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Hi Everyone!

I'm thrilled to be here, sharing some thoughts with you. I'm just back from Boston, where I was honored to received an award for my latest book, Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed... and Revealed, which I co-authored with my wife, Yael Schy. (Our book was awarded the 2008 SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the category "Children's Science Picture Book."  The award is sponsored by Subaru and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and it was shared between the two authors and photographer Dwight Kuhn.) I was planning to write about the award ceremony and the four books that received the prize in different categories (see www.sbfonline/prizes) but I have decided to save that for another day, 

except to give you a glimpse of our book's cover and to share one detail about the ceremony. The sponsors of the SB&F Prize arranged to have several local children present the awards to the winning authors. The kids told the audience (and the authors) what they liked about the books. Some of them spoke with passion about questions the books had raised in their minds. To these readers, a book that raises interesting questions is a good book indeed. Then the young book reviewers shook our hands while handing us our award plaques.

The opinions and questions of children often fascinate and delight me. I get a lot of great letters from children and I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite, but one letter that stands out in my mind came from a nine-year old girl who wondered about the accuracy of various statements in my first book. I'm going to remove her name and address to protect her privacy, but we can call her by her first name, Lisa. Here is what she wrote. I apologize that the letters are small and a little hard to read. Lisa's message is summarized in the last two sentences:

In my presentations at schools, I often tell children, "Wondering is wonderful." I find it wonderful that Lisa is wondering about the statements in my book and whether or not they are true. These musings give her "mixed up feelings," which may sound uncomfortable, but she quickly goes on to reassure us that she finds these feelings magical. Her letter ends with a sentence I find truly memorable. To Lisa, the magic in books is wondering whether the "facts" are true or not! 

I wish readers of my books -- or all books -- would wonder about them the way Lisa does. Active minds read critically, questioning what they read as they blend their own experiences, knowledge and observations with the author's raw ingredients. They create a nourishing stew that is more than a bowl of information.

I have been lucky enough to see see many examples of readers extending or challenging statements in my books. The 2rd and 3rd graders of one class doubted that the average height of elementary school students was truly 4'8", as I reported in the backmatter of How Much Is a Million? I used that figure to estimate the height of a million children standing on one another's shoulders. To find out if I was right, this class set about measuring every child in their elementary school. They determined the median, the mode and the mean, and they graphed their data. Finally, they declared that the average height was only 4'4".

But they didn't quit there. They proposed several possible explanations for the discrepancy between what I had written and what they had found. For example, their school has grades from K-5. Maybe my school went up to 6th or 8th grade. If so, that could explain the difference between their answer and mine. Or, they speculated, their school might be shorter than normal... or perhaps mine was taller than normal. Or maybe I just measured a single child with a height of 4'8" and I said, "He's normal!" In a scientific paper, this section of their report would have been the "discussion" section.

I'll give just one other example of children wondering about what they have read.

In If You Made a Million, I wrote that a million dollars would be equal to "a whale's weight in quarters." A group of schoolkids wondered about that. They looked up the weight of a blue whale (60 tons) and calculated that it is the same as the weight of 10 million quarters, or 2.5 million dollars -- not one million dollars as the book said. When they wrote to me about it, I pointed out that the book did not specify a particular species of whale. And in the backmatter, where I explained the math, I showed that the weight of a million dollars in quarters is about 50,000 pounds, which is "the approximate weight of many kinds of whales, including the sperm whale." Then, as if anticipating their objection, I added that blue whales can be much heavier than that. I thought I had covered my bases and I said so (nicely) in a letter to my challengers, but they were not convinced. Here is a copy of the page that they sent back to me, bearing their comment upon the situation:

Don't you love it? I sure do. I told them they would have to take it up with the illustrator, Steven Kellogg. And I even provided his address! 

To me, the point isn't who is right and who is wrong. The point is that they wondered about something they had read in a book ... and they pursued their wonders through research and mathematics. It's magical. As nine year-old Lisa said,  "The magic of books is not knowing whether the facts are true or not."

While looking up a particular poetic form a few weeks ago, I came across this site, Payapoet.com. At first, I was a bit horrified at this, I admit. The whole idea of hiring a poet to write a love poem or a birthday poem or, yes, a eulogy poem, and paying by the line...it just left a bad taste in my mouth. 

The schlocky Renaissance theme of the site didn't help. And I think it's weird there's no poet bio. I suspect that if there's really the work available, there's a stable of writers to churn out poems. Again, that bad taste in my mouth.

Then I got over myself.

After all, I wrote 10 work for hire poetry collections last year. I put a lot of time and thought into those poems, and perhaps this poet does, too. I have family members who have commissioned people to create stained glass windows and other art and craft forms to their specifications. Is that art? It might be. And why can't poetry be done the same way?

I haven't seen any of this person's poetry, so I have no idea if it's pure crap or really wonderful writing. It could go either way. I guess it somewhat comes down to intent. If the poet is really trying to express someone's ideas in a way that fits the situation, then that's class. But if it's just a hack who will throw together any rhyming lines in the number and order and mood you specify, then that's crass.

I will say that if this person can get paid $1,349.95  for a 30-line acrostic, then clearly his patrons have deeper pockets than children's publishers do!

What do you think about this?

Harvard Law School attorney Stu Rees did his thesis on comic strip syndicate contracts. Stu represented me and several other cartoonists and helped change the way syndicate contracts were written and negotiated. Here's a link to his thesis.

The Graphic Artists Guild keeps an eye on what types of contracts illustrators are having to sign. It offers a good resource for understanding contracts as well as offering some real-life contracts as examples. GAG Contract Monitor.

The Authors' Guild has Negotiating tips for nine typical contract clauses.

Famed Illustrator C. F. Payne has some strong thoughts on Work-for-Hire agreements. While hard to avoid, WFH agreements remove an illustrator's legal authorship to his or her work. You're not just selling rights, nor simply the original art, but your very claim to authorship. Not a new article but an important one, especially since Payne's career has skyrocketing (at least compared to mine!) since he wrote this article, indicating it's not necessary to sell out in order to make a living.

Our best luck is with clients who do not have a boilerplate contract. Oftentimes clients who do have a contract have "borrowed" it from someone else, rather than having an attorney draft one for them. In any case, it is better for the Illustrator to have his or her own boilerplate, often referred to as a Letter of Agreement (see GAG Contract Monitor above). This allows the Illustrator to have more control in the negotiation process, and creates a better opportunity to explain the terms for usage of rights.

It is best to grant usage rights as specifically as possible. For example, Exclusive North American print rights for one year in March 2007 issue of Passing Classical Gas magazine. After that point, all rights revert back to you.

Limit the number of unpaid revisions to one or two. Chances are this will halve your annual workload and double your income for the year! I'm only slightly exaggerating.

How do you know if you've negotiated a good deal? If afterward you don't feel like you just screwed yourself. Never be afraid to say No and ask for what you are worth.

Ted

Questioning and Researching from the Start In this show: “Pluto, I Found Him!”, Taking Social Action in 2nd Grade. Special Thanks to : Carol Felderman for contributing to the show. Participate in the show. Subscribe and listen in iTunes XML Feed Location : feed://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/?feed=rss2 Let me know where you are by clicking on ‘Join the CLIP Frappr Map’ in the menu [...]