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Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Thompson

Indies First 2014, this Saturday!

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Indie's first logo
 
For the hol­i­day 2014 sea­son, best­selling author Neil Gaiman and musi­cian-author Aman­da Palmer called upon their fel­low authors to get behind Indies First and “vol­un­teer” at book­stores on Small Busi­ness Sat­ur­day (Nov. 29).
I could­n’t choose just one inde­pen­dent book­store to hang out in (we’re lucky to have so many to choose from where I live!), so I’ll be doing two shifts:

I’ll be sign­ing copies of BE A CHANGEMAKER and rec­om­mend­ing a few of my oth­er favorites, and I’ll be in great com­pa­ny with many oth­er local authors and illus­tra­tors. So, if you’re in the area, please stop by and say, “Hi!”
If you’re not in the area, be sure to check out the inter­ac­tive Indies First map to find a par­tic­i­pat­ing store near you!
 

Interview w/Matthew Winner of the Let’s Get Busy podcast!

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Every now and then I stum­ble on some­thing so won­der­ful that I want to add it my own list of “My Favorite Things” and share it with the world: the Let’s Get Busy pod­cast from Matthew Win­ner is one of those things. Whether you’re an author, illus­tra­tor, teacher, librar­i­an, agent, edi­tor, bookseller–if you have any­thing to do with chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture at all–this show is too good to miss. Think you don’t have time for pod­casts? I lis­ten while I’m in the car. Or while I walk the dog. Or while I clean the house. And, believe me, all of those tasks are way more enjoy­able when you have Matthew and his guests with you!
Matthew recent­ly record­ed his 100th episode of the pod­cast, and he put togeth­er a mas­sive blog and pod­cast tour to cel­e­brate. Here’s where he’s been so far:

And I’m thrilled that today is my turn to host! Matthew was kind enough to answer a few of my ques­tions, so we can all get to know him better.
LT: Hi Matthew, and wel­come! I’ve already gushed to you about how much I love your pod­cast, but I’m curi­ous to learn more. How and when did you first become inter­est­ed in doing a pod­cast like Let’s Get Busy? How did you get started?
MT: I lis­ten to a lot of pod­casts. I mean, a whole lot of pod­casts. All the time. When I’m dri­ving to work. When I’m wash­ing the dish­es. When I’m shelv­ing books. When I’m mow­ing the lawn. It’s the pri­ma­ry media I con­sume. The idea for doing a pod­cast of my own and, specif­i­cal­ly, a kidlit pod­cast just sort of popped into my head one day, took up camp, and then would­n’t leave. But it took a con­ver­sa­tion with Travis Jonker (of 100 Scope Notes) to nudge me into actu­al­ly start­ing it. He and I were talk­ing one evening dur­ing an ALA con­fer­ence in Chica­go about how much we love the insights but also those mem­o­rable vignettes that inevitably stick in your brain when­ev­er you’re in the com­pa­ny of authors or illus­tra­tors (or any­one who has some­thing to say, for that mat­ter). Travis asked me what my next big project would be and I told him that all I could think about was this idea of cap­tur­ing these sorts of con­ver­sa­tions through a loose­ly for­mat­ted pod­cast. Then he basi­cal­ly asked me when I was start­ing, and that was all it took.
LT: Some­times we just need the tini­est nudge, don’t we? (Thanks, Travis!) You sure have been busy since then. I can’t believe you start­ed less than a year and half ago, and you’re already up to 100 episodes! 
LT: How much time do you spend on the pod­cast over­all, and what’s the break­down of how that time is spent (lin­ing up guests, record­ing and edit­ing, pro­mot­ing, etc.)?
MW: Eeep. Let me try to make this as inter­est­ing as possible.
MW: I shoot for 30-minute record­ings so that I’m able to post twice a week (or 8 episodes per month). A lot of this is based on band­width lim­i­ta­tions and the cost of main­tain­ing a sub­scrip­tion on Lib­syn, a pod­cast host site. I usu­al­ly talk with each guest for about an hour total and we spend the unaired time lock­ing into a com­fort­able can­dor (or going on tan­gents and then say­ing, “Shoot! I should be record­ing this!”). Edit­ing and prep­ping the accom­pa­ny­ing blog post takes any­where between 30 and 60 min­utes. And coor­di­nat­ing sched­ules and review mate­ri­als and record­ing logis­tics over email can take upwards of 30 min­utes per sched­uled guest, but that might be over a series of weeks.
MW: So, let’s see. That’s 25 minus the cir­cum­fer­ence of Y, car­ry the 3 and sub­sti­tute 7 for X… about 2–3 hours per guest from first con­tact to pub­lished and pro­mot­ed episode.
LT: That’s a big com­mit­ment (but less than I thought–you’re fast!). What then is the hard­est part of doing the pod­cast, and how do you deal with that?
MW: The hard­est part for me is ask­ing new peo­ple to come on. It seems like every­one and their moth­er has a pod­cast nowa­days, but I’m often the first pod­cast my guests have ever appeared on or, in some cas­es, lis­tened to. And also, many of them have no idea who I am. That gets in my brain and makes me think all sorts of wonky things and then I start to psych myself out over send­ing that first con­tact email. I’ve coped with it by ask­ing each of my guests, fol­low­ing our own con­ver­sa­tions, to rec­om­mend a friend or col­league whom they think my be a good fit for the pod­cast or this inter­view for­mat. It’s worked pret­ty well for me and my guest list now reads like one great big fam­i­ly pho­to album with all sorts of zigzag­ging con­nec­tions between each of the faces.
LT: That is real­ly neat to envi­sion. So much of what we do is built on per­son­al rela­tion­ships, isn’t it? I don’t think you have any­thing to wor­ry about, though. First, kidlit peo­ple are the best peo­ple in the world, don’t you think? And sec­ond, I’m sure most authors and illus­tra­tors are thrilled by the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chat with you: you’re inter­est­ed in our work, and you give us a chance to talk about it. Just remem­ber: we’re nice, and you’re doing us a favor. There’s no need to psych your­self out! 🙂
LT: What has sur­prised you most about the podcast?
MW: Every­thing sur­pris­es me about the pod­cast. Some­times the thing that sur­pris­es me most is know­ing that any­one’s actu­al­ly lis­ten­ing. I learn some­thing new with each new per­son who comes on and by rule of thumb I allow myself space to won­der, to be excit­ed, to nerd out over process, and to ask what­ev­er comes to mind. That approach has served me well and has led to a good deal of sur­pris­es when our con­ver­sa­tions take unex­pect­ed turns. It’s how I learned that Lau­rie Keller (Arnie the Dough­nut) plays ban­jo, that Nick Bru­el (Bad Kit­ty) used to work at Books of Won­der, a land­mark chil­dren’s book­store in New York, and that Steve Light (Have You Seen My Drag­on?) works with PreSchool students!
LT: I love that every episode feels like a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion between friends, rather than an inter­view, per se. In fact, it’s my favorite thing about lis­ten­ing to them! What is your favorite thing about doing them?
MW: So, I have a blog called The Busy Librar­i­an. I start­ed it as a sort of advo­ca­cy blog for all of us teacher librar­i­ans who are all just so busy all the time. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, I pub­lished my first post. Here is the text in its entirety:

This is a blog for busy librarians.
For those of us who feel, well, overwhelmed.
It’s a place of com­fort and, hope­ful­ly, a source of inspiration.
Here you will find the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act glob­al­ly and to impact locally.
We’ll syn­er­gize moments, ideas, and activ­i­ties that will enable us to become more effec­tive librar­i­ans, more effi­cient in our libraries, and more ener­getic with our stu­dents, with­out feel­ing like things are careen­ing out of control.
So, let’s get busy!

It made per­fect sense to me to name the pod­cast as an exten­sion of the blog itself. Hence, Let’s Get Busy. My very good pal Sher­ry Gick, teacher librar­i­an at Rossville Con­sol­i­dat­ed Schools in Rossville, IN, and author of the Library Fanat­ic blog, and Nik­ki Ohs Barnes, fel­low Nerdy Book Club mem­ber and co-founder of the Vir­tu­al Book Club, met me at ALA where, just one night pre­vi­ous, Travis and I had talked about pod­cast­ing. Super excit­ed to share, I told Sher­ry and Nik­ki that I was going to start a pod­cast and that I decid­ed to call it Let’s Get Busy after my blog. They both imme­di­ate­ly broke into what they decid­ed would have to be the pod­cast sound effect… a sort of BOW-CHIKKA-WOAH-WOW that I have not to this day been able to get out of my head when­ev­er I’m about to start an inter­view. Car­ry­ing those sorts of mem­o­ries around every­where I go is def­i­nite­ly my favorite thing. And with 100 episode behind me, I’m def­i­nite­ly car­ry­ing around a lot of stories!
LT: I’m sure you are! 
LT: How do you feel your oth­er activ­i­ties (teach­ing, pre­sent­ing, writ­ing, blog­ging, Twit­ter, par­ent­ing, etc.) make the pod­cast bet­ter? And, vice ver­sa, how does the pod­cast con­tribute to those oth­er facets of your life?
MW: Oh my word! Every­thing and I mean EVERYTHING goes into the pot when it comes to mak­ing these record­ings. Books from my pic­ture book guests are typ­i­cal­ly already bed­time sta­ples with our 4‑year-old son. Teach­ing and being a teacher librar­i­an is the best and comes up over and over again on our chats because I like to share the way that the guests’ book is reach­ing kids and sup­port­ing read­ers in ways that I get to expe­ri­ence first­hand. Twit­ter is my pro­fes­sion­al learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but it’s also where I get to nerd out with friends over great kidlit and meet very cool peo­ple cre­at­ing very cool books in the process, many of whom I’ll invite on the pod­cast because their work sticks with me.
MW: Doing the pod­cast brings me pure joy and is or has become a part of my iden­ti­ty. And I’ve got­ten to meet a ton of real­ly cool peo­ple in the process. I’m thank­ful that our son is grow­ing up in a house sur­round­ed with beau­ti­ful pic­ture books, both on our book­shelves, and in frames hang­ing up through­out our house.
LT: Oh, I love that. Why have I nev­er thought of fram­ing pic­ture books?  (Hmmm… just in time for Christ­mas, too!)
LT: I’ve always said that I will know I’ve made it when I receive one let­ter from one child say­ing that some­thing I wrote made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in his or her life. How do you define suc­cess? Do you feel like you’ve achieved it? If not, what’s left on your to-do list?
MW: I lis­ten to my guests and I lis­ten to my lis­ten­ers. The pod­cast suc­ceeds when the guests feel like they’ve found a home in our con­ver­sa­tion and when the lis­ten­ers feel like they’re in the room with us. I also try to take in the kind things peo­ple are say­ing about Let’s Get Busy or about me per­son­al­ly. Sey­mour Simon once told me that he thinks of me “like a son” and that he’s proud of me. I achieved all I ever want­ed when I pub­lished the very first episode of Let’s Get Busy. And I’m thank­ful that so many peo­ple feel moved to tell me how the pod­cast is con­nect­ing with them. Suc­cess to me is know­ing that one per­son cares about the thing you’re mak­ing, or say­ing, or cre­at­ing. And I’m one per­son that cares a great deal about what I myself am mak­ing, say­ing, and cre­at­ing. So with every episode I get to share, I’ve already achieved suc­cess before a sin­gle down­load occurs.
LT: What a won­der­ful atti­tude, Matthew! I care a great deal about what you’re mak­ing, say­ing, a cre­at­ing, too. Thanks so much for shar­ing it with us ! 

As you can see from above, Matthew calls him­self “the busy librar­i­an” for good rea­son. Here are some of the places you can find more from him:

And be sure to fol­low the rest of the Let’s Get Busy podcast/blog tour, here:

Quote: “You are the changemakers and the change.”

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Monique Coleman quote

Monique Coleman quote
Pho­to Cred­it, David Niblack, Imagebase.net

Quot­ed in BE A CHANGEMAKER, chap­ter 1, from a speech giv­en at We Day Seat­tle on March 27, 2013, attend­ed by the author. Vis­it Monique Cole­man’s offi­cial web page for more infor­ma­tion about her speak­ing and human­i­tar­i­an activities.

Fan mail: a teacher email about Be a Changemaker

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I recent­ly received this email from a mid­dle-school teacher:

I want­ed to let you know that one of my stu­dents has tak­en your book to heart.  He’s been car­ry­ing it with him for six weeks, and he is in the process of try­ing to start a nature club at school.  He is a super hard work­er, and a won­der­ful, bright, sen­si­tive 12-year-old boy–the type who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. He is pas­sion­ate about this endeav­or, but he does­n’t feel that he’s being tak­en seri­ous­ly: adults are assum­ing he’s not going to work hard enough, he feels like things aren’t mov­ing fast enough, and he’s dis­heart­ened. Still, he recent­ly cit­ed your book to me, say­ing, “She says some­times it can take for­ev­er, and then some­times things hap­pen out of the blue,” so your words mat­ter to him.

In the rush and hur­ry of get­ting through my inbox, this mes­sage brought me to a full stop. I’ve always said that I will feel like I’ve achieved suc­cess when I hear from one read­er that my work mat­tered to them. Though not direct­ly from the read­er him­self, this mes­sage from such a car­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, clear­ly amaz­ing teacher on her stu­den­t’s behalf feels every bit as won­der­ful. Read­ing this email was an even grander “first” for me than see­ing my name in print for the first time, or hold­ing the final book in my hands, or sign­ing stacks of books at an event. This was a real con­nec­tion with a young read­er, a poten­tial shift in the tra­jec­to­ry of this young man’s life that might not have occurred with­out my work. It’s both hum­bling and validating.
I have no doubt in the world that this stu­dent is indeed the type who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. It wor­ries me, though, that even with this sup­port­ive teacher clear­ly on his side, he stills that one of the obsta­cles he faces is oth­er adults assum­ing he’s not going to work hard enough. I mean real­ly, what have we got to lose, adults? If they encour­age him and he lat­er quits, there’s no harm done: He feels val­ued and respect­ed, he learns some­thing about him­self, and things go back to the way there were before. If they encour­age him and he suc­ceeds, the out­come real­ly isn’t all that dif­fer­ent: He feels val­ued and respect­ed, he learns some­thing about him­self, and things get a lit­tle bit better.
I know that I’ve been guilty of sim­i­lar reac­tions with my own chil­dren and their ideas. I’ve been too quick to point out what chal­lenges I see and the rea­sons why their ideas might not be per­fect­ly fea­si­ble. I ques­tioned their long-term com­mit­ment to the projects they pro­posed. What I thought was help­ful real­ism, how­ev­er, was­n’t real­ly that help­ful at all. Indeed, what if my “real­ism” was actu­al­ly cyn­i­cism, and maybe their “fan­tasies” could have actu­al­ly worked? We’ll nev­er know, because count­less times I’ve inad­ver­tent­ly stopped them in their tracks before they even got start­ed, all in the name of think­ing things through and not embark­ing on some­thing they could­n’t finish.
I think many of us (adults, espe­cial­ly, but kids, too) have become so goal-ori­ent­ed that we don’t want to do or sup­port any­thing that does­n’t seem very like­ly to suc­ceed. We’re over­ly focused on the results, when so many of the poten­tial ben­e­fits come from the process itself. We don’t want to waste time on some­thing that might fail, but we for­get that we learn by mak­ing mistakes.
If I’d focused on the like­li­hood of ever get­ting an email like this one, I would prob­a­bly nev­er have stuck with the process of hon­ing my craft, revis­ing my drafts, putting myself out there, etc. But if I had­n’t done that, I would­n’t be the per­son I am today, and I would­n’t have received an email from a teacher that brought me to tears.
I’m going to try to do bet­ter for my own kids and oth­er young peo­ple I inter­act with, and I hope you’ll com­mit to try­ing to sup­port the young change­mak­ers in your life as well. Let’s val­ue their ideas and inten­tions for what they are, and let go of our expec­ta­tions or con­cerns over the results. I have no doubt that, giv­en the right encour­age­ment, they are all the types who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. And we need each and every one of them to try.

EMMANUEL’S DREAM is available for pre-order!

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EMMANUEL'S DREAM cover

EMMANUEL'S DREAM cover
 
My first pic­ture book, EMMANUEL’S DREAM, will be pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, but it’s avail­able for pre-order now!
Here’s the descrip­tion from the pub­lish­er’s web page:

Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah’s inspir­ing true story—which was turned into a film, Emmanuel’s Gift, nar­rat­ed by Oprah Winfrey—is noth­ing short of remarkable.
Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dis­missed by most people—but not by his moth­er, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soc­cer, left home at age thir­teen to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, became a cyclist. He rode an aston­ish­ing four hun­dred miles across Ghana in 2001, spread­ing his pow­er­ful mes­sage: dis­abil­i­ty is not inabil­i­ty. Today, Emmanuel con­tin­ues to work on behalf of the disabled.
Thomp­son’s lyri­cal prose and Quall­s’s bold col­lage illus­tra­tions offer a pow­er­ful cel­e­bra­tion of tri­umph­ing over adversity.

To order your copy from an inde­pen­dent book­seller, vis­it Secret Gar­den Book­shop (if you add your per­son­al­iza­tion request in the com­ments sec­tion, I’ll sign it for you!) or check out IndieBound for a local book­store near you. Of course, you can also find it on Amazon.com or BN.com.
And, of course, you can always add it to your Goodreads shelf:

Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah


Changemakers in the classroom

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I’ve been huge­ly grat­i­fied by the respons­es I’ve got­ten from teach­ers around the coun­try about using BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS in their class­rooms. The very first of these was a love­ly 8th-grade ELA teacher from a pri­vate Catholic school in Louisiana. She reached out to me before the book was even released, and let me tell you, her enthu­si­asm was a much-appre­ci­at­ed sooth­ing balm for all of my pre-release jitters!
She is using the book for her stu­dents’ “20% projects,” an idea adapt­ed from the cor­po­rate world where com­pa­nies allow employ­ees to spend 20% of their time work­ing on a pet project that inter­ests them. They’ll be using the books through­out the school year to choose self-direct­ed projects and bring them to life. Isn’t that excit­ing? I sure think so!

8th graders in class 1 with their new books
8th graders in class 1 with their new books

As part of her cur­ricu­lum, she was able to pur­chase a copy of the book for each and every one of the stu­dents, and she even got them per­son­al­ized! It was a huge pile of books for me to sign, and such an incred­i­ble hon­or for me to write each stu­den­t’s name in his or her own book.
8th graders in class 1 with their new books
8th graders in class 2 with their new books

These pic­tures are from the day she hand­ed the books out to all of the stu­dents. I hope you enjoy see­ing them as much as I do!
The stu­dents also watched a video I made for them to help kick off their project. I post­ed about that video ear­li­er this week. Check it out here if you missed it.
I can’t wait to hear about these stu­dents’ ideas and fol­low their progress through­out the school year. I’ll post updates here as I get them so you can fol­low along, too.
I love hear­ing about young peo­ple using the book, whether on their own or through a class or oth­er orga­ni­za­tion, so if you’re using (or think­ing about using) BE A CHANGEMAKER on your own or with your stu­dents, scouts, chil­dren, youth group, etc., please let me know! My email address is at the bot­tom of this page, or you can reach out on my Face­book author page or on Twit­ter.

Be a Changemaker introduction video

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To my delight, I’ve had sev­er­al teach­ers con­tact me about speak­ing to their stu­dents at the kick­off of a unit using Be a Change­mak­er in their class­rooms. While I’m always thrilled to do a quick, live Skype call if the tim­ing and per­mis­sions work out, so far it’s been eas­i­er for every­one if there’s a pre-made video that they can just have pre­loaded and ready to go.
So, here’s an infor­mal “hel­lo” video that any­one can use to intro­duce me and my how-to book for teens, Be a Change­mak­er. Enjoy!

It’s PiBoIdMo time!

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Novem­ber is here, and that means it’s time for Pic­ture Book Idea Month. So far, I’m two for two: woohoo!
PiBoIdMo 2014 banner
Remem­ber the Howdy Doo­dy theme song? Did you ever notice how PiBoId­Mo has the same num­ber of syl­la­bles as “Howdy Doo­dy?” Now that I’ve noticed, I can’t get it out of my head. So, I thought I’d share my lit­tle ear­worm with you here:

It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
Tara and her great crew
Wish PiBoIds to you.
Let’s give a rous­ing cheer,
Cause PiBoId­Mo’s here,
It’s time for books to grow,
So here we go!

I love PiBoId­Mo. Some­times it’s a strug­gle to come up with ideas (okay, most times), oth­er times they seem to flow faster than I can write them down (okay, rarely, but when it does it’s awe­some!). Either way, it feels good to have those ideas tucked safe­ly inside my note­book, ready to blos­som when giv­en a chance.
And yes, even non­fic­tion writ­ers (like me!) can par­tic­i­pate in PiBoId­Mo! Christy Peter­son has a great blog post on how to do that. I rec­om­mend read­ing it here (even if you write fic­tion!). I usu­al­ly come up with about half non­fic­tion ideas and half fic­tion ideas, and I use all of the meth­ods Christy men­tions in her post.

sample Fiction Magic card
sam­ple Fic­tion Mag­ic card

This year I’ll also be using a new tool that just arrived (per­fect tim­ing!). My friend Deb Lund is a tal­ent­ed author, teacher, and cre­ativ­i­ty coach. She’s made a deck of cards, called Fic­tion Mag­ic, which fea­tures prompts to inspire writ­ers as well as a handy guide­book on how to use them. I drew one card today, played around with it for a while, and voila… I had two new ideas! You can get your own set of Fic­tion Mag­ic cards here.
I prob­a­bly should­n’t be doing PiBoId­Mo at all this year. I have too many projects call­ing to me at the moment, and the last thing I need right now is more ideas! But, PiBoId­Mo is about so much more than the ideas for me. It’s about cre­ativ­i­ty, play­ful­ness, free­dom, and fun, and every year I end up redis­cov­er­ing why I decid­ed to write for chil­dren in the first place. In those ways, it’s good for my career. PiBoId­Mo also reminds me to look at the world through a lens of dis­cov­ery and curios­i­ty, won­der, grat­i­tude, and empa­thy. In those ways, it’s good for my soul.
I may not love all of the ideas I come up with dur­ing PiBoId­Mo, but I love what PiBoId­Mo does for me. If you want to write pic­ture books, I hope you’ll give it a try, too! You can reg­is­ter through Novem­ber 7th at this link.

Interview: Chris Barton, author

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On Mon­day, I reviewed a new alpha­bet book, ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE!: A GAMER’S ALPHABET, writ­ten by Chris Bar­ton and illus­trat­ed by Joey Spi­ot­to. Today, I’m thrilled to intro­duce you to Chris!

Chris Barton head shot
Chris Bar­ton

Chris was kind enough to answer a few of my ques­tions about writ­ing ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE! Read on for the interview:
LT: I have a sort of love-hate rela­tion­ship with video games. I enjoy play­ing them, but have to watch my ten­den­cy to get obses­sive. I sus­pect my growth is per­ma­nent­ly stunt­ed from spend­ing my teen years play­ing Cav­erns of Mars on my Atari when I should’ve sleep­ing. In col­lege, I could spend whole week­ends play­ing Civ­i­liza­tion. Now, I strug­gle not to play too much soli­taire, Can­dy Crush, or Tick­et to Ride, and I have to mon­i­tor what my kids are play­ing and how much time they’re spend­ing at it, as well. 
LT: Tell me about your own video gam­ing expe­ri­ence, past and present. What kinds of games do you like to play? How has your game-play­ing changed over time? 
CB: Hon­est­ly, there’s a lot more to say about my past expe­ri­ence than my present expe­ri­ence — and, even then, there’s not a huge amount. Gam­ing has nev­er been as big a part of my life as it is in the lives of my kids.
CB: But I do have some vivid mem­o­ries from when I was grow­ing up: of my great-aunt and ‑uncle giv­ing my broth­er and me Pong one Christ­mas, and of us hook­ing that up to the black-and-white TV in his room; of cel­e­brat­ing the 12th birth­day of my friend Ty (to whom Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! is ded­i­cat­ed) by play­ing a lot of Ms. Pac-Man at Mal­ibu Grand Prix and then going to see Tron in a the­ater; of final­ly mov­ing up from Pong by buy­ing Ty’s Intel­livi­sion con­sole, on which I espe­cial­ly loved play­ing Pit­fall!; and of the thrill of play­ing Spy Hunter at the Aladdin’s Cas­tle arcade when­ev­er I got to go the mall 80 miles from my hometown.
CB: I still real­ly enjoy play­ing arcade games — that over­all sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence is a sure­fire way to bring out the 13-year-old in me. Being big fans of the Bea­t­les, Jen­ny and our kids and I love play­ing Bea­t­les Rock Band togeth­er on our Wii. And I high­ly, high­ly rec­om­mend the game Gone Home, a first-per­son game in which you’re a col­lege stu­dent return­ing from a year abroad only to dis­cov­er that all sorts of things are not right at the house your fam­i­ly moved into dur­ing your time away. Recent­ly I was strug­gling to remem­ber the name of the YA nov­el I had read that got me all choked up at the very end, but then I real­ized it had­n’t been a nov­el at all. It had been Gone Home.
CB: I would undoubt­ed­ly spend more time play­ing games — and watch­ing TV, and going to the movies — if it weren’t for all these books I’d like to write. I can’t do it all.
LT: Yes! That’s what keeps me off of them, too… most of the time.
LT: What was your favorite part of A!B!CC! to research and/or write?
CB: Oh, it was def­i­nite­ly the page at the end where I use all 26 gam­ing terms in a sin­gle sen­tence. Fig­ur­ing out how to do that was not only a fun puz­zle to solve, but also a good test of how well I knew my ter­mi­nol­o­gy. I sus­pect that page will also be my favorite part of the book to read aloud, though I’m going to need a big­ger set of lungs if I’m ever to get through it in a sin­gle breath.
LT: That’s funny–I would’ve expect­ed you to say that was the hard­est! It was indeed impres­sive. What, then, was the hard­est part of the book to research and/or write?
CB: “I is for Instance,” by far. The usu­al sus­pects in an alpha­bet book — Q, X, Z — weren’t all that chal­leng­ing. But “I” had sur­pris­ing­ly few terms that seemed like great can­di­dates, espe­cial­ly since I avoid­ed brand names or names of spe­cif­ic games or char­ac­ters. I was hap­py to include “Instance,” as I think it’s an impor­tant con­cept for under­stand­ing why your screen isn’t over­run by oth­er avatars when you’re play­ing a mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online game, but get­ting the def­i­n­i­tion just right — cor­rect, yet easy to under­stand — took a lot of effort.
LT: Inter­est­ing! It cer­tain­ly would­n’t seem like “I” would be one of the tricky let­ters. I can see how instance would be a tricky one to explain, though, and you’re right about it being an impor­tant con­cept. Great choice!
LT: Were there any sur­pris­es along the way?
CB: Sure. I began the project with a desire to show some of the rich­ness and depth and breadth of gam­ing cul­ture and his­to­ry. But I was still tak­en aback by the pas­sion and thought­ful­ness and sin­cer­i­ty of oth­er writ­ers, com­men­ta­tors, and gam­ing pro­fes­sion­als who have ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to this field far more exten­sive­ly than I have. And I’ve been espe­cial­ly intrigued by the cur­rent par­al­lels between the gam­ing and chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture worlds as both strive to make them­selves more diverse and inclu­sive, to allow more par­tic­i­pants and con­sumers from more back­grounds to take part in these fields and rec­og­nize them­selves in the work that’s created.
LT: I’ve noticed those par­al­lels, too, and it’s def­i­nite­ly a good thing. 
LT: One last ques­tion… I think every book teach­es us some­thing new, about the world, about our­selves, or about the craft of writ­ing. What have you learned as a result of writ­ing this book?
CB: I’ve got a new appre­ci­a­tion for what a great tool an alpha­bet book can be for orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion about a top­ic, and for explor­ing a top­ic beyond what you’re already famil­iar with. It’s a for­mat that forces you to dig deeply and employ some cre­ative research skills and weigh why one con­cept might be more impor­tant to include than anoth­er. I’d rec­om­mend that oth­er writ­ers of all ages give it a try. I myself expect that I’ll return to this approach soon­er or later.
LT: Great advice! And I look for­ward to see­ing what you do with it next time. 
LT: Thanks for stop­ping by and shar­ing your thoughts, Chris. I had a great time, and I wish you the best of luck with ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE!

Review: ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE! by Chris Barton

by
Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! coverATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE!
writ­ten by Chris Bar­ton, illus­trat­ed by Joey Spi­ot­to
pub­lished by POW! Kids Books, Octo­ber 2014
32 pages

From the pub­lish­er’s web page:

An iron­ic yet infor­ma­tive alpha­bet that defines the most impor­tant gam­ing terms that every­one needs to know, Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alpha­bet is the ulti­mate crossover gift for our age, a book that can actu­al­ly bring togeth­er video game-obsessed kids and their often per­plexed parents.
If you can deci­pher the fol­low­ing sen­tence, you don’t need this book: “This open beta game is in third-per­son but first-per­son is unlock­able if you know the cheat code or install your own mod, but either way, for the best attack on the boss on this lev­el, try to grab that power-up!”
— See more at: http://powkidsbooks.com/attack-boss-cheat-code-a-gamers-alphabet/#sthash.sLnYcu9z.dpuf

Okay, I know I’m show­ing my geeky gamer girl side, but I love, love, love this book, and I think today’s young (and not-so-young) read­ers will, too!
It’s an alpha­bet book, of course, which means the infor­ma­tion is orga­nized by let­ter. With­in that con­straint, Bar­ton some­how man­ages to work in a whole bunch of key con­cepts nec­es­sary to under­stand­ing video games. Some are expect­ed, such as “boss.” Oth­ers are more sur­pris­ing, like “instance.” In either case, read­ers will love see­ing the terms they’re more famil­iar with from the games they love play­ing, as well as the terms they’re less famil­iar with but may have run across in con­ver­sa­tions with friends. I’ve played a fair amount of video games in my life­time, and I was still very pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to learn a few new terms myself!
The art­work is bright and fun and helps illus­trate the con­cepts well. The illus­tra­tor tips a nos­tal­gic hat to old­er games that more grownup read­ers will appre­ci­ate, while at the same time ref­er­enc­ing enough cur­rent faves to delight younger gamers.
Check this one out, and then come back on Wednes­day for my inter­view with the author, Chris Bar­ton!
 
Facts First! Nonfiction Monday
(Dis­claimer: The review copy was won by the blog­ger as part of a pro­mo­tion­al giveaway.)

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