OK with YA

Earlier this blogging week I was musing out loud about the questions, What makes a book a YA book? and What determines suitability? Not original questions, certainly, but important ones that surface nearly daily in my work as both a writer and a critic.

Yesterday, while sprawled on the couch battling the mid-day heat in my un-AC'ed house, I was indulging in one of my favorite weekly rituals—reading the New York Times Book Review, cover to cover—when I came to the last-page essay by Margo Rabb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Rabb-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

Perhaps the essay title says it all: "I'm Y.A., and I'm O.K." But maybe not. For Ms. Rabb, author of Cures for Heartbreak, waits to her very final paragraphs to be okay with being Y.A. Along the way, she interviews personages such as Sherman Alexie and Mark Haddon who comment along the following lines: "I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian—that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A." (that's Sherman Alexie, the mega-selling National Book Award winner speaking); and "... a number of people look(ed) down their noses at me when I explained what I did for a living, as if I painted watercolors of cats or performed as a clown at parties." (that's Haddon, who authored the impeccable, mega-watt The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.")

Well, it was hot already in my little house in my sweltering neighborhood at 3 in the afternoon, but I was sweating by the time I finished the piece, which concludes (I won't leave you hanging), with Ms. Rabb receiving a note from a young fan who speaks of how wonderful Ms. Rabb's own meant-it-for-adults-but-was published-for-YA-thanks-t0-marketing-department-pressures book is. That fan letter helps assuage Ms. Rabb's shame. It helps her be O.K. with Y.A.

Having written and published in most every genre—memoir, history, poetry, fable, YA, and I'm now at work on a novel for adults—I had to think hard, as I lay here sweating, about Ms. Rabb's essay. I turned my thoughts back to the time when I was nearing publication of UNDERCOVER, my first YA novel, and began to tell my friends what I had been up to. Maybe I live in an ultra Saran-wrapped world, but I don't believe I was ever given cause to feel deep shame. Darcy Jacobs of Family Circle magazine simply reached out and said, "Wait until you meet some of these YA readers; there is really nothing like them." The teachers at my son's high school promised the sort of psychic rewards I'd not be able to find elsewhere. The HarperCollins team, certainly, treated me like a grown-up, not as something secondhand. And as the book moved out into the world something happened—I was introduced to a generation of vivacious, hungry readers who trumpet favorite books to the world, who race to read, who then challenge themselves to read even more. Y.A. books, I also discovered, don't live in some ghetto somewhere. Indeed, a healthy percent of the readers of my Y.A. novels seem to be women in their thirties who don't abide by labels—who have, indeed, minds of their own.

My dear friend Little Willow, a most voracious and discerning reader, sent me a note the other day, when I was feeling blue. She said, in essence, that if we touch one reader with our work—one reader, it doesn't matter who—then we have done our jobs as writers. Readers don't live inside categories. They live within their own hearts and think with their own minds. They find us if we're somehow meant for them, no matter the label (or the brand).

HOUSE OF DANCE Giveaway

Back when UNDERCOVER was a relatively new release, that wonderful Miss Em, whom so many know as a grand advocate for books and for those who write them, asked me some questions about the writing life, posted them on her blog, and conducted an interesting competition. We became friends; we couldn't help it.

It turned out that Miss Em was one of the very first people—in the world—to read HOUSE OF DANCE, and her note to me about it last winter eased my heart tremendously. Recently she interviewed me again and asked—and I think this was a touch of genius—that I answer some of my questions with photographs.

That interview, which is now up on Miss Em's blog, is part of a HOUSE OF DANCE giveaway, and you can participate by visiting here.

Thank you so much, Miss Em.

http://emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2008/05/house-of-dance-interview-and-contest-to.html

Managing the Motherload

Is it the weather? Is that I woke up not just today, but yesterday and also the day before with time to work on my new novel? Or is it, hmm, that I danced yesterday, and did enough of at least one half thing one half right to be allowed to dance five consecutive moves without being stopped for a dance infraction by, Jean, my impeccable teacher?

Whatever it is, I'm feeling insanely lucky today, just lucky to be alive, that sort of lucky, and my luck just got even better. Jennifer Applin, the wonderful writer and mother, has given UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE the great gift of being acknowledged by her, and featured here, in a most companionable fashion.

http://managingthemotherload.typepad.com/managing_the_motherload_b/2008/04/bloggy-giveaway.html

So thank you, Jennifer, and thank all of you have gone onto this posting and commented.

All signs are green (or, um, white). I'm going to go take a dance-walk. Shoulders down. Head up. Find the music in the hour.

Me and Melissa Walker

UNDERCOVER has taken a journey since last September, when it was first released; every book does. But I have never published another book that has been so companionably launched—ushered from here to there through the generosity of bloggers, reviewers, librarians, and one very special Melissa Walker, whose VIOLET ON THE RUNWAY was released at about the same time. UNDERCOVER and VIOLET appeared side by side on the pages of FAMILY CIRCLE magazine. They appeared together in the New York Public Library, during the celebration of the 2007 Books for the Teen Age. And this morning I woke to an email from Melissa: We're together again, in the pages of JUSTINE.

I've never met Melissa, but I feel I know her—her blog is charming and outreaching (http://www.melissacwalker.com/blog/); she projects a bright blue sky; she's generous whether conducting a contest or sharing apron tips; and I happened to love the smart and glittering VIOLET ON THE RUNWAY. She's got a new book out, VIOLET BY DESIGN, which I (a gigantic fan of the Bravo TV show Project Runway) can't wait to read. So here's to companionship, and here's to Melissa, whom I've loved getting to know.

Thanks today also go to Jill Santopolo, at HarperCollins, for sharing the news that UNDERCOVER made the Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year list (2007).

Looks like the sun is coming up today. I've got some plants to bed in.

More Positive Thinking

Friday evening I sat with a circle of young reader/writers and their mothers exploring literary voice and purpose, the pleated pulse of motivation, the active conversation that goes on with the characters that prance around in one's head. Two sisters, both actresses, spoke of a project in progress and the power of collaboration. One young writer confessed to fearing repetitions—of words, of phrases—and of assiduously working around them. The role of essays in defining points of views was discussed and honored.

I wasn't nearly as sophisticated when I was the age of these young writers. I was drawn—it was primal, it was defining—to sound and song, to the pairing of unlike things. So it was with keen interest and a sense of privilege that I entered into this literary conversation, and it was with a settled calm that I left it.

I spent the next day rehearsing for and dancing in that oft-mentioned, inanely feared ballroom dancing showcase, and all, by the end of that long day, was well. Jean had been right about positive thinking, straight backs, settled hips, and musicality. He had created a space within which I could dance. But mostly, showcases like these can't be about oneself. They are finally about the community of many who come together for a purpose, and all day Saturday I was alive within a community I've grown to love.

Finally, a note about gardens: I spent most of yesterday with my dad at a new Downingtown shop called Handmade Gardens, where the fantastically artful Michael Petrie is at the helm and his wife, the writer Kathye Fetsko Petrie, stands at his side. Handmade Gardens offers richly budded tree peonies, royal columbines, wide-budded hellebore, old lightning rods, antique watering cans, a freehand sculpture of hose nuzzles, and many more things I don't have the vocabulary to name. I came home bearing the promise of spring, the eagerness to go in deep with the earth again.

Spin

Here's the truth: The best news comes when you aren't looking for it, not even imagining it, not pretending not to want it.

And it comes on days when you're feeling sort of drowning-in-the-work-stuff blue.

Via email.

Thanks to Emilie of HarperTeen for your note today that UNDERCOVER has been named to the 2008 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list. Just to think that someone in that gorgeous institution was sitting somewhere (perhaps beneath the spangled sky?) with the book in his or her lap—well, that's enough for me. Really. Today, especially, it's huge.

Miss Melissa Walker: You are one generous soul. Get well soon.

Finally, Judy, beautiful Judy, of the dress photographed here. Thanks for the photo session.

The Room of Dance and Words

What if your books could talk to each other: What would they say? What if your characters could all slidhoptumblemosey down, leap their own pages? That cat-loving neighbor. That defiant divorcee. That vanished father. That lonesome ice skater. That grandfather facing his final hour. That Spanish nurse. That English teacher, Dr. Charmin. That art restorer. That recluse. That little girl in Anapra. That striped-stocking adventuress known to Zenobians as Moira.

Would they, the question becomes, defy, convey, embrace, congeal? Would they fall in love?

Little Willow stirred the pot for me on this. She said, an email, I'll put your books together on my shelf so that they might whisper to each other. Hmm, well, and there it was. I've been imagining ever since.

Here is the room in which my characters would mingle. A room set aside for dance and words.

A Conversation with Ellen Trachtenberg

Ellen Trachtenberg, a critic and author of The Best Children's Literature, recently invited me into a conversation about UNDERCOVER and the writing life. Thank you, Ellen, for the dialogue that appears here.

Your writing career has spanned several genres—adult fiction, regional history, personal narrative—though it has largely been geared toward adult readers. Your new book, Undercover, is intended for teens. What led you to write for a younger audience?

A number of things conspired, in this case. I chaired the Young People’s Literature jury for the National Book Awards in 2001, and through that process read some 160 books intended for young readers. I was deeply inspired by some of the narratives, hugely dismayed by others, and I began to dwell on the question: What is YA literature? What could it be? Not long after that, I was contacted by Laura Geringer, an editor with her own imprint at HarperTeen; we developed a friendship and a conversation that led me to look back on my own “career,” so to speak, at Radnor High School. Finally, I’d been conducting workshops for young writers for years. I found myself wanting to write books for the very sort of keenly intelligent, observant, and compassionate writers I was teaching.

Were there moments in the process of writing Undercover when you felt guided by your own experiences as a teenager? Were any characters based on specific figures from your past?

“Guided” is the right word here. Like Elisa, I was an aspiring poet. Like Elisa, I had the very good fortune of sitting in the classroom of an English teacher we then called Dr. Dewsnap. She saw possibility in me where others might not have (truly, she had to look far and wide). She gave me room on the pages of the school literary magazine, nominated me for a community poet award. Once she even gave me the part of Juliet to read against a Romeo who was my (secret) heartthrob. I remembered all that, in writing UNDERCOVER. But Elisa is a better writer than I ever was, and her home life does not reflect not my own childhood.

Like your protagonist, Elisa, you’re an avid figure skater. What’s your favorite local skating venue?

I was an avid figure skater for years—teaching myself to skate on a pond in Boston, taking my first lessons at the Skating Club of Wilmington (where I competed in the interpretive skating competitions I recreate in UNDERCOVER), and then finding a true skating home at the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society. I competed up to the age of 16, when I left the glamour world for the mud and grit of Radnor’s track team. Today I dance ballroom and Latin at DanceSport in Ardmore with my husband.

The book has received wide critical acclaim. What type of feedback have you received from readers?

Readers of UNDERCOVER seem to span all ages, and that thrills me. The most consistent response I get is, “This has ‘movie’ written all over it.” This possibility didn’t occur to me when I was in the midst of writing the book, but perhaps something about the plotting, and about a final confrontation scene, seems cinematic. The book is in development right now at Lifetime TV. It will be interesting to see the book through another’s eyes in that way.

Do you keep a journal?

I’ve kept a book of words for a long time (as does Elisa), and whenever I’m writing a new book, I keep a journal full of ideas. In early October, I started a blog about the writing life last October, which is the most disciplined I’ve ever been in the journal department.

As a writer, what’s the best advice you’ve received?

Hmmm. Perhaps to read widely, to write fearlessly, and to trust one’s self. Almost every book I’ve ever started had its detractors before I was even close to done—my subjects never being sufficiently commercial, my constructs too “unusual,” my books never finding an obvious slot in bookstore shelves. But what I’ve discovered is that the books that have been considered the most potentially problematic from a conceptual standpoint—take FLOW: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILADELPHIA’S SCHUYLKILL RIVER as an example—have gone on to find the most generous audiences.

What’s next for you?

There is always something percolating around here. I have co-authored, with Matt Emmens, the CEO of Shire, an Alice in Wonderland type fable about corporate America, which was just released. Subsequently, there will be several more novels for HarperTeen; the first of those, called HOUSE OF DANCE, is due out next June. Today I’m at work on a new historical novel. Most days, however, I’m squarely focused on the marketing communications business, Fusion, that I run with my husband.

Keying In

A few weeks ago (feels like a year ago) I'd walked away from a novel I'd been writing. Yesterday—tentatively, briefly—I returned. Opened the folder on my desktop and fell in among characters and landscapes, inventions and technologies I'd forsaken, not forgotten. Odd, to return to your own imaginary places. To draw the maps, again, reconstruct the crosswalks and timelines you'd been holding in your head.

I'd left Katherine sitting among strangers.

I'd left William outside an opera house, a mutt at his side.

I'd left a fire burning.

Like unlocking a door. Like keying in.

On another note altogether, thank you, Keris Stainton, brilliant British reviewer of books and fabulous reporter on all things ballroom dance, for the generous review of UNDERCOVER today:

http://www.trashionista.com/2008/02/book-review-und.html

The UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE Interview with Little Willow

A week ago, I was interviewed by Little Willow, a conversation about which I promptly posted. Today I'm running excerpts from that interview here (in apology for my failure to hotlink it previously). Many thanks again, Little Willow.

Interview: Beth Kephart

Beth Kephart has written poetry, memoirs, and more. Her most recent works, Undercover and House of Dance, are novels for teens. We discussed the difficulties of putting pen to paper and sharing personal stories with the world.

You have noted that some real-life experiences inspired characters and events in your novels. Is it harder to imagine the lives of others or to immortalize those you've known?

Perhaps the hardest thing is to find fluency between the known and the imagined - to move seamlessly between what has been lived and what has been projected. When you draw from real life for the purposes of fiction, you have to be willing to discard details that have mattered deeply, to blur edges of the truth, to shape newly. You have to be willing to get lost, to not know. When you imagine you have to take another kind of risk, the could-it-actually-happen-like-this-feel-like-this risk. You're high on a tightrope, the entire book through.

In UNDERCOVER, the kernel of truth was that I have always been a facilitator of one sort of another. Someone who forges bridges, connects people or possibilities, while often standing off in the margins. Guys I often liked myself, hoped for for myself, would come to me, earnest and honest, asking advice on how to attract the true girl of their dreams. I grew up to be a consultant, a ghostwriter for executives, a whisper in an ear. This, and the fact that I ice skated and that I had a wise English teacher, is the real life stuff of UNDERCOVER. But certainly my real high school teacher would not see herself in UNDERCOVER's Dr. Charmin, and certainly I never knew a Theo. And Elisa, finally, is far more talented as a poet than I ever was.

It has now been ten years since the release of A Slant of Sun, five since Still Love in Strange Places. How has your writing style changed over the years?

Wow, well, that's an incredible question. I try not to think about this too much, try not to categorize my own work, put it into any sort of box. My first book was never intended to be a book; it was a series of essays that I was writing for my son, that I would read to him so that he would know just how much he taught me, how deeply he is loved. The publishing of SLANT came from a simple, naïve desire -- to bind those pages into a book and to throw a party for all those who had made such a difference in our lives. STILL LOVE IN STRANGE PLACES began as a novel about El Salvador and became, over 15 years, a memoir, for there was an instance where the risk of imagining seemed too great, the possibility of getting some part of it wrong too extreme. So I started over, and simply wrote the truth.

The young adult novels -- they are different. They come to me more quickly, they feel somewhat lighter on their feet, I feel more free when I write them, for I am not bound to getting the truth just right (my memoirs tend to be deeply researched, in addition to being deeply lived), nor must I look over my shoulder, wondering who might read them, who might misinterpret them, who might judge them. Memoirs are such tricky business -- they have to be truthful, yes. But also, at least for me, they cannot hurt anyone.

Every book requires its own voice; I think that's true. So that when I wrote FLOW: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILADELPHIA'S SCHUYLKILL RIVER, I moved into deeply poetic, sometimes tangled terrain, for this is a book in which a river tells her own story. When I wrote ZENOBIA, a corporate fable, I adopted a whole new sound. Right now I'm writing an historical novel for adults, and here again the language is entirely new (and of course I'm back inside deep research once again).

It's a privilege experimenting with it all.

Some of the poems and pieces in Undercover were previously published. When did you decide to incorporate them into this novel - or did they inspire the novel itself?

Hmmm. Another fantastic question, and let me think about this to be sure I get it right. Here's the sequence, as I recall: I had a three month jag of terrible insomnia, truly went days without so much as an hour of sleep, and then I'd sleep that hour, and the insomnia would start again. Desperate, I began to write poems to calm me down; I hadn't written any in years. Soon the nights were okay again, for I looked forward to writing the poems, and as I wrote the poems I began to remember my life as a teen poet. I didn't think of turning any of this into a novel until I had a conversation with Laura Geringer, an editor at HarperTeen. But the poems were deep within me as I started UNDERCOVER.

House of Dance, coming out in June 2008, captures the slow-quick-quick movement of life and loss. Tell us about the dance lessons and life lessons which inspired this book.

Ah, well. I have spent my whole life inside music, one way or the other, dancing alone in the morning here - a form of meditation and exercise. But then my husband began watching Dancing with the Stars, and he was intrigued by the challenge of ballroom dancing. For my birthday he bought us lessons at a studio down the road. He soon chose to take lessons on his own (wanting more time to learn to lead), and so I too began taking more lessons on my own, and now that studio is like a second home for us both. I've been dancing for two years now, and I love the bolero, the rumba, the waltz, the tango, finally feel settled within the cha-cha and salsa, and find the samba a continuing challenge.

We happen to dance at an extraordinary place, with extraordinary talents, including the nation's top amateur rhythm champion. I'm currently taking lessons from an exquisite dancer who hails from Russia; he and his wife were recent Rising Star champions, and, oh my goodness, it's unbelievable what he can do and what he knows. Dance is its own sort of intelligence, and I learn so much from these people that I'm privileged to dance with.

I've also, by the way, become involved with the Dancing Classrooms program that inspired the documentary Mad, Hot Ballroom. If you want to be reminded of the pure glory that is still within reach, go see these kids dance. It's mind-blowing.

I'm a dancer moved by tap, character, jazz, and musical theatre. What is your favorite form of dance?

At the moment, ballroom, just because I've had the chance to learn its language, just because it's starting to make some sense to me now. But I have enormous respect for any kind of dancing, truly. I find it mesmerizing.

Undercover has foxes; House of Dance has the fox-trot. What will your next books have to offer, and when will they be released?

Your question makes me smile. THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE will take readers to a squatter's village in Juarez, Mexico; it asks the question: What can we really do to help heal the world?

But before HEART will be NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, due out next winter, which is the story of a high school senior grappling with the death of her mother. GHOSTS involves the decoding of a mystery in a garden down the road. There are small touches of mystery all the way through, and a finch, which is GHOSTS' fox.

What are ten of your favorite books?

Well, I'll make this list, and tomorrow I'll wish I'd put something else on, but at this very moment, trolling through my memory...

Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
The Wild Braid, Stanley Kunitz
Bone, Fae Myenne Ng
Reading in the Dark, Seamus Deane
The Journey Home, Olaf Olafsson
Road Song, Natalie Kusz
Zoli, Colum McCann
Coming through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell

http://slayground.livejournal.com/335269.html

Interviewed by Little Willow (and grateful for the conversation)

There are some fiercely well-read and thoughtful people out here, in the land of the blog, and one of those is Little Willow, whose blog I've visited, admired (she's an artist, on top of being a reader and a writer; she's a dancer, too). This weekend I had the privilege of sitting down to a virtual conversation with her. She made me think, asked me questions no one ever has.

The result of that conversation, along with Little Willow's reviews of both UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE, can be found here.

http://slayground.livejournal.com/335269.html

Thank you, Little Willow.

Em's Bookshelf Interview

So here I am relaxing now that nearly all my Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped, and all but one client project put to bed, and college application angst a thing of the not-so-distant past (okay, not really: my skin was never porcelain, my lips were never pouty full, my nose doesn't sweep toward perfection, and I can't find my pearl-encrusted bathing cap). Here is me, I should say, in my own mind's eye. A little less crazed.

And then, in the midst of a sigh, I receive an email from a really wonderful (extraordinarily generous) reader and writer named Em, who reports that a conversation we had over email has now been posted on her blog.

Boy, has she done an artful job of arranging the text and the images, and truly, she is very kind.

Here is the URL if you'd like to check it out for yourself. She asked good questions, made me think hard.

Thank you, Em. For being one of the very first to read and celebrate UNDERCOVER, and now perhaps the first (outside the editing circle) to have read HOUSE OF DANCE. You may never know just how much that means.

http://emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-very-first-author-interview.html

Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books 2007: An Excerpt

http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/images/pdf/Best_Young_Adult.pdf

Undercover
Beth Kephart
Laura Geringer/HarperCollins
September / 9780061238932 / $16.99

A successful memoir author, National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart turned to young-adult novels after a conversation with Laura Geringer. “On the train ride back from my meeting with Laura, the voice of a character rose up in me. I wrote the first ten pages within that 45-minute ride. I couldn’t stop myself after that,” says Kephart. Teaching teen-writing workshops and reading 160 books as chair for the 2001 young people’s literature jury for the National Book Awards also birthed her YA voice. Undercover is the story of Elisa, a high-school girl outside the “in crowd.” Elisa loves words and is the “Cyrano de Bergerac” behind several of the school’s popular couples, including Theo, who touches Elisa’s heart. Although he encourages her to pursue her love of ice-skating, he keeps his distance—and the girlfriend he captured with Elisa’s words—until Elisa captures his heart. Elisa’s love of words is similar to the author’s. “I love the shape and sound of words,” says Kephart. “A single word, well-considered, can launch a story or a poem.” Like Elisa, Kephart keeps a Book of Words, started in her 20s, which she still keeps today. In writing for young adults, Kephart feels she has tapped into something deep. “When I sat down to write my first YA novel, something very essential happened to my idea of pacing. A different kind of energy got injected into my narrator’s voice,” she says. “I have never had so much outright fun writing…and it’s because I am enjoying myself so much with this that I have written so furiously, so fast.” Empowering and using the beauty of language and movement to connect with readers, Undercover is the first of four novels scheduled.

Guardian Angel: School Library Journal Best Books Pick

This morning, Jill Santopolo, the HarperTeen editor about whom I rave-blogged not long ago, sent a sensational email from the floor of the National Convention of Teachers of English, where UNDERCOVER was apparently just named one of the Best Books of the Year by School Library Journal.

The news floors me, but most of all it assures me that my mother, who passed away so tragically close to a year ago, is looking down on me. UNDERCOVER was the book she most deeply believed in, the book she longed to see come to pass, and every single time something blesses this book, I know, irrevocably I know, that she is out there pulling strings.

Mom, this one's for you.

The light through these trees?

That's you, too.

Autumnal Blessings: Kirkus Top Books

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jamie Engle, for the upcoming 12/1 issue of Kirkus, which will feature UNDERCOVER as a Top Young Adult Book for 2007. I was grateful to her for the thoughtful questions, for the way that she returned me to the novel's very earliest days, when it was more impulse and instinct than story, and when being brave mattered more (as it always does at first) than getting it absolutely right.

Yesterday, while walking the streets at near dusk with my camera, I found this fully articulated tree. Its leaves are the very colors Elisa, the novel's heroine, sees—the colors with which I began to limn the tale.

Thank you, Amazon

This is a note of thanks, plain and simple, to the editors of Amazon, who have graciously named UNDERCOVER one of the top ten YA books of the year.

It means more than they could know.

Writing for tweens

I loved Judith Warner's most recent blog post, Seventies Something (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/). I loved the questions it raised: "What power can any of us – moms and daughters, adrift in the cultural mainstream — have against the hugely seductive, hypnotic machine that has brought us Paris, Miley, Lindsay and more?" I loved its conclusion: "The only thing we can do is provide some sort of inspiration – of a kind of womanhood that makes them want to connect to the better aspects of the girlhood we once knew. And then, give them the space and the time to make it their own."

When UNDERCOVER, my novel for tweens, was released this past September, I wondered how it would fare in a gossip-glittered world. I still don't have any quantifiable answer to that, but what I do have is a growing collection of anecdotals—moments where I've been stopped by mothers, aunts, young readers themselves, and asked point blank: Is this a (to use one person's word) "whole" story? Is this a novel in which intelligence is celebrated? Is this a novel that gives young readers something more than Paris and Britney to think about, aspire to?

I have been surprised by the questions. I have listened. And while I am no sociologist and will never name an era, I can say, in response to a line in Judith Warner's blog that yes, perhaps, there are more of us out here than I might have previously thought. Readers and writers who want heroines to soar, to transcend because of how deeply they think, how brilliantly they see. Maybe smart and self-defining is the new cool. Here's hoping, anyway.

Undestroyed

Upon re-reading So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell) for the third time, the mystery was not what would happen—I already knew—but what I would find that would remind me of why I have always loved this book.

Why it has haunted me.

Why I think that it is perhaps the truest (I didn't say best, I didn't say most beautiful, I don't say most perfect, I said truest) novel I've ever read.

Just now, finishing, I remember.

It is the word "undestroyed" in the final sentence. How it pins the heart to the page.

P.S. A little bit of something nice today: Booklist posted its starred review of UNDERCOVER as today's Review of the Day. http://www.booklistonline.com/

Dog Ears and Happenstance

I give my son my favorite books to read, and I find them, months later—beneath his bed, stuck in his pile of first-draft screenplays, in among his paycheck stubs—with all the stop pages turned back like some kind of origami.

When I read the books again I find myself following his trail—the parentheses he placed around the chapters, the suspense he held back for himself. The reading mind in action.

P.S. A shout out to someone whose new book I'll soon be reading—Melissa Walker, whose VIOLET ON THE RUNWAY shares pick of the month space with my own UNDERCOVER in the current issue of Family Circle. I love the way seeeming happenstance brings people together. I'm not just reading Melissa's novel because she's an extremely generous person. I'm reading it because I am a fan, why, yes I am, of America's Next Top Model, and because I suspect Melissa has a lot of insight into that whole gorgeous-on-the-outside-but-what-about-the-inside world.
http://www.parents.com/parents/story.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/fc/story/data/1185997737466.xml

Break Back and Dance

This is Montreal, two summers ago, above the salsa pier. This is a girl on the edge, looking down.

Risk it, I want to tell her. Dance. Don't wait to break past yourself.

Within the space of a year, I will have been lucky enough (and yes, a whole lot of luck has been involved) to have published three books—all risks. FLOW, the autobiography of the Schuylkill River, made a whole lot of people wonder out loud: A river's autobiography? Would that be fiction or nonfiction? Would that be a poem? Is there an audience for such a concoction? UNDERCOVER, the novel for young adults, took me to places I hadn't gone as a writer. ZENOBIA, a book I co-authored and due out next January, is a corporate fable, an Alice in Wonderlandesque journey through a sclerotic, crooked, teetering organization—not the usual business book fare, and certainly not the memoir genre with which I began published life.

The point is: I'm out on the edge of a cliff, and I'm happier than I've ever been as a writer. Because of FLOW I've met some of the most daring and compelling people I've ever met (people who care about a city, people who are healing a city). Because of UNDERCOVER I've stumbled into a world of big-hearted readers. And ZENOBIA isn't out yet, but already it is teaching me new things about what people want, what they end up doing.

Break back, I say, and dance.