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Laurie Ann Thompson

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Save Bookstores Day haul post: fun nonfiction for kids

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We had an all too rare sun­ny sum­mer day yes­ter­day, so the fam­i­ly and I walked to the library (most­ly to drop off oodles of books), and then we went shop­ping at our local inde­pen­dend book­store in hon­or of Save Book­stores Day. My daugh­ter was con­sumed by a book we had just bought at the Friends of the Library used book­store (hope­ful­ly that counts–save libraries, too!). My hus­band was con­sumed by after­noon nap and sun­shine. So, the two of them sat out­side togeth­er in the sun doing their things while the boy and I went into Uni­ver­si­ty Book Store. I love hang­ing out in there. They have a great chil­dren’s department!

After much delib­er­a­tion (the boy is deci­sion-impaired), we set­tled first on:

Physics: Why Mat­ter Mat­ters by Dan Green and Simon Bash­er.

This non­fic­tion series pub­lished by King­fish­er (called the Bash­er series, after the com­mon illus­tra­tor and cre­ator) includes top­ics in sci­ence, math, the arts, and lan­guage arts, and each one we add to our col­lec­tion holds both kids enthralled. Each one is a paper “Face­book” of what’s what in the giv­en sub­ject, treat­ing each top­ic as a char­ac­ter and list­ing its behav­ior and vital sta­tis­tics. They’re per­fect for boys, because they feel like those game cards (Poke­man, Bak­a­gan, Yu-Gi-Oh, and what­ev­er else) with the stats, short descrip­tions, and fun art. They’re per­fect for girls because they make abstract con­cepts char­ac­ters, and sud­den­ly we care about them (stereo­typ­i­cal, I know, but it sure works for my daugh­ter and me). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed! I know our fam­i­ly will be buy­ing many more.

Then, he picked out:

Myth­i­cal Crea­tures by James Harpur and Stu­art Mar­tin.

This one is sim­i­lar in feel to the ‑olo­gy books from Can­dlewick, which he loves. A hit, and no night­mares. Yay!

Can I just pause to say how proud I am of my non­fic­tion-lov­ing boy? *smile*

Final­ly, I bought myself this nifty shirt:


I think it’ll be per­fect to where to KidL­it­Con in Sep­tem­ber, which I’m already signed up for. Are you?
The kids were too busy read­ing to walk back home again with­out face-plant­i­ng some­where along the way, so we all hopped on the bus back home.
Did you make it out for Save Book­stores Day? What did you buy?

SCBWI Western Washington’s 2011 conference wrap-up: part 2

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I did­n’t think SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton’s 2011 con­fer­ence could get any bet­ter than it was on Sat­ur­day, but yes, it could! Sun­day start­ed a lit­tle lat­er (thank good­ness, after all that danc­ing!). On Sun­day, April 17, we start­ed out by cel­e­brat­ing our awe­some­ly tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed advi­so­ry com­mit­tee. And they cel­e­brat­ed us with a great big sur­prise presentation!

Copy­right Dana Sullivan

Before we even had time to see what good­ies they put togeth­er for us, we jumped right into gear with Dan San­tat’s keynote. He not only gave a peek into the tra­jec­to­ry of his career so far (and trust me, it’s only going up, folks!), but he showed us that he, too, is indeed human. He made him­self cry by show­ing us a pic­ture of why he works so hard (his fam­i­ly), and he took the rest of us right along with him. 400 peo­ple want­ed to give Dan a hug, but I think most of us set­tled for buy­ing his books and becom­ing life­long fans.
The local suc­cess sto­ry pan­el is always one of my favorites because 1) I usu­al­ly know most of the peo­ple of the pan­el and love cel­e­brat­ing their suc­cess­es, and 2) the sto­ries are always so inspir­ing and leave us all feel­ing that some­day, if we keep work­ing hard, we could be up there telling our sto­ries (about our sto­ries). This year’s panel–featuring Car­ole Dagg, Cari­dad Fer­rer, Liz Mills, Craig Orback, Wendy Wah­man, Jesse Joshua Wat­son, and Jim Whit­ing–did not dis­ap­point! From the 14-year labor-of-love per­son­al-his­to­ry nov­el to the 90-day start-to-fin­ish top­i­cal and time­ly pic­ture book (writ­ten AND illus­trat­ed by the same per­son!), these folks were all full of exam­ples of the rewards that come from hard work and dedication.

Copy­right Dana Sullivan

Dur­ing lunch I final­ly had a chance to peek at the good­ies from AdCom–HUGE MISTAKE! They had all writ­ten per­son­al notes and mes­sages inside the card (see awe­some pic­ture of the card front, above), and I total­ly teared up, again! We have such a great team, and I’m so thank­ful to work with each and every one of them. For them to go all out to thank ME reduced me to a blub­ber­ing mess. I final­ly pulled myself togeth­er enough to return to the ball­room, where I watched our awe­some Assis­tant Region­al Advi­sor, Kim­ber­ly Bak­er, open the thank you gift we got her. She burst into tears, so yeah, there I went AGAIN. Then, our Pub­lished Pro Liai­son, Sara East­er­ly, pre­sent­ed our region’s first ever Life­time Achieve­ment Award to Peg­gy King Ander­son. You can read Peg­gy’s take on it here, but we all know and love Peg­gy, so–yep, you guessed it–MORE tears!

Thank good­ness the after­noon was jam-packed with infor­ma­tion! First I went to Jim Whit­ing’s talk on Non­fic­tion Hooks. He had oodles of exam­ples of revis­ing to hook the write audience–with hand­outs! Then Jesse Joshua Wat­son talked about Writ­ing for Change, with the inspir­ing sto­ry about how his book HOPE FOR HAITI came to be and orga­ni­za­tions he has part­nered with since (okay, I got a lit­tle teary here, too). Final­ly, the last break­out of the day for me was about authen­tic­i­ty, pre­sent­ed by agent Mari­et­ta Zack­er. Mari­et­ta gave a bril­liant talk illus­trat­ing the need to be absolute­ly true to your­self while still per­fect­ly address­ing your audi­ence (yep, misty-eyed, sigh).
The rest, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is a bit of a blur. But I know I end­ed the day on a total high–even before the foot mas­sage and cocktails. 😉

Teaching Social Issues in Elementary School

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In my most recent issue of Social Stud­ies and the Young Learn­er (Vol­ume 23, Num­ber 4, March/April 2011) from the Nation­al Coun­cil for the Social Stud­ies, there’s a brief arti­cle enti­tled “The Uncom­pro­mised Cur­ricu­lum: Videos of Teach­ers Teach­ing Social Jus­tice Issues,” by Deb­bie Sonu. Deb­bie talks a bit about how dif­fi­cult it for today’s teach­ers to include social jus­tice lessons despite nar­row, test-focused cur­ricu­lums. She took videos of three of these deter­mined teach­ers in action, and they are noth­ing short of inspiring.
Watch the videos here.
These are class­rooms I would’ve loved to be in as a child (heck, I’d love to be in them now!), and you can see how engaged the kids are with the dif­fer­ent top­ics. What I love most about all three of these approach­es is the respect each of the teach­ers has for her stu­dents. In the first, the teacher tells her fifth graders that it’s okay to let their dis­cus­sions wan­der where they will and not stick to the pre­pared ques­tion list. In the sec­ond, the teacher tells her first graders they are not ask­ing first grade ques­tions, they are ask­ing col­lege ques­tions. And in the third, the teacher asserts that all children–gifted or not–have the abil­i­ty, and in fact the need, to dis­cuss these kinds of issues.
Kudos to these teach­ers, and to Deb­bie Sonu for shar­ing them with us!

Do good by reading good YA: WHAT YOU WISH FOR

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I just pre-ordered my copy of WHAT YOU WISH FOR: A BOOK FOR DARFUR, and I am so look­ing for­ward to read­ing it.
Com­ing from Pen­guin Group’s G.P. Putnam’s Sons in Sep­tem­ber, 2011, the book is a col­lec­tion of YA poet­ry and short sto­ries writ­ten by var­i­ous authors, includ­ing Cor­nelia Funke, Meg Cabot, R. L. Stine, John Green, Ann M. Mar­tin, Alexan­der McCall Smith, Cyn­thia Voigt, Karen Hesse, Joyce Car­ol Oates, Nik­ki Gio­van­ni, Jane Yolen, Nate Pow­ell, Gary Soto, Jeanne DuPrau, Fran­cis­co X. Stork, Mar­i­lyn Nel­son, Nao­mi Shi­hab Nye, and Sofia Quin­tero.
Prof­its from the book sales will be donat­ed to the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion for Refugees (UNHCR), an orga­ni­za­tion build­ing libraries in Dar­fur refugee camps in Chad.
Read more here or pre-order your own copy here.

Fans of FARTISTE

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Fartiste book cover
I’m a huge fan of Kath­leen Krull’s non­fic­tion books for kids, so I was sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed to read her recent arti­cle in the Horn Book about the dif­fi­cul­ties she and her hus­band have had sell­ing their book FARTISTE! I would’ve thought a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy about a per­former who enter­tained audi­ences with his mas­tery of the art of the fart would be an easy sell, to a pub­lish­er AND on the book­store shelves! Does­n’t it sound like the per­fect idea for a kids book?
Here’s a case in point. Yes­ter­day, my son was hav­ing a bad day. I took him to the library because he said there was a book there that he want­ed. He walked straight to an emp­ty table in the children’s area and burst into tears. Come to find out, the book he want­ed had been lay­ing out on a table the last time we were in the library together—2 weeks ago—and now, to his sur­prise and great dis­ap­point­ment, it was gone. He didn’t remem­ber what book it was, and couldn’t tell me any­thing about it, except how heart­bro­ken he was and how no oth­er book in the whole library would do.
I walked over to the shelf, grabbed a copy of FARTISTE (which was on my mind because I’d just read the Horn Book arti­cle and was still mulling over my own afore­men­tioned sur­prise and dis­ap­point­ment), and hand­ed it to my sob­bing, incon­solable boy. “What’s this?” he asked skep­ti­cal­ly, stick­ing out his bot­tom lip. I told him. Curi­ous, he opened it up and read the first page. Engaged, he sank down to sit criss-cross in the floor in the mid­dle of the aisle. 15 min­utes or so lat­er, a per­fect­ly com­posed boy closed the book and said, “Thanks, Mom. That was a great book. Let’s take it home.” And he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the check­out counter.
So, thank you, Kath­leen, for the Horn Book arti­cle. And a big thank you, Kath­leen and Paul, from both of us, for stick­ing with FARTISTE. You have fans!

6 Lessons Learned from Doing the Picture Book Marathon

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Pic­ture Book Marathon 2011 Logo, by Nathan Hale

I did it. I wrote 26 brand-new pic­ture-book texts in the 28 days of Feb­ru­ary! Now that I’ve had some time to relax and reflect, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the experience.

I start­ed out with great gus­to, then stum­bled in the mid­dle and took a bunch of days off, but man­aged to sprint to the fin­ish to make up for lost time. I fin­ished the last one with exact­ly 12 min­utes to spare before the clock struck mid­night on the very last day. Talk about close. But, still, I did it!

And I am so glad I took on this chal­lenge. Not only do I have 26 bright, shiny new man­u­scripts (sev­er­al of which have real poten­tial right out of the gate), but I learned some much-need­ed lessons along the way. I’d thought I’d doc­u­ment there here for any­one think­ing about doing the chal­lenge, for any­one think­ing about writ­ing pic­ture books, or for my future self when­ev­er I need a reminder!

5 Lessons I Learned From the Pic­ture Book Marathon:

  • PB Marathon Les­son #1: When I set my mind to it, I can be a LOT more pro­duc­tive than I thought I could. I was find­ing stolen moments in the pick-up line at school, while wait­ing for kids to get out of lessons, scrib­bling on receipts at stop­lights, etc. I dis­cov­ered I have been wast­ing a lot of time on things like self-doubt, think­ing I need­ed a big chunk of unin­ter­rupt­ed time to write, or try­ing to fig­ure out the whole sto­ry before I start­ed writ­ing. I wrote more in this one month than I have in the past year. Yes, I was most­ly work­ing on revi­sions, but still–yipes! We need to keep the cre­ative wheels turn­ing, even when we’re focus­ing on more ana­lyt­i­cal tasks. This has unex­pect­ed ben­e­fits, like…
  • PB Marathon Les­son #2: Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty begets pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and pro­cras­ti­na­tion begets pro­cras­ti­na­tion. The more I wrote, the more I felt like writ­ing, AND it car­ried over into oth­er things as well. I man­aged to get some long-stand­ing to-do’s around the house done, sim­ply because I felt so super­charged about get­ting my books writ­ten! Typ­i­cal­ly I would­n’t let myself tack­le those kinds of chores, because I always felt like I should be writ­ing instead. But I often did­n’t do the writ­ing because it was so easy to get dis­tract­ed by lit­tle to-do’s and inter­rup­tions. So, every­thing would stag­nate. Now that I learned #1, it’s much eas­i­er to avoid the down­ward spi­ral of #2.
  • PB Marathon Les­son #3: As pro­duc­tive and ener­giz­ing as that month was, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber to recharge! I think I crashed in the mid­dle because I was writ­ing every day. It was fine on week­days, but on the week­ends I real­ly need­ed to get away from my com­put­er and play. Doing that and then feel­ing behind and rush­ing to catch up was­n’t help­ful either. So, out­side of the chal­lenge, I’ll try to be pro­duc­tive every week­day, and I’ll reserve the week­ends for rest­ing, read­ing, and spend­ing time with family.
  • PB Marathon Les­son #4: Writ­ing fast and short is the best way to cut to the heart of the sto­ry. I tend to over­think book ideas before I ever get to writ­ing the first word. And, if I do start writ­ing, I tend to be research dri­ven and over­ly wordy (which is the kiss of death for pic­ture books!). So, my first drafts usu­al­ly read like real­ly bad ency­clo­pe­dia entries, and then I spend all my revi­sion efforts try­ing to resus­ci­tate them and bring back the life that inspired me to write about them in the first place. The marathon forced me to just get it out there in all its pas­sion­ate chaos. It’s much eas­i­er, and more suc­cess­ful, to start with a strong heart and add the nec­es­sary limbs lat­er than it is to start with a bunch of limbs and try to find a place for the heart! The PB Marathon allowed me to final­ly get to the core of some big ideas I’ve been think­ing about for years but did­n’t know how to con­tain. I think this approach would also help me with longer projects, as a sort of outline/synopsis/summary to keep me on track as I flesh out the details.
  • PB Marathon Les­son #5: I need to work on end­ings! If I could work a cir­cu­lar end­ing, great. If not, though, all of my end­ings felt either rushed or drawn out or just plain trite and stu­pid. Clear­ly, I need some work here! So, I’m going to be launch­ing a major self-edu­ca­tion unit, study­ing the best of the best pic­ture books and their end­ings. Maybe I’ll post my dis­cov­er­ies here someday.
  • PB Marathon Les­son #6: Final­ly, the biggest, most impor­tant les­son learned: Despite my weak­ness with end­ings, I don’t total­ly suck! Okay, so not all of the 26 are going to end up on any­body’s award list (or even book­shelf), but that’s no sur­prise to anyone–least of all me. What I was­n’t expect­ing was to find a hand­ful of real gems. There are sev­er­al man­u­scripts in the pile that I love, can’t wait to revise, and know I will hap­pi­ly and con­fi­dent­ly sub­mit in the not-too-dis­tant future. And there are quite a few oth­ers that are, at the very least, a good idea worth pur­su­ing to see if I can devel­op it into some­thing sol­id. Very pleas­ant sur­pris­es indeed, and great con­fi­dence boost­ers besides.

After all those valu­able lessons, I would’ve felt like a win­ner even if I had­n’t com­plet­ed the 26 man­u­scripts. The whole expe­ri­ence was def­i­nite­ly worth­while for me. To my friends and fam­i­ly, thank you for the encour­age­ment and cama­raderie: they were a huge help, and I am extreme­ly grate­ful for your sup­port! To my amaz­ing and won­der­ful cri­tique group, thanks for wel­com­ing the del­uge of new man­u­scripts com­ing your way! And to those of you con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenge, DO IT! And let me know what YOU learn. 🙂

February 26th is National Fairy Tale Day!

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I love fairy tales. My hus­band loves fairy tales (thanks to him we own an almost com­plete set of the Pan­theon Fairy Tale and Folk­lore Library!). And of course, my kids love fairy tales. Who doesn’t?

Old pho­tos of Snow White and one of her dwarfs—Hungry, maybe?

While search­ing for ideas for this mon­th’s Pic­ture Book Marathon, I’ve been read­ing more fairy tales and folk­tales than I nor­mal­ly do. And I’ve been lov­ing every minute of it!
Imag­ine my sur­prise when I dis­cov­ered the Feb­ru­ary 26th is Nation­al Fairy Tale Day! I can’t find an offi­cial source for that, but oth­er peo­ple seem to cel­e­brate it, so why not? I’ll take any excuse to share some of my new­ly dis­cov­ered favorites with the kids at bed­time tonight, or maybe I’ll even read them some of the retellings I’ve writ­ten this month. 🙂
Look­ing for more fairy tale facts or fun? Here are some resources I’ve found:

  • SurLaLune is THE place to start research­ing fairy tales on the web. It fea­tures 49 anno­tat­ed fairy tales, includ­ing their his­to­ries, sim­i­lar tales across cul­tures, mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions and over 1,500 illus­tra­tions. Wow!
  • Here’s a great old post writ­ten by Han­nah Boyd about Why Fairy Tales Mat­ter.

“[Fairy tales] work through so many per­son­al and cul­tur­al anx­i­eties, yet they do it in a safe, ‘once upon a time’ way,” says Maria Tatar, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Col­lege who writes about, and teach­es class­es on, fairy tales. “Fairy tales have a real role in lib­er­at­ing the imag­i­na­tion of chil­dren. No mat­ter how vio­lent they are, the pro­tag­o­nist always survives.”

I’d rather just read and enjoy (and write!) them, though. Two of my favorites have always been The Ugly Duck­ling and Puss in Boots. I guess I’ve always been a suck­er for a good under­dog story.
What are your favorites, and why?

p.s. Feb­ru­ary is also Nation­al Love Your Library Month. Why not head to your local library and pick up some fairy tales to enjoy with some­one spe­cial tonight?

Oodles of story ideas!

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Pic­ture Book Marathon 2011 Logo, by Nathan Hale

I’m behind on the Pic­ture Book Marathon and have some seri­ous catch­ing up to do, so I’m going to make this short, but thanks to this Pic­ture Book Marathon blog post, I dis­cov­ered some great new sto­ry idea resources that I just have to share!
Author Rick Wal­ton has some great tips for com­ing up with sto­ry ideas here. He lists a bunch of dif­fer­ent ways you might get start­ed with a sto­ry. For exam­ple, choose a char­ac­ter, a quest, or even just a phrase–just about any­thing that comes to mind–then fol­low it, and see where it goes.
To help with that, he’s also com­piled lots and lots of amaz­ing brain­storm­ing lists for chil­dren’s book writ­ers, which you can find here. A few of my favorites include:

If you can’t find some sto­ry ideas in there some­where, you might want to try a new career. Maybe brick lay­ing or air traf­fic con­trol? (Oh wait, that’s what MY high school apti­tude test said I should do. I guess you’re on your own.)

Picture Book Marathon–Day 14

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hearts

hearts
Last month, I blogged that I was going to to do two big chal­lenges: the pic­ture book marathon and the Word­Press PostAWeek. I’ve pret­ty much been keep­ing up with the Word­Press PostAWeek chal­lenge. I think I’ve put up some good posts so far, but I’m still a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed with the results. I was hop­ing to get a lit­tle more inspired, get a lot more into the flow of reg­u­lar blog­ging, and get more com­fort­able shar­ing more about what I’m learn­ing and doing. Per­haps that will come in time. After all, I’ve been fair­ly well con­sumed by the Pic­ture Book Marathon all this month, too!
The PB Marathon is a chal­lenge “dur­ing which children’s writ­ers com­pose one pic­ture book each day until they have writ­ten 26 pic­ture books.” Today is day 14, and I’m pleased to say I’m half way there! So far, I’ve writ­ten 13 brand-new pic­ture books includ­ing every­thing from non­fic­tion sci­ence and biogra­phies to pure­ly fic­tion­al goofi­ness to tra­di­tion­al folk­tale retellings. It’s been a lot of work, but I have def­i­nite­ly learned that I can com­mit to a dai­ly writ­ing prac­tice. (Well, Mon­day through Fri­day, any­way. Week­ends have been near­ly impos­si­ble!) I’ve also been pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the results. I was expect­ing per­haps two out of 26 to be worth pur­su­ing, but so far, I think maybe there are only about two that should prob­a­bly just be delet­ed right now. Some are bet­ter than oth­ers, of course, but I think most of them do have the poten­tial to be devel­oped into some­thing inter­est­ing. And since I like doing revi­sion much bet­ter than writ­ing first drafts, I’ll be set for quite some time (although I am def­i­nite­ly going to con­tin­ue with some type of new writ­ing work every day—just not a whole book)!
So, Feb­ru­ary is half over. And 2011 is look­ing to be a very pro­duc­tive year. Over the hump and on down the oth­er side!

I’m off to NYC for #NY11SCBWI!

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I have to admit, I’m a lit­tle more ner­vous about attend­ing the SCBWI con­fer­ence in NY this year. Yes, they’re going to have great speak­ers (Lois Lowry! Jane Yolen! R. L. Stine! Mo Willems! and plen­ty of oth­er won­der­ful peo­ple!). And yes, there will be agents, edi­tors, and pub­lish­ers there. But I’ve got­ten fair­ly used to that by going to so many great SCBWI events over the last few years.  No, that’s not why I’m nervous.
I’m ner­vous because NYC has been called “the bed­bug cap­i­tal of the world.”

I guess that’s sup­posed to be me, although the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed Dana Sul­li­van must have missed my tweet about pack­ing to stay warm and only wear­ing com­fort­able shoes this trip (sor­ry NYC fash­ion­istas, but it’s not like I had a chance any­way). And a mar­ti­ni? Per­haps he also does­n’t know I’m more of a Guin­ness-girl. At the very least, cock­tails should def­i­nite­ly not have veg­eta­bles in them. Besides that, though, Dana’s pure bril­liance. You can see more fun­ny things from him, or even sign up to receive one by email every week, here.
Any­way, I’ve got plas­tic bags for all my clothes, I plan to keep my suit­case and clothes off the floor at all times, and I WILL be check­ing the bed and room when I arrive. So, let’s hope the only new things I bring back home with me are books.
Wish me luck!

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