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I’m up in the middle of the night, in Savannah (For the Children’s Book Festival), after a really interesting conversation about slam poetry, novels-in-verse, and what kids get from language… And I want to say this: Poetry challenges words to communicate MORE than their meanings. IMHO, poetry has to do this, or it isn’t poetry.  Breaking  [...]

Are you a mother? A nonmother?

Would you trade places?  Do it again differently?

How does this role/identity affect your life as a person?  Limit your life as a person? Make you feel judged by the eyes of the world? Affect your process and your art/writing?

Rachel Zucker and Sarah Manguso have published a painfully honest/critical/revealing conversation about their choices/lives in relation to being/not-being an “egg-box.” I think it’s an important document.  I think everyone, especially women– and especially anyone interested in feminism–should read it.

I suggest you go read it right now.

No, really.

When I was a kid, Hanukkah meant that:

1. I’d be peeling a lot of potatoes
2. I’d be forced to share the chocolate coins I won at dreidel
3. I’d have to sing a non-religious Xmas song at school
4. I’d  be getting a BOOK giftwrapped in last year’s Jewish calendar

Sigh… I’ll never forget the wonder of unwrapping my very own copy of Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. Running my hand over the somber cover. Cracking the spine.  Reading.

Then…. shivering… in my bed… alone… all night… with a newfound fear of man’s capacity to do evil.

Okay, so maybe YOU don’t give your kids horrifying nonfiction at the holidays, but if you’re Jewish you probably DO give your kids a book at some point in December.

Right?

And if that’s the case, I have a special offer for you!  From now until the end of Hanukkah, if you order a copy of one of my books from Little Shop of Stories (may I suggest Any Which Wall, which centers on Susan and Roy LEVY…) I will personally drive over to the store, and sign the book with a special holiday message, and include a handmade Hanukkah card!

You can call the store, and order any of my books ((404) 373-6300 ) , and they’ll call me up and I’ll go over and sign.  Then they’ll pop it into the mail to you.

Easy as…. latkes?

From a mix!

I’ve been mulling, mulling, mulling… over the conversation between Rachel and Sarah. I’ve gone back and forth about posting here.    But here it is, what I feel. Limited though it may be. As a writer, my poetry/prose have mattered to me. Language has been a huge part of my life.  I have made sacrifices/compromises/choices to [...]

And now… for my next nutty idea…

In 2010, I’m trying out a crazy new scheme, a book club.

Essentially, it works like this– you and your group of kids (class, library book club, bookstore regulars, homeschool community, etc) pick any five of Penny Dreadful’s 20 favorite books from a list I’ll provide (Penny is a BIG reader).

Contact me and tell me which books you’ve chosen, and I’ll supply my own special study guides for each of them (along with a stack of bookmarks for the kids and a poster for your library/store/classroom, listing all the titles).

You simply read and discuss the books you’ve chosen as a group, and then I’ll come and join you for your discussion of the sixth book– Penny Dreadful!

I will do this FREE OF CHARGE for groups of ten or more kids within driving distance, or for just the cost of transportation/hotel if I must travel.  I’m doing this–waiving my fee–because the books on the list are books I love personally, and the idea of kids reading them makes me so happy!  Of course, the idea of kids reading PENNY makes me dance around in circles too, but really, the idea of this club is to get kids reading awesome  books and talking about them in the context of each other– older books and younger books, magic books and non-magic, etc.

So that’s it!  You just hang up the poster, sign up the kids, host a monthly conversation using the study guides, and let me know how it goes. Then I’ll arrive, with my ukelele and silliness, and hang out with you for an afternoon!

Sound fun?  I sure think so!  Details (and downloadable posters) to come.

Also– I should add here that you don’t have to have 10 kids. Adults are allowed to read kidlit too, of course.  And if you have an adult group interested, I’ll bring a bottle of wine!  I would, myself, happily join a middle grade reading group…. especially if there was wine.

Hee.

Fear is a useful emotion.  Fear of judgment is a HUGE waste of emotional energy.

Must remember. Must remember. Must remember…

Inside our walls.

We can hear him snoring at night.

No kidding!

Inspired by the rarely-dull-or-dumb Sara Zarr, I’m taking a break from online social networking (Twitter, FB, etc).  From tomorrow (the first Sunday of Advent) through January 6 (Epiphany).

(Despite being Jewish and therefore not celebrating Advent in any other way)

I’ll still be online, for emailing and a blog-post now and then, and maybe even the occasional Etsy holiday purchase.  And I’ll be reachable by phone or carrier pigeon (as usual).  I just won’t be on Twitter or FB.

Don’t worry.  This isn’t like last time. I’m not shaking and sweating in my bed. Nobody had to tie me up. I just have a lot to do, and I’ve been too busy lately. Not enough space inside my head for all the things I’m putting in there.  In fact, this isn’t just a web-hiatus. I’m  pulling back on my offline (which is to say, physical) social life too.

And hopefully, I’ll write this book and clean my house and come back a saner version of myself!

Look!

Over at Bookslut, Colleen Mondor  says, “the go-to book for every middle school reader this winter should be Laurel Snyder’s Any Which Wall…. With or without a debt owed to Mr. Eager, Ms. Snyder proudly stands on her own here, and has created a truly blissful read. It might just help a kid survive the winter – and plot their own summertime fun.”

I loved Edward Eager from the moment I stumbled across Half Magic, in our tiny school library, and read the first half page sometime back in the mid 60s. It was one of the best and most memorable books I read as a child - ranking right up there with Charlotte’s Web, The Wizard of Oz, and The Wind in the Willows. I never forgot the book, but didn’t see it again until thirty years later and hundreds of miles away during a boring PTA meeting in my sons’ even measlier school library. I turned to look at the bookshelf (to hide my rolling eyes) and there was Half Magic nudging my elbow. I fell in love all over again. It took another ten years, though, and a job in the children’s department of yet another library, before I discovered Eager’s other books. I’ve since read them all and recommend them often (and eagerly). In fact, Half Magic is on our list of 110 books every child should know, a list we put together commemorating our 110th anniversary as children’s department in a public library.

I’ve got an email about Eager in draft form. I plan to send it to you sometime over the next couple of days.
–Farida

I don’t know if I’m at all representative, but while I loved Edward Eager books when I was a kid, I haven’t thought about them much since. Same goes for, e.g., E. Nesbit and Ruth Chew (along with others in the groups-of-children-having-magical-adventures category). I tend to hearken back more to Louise Fitzhugh, Diana Wynne Jones, and other authors who for various reasons reverberated more for me on my way out of childhood.

I LOVE Edward Eager books. So did my kids (gah–I can’t believe they’re old enough now that I have to use past tense on that one!).

Okay, this is getting spooky. I saved my copy (identical to the one pictured in your entry) from childhood, and my daughter absolutely loved it 30 years later.
FIrst I see you tout Nesbit and now Eager.
At last I’ve found a blog with bite!

Oh, come on! That’s like saying only the hot book of the moment matters! (cough-Twilight-cough) I love Edward Eager’s books the same way I love Noel Streatfeild’s stuff: yes, I’ve read Ballet Shoes half a dozen times over the years! Does The Little Princess have its own website? (Well, maybe it does, but you get my point.) Which really brings up a graduate-thesis-type conversation about relevance and markers thereof. Symptoms thereof? Something like that! I haven’t read a Laurel Ingalls Wilder book in years, but I have some in my library and the whole series is part of who I am as a reader, writer, and human. (On a related note, one memorable night just a few years ago my chick-flick group–all women in their 30s and 40s–stayed up till 3:00 a.m. watching every single one of the Anne of Green Gables DVDs. Talk about tired but happy!)