A book courtship ritual

This sounds odd, what I'm about to say. At least, I think it does. I wrote this blog entry once and deleted it because it didn't come out right. Several friends emailed to say, hey! what happened to that thing? So I thought, what the heck? It's my blog. I can say anything I want.

I started off by saying that I love the heft of books. The weight of them in my hands. And I do. But what I meant to express is that it struck me the other day, rather forcibly, that I do an entire getting-to-know-you ritual when I pick up a book for the first time. It never varies. I perform the same series of actions every time. Having realized it, I know that it stems from a lifetime of reading. I can spot a potential good book from looking at the spine. I get a feeling, an impulse, a response to type, color, title - even the name of the author can attract me.


But until the other day, when I spotted The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell on the new book shelf at our library, I'd never realized it. I'd had that book on reserve for a few weeks. I didn't expect to get it for several more weeks. To discover a copy that had somehow slipped through the system was thrilling.

I took it off the shelf. Oh, my God, I thought. I have a book ritual. It goes like this. Every time:

I pick the book up. I feel the weight. I notice the edges on the pages; smooth, or ragged in that nice old-fashioned way? That Charles Dickens might have been here, sort of fashion.

I look at the cover. Run my hand over it. What does it tell me about what I'm considering reading? Book covers - when they're good - are extraordinary. Bad? and be you six or sixty, they can kill a book just like - snap! - that.

Next, I turn the book over. Did any writers who I admire like it? What did they say about it? How come so many people who I don't know seem to be endorsing books these days? If I don't know any of them, I may well put the book back on the shelf. Sad, but true. If there are review excerpts from places like The Guardian or The Independent, I'm excited. They give the book an advantage. I have to admit to a slight prejudice in favor of writers from Great Britain. Another sad truth.

I flip to the back, inside flap. What does the author look like? What else have they written? Won any awards? How come most of the writers selling books these days are either ridiculously young or incredibly pretty? What's with that?

I turn the book back over to the front cover. I open it. I read the title page. The copyright page. The dedication. The act of slowly turning the pages is a pleasure. The paper, the color of the paper, the weight of it - all combine to inform me about the book.

I get to the first page. I read the first sentence. I'm in love, or I'm not. It comes home with me, or it doesn't. Ruthless, ruthless reader.

Like a single woman in a bar, being approached by a stranger. One look, one word out of his mouth, and he's either a dead man or not. I remember those days. I never realized how ruthless a process it was. But now, at my age, having picked up Mitchell's book and recognized the bald-faced courtship dance I perform ...

I fell in love this time. I was right to. Wonderful book. Amazing writing. Incredible story. God only knows what might have happened if our first meeting had taken place in Gleason's on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 78th street in Manhattan, oh, so long ago ...

What Arthur and I Have in Common

I'm so glad. Even Arthur Levine has a hard time keeping his blog up to date. I don't know why I say "even," now that I think about it. He's an editor, a very successful editor (maybe even a Publisher? He has his own imprint, that I do know), who has a lot more to do than I do.

But I'm glad, anyway. He started off a new blog two weeks ago and hasn't visited it since. We bloggers set out with the best intentions in the world to keep posting, keep on being interesting and thought-provoking (I think that's the aim), and soon discover that it's very hard to keep up that level of commitment.

Or maybe I need a concept here ... one along the lines of the woman who cooked every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook. Her name escapes me. Julie Something.

Sorry, Julie.

What I'd doing on this last day of the 3rd week in July is thinking about beats. Those snippets of action or thought that an author uses in order to break up long passages of dialogue. It's a theatrical expression, I believe. I have nothing more profound to say about them today other than the fact that Hilary McKay, an English writer who is one of my favorite children's book authors, handles beats extremely well. Anyone trying to write would be wise to read several of her books.

Take that! she thought to her non-audience. Then clicked "Publish Post" and disappeared.

Perfect Sentences all around

I love this sentence. It describes how a man's children respond when they hear him coming home:

The children would all rush off like water down the sink.

It's from an adult book called THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN by Christine Stead. Here's another sentence I read years ago and still remember:

He stood up like a struck match.

That's from THE BOOK THIEF, by Markus Zuzak.

Perfect sentences are everywhere. I keep meaning to write down each and every one and, more often than not, forget.

A Lesson in Pacing

I'm not big on craft books. Oh, I read a few when I was earning my MFA at Vermont College in which the author expressed something in a way I'd never heard before, and it hit the spot. I found it illuminating. But for the most part, they're one-step removed from actual writing, to my mind. Reading them is like reading books about how to paint with water colors.

One or two, and start painting.

Every writer has his or her own mantra, obviously.

For me, reading an actual book is the best way to learn. And one I read yesterday (yes, in one afternoon because I couldn't put it down, so adept was the pacing, the sentence length, the plot) is a fantastic book to read if you're struggling with the pacing of your novel.

THE FORESHADOWING by Marcus Sedgwick. It's a YA. Wendy Lamb Books. 2006.

How come I didn't hear about it?

Sedgwick is English. He writes like a bomb, as they would say. Everything about this tightly-plotted story of a 17-year-old girl during WWI, and her ability to see the future, which leads to much trouble and distress during wartime, is a lesson about good writing.

The sentence length. Not too long; not gratuitously short. (There's lots of that going around. It's a stylistic thing.) Same with the chapters.

Characterization. Perfectly done with a minimum of fuss. Compelling people we care about.

Pacing. It gallops. It jolts. It moves in more way than one. Like dominoes, one thing leads to another to another to another, without ever giving the reader the sense that they're being manipulated. I have rarely read a book that made me want to find out what was going to happen more.

It's good. It's very good.

Sluggish plot? Pivotal scenes taking a long time to get to? Your characters seem to be talking to much and doing too little?

Read THE FORESHADOWING. Carefully. Read and learn.

A Great Time to be a Male Writer in the Children's Book World

It's a very good time to be a male writer in the children's book world.

I just read an article in PW about a panel of male YA authors at the LA Times Festival in CA a few weeks ago. Neal Shusterman moderated. The authors were Gordon Korman, Pseudonymous Bosch, and PJ MacHale.

I don't know MacHale. I know of Bosch. I had dinner with Gordon Korman in April when we were both making school visits in Alabama. So much talent, I thought wistfully as I read the article, directed at older readers. (In the same PW, I read that Louis Sachar has a new book. The protagonist is 17.)

I'd love to run into Gordon again. I'd say, "Gordon! Direct some of that magic, that humor, that quirkiness of yours, to younger readers. Little boys would be rolling on the floor if you wrote for them the way you write for your middle school readers."

Gordon knows this, I'm sure. He has two boys of his own.

There are few things in life more enjoyable than watching small children (and especially boys, because capturing them through reading, and getting them interested in books, is no small feat) get completely wrapped up in a book. Especially a silly book. They adore silly. They don't hold back. They don't read under cover of darkness. Give them a fart or a pair of underpants and you have them rolling in the aisle.

I recently read my newest book, an early chapter book, to a large group of first graders in Texas. They were the book's first audience. When I came to the word "belly button," there was an audible gasp. Plenty of giggles. I wasn't expecting it. I hadn't planned it. The words worked in the story, that's all.

Now I want to liberally sprinkle all of my books with belly buttons and poop and anything else that'll make them react that way. Because making children laugh is so much fun. More importantly, it goes such a long way in convincing them that books are fun. Coming from me, however, those words could end up sounding gratuitous. I usually don't write that way.

But men do. Some men do. Men who remember how hilarious it felt to be a little boy. Having raised a son myself, I have a great appreciation for a boy's love of silliness; for that sweet and constant desire many of them feel for life to be exciting! and wild! and so much more than just sitting at a desk, being good.

I want that panel of YA male authors to write for the 5 and 6 and 7-year-olds they were.

And then I want to put my name on their books and watch my royalties soar.

Writing groups: the same and different

Sorry, blog. I disappeared. A weeklong Mother's Day visit in Connecticut.

While I was there, I read the picture book manuscript of an old friend of my mother's. My mother is Constance C. Greene. She wrote children's books in the 70s and 80s. I'm very proud of her.

Her friend, Mary Jane, was one of the members of my mother's first, and last, writing group. They started in Darien, CT 50 years ago. To every meeting, they invited an editor from New York. It was one such editor who identified my mother's first manuscript - A GIRL CALLED AL - as the one my mother should pursue.

Writing groups sure have changed over the past 50 years. Imagine getting an editor to come to yours.

Anyway, Mary Jane is 85. She has had breast cancer. She lost her husband and daughter to cancer. Her picture book manuscript is told from the pov of Ellie, a little girl whose father is at war. She and her mother are living with Ellie's grandmother in a very small house.

We know the mother is upset because Ellie tells us, "She threw her shoe at the wall. It left a big mark."

We feel the delirious joy of their happiness when they learn that the father's coming home when Ellie says, "We threw oranges out the window because that's all we had."

It was all about "show, don't tell" in those days, Mary Jane told me. I think those are two pretty fine examples.

I guess some things about writing haven't changed in the last 50 years. Kind of reassuring.

Children's reading habits

I'm reading a very good book. It's The Book Whisperer; Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. Miller is a 6th grade reading teacher in Texas. The book was recommended to me by a good friend who's a 4th grade writing teacher in Texas.

The book's a primer for other reading teachers, I guess. But any parent, teacher, or writer who's writing for children would benefit from reading it. Miller says a lot of wise things. She understands children and their reluctance to read, and - year after year - has witnessed their elation when they discover the deep satisfaction that comes from reading.

That must be fun.

She has a classroom filled with 2,000 books which she purchased with her own money, and from which she lets her students choose the 40 books they're assigned to read every year.

40 books in one year is a HUGE GOAL for many, many 6th graders. We are firmly in the "books are boring" league with this group. Yet the majority of Ms. Miller's students make their goal.

One thing Miller talks about a lot is how insecure her students are about choosing a book at the beginning of the year. They don't know how to choose a good book, or what's out there, or even what they might like to read. This amazed me.

How can a child reach the age of 10 or 11 and not know what they'd like to read? They know what food they like to eat. And what movies they want to see. How can they not know what they want to read about?

Parents often don't know how to choose books their children will want to read, either. That amazed me, too, when I first started hearing it from parents years ago. How can that be, when they know their children better than anyone? Isn't acting as their child's advocate in reading as much a part of the job description as any other aspect of its life? Think about the thought we put into their food alone.

I say, let's go straight to the readers. Teaching children how to choose a good book should be among the first steps they're taught in schools if we want to turn them into lifelong readers.

If parents don't know how to choose a book, and children don't know how to choose a book, maybe schools need to start teaching "The Art of Choosing a Good Book" in kindergarten, and then every year after that while the child's in school.

Maybe, instead of testing them to see if they can read on grade level, testers should first find out whether they even know how to choose a book they want to read. If they don't, they should be taught that.

Because if they don't learn that reading is wonderful, how can they learn to read at all.

What I'm Reading and Why

Children are a tough audience. I tell them during school visits that I think of them as "ruthless readers."

Ruthless, I say, is what one boy in Michigan defined as "show no mercy."

They seem to like the idea of being people who show no mercy. You'll reject a book because of its cover, I tell them. Or if you don't like the first sentence, or the way the type's laid out. Research shows, I say, that boys won't read a book with a girl on the cover.

And then I look around at the boys and see they're pleased, heads vigorously nodding.

I was thinking about their reading habits recently, and how important it is that they learn to form reading habits, and decided to list the books I read this past week and jot down why:

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors (YA) by Francisco Stork. I loved Marcello in the Real World. I'd read a good review of this one. The children's librarian at my local library had the ARC and loaned it to me. If I didn't know Stork, I might have passed it by. Title's foreboding, cover only so-so.

My Last Best Friend (mg) by Julie Bowe. In a recent blog, Elizabeth Bird said she couldn't keep this book, and the second one, on her shelves. I thought, wow. I should know about these. The local children's librarian hadn't heard of them but she checked her computer. The library had them. They were both available. She said to me, "Do you know how many branches the New York Public Library has?"

Looking Like Me, a new picture book by Walter Dean Myers. Illustrated by Christopher Myers. This was a no-brainer. An author who makes words sing; a graphic, hip-hop cover; illustrations by the boy I know from "Love to call him in the morning love to call him, 'Hey, there, son'."
Note: It's impossible not to read this one out loud.

Back of the Bus, a new picture book by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Why? The face of a little boy on a bus holding a marble on the cover is beautiful; I liked him already. I knew from the title what the subject was about and understood from the feeling of the illustration that this was a warm, human approach.

How do you choose books? What does that mean to us as writers?

"A writing-life is not a life."

That's what Joyce Carol Oates says in the Fiction 2010 supplement to the most recent issue of The Atlantic. It's from an except of a novel she has written about widowhood after the death of her husband of 48 years.

Oates' point is that when people see OATES on the spine of a book, it has nothing to do with the person she is in real life. She goes on to say that "being a writer always seems to the writer to be of dubious value."

I know this to be true. Many children's book writers feel sheepish about calling themselves writers. Until they get validation by publishing, it feels too lofty.

Then Oates said that teaching writing is different.

So, teaching writing is a life.

The difference is, according to Oates, that "teaching is an act of communication, sympathy - a reaching out - a wish to share knowledge, skills; a rapport with others ...; a way of allowing others into the solitariness of one's soul."

It got me thinking.

I would never call the fact that I write children's books a "writing life." The writing life went out with Hemingway. It's my job. It's what I do to express myself, yes, but it's also my profession. And it helps keep my household afloat.

But aren't my books, or any writer's books, "an act of communication, sympathy - a reaching out - a wish to share knowledge, skills; a rapport with others; a way of allowing others into the solitariness of one's soul?"

And doesn't reading them make children better writers?

If so, does that make us all teachers?

It was a dark and stormy afternoon ...

Actually, the sun has now come out. But this is my first blog post, so the air feels full of portent.

Some writers are more relaxed about this kind of thing than others.

I write children's books. I read children's books, too. But I probably read more adult fiction. There is no reason for this.

It just is.

Sometimes, the best thing about a book is the poem at the front. Here's one I just read in a wonderful book An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg. I cannot recommend it highly enough. When I teach myself how to link titles to Amazon, I will.

For now, here's the poem. Even if I didn't know a few elderly people who have died lately, I'd still love it.

There is nothing like a perfect poem to make a writer feel humble.

It's called Not Dying:

These wrinkles are nothing.
These gray hairs are nothing.
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.