Oodles of story ideas!

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.)

Alchemy and Karen Cushman!

Oh, this is so much fun! Not only is there a brand-new book out from one of my all-time favorite authors, but I got to read an ear­ly copy (squeee!) and inter­view the author for my blog (huz­zah)!

First, let me gush a lit­tle about how much I enjoyed read­ing Alche­my and Meg­gy Swann. There’s an awful lot for read­ers of any age to love in this lit­tle book: from the open­ing scene where we start right in with action and a bit of a mys­tery, to the feisty but kind-heart­ed hero­ine, to the his­tor­i­cal rich­ness, to the won­der­ful array of cre­ative insults. It’s tru­ly got some­thing for every­one. If you’re not already a fan of Karen Cush­man, this book will sure­ly trans­form you into one. And now, let’s meet the alchemist herself—welcome, Karen!

LT: First, I love the par­al­lels between the father’s search for alchem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion and Meggy’s per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion. What made you start think­ing about alche­my as a book sub­ject, and was the par­al­lel planned from the outset?
KC: I found alche­my an intrigu­ing idea but did­n’t real­ly have an idea about how I’d use it in a book until I thought more about trans­for­ma­tion, about that very par­al­lel between alchem­i­cal and per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion.  I love how the ides of change works for both and how trans­for­ma­tion may not hap­pen exact­ly as they want­ed or expected.

 

LT: I think you real­ly gave us an accu­rate por­tray­al at what it’s like to feel dif­fer­ent and/or unwant­ed and the mis­guid­ed but all-too-com­mon defense mech­a­nism of push­ing peo­ple away before they can reject us, and it is these under­stand­able flaws that make Meg­gy such an inter­est­ing and uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing char­ac­ter. Did you know you were shoot­ing for that at the start, or did those aspects of char­ac­ter evolve nat­u­ral­ly as you wrote the story?
KC: Meg­gy start­ed out much sweet­er and more com­pli­ant but as I under­stood more about her and her strug­gles, I real­ized she prob­a­bly would not have respond­ed or act­ed in such under­stand­ing ways.  So, yes, those aspects of char­ac­ter evolved as I wrote the story.

 

LT: I find it fair­ly dif­fi­cult (but extreme­ly enter­tain­ing) to pic­ture you hurl­ing insults at any­one, but Meg­gy seems to have no trou­ble what­so­ev­er. How exact­ly did you come up with Meggy’s many inven­tive invectives?
KC: I found an invalu­able lit­tle book called Shake­speare’s Insults and bor­rowed some of those.  And there is a web­site called the Shake­speare­an Insult Kit (www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html) that allowed me to come up with intrigu­ing com­bi­na­tions.  It was great fun.

 

LT: I can tell you did a ton of research for this book. Do you think you’ll reuse any of it in future sto­ries? Will we see Meg­gy again? (I need to see her reunit­ed with her goose!)
KC: I had­n’t planned on a Meg­gy sequel but young read­ers have said they like the idea.  First I’d have to fin­ish a new book, Will Spar­row’s Road, where I will use a lot of what I learned about Eliz­a­bethan England.

 

LT: How about non­fic­tion? I’m a pri­mar­i­ly non­fic­tion writer who dab­bles in research-based fic­tion when some­thing I’m research­ing gets my imag­i­na­tion going. Have you ever or do you think you will ever dab­ble in non­fic­tion? You’ve cer­tain­ly got the research part down!
KC: So far it’s the “what if?” of sto­ries that has my atten­tion.  I love sit­ting in my chair and mak­ing things up.  But I dab­ble in non­fic­tion when I write my author’s notes.  The notes for Meg­gy Swann were espe­cial­ly fun to do.

 

LT: I love that you “like to write about gut­sy girls fig­ur­ing out who they are,” and I love gut­sy girls, even if some of us don’t get gut­sy or fig­ure out who we are until we’re actu­al­ly mid­dle-aged women (who, me?). Which real-life gut­sy girls (and women) have inspired you most?
KC: Some of my female heroes are Jane Addams of Chicago’s Hull House, the anthro­pol­o­gist Mar­garet Mead, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, and genius illus­tra­tor Tri­na Schart Hyman—all gut­sy girls.

 

LT: I’ve always said that I’ll feel like a suc­cess­ful writer when I receive one let­ter from a read­er say­ing that my book helped them in some way, and you’ve said that con­nect­ing with read­ers is what makes you feel proud­est of your work. What’s the best let­ter you’ve ever received from a reader?
KC: I got a won­der­ful let­ter that said, “I nev­er read one of your books but now that you’ve come to my school, I am con­sid­er­ing try­ing to read one.”  But I trea­sure the ones that say “I nev­er thought about that before but…” or “Since I read your book, I know there are oth­er peo­ple who feel like I do.”

 

LT: Alche­my and Meg­gy Swann, even more so than your oth­er books, I think, is a short­er book with more dif­fi­cult lan­guage. Was there ever any ques­tion, from you or your pub­lish­er, about audi­ence, age, and/or read­ing ability?
KC: No, I think Dinah, my edi­tor, thinks as I do that we should give young peo­ple more cred­it for their under­stand­ing. And I tried to use words that could be under­stood through con­text or ono­matopoeia.  It was great fun search­ing the­saurus­es and the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary.

 

LT: I love that answer and com­plete­ly share the belief that we should chal­lenge and believe in chil­dren rather than sell them short. Since you men­tioned Dinah, can you tell us what it’s like to work with the leg­endary Dinah Steven­son?
KC: Leg­endary?  Is Dinah old enough to be leg­endary?  I was assigned to work with Dinah when Clar­i­on bought my first book–an amaz­ing stroke of luck.  Dinah is a great edi­tor, intel­li­gent, insight­ful, and not at all pushy, and she makes my work much bet­ter and rich­er than it would be with­out her.  That does­n’t mean I don’t snarl and throw things when I get one of her famous 17-page edi­to­r­i­al let­ters, and I don’t fol­low every sug­ges­tion she makes but I do think about them care­ful­ly.  And she always reminds me it’s my book and I should write it my way.

 

LT: Age has noth­ing to do with it—only the esteem she’s earned with­in the indus­try! You’ve been very loy­al to Dinah and to Clar­i­on over the years (and I must admit that Clar­i­on is one of my dream pub­lish­ers!). They’re inter­est­ing because they’re a rather small imprint with a small list, but owned by a huge con­glom­er­ate. How do think this has helped or hurt you?
KC: I think Clar­i­on’s small size has meant there’s a small­er list and few­er oth­er authors.  I can have a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with every­one on the staff and feel they know me.  I like that.  And I’m sure the sup­port Clar­i­on gets from Houghton Mif­flin Har­court ben­e­fits me in ways I don’t even know.  So far I have felt no drawbacks.

 

LT: Final­ly, any advice for up-and-com­ing wanna-be’s?
KC: I tell most women who come to me for advice that they prob­a­bly are just too young yetI was fifty, after all, before I start­ed writ­ing.  Beyond that I rec­om­mend what most writ­ers dolots of read­ing, much writ­ing, cri­tique groups, and sup­port groups of like-mind­ed folks like the SCBWI.

 

LT: Phew, that’s good to knowI’ve got a few more years yet. What a relief! Thanks so much, Karen. As always, it was won­der­ful to talk with you, made even more so by hav­ing such a delight­ful book to discuss. 

 

 

** Dis­claimer: I received a free advance review copy of this book from the publisher.

Interview with Michael Bourret, agent

Michael Bour­ret is an agent with Dys­tel and Goderich, and recent­ly opened their brand-new West Coast office. I’ve heard Michael speak at a few of the nation­al SCBWI con­fer­ences, and it’s always a plea­sure. Don’t miss him at the SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton con­fer­ence this weekend!

L: Wel­come, Michael! Thanks so much for tak­ing the time to answer some ques­tions for me! Your var­i­ous bios and mar­ket list­ings say you accept all kinds of non­fic­tion, and I know you rep­re­sent adult non­fic­tion, but I don’t see any non­fic­tion for kids among your titles. Why is that? Please give us some insight on the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket from an agent’s perspective.
M: Thanks for hav­ing me, Lau­rie! And I’m excit­ed that you’re ask­ing about juve­nile non­fic­tion, and I’ll be real­ly hon­est: I don’t know much about it. It isn’t a cat­e­go­ry that I’ve pur­sued, aside from the amaz­ing pic­ture books of Anne Rockwell’s. I think that juve­nile non­fic­tion has most­ly been left to the aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ers, in part because it isn’t as glam­orous as nov­els. But that may well be chang­ing, as is the very def­i­n­i­tion of cat­e­go­ry. I’m see­ing a lot more inno­va­tion and a new approach, includ­ing more mem­oir and oth­er nar­ra­tive nonfiction.
L: Sev­er­al children’s non­fic­tion titles received quite a lot of atten­tion this year, espe­cial­ly Phillip Hoose’s CLAUDETTE COLVIN and Deb­o­rah Heiligman’s CHARLES AND EMMA. Do you think this will have any effect on the market?
M: Any com­mer­cial suc­cess will have an effect on the mar­ket, and the crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial response to both of these books cer­tain­ly got my atten­tion. I’m not sure we’ll see a flood of non­fic­tion, but I do think we’ll see some smart books com­ing from major pub­lish­ers bet­ter known for their fiction.
L: You don’t rep­re­sent pic­ture books, either—is that a per­son­al pref­er­ence, a mat­ter of indus­try knowl­edge and exper­tise, or a pure­ly finan­cial deci­sion  (or one of the oth­er rea­sons fel­low agent Michael Stearns blogged about here)?
M: I do rep­re­sent some pic­ture books, actu­al­ly, but it’s not an area in which I’m look­ing to grown. The mar­ket is dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly for writ­ers, and since they’re the ones I rep­re­sent, it just doesn’t make sense for me to con­tin­ue look­ing for new clients.
L: Is there any­thing you wish would show up your query pile that just hasn’t been there (be care­ful what you wish for!)?
M: As I said in anoth­er inter­view recent­ly, with how many queries I get, it’s hard to say that there’s any­thing I haven’t seen! I’d rather not see books that chase trends, but that said, I love to see how peo­ple can approach well-worn ideas in a new way. I recent­ly signed up a nov­el based on a Poe sto­ry that I’m very excit­ed about, and I’d love to see more dark, psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers. Some­thing that makes my skin crawl would be great!
L: Tell us about your agent­ing style: Are you very edi­to­r­i­al? Phone or email? Hands-on through­out the whole process or mitts off until the final product?
M: All agents have to be edi­to­r­i­al, but I’m not some­one who’s going to line edit a man­u­script. It’s just not where my skills lie. I do love to devel­op ideas with authors—helping them to turn a vague notion into some­thing that sup­ports a book-length nar­ra­tive. I’m more of a phone than email per­son, but I spend much more time on email! I wish peo­ple uti­lized the phone more; a con­ver­sa­tion has a cer­tain give-and-take that can help get to the point more quick­ly. I’m pret­ty hands on, and as I say to new clients, I like to know every­thing. That way I can antic­i­pate and pre­empt issues they may not even see arising.
L: What aspects do you like most about being an agent? Least? Pet peeves (please don’t say blog inter­views, please don’t say blog interviews…)?
M: I like that every day is dif­fer­ent. I like pitch­ing to edi­tors, I like dis­cussing ideas with clients, I love find­ing new voic­es. I love build­ing rela­tion­ships and match­ing authors and edi­tors. I like dis­cussing big-pic­ture ideas with my col­leagues, both in-house at DGLM and with the pub­lish­ing world at large on Twit­ter and through our blog. It’s hard to say that I don’t like a part of my job, but I don’t like how long things take. I’m real­ly impa­tient. I don’t have any major pub­lish­ing pet peeves, but I do wish we could all be more kind and respect­ful. It’s a chal­leng­ing busi­ness, and emo­tions run high, but we need to remem­ber that we’re all in it together.
L: Besides the man­u­script itself, what oth­er fac­tors do you con­sid­er when decid­ing whether or not to offer rep­re­sen­ta­tion (plat­form, online pres­ence, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, spe­cial­iza­tion, rec­om­men­da­tions, affil­i­a­tions, etc.)?
M: The man­u­script is what mat­ters. If that doesn’t knock my socks off, noth­ing else mat­ters. In a query, how­ev­er, men­tion­ing a large plat­form, and award win, or even mem­ber­ship in rep­utable orga­ni­za­tions like SCBWI will make me pay more atten­tion. But then it comes back to the man­u­script again. It’s got to be great.
L: Besides care­ful­ly read­ing mar­ket guides, surf­ing the web and send­ing tar­get­ed queries, what can we authors do to ensure a good fit, both when sub­mit­ting and when con­sid­er­ing an offer of representation?
M: If you’re doing your home­work and research in advance, the only oth­er thing you need to do is inter­view the agent. It’s impor­tant for both writer and agent to chat and make sure that they get along and can have a con­ver­sa­tion. If you’re afraid of your agent, the rela­tion­ship isn’t going to work. If you don’t feel like your agent is enthu­si­as­tic about your sub­mis­sion, the rela­tion­ship won’t work. I tell peo­ple all the time that they should wait for a good match and not just take the first offer. It’s hard to do, I know, but I think the advice is sound.
L: I think authors put so much time and effort into find­ing an agent, that then inter­view­ing an inter­est­ed agent feels a bit intim­i­dat­ing. What kinds of ques­tions do you think authors should ask to deter­mine if an agent will be a good match?
M: Authors should ask agents about the edi­to­r­i­al vision for the book, how they work day-to-day and how the sub­mis­sion will work, how often they can expect to be in touch, and then they should dis­cuss the future—what do both the author and agent see for the author’s career down the line? It’s impor­tant that you’re on the same page as your agent about these things.
L: Do you have any upcom­ing client titles you’d like to high­light for us?

The past cou­ple of months have seen the excit­ing releas­es of Eleventh Grade Burns by Heather Brew­er and Gone by Lisa McMann, the release of which got both series onto the New York Times list. The com­ing months will see the release of Restor­ing Har­mo­ny by Joëlle Antho­ny and Shoot­ing Kab­ul by N.H. Sen­zai, two debuts that I’m real­ly proud of. In addi­tion, the fan­tas­tic Suzanne Selfors’s fifth book Smells Like Dog is also out short­ly, along with Dale Basye’s third book in the twist­ed “Heck” series, Blimpo. And that’s just through May!

L: Is there any­thing else you wished that I had asked, but didn’t? Feel free to write your own ques­tion here. =)
M: This has been a ter­rif­ic and thor­ough inter­view. I’ve got noth­ing to add, but thanks so much for think­ing of me!
L: Thank YOU, Michael! I real­ly appre­ci­ate the time and thought you put into this, and we’re look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more at the con­fer­ence this weekend. 

Ah, sweet rejection

My goal for this year is to receive as many as rejec­tions as pos­si­ble. I can be a little—okay, a lot—perfectionistic about where and when I send out sub­mis­sions, so the inten­tion of this goal was to push me to accom­plish the part of pub­lish­ing that I can con­trol, sub­mit­ting, and let go of the part I can’t con­trol, sell­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this has­n’t worked out so well, as it seems most places either aren’t even read­ing the work or are only reply­ing if inter­est­ed, and are thus deny­ing me of the small sat­is­fac­tion of the rejec­tion let­ter as proof I did SOMETHING. So, I think I will have to revise my goal and tweak my process so that I can cel­e­brate, and tan­gi­bly see, every sub­mis­sion, whether I receive an answer or not. How do you do that with­out wast­ing paper? I’d love to hear your ideas!
There’s some good news, though (well, kin­da)! Yes­ter­day I received a rejec­tion let­ter for a very begin­ning-lev­el easy read­er I’d sent to Scholas­tic’s Cart­wheel imprint. I sus­pect­ed it was prob­a­bly not per­fect­ly right for them, but I love them so much I just had to try (fight­ing that per­fec­tion thing again). Well, it was a rejec­tion, but it was per­son­al­ized, friend­ly, and dis­cussed my par­tic­u­lar man­u­script and why they decid­ed to pass. In fact, I have to agree with their assess­ment, although I still believe there’s a place for this man­u­script with a dif­fer­ent list. So, yes, it’s a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, but I’ll still send out a big vir­tu­al thank you to Scholastic/Cartwheel. I final­ly have some­thing for the rejec­tion file, and can at least rev­el in the suc­cess of failing!

‘Suc­cess is going from fail­ure to fail­ure with no loss of enthu­si­asm.’ —Win­ston Churchill

Interview with Sara Crowe, agent

Sara is an agent with Har­vey Klinger, Inc. in New York City. I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with Sara last Jan­u­ary pri­or to the 11th Annu­al SCBWI Inter­na­tion­al Win­ter Con­fer­ence. Yes, she is every bit as cute and friend­ly as she appears in the pho­to below, so if you’re going to attend our con­fer­ence this April, be sure to tell her hello!


L: Wel­come, Sara! Thanks so much for tak­ing the time to answer some ques­tions for me! Let’s jump right in at the top of my list… with a rather tricky one. Your var­i­ous bios and list­ings say you accept non­fic­tion, but I don’t see any non­fic­tion for kids among your titles. Am I miss­ing it? If not, what do you sup­pose are the rea­sons? Do you just not get many non­fic­tion sub­mis­sions, are they hard­er to sell, is it just hard­er to find one that grabs you per­son­al­ly, or some com­bi­na­tion of those? Give us some insight on the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket from an agent’s perspective.

S: Hi Lau­rie! Thanks for hav­ing me! What my web­site says about what I rep­re­sent is this: I am an agent with Har­vey Klinger, Inc., a full ser­vice bou­tique lit­er­ary agency in New York where I rep­re­sent both adult and chil­dren’s titles. On the adult side, I rep­re­sent com­mer­cial and lit­er­ary fic­tion and a range of non­fic­tion. On the chil­dren’s side, my list includes YA and mid­dle grade fic­tion, as well as pic­ture books.
S: So, I am upfront about my lack of non­fic­tion on the chil­dren’s side. How­ev­er, I am very open to queries for chil­dren’s non­fic­tion, and do hope to find more. Many of my favorite books as a child were non­fic­tion, and it is some­thing I remain inter­est­ed in read­ing. My client Erin Vin­cent’s debut YA, GRIEF GIRL (Dela­corte, 2007) is a mem­oir, and I would love to see more YA mem­oir. I am also work­ing on two non­fic­tion projects at the moment—one pic­ture book and one biog­ra­phy for children.
S: I do rep­re­sent a lot more fic­tion, though, so when it comes down to it, I am not as famil­iar with the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket, and the chances are slim­mer that I will be the right fit for a non­fic­tion book. If it does grab me per­son­al­ly, and if I can come up with a great list of edi­tors to send it to and am 100% sure there is a mar­ket for it, I will take it on!

 

L: Okay, that was sort of a doozy—thanks for play­ing along and giv­ing such a can­did answer! Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this one is prob­a­bly even worse. I see you’re not tak­ing pic­ture book sub­mis­sions at this time, which seems to be a trend among agents. Can you tell us why? What do you think about the cur­rent state of the pic­ture-book indus­try? What can pic­ture-book authors do to help them break in?
S: I prob­a­bly should take that off my site and the agen­cy’s site. I get many pic­ture book queries, what­ev­er it says online, and they did not seem to slow at all when I post­ed that notice. (Inci­den­tal­ly, it says every­where online that I do not like to receive snail mail queries, but those keep com­ing too, and I respond to them!)
S: I sold a debut pic­ture book recent­ly, by Matthea Har­vey, to Schwartz & Wade, and one of my cur­rent pic­ture books, on sub­mis­sion now, is non­fic­tion. I just took on a pic­ture book from a query that real­ly grabbed me. So like with non­fic­tion, I will take on the right pic­ture book project for me—but I will take on much few­er pic­ture books than nov­els, and so it’s less like­ly I will be the right fit.

 

L: Okay, you made that one seem easy, so this one should be a piece of cake… Tell us about your agent­ing style: Are you very edi­to­r­i­al? Phone or email? Hands-on through­out the whole process or mitts off until the final prod­uct? It’s clear your clients LOVE you, so what­ev­er it is, it’s working!
S: Thank you! I am an edi­to­r­i­al agent and do think I am very hands-on. I edit every­thing I take on before it goes out to edi­tors. If I see any sweep­ing changes that I think need to be made before sub­mis­sion, I talk to the writer about that when we dis­cuss rep­re­sen­ta­tion. And the edit­ing does not stop with the first sale. I con­tin­ue to edit my authors’ books, and to dis­cuss their new book ideas with them. I usu­al­ly read major revi­sions before we send to the edi­tor, and I read and dis­cuss syn­opses and par­tials, or some­times just ideas, about what the author should do next. I am always on email, but some­times a phone call is the best thing for the sit­u­a­tion, and I am always hap­py to be on the phone.

 

L: What aspects do you like most about being an agent? Least? Pet peeves?
S: I tru­ly feel lucky every­day to have a job that is nev­er bor­ing, always chal­leng­ing, and that involves read­ing books that I love and talk­ing them up to any­one who will lis­ten. I love find­ing a new client, a new book to be excit­ed about. Call­ing an author, espe­cial­ly a debut author, to tell them their book will be pub­lished nev­er gets old. I love all of my agent roles: edit­ing, match­mak­ing, mak­ing deals, nego­ti­at­ing con­tracts. Its the kind of job that does­n’t end at the end of a day or week, though, and agents are always work­ing, even when they are try­ing to read for plea­sure. It is a job with­out bound­aries. That applies to every­one in pub­lish­ing, I think, writ­ers, too. I wish there were time to read when I am actu­al­ly at work! Real­ly, I just need there to be more time in a day.

 

L: Oh, I think we all could use some of that! Besides the man­u­script itself, what oth­er fac­tors do you con­sid­er when decid­ing whether or not to offer rep­re­sen­ta­tion (plat­form, online pres­ence, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, spe­cial­iza­tion, rec­om­men­da­tions, affil­i­a­tions, etc.)?
S: Unless it is adult non­fic­tion, where plat­form tru­ly mat­ters, I am only look­ing at the book first—and if I love it and feel con­fi­dent I can sell it, I am not con­cerned about a plat­form or an online pres­ence. I think for the most part, those things can wait until after the sale of the book to the pub­lish­er. Once we have sold it, I do think all authors should get online. Of course a blurb or rec­om­men­da­tion from a well known author is appeal­ing, as it might make the book eas­i­er to sell, but its not necessary.

 

L: Besides care­ful­ly read­ing mar­ket guides, surf­ing the web and send­ing tar­get­ed queries, what can we authors do to ensure a good fit, both when sub­mit­ting and when con­sid­er­ing an offer of representation?
S: I think that what you want to find is an agent who is pas­sion­ate about your book and your writ­ing, who has knowl­edge of the mar­ket­place, expe­ri­ence with your type of book and whose list is a place you think you belong and where you want to be. You can find much of this out with research, talk­ing with his or her oth­er clients, and by ask­ing the right ques­tions when you speak to the agent on the phone. As for queries, make them count! Spend the most time on your book descrip­tion as its the most impor­tant thing. And do not make it all about the query—make sure the man­u­script is in great shape before you start querying.

 

L: Do you have any clients or titles you’d like to high­light for us?
S: Two chil­dren’s books out in March: a mid­dle grade and a YA. IT’S RAINING CUPCAKES (Aladdin), Lisa Schroed­er’s mid­dle grade debut, is about Isabel, who dreams of see­ing the world but she’s nev­er left Ore­gon. When her best friend, Sophie, tells her of a bak­ing con­test whose win­ners trav­el to New York City, she eager­ly enters despite con­cerns about her moth­er, who is open­ing a cup­cake bak­ery. And SAVING MADDIE by Var­i­an John­son, just out with Dela­corte, about Josh, a preacher’s son, whose best child­hood friend, Mad­die has come back home a new person—gorgeous and trou­bled and with­out her faith. Can you save some­one who doesn’t want to be saved? And more impor­tant­ly, how do you save some­one with­out los­ing yourself?

 

S: In April, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER by Dan Wells is out with Tor Books. It is about a boy who is con­cerned he might be a ser­i­al killer, and so makes rules for him­self to avoid becom­ing one — but then a real one comes into town and starts killing peo­ple, and he has to break some of his rules to find the killer. Its a def­i­nite crossover title–a hor­ror nov­el with a lov­able teen pro­tag­o­nist and a great YA voice, though will be pub­lished here as an adult book. Its already out in Ger­many where its a best­seller, and is also out in the UK– where it was pub­lished as YA. Kirkus just gave it a starred review and wrote: “(An) unabashed­ly gory gem.… Buy mul­ti­ples where it won’t be banned.”

S: Final­ly, Hol­ly Nicole Hox­ter’s YA debut, THE SNOWBALL EFFECT will be out from Harp­er in April! It’s about Lainey Pike, who is try­ing to make peace with her dead moth­er (not easy), take care of her five-year old broth­er who is now an orphan, and to learn to love with her estranged old­er sis­ter who is now back in her life as her guardian until she turns 18.

 

L: Is there any­thing else you wished that I had asked, but didn’t?
S: I have too much read­ing to do to come up with anoth­er question—but I loved answer­ing all of yours. Thanks so much, Lau­rie! I am real­ly look­ing for­ward to the conference!
L: Thank YOU, Sara, for being so open, hon­est, and approach­able! I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing you again in April and show­ing you around our neck of the woods.

Interview with Deborah Hopkinson

I became a fan of Deb­o­rah Hop­kin­son in 2007, when I start­ed Anas­ta­sia Suen’s Easy Read­ers and Chap­ter Books course. For the first assign­ment, we had to read five chap­ter books then choose one to ana­lyze. I chose PIONEER SUMMER because it was my favorite. Years lat­er, when I became co-region­al advi­sor for SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton, I knew I had to bring Deb­o­rah up to talk to us. I’m thrilled that she’ll be com­ing to our con­fer­ence this April, and that I’ll final­ly get to meet her in per­son! I’m going to try not to go all fan-girl on her, but you nev­er know. 
I thought I’d take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask her a few ques­tions that have been on my mind and share them with you, so we can all get to know her a lit­tle better…



L: From oth­er sources I found online, it sounds like you start­ed writ­ing for chil­dren when your own chil­dren were young, just like I did. Is that right? Did you always know you want­ed to be a writer? Tell us how you got started.
D: I want­ed to be a writer from the time I was in the fourth grade, but it wasn’t until my daugh­ter, Rebekah, was born that I real­ized I want­ed to write for chil­dren.  As a young moth­er with a full time job, pic­ture books seemed short enough to be doable with my busy sched­ule. It took me about two years to sell my first mag­a­zine sto­ry, and anoth­er cou­ple of years to sell my first pic­ture book.


L: When­ev­er I’m not writ­ing, I feel like I should be, but when­ev­er I am writ­ing, I feel­ing like I’m tak­ing valu­able time away from oth­er things. What tricks have you learned for find­ing a bal­ance between your own cre­ative pur­suits and the demands of keep­ing up with the indus­try, work­ing full time, tak­ing care of your home and fam­i­ly, etc.? 
D: Well, I don’t lis­ten to or wor­ry about peo­ple who have firm guide­lines about how one must write every day.  But I once read a great arti­cle where the author rec­om­mend­ed two kinds of writ­ing goals: out­put and process.  I use a com­bi­na­tion of those strate­gies to bal­ance my life.  Out­put goals might be expressed as: “I am going to sub­mit a man­u­script this month.”  And then you do what­ev­er it takes to meet that dead­line.  Process goals are: “I am going to write for three hours every week­end.”  It also just works to put your ener­gies in the direc­tion you want to go as much as you can.


L: Many of your books are his­tor­i­cal and obvi­ous­ly heav­i­ly researched, yet they end up in the fic­tion sec­tion. How and when do you decide when to go straight non­fic­tion ver­sus when to fictionalize? 
D: Whether a book is his­tor­i­cal fic­tion or non­fic­tion often is deter­mined by how the sto­ry is pro­gress­ing, I think.  Many times the demands of a dra­mat­ic arc make it a bit dif­fi­cult to tell a com­pelling sto­ry for young read­ers in a non­fic­tion format. 



L: What do you think about the cur­rent state of the pic­ture book indus­try?
D: Well, I am not sure I know enough to be an expert on that!  I feel for­tu­nate to still be able to occa­sion­al­ly sell pic­ture books.  I also try to have some cur­ricu­lum tie-in so that my books are appro­pri­ate to schools and libraries. 



L: I noticed the warm ded­i­ca­tion in STAGECOACH SAL to your amaz­ing super­a­gent, Steven Malk at Writ­ers House (who was at our con­fer­ence last year—thanks, Steven!). Tell us how you snagged him, and if you can, give us a peek inside your author-agent relationship!
D: I called Steven up some years ago at the rec­om­men­da­tion of a fel­low writer, and feel very for­tu­nate to be able to work with him.  Steven is won­der­ful.  I have had many doors opened thanks to his hard work, and I also make an effort to work hard on my own to under­stand what my edi­tors need and want. 


L: My hus­band once asked me what I would con­sid­er suc­cess in this indus­try. I told him 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. (Of course, I’d love truck­loads of let­ters like that, but if I can get at least one, I’ll die hap­py.) You’ve got a long and var­ied book list, with an impres­sive list of awards to go with it. So, how do you define suc­cess? Do you feel like you’ve achieved your dream? If not, what’s left on your to-do list?
D: Well, I try to be very grate­ful for the luck and suc­cess that I have had.  Right now I am vice pres­i­dent for Advance­ment at the Pacif­ic North­west Col­lege of Art.  I have sev­en peo­ple report­ing to me, and it is cer­tain­ly one of those “big jobs.”  I do feel for­tu­nate to have had, in a way, two careers.  How­ev­er, that doesn’t mean I still don’t dream of becom­ing a full time writer!  But with a kid in col­lege and one in grad­u­ate school, that may not ever happen. 


L: What tips would you like to share with aspir­ing children’s book writ­ers, espe­cial­ly those of us writ­ing non­fic­tion or fic­tion based on facts for grades preK‑5?
D: Well, I think it is very impor­tant to under­stand as much as pos­si­ble about how pub­lish­ing works as ear­ly in one’s career as pos­si­ble. Also it helps to under­stand the cru­cial role of teach­ers and librar­i­ans in children’s lit­er­a­ture.  And I would give writ­ers the same advice I give stu­dents dur­ing author vis­its: Read!


L: What’s com­ing up next for you?

My newest book is The Hum­ble­bee Hunter, illus­trat­ed by Jen Corace. It’s based on the fam­i­ly life of Charles Dar­win and his chil­dren at Down House. It was recent­ly reviewed in the New York Times, which was excit­ing.  My oth­er forth­com­ing books include Annie and Helen, to be illus­trat­ed by Raul Colon, and A Boy Called Dick­ens, illus­trat­ed by John Hen­drix, who also did the art­work for Abe Lin­coln Cross­es a Creek.

L: Those sound won­der­ful! I can’t wait to see them. Thanks so much for chat­ting with me, Deb­o­rah. See you in April!

Congratulations Cybils 2009 winners!

A few spe­cial shout-outs for a few spe­cial Cybils 2009 winners:


Non-Fic­tion For Young Adults
The Frog Scientist
by Pamela S. Turn­er; illus­trat­ed by Andy Comins
Houghton Mif­flin Harcourt
Nom­i­nat­ed by: Lau­rie Thomp­son (YAY, that’s me!)
Again, what a field. Each of the books in this cat­e­go­ry blew me away. It’s thrilling to see these excit­ing top­ics being cov­ered in depth in such inter­est­ing for­mats for upper mid­dle grade and young adult read­ers. I was shop­ping a teen non­fic­tion book awhile back, and an agent told me, “Nobody buys teen non­fic­tion.” Look at this list (and any oth­er awards list this year!), and it’s obvi­ous that is so not true. I think each of these books will leave an impor­tant and last­ing impres­sion on their read­ers, but spe­cial con­grat­u­la­tions to Pamela!


Pic­ture Book (Non-Fic­tion)
The Day-Glo Brothers
by Chris Bar­ton; illus­trat­ed by Tony Persiani
Charlesbridge
Nom­i­nat­ed by: Cyn­thia Leitich Smith
As soon as I heard Chris was work­ing on this, I fig­ured it would be a slam dunk. What a great top­ic idea! Chris and Tony REALLY pulled it off, though. Chris’ insane research adds so much depth (remind­ing me to always do my home­work, because you nev­er know what you’ll find), and what kid (or adult) could resist Tony’s Day-Glo car­toon-style illus­tra­tions? (Not me!)


Fan­ta­sy & Sci­ence Fic­tion (Mid­dle-Grade)
Dream­dark: Silksinger (Faeries of Dreamdark)
by Lai­ni Taylor
Put­nam Juvenile
Nom­i­nat­ed by: Melis­sa
Wow, this was a tough cat­e­go­ry for me–so many great final­ists! I know (and love) Joni, Lai­ni, and Grace, so I was cheer­ing for all three (if that’s pos­si­ble). I bet it was even hard­er for the judges, though, don’t you think? It’s got to be a win for all just to be going up against the likes of Neil Gaiman, I guess. But, huge con­grat­u­la­tions are due to the dear, sweet, ridicu­lous­ly tal­ent­ed, and super hard­work­ing Lai­ni Tay­lor. Both Dream­dark books are true masterpieces.


Pic­ture Book (Fic­tion)
All the World by Liz Gar­ton Scan­lon; illus­trat­ed by Mar­la Frazee
Beach Lane Books
Nom­i­nat­ed by: Cyn­thia Leitich Smith
I LOVE this book, and I can’t decide which I love more, the words or the illus­tra­tions. This is a per­fect exam­ple of a pic­ture book, stand­ing equal­ly on both legs. It’s a beau­ti­ful mes­sage for today and always–sure to become a classic.


Mid­dle Grade Fiction
Chains
by Lau­rie Halse Anderson
Simon & Schuster
Nom­i­nat­ed by: melis­sa
This is his­tor­i­cal fic­tion at its best, and a book that need­ed to be writ­ten. The only thing miss­ing is book two. I can’t wait! Exel­lent choice, judges!


Easy Read­er
Watch Me Throw the Ball! (An Ele­phant and Pig­gie Book)
by Mo Willems
Hyperion
Nom­i­nat­ed by: Melis­sa
You just got­ta love Ele­phant and Pig­gie. ‘Nuf said. Although I think THERE’S A BIRD ON YOUR HEAD will always be my favorite.

Sunday Scribblings #194: People Who Dared

The prompt over at Sun­day Scrib­blings today is dare. My first instinct was to write a spon­ta­neous short fic­tion vignette—that is what prompts are all about, right? But, while I con­sid­er writ­ing fic­tion a use­ful prac­tice to improve my skills as well as a reward­ing cre­ative endeav­or in its own right, my real pas­sion is non­fic­tion. So, today I’ll share the true sto­ries oft­wo peo­ple who dared.

First up: Flo­rence Nightin­gale. We all know her as the “lady with the lamp,” the hero­ic nurse who tend­ed British sol­diers dur­ing the Crimean War. But her sto­ry is so much more inter­est­ing than that. Even as a child, she nursed her dolls, pets, and even the local poor. As a young woman from a wealthy fam­i­ly, she did not have to work. She was attrac­tive, and had many mar­riage pro­pos­als, one from a man she tru­ly loved. Yet she turned them all down to do the work she felt com­pelled to do. In Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, nurs­es were con­sid­ered to be among the low­est lev­els of soci­ety: igno­rant, dirty, and often drunk. Flo­rence ded­i­cat­ed her life to chang­ing this per­cep­tion, not only car­ing for her patients with ten­der ded­i­ca­tion, but also by lob­by­ing for and mak­ing sys­tem-wide improve­ments in hygiene, admin­is­tra­tion and record-keep­ing, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, report­ing, and hos­pi­tal con­struc­tion. She dared to defy the expec­ta­tions of every­one around her, and ini­ti­at­ed a new order in health care.

Sec­ond: Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah. He was born in 1977 in Ghana, West Africa, with only one leg. At the time, dis­abil­i­ty was con­sid­ered to be a curse. His father left, and friends urged his moth­er to kill him. She did not, and instead raised him the same as able-bod­ied chil­dren, doing chores and going to school. As a young man, he was dis­turbed by how many dis­abled peo­ple were forced to beg to sur­vive. He decid­ed to show his coun­try that peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties could do use­ful things. In 2001, he dared to ped­al a bicy­cle almost 400 miles across Ghana, with one leg. He drew the atten­tion of the peo­ple, the media, and the gov­ern­ment offi­cials. In 2006, Ghana’s Par­lia­ment final­ly passed the Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ty bill, which stat­ed that peo­ple with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties are enti­tled to all of the same rights as the rest of the country’s cit­i­zens. “I want to spread a mes­sage to change per­cep­tions,” he said, “and the only way to do that is to lead by example.”

These are two of the true sto­ries that give me the courage I need to con­tin­ue to dare to make my own mark on the world by writ­ing about and shar­ing them with oth­ers. How about you—will you dare to make a dif­fer­ence in the world? Come on—I dare you!

Magical realism assignment: garden prompt

In the inter­ests of push­ing myself out of my com­fort zone, I recent­ly fin­ished a class in mag­i­cal real­ism. It was dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from any­thing I’ve done (or even read, real­ly) before, and the results were, well, inter­est­ing. The final assign­ment was this: “For this assign­ment, take the notion of a gar­den (well tend­ed or neglect­ed, your choice) and play with its real­i­ties. Find the most mun­dane aspects of it and ele­vate them to mag­i­cal heights. Take the mir­a­cle of a seed and turn it into some­thing ordi­nary and bland. Jux­ta­pose ideas to rebel against expec­ta­tion. A gar­den, after all, is not what you see above the sur­face, but what builds it from beneath.” And here’s what I came up with:

Inva­sive Species

She doesn’t even know I’m here, in her beau­ti­ful gar­den. But I’ve been hid­ing in plain sight for years. At first, she could not have noticed, no mat­ter how hard she tried, how care­ful­ly she tend­ed her plants and flow­ers, turn­ing the soil and pulling weeds. I once was but a seed, deep under the ground, waiting.

Final­ly, the time was right. I split my shell silent­ly, send­ing my ten­drils out into the gar­den, urg­ing them to take root wher­ev­er they would. I knew she would not see me then, either. She loved her gar­den, but she cared for it spo­rad­i­cal­ly at best. Once a year she would give it a good look, fix­ing the most obvi­ous prob­lems, and mak­ing a note to watch the rest. But the rest of the time, she took its boun­ty com­plete­ly for grant­ed, play­ing with her young daugh­ter on the patio or rock­ing with her hus­band on the swing. By the time she noticed me, I was sure, it would be too late. The gar­den would be mine.

My ten­drils con­tin­ued to spread, silent thieves in the night. Some found fal­low soil, with­ered, and died. But oth­ers took root in her fer­tile ground. I could feel them wind­ing their way through the flow­ers, steal­ing their nour­ish­ment, chok­ing them out. It fed me, and I grew.

Even­tu­al­ly, feel­ing among the flow­ers, she noticed me—a small lump that did not belong there, had not been there last time she looked. Had it? I could see the recog­ni­tion on her face, the brief wave of pan­ic. I was afraid too, it was too soon, too soon. My roots were not deep enough yet. They could still be pulled if one knew how.

Denial. Best friend to all that is evil. She had looked me in the eye, and decid­ed to ignore what she knew to be true. “I am too young, too busy, to have to deal with this,” she told her­self, and she pushed my exis­tence to the back of her mind. She was not yet brave enough to face me.

“Grow, grow!” I urged the ten­drils, just begin­ning to bloom into full-grown plants in their own right. “The gar­den is almost ours.”

Any idea what I’m talk­ing about? Think it needs an end­ing, or is it bet­ter left right here?

Nonfiction Monday: Emotion and Passion in Writing Nonfiction for Kids (#nfforkids)

I loved this recent post by Cheryl Har­ness over at I.N.K. (Inter­est­ing Non­fic­tion for Kids). My favorite part comes right at the end:

As for me, here’s the “Boston Mas­sacre,” March 5, 1770, in The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary John Adams: “Noisy men and boys were throw­ing snow­balls and oys­ter shells at a British sen­try …The scene explod­ed with more sol­diers, an alarm bell, and a mob of men run­ning from the town and the docks, shout­ing “Kill ’em! Knock ’em down!” Shots rang out in the frosty air and five Amer­i­cans fell…” For me, a sense of what the moment was like is what I want and what young read­ers need in his­tor­i­cal non­fic­tion. Sto­ry, snap­py descrip­tion, human­i­ty, and imme­di­a­cy: these are the sug­ar that help the med­i­cine, i.e. the need-to-know facts, go down, With these things, You Are There.

What makes for extra­or­di­nary non­fic­tion is often the same as what makes for extra­or­di­nary fic­tion, and this sense of human­i­ty and immediacy–the You Are There effect–is def­i­nite­ly a key ingre­di­ent. If the read­er does­n’t FEEL what it was like to be there in the moment, they prob­a­bly won’t real­ly care about or remem­ber the facts or the sto­ry, no mat­ter how inter­est­ing they might be. I’m adding it to my revi­sion checklist–thanks, Cheryl!
Ink1-copyAnoth­er recent post that stuck with me is this one by Deb­o­rah Heilig­man, again over at I.N.K. Deb­o­rah shares the sto­ry–both use­ful and touch­ing–behind her first book, FROM CATERPILLAR TO BUTTERFLY. She also gives some good prac­ti­cal advice about how to increase sales by find­ing ways to tie your book into the curriculum. 

I tell chil­dren in school vis­its that when­ev­er they read a book they should know that the author was think­ing of them when she wrote the book. I would like to tell teach­ers the same thing: we think of you, too.

What I real­ly loved about this post, though, was that you can tell how pas­sion­ate she is about writ­ing non­fic­tion for kids. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, I’m sure, Deb­o­rah is a 2009 Nation­al Book Award Final­ist with CHARLES AND EMMA: The Dar­wins’ Leap of Faith.Congratulations, Deb­o­rah!

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