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard, Amanda Seyfriedas Mary, Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, Garrett Hedlund as Hook, and Levi Miller as Peter Pan.

According to Deadline.com, the theatrical release date has been scheduled for October 9th. Click here to download a free digital copy of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. (via movieweb.com)

– We’ve talked about it some, and it seemed like only an eventuality, but The CW has officially picked up the Arrow/Flash spin-off and has given it a real title: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

The series, which stars Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter, follows the time-traveler as he is tasked with assembling a group of heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat, where both the planet and time itself is at stake.

Also appearing in the new series will be Victor Garber, Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz, Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell, Ciara Renee, and Franz Drameh. Each either reprising their roles from Arrow and The Flash, or starring as new characters for the series, such as Renee’s Hawkgirl.

So, at the very least The Atom, the first Black Canary, Captain Cold, Heatwave, Rip Hunter, Hawkgirl and one half of Firestorm are heading up this team. Drameh’s character is the only mystery remaining, here’s how the casting rumors described his part:

“MYSTERY HERO” | An African-American male in his twenties will fill the role of a regular, street smart guy who unexpectedly gains powers, and then, as part of the team, regularly quips about the insanity of the situations.

– In exciting news for anyone that’s a fan of good genre television, ABC opted to renew Agent Carter, despite being a somewhat soft performer ratings-wise (averaging about 5 million viewers an episode). Showrunners Michelle Fazekas and Tara Butters are expected to return. Also, as expected, ABC renewed Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for another season.

While I’m fairly lukewarm to negative on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the potential of Agent Carter is pretty tremendous, given its cast and concept. I rather hope that next season does the “ten year jump forward” bit that Hayley Atwell has mentioned in the past. It’s a series that could afford to shake things up somewhat, and really, who doesn’t want to see Peggy Carter in the “Mad Men era” or better yet, something Jim Steranko-inspired? Plus, I really just want to see John Slattery take over the Howard Stark role at this point.

– With this good news though, it looks like ABC only had so much room for Marvel programming, as according to Deadline, the proposed Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spin-off focused on Adrianne Palicki‘s Bobbi Morse will not go forward. Truthfully, that might have been a blow that its parent series might not have recovered from.

– Lastly, Hugh Jackman has confirmed that this next Wolverine entry will be his last, per an interview with an Australian talkshow:

This will be my last one. It just felt like it was the right time to do it. And let’s be honest, 17 years! I never thought in a million years it would last, so I’m so grateful to the fans for the opportunity of playing it. I kind of have in my head what we’re going to do in this last one. It just feels like this is the perfect way to go out.

It feels like Jackman says this every few years, but given that he’s starting to creep up in age (he’s currently 46) and the sheer torture he probably puts himself through to get into “Wolverine shape”, it’s surely for the best.

Warner Bros. Pictures has unveiled a new teaser trailer for Pan. Deadline reports that “the fantasy actioner retells the tale of an orphan boy snatched from turn-of-the-century London and transported to a magical land ruled by a moustache-twirling pirate.”

The video embedded above offers glimpses of Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard, Amanda Seyfried as Mary, Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, Garrett Hedlund as Hook, and Levi Miller as Peter Pan. This movie will hit theaters in July 2015.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A new trailer has been unveiled for X-Men: Days of Future Past.

The video embedded above offers glimpses of scenes featuring cast members Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, and Jennifer Lawrence. Just Jared has posted photos from the movie set.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Comic book hero Wolverine got a six-second teaser trailer on Twitter’s Vine, a “tweaser” that pushes the limits of how movie trailer brevity. Director James Mangold joked on Twitter: “I think teasers are going to keep getting shorter and shorter and shorter until they become one sheets.”

We’ve embedded the Vine above. What do you think–can a six-second movie trailer actually be satisfying? If you want more, MTV News has a 20-second trailer for the comic book adaptation. Mashable has more about the movie:

The flick stars Hugh Jackman and comes out July 26. Among the action-packed scenes in the Vine are glimpses of Viper and Silver Samurai, and a short clip of Jean Grey, hinting at the possible return of Famke Janssen‘s character (presumably in flashbacks).

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The first trailer for an upcoming adaptation of the Les Miserables musical has been released, turning the hit musical version of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece into a film.

What do you think? The film will be out in December, competing with The Great Gatsby for literary movie-goers. Internet pranksters have already created a .GIF that captures a particularly emotive moment in Anne Hathaway‘s singing performance.

The Washington Post broke down some of the imagery: “We see images of Hugh Jackman’s Jean Valjean waist deep in water as prisoner 24601 and later comforting a fifthly young Cosette in a bleak forest. Then there’s Russell Crowe looking appropriately intense as Javert. Eddie Redmayne as Marius makes a stand for revolution on the barricades and eyes the lovely Cosette, played by Amanda Seyfried.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A film adaptation of Lisa See‘s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan will hit theaters in July 15th. The official trailer is embedded above–what do you think?

According to Word and Film, the film stars Bingbing Li, Gianna Jun, Vivian Wu, and Hugh Jackman. Director Wayne Wang helmed the project.

In an essay about the writing the book, See explained: “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a story about friendship and what it means to be a woman. Yes, our lives are completely different from those lived by the nu shu writers, but inside we are the same. We want people to hear our thoughts, appreciate our creativity, and feel empathy for our emotions.” (via Shelf Awareness)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from our resident film and TV guru Alyx Steadman. After calling out awards shows as one of the "Worst moments in television" in 2008, Alyx was pleasantly surprised last Sunday when he tuned in to the... Read the rest of this post

I'm sure it is my enthusiasm for children's lit westerns like, Maude March and Deadwood Jones that first alerted me to this upcoming movie, or maybe it is the fact that our entwood now extends to the continent of Oz.

In any even, this trailer for Australia caught my eye.





Or maybe it was Hugh Jackman with scruffy beard on horseback that um... well... anyway.

 

Here's the next book in my series of 6 Capstone poetry books.

After the fall poems, I headed into the weather batch of photos. This group was full of more stunning images. I was so glad I got to start with two subjects--autumn and weather--that really appealed to me. I love pictures of nature, and that's, of course, mostly what the weather pictures were.

I flipped through all the images and began making notes on them. Basically, I just wrote down whatever occurred to me, right there on the page. Sometimes it was a certain poetic form I thought the image lent itself to, but other times it was a thought about the topic or mood of a possible poem. On the lightning bolt image, I wrote "haiku?" For a boy playing on the beach wearing goggles and a towel cape, I imagined a poem about a superhero. For boys looking out a rainy window, I wrote, "magic of rain, how it softens everything." 

I did have a slight problem, though. There were a number of images with kids in them, and you could almost always see their faces. I found this really hard to work with! I was surprised by that. Actually, I don't know why I was surprised. I don't tend to like artwork with people in it, especially if I can see their faces. (That probably reveals some horrible psychological defect in me!) And with these images, I had a hard time imagining anything but the mood and thoughts of the kid in the image. So it felt very restricting to me. I wanted to focus on the weather phenomena, but I needed to work on the relationship between kids and weather, too.

And on top of that, there were kids of both genders and various ethnicities, and I needed to be balanced. Capstone did not want a book full of kids that all looked the same. But I had a few choices for most topics. Caucasian girl flying a kite. African-American girl with her hair blowing behind her. Asian boy with his hat blowing off. That kind of thing. So whatever image I chose for the wind poem, I needed to keep that in mind when I was choosing the rain poem, which also offered several choices of ethnicities.

So, it was a little tougher that Shrinking Days, Frosty Nights for me. More logistics to consider.

Also, I turned in a couple of poems that showed the fascination and even appeal of deadly weather. One was about a tornado, and it was kind of light-hearted. The other was about the deadly beauty of a hurricane seen from space.

From a Tornado (That Doesn’t Know Its Own Strength)  

My whirling funnel’s
a windy slide!

I’m a twirling jump rope—
Step inside!

I’m a monster
roller coaster ride!

I don’t know why
you’re terrified!

I knew this might not fly, because the book is for young kids, and tornadoes are scary things! But poetry for me is about seeing the other side of things, and I loved imagining the tornado's point of view. The editor apologetically passed on that this poem, though she liked it and so did the higher-ups, at first, didn't make the cut. They were worried about parents or some reviewers having trouble with it. And while I thought that was too bad, I could understand their point. I actually revised the poem somewhat and put it on my website. 

Here's the tornado poem I wrote on revision for the book. Please note: None of these images are from the book. I just wanted to add photos to give you a tiny idea of what they go with.



Wild Wind

Rushing wind
Roaring wind
     Whirling, twirling
          Warring wind

Ripping wind
Whipping wind
     Please release your
            Gripping wind

Nearing wind
Clearing wind
      Finally,
            Disappearing wind


I also placed the hurricane poem on my site.

So, those were a couple of issues I ran into with this collection. But I still loved writing these poems. Here are a couple more poems from this book.





Softer

Through a windowpane
Streaked with sliding rain
Outside world has changed:
Blurry, velvet stain

Every house and car—
Soft where edges are…
Waterpainting sky
makes each light a star 


 



Wind Is An...

Expert blower
Seed sower
Sailboat go-er
Hat thrower
And, best of all, a
Kite tow-er


And this one goes with a glorious image on rime ice on trees against a Parrish blue sky.



Winter Blooms

branches
blooming with ice
paint a shocking picture
of frosty white trees on winter's
blue sky

[cinquain]

Last night, the friendly UPS man brought 2 heavy boxes to my door, and they were the author copies of 4 more of my 6 Capstone poetry books. Woop! Woop! I now have copies of all of them except Flashy, Clashy, and Oh-So Splashy.

So, as promised (or threatened!), I'll be sharing a little of my process about each of the books. Today is the day for patriotic poems.

This book, Tiny Dreams, Sprouting Tall, was one of the toughest of the first set of 6 books. In fact, I think it was the toughest. Part of the reason for that was that my other collections all had a certain degree of silliness to them, even with serious pictures. In Then There Were Eight, for instance, the picture of the Mars Rover is a silly dog poem, because it looked like a metallic dog to me. Tiny Dreams was the last book of the 6 that I wrote. So my editor, Jenny Marks, and I had a good system down, and I followed it. I wrote my manuscript and turned it in the same way I had done all the other collections.

But then came the feedback. My revisions on the other books had been fairly specific and minimal. But on this one, there was a bigger change underway. They wanted the poems to be more specific to the United States. She explained that "For some photos/poems, the connection is obvious—like MLK Jr. or the flag. They are uniquely and obviously American. Other subjects, like surfers, light houses, beaches, cows, etc..., are definitely American, but those things are found in other countries, too. For those subjects, especially, the poems must make a more explicit connection." 

This hadn't been planned from the start. But upon reading the manuscript, the product planning committee felt this title could come under greater scrutiny than the other titles, and would be more likely to be criticized for what was included or left out. So they wanted every poem to really have a strong, overt connection to the United States somehow.

This new directive meant heavier revisions just before I was leaving for a family reunion--so I was a bit stressed out about it! Jenny was, as always, encouraging and supportive, so there was no feeling of having screwed up. It was just an unanticipated shift or tightening of focus. Still.

I ended up going to the reunion and finishing up the revisions afterward, and I was really happy with the completed book. But boy, was I happy to be finished!

Something else unique to this manuscript was trying to express pride in my country but being honest as well. An early draft of a poem about the Statue of Liberty was a cinquain:

Doorway of the U.S.A.

Statue
of Liberty
welcomes all refugees
streaming in seeking the promise:

Grand Canyon

rock
hard, red
rising, rippling, towering
water flowing, canyon growing
carving, wearing, eroding
sunken, brown
river

While the book isn't stuffed with uber-patriotism, I did want to show pride, too! Here's one I had fun with:

Flag Music

Luff-luff-luff-luff
like a clipper’s great sail

Rat-a-tat-tat
Like a stormy day’s hail

Creak up and down
Like squeaky old brakes

No matter the sound
that our flag outside makes

Still day or windy

Quiet or loud 

It makes me feel safer

And stronger and proud  


As with the other books in the collection, gorgeous, dramatic photos complement the poems, and impressive design work makes the poems themselves visually interesting. I'm thrilled my words got such great treatment!

  

I am so excited!

Last week I started getting author copies of my 6 poetry books for Capstone Press. I've only gotten one of the six so far, because the others are backordered. But soon, I hope!

Anyway, some people have asked about what it was like to write work-for-hire poetry, and I thought I'd share my overall process. Plus, I'll probably do one post about each book as I get my copies of it. I want to have some record of the whole experience.

A woman who used to be with Lerner (and whom had assigned my Isaac Newton bio) and was now with Capstone Press (which I've been writing for for years) emailed me to say that she saw I had a poetry book coming out from Clarion and was writing a Write Your Own Poetry book for Compass Point. She wanted to know if I'd like to get together for lunch to talk about a possible poetry project. Of course I would!

Over lunch, she shared her vision of poetry books illustrated by striking photos for young kids. But the photos would not, for the most part, be studio shots; they would be stock images. She asked about the best way to work, and I said that I thought it would be fun to actually write the poems to the images, rather than have them try to find images that illustrated my poems.

Her idea hadn't been approved yet. She was trying to convince whomever she had to convince that poetry was viable for them. That enough school libraries would buy it.

And within a couple of months, she had approval and the project was moving forward.

The actual hands-on editor I would be working with was Jenny Marks at Capstone Press. She was a delight to work with, and this is basically how our process went.

She would tell me when the team was meeting to discuss images for each title. I would brainstorm my own list of possible images that I thought would be inspiring for poems and fun to look at. I'd email her the list, and they'd include my ideas in the meeting.

I had 4 weeks for each of these first 6 books. So here's how the schedule shook out.

Week One - I receive the images. The batch always includes extras, because I won't be inspired by everything! Each collection needs 14-16 poems. I need to submit 18 or so so that they have a couple of extras to allow for variety, design decisions, etc. They send me images of 20 or so objects/scenes, and I have more than one choice for some of those. For weather, for instance, there were 2 or 3 different pictures of a kid with a kite. I could choose which one to write to.

I spend a few days sifting through photos. I jot notes on the ways certain images strike me. If an image has a capacity for opposites (like a rainbow and a cloudy sky in the same image), I might write "diamante" on the page, because it's an image that lends itself to that form. Or I might note a silly picture that could make for a good limerick. I also jot words or phrases that occur to me, that might or might not make it into the poem, as well as angles/topics for the possible poems. (I'll give examples of this when I talk about the individual books.)

Then I start writing. I write like mad. I do research along the way, as necessary--more for space poems than for color poems! For the 20 or so images that I choose, I write a poem rough draft for each one. Many of these are bad! I try to have the rough draft complete that first week. I often end up with closer to 25 poems.

Week Two - I go back through the poems and revise them. Sometimes I write entirely new poems at this point, but mostly I'm reworking, rewriting, reseeing these poems.

Week Three - I let the poems sit. I am sick of them now and need a break! Sometimes, my wonderful critique groups have time to do a quick read and give me feedback on which poems work, which don't, and how I might fix them.

Week Four - I write the end matter (glossary, poetry terms, read more, etc.). I polish and tweak and make decisions about which poems to submit. At the end of the week, I submit the poems to Jenny.  Another deadline met--hurray!

After a week or so, Jenny gets back to me with comments on the poems. She has had a group of people read them. I think, but am not sure, that her group consists of teachers and librarians. She passes along their comments/feelings about various poems and her own, too. She is incredibly encouraging and complimentary, and also points out what doesn't work about various poems.

I do revisions the following week and turn it back in.

With few exceptions, the process went really smoothly. (I'll share stories when I do the individual books.) I wrote these books last spring, and I was so thrilled to see the galleys this past fall. The books are gorgeous! The images look spectacular, and the design work is fabulous. I have no say in any of that, of course, and I was a little nervous. But I couldn't be happier with how they came out. I can't wait to hold every one of them in my hot little hands, in fact.

So that's the (too long--sorry) story of how I wrote these books. If you look at them on my site, you can read one brief excerpt from each title and see each cover. I hope you like them!

 Friday after I took my sister to the airport, I started sorting through all the library books I'd checked out for my Saturday Loft workshop on Writing Children's Nonfiction Books for the Educational Market. I put together series, chose books to show various topics covered for different age ranges, marked passages I'd read aloud to prepare for a writing exercise, made sure I had all my overhead transparencies, etc.

The high Saturday was 7 degrees, but road conditions were good. Only a few of the registered 23 students didn't show up.

It was a great class with smart, well-qualified writers. The class was full of lots of teachers, journalists, PR people, etc. They asked lots of questions and seemed very happy with the workshop, and many stopped me on their way in or out of class, in the bathroom, after lunch, etc., to say how much they were learning. 

I love that feeling. When you teach kids, it's rewarding, but the kids themselves rarely tell you, "Thank you for putting together all this information for  us." (Ha--I only remember one suckup student, Allen, actually saying that. Others showed it by coming to class early, spending time in my room before school, asking for extra credit projects even if they already had an A, etc.) But teaching adults, especially on a topic that's not covered much, like writing for the education market, really gives you a lot of kind and excited feedback. Only two women in the back looked bored and/or hung over and spent much of the day whispering behind paper. What can I say? There's at least one in every class. But they weren't disruptive, so I ignored them.

Anyway.

Here are a few pictures from the workshop.



Students listen to my special lunchtime guest speaker.



Nick Healy, Editorial Director of Picture Window Books and Compass Point Books, volunteered to come explain those companies' editorial process to my workshop. He drove up from Mankato, 1-1/2 hours south of Minneapolis, which was great of him. He was a huge hit!



Students choose their door prize books at the end of the day.

I've invited students to email me any questions they have in the coming week, and if I receive any, I'll post and answer them here on the blog.

I always breathe a sigh of relief once an all-day workshop goes well. I imagine all sorts of disasters that could happen. I know lots of you teach writing to adults and/or do school visits. Any memorable moments (good or bad) you can share with me?