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Imagine if Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and other great characters tweeted and texted. The new book Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg is a novel built around that conceit.

Here's a funny example from the book posted on the National Public Radio (NPR) website:

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National Public Radio (NPR) has an interview with John Cleese about his new autobiography So, Anyway... Check it out to discover what the British wit whose comic characters and hit movies, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Time Bandits, and A Fish Called Wanda, has to say about writing funny.

Here's a highlight from the NPR interview:

Cleese's advice for young comedy writers

"I tell them to steal, because comedy is extraordinarily difficult. It's much, much harder than drama. You only have to think of the number of great dramatic films and then compare that with the number of great comic films ... and realize that there's very, very few great comedies and there are lots and lots of very great tragedies, or dramas. That tells you, really, which is the hard one to do. So at the very beginning, to try to master the whole thing is too difficult, so pinch other people's ideas and then try to write them yourself, and that'll get you started."

To read and listen to the NPR interview, click on this link to NPR's website:

Do you agree that it's hard to write funny?

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The day has come!  Shel Silverstein’s newest poetry collection, EVERY THING ON IT, is on sale today!

You can get a peek at the book by using our Browse Inside feature, and check out the downloadable activities.  The New York Times also wrote a lovely piece about Shel Silverstein as an unexpected “authority on education.”  And don’t forget to check out Shel’s poems on NPR’s Morning Edition (seriously, you haven’t lived until you hear Shel’s editor Toni Markiet read “Italian Food” out loud!).

The reviews are coming in and they positively glow about EVERY THING ON IT:

“This posthumous collection of Silverstein’s poems and illustrations is not only familiar in design, but chockfull of the whimsical humor, eccentric characters, childhood fantasies, and iconoclastic glee that his many fans adore.” ~ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like the boy holding the delightfully absurd hot dog with everything piled upon it, this collection offers a Silverstein smorgasbord that won’t linger on the library shelves.” ~ School Library Journal (starred review)

“Adults who grew up with Uncle Shelby will find themselves wiping their eyes by the time they get to the end of this collection; children new to the master will find themselves hooked.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

It’s a historic day, and we’re so excited to share it with you, readers.  And if you’d like to share memories and/or favorite poems by Shel Silverstein in the comments, please feel free – we’d love to hear it!

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The House of Representatives voted 228-192 to defund National Public Radio this afternoon. This week Steve Oney (author of And the Dead Shall Rise) landed a book deal to write a book on “the history, trials and tribulations of NPR.”

The Kneerim & Williams Agency negotiated the deal with Ben Loehnen at Simon & Schuster. Publisher  Jonathan Karp had this statement: “We’re delighted to have acquired Steve Oney’s exploration of the personalities and conflicts at NPR.  This is the rare media story that transcends the industry and speaks to larger cultural issues, and we believe this book will offer valuable insights into the workings of an important and intriguing journalistic organization.”

Follow this link to learn more how to support the embattled institution.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Lots of news to catch up on…

1.)  First of all, THOMAS AND THE DRAGON QUEEN was listed last year by the New York Public Library as one of their recommended top 100 books. Yay! Listed in: “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.”

2.) And . . . I’m happy dancing for a good friend of mine and a writer I mentored a year or so ago. Her name is Tracy Bilen. She won me as a novel mentor for a year in Michigan’s SCBWI (Soc. of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) group. Her manuscript had the basics of a great read…a riveting plot and an empathetic main character. But it needed deepening and developing. She worked hard, took many of my suggestions and always did the homework I suggested. Just this week she received an offer from Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Schuster. YAY!  I think I am more excited about this than anything else that’s happened lately.  It’s so fun to know that soon another great young adult novel will be in the hands of readers. It will make its debut in 2012. Hugs to Tracy!!! (And we’ll roll out the red carpet when the book comes out.)

3.) A really different and fun book just made the news on National Public Radio. It’s called YOU CAN COUNT ON MONSTERS by Richard Evan Schwartz. It’s not a picture book–though it’s all about pictures of monsters (and numbers).  I’ve highlighted it to the right. Enjoy!

4.) Wow!!  Michigan rocks…In the recent ALA awards Erin Stead won the Caldecott Medal for A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE (written by her husband Philip). Sure am proud to live in Michigan!

Shutta

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When a man recently went to a bookstore in search of his book group’s latest selection, he never dreamed that a clerk would question who the book was for, nor did he expect an unsolicited analysis of his character. Yet that’s what happened to one purchaser of Aryn Kyle’s novel, The God of Animals, when the woman who waited on him asked who he was buying the book for, and when learning it was for the customer himself, informed him that men who read “women’s fiction” were “sensitive.”

The customer was understandably unsettled by this encounter, which he later discussed on National Public Radio’s program, The Bryant Park Project. As a bookseller for many years, and as a parent of two sons, I’m perplexed and unsettled by this story as well, on a couple of different levels.

Even if we ignore the fact that The God of Animals is an amazing novel about the modern-day American West, in which one of the central relationships is that between a father and daughter, and is a book that should never be limited to readers of only one gender, the assumption that there are “men’s books” and “women’s books” and never the twain shall meet is one that is alien to any bookstore I have ever known. Yet at the same time, as a children’s bookseller, I often heard, and have espoused myself, the point of view that “girls will read books about boys but boys will rarely read books about girls.”

There are of course exceptions–I’ve yet to find any child who will not devour Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy seems to have met few gender-based barriers. Yet I’ve learned from bitter experience that offering a boy Harriet the Spy or my all-time favorite Mistress Masham’s Repose often will evoke the disappointed response, “Oh, it’s about a girl.”

When my sons were small, they loved the adventures of Dorothy in the land of Oz and Alice whether she was in Wonderland or through the looking glass as much as they did Peter Pan or Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows. And certainly Marjorie’s Brothers One and Two seem to enjoy books about females as well as males.

So when and how does this divergence in taste occur? Or do we just assume that it will occur and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophesy? In your experience, do boys avoid books in which girls take the leading role? If so, how can we broaden that point of view? And what would have become of J.K Rowling if she had written about Harriet Potter?

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I'm a writer. I write novels for teens. Three months ago I quit my day job as a healthcare data cruncher to become a full-time writer, and now I'm doing my best to get the word out about my recent novel, LEMONADE MOUTH. And this is what my family and I came up with... 

LEMONADE MOUTH ACROSS AMERICA! is my family's audacious attempt to make a writer's dream come true with a road-trip adventure and a shoestring budget. It's a summer-long, 26-city, 9,000 mile book tour across the USA and back--two adults, three small children and a pile of books all crammed into a minivan! For the story behind the story, click here. My website is www.markpeterhughes.com.

The Route: For a list of cities and dates, click here. If you're nearby, come see us--we'd love to meet you!

National Public Radio: NPR recently ran a commentary about me, my books, and how I quit my job to write full time.  To hear it click here.
 

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

It all started as just a little idea...
After recently (March 30, 2007) quitting my day-job to become a full-time writer--a big financial risk that my wife and I decided to take (carpe diem!) – Karen and I talked about ways to make the most of our summer. It started as a just little idea: Let’s take the family on a fun road-trip in our rusty minivan and stop at some bookstores along the way...but it quickly grew into something much larger. Now it’s a summer-long, 26-city, 9,000 mile adventure across the USA and back!

Our friends think we’re crazy, but we’re doing it anyway. Thing is, we probably have only a narrow window of time in our lives when this is even possible: Karen’s starting back as a Spanish teacher in September, the kids are young (Evan 9, Lucy 8, and Zoe 5) and still want to be with us (that surely won’t last forever!), and I have a new YA novel out. So the timing seems perfect, right? Except...t we have no money, and our mechanic wonders whether our 1996 Honda Odyssey, which has close to 200,000 miles on it already, will make it--not to mention that this is the summer of the final Harry Potter, so Lemonade Mouth is going to have a tough time attracting any notice at all in Harry's shadow.

But...we decided to do it anyway! (carpe diem again!)

Brace yourselves! We’re setting off on June 27!
We'll be stopping in cities all over the country, dealing with heat, kid issues, and close quarters while doing our best to make a writer's dream happen on a shoestring budget--all while discovering America! 

-- Mark 

LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007)
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
<http://www.markpeterhughes.com>
<http://www.lemonademouth.com>

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