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It was strikingly appropriate that Sir Geoffrey Hill should have focused his final lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry on a quotation from Charles Williams. Not only was the lecture, in May 2015, delivered almost exactly seventy years after Williams’s death; but Williams himself had once hoped to become Professor of Poetry.

The post Charles Williams: Oxford’s lost poetry professor appeared first on OUPblog.

Fellow Boomerang Blogger, Romi Sharp recently congratulated me on hitting my first century. Gob smacked! I mean I don’t even own a cricket bat, let alone know how to hold one. She meant blogs of course. I hardly noticed. They rack up and slip by like birthdays these days. Nonetheless, even numbers deserve celebration (especially […]

Death. Grief. Sorrow. Those aren’t words that any of us like, especially when they involve those closest to us. I don’t pretend to understand sorrow, though I have experienced it many times. I experienced it when my grandparents died. I experienced it when my own father was in a car accident, and again when my…

Hi ho.  Time to round-up what Jules and I have been up to over at our Wild Things blog (book promotion for bloggers means more blogging, you see).  Here’s the long and short of what you may have missed:

• Wacked out 1970s picture books.
• Maurice Sendak’s actual first book (and it’s not what you think).
• Blueberry cheesecake and how it applies to Newbery and Caldecott acceptance speeches.
• Thoughts inspired by what may well be the most misguided celebrity children’s book we’ve heard about in years.
• Why did Robert McCloskey leave the field early? Perhaps Maurice Sendak had something to do with it.
• That time the editor of SLJ threatened to hit the editor of Horn Book over the head with a chair.
• The direct connection between the Caldecott Medal and the man who caught Al Capone.
• Authors that have to deal with their books on the silver screen.
• Last words and final regrets.
• More film adaptations, particularly the bad ones.

Whew!  We’re busy little bees, aren’t we?

• Tra la!  It’s coming!  The greatest conference of children’s and YA literary bloggers is coming!  And Liz Burns not only has the info but also the reason such an event is cool.  Quoth she: “What I love about KidLitCon is it’s about the bloggers. Full stop. That is the primary purpose and mission of KidLitCon. It’s about what the bloggers care about. Oh, there may be authors and publishers there, presenting, and that can be great and amazing. But it’s not about them. They are there to support the blogging community: they are not there saying, what can the blogging community do for us.”  Amen, sister.  Preach!  By the way, the theme this year is Blogging Diversity in Young Adult and Children’s Lit: What’s Next?  Be there or be square.

• So there’s a new Children’s Book Review Editor at the New York Times and by some strange quirk of fate her name is NOT alliterative (note Julie Just, Pamela Paul, and Sarah Smith).  Her name?  Maria Russo.  Which pretty much means I’ll be tracking her like a bloodhound at the next Eric Carle Honors event.  Trouble is, we don’t wear nametags at that event so I’ll probably be the crazy lady grabbing all the women, staring intently into their eyes.  Wouldn’t be the first time.

• The 10 Children’s Book Series That Deserve TV Adaptations list at Flavorwire is perfectly nice, but you can actually pinpoint the age of its writer.  Which is to say, she’s my little sister’s age.  Not a new series of children’s books as far as the eye can see.

I blame Saving Mr. Banks.  One little children’s writer biopic comes out where the writer isn’t seen as all kittens and sunshine (I still loathe you Miss Potter and Finding Neverland) and all hell breaks loose.  Now we hear that McG is going to do a Shel Silverstein biopic on the one hand and that there are plans to examine the relationship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the other.  I’m just counting the minutes until someone tackles Margaret Wise Brown or the whole Anne-Carroll-Moore-didn’t-like-Stuart-Little story (which you just KNOW is in the works somewhere).

• Speaking of films, when I heard that Alan Snow’s delightful Here Be Monsters was being turned into a film called The Boxtrolls I was incredulous.  That book?  The one I couldn’t get kids to even look at until they made a blue paperback version?  I mean I liked it (it came out in a year when sentient cheese was all the rage in children’s literature) but how long was this film in production for crying out loud?  Doesn’t matter because according to iO9 it’s brilliant.  Good to know.

• So Phil Nel, our ever intrepid professor with a hankering for children’s literature, went to ComicCon.  Best of all, he’s willing to report his findings to us (so that we don’t have to go!).  Read up on Part 1, Part 2 (my favorite for the cameo of Bananaman), Part 3, and Part 4.  Phil was there promoting his Barnaby books (which he co-edited with Eric Reynolds). These include Barnaby Volume One: 1942-1943 (2013) and Barnaby Volume Two: 1944-1945 (2014).

• Me stuff.  Thank you, Zoobean.

• Did I know that Amanda Palmer wrote a song about what she owes to Judy Blume?  I do now.

• This is what separates the true fangirls from the poseurs.  Thanks to the CBC for the link.

• I did once learn about this old National Book Award kerfuffle, but had long since forgotten it until Roger Sutton reminded me.  And I too have seen that book.  And it is AWFUL.  But, as ever, Peter Sieruta said it better than I.

• Two Little Free Libraries have sprung up near my home across the street from the Harlem branch of NYPL.  I couldn’t be more pleased because they mean just one thing to me . . . a place to give away my books!!!  Culling books is terribly enjoyable.  It’s also part of BookRiot’s incredibly useful post 8 Tips for Moving When You Have a Ton of Books.

• What can writers learn from Goodnight Moon?  That it’s awesome.

• Daily Image:

Two words. Bookish shoes.  My personal favorites include . . .

Remember, by the way, that my sister told you how to make some of these yourself.  Thanks to Mom for the link.

• First up, my little sister.  My daughter recently had her third birthday so my sis came up with a craft involving what she calls Do It Yourself Cupcakes. Each cupcake sported a teeny tiny cover of one of my child’s favorite books.  Then we took them to her daycare where she delightedly set about pointing out all the books she knew.  I have zero crafting skills but if you do then you might want to try this sometime.  It was kind of friggin’ amazing.

• Now in praise of Kevin King.  The Kalamazoo Public librarian has long been hailed as one of the best in the country.  Fact.  Children’s authors and illustrators everywhere know his name.  Fact.  But when a man attended a summer reading kickoff  for Kalamazoo Public Library with a gun, who confronted the fellow and asked him to please leave?  Kevin King.  So basically, he’s an amazing librarian AND he has the guts to talk to someone packing heat around children.  Kevin King, today we salute you.  I don’t know that many of us would have the courage to do what you did.

• Look, we all talk about how we don’t have enough of one kind of book or not enough of another.  But what do we actually DO about it?  Credit to Pat Cummings.  She doesn’t take these things lying down.  Check out the Hero’s Art Journey Scholarship then.  As the website says, “The Children’s Book Academy is proud and excited to offer merit scholarships for writers and illustrators of color, identifying as LBGQTI, or having a disability, who are currently underrepresented in the children’s publishing industry. In addition, we are offering scholarships for low income folks who might not be able to take this course otherwise as well as to SCBWI Regional Advisers and Illustrator Coordinators who do so much unpaid work to help our field.”  The first and only scholarship of its kind that I’ve certainly seen.

• Sometimes it’s just nice to find out about a new blog (even if by “new” you mean it’s been around since 2012).  With that in mind, I’d like to give a hat tip and New Blog Alert to The Show Me Librarian.  I believe it was Travis Jonker who led me to St. Charles City-County Library District librarian Amy Koester’s site.  It doesn’t have a gimmick.  It’s just an honestly good children’s librarian blog with great posts like this one on Reader’s Advisory and this one on picture book readalouds.  Them’s good reading.

• Jules would never alert you to this herself, but don’t miss this interview with the woman behind the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog as conducted by Phil and Erin E. Stead.  Even if you know Jules you’ll learn something new.  For example, I had no idea she enjoyed Marc Maron’s podcast too.

• Speaking of Jules, who is the most tattooed children’s author/illustrator (since we already know the most tattooed bookseller)?  The answer may surprise you.

• “There’s not just one way of believing in things but a whole spectrum.”  That would be Philip Pullman talking on the subject of fairy tales and why Richard Dawkins got it wrong.

• I’m sorry.  I apparently buried the lede today.  Else I would have begun with the startling, shocking, brilliant news that they’re bringing back Danger Mouse.  Where my DM peoples at?  Can I get a, “Crumbs!”?  That’s right.

• I don’t read much YA.  Usually I’ll pick out the big YA book of a given year and read it so that I don’t fall completely behind, but that’s as far as I’ll go (right now deciding between We Were Liars and Grasshopper Jungle).  But I make exceptions and Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles fall into that gap.  Now I hear that Meyer wrote a prequel called Fairest giving her villain some much needed background.  That’s cool enough, but the cover?  You only WISH you could see more jackets like this:

• Speaking of YA, and since, by law, nothing can happen at this moment on the internet without some mention of The Fault in Our Stars at least once, I was rather charmed by Flavorwire’s round-up of some of the odd TFIOS merchandise out there.  Favorite phrase: “for the saddest party ever.”

• It’s important to remember that school library cuts aren’t an American invention.  They’re a worldwide problem, a fact drilled home recently by the most recent post on Playing By the Book.  If you’re unaware of the blog it’s run by the wonderful Zoe Toft and is, to my mind, Britain’s best children’s literature blog, bar none.  Now Zoe’s facing something familiar to too many school librarians and it’s awful.  Does anyone know of a British children’s literary magazine along the lines of a School Library Journal or Horn Book?  The fact that her blog hasn’t been picked up by such an outlet is a crime.

• “I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.”  As a woman with a child too young at the moment to be vaccinated against diseases like measles, every parent that refuses to get their own children vaccinated is a threat to mine.  So I read with great interest what Roald Dahl felt about vaccinating your kids.  It ran on BoingBoing back in 2009 but this kind of thing never dies.

• Father’s Day has come and gone but it’s never too late to look at a bunch of adorable pictures of dads reading to their kids.  Particularly when one of the dads is married to yours truly.  See if you can spot him.

• And the award for Best Summer Reading List of All Time goes to . . . Mike Lewis!  His Spirit of Summer Reading list for reluctant readers can only be described in a single word: Beautiful.  Designed flawlessly with books that I adore, this is the list I’d be handing to each and every parent who walks in my library door, were I still working a reference desk somewhere.  Wowzah.

• A whole exhibit on Appalachian children’s literature?  See, this is why I need my own private jet.  Why has no one ever given me a private jet? Note to Self: Acquire private jet, because it’s exhibits like this one that make me wish I was more mobile.  You lucky denizens of Knoxville, TN will be able to attend this exhibit between now and September 14th.  Wow.  Thanks to Jenny Schwartzberg for the link.

• So pleased to see this interview with Nathan Hale on the Comics Alternative podcast.  Love that guy’s books, I do.  Great listening.

• New York certainly does have a lot of nice things.  Big green statues in the harbors.  Buildings in the shape of irons.  Parks that one could call “central”.  But one thing we do not have, really, is an annual children’s book trivia event for folks of every stripe (librarians, editors, authors, booksellers, teachers, etc.).  You know who does?  Boston.  Doggone Boston.  The Children’s Book Boston trivia event happened the other day and The Horn Book reported the results.  One could point out that I could stop my caterwauling and throw such an event myself.  Hmm… could work. We could do it at Sharlene’s in Brooklyn… it’s a thought…

• C.S. Lewis on the Three Ways of Writing for Children and the Key to Authenticity in All Writing.  Need I say more than that?

• Daily Image:

There are bookshelves that seem kooky or cool and then there are bookshelves that could serve a VERY useful purpose, if you owned them.  Boy howdy, do I wish I owned this because useful is what it is.  It’s a “Has Been Read” and “Will Be Read” shelf.

Thanks to Aunt Judy for the link.

I was speaking to a large audience of students, at one point explaining my writing process for an upcoming SCARY TALES book, titled The One-Eyed Doll.

The first image that came to me was the discovery of a door, or a hatch, in a bedroom floor. An old rug had been pulled away and there it was. Strangely, the door was padlocked.

That image got me thinking. Why the lock? Over time, I played around with the idea, moving the hidden door to a basement and, later, to the woods, obscured below the leaves. It evolved into a locked box buried behind an abandoned house and discovered by three children.

By the way, I love the idea of characters believing they found something — that they acted upon an object — when the truth is the exact reverse: the object had acted upon them.

So: What was inside the box?

A crummy old doll.

Why was it locked inside a box, nailed shut, padlocked, and buried?

Well, there must have been something strange about that doll. Right? We all know that. Every kid knows it, too. This isn’t our first rodeo.

Now as the writer of this story, I had not yet figured out the issues surrounding this doll. The whys and wherefores. I had not yet answered the essential question a writer must answer for every character, in every story: What does this doll want?

At that point in my presentation, an excited boy raised his hand and said, “Like Chuckie!”

Well, yes, I guess. Like Chuckie. There are not many original ideas left. So, sure, absolutely, the evil doll is like Chuckie, though I’ve never watched those movies. Chuckie, of course, is not the original evil doll. Twilight Zone had several, the old Bat-Man comics — often a ventriloquist figures into these things — and so on. It’s a familiar conceit, a cousin to the Gingerbread Man and even Pinocchio. This is not depressing to me, as a writer. It’s inspiring.

Likewise, the secret door has been done a million times, most notably in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, C.S. Lewis’s “Narnia” books, and just about every time-travel novel ever written. Stephen King used a storage closet for his “secret door” in the terrific novel, 11/22/63. The door is just a device that gets you to the other world — or get the reader (and writer) to the story. Just push on through and don’t worry too much about how that door got there in the first place.

On and on it goes. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Now it is fair to ask: If you can’t come up with your own ideas, why bother?

And I’m here to say that is exactly the wrong way of looking at it.

Because I am talking today about tradition, ladies and gentlemen, specifically about writing within a tradition — an awareness, conscious or not, that we’ve inherited a rich past. All those stories mining the same turf. Every storyteller throughout history with a pick axe and calloused hands.

The Japanese artisan Kaneshige Michiaki said it well: “Tradition is always changing. Tradition consists of creating something new with what one has inherited.”

It’s not copying. It’s creating a new thing using familiar elements. In that respect, it’s a lot like cooking. Here’s a chicken, here’s an oven, here’s some herbs and spices and all the vegetables ever invented. And, sure, if you are like my mother, here’s a frying pan and a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.

The challenge is to cook up something new.

Something satisfying and delicious.

I experienced this same thing when writing the Jigsaw Jones mystery series. That same sense of jumping into a river, pushed on by the current. And then, treading water, I start to move my arms, kick my feet for fear of drowning. The water of tradition — Chandler and Hamitt, Connelly and Sandford, Sobel and Christie — whomever! — carrying me along (so long as I kept swimming).

Did I ultimately make something new? I can’t be the one to say, but I’ve sure enjoyed getting wet.

In a 1941 letter to a student, the great novelist C.S. Lewis delivered some advice that should apply to all readers and writers: “Your book bill ought to be your biggest extravagance.”

How much do you spend on books? One Reddit user made an online poster to frame the quote (embedded above)–remember Lewis’ words the next time you are debating buying something at your local bookstore.

The CS Lewis Society of Frederick, Maryland has more about the quote: “From a letter dated April 8, 1941 to Derek Brewer from C.S. Lewis regarding the books he should read to prepare for his time at Oxford, where Lewis was to be his tutor. Found in the Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3, in the supplement, page 1540-1541 in my hardcover copy.  I first discovered the quote in Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian in the section on Books.”

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#5 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1950)
204 points

The book that made me a reader, by a writer whose pure enthusiasm for life and story carries you on a lion’s back through the best of adventures. – Susan Van Metre

I remember at my vast old age in 7th grade sadly concluding that I was too old for the Narnia books now. (I had already read them many times.) Then I took them up again in college and found new riches. I know I will never “outgrow” them again. No kid who reads this book will ever look at a closet door the same way again. – Sondra Eklund

The first series I read to myself, starting halfway through when I switched from listening to my mom read them aloud, to sneaking them off to my room to read ahead. I was convinced that someday I would meet the Pevensies and tell them that I knew about Narnia, too. Sadly, Turkish Delight did not live up to my expectations. – Jessalynn Gale

I still remember the day I finished this book, laying on my parent’s family room couch on a bright, sunny summer day. I would have been playing outside in the sprinkler had I been able to put it down. Instead I was SOBBING on the couch as Aslan died. I finished it and read it again. And again. I don’t always think the oldest, most classic version of a tale is the one that kids should keep rending. If someone else comes along and does the tale better, by all means, let’s read that one… but has anyone done this better? – Nicole Johnston Wroblewski

I remember a sense of magic while reading the Chronicles of Narnia as a child. And I’m not referring to the magic contained in the storylines. But rather the giddy awe of falling into the story. It was thrilling. It’s a very specific emotion, one I don’t think we have a word for, one I don’t think I’ve ever felt as an adult — but it’s an emotion that I remember perfectly. The characters and worlds seemed so alive. I think it’s one of the few times I really felt transported to another place through the pages of a book. And being the Chronicles of Narnia, that’s rather fitting. – Aaron Zenz

The synopsis from the publisher reads, “When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are sent to stay with a kind professor who lives in the country, they can hardly imagine the extraordinary adventure that awaits them. It all begins one rainy summer day when the children explore the Professor’s rambling old house. When they come across a room with an old wardrobe in the corner, Lucy immediately opens the door and gets inside. To her amazement, she suddenly finds herself standing in the clearing of a wood on a winter afternoon, with snowflakes falling through the air. Lucy has found Narnia, a magical land of Fauns and Centaurs, Nymphs and Talking Animals — and the beautiful but evil White Witch, who has held the country in eternal winter for a hundred years.”

According to 100 Best Books for Children by Anita Silvey (do you own your copy yet?) when Lewis was sixteen he envisioned a faun carrying an umbrella in a wood full of snow.  “Then nine years later, a lion leapt into a story, and Lewis began working on a book entitled ‘The Lion’.”  I was unaware that he was only twenty-five when he began the tale.  He’d be fifty-two by the time it published, though.  That’s what we call in the business a gestation period.  He did show an early manuscript to one Roger Lancelyn Green, though, and Green helped him get his manuscript up to snuff.  The book was originally meant to stand alone, which is part of the reason it bugs me when publishers release

#96 The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis (1954)
20 points

Admittedly this one was a real shocker to the system.  Not only did it not show up on the previous poll but I rarely hear it come up in common conversation.  When we talk about Lewis we usually talk about the first three of his titles or maybe The Magician’s Nephew.  We might even debate the relative merits (or lack thereof) of The Last Battle, but The Horse and His Boy?  Yet here we are.  Enough people not only thought it a worthy inclusion, their love for it reigned supreme enough to get it on the Top 100 list!

The plot, as told by Kirkus, reads: “The setting is familiar. There is the eastern flavour to his make-believe kingdoms and great Aslan the Lion is still Narnia’s protector. But for a new hero there is Shasta, a slave boy in the tyrannical land of Calormen, and of unknown parentage, who escapes to the free north with Bree, one of Narnia’s talking horses. En route, they meet Aravis, a Calormene princess also in flight because of an impending forced marriage, and together they help snuff out a Calormene plot to attack not only Narnia but its brother land of Archenland, of which Shasta turns out to be a lost prince.”

Of all the Narnia books this is the one that is believe to be anti-Arab.  As this is the fifth Narnia book (depending on how you count them) there was some talk of whether or not there would ever be a movie.  Yet as the Houston Chronicle pointed out in 2005: “the BBC produced versions of four ‘Narnia’ books in the late ’80s (now available on DVD, in highly respectable renderings, but with cheesy ’80s-era special effects). ‘The Horse and His Boy’ wasn’t among those four.”  While Shasta is light-skinned, the Calormenes are “men with long, dirty robes, and wooden shoes turned up at the toe, and turbans on their heads, and beards . . .”  They lives in a city where “What you would chiefly have noticed if you had been there were the smells, which came from unwashed people, unwashed dogs, scent, garlic, onions, and the piles of refuse which lay everywhere.”

Lots of problems with this, and so one wonders how much would be changed if a film was ever made.  Those who read it in their youth don’t remember these details, of course.  Still and all, it’s good to keep them in mind when we consider this list as a whole.

Kirkus said of it, “A beautifully written tale to read aloud as well, in which C.S. Lewis’ talents seem to flower more than ever.”

Today’s entrée is a set of exercises meant to help the writer shift perspective and get those creative muscles flexed and toned.

These small forays into new territory will, hopefully, help you gain in your battle with daily wordsmithing. Are you ready? Here goes.

Circumvent the cliché. While Little Johnny can’t read, does that mean that Little Jill has educational challenges as well? If all of your eggs are in one basket, will they all break when that basket is dropped?

We live with hackneyed and cliché phrases every day. They speak to the simplistic and real metaphors of our lives. That’s the reason they still hang around our necks like a broad-winged bird descended from a pterodactyl.

Take each of the following adages/sayings/clichés and devise three ways of saying the same thing, with the same semantics. Make each new “saying” as fresh as possible.

1. Rolling stones gather no moss.
2. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
3. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Recast old characters in new roles. Most people can hear a line of dialogue or see one frame of a favorite movie and give you the name of the characters involved. Like favorite books, the stories that flow across a screen at the theaters make a place for themselves in our mental storage lockers, waiting for future review.

The following exercise is meant to help the writer change well-worn paths carved out by characters we know well and as an exploration of possibilities for such characters that wouldn’t otherwise be tackled.

1. Most adults over the age of 35 will probably remember the character name “Maverick” as Tom Cruise’s character from Top Gun. The exercise is to recast this character as a “Cowboy,” complete with name. If it helps, picture TC when you’re putting together an action scene in the old/new west. Only one scene is necessary to write, but if a full story evolves from this exercise, so much the better.
2. C. S. Lewis’s character of Lucy in “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” presents us with a sweet child of remarkable resolve and steel spine when faced with adversity. Yet her complex personality allows for uncommon loyalty, self-doubt, and approval-seeking behavior.

Recast Lucy’s character, complete with name, as an adult. Place her in a           romance where finding her soul mate and an unforeseen future is the goal           of the scene. This will b

Wish you could tune out the world while reading your favorite book? The free “Go Away, I’m Reading” book covers will send a blunt message, customized for your book.

Erin Bowman, Sarah Enni and Traci Neithercott created the simple but inspiring dust jackets pictured above–what cover will you pick?

They have built “Climbing Mount Doom” for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy,  “In Narnia BRB” for readers of C. S. Lewis‘ The Chronicles of Narnia, “At Hogwarts” for aficionados of J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series, “In Forks, Send Help” for fans of Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight series and finally, “In the Arena, BRB” for readers of Suzanne Collins‘ Hunger Games series.

Here’s more about printing: “These covers will fit the traditionally-sized YA book. Take the PDFs to your local FedEx or Staples and get them printed on tabloid paper (11x17in). We suggest a matte cardstock (you could print on something glossy, but sometimes that causes light glares at certain angles and you want people to be able to read that Go Away message without incident). Choose a weight between 60-80lb for the paper. Anything lighter and the page will be too thin, anything heavier and folding it around your book will be difficult.”

continued…

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To all intents and purposes I never belonged where I began. Not as a full-time adult, I mean. I learned more than I can remember about too many things to count while growing up. I’ve used that learning numerous times as well. I enjoyed the wave-like movement of all that education and wish that I could recall it all clearly.

But, I never really fit that mold. I was the one who loved classical music and opera. Somehow, I was the one who introduced me to it. I was the one who taught myself about ballet and other dance forms and watched it whenever I could. I also read Shakespeare and Tennyson in upper elementary and middle school when others my age were devouring Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. I never heard of those books until I was an adult.

I didn’t see anything by C.S. Lewis until in my late 30’s. All I had was adult reading material, and I learned to suck it in like a vacuum.

My family listened to early Country music much of the time that I didn’t tolerate very well. None of them could tolerate my preferences either. We accommodated the differences.

We attended great auctions back then. They were better and cheaper than going to the Drive-In theatre. Dad didn’t have to spend more than a few bucks for a hot dog and drink for each of us, and we could spend an entire evening watching people go frantic with bidding paddles and someone else’s junk. Learning how the operation worked was an education in itself. I especially learned to watch the auctioneers.

We all loved going to them.

Yet, when I was in eighth grade, my dad went to an auction without the rest of us. He returned with many things, plus a box specifically for me.

Inside it were books. The box was filled with books. The pièce de résistance nearly floored me. Nestled among the novels by Faulkner and Updike and English books, to the side of those volumes on history, was a complete set of Shakespeare bound in moss green fabric and gilt lettering (pub. England, 1863), including his sonnets and other poetry.

I knew I’d died and ascended to Heaven without realizing it. That’s when I saw the tiny tomes. Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Thoreau, etc. (pub. NY 1909 approx.,) each bound in exquisite jacquard fabric, small enough to fit inside a pocket, huddled behind Shakespeare like so many children behind their mother’s apron.

That one act of consideration on Dad’s part sealed my fate. I was a classicist and would never truly fit into my birth family completely. I would always love them and honor them, but never be one of them. I’d been set free with that box of books and the knowledge that my father had unwittingly given me the ticket on the train to a literary career somewhere in my future.

Looking back on that moment, I can relax now. I understand that the family that I love don’t have to understand why I do what I do, or even how I do it. It’s enough to know that they acknowledge that that’s who I am and that they accept the fact that I can’t be

And then it’s February.  How the heckedy heck did that happen?  Looks like 2012 is already establishing itself as the Blink and You’ll Miss It year.  Well, let’s get to it then.

First and foremost was the announcement of Battle of the Books 2012.  Or, as I like to think of it, the place where Amelia Lost gets its bloody due (if there’s any justice in this world).  We’re now in the earliest of the early days of the battle, but stuff’s on the horizon.  I can smell it.

• In other news there was an SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) meeting here in New York this past weekend.  I didn’t attend because, apparently, if it’s way too convenient I’m absent.  After checking out the recap on this blog, however, I clearly need to change my priorities.  Though I had to miss the cocktail party on Friday I did attend Kidlit Drink Night which was PACKED, dudes.  Packed to the gills!

• I like me some Megan Whalen Turner, which is pretty much just another way of saying that I am human and I can read.  In any case, the woman knows how to make words work.  Case in point, this guest post she penned a little while ago which might as well be called The Evolution of Not-Telling Or, how my policy of not answering questions about my books began as self-serving and over time became something even more self-serving. Mm.  Worth it.  Thanks to Beth Fama for the link.

• In her post Ms. Turner mentions the Mythopoeic Society.  By complete coincidence I stumbled over yet another link involving that society in question.  Neil Gaiman reprints an old speech he gave to the society in 2004 on C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton.  A great look at how good fantasy can influence kids.  Also a good look at how bad television programs lead kids to books.  I believe it.

• Well The Today Show may have passed up the chance to talk to the Newbery and Caldecott winners but leave it to NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me to speak to Jack Gantos for their Not My Job game.  Someone must have tipped them off to the fact that the man is the world’s greatest interview.  Love the Judy Blume reference.  And though I thought I knew his Hole in My Life story, clearly I missed some details.  Thanks to Susan Miles for the link.

• Of course Jack and Chris Raschka were interviewed by SLJ about their respective wins.  That’s good news about a Dead End in Norvelt companion novel.  Ditto the idea of Raschka working on a Robie H. Harris title.

• This 5 Comments on Fusenews: The Jack Gantos / Alfred E. Newman Connection, last added: 2/3/2012