Things to see and do

This is turning out to be a week for me to feature some new books by writer friends ... it's a theme that developed on its own, so I'm going with it. The latest offering is Jeannine Atkins's Views from a Window Seat: Thoughts on Writing and Life, which is described thusly:



"Every writer needs inspiration, whether composing fiction, poetry, or fact-based work for an audience of children or adults. Both inspiration and company, Views from a Window Seat: Thoughts on Writing and Life poses and answers questions such as: How do we decide the best way to begin a book? How do we keep up our momentum during the long middle? What are some ways to know we’ve reached an ending? How do we tell the truth?"

I've taken a poetry workshop from Jeannine and enjoyed her book Borrowed Names, so I think this one is worth checking out.

In other news, Children's Book World in Haverford, PA is having its annual author/illustrator night this Friday, Nov. 1, at 8 PM. In attendance will be Jerry Spinelli, K. M. Walton, April Lindner, Tiffany Schmidt, Kelly Fineman, Donna Jo Napoli, among many others (including yours truly). You come, too.

Guest post: Ace Hansen with a humorous middle-grade mystery

My writer friends have been prolific lately! One of them has channeled the spirit of an irreverent cartoon alien, Ace Hansen, to produce a funny, down-to-earth MG mystery. Ace Hansen describes this literary adventure below.

Interestingly, our alien author (speaking here) has chosen a human narrator for his book--a boy named Julius Caesar Brown. Probably because humans are the creatures most likely to read this story, which has been available as an e-book and has been newly released in paperback. I suppose we humans are most appreciative of mysteries and--shall we say, gastrointestinal humor?

Take it away, Ace:


Ace Hansen, distinguished author

Thanks, Jenn, for inviting me to hang out on your blog today. Some of you Earthlings have been asking what's so special about my book. Holy asteroid! What could be more special than a book written by me, a humble green alien? Your world is farting green! What could be more interesting than that?

What? You still want to know why you should read my book? Because you Earthlings like to make that strange sound out of your tiny mouths and noses you call giggling or guffawing or busting a gut or being in stitches and other strange things like that. This book will do that to you, even if you're an old Earthling (that’s more than 13 in Earth years, in case you were wondering).

You still aren't running out to buy my book because you don't like to read books? Because you'd rather play video games in which you splatter green aliens from one end of the galaxy to the other? Well, if you start farting green one day, I guarantee you'll want to find out why. If you're the least bit curious, this is the book for you.

Only I know the answer to the green gas mystery.



Well, me and all the smart Earthlings who’ve already read the book, available here.

On reading, a novel guide, and unlikable characters

Today's my day to post at YA Outside the Lines. The topic: "reading hungrily." A sample: "I read the way people eat: for nourishment, for pleasure, for life."

In other news, my former agent and current friend Nathan Bransford is launching his guide, How to Write a Novel. I have not yet had the chance to read it, though I've already downloaded it, but I would recommend looking at it for a few reasons. One is that the tone of Nathan's blog, where he has written about writing and publishing for years, is engaging and often amusing, which suggests that this book will be the same. But the main reason is that, as a former client, I had several chances to experience a Bransford novel critique. I always came away from it feeling that my book had been thoroughly and justly analyzed; that I had a lot of work to; and that I could do it. It's not easy to give a novelist a list of umpteen things she needs to do to fix her pet project, yet make her feel energized and confident about tackling those umpteen things, but somehow he managed it. And I saw how my writing improved, so I know he has the insight and instincts ... which he then demonstrated further by publishing three novels of his own, the Jacob Wonderbar series!

I also want to point out a post that appeared recently on Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations blog: Sarah Aronson on unlikable characters. Sarah Aronson said so many things I have been thinking for a while, but she said them better than I ever could. Here are a couple of excerpts to illustrate why I recommend reading the whole thing:

"I want to read stories that offer me something much less safe and perhaps, a little more real or edgy with lots of moral ambiguity."
"Today, many of us are preoccupied with our images and what others say about our work. We ... have access to what our readers think of our creative decisions. Here is the big problem: if we let it infect us too much, it will hurt our work."

Happy reading!

What to leave out

I loved what Crissa Chappell said this month at YA Outside the Lines: "Students are often told to 'add more' to their stories and essays. Finally, I discovered that it's not necessary to describe everything. Give the reader one or two important sensory details. Let them imagine the rest."

I may go a little too far in the minimalist direction sometimes, but when I do it's because I am embracing that philosophy. I'm trying to give the readers just enough for them to build the stories in their minds.

There's also the question of subtlety in theme, of how much of our main point to spell out and how much to leave for the readers to figure out. In one creative writing class I took, I responded to a teacher's critique of my holding back by saying, "I didn't want to hit people over the head," to which she replied, "Hit them over the head a little." After all, a point does have to be visible. There is such a thing as leaving too many blank spaces.

But when it's done right, restraint has such power.

I saw an example this week, courtesy of a tweet by Sarah LaPolla. She linked to this essay by David Sedaris on the loss of his sister. And the essay, naturally, is powerful enough--would be powerful anyway because of the events it describes. And because of that, it feels a little weird even to talk about the essay in literary terms. But as a writer reading the work of another writer on the New Yorker website, my writer brain does tend to whisper in the background.

What I thought when I read the last line of Sedaris's essay was this: There is an unspoken line there. He does not say, "This family is not as big as it used to be; not as big as it should be." He doesn't say it, and he doesn't need to say it. The reader says it. He invites the reader to say it; he lets the reader say it. In fact, the whole essay is stronger for what it doesn't say: about sudden losses, family rifts, suicide, death, sibling bonds and sibling rivalries.

In this way, the intimacy of reader and writer can be heightened. The writer places dots in front of the reader, and the reader has to draw the lines that connect them.

Some history of YA novels

I'm mystified when people say that young-adult novels are a new thing, that they weren't around even a decade or two ago. They've been around much longer than that. In fact, many of the YA books I'm going to discuss here were written before I was even born.

For purposes of this discussion, I'm excluding books that were originally written for adults but later became high-school classics (like The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies), and books that featured teen characters but were clearly for younger readers (like the Nancy Drew books), and books that were stocked in the adult section when they first came out but would go in the YA section now (like Forever ... and It's OK If You Don't Love Me). I'm talking about books that were absolutely aimed at teens, that were grouped together in the children's or teens' section in bookstores and libraries, and were sold in school book clubs.

They've changed over the years, of course. The typical YA of the 1960s-1980s was short (closer to 200 pages than the 350 pages of our current era). Contemporary realism dominated the market. You could find a smattering of historical fiction, and there were mysteries and science fiction and romances. But there were, by far, fewer fantasy and paranormal novels than there are now.

Also, while today's books tend to be more explicit when dealing with edgy material, tough subjects were not off limits even 40 or 50 years ago. Here are a few examples to illustrate that this genre has been thriving for much longer than people might think:

1940s and 1950s

Practically Seventeen, by Rosamond du Jardin (1943)
Senior Year, by Anne Emery (1949)
Jean and Johnny, by Beverly Cleary (1959)

YA from this era was definitely tamer in tone than today's stories. There's nothing in these books that most middle-graders couldn't read. But I consider them YA because all three feature high-school girls and their adventures (mostly misadventures) with the opposite sex. Boyfriend troubles are usually considered a YA subject, even nowadays. All three books are clearly aimed at readers who are the same age as the protagonists; the voices and point of view are young.

1960s

The Unchosen, by Nan Gilbert (1963)
Drop-Out, by Jeannette Eyerly (1963)
Durango Street, by Frank Bonham (1965)
A Girl Like Me, by Jeannette Eyerly (1966)
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (1967)
The Pigman, by Paul Zindel (1968)
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, by Ann Head (1968)
Tuned Out, Maia Wojciechowska (1968)
I'm Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down, by Nat Hentoff (1968)
I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip, by John Donovan (1969)
My Darling, My Hamburger, by Paul Zindel (1969)

The 1960s saw a shift in tone and subject matter. While the first book on this list, Nan Gilbert's The Unchosen, is similar to the 1940s-1950s-era stories in its often light tone and humor, it is less chatty in style, and it's extremely well-written. Also, while its references to making out would scarcely raise an eyebrow today, it approaches the subject a bit more frankly than the books of the previous decades.
With Drop-Out arrives the serious tone--and the edgy topics--of the problem novel: dropouts and runaways (Drop-Out), teen pregnancy (A Girl Like Me; Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones; My Darling, My Hamburger). In these books, for the first time, teens are sexually active--although that all happens offstage, and every girl who does it gets pregnant.
Durango Street is about street gangs; its main character has been arrested for car theft.
The Outsiders and The Pigman were undeniably watershed novels, novels that show the power of the genre. Those who know Zindel only for The Pigman might be surprised to come across My Darling, My Hamburger, a book in which a teen girl has an abortion (a topic that YA novels rarely touch even today).
And John Donovan's I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip is often cited as the first YA novel to introduce a same-sex attraction. It may be; I don't know of others. I do recall that the main character seems to write off his interactions with his friend as just adolescent experimentation.
I'm Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down references the draft; unsurprising, since this was a major concern for teen males of this era.
Tuned Out is the earliest example I have of a problem novel centering around drugs.

1970s

Phoebe, by Patricia Dizenzo (1970)
An American Girl, by Patricia Dizenzo (1971)
Go Ask Alice, by Beatrice Sparks (1971)
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, by M.E. Kerr (1972)
The Fog Comes on Little Pig Feet, by Rosemary Wells (1972)
The Room, by Ruth Holland (1973)
They'll Never Make a Movie Starring Me, by Alice Bach (1973)
A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, by Alice Childress (1973)
Trying Hard to Hear You, by Sandra Scoppettone (1974)
The Late Great Me, by Sandra Scoppettone (1976)
Confessions of a Teenage Baboon, by Paul Zindel (1977)
Happy Endings Are All Alike, by Sandra Scoppettone (1978)

The problem novel was going strong in the 1970s, and drugs were everywhere in books. Lots and lots of drugs (almost always in cautionary tales): see A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, Go Ask Alice, Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, and The Room. (The latter two, incidentally, manage to be warm and funny as well, and Dinky Hocker really only mentions drugs peripherally.) Alcoholism shows up, too (An American Girl, about growing up with an alcoholic parent; and The Late Great Me, about a teen with alcoholism). I have to say that although the problem novel eventually became a rather played-out formula, in its heyday, it produced some gripping novels.
We also have more discussion of same-sex relationships in They'll Never Make a Movie Starring Me, Trying Hard to Hear You, and Happy Endings Are All Alike. Gay and lesbian teens may have found a glimmer of hope that the lesbian couple in Happy Endings was featured prominently on its cover, although the perils of prejudice experienced by those who dared to come out of the closet were brutally rendered in that book and in Trying Hard to Hear You.
Although 1970's Phoebe had an unplanned pregnancy, by 1973 pregnancy was no longer the obligatory outcome for a sexually active character. The main characters in the Wells and Bach books are the first female characters I can think of who actually wanted people to think they were experienced, unlike the girls of an earlier era.
Suicide--attemped or successful--is also mentioned in The Fog Comes on Little Pig Feet and Confessions of a Teenage Baboon. (Come to think of it, Zindel touched on this topic in his 1969 book, too.)

And yes, in these decades YA was very (though not exclusively) white, which continues to be an issue today. I can recall a few novels about teens with terminal illnesses, but fewer about teens living successfully with physical challenges (Beverly Butler's 1970 Light a Single Candle being a notable exception).

This is hardly an exhaustive or systematic survey. My point here is to show that YA was around at least as early as the middle of the 20th Century. (I'm open to the idea that it goes back even farther than I've shown here, if anyone wants to pursue that.) YA has continued to evolve, and I've only barely touched on what was happening in the genre even in the 1940s-1970s. I just wanted to review some of the history of the genre.

The cozy season

It's a cloudy, chilly fall day. I made a stew tonight for dinner (lentil stew, to be exact), which is one of the ways I mark this season.

At this time of year, when we're losing light from both ends of the day, when the air turns cold and the plants die or go dormant, I always feel a pulling inward. It's time to go indoors and gather around the hearth. (Well, we don't actually have a hearth, but our cat does plant himself right on top of one of the heating vents.)

The cold and the dark make it harder and harder to get out of bed. There will be no more reading on the porch until next spring.

I tell myself it's a good time to write. All this turning inward; all this indoor weather.

What gives a book longevity?

Matt Kahn has been doing a blogging project where he reads the top-selling novel of the year for the past 100 years. He's now up to 1951's From Here to Eternity, and it was one of the few bestsellers that he has found, so far, to hold up over time.

That so many of the books on Kahn's list have been forgotten helps to dispel the myth that people used to read Real Literature in the past, and now they read schlock. I think the books that survive from earlier generations tend to be the classics, and so we are left with this skewed view that in days gone by, everyone sat around reading the classics all the time.

Anyhoo ... I've been reading Kahn's summaries and trying to identify what gives a book that timeless quality, and what makes it forgettable. One thing I noticed pretty quickly is that having a book made into a movie helps greatly with that book's ability to linger in the public consciousness. Kahn has found several books that were made into movies and faded anyway. But there don't seem to be too many books that lasted only because of their book form.

Since that part is out of most writers' immediate control, however, what is it about a book itself that lasts--or doesn't? One thing that seems to destine a book for ultimate obscurity is appealing to the sentiments (or sentimentality) of its times, but not keying in to universal and substantial truths or emotions. A temporary thrill--or warmth--but not enough illumination. I'm also starting to wonder if I see a pattern forming where books that reinforce status quo attitudes tend to be very popular in their time and then forgotten, while those that challenge the status quo live on longer.

In praising From Here to Eternity, Kahn comments, "The novel deals honestly and directly with morally ambiguous situations, and with topics like sex and honor" and "with complex relationships, both romantic and professional, and with complex group dynamics." Two features jump out at me there: complexity and ambiguity.

I don't have any definite answers. Just food for thought.

Event on Friday

Children’s Book World presents:

OUTSIDERS SPEAK UP!

A panel of young-adult and middle-grade authors on the power of outcasts and outsiders.

Ellen Jensen Abbott, author of Watersmeet and The Centaur’s Daughter

Alison Ashley Formento, author of Twigs

Jon Gibbs, author of Fur-Face and Barnum’s Revenge

K.M. Walton, author of Cracked and Empty

Jennifer R. Hubbard, author of The Secret Year, Try Not to Breathe, and Until It Hurts to Stop

Evening includes Q&A, refreshments, and book signing.

Friday, October 18

7:30 PM

Children’s Book World

17 Haverford Station Rd., Haverford, PA 19041
610.642.6274

http://www.childrensbookworld.net/

Breathing room

These recent posts all made me say, "Yes!!" so I thought I would share them with you. It occurs to me that they're all about giving ourselves a break. Letting ourselves rest, and acknowledging that life's challenges can be tough. We don't have to charge relentlessly forward, always wearing the brave and happy and productive face.

"Taking a break" by Kathleen McCleary on Writer Unboxed. A sample: "But it wasn’t until recently ... that I understood something elemental about writing: It’s equally important to not write. At all. For an extended period of time."

Natalie Whipple on dealing with bad days. A sample: " So I want to talk about what you do when you're having a bad day. Or maybe even several bad days in a row. Or a whole month. Or even more. Because if you're a writer, chances are you'll have bad days ... Writing is special like that—able to bring both the greatest joy and deepest sorrow."

Julie Owsik Ackerman acknowledges that it's okay to be sad. A sample: "It’s okay to be overwhelmed. It’s okay to be guilty and unsure. The more I accept these feelings, welcome them even, explore them with curiosity, the less scary they are, the less they rule my life, the more I’m free to enjoy the good."

Stories from Jonestown

I finished reading Leigh Fondakowski's Stories from Jonestown a few weeks ago, but it has stuck with me.

I was a child when the mass deaths occurred, and I understood little of the story at the time, but I will never forget the images that appeared on the news: hundreds and hundreds of bodies lying in the jungle. Nor can I forget the stories about the poisoned fruit-flavored drink that killed most of them (which Fondakowski reminds us was not Kool-Aid, but Flavor-Aid, although the phrase "they drank the Kool-Aid" has been part of our language ever since).

It did not occur to me until I was an adult to wonder: who were the people who tried to build a paradise in Guyana? What did they see in leader Jim Jones? What could push them to assassinate a Congressman and then kill their children, their elderly, and themselves in a mass ritual? What were they seeking?

Jonestown was only a part of the Peoples Temple movement started by Jim Jones. Fondakowski was able to interview many of its former members who were not in Jonestown that day, as well as some of the handful who survived Jonestown. The result was a stage production along the lines of The Laramie Project (which Fondakowski also worked on) and this book.

Fondakowski enables the interviewees to tell their own stories in their own words, and the result is a book that tells of heart-breaking hope and faith, and unimaginable loss. For most of them, Peoples Temple began in a search for social justice. It was about music and love and equality. It was a place where people of different races came together on equal terms and worked for a better world. Somewhere along the way, the dream turned into a nightmare. For many of them, that did not happen until the very end, and they still cherish the memories of the work they did together and the people they befriended. For others, the nightmare began earlier; they were alienated much sooner by the increasing rigidity of the society and the increasingly erratic behavior of Jones.

Fondakowski wisely refrains from trying to impose an authoritative conclusion or definitive interpretation on the story of Peoples Temple and Jonestown. Rather, she lets its survivors speak and acknowledges that the record is, and will always be, incomplete.

One interesting thing she says is that the popular expression "they drank the Kool-Aid" makes her cringe, since she now understands like never before how deep a tragedy it refers to, what a monumental loss that overused idiom represents. She thinks that if more people delved into the story of Jonestown, they would not use the expression so casually.

For me, this was a haunting book, but one that I'm glad I read. Because the tragedy of Jonestown was real, a reminder that people's grandest plans sometimes take very wrong turns.


source of recommended read: library

Going All In: Guest Post by Jody Casella

This is my latest guest post on the topic of fear, in which Jody Casella talks about challenging our fears.


Several years ago I hit a writing wall. I'd been working seriously for years, but I couldn't break through. Editors expressed interest in my books then told me in a variety of ways: No.

A turning point came when I attended a Highlights Children's Writers workshop. I showed up, I'm ashamed to say, reluctantly, almost arrogantly. I remember thinking, "What can these people tell me that I don't already know?"

The first day I met with my assigned mentor to go over a manuscript that I thought was finished and perfect. She pointed out a few things I might want to try. She was kind, not critical in the least. But the conversation almost destroyed me.

My arrogance disappeared. In its place was fear. Fear that my writing wasn't good. Fear that I had no idea how to make it better.

The rest of the week I became a sponge for information, attending every session, taking notes, asking questions. One of the speakers, editor Patricia Lee Gauch, discussed why so many manuscripts went wrong. Climaxes would happen off stage. Essential scenes were skimmed over.

It was almost as if the writer pulled back right at the moment when she should've "gone all in."

A light bulb went off in my head. I had been doing exactly this. Holding back just as the story took off in a direction I hadn't planned. Glossing over moments that hit an emotional nerve. I wasn't going all in with my stories.

I wasn't going all in as a writer either. Holding back was a way to protect myself. Because, what if I tried my hardest and I still failed?

But if I didn't give it my all, could I ever succeed?

After the workshop, I started writing a book called Thin Space. The usual fears and doubts plagued me. What if it wasn't good? What if no one ever wanted to read it? And what the heck WAS it anyway? I thought, as the story turned into something kind of weird and horrifying.

I kept writing anyway. I let the story go where it wanted. I threw everything I had into following it to its conclusion. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life and I decided that even if it never made it into print, it was a book I was proud to have written.

Thin Space, Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster, Sept. 2013 "There’s a fine line between the living and the dead, and Marsh is determined to cross it in this gut-wrenching debut novel."

 Jody Casella lives with her husband and two children in Ohio.

The Artful Dodger rides again?

One strength of Charles Dickens was the depth of his secondary characters. In fact, they sometimes threatened to steal the show from the main character. This was especially true of Oliver Twist, a book from which the title character virtually disappears in the later pages, ceding the stage to his supporting cast.

One of Twist's memorable secondary characters is the Artful Dodger, who showed an amazing amount of street savvy for his age. When I read this news story, I couldn't help thinking, "Sounds like something the Dodger would pull off, if he were real and living in the 21st Century."

(This is how you can tell I'm a reader; everything reminds me of a story.)

Go Ask Alice, and "real" teen voices

Go Ask Alice is a YA book that was widely read when I was growing up, and perhaps still is. My copy lists the author as "Anonymous" and says, on the cover, "Autobiography" and "A Real Diary." The introduction says, "Go Ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user ..." and the epilogue tells us (spoiler alert!) that the diarist died of an overdose while her parents were out at movie. (A rather specific description of a person's fate.)

The above factors all led me to believe at the time--and not unreasonably, I think--that this was the actual diary of an actual person. Especially when I noticed that although no years are given as part of the diary's dates, the days of the week on which these dates occurred corresponded exactly to the years 1968-1970 (the book was originally published in 1971). To me, that gave it an extra touch of authenticity. The only clues that this was perhaps not a real story appear in two places in my copy of the book: the cataloguing information in the front of the book (which, hey, who doesn't read that, right?) lists this as "Fiction" (although I recently found an older copy of the book in which the "Fiction" label does not appear). And a close reading of the introduction makes one notice the "based on" language. What does it mean to be "based on"  a real diary? How loosely based was this?

Snopes.com has a discussion of this book's hazy provenance and how we know it is really fiction. (See also this NY Times Online article by Mark Oppenheimer, and the Wikipedia entry for Beatrice Sparks, author of Go Ask Alice.) There is, however, one point in the Snopes piece on which I disagree: "Girls of that age do not write the way the journal entries of Go Ask Alice are penned ..." This statement is followed by a criticism of the use of polysyllabic words, and the amount of space the alleged diarist gave to the topics about which she wrote.

I have to say that teenagers are perfectly capable of writing the way the narrator of Go Ask Alice writes. Teenagers--especially those who read a lot, and who like to write--have vocabularies that rival those of adults. (After all, high schoolers are preparing for SATs and college entrance, and they're regularly reading textbooks and literary classics for school.) I myself tended to use longer words and a more expansive vocabulary when I was writing--especially when I was writing for myself--than I did in casual conversation. The personality shifts in narration in Go Ask Alice could be the result of multiple authors and jagged editing ... or true adolescent experimentation. When I was growing up, I remember trying on different voices, different handwritings, different nicknames, different attitudes and interests. So did my friends.

What appealed to me about Go Ask Alice was not only the gripping, slow-motion horror of the main character's descent into addiction (as unrealistic as I may find some of it now), but the emotional quality of her voice. The narrator's ups and downs reflect my own adolescent diaries: one day, everything was wonderful; the right guy smiled at me; I aced a test; whatever. A week later: devastation. Fights with parents, being ignored by a crush, or clashing with a teacher could inspire the most introspective and despairing of entries. If Go Ask Alice is fiction--and I have believed for a while now that it is--it is nonetheless fiction that did exactly what I needed it to at the time I read it. When I was a teenager, I never questioned the authenticity of the book's voice. And judging by this book's phenomenal sales, neither did many other people.

I will leave to others a discussion of whether the book should be read now, why it was presented as nonfiction, and many other interesting issues that could arise. The only point I want to make today is that we can't assume teenagers don't use big words or have deep thoughts, or that they only write about certain subjects. Adult expectations of what teens are "supposed" to sound like do not constitute evidence either way.

Invitation to a NY event

An invitation to anyone in or near NYC on Wednesday:

October 2 -- Teen Author Reading Night (6-7:30, Jefferson Market Branch of NYPL, corner of 6th Ave and 10th St). Part of a series developed by David Levithan; this installment hosted by Barry Lyga. The lineup:
Kate Brian, Hereafter
Zoraida Cordova, The Savage Blue
Jocelyn Davies, A Radiant Sky
Sarah Beth Durst, Conjured
Jennifer R. Hubbard, Until It Hurts To Stop
Kass Morgan, The100
Emil Ostrovski, The Paradox of Vertical Flight
Allyson Schrier, How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend
Jon Skovron, Man Made Boy