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Fast fast, like lightning, fast!  It’s a Fusenews round-up of epic quickie proportions!

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First up, my buddy Warren Truitt used to work with me in the Central Children’s Room of New York Public Library.  Then he moved to Alabama.  He’s kept busy, since that time with a long-term personal project.  This one man machine is intent on setting up every single child in every single preschool in Lee Col, AL with three books that they can take home as their own.  To do that, he has set up a very specific registry.  If you want to help him out go to this Amazon wishlist and buy him one or more of the books on this list.  This is a straight up good cause with direct results.  Make yourself feel good about yourself today.

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In other news, I have been mistakenly complimented.  Cece Bell, the marvelous creator behind such books as El Deafo and the Rabbit and Robot easy book series wrote a post recently in which she wrote the following:

“After El Deafo came out, … Betsy Bird pointed out that the first book in the series (Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover) seemed autobiographical to her. (She was right in some ways—I had initially modeled Rabbit on someone else, but while working on the book realized that the high-strung, anxious Rabbit is pretty darn close to me.) Betsy used her crazy-good comp-lit skills and suggested that my personal connection to the book went even further. She pointed out that while Rabbit might represent me (I’m a rabbit in El Deafo, after all), perhaps the problem-solving Robot might represent the Phonic Ear, my clunky hearing aid from elementary school. I think Betsy was right! Robot drives Rabbit crazy but ultimately helps him out; my Phonic Ear drove me crazy, but ultimately helped me out. A lot.)”

She goes on to explain how the newest book in the series follows in this vein, though she didn’t intend it to do so.  Now, you know me.  I’m vanity incarnate.  I like taking credit for things, but this?  I can’t take credit for this.  In point of fact it was my genius husband who actually came up with the Rabbit & Robot = El Deafo connection.  So I thank you, Cece, but in truth it is Matt Bird who deserves this honor.  I am but his humble vessel, parlaying his theories into the universe.

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Seems like every day we’re getting more and more information about the upcoming Wrinkle in Time movie.  It’s being directed by Ava DuVernay.  This is good.  Oprah will star in some capacity.  Let the Oprah as winged centaur fan art begin!  Still good news.  Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon may be involved somehow.  Better and better.  And lastly, Storm Reid (seen here) will be Meg.  Perfect!  Right age and everything.  BUT, and this is a big but, there is still one way they can mess everything up.  MEG. MUST. WEAR. GLASSES.  If Meg is not wearing glasses in this movie then I am checking out.  Harriet the Spy didn’t wear glasses in that Rosie O’Donnell film and Meg didn’t wear glasses the last time they filmed this.  Team Glasses, that’s me.  Let’s see what happens.  Thanks to Laurie Gwen Shapiro for the link.

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Anyone else notice that there’s been a distinct increase in the number of articles praising translated books for kids and asking for more out there?  Bookriot just came out with 100 Great Translated Kids Books From Around the World.  I am not familiar with this M. Lynx Qualey but this is top notch writing.  Hooray, #WorldKidLit Month!

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New Blog Alert: In my travels I just found a new blog via a recent New York Times Book Review.  New to me anyway.  Apparently this woman’s been doing this since 2012.  Meet Catherine Hong.  She works on magazines.  She blogs at www.mrslittle.com.  And she writes on interesting topics with interesting titles.  Here’s a smattering of what I mean:

• New York Fashion Week meets Moomin
• Best Dressed: Sylvester’s mother
• Wes Anderson Probably Read This Book
• Double Fudge: A Novel for Adults
• Quite Possibly the Coolest Author Photo to Have Ever Appeared in a Kids’ Book

Read that last one if nothing else.  This is my kind of woman (to quote Animal from The Muppet Show)!

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The National Book Award longlists were announced this week, people!  And guess what?  There’s a nice equal smattering of YA and children’s literature on the list.  Hooray!  Some years it’s all YA with just one children’s book squeezing in there.  This year there are SIX children’s books, just slightly tipping in favor of younger readers.  I’ve read five of them.  See if you can guess which one I haven’t read.  It’s not as obvious as you might think.

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And now, your daily reminder that David Foster Wallace once taught Mac Barnett.  I will repeat.  The author of Infinite Jest taught the author of Extra Yarn.  I’m just going to sit and process that for a while.  Carry on.

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Hey!  Look over there!  At the Horn Book Podcast (I listen to all the episodes – I’m such a junkie) Jules Danielson was on and she said many smart things.  Many!  Go listen to her and feel smart while doing so.

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Confession: I was just going to coast today, since I’d technically already submitted my four blog posts for the week (Sundays totally counts).  Then Travis Jonker goes and does THREE brilliant posts in. a. row.  This will not stand.  I can’t compete with that.  First he predicted the upcoming New York Times Best Illustrated books for 2016.  Then he did a piece called Who Has Published the Most New York Times Best Illustrated Books in the Last Decade (the answer may surprise you . . . but won’t) and then he followed that up with The Failed Political Campaigns of Children’s Book Characters.  I was particularly keen on the last of these because just two days ago I interviewed Aaron Reynolds about President Squid for this new show I’m doing.  I recommend that if you don’t want to listen to my big face, skip to about 18:30 where you can experience the most enjoyable sensation of watching a really good author/performer read his book aloud.  The voice of President Squid here is fantastic.

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Yesterday, final day of our incredible retreat with my incredible partner-in-teaching Jordan Rosenfeld and 18 incredibly intrepid writers, I found myself rushing faster and faster to the finish-line, my vision narrowing to one thing and one thing only -- escape!! Well, not really escape. The weekend was filled with heart-felt memories and deep learning. Rather… solitude… space… freedom…

Finding more and more of a struggle to reconcile the outer me as teacher and presenter to who I am finally able to re-embrace as the shy, silent backwards daughter wrapped in a cloud of cotton candy. I'm left to wonder about that journey out of silence into the exotic world of words -- damn, who knew there could be so many words generated at once?

Have you ever considered how many words are being written across the world at this very instant? How many being said? We're all worried, and rightly so, about over-population of humans. What about over-population of words?

After the yapping excitement of returning home calmed, I settled in to revel in Maya Angelou on Oprah's OWN Super Soul Sunday. She spoke of the pieces stolen from you when slung slights, criticisms, cruelty, discomfit. Makes you wonder how any pieces are left at a ripe old age. Fortunately, love and acceptance for exactly who you are go far toward filling in those missing pieces.

Can't help but think of how many little pieces I lost this weekend, not stolen in meanness but offered with joy. Whole chunks of my thoughts and beliefs and knowledge and experience and magical thinking left me to grow and multiple. I'm left feeling a bit like Swiss cheese.

The darkness of scarcity lifts as the light of abundance sweeps in.

Blessed time to go inward, refill, allow for space and the reconnection to that which sustains me -- the sea.

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You’ll just have to trust me that there’s a story behind this. Mine isn’t as interesting as the one that taught me this lesson:

One of my favorite women adventurers is Helen Thayer. She’s a New Zealander by birth, now living in Washington State, and I first heard of her when I read her book Polar Dream.  Here’s the description:

In 1988, at the age of 50, Helen Thayer became the first woman in the world to travel on foot to the magnetic North Pole, one of the world’s most remote and dangerous regions. Her only companion was Charlie, her loyal husky, who was integral to her survival. Polar Dream is the story of their heroic trek and extraordinary relationship as they faced polar bears, unimaginable cold, and a storm that destroyed most of their supplies and food.

So yeah, super burly. I’ve referenced that adventure in a few books of mine–Doggirl and Parallelogram 3: Seize the Parallel–because I remain so thoroughly inspired and impressed by what Ms. Thayer accomplished despite the incredible danger and hardships. And that wasn’t her only big adventure. She and her husband and the dog from Polar Dream lived among wolves for a year (see her book Three Among the Wolves) and later, when she was in her 60s and her husband was in his 70s, they both trekked across the Gobi Desert, just the two of them and a few camels (see Walking the Gobi: A 1600 Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair). You can understand why she’s a hero of mine.

And one of her lessons that has always stuck with me is the one about being too polite.

Here’s the situation: On her last morning in civilization before Helen set off for the magnetic North Pole, the Inuit villagers who had graciously hosted her the night before took their hospitality one step further by helping Helen pack up her sled for the journey. Helen had a particular packing system in mind, but she didn’t have the heart to tell the villagers she didn’t want their help. They were so happy and enthusiastic about it, she didn’t want to hurt their feelings. So she just smiled and said thank you as she watched them stuff her gear and clothing every which way into various pockets and pouches. She figured she’d fix it all later once she was alone in camp that night.

Big mistake.

Because when she finally stopped skiing across the ice that first night and began setting up her camp, she could feel the cold beginning to affect her fingers. She understood the dangers of frostbite. She needed to put on her pair of heavy, insulated mittens, but where were they? As she frantically searched for them, she could feel the dry cold and the wind chill of minus 100 quickly taking their toll. By the time she finally found the mittens, her fingers already felt like hard wooden blocks. The damage was done.

When she woke up the next morning, her hands were swollen and covered with blisters. And they felt incredibly, horribly painful. They stayed that way for the whole first week, making everything so much harder: lighting her stove, dressing herself, setting up and breaking down her camp–anything that required manual dexterity and ended up leaving her fingers throbbing with agonizing pain.

All because she’d been afraid to say, “No. No, thank you. I need to do this myself.”

What’s amazing is you’d think someone as brave as Helen Thayer would have no trouble telling people no. But it just shows you hard it can be sometimes to retrain ourselves to do what might seem impolite.

Years ago I saw an Oprah episode where she interviewed Gavin de Becker, the guy who wrote The Gift of Fear. Does anybody else remember that episode? He talked about how predators sometimes test their prey by insisting on “helping.” “Oh, here, let me bring this to your car. You dropped this, I’ll just bring it upstairs for you.” And when you say, “No,” the predator still insists. Because he’s testing whether he can dominate you.

De Becker and Oprah discussed how it wasn’t just dangerous criminals doing that, it could also be friends or family members. De Becker said, “Anyone who won’t hear your ‘no’ is trying to control you.” When you think of it that way, you can probably see it all around you: in your bossy co-worker, your critical mother-in-law, even your well-meaning sister or friend. Here you are taking a stand and actually using your “no,” and the person refuses to accept it.

Annoying, and, as de Becker points out, also potentially dangerous. People practice on us. We need to practice, too.

This is all a way of saying the same thing someone once told me: “It’s only fair if it’s fair to you, too.” How’s that again? You get a vote. If it’s nice for someone else, is it also nice for you? Or are you going to end up exhausted/broke/angry/resentful/out of time to watch your favorite show if you do “just this one more” favor?

Don’t get me wrong–it feels good to be nice. No doubt about it. But it feels less good to always be the one giving and giving, while your own store of personal energy and good will feels like it’s slowly draining away. Then, if you’re like me, one day it’s finally enough, and the answer for everybody is “No, no, and NO,” even if a few of those would have been yesses if they’d caught you on a better day. And maybe that grumpy, surly no-ness lasts for a lot longer than you meant it to–*cough* three years–and you realize when you come out of it that you could have had a much easier life and been much happier if you’d only moderated your yesses one by one instead of letting them all pile up in such an unbalanced way.

See where I’m going with this?

As my best friend sometimes has to remind us both, “We don’t have to act nice, we are nice.” And if you look closely at your own behavior, you can see the times when you’re just performing–wanting to appear nice–as opposed to genuinely wanting to do something out of love or friendship or simple human kindness. There is a difference. One of them drains you, the other fills you up. It’s very noticeable once you really start looking at it.

Sometimes you need to work the problem backwards. How will you feel afterward if you say no here versus yes? Forget how hard it might feel in the moment to tell someone no–think about how you want to feel afterward. If you really, really want to go home tonight and slip into something slouchy and treat yourself to an evening of quiet and Call the Midwife, then why are you saying yes to anything else? Don’t you get a vote, too? Don’t you ever get the yes?

Or, like I’m doing today, you work out a balance: ten nice things for other people, ten nice things for yourself. That seems like the best recipe for me lately to be able to handle all of my obligations cheerfully. I know at the end of a long stream of yesses today I’ll get to sit down and binge watch season 2 of The Mindy Project.

Now that’s my kind of balance.

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I'm 40 days away from my book launch--exciting, no?

But also slightly terrifying. Because this means I have to get more serious about marketing, and having a marketing plan to work from. When Double Vision sold, I started writing down all kinds of brilliant and out-of-the-box ways I could get the word out. Like making an awesome animated book trailer series. Writing articles for parenting magazines. Tweeting a story. Being on Oprah's book club--sure, she doesn't exactly feature my kind of book, but you never know.

So now I'm at the point that I have to turn these fantabulous ideas into an actual plan. Which means about three quarters of them will go in the I-wish-but-it's-not-practical/too-expensive pile (like the Oprah thing). And then there are additions, like sending out postcards. Making giveaway packages. Last week, I got my first invitation to speak at a YA/MG event in a nearby city--cool, right?

Lesson learned: ideas are great, but unless you create an action plan to go with it, they're just air. This marketing plan business is a lot like writing a novel, turns out... Like Yoda said: "Do, or do not. There is no try."

How about you, writer friends? Any recommendations on successful marketing for this newbie?

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I've been "gone".  So now I have to catch up. 

Seems like everybody has an idea of what books kids' should read.  Oprah has a whole page dedicated to suggestions for age appropriate books for children.  When your young reader has run out of Big Nate books or Dear Dumb Diary books, here's another place to look for ideas.

I finally read David Benedictus' Return to the Hundred Acre Woods.  I didn't want to read it because the original Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner are tied for my number 1 favorite book of all times.  (It's a three-way tie with The Lives of Christopher Chant. )

I was afraid of what Benedictus would do with my memories.  I mean, Disney already reduced Eeyore to a one-note joke.  Without the superb humor of A. A. Milne, how would Pooh and Rabbit and Piglet, to say nothing of Eeyore, fare?

Benedictus is not as laugh-out-loud funny as Milne.  I should not even have hoped for that!  But Benedictus respects Milne's characters.  Sometimes, there is a joke that is overdone or a characteristic that is overemphasized.  But Pooh is not a "fuzzy little tubby all stuffed with fluff" or whatever.  The stories reflect the ways that 8 or 9 year old boys play.  When the animals decide to open a school, Benedictus hits all the right notes.  And Christopher Robin's cricket instructions were quite edifying!  I prefer Lottie the Otter in this book to that whistling gopher in the Disney adaptations. The illustrations were nicely close to E. Shepard's originals.

And the ending left me misty-eyed. So hats off to you, Mr. Benedictus.  You did quite well.  But, one revisit was enough for me.  Thank you.

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Every so often I want to highlight what books are being talked about Around the Web. So, without further ado, the launch of a new series.

On Oprah’s blog, Life Lift, we have our weekly book recommendation.

Coral Glynn
by Peter Cameron

In the standard domestic drama, a poor lonely girl comes to work for a rich lonely man, and the two fall in love, a la Jane Eyre. The thought-provoking Coral Glynn begins in just this way. It’s right after World War, and Coral comes to nurse the dying mother of Major Clement Hart—an Englishman whose leg and confidence have been badly damaged on the battlefield. The Major quickly falls in love with Coral, and the two decide to get married, until a gruesome murder in the neighboring woods sends Coral fleeing back to London. For a few pages, it seems as if this book may turn into a Gothic thriller: how will the two reunite and who exactly is the killer? But Peter Cameron is so much more of skilled and subtle writer than this. Underneath his page-turning plot is a careful, complex examination of loss—and the human ability to fully experience love after too much loss. Coral has suffered all kinds of quiet, devastating violence in her own life—the unspoken kind that’s either ignored or simply expected when it comes to working-class woman, post-war or not. It’s her emotional life that becomes the real mystery of the novel. Coral can’t engage with others, even as they become entranced, if not bewitched, by her. She tries to connect, of course, and at strange, unexpected times, longs for more, such as when she enters a florist shop and is overwhelmed by the beauty of the flowers, feeling “in some way that ll the life and warmth of the cold, drab town, of her life, had collected in this room—that she was in the hot golden center of the world.”  Here is the pleasure of the novel—albeit a painful one. In bringing Coral to life, Cameron knows what not to say, how to leave the kind of tiny, white space that lets us readers imagine the huge, colorful, overwhelming world of even the most broken human heart.

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USATODAY brings further attention to the underground, cult-like book, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY that is becoming one of the most talked about books of the season. Turns out, FIFTY SHADES started off as a Twilight Fan Fiction creation.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY by EL James:

When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind – until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.

The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize

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For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you already know that I attended the O You! Conference, sponsored by Oprah Magazine.

It was here in Atlanta and I was excited to attend. Some of my favorite speakers were there including Suze Orman, Dr. Oz, and Nate Berkus. Journalist Lisa Ling was there as well as everyone’s best friend Gayle King.

Oh yeah…Oprah was there too.

Although I had to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday after working almost 60 hours at the day job, I was so glad that I made the effort. The day was filled with inspiration and the positive energy of over 5,000 people wanting to learn new things and live a better life.

I’ve always wanted to attend an Oprah Show but never got a chance to so I was very excited to have the opportunity to see her in person and hear her speak. Let me tell you, Oprah did not disappoint.

So I just wanted to share with you some of her gems that spoke to me and hopefully they can be helpful to you in your life — and even your writing.

“Stand in the truth of who you are.”

“Once you are strong enough to receive what you are meant to have, it will come to you.”

“Life is about growth.”

“All clarity comes from stillness.”

“If you have to ask outside of yourself for the answer, you are looking for confirmation from others when instead you should look within.”

“Everything in your life is there to teach you a lesson.”

“The greatest power is the true knowing of yourself.”

Oprah also took some questions from the audience and an 18-year old girl stood up and said that she wanted to be a successful talk show host who reached millions of people to make an impact on the world. She wanted Oprah to give her advice and how to start towards that goal. I loved how Oprah answered her.

Basically Oprah told the young girl that she shouldn’t be focusing so much on the millions of people but rather her intention. It’s the work that should matter. Even if the talk show only reaches 5 or 10 people. It’s the impact of the work. Oprah said that best way to start is affecting the people closest to you — your family, your circle of friends, your community. And to redefine what success truly means. And it may not be a talk show that reaches millions of people. That’s okay. It’s still an impact.

This resonated with me especially because I think so much as artists and writers that we really want to make a difference with our words — we want to reach millions of people — but sometimes we need to get back to the focus of the work. Back to the true intention of why we’re writing in the first place. Even if that means our novel only reaches 5 or 10 people. The impact of our words is still powerful.

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By Andrew Trask The non-fiction author has all kinds of worries. He may get his facts seriously wrong, in a very public forum. His books may not sell. Even if his books do sell, he may be sued for libel (the print version of slander), especially in Europe. And, in the past few years, a new threat

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On August 11, 2011, ABRAMS and Harpo, Inc. released the cover of The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy and a list of notable luminaries who are contributing to the book.  Copies of The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy can be pre-ordered wherever books are sold and will be available in stores November 15 and will probably be a BIG holiday book purchase.

The book chronicles the full 25 years of The Oprah Winfrey Show with unforgettable highlights and images, as well as essays about its indelible impact and most important themes by well-known individuals across a wide variety of areas and interests.

These contributors include:

• Maya Angelou, who writes the foreword
• Bono and Nicholas Kristof writing on giving and social action
• Ellen DeGeneres, Stanley Crouch, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writing on equality
• Julia Roberts and Diane von Furstenberg writing on culture and style
• Toni Morrison and Elie Wiesel writing on books
• Maria Shriver and Gloria Steinem writing on women’s issues
• Dr. Phil McGraw, Mark Nepo, and Marianne Williamson writing on spirit and personal growth
• Bob Greene and Dr. Mehmet Oz writing on health and wellness
• John Travolta and Phil Donahue contributing tributes to Ms. Winfrey

The cover features an image of Ms. Winfrey taken by acclaimed fashion photographer Ruven Afanador.

About the Book
The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy
Abrams
On Sale: November 15, 2011
Author: Deborah Davis w/ foreword by Maya Angelou and multiple contributors
Hardcover with jacket
$50.00 US / $55.00 CAN
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0059-0
150 color photographs 240 pages / 10 ½ X 13 ½

Read more at Oprah’s Press Room.

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First Book is deeply grateful to have been part of “Oprah’s Surprise Spectacular.” We were overwhelmed when 13,000 people at the United Center stood in tribute to Oprah Winfrey and the power of reading – each holding a brand new children’s book to be donated to a child in need through First Book. Surprises don’t get much better than that!

But the story doesn’t end there. Thanks to the audience’s generosity, more than 25,000 new books in total will be given to children in low-income communities throughout the country, including a donation of over 1,100 books for the children at KIPP Believe College Preparatory Academy in New Orleans, the school that was featured in the broadcast.

Honoring The “Oprah” Show’s 25-year legacy with a donation of 25,000 books for kids in need makes for a pretty spectacular surprise. Even though the guest of honor may not like surprises much, we could tell she liked this one.

Everyone at First Book thanks The “Oprah” Show’s audience for supporting our work and sharing the love of reading with children who need books in their lives.

First Book also thanks the fabulous people at Harpo for tapping us for this remarkable opportunity. You are an inspiring group, and we are honored to have worked with you.

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It was the best of times…it was the end of times.

Perhaps you haven’t heard, but the world will end tomorrow. That is, according to Harold Camping and the “Family Radio” network, who have been warning us that the rapture will take place at 6 p.m. on May 21st. (I am still unsure…is this for Eastern Daylight Time? Or will it just begin in New Zealand and sweep west?)

I wouldn’t want you all to just be sitting around, bored and waiting, so I’ve come up with a few things you can do in the meantime.

Google ‘rapture’ and watch the realtime results counter. (Is there a rapture countdown widget? I haven’t been able to find one.)

Play World of Warcraft. Go ahead. Here’s why your gaming skills will help you survive.

Try to figure out what the heck Blondie’s singing about in “Rapture.”

Read New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg shares 5 reasons the world can’t end. Yet.

Jump for joy, because if the world ends, so does alternate-side parking.

Get to know your apocalypse.

Remember that the real doomsday is coming: the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Figure out the difference between the rapture and the second coming of Christ.

Catch up with this last-minute rapture reading list. (To which I would like to add Apocalyptic AI.)

Prepare a Rapture Party.

Get your groove on to the Eclectic Method’s “Apocamix.”

Buy the large popcorn at the movies (with EXTRA butter) and don’t even bother flossing.

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