She's not a sellout, is all: Martine Leavitt and Calvin

It was Tim Wynne-Jones who suggested. At Bank Street. While we were waiting for our panel on narrative risk.

Martine Leavitt is one of our smartest writers, period.

Martine Leavitt is a writer of great integrity.

Martine Leavitt spends her time making books (and teaching the artistry of making books, in the Vermont College of Fine Arts program, alongside Tim), as opposed to self-promoting.

Read Martine.

(Tim said. Rita Williams-Garcia nodded.)

And so I did. Picked up her newest, Calvin. Sat down. Utter immersion ensued.

Calvin, a seventeen-year-old smart kid who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was born the day the very final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published. As a baby, he had a stuffed tiger at his side. As a young man with a best friend named Susie, he has a lot of questions. He has hope, too—delusional hope?—that Bill Watterson, the comics' creator, will create one final cartoon strip that will set Calvin free of his persistent unrealities.

Are they unrealities?

All of which (but naturally, right?) sets Calvin off across the frozen tundra of Lake Erie in pursuit of Mr. Watterson. But oh, Lake Erie is very cold and very wide. And Susie may or may not be accompanying Calvin on this trek.

It feels like just a touch of sin to reduce this elegant novel to a summary. Because yes, this is a moving and original premise. But it's what happens inside Calvin's mind that matters most. The kid asks huge questions. He ponders without restraint. He thinks about God, vastness, the otherness of others, the beauty of beauty, the difference between reality and truth, the nature of friendship. He thinks about these things profoundly—but he, and the Susie with whom he hopes he's actually traveling, always sound like kids.

Here, for example, is Calvin pondering the great silence of the lake.

When you've lived all your life with the sound of Life in General, you don't even hear it anymore. You don't hear the noise of cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, refrigerators, air conditioners, furnaces, and you don't feel radio and television waves shooting through you, and you don't hear telephones, animals, birds, floors creaking, doors opening, the voices of six billion people all talking and laughing and crying, and over a billion cows mooing and nineteen billion chickens clucking and a million species of bugs buzzing and you don't realize that it all adds up to this low hum of Life in General.

Life in General doesn't live in the middle of the lake.

There's a touch of autobiography in almost everything we read. Or we, as readers, can pretend (to ourselves) that we've pierced the veil. So that when I came upon this next passage, I thought about Tim talking about Martine—a writer far more invested in making than self-glorifying. Susie and Calvin, stranded out in the bitter cold, are wondering why Mr. Watterson has remained elusive. About why he stopped drawing Calvin and Hobbes, about why he's not talking to the press (or to these two kids).

He's just not a sellout, is all. He thinks selling out is buying into someone else's values. Or maybe he knows there's power in creating something and then stepping out of the way. All that silence, that refusal to show up for adulation—it forces you to look harder at the creation itself, like he's saying, this is what I have to say. You laugh, you cry, you think, you change—and that's the point.

It's the end of the year. I've not read half the books I should have read. I'm trying now to make amends in between corporate deadlines. But this Martine—I'd like to do some promoting for her. She's a writer we all should read. We could learn a lot from the humanity and originality of her prose. We could learn how to be artists, too.

And as for you, Mr. Tim: I'm going to try to slip a zeugma into some annual report writing today.

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NYC in 36 hours

Some day I'll be too old for this. This insistence (within myself/for myself) that I live each minute, see each place, feel each thing I can find my way to.

But I'm not there yet. I'm still the woman who arrives mid-afternoon to New York City, checks into a hotel with her husband, and starts to walk. This time to the Columbia University campus, which I had never seen (that old library, now the administration building, soars). To the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Past the fruit vendors on upper Broadway.

Then a subway ride to Columbus Circle and the Museum of Arts and Design (where an exquisite Wendell Castle show is in place). Then a walk-run (to the extent possible) through Times Square, and then more underground tunnels to the World Trade Center, where we were stopped by the power of those two pools, the remembered names, the roses and calla lilies left in respect and honor. Art can speak, and this art does—the down and the down of the water, the sound of that water, the return of the water, and the light behind the names.

It was the hour of the gloaming. The stone buildings burned red-orange inside the blue glass of the new tower, and that big Calatrava bird, soon to be the World Trade Center Transportation Center, was already soaring.

We walked a long length of Greenwich, then, met our son for dinner, watched him take off in an Uber for a date, made our way all the way back to 103rd Street, where all night long we listened to the trash trucks, the buses, the NYC talk just outside our window. I rose in the dark, put on a dress, and as soon as the sun was up I was walking again—finding a French bakery, buying an almond croissant, and working my way toward Central Park, where the early dog walkers were out and about and I could see the river just beyond them.

By 8:15 I was dancing with the extraordinary educator/advocator Susannah Richards in the lobby of Bank Street. Dancing, yes. I swear we danced. (Susannah is especially good at the twirls.) At Bank Street, a remarkable cast of writers, illustrators, educators, librarians, and book people were convening for what, in my book, is the best gathering of storytellers ever anywhere. Here the conversation circles around Thoughts as opposed to Marketing Platforms. The forum encourages conversation, consideration, a maybe this or a maybe that. This is hardly accidental. This reflects the good work of those who assemble this program, moderate the panels, conduct the keynote (thank you, Rita Williams-Garcia), and say yes. I bow down to you, oh Bank Street, with thanks especially to Jennifer Brown and Cynthia Weill, and then to my fellow panelists Daniel Jose Older and Tim Wynne-Jones—the three us led toward greater understanding about narrative risk by the exceptionally thoughtful questions of Vicki Smith of Kirkus Reviews. And with thanks to Chronicle Books, who said yes to the event.

When it was done, when I hugged my old and new friends goodbye, I was running again, to the subway, to the PATH, and toward my husband and son, where we walked some more, had an early dinner, and watched the lights of the World Trade Center blink on.

(Can I just thank here the little boy on the incredibly crowded train who must have read the panic of this claustrophobe on his face and said, "Miss? Do you want my seat?")

We drove home in the dark. I slept. I actually slept. The sleep of a satisfied woman.

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pushing narrative boundaries at the BankStreet Fest, with Tim Wynne-Jones and Daniel Jose Older

A few months ago I received an invitation from one of my very favorite people in all of young people's literature, Jennifer Brown. If our friendship has evolved over time, my respect for Jenny was immediate. As a Shelf Awareness reviewer, prize adjudicator, discussion leader, Bank Street visionary, and all-around children's books advocate, Jenny's opinions have mattered. She has welded intelligence with kindness and become a force. Today she serves as vice president and publisher of Knopf Books for Young Readers at Random House Children's Books—a position that is such a perfect fit for her myriad talents (and soul) that one imagines it was waiting for her all along.

Before Jenny took on that new role, she designed the 2015 BookFest@Bank Street and extended the invitation I noted above. Featuring Rita Williams-Garcia in a keynote, the day will include insights from scholars and writers Leonard S. Marcus, Adam Gidwitz, Elizabeth Bluemle, Cynthia Weill, Christopher Myers, Shadra Strickland, Raul Colon, Sara Varon, Joe Rogers, Jr., Laura Amy Schlitz, Jeanne Birdsall, Kat Yeh, Liz Kessler, and Monica Edinger. BookFest will also feature a panel titled "Pushing Narrative Boundaries in Teen Literature," moderated by the reliably smart and provocative Vicky Smith, the reviews editor of Kirkus.

I'm thrilled to be joining Tim Wynne-Jones and Daniel Jose Older on that boundaries-pushing panel. I was thrilled even before I'd read their new novels, The Emperor of Any Place and Shadowshaper, respectively. But now, having spent the last few days immersed in both, I'm even more eager. This will be a conversation. The kind of conversation that I crave like I crave a perfect peach or a ripe Bartlett pear.

The Emperor of Any Place is a work of supreme art. A nested story within a story (and, one might suggest, within another story) that carries the reader in and out of history. There's the present-day reality of a teen named Evan who has lost his father and must now endure (within the knot of his grief) the arrival of his once-estranged grandfather. There is, as well, the story inside the book Evan's father was reading when he died—the diary of a Japanese soldier stranded on a small Pacific island during World War II. The soldier is not the sole inhabitant of that island, nor is he the only one who ultimately writes inside those diary pages. As Evan reads the book, many mysteries emerge. Why was his father obsessed with this story? Why is his grandfather obsessed, too? And what is the truth inside these diary pages that were annotated, later on, by another visitor to that island?

Emperor is grounded in the fear of war and the haze of solitude and the ingenuity of survivors, both contemporary and historic. It is wholly conceived and executed, yet it trembles with mystery and a touch of magic. It is brilliantly structured but its power does not rest on its conceit. Tim may have pushed the narrative boundaries but he has not taken a single short cut, not expected the readers to follow just because he's feverently hoped they will. Every element adds to every element here. There are rewards for those who ponder, and, indeed, you could ponder all day and never find a fault line in this complex novel's execution.

Shadowshaper casts its own marvelous spell, builds its own mystique, is the sort of original work you would expect from an author who is also a musician who is also an EMT who is also a commentator on social order and disorder. Daniel has built a book about a young girl who discovers within herself a legacy power—and who must learn to harness it for a greater good. Sierra Santiago is a painter who can see, within the art of others, shadow lives and shapes, art that fades, murals that shed real tears. She is a daughter and a granddaughter in pursuit of hidden grace. She chases, and she is being chased. She rises to the challenge.

Sierra does all this within language steeped in salsa rhythms and Brooklyn gaits. She does this while pondering the color of her skin, the explosive nature of her hair, the discrete borders inside the border lands of race. Daniel is not just weaving a magical story here. He is telling his readers something about how it feels to live today within the fractures of society. About how it is to hope, despite the noise of now.

Authors of books that break the rules must know, to begin with, what the prevailing rules have been. They have a special obligation to steer their projects toward a higher grace, so that the strange ultimately does collide with a deep emotional truth, so that the fiction feels real, so that the experience of reading the story goes beyond admiration and straight into embrace. Fiction comes from a human place. The best fiction elevates the idea of the humane.

We'll talk about this and much more, I'm sure, at Book Fest. I'll learn; I'm sure of that, too.

Registration information for Book Fest is here.

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Dr. Radway and Dangerous Neighbors: a side-by-side review

Readers of this blog know that Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent is a story featuring a boy named William—a child of Bush Hill and Baldwin Locomotive Works, the brother to a young man murdered by a cop. William has lived in my imagination for many years. He was a primary character (but not the primary character) in my Centennial Philadelphia novel, Dangerous Neighbors. He rescues lost animals for a living. He matters to me.

Earlier today, I discovered that my friend Ed Goldberg, a librarian in the New York system, put Dr. Radway and Dangerous Neighbors side by side in a review. I love that he did this. I learned from his study. I'm deeply appreciative.

Ed's entire report can be found here, on his lovely blog, 2HeadsTogether. He ends his musings like this:

What both books do so well is describe one city, Philadelphia of the 1870s, although two different worlds. Both books delve into their main characters, William and Katherine, making them come alive. And both books use language as only Beth Kephart uses language.

It was a luxury reading the books one after the other, because it highlights the contrasts that otherwise would have been hidden. So, Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent and then Dangerous Neighbors. The one-two punch in books.

Thank you, Mr. Ed. And thank you, Elizabeth Mosier, for the extraordinary note you wrote to me after you read the book through. No one can ever know just how much words like these matter to an author—especially in the case of this particular book.

I'll be talking about the research that fueled both books tomorrow, during the Week of Writing at Drexel University. If you're in the city I hope you'll join us, especially so that you can meet my most esteemed co-panelists, Rita Williams-Garcia and Eliot Schrefer.

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A Week of Writing at Drexel University: Join Us!

The crowd at Drexel University has put together an extremely interesting program for this very week, and I'm so happy to be part of it. On Wednesday, at 2 o'clock, I'll be joining Rita Williams-Garcia and Eliot Schrefer for a panel called Strange and Familiar Places in Young Adult Fiction (see below). But the entire week is full and rich, and I hope you'll double click on the poster above to find out more.

Strange and Familiar Places in Young Adult Fiction

Explores the complexities of conducting and incorporating research to create a sense of time and place in YA fiction. Attention to setting is crucial for any writer, but readers often overlook the breadth of historical, scientific, and philosophical inquiry that culminates in successful settings.  Panelists include: Beth Kephart, who will speak on the surprises and challenges of bringing 19^th-century Philadelphia to life in Dangerous Neighbors (2010) and Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent (2013); Eliot Schrefer, whoseEndangered (2012) depicts a bonobo sanctuary as war breaks out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Rita Williams-Garcia, who will describe her research process in recreating the Black Power Movement in 1968 Oakland forOne Crazy Summer (2011) and its sequel in Brooklyn P.S. Be Eleven (2013).  Join us to discuss the craft of translating not just physical and geographical detail, but larger social and political contexts to the page.

2:00 pm – 3:20 pm
Lobby of Drexel University Recreation Center
Moderator: Dee McMahon
Panelists:
Beth Kephart, Eliot Schrefer, Rita Williams-Garcia

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Strange and Familiar Places in Young Adult Fiction, with Eliot Schrefer and Rita Williams-Garcia, at Drexel University

I'm honored to be included among friends in an upcoming YA panel—open to the public—at the Drexel University Week of Writing event. To see all the offerings, go here. (I am particularly intrigued by the panel that will help those of us who receive unusual comments from anonymous commenters know, um, what to do or think.) To join Rita Williams-Garcia, Eliot Schrefer, Dee McMahon, and myself for a discussion about research, time, and place in young adult fiction, make room for us on May 22.

See you there?

Strange and Familiar Places in Young Adult Fiction

Explores the complexities of conducting and incorporating research to create a sense of time and place in YA fiction. Attention to setting is crucial for any writer, but readers often overlook the breadth of historical, scientific, and philosophical inquiry that culminates in successful settings.  Panelists include: Beth Kephart, who will speak on the surprises and challenges of bringing 19^th-century Philadelphia to life in Dangerous Neighbors (2010) and Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent (2013); Eliot Schrefer, whoseEndangered (2012) depicts a bonobo sanctuary as war breaks out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Rita Williams-Garcia, who will describe her research process in recreating the Black Power Movement in 1968 Oakland forOne Crazy Summer (2011) and its sequel in Brooklyn P.S. Be Eleven (2013).  Join us to discuss the craft of translating not just physical and geographical detail, but larger social and political contexts to the page.

2:00 pm – 3:20 pm
Lobby of Drexel University Recreation Center
Moderator: Dee McMahon
Panelists:
Beth Kephart, Eliot Schrefer, Rita Williams-Garcia

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The Small Damages Book Trailer

... featuring the words of authors I love, the kindness of bloggers, my photographs of southern Spain, and my husband's deliberately rough Spanish guitar, for that is the kind of guitar my gypsy characters play.

It would mean so much to me if you shared this trailer with others.

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Judging Teen Stories with a Remarkable Cast for the "It's All Write" Contest

A few months ago, Vicki Browne, the teen librarian with the Ann Arbor District Library, wrote to ask whether I might participate in the "It's All Write!" Short Story Contest, a project her library has, together with the Ann Arbor Book Festival, sponsored for the last 20 years.  According to the web site, more than 1,500 entries from young writers all around the world have been received for the contest over the years.  This year, 350 stories arrived.  

Winners of "It's All Write!" are compensated handsomely—with cash rewards, with publication in a booklet, and with an awards program that will be held, this year, on May 12th.  But perhaps most importantly of all, the winners know that they have been carefully read by judges who have invested their own lives in stories and words.  This year I join a remarkable slate of individuals in the judging process, and I am honored.  It is my hope that those young writers who read this blog will pay close attention to this program and start thinking about possibilities for next year's contest. 

Natalie Bakopoulos

     The Green Shore, Natalie’s debut novel is set in Athens and Paris, against the backdrop of the Greek military dictatorship and  centered around four memorable characters.  She received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan.  She was also recognized as a 2010 PEN/O. Henry Award-winning author.

Judith Ortiz Cofer

     Critically acclaimed and widely published poet, novelist, and essayist Judith Ortiz Cofer’s  latest book, If I Could Fly, tells the story of 15 year old Doris, who learns that ‘she might have to fly far distances before she finds out where she belongs.  Judith writes extensively about the experience of being Puerto Rican and her identity as a woman and writer in the U.S.  Currently she is teaching literature and creative writing at the University of Georgia.

Kelly Milner Halls

     Kelly has had more than 25 books published, one of which is the amazing non-fiction title  Operation Rescue: Saving the Baghdad Zoo, which tells the story of remarkable animals and the team that worked to save them.   A recent release, Girl Meets Boy: Because There Are Two Sides to Every Story, is a collection that she edited with a lineup of YA authors with a he said/she said telling of each story. 

Her shorter nonfiction has been published in numerous publications.  She lives in Spokane, Washington.

Beth Kephart

       Acclaimed novelist for both teens and adults, Kephart currently teaches creative nonfiction workshop at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the winner of numerous grants, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Kephart’s essays are frequently anthologized, and she has judged numerous competitions.  Undercover  and House of Dance  were both named a best of the year by Kirkus and Bank Street. Nothing But Ghosts, A Heart is Not a Size and Dangerous Neighbors, were also critically acclaimed. Most recently, You Are My Only, tells the gripping stories of Emmy and Sophie, in alternating narratives, ‘of loss, imprisonment, and freedom regained.’

Nina LaCour

     Ms. LaCour received a MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and currently teaches English at an independent high school.  She is also co-founder of ‘Write Teen’ a series of YA writing classes.  Hold Still, Nina’s first novel, was published in 2009 and is a William C. Morris Honor book, a Junior Library Guild selection, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and a Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books of 2009.  Nina won the 2009 Northern California Book Award for Children’s Literature and was featured in Publisher’s Weekly as a Flying Starts Author.

Laura Resau

     With a background in cultural anthropology and ESL-teaching, award-winning author Laura Resau has lived and traveled in Latin America and Europe. Her experiences inspired her novels for young people-- What the Moon Saw, Red Glass, The Indigo Notebook, The Ruby Notebook, The Jade Notebook, Star in the Forest, and The Queen of Water. She lives with her family in Colorado.

Pat Schmatz

     Bluefish is the fourth teen novel for Pat Schmatz.  This latest book received a starred review from Horn Book, Bulletin of the Center for Children’s  Books, and School Library Journal.   In Bluefish, everything changes for thirteen-year-old Travis,  a new student who is trying to hide his illiteracy, when he meets a sassy classmate with her own secrets and a remarkable teacher. Pat currently lives in rural Wisconsin. 

Rita Williams-Garcia

     Rita Williams-Garcia’s work has been recognized by the Coretta Scott King Award Committee, PEN Norma Klein, American Library Association, and Parents’ Choice, among others. She recently served on the National Book Award Committee for Young People’s Literature and is on faculty at Vermont College MFA Writing for Children and Young People.
Winner of the 2011 Coretta Scott King Award AND the Newbery Honor Book, One Crazy Summer  is the story of three girls from Brooklyn who head out to California to stay with their mother, a poet, who ran off years before; the year is 1968.

Terry Trueman

     Stuck in Neutral, published in 2000, was a Printz Honor book, followed by Inside Out, Cruise Control, and No Right Turn.  Terry received his degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, with degrees in psychology and an MFA in creative writing , also from Eastern Washington. 

Terry Trueman is the father of two sons, and makes his home in Spokane.

Ned Vizzini

     Ned Vizzini is the author of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah. . .  He has written for the New York Times, The Daily Beast, and season 2 of MTV’s Teen Wolf.  His work has been translated into seven languages and will soon be in Czech.  He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the forthcoming fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets.  Forthcoming in the fall of 2012, is a new teen novel,  The Other Normals. 

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What I'll be reading for World Read Aloud Day

This week my Penn students are off for spring break, but I'll be back in (another) classroom tomorrow—this time among the eighth graders of Villa Maria Academy, where I've been asked to share some thoughts and favorite books for World Read Aloud Day.

In preparation I've been sitting on the floor surrounded by books (isn't that where everything begins?).  I've been making decisions about what to carry forward.

My choices are these:

Owls and Other Fantasies: Mary Oliver
Carver: Marilyn Nelson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith
A River of Words: Jen Bryant/Melissa Sweet
The Marvelous Journey Through the Night: Helme Heine
The Book Thief: Markus Zusak
One Crazy Summer: Rita Williams-Garcia
Mockingbird: Kathryn Erskine
Between Shades of Gray: Ruta Sepetys
Goodbye, Mr. Chips: James Hilton

What will you read, for World Read Aloud Day?

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Small Damages, Ruta Sepetys, and a birthday surprise

This morning I did one of those things I try not to do—traveled over to the Amazon page to see if the cover for Small Damages, my summer 2012 novel, has been posted.  It has not, but a separate piece of news was there, something I had not known.  Small Damages, the book that took nearly a decade of my life, was inspired by my travels to Seville, and will be published by one of the most extraordinary houses anywhere, Philomel, is set to come out on my son's birthday.  (For more on the incredible Philomel, go here.)  That is no mere coincidence.  That is perfection.  My son has been with me through every one of the dozens of drafts and, indeed, the book is dedicated to him.

And so I wait to share the remarkable cover with you.  Believe me, it is worth waiting for.  Tamra Tuller, my editor, and her team worked for literally months to produce something that is just so infinitely right that it staggers me.  In classic Tamra style, she also took the time to share the book with her authors Kathryn Erskine (Mockingbird, The Absolute Value of Mike) and Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray).  I had shared Kathryn's words on this blog earlier, along with the treasured words of Rita Williams-Garcia (One Crazy Summer).  

This morning I share Ruta's enormous generosity:

Stunning.  Kephart's lyrical prose lingers with you long after the final page.  I simply didn't want it to end.

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Small Damages: The first words from Rita Williams-Garcia and Kathryn Erskine

Those of you who have followed this blog know how graced I have been to enter the Philomel fold and to look forward, with editor Tamra Tuller and Philomel, to the publication of Small Damages next summer.  More about this Seville-inspired book can be found here.  But for the moment, I would like simply to thank the extraordinarily talented and generous authors Rita Williams-Garcia and Kathryn Erskine, who are the first to read this book in its final (gorgeously designed) galley form, beyond the good people at Philomel.  I will always be indebted to them for their words. 

"Small Damages is a wrenching celebration of choice.  To read Kephart is to splendidly dream with both eyes open."

— Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer, 2011 Newbery Honor Book and 2011 Coretta Scott King Award Winner

"As this delicate and luscious novel unfolds, the lines are blurred between love and loss, past and present, real and magical, and even life and death."

— Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird, 2010 National Book Award winner, and The Absolute Value of Mike

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"Historical fiction is struggling,"

I was told in an ever-so-brief e-mail yesterday.  Strangely, the note didn't do a thing to discourage me from the work I am doing to tell William's story in a Dangerous Neighbors prequel.  Most importantly, perhaps, because I just love this book—the guy-oriented nature of it, the pretty fascinating history behind it, and the way it visits me, late at night (my characters inside my dreams, my dreams beginning alongside a mess of noisy railroad tracks, in the clamor of a newsroom, in the rescue of a red heifer).  But also because when I look around I see books I've loved—historical novels for young adults—that are absolutely thriving.

Let's consider Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs), a Quirk publication, now in its seventh week on the New York Times bestseller list (I'm 70 pages in and loving the mix of image and story; expect a full report tomorrow).  Let's talk about Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray, a book that led me to the marvelous Tamra Tuller of Philomel, and which, in its very first week, debuted on the New York Times list.  Let's talk about The Book Thief, one of my favorite books of all time, still number one on the list, or, for that matter, the award-winning, bestselling The Good Thief, still generating much enthusiasm.  Libba Bray didn't do too badly with The Sweet Far Thing or A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rita Williams-Garcia was deservedly rewarded for her basically perfect One Crazy Summer, and I recall—do you as well?—a certain series of historical novels featuring glamorously clad society heroines that rocked the lists for a very long time.  (I'm also thinking of the big recent award winners like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and about the up and coming May B. by Caroline Starr Rose.)

Then there are those adult books, historical novels all, with which we are so familiar—Devil in the White City, The Help, Water for Elephants, The Paris Wife, Loving Frank, so many others—that locked in their places in book clubs and on lists. Struggle isn't a word that I would apply to them. 

I believe, in other words, that there is room for those of us out here who have fallen in love with a time and place and have a story to tell.  I've been barely able to breathe under a load of corporate work lately.  But the first chance I get, I'm returning to William.  I left him in a saloon down on Broad Street by name of Norris House.  He's been hankering for some dinner. I've got ideas about a multi-media launch.  And this kind of fun is worth having.

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Illyria: writing up to teens

Had it not been for Colleen Mondor's high praise, I might never have known about Elizabeth Hand's Illyria, an alternate reality that seems supremely tragic.  Because oh my goodness, is this a book, is this writing at its no-holds-barred, no-compromises best. When I say, as I have been known to say, that the best of young adult writing honors the intelligence of teen readers, expects vocabulary and delivers it, leaves explication in the reader's hands, and entrusts the reader with the odd and the new, I am referring to writers like Markus Zusak and John Green and Rita Williams-Garcia and now, with Illyria, Elizabeth Hand, who yields sentence after sentence of un-redundant perfection in this strange and unapologetic tale of kissing cousins.

I'll be writing more about the story in a blog to come. I will be musing, too, on the power of past tense in a story like Illyria.  But for now, on this Friday morning, might I give you this—Hand's description of the boy cousin, Rogan, who "looked like he'd fallen from a painting."

He had high cheekbones in a feline face—not like a house cat's; more a cougar or a lynx, something strong and furtive and quick.  His nose was like mine, although it had been broken more than once.  His mouth was wide and surprisingly delicate, the only thing about him that might have seemed girlish.  Until he smiled, and showed narrow white teeth that were also like an animal's.  He had huge, deep-set eyes—wary eyes, which made it slightly alarming when he suddenly turned them on you—and they weren't Tierney blue but a true aquamarine, the palest blue-green, changeable as seawater in sunlight or cloud.

Find out more about this book, and about Hand herself, here.

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One Crazy Summer/Rita Williams-Garcia: Reflections

A week ago today, I joined Catherine Murdock and Rita Williams-Garcia at the Philadelphia Book Festival—sat in the cold air before these brave folks and talked books and book making while the wind blew.  "Zumba for everyone," Rita signed my copy of One Crazy Summer, as I headed home.  A little joke that had crept up between us.

Today I read that signed book through, smiling bigly and longly, thinking with each page, and then with the next one, I have another perfect book to recommend.  I love when that happens.  I love adding a new title to my short list of books that I think everyone should read.  The books on my short list transcend categories because they are so well made, because they are wisdom and they are poetry and they are heart, because they are meaningful story.  Tween novel?  Teen novel?  Adult novel?  Does it matter?  I don't think it does, when the writing is this good.

One Crazy Summer tells the tale of three sisters who visit their long-ago-left-them mother in Oakland, CA.  Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern have made their trip from Brooklyn in a plane that does some wary warring with the clouds.  They've arrived to find a woman who hardly makes a show of knowing them.  They're sent to a camp sponsored by the Black Panthers.  They watch their mother (who has changed her name to something nearly unspellable) ink a press and roll out poems in a kitchen never used for cooking.  Delphine, only eleven, has to see her sisters through.  She has to understand just what this Black Panther business is.  She has to be older than she is, or does she?  Can she hold onto eleven?

My friend Susan Straight named her daughter Delphine, and so I smiled extra wide when I read these words in Summer.  Delphine is our narrator.  This is what she has to say about names:

"A name is important.  It isn't something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground.  Your name is how people know you.  The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down.  Your name is who you are and how you're known even when you do something great or something dumb."

(Thank you, Kathye, for the photo.)

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In which I apologize to (and thank) Kathye Fetsko Petrie

This blog has a singular purpose:  To thank Kathye Fetsko Petrie, who is one of the greatest friends books (or a friend) could have, for taking my hot red Sony in the midst of this Philadelphia Book Festival moment and snapping this photo of Rita Williams-Garcia, yours truly, and Catherine Murdock.  Kathye undertook the endeavor at physical risk to herself (I didn't realize the stage was quite so high or inconvenient when I asked her if she might do it) and, well, I don't know:  I just wanted to say thank you.

Kathye, next photo's on me.

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Philadelphia Book Festival

The morning has been broken wide by sun. The trees that hadn't bloomed before I left for Appleton are shockingly alive; everything is color. I'm hopping a train for Philadelphia in a few hours and walking, then, to the Philadelphia Book Festival, to see a few friends and to have the honor of reading with Catherine Murdock and Rita Williams-Garcia.

A few days ago, in Appleton, a seventh grader asked what it is like to live the author life.

It's a privilege, I said. And I meant it.

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Philadelphia Book Festival: The Details

Many of you know that I'll be appearing at the Philadelphia Book Festival (my friend Sy Montgomery will be there, too, with her new book about birds!). I am honored today to tell you that my co-panelists that Sunday afternoon will be Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Rita Williams-Garcia.

The event takes place on Sunday, April 18, 2010, at the Performance Stage at Shakespeare Park. Details can be found here. We hope for beautiful weather, and for your presence.

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