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First among the privileges of attending writing festivals is this: the young people you meet. Just look at those Little Flower Catholic High School girls. Look at those faces, that youth, those smiles, that Sister-Kimberly-Miller-inspired love for books. These students
made the enormously successful first Little Flower Teen Writing Festival a few brief Saturdays ago. They (along with all the hard work of Sister Kim and Kate Walton) were the reason we were there.
But the twenty writers who gathered for this event also had the chance to talk with, and support, one another. That, too, is excellent stuff. That, too, makes a weekend.
Today I'd like to share a few opening lines from two of the new books that I brought home, to entice you to go out and find these books for yourselves.
First, from Jennifer Hubbard, author of
Try Not to Breathe and
The Secret Years, comes her new story,
Until It Hurts to Stop, about a teen trying to overcome a legacy of brutal bullying, a teen trying to believe in her own worth. (It's also about hiking, about which Jenn knows a whole lot.)
That story begins like this:
My friend Nick reaches across the cafeteria table and drops a knife into my hand. "Happy birthday, Maggie."
I turn the knife over in my hand. I have always wanted one of these. I've borrowed Nick's often enough, out on the trails.
I know I should hide it. It's a Swiss army knife, not a weapon, but our school gets hysterical over nail clippers. They'd probably confiscate it and put me on some list of budding terrorists.
Even so, I can't resist stroking the smooth metal and snapping open the different tools: the nail file, the screwdriver, the tiny scissors. Best of all, I love the tiny scissors....
Second, from Elizabeth LaBan, a story inspired by an assignment the author herself was given as a teen—to write something called a "tragedy paper." LaBan's novel (
The Tragedy Paper) is told in two voices—that of an albino boy who leaves a record of his last semester in a boarding school behind, and that of the boy who discovers and ponders the tale.
That story begins like this:
As Duncan walked through the stone archway leading into the senior dorm, he had two things on his mind: what 'treasure' had been left behind for him and his Tragedy paper. Well, maybe three things: he was also worried about which room he was going to get.
If it wasn't for the middle item, though, he tried to convince himself, he would be almost one hundred percent happy. Almost. But that paper—the Irving School's equivalent of a thesis project—was sucking at least thirty percent of his happiness away, which was a shame on such an important day. Basically, he was going to spend a good portion of the next three months trying to define a tragedy in the literary sense, like what made King Lear a tragedy? Who cared? He could do that right now—a tragedy was when something bad happened. Bad things happened all the time. But the senior English teacher, Mr. Simon—who just happened to be the adult overseer of his hall this year—cared. He cared a lot, and he loved to throw around words like magnitude and hubris....
Of course, no matter how many books I own, I'm always wishing I had room and time for more. But here, for this rainy day, are the start of tales from my big reading pile.
Yesterday, in New York City, I joined the great cast of writers that the truly great David Levithan had gathered at Books of Wonder, a store famous and hallowed and grand. I met a student with a future, a librarian with a heart, a blogger with whom I'd corresponded, an AP English teacher, a science fiction writer, a screenplay writer, super cool Wonder staff, others. K. M. Walton and I compared war stories (we always do; this time I won). A.S. King swore she'd been practicing her salsa (but I don't know; the girl does write fiction). David revealed some of the new work on his Scholastic list, and I sort of begged, I hope that's okay, for one of the ARCs.
(David Levithan did not reveal, however, how he maintains his fresh-faced good looks after his long and uber successful week of moderating and hosting countless (all right, so someone counted them, probably even David himself) YA panels and conversations.)
And then something else amazing happened: Ed Goldberg, who wrote to me following the launch of HOUSE OF DANCE and who has remained in touch ever since—a stalwart cheerleader in times both green and fallow, a teacher, a librarian, a garden lover, a dad, a man in love with his Susan—took the train into the city and surprised me. Yes, indeed, the surprise was gonzo. And Beth Kephart, born on April Fools' Day, does not easily surprise.
After the signing, I wove through New York City. I share my quick snapshots here.
On the train there and back, I was reading Elizabeth Graver's new novel,
The End of the Point.Help me, Rhonda: I can't wait to tell you about her book. (That is, if you haven't already read about it everywhere, my friend Elizabeth now on bestseller lists everywhere.)
It was particularly difficult—and yet so important and poignant—to read K.M. Walton's second novel,
Empty, late last night and into this early morning. Kate is a friend of mine, a deep-thinking, big-hearted former school teacher who has devoted her novelistic life (so far) to making visible the too-often invisible lives of young people who have either been bullied or succumbed to the tease of hurting others. In a
recent, moving TEDx talk, Kate took us back into her teaching days and shared her effective cure for getting kids to stop hurting other kids. It's mandatory watching.
With
Empty, Kate focuses on Adele, 17 years old and massively overweight, a former softball star whose size now makes it difficult to play. Her father has left the family. Her mother, working two jobs and addicted to prescription pills, has moved Adele and her baby sister into inadequate, cramped quarters. Adele's only friend doesn't even truly know Adele, and sometimes, for comfort, Adele will pour a box of cereal into a large mixing bowl and eat every single bite. And things will only get worse.
One wants to believe (to hope) that no child is this alone, or in this much pain, but the news tells us differently. The news reminds us of how frightening alone-ness is, and of what its consequences can be.
Empty is a brave book written by a brave writer—relentless, unblinking, harrowing. We read it to know. We read it disabuse ourselves of the easy notion that those young people floating on the margins will be just fine without us, that they somehow don't need our attention or care.
They are not fine without us.
They need our care.
I received an early copy of
Empty from Kate. Join her for her book launch on January 5, 2013 at the Barnes and Noble in Exton, PA, 7 PM to 9 PM. I, most certainly, will be there.
What an amazing story my friend KM Walton tells here about saving a bullied boy from those who tormented him. She taught empathy. She gave bullies the power of kindness. Listen in.
We think it's pretty special out here when generosity, talent, humility, spark, and through-and-through writerliness live within one person. The fact that all that (and more) defines David Levithan—Scholastic editor, mold-smithering author, and genuine conversationalist—explains, at least in part, his ricocheting popularity.
Last evening, at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA, David shared his stage with the wildly popular Ellen Hopkins, the delightful Eliot Schrefer, my new and powerfully talented friend Jennifer R. Hubbard, and me. We each read briefly. Eliot took our breaths away with baby bonobo photos. A very generous CBW plied us with special treats, even customized cookies. And writerly/readerly teens do what they do so well—let us into their world with questions and thoughts.
A.S. King, we're all coming right back there for you on
October 30, to celebrate your much-anticipated new book,
Ask the Passengers. Please bring your duplicate. We love her. K.M. Walton, we are indebted, always, to your immaculate kindness and talent (and your photographs; thank you for the last one!). To my many friends (and client/friend!) who slipped into the crowd, thank you.
I have come home with some glorious new books to read. I'll start with
Every Day, David Levithan's newest. Many times in the past few weeks I have had to stop myself from buying the book. Sometimes waiting for
that moment is worth it.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 8/25/2012
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
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Plenty of wild things happened at Skyanne Fisher's PAYA Festival today. A.S. King hand sold Beth Kephart books, because somebody had to. Beth Kephart signed her books with A.S. King's name, because every tit deserves a tat. Kate Walton looked gorgeous (nothing wild about that one, happens all the time). Skyanne spoke of traveling to humdrum places like Ghana (Sure, Ghana. Of course, Ghana. Who doesn't yawn at Ghana?) Elisa Ludwig showed up in a dress Beth Kephart wanted but Elisa (oddly) wouldn't give it to Beth. Ilene Wong revealed deep secrets. Margie Gelbwasser was adorable. Heather of Children's Book World talked about how much she loves Jessica Shoffel (
My Jessica Shoffel? I said. My. Very. Own??) And Beth Kephart got to sit beside the beloved Jennifer Hubbard, a full month shy of her
Children's Book World event with Jennifer, David Levithan, and Ellen Hopkins.And as if that were not enough? There stood this delightful man. Okay, so he could have used a little meat on his bones. Sure, his hat wasn't as vintage as I'd have liked. He was also (sorry!) on the tad short side. But he was upright, strong, and he had a spine, and he could hold his own around three majestic authoresses. Jennifer, A.S., and I fought over him—with the best vocabulary in the land, I can assure you. Then he—not defeated, but slightly bored—suggested that we share.
We're big girls now. Adults. We did.
Thank you, Skyanne and PAYA!
I don't know what it is about lately.
Truly.
Ask A.S. King, that famous writer, She. She is the one took the photo here. Snapped it at Chester County Book and Music a few weeks ago, where I had gone to sign
Small Damages, and where A.S. King and K.M. Walton and I practically shut down the little restaurant hours later. Or, at least, we shut down the lunch shift at 5 PM.
Minutes after striking this hot little pose I was informed by a quite polite but anxious management team that this very table had collapsed beneath another's weight, a few signings back. I wanted to ask if the other author had been a former Rockette, just like me, but decided to heed the caution and hopped off, pledging myself to adult behavior.
But here, forever, thanks to A.S. King, is me being me.
I will get back to my regularly scheduled seriousness on the morrow.
Unless another odd photo surfaces.
How much do any of us need to know about a book before we decide to make it our own? I cannot predict myself. I'll buy a book on a whim, or because I like the cover. I'll buy it because a blogger I respect suggested that maybe I should, or because it got a rave review, or because someone I know is on the fence and I want to know how I'd decide. I buy books in an instant, and I've been known to take my time. But eventually I get around to buying books.
Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley's book, has been on my radar screen for a very long time. It won the 2012 Printz Award and the William C. Morris YA Award. My friend Ruta Sepetys loved it, and she doesn't go wrong.
Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, called it a "taut and well-constructed thriller."
I need to read more thrillers.
And so this weekend, while at the Chester County Book and Music Company
with my friends Kate Walton, Amy King, and Joanne Fritz, I asked Joanne (who happens to work at CCBM) if she could locate a copy of Whaley's famous book. There are more than 28,000 square feet at CCBM, but Joanne, being a whiz, returned in a second, book in hand. Yesterday I lay on a couch and read.
Everyone knows how happy I am when authors take risk. When they write outside category, defy logic, or dare to craft something we have not quite seen before.
Where Things Come Back is one of those books—nearly uncategorize-able (I'm not sure I'd call it a thriller), never super eager to broadcast its ambitions, willing to take some time and to confuse readers, even, so that it can eventually make its point and (this is important) have its fun. This is a story in which many seemingly disparate parts do ultimately make a whole. A brand of religion is involved, a probably extinct bird, a kidnapping, some insanity, best friends, young divorce, misdirected prosleytizing, and the angel Gabriel. Gabriel is also the kid brother of our narrator. Some people (in the novel) get the two confused.
I admire the time Whaley takes with this book, the no-hurry he is in to explain all these parts, or to promise us cohesion. His narrator is so likable that we're going for this ride. The story is so unusual that we stay. The suspense here—the thrill—is seeing if Whaley is actually going to full this off.
No spoiler here: he does.
There are words today, for all of us. I quote them here. Then I encourage you to go to my friend Kate Walton's blog and read
her plea for greater kindness, for less aloneness. We should all print her piece and keep it near.
From Whaley:
... I wanted to be offered help from people because they cared about me, not because they felt some strange social obligation to do so. I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling.
I'm going to be downright honest with you. Launching a book prickles me over. I hail from failed Girl Scout Cookies sales roots, after all. I ripple with panic (more than a pebble's toss worth) every time I have to price a corporate project (and that's my business, my family's livelihood). I send announcement e-mails out about my books in full-force cringe. I am graciously invited into bookstores and then apologize to any friend who might want to come.
I'm sure you're busy, I'll say.
Don't feel you have to come.It's an itchy enterprise, this book thing. I
want my books to succeed, and I especially want
Small Damages to succeed because I am working with such exceptional people at Philomel and I cannot let them down. I worry about unhappy reviews and reviewers for their sake. I worry about sales because people I love have believed in me, and I want to deliver for them.
Still, I struggle with self-promotion. I struggle to find balance. I want to look out, beyond myself— reporting on the books of others (only the books I love, obviously, for I am not quite sure what any blogger gains from reporting on books that were not loved), reflecting on the world at large, honoring neighbors, children, family, friends. I want to connect in a very real way with people. I want to generate positivity against the dark clouds of 2012—the heat of summer, the terror in a theater, the buried secrets of a certain university and an assistant football coach, the final ebbing away of loved ones.
Yesterday, as you know from the identical picture in the previous-to-this-one post, I launched
Small Damages at Chester County Book and Music Company, a store that brought us all so much for three full decades but is now on a month-to-month lease. It is the Kindle, not the economy in general, that some believe hurt this gigantic independent. The Kindle, a machine. Bookstores are about community. Machines most often aren't. We writers and readers are losing, in CCBM, a glowing, active hearth, and we will be so much the poorer for this.
Yesterday was a Saturday in mid-summer. I am who I am, no actual rock star (despite my pumpkin-dashed-with-paprika pants). Nonetheless, A.S. King drove all the way from where she lives (I call it a castle, she swears that it isn't) and K.M. Walton flew in from down the road (on fairy wings, with sparkle), and Joanne Fritz sat among us, and we talked, until a teen reader and her mom and, then, two friends joined in. Maybe some people would want to be surrounded by crowds at a book launch. I could not have been happier than this—the intimacy of the conversation, the honest exchange, the talk that went on and on until Amy and Kate and I looked at our respective time-announcing gadgets and realized that dinner in our households was about to begin. Amy, Kate, and I are writers first. We live the writing life. We had stories to tell, no bravada behind which to hide, no desire to be anything but ourselves. We loved our teen reader and her mom for encouraging a life with books. We loved Joanne and CCBM for making room for us there. We loved the two best friends who went home armed with their own piles of books. We loved spending time not wanting to be, but being.
I signed my very first copy of
Small Damages to a teen reader named Julia. I laughed until I ached with Kate and Amy. I went home counting my luck for being in this odd but beautiful business of publishing.
Thanks to Joanne Fritz for being our hostess with the mostest this afternoon at your beautiful, please-tell-us-it-will-be there-forever store. Where else can we sit like we did and laugh long and hard, long after we stopped talking about
Small Damages? And how lucky am I that A.S. King (we'll call her Amy) and K.M. Walton (we'll call her Kate) spent this afternoon with me?
Right answer: Extremely lucky.
And what about Julia—our teen reader? She's something else.
I wore orange pants, just so none of us could forget this afternoon. I know that I never will.
I was shocked and of course deeply saddened when I learned last week that
Chester County Book and Music Company—the grand lady of independents in my part of the world, a vast store, encyclopedic in scope, and intimate in nature—was now occupying its West Chester store
on a month-to-month basis. It will remain active, we are told, at least through the fall. But the future beyond that is cloudy, unsure. And we readers and writers are devastated.
Chester County is where it always happened. It's where the big-name authors came, the celebrities, the locals, the book clubs, the university students from down the road, the mothers on an afternoon out. It's where the staff, many of them long-timers, read passionately and recommended enthusiastically—in person and by way of placards all around the store. A.S. King was there on a rainy night, and we gathered around. K.M. Walton threw her launch party there and hundreds, I mean hundreds, rallied. Kate Moses and I once sat in the near dark on a very rainy night and met the likes of Kathye Fetsko Petrie. I met Ilene Wong, thanks to CCBM. I met a band of students from West Chester University, saw again old teachers and city friends.
What will we do without our store? How many nights did I come home with a bag of books that I had bought strictly and solely on staff recommendations (and they were almost always right)? How many books in this book-crowded house of mine first lived at CCBM?
And what can we say to thank those who made CCBM what it is, those who must now look for new jobs to do, new ways to channel their passion for stories?
Joanne Fritz, who spent many years behind the desk and in the aisles of CCBM, was the first to get in touch with me about
Small Damages, months and months ago. It is thanks to her that I will be at CCBM this coming Saturday, fitting, I think, that my first event for
Small Damages be held here. Perhaps I'll see you there, but more importantly, perhaps you'll find time, between now and this fall, to make your way to this great store and thank it for all it has given to all of us throughout these many years.
SMALL DAMAGES signing
Chester County Book and Music Company
975 Paoli Pike West Chester, PA 19380
West Chester, PA
2 PM
In my hurry through life I have, in some ways, been neglecting this blog and my blogger friends. For that, I ask forgiveness. This morning I'm about to head off to the library to collect a good dozen new books, but before I do I wanted to stop and share these moments from the past few weeks.
The first several shots take place at the Exton Barnes & Noble, where K.M. Walton brought a number of area YA and children's book writers together for what was a genuinely good time. We're all together in that first shot—K.M. Walton, Elisa Ludwig, Amy Garvey, E.C. Myers, Monica Carnesi, Ame Dyckman, Dianne Salerni, and me. And then there's Ame (who got a fantastic
New York Times Book Review assessment of her
Boy + Bot just last week), Elisa, and Eugene.
The next three shots were taken this past Tuesday, during my travels down Locust Walk and toward my classroom at 3808 Walnut Street. The final image in that series is deliberately blurry; suffice it
K.M. Walton is the author of TEACHING NUMERACY: 9 CRITICAL HABITS TO IGNITE MATHEMATICAL THINKING and her fiction debut, the forthcoming CRACKED (Simon Pulse, January 3, 2012).
An elementary and middle school teacher for more than ten years, she now writes full time, is married to her college sweetheart, and has two sons.
Below, she poses with her three year old nephew Alex, who is "crazy about dinosaurs."
I'm about to start Elizabeth Graver's book too! It's my spring break treat (next week). Sounds like a fabulous experience in NYC.