Bunny Eat Bunny

Meanwhile, across the Pond

2011-11-10T07:59:00.004-05:00

I'm watching a live stream of James Murdoch being questioned by members of Parliament in London, even as I write. (Thank you, Guardian newspaper.) I continue to be fascinated by this scandal, for reasons too numerous to examine in this post. But here's what struck me this morning:

12.54pm: Louise Mensch apologises that she has to leave immediately after her questions to collect her children which she says are the same ages as Murdoch's.

Could you imagine for one second that a member of the US Congress would say he/she had to leave a hearing to pick up his/her children? Even one as glamorous as Louise Mensch? I await the day.

Why I (still) love the Con

2011-10-14T20:20:00.005-04:00

I stopped in at New York Comic-Con tonight on my way home from drinks at the Old Town. Granted, I didn't start attending Comic-Con when it was a few folding tables with old comic books in downtown San Diego. But I have been going for a while. I almost skipped this year, but here's why I still love the Con. Eleven reasons, because prime numbers are cool (at the Con).

1. The Popular Kids can't make it to the Con.
2. People read at the Con.
3. Folks are humble at the Con.
4. They give you the benefit of the doubt at the Con.
5. Good ideas come from the Con.
6. Nobody tries to stop you at the Con.
7. There's a lack of irony at the Con.
8. All body types are celebrated at the Con.
9. The graphics are great at the Con.
10. People share at the Con.
11. There's a lot of hope at the Con.

See you in San Diego.

To do list for this past Columbus Day

2011-10-11T22:10:00.006-04:00

Write till noon
Dye eyelashes
Bike downtown
Come up with good book idea
Occupy Wall Street
Kayak in Hudson
Catch Martin Scorsese's Hugo as a work-in-progress

All done!

New Frontiers: THE WESTERN MYSTERIES

2011-10-02T17:06:00.007-04:00

Sometimes I go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to write. It’s where I’m writing now. I’ve been coming here since I first arrived in New York and lived at the Deanery on the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (long story) right across the street.

Yesterday I was here working on a picture book text, which I had owed to my gifted and clear-eyed editor, Lee Wade, for some time. I am proud to say I finished a first draft. Now Lee will tear it apart, at least I hope she will.

I was a little distracted – but not too much – by a fortyish, shaven-headed man at the next table who was pitching a business idea to a younger friend? intern? B-schoolmate? It was only when the pitcher described the business as “a reservoir of stories that you can go to any time” that of course my ears pricked up. Like the pitchee, I didn’t really cotton to what this business was. People wrote stories, posted them, and then other people could buy them as a plot for their own work? At least that’s what I think it was. Who would do such a thing I can’t imagine. (It would put Hollywood out of business.) But he was convinced, if not convincing.

It made me think of the Gold Rush and the last last frontier we had: the Wild West. I’ve been thinking about the Wild West because I’m the lucky co-agent of Caroline Lawrence’s Western Mysteries, the first book of which, The Case of the Deadly Desperados, is coming out in Spring of next year. If you think of the series as Deadwood meets Mark Twain by way of Richard Peck, you’ll have the right idea. It’s funny, original, unsparing, and it has the most original hero you’re going to meet anywhere in books next year. I love it.

For a while we thought that space was the next (and final) frontier. But virtual space is our own Gold Rush, and its power and allure are as palpable as they were in 1849, even if the coffee and beans have been changed to espressos and ischlers.

Separated at Birth? Rebekah Brooks & Mary Magdalene

2011-07-08T22:38:00.007-04:00

As a redhead, I couldn't help but notice.

Poetry Friday: The wisdom of Kentucky trees

2011-04-01T22:09:00.003-04:00

Here's a poem I received as part of an everyday email today from the wondrous George Ella Lyon:

We're having a cold spell in Kentucky.
The trees keep saying April! April!
and the wind says Fool! Fool!

But we know the trees are right.

Poetry Friday: The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind

2011-02-04T21:36:00.006-05:00

Marilyn Singer will be one of the panelists tomorrow at a program at the New York Public Library called "A Passel of Poets: Children's Poetry in the Modern Age." One of the questions librarian Betsy Bird asks is "Does poetry for kids ever truly get its due?' I actually think it does; if not publicly, then in the hearts and minds of the readers. Certainly that was true for this reader of poetry.

Shelley called poets the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Here's an acknowledgment of poetry for a Friday night by way of Kurt Anderson and his radio program Studio 360. Anderson interviewed Palestinian poet Tamim Al-Bargouthi on NPR earlier this week. Al-Bargouthi, previously unknown to this blogger, is a poet who came to the world's attention with his poem "In Jerusalem." His father is Palestinian; his mother Egyptian.

Al-Bargouthi is not in Cairo right now, though from Kurt Anderson's interview it sounds as if he longs to be there. But his contribution has been felt. He wrote a poem about the revolution in Egypt, and faxed it to his newspaper in Cairo. According to Studio 360, when the paper published it, the text was photocopied and distributed among the people risking their lives in Tahrir Square. Al-Bargouthi's image was somehow broadcast "every ten minutes" on sheets pinned up by the people calling for Mubarak's ouster in Cairo. In a revolution, poetry is worth dying for.

This is a transcription of Al-Bargouthi's very rough and off-the-cuff translation on Anderson's radio show. I don’t have any Arabic, so I can neither read nor transcribe his words. I wish I could. But even in this unpoetic translation, the poetry speaks for itself.

O Egypt, It’s Close

We’re close, it’s going to be a good day,

Nothing remains of power but a few batons,

If you don’t believe it, just come to the Square and see.

The tyrant only exists in the imagination of his subjects,

Even those who stays at home after this will be free.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

2011-01-21T15:21:00.002-05:00

Seen today on Upper Broadway. Between the snow and his expression and the sign -- let there be no mistake: it's the Duck that's not in service -- my heart cracked a little.

Ricky Gervais for Newbery/Caldecott Banquet?

2011-01-20T21:32:00.014-05:00

Somehow I don't think so.

Ricky Gervais might have been the right host for the Golden Globes this year, but he'd never do at Newbery Caldecott or the National Book Awards or PEN or the Authors Guild. We've had celebrities -- Garrison Keillor (he counts!) and Steve Martin and others. I know the N/C banquet can seem awfully earnest, but honestly I'd take that over ungraceful mockery. People in Hollywood actually work very hard on movies. A lot of films are works of art that will last after we're all gone. Some of them are not, but I think our pals in Tinseltown deserve something better.

So before we in the book community bemoan the fact that the Today show doesn't pick up our authors, or that NBC doesn't cover Poets & Writers, let's remember that when events are not televised, they're allowed to have their own personality and style. Their own profile, warts and all. They're allowed to rejoice in themselves. Sometimes banquets are dull; sometimes speakers are unspeakable; but the banquets I've been lucky enough to attend and the speakers I've been lucky enough to hear are all trying to get at something: that art has a place; that artistic endeavor should be lauded; and that some things are worth taking seriously.

Last week, I was hunting around for photos for my daughter's yearbook page. I found some great old pics of her, and I also found this photo of Virginia Euwer Wolff at the National Book Awards in November, 2001. Below are Jinny's remarks from that evening. After hearing them, Steve Martin (never sufficiently to be praised) said "My God. She went from shock to eloquence in three seconds."

That's the kind of remark we're privileged to hear at a celebration of artistic endeavor that takes itself just seriously enough.

Here's what Jinny had to say:

Like most authors, I have wondered since September 11th what I would ever write again, if I would ever write anything, and if so, would it matter? Usually, the answer has been no, for two months, the answer has been no. You understand, don't you? Of course.

Today my son, Anthony, and I went to the World Trade Center site and we walked around. What I saw was living proof of Faulkner's six. Faulkner said in 1949 in the Nobel speech that if we are not writing about these six things we are not doing our job. They are love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. I think of them as Faulkner's six. I used to have them on my wall until I memorized them and now they're on this wall in here.

And I saw them today at Ground Zero, the work that is going on and the awe and the humility and the hush and the consideration. Love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. That's what you and I and all of us are supposed to be writing about; Faulkner said it and he was right. Thank you.

Blue Valentine

2010-12-31T00:35:00.009-05:00

Ryan Gosling is heartbreaking in Blue Valentine, the new movie about how devastatingly sad it is when two people stop loving each other. He's an extraordinary actor, different in every movie. In this film Dean, Gosling's character, is the one whose pain I felt most keenly. You've read about the movie, I'm sure, and the experience of watching it, for me at least, was diminished by knowing a little too much about it. But I don't think it will be a spoiler to hear that Gosling's character has a tattoo on his upper arm that features the cover of The Giving Tree. It's such a killer image, because the book has duped Dean into believing its cold-hearted message: the more you give, the more will be taken, until you've given everything, and there's nothing left.

I thought of Dean reading The Giving Tree over and over to his daughter, having so much faith in it that he had it carved into his skin -- which even recalls Kafka's In the Penal Colony, in a way. I guess there are ways to erase tattoos these days, but I somehow think Dean won't have it removed. I can't shake him from my head, and I only wish that he had read a different book to his little girl. There are better books about love.

Rara Avis

2010-07-21T11:56:00.005-04:00

I love the view from the 15th-floor window of my office at 55 Fifth. Village rooftops with white-robed men practicing martial arts. Lots of trees, green now in summer. A handsome swath of the Hudson River with its mighty river traffic. Sometimes I see red hawks being beaten up by crows. Bluebottle flies, too high up, take a breather on my windowsill.

Here's the unexpected rara avis that perched on that same windowsill today. He wasn't there long; he just took time enough to do his job, swiftly and neatly.

I held my breath the whole time. Then he straightened his wings, clamped onto the next set of bolts, and was gone.

It's hard to be mad at your daughter...

2010-06-24T09:03:00.003-04:00

...when her reason for not doing the dishes is that she was reading Billy Collins aloud with her best friend.

Poetry Friday: Cruel, Clever Cat

2010-06-18T23:13:00.004-04:00

For a moment there today, I couldn't remember whether it was "bated breath" or "baited breath." Just for a moment. Then I remember bated/abated, and realized it was the former. But I had already googled it, and thence came upon this little ditty by a poet unknown to me, Geoffrey Taylor. I could not resist pairing the poem with a photo pared from the Facebook page of author/artist Brian Floca, from his celebrated "Wildlife Photography, 23rd Street" series.

Clever, Cruel Cat

Sally, having swallowed cheese
Directs down holes the scented breeze
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.

Clever, cruel Sally! We could use her on the F train.

Hooray for Cake

2010-06-10T13:28:00.006-04:00

I was a bit slow to blog about a book party the Bunny hosted for her erstwhile author, Jennifer Finney Boylan, whose terrific new book, Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror, is now happily published by Katherine Tegen Books at HarperCollins. I was a bit slow because I thought perhaps Betsy Bird would blog about it in her own sparkling and irresistible style, and now she has.

Here's one secret even Betsy Bird didn't know: When I heard that certain well-known authors were planning to attend the affair, I looked around the house for the copies of their books I knew I had. But they were almost all absent. The Richard Russos were in place, but the Cecily von Ziegesars were in storage; my two copies of Running With Scissors -- hardcover -- had been lent out and never returned; and my Jennifer Finney Boylan backlist was at my sister's. (I'll admit I did not have any copies of the plays of Edward Albee. Then.)

I figured if I were an author and I came to someone's house, a house pretty much filled with bookshelves, the very first thing I would do would be to scan the shelves, oh so nonchalantly, for my own name. And I could not bear to have these authors look on my shelves -- shelves that had once held their books, most bought at retail -- and find themselves missing.

One of the glories of living in New York is that there are bookstores all over the place. So the day of the party, I high-tailed it uptown to an indie, and downtown to a chain and a used, to pick up copies of what I was missing. I slipped them into their rightful places (alpha by author, except for the plays, which went on the slender Drama shelf), about half an hour before the first doorbell rang. Then I took a belt of the Sicko Sauce, and declared that the party could begin.

Did the writers scan the shelves? I'll never know. But I was happy to look up and see those names, and those books. Parties come and go, but words endure.

Many thanks to A.B. for the photo, and to HarperCollins for underwriting the affair.

Why People Read

2010-06-09T16:25:00.003-04:00

So they can spend their mornings reading in West Village cafes.

And she was reading Freud. In French.

Actually, this post might be better titled, "Why People Come to New York."

Because they can read Freud in French. Or meet people who do.

Poetry in unlikely places

2010-06-07T18:15:00.006-04:00

I know magazines are folding and newspapers will soon cease to exist, but what will ever replace the little gems of meteorological narrative non-fiction that appear in the upper right-hand corner of the New York Times each day? Here's what the Late Edition told us this morning, and so far it's all come true:

Today, mostly sunny, not as warm
nor as humid, high 76. Tonight,
mostly clear, comfortable, low 58.
Tomorrow, mostly sunny, nice.

The world is gushing chaos, but somehow gentleness survives.

(The photo was taken on my way home from work today. Tango by the River at sunset.)

Poetry Friday (Memorial Day weekend edition)

2010-05-31T09:48:00.004-04:00

Things slow down on Memorial Day Weekend, especially if you stay in the city. So here's a belated Poetry Friday post in commemoration of this weekend, Siefried Sassoon's "Everyone Sang." I know this would better posted on Armistice Day, as that was when it was written -- days after World War I was declared over on November 11, 1918. But in my mind, there is never a day when a poem about the end of war is not welcome.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

         -- Siegfried Sassoon


(with thanks to Richard Barnes of the New York Times for the photograph of starlings over Rome)

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum

2010-05-29T21:48:00.003-04:00

Jessie Hartland's terrific book is coming out this fall. Featured at BEA -- with its own timeline poster -- it will be on the shelves of the Metropolitan Museum and bookstores all over the country this fall.

Margaret Wise Brown Birthday Party

2010-05-23T22:38:00.005-04:00

Let's call it the First Annual MWB Birthday Party, because I for one would like to do it again. There were cupcakes, baffled tourists, pleased parents, delighted cupcake-eating kids, random teens, and some stalwart librarians, game artists, and children's book enthusiasts. Dianne Hess of Scholastic Press stole the day by actually dressing like Margaret Wise Brown. Betsy Bird knowledgeably informed us that Margaret and Ursula Nordstrom would have had their protest tea on the north stairs of the Library, as that was the entrance to the children's room. But we had our celebration on the front steps, and we here at Bunny Eat Bunny hope you celebrated the life of this fabulous woman with fur and poetry and sensuality and rash behavior.

Margaret Wise Brown Birthday Sing-in: May 23

2010-05-06T22:09:00.007-04:00

Margaret Wise Brown deserves the laurel leaf crown for many reasons -- the last line of The Runaway Bunny, the real moths in the pretend Little Fur Family, Maine -- but the prime reason is this: She once staged a literary tea on the steps of the New York Public Library in defiance of Anne Carroll Moore. Margaret was defiant because Miss Moore had chosen not to include Miss Brown's books in the NYPL's children's collection. Leonard Marcus tells the story beautifully in his wonderful book, Awakened by the Moon, but, in a nutshell:

Miss Moore hosted an annual tea party at the main branch of the library for authors she supported. Margaret and her adored editor, Ursula Nordstrom, set up a tea for themselves on the library steps, which meant that all the included authors and publishers had to step right over the refusées in order to enter the event. Very naughty. Very Margaret.

The 100th anniversary of Margaret Wise Brown's birthday is Sunday, May 23. I'll bring cupcakes if you'll come out to sing Happy Birthday on the steps of the New York Public at 2PM. Isn't it the least we can do for her? And wouldn't she have loved it?

Poetry Friday: Too big to fail

2010-04-23T17:18:00.006-04:00

With the presidential Marine 1 helicopter chopping its blades over our offices yesterday, Earth Day didn't feel very green here at Sanford Greenburger. Obama was on his way to scold Wall Street at nearby Cooper Union. Sirens blared, traffic snarled.

But then I received this beautiful message in an email from poet and novelist George Ella Lyon, and the two worlds grafted together.

THE MEADOW DOES NOT KNOW

about the stock market.

Today she is worth

exactly what she was worth

yesterday, a year ago, at creation.

I don’t mean property value,

taxable assets. I mean

milkweed and copper moths

honeybees, cow vetch,

king snakes.

Meadow life

is not money.

What rises

and falls here are stems

and flowers, leaves and fruit.

No zigzag line of profit and panic

but the great wheel turning.

Here God gives of her

extravagance and here, like

flicker, viceroy, dragonfly

we come into our inheritance.

-- Earth Poems, George Ella Lyon

Acts of God

2010-04-15T21:36:00.005-04:00

Today was the closest we'll ever get to The Devil Wears Prada at Sanford Greenburger. Volcanic ash engulfed European skies -- just as the London Book Fair was about to begin. So as some of us were assiduously attending to our clients' needs (i.e., glumly going about our business as our fellows dashed off abroad), others were madly canceling flights, rebooking through Bournemouth, through Glasgow, through Paris, through the Chunnel, via Liverpool, over land, sea, air, foam. I'm not sure whether my colleagues actually will make it to London, but they gave it their all, trying to get there.

Our newest hire, dewy-eyed Rachael, observed wonderingly: "At my last job, they would have said the volcano was my fault!" It's good to know that in book publishing, at least, we can't resort to flying on Donatella's private jet, and sometimes must stand aside as God and Nature, in all their glory, have their way.

My new favorite bar in New York

2010-04-13T22:31:00.003-04:00

Because they carded me tonight.

The Mozart Season rises again

2010-04-06T21:31:00.008-04:00

Do you know about the Phoenix Award? I have to admit, shamefully, that I did not -- until tonight. Tonight, Virginia Euwer Wolff was named the recipient of the 2011 Phoenix Award for her glorious novel, The Mozart Season.

Could there ever be a better reason for giving a prize than this one? Here is the citation:

The Children's Literature Association Phoenix Award is presented annually to the author of a children's or young adult book, originally published in English twenty years earlier, that did not win a major award at the time of its publication. The award recognizes works of high literary merit and lasting significance.

Jinny Wolff is almost pathologically modest, so I will crow on her behalf. The Mozart Season is a book that bears reading and re-reading. (So great was my respect for her novel that I'd clean my apartment on druggy St. Mark's Place -- vacuum even! -- before I'd allow myself to open her manuscript and read her sentences.) Read it if you have a chance.

Hats off to the 2011 Children's Literature Association committee for their far-sighted choice; three cheers for the 17-year-old boy who composed that stunning violin concerto; and kudos to the brilliant Virginia Euwer Wolff for writing a book that will rise again and again.

Poetry Friday: What's truly English?

2010-04-02T19:41:00.009-04:00

My walk to work takes me through Central Park. It's like walking through a picture book: dog-walkers, joggers, school children, the turning of the seasons. I passed a host of golden daffodils this morning and thought: Shall I use Wordsworth's well-worn chestnut for Poetry Friday today? Nah. Who can bear to read that one again.

Then came to mind "Oh, to be in England, Now that April's there!" a poem I once had by heart but which now mercifully is gone from memory.

No to Browning, no to Wordsworth, but England seemed to be in the air. Hence the below, from that great unsung Irish laureate, Spike Milligan:

TEETH

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them --
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

Thanks again to the brilliant anthologist Wallace Tripp, in whose Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet! I first found this poem.

Poetry Friday: Missing Bologna

2010-03-26T14:15:00.007-04:00

Yesterday was the end of the Children's Book Fair in Bologna. Many have waxed lyrical about the beauties of the place, the bounty of the food, the flowing of the wine, the vaulting of the porticos. So I won't spend too much time on those. What I miss: the hardware store with its smaller-scaled Italian household goods; the candy/jam/grappa shop where I would have bought Easter chocolate; the mermaids; the waiters; the vacuum-packed parmigiano from Tamburini.

But to be honest, what I miss even more is the community. Many is the international dinner where you are seated next to someone whose language you do not share. It's hard to communicate, even if you're doing business in common. So what do you do? If you're very lucky, you're at a dinner where the guests sing or declaim or recite in their own language. Does it matter if you don't understand the words? It does not. What matters is the tone, the sound, the feeling, the surprise.

I hosted a dinner once where, after antipasta and pasta and carne and insalata and dolci and caffe and vino bianco e rosso and of course aqua minerale (gazata o non-gazata), I asked the participants if they would grace us with a little rhyme from their own country. It doesn't take much for Europeans to come up with poetry. We went around the table and we each recited a nursery rhyme. Some of the rhyming patterns were shared, country to country. Mostly we didn't understand the Swedes and Finns, but we all understood that we'd reached deep into ourselves to find first the cadence and then the words of an old rhyme. This was mine:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

When we're next in Bologna, what will be yours?

Poetry Friday: Wasn't today the quintessence of Just- spring?

2010-03-19T21:26:00.007-04:00

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

-- E. E. Cummings

(And yes, I'm daring to use the capitals in his name: http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm)

The Bunny is coming out of hibernation

2010-03-16T20:42:00.006-04:00

Soon, soon.

Eloise at the Library

2009-11-08T20:55:00.011-05:00

Once there was a 6-year-old who lived not far from Central Park. She had a dog that looked like a cat and a turtle named Skipperdee. Her mother was mostly absent. Her nanny drank. She skibbled around New York like she owned the place. But there was one marble edifice whose door she was not allowed to darken: She was shut out of the New York Public Library.

That's why I was so delighted to see that the red carpet was rolled out this weekend at the NYPL for Hilary Knight, the man who created those perfect black, white, and red drawings of Eloise, the eternal bad girl. Hilary was named a NYPL Library Lion of 2009. He donated his papers -- the notes, sketches, and biographical outpourings of an artistic lifetime -- to the Library's collection on November 2 of this year, just a day after his 83rd birthday. When I opened the Style section of the New York Times today, there was Hilary in his impeccable black tie with a gorgeous crimson sash, taking up his rightful position as a Library Lion.

But where was Eloise? Oh, she's in the children's collection now, now that it's safe to have her there, nestled among Gossip Girl and Heather Has Two Mommies, fifty-four years after her conception. But when Eloise was first released by Simon & Schuster in 1955 Anne Carroll Moore, the redoubtable head of the library's Office of Work with Children, deemed her unworthy. Not because the book wasn't a good book, nor because it was "for precocious grown-ups," as Kay Thompson so brilliantly subtitled her work, but because it was a good book for bad children. And Miss Moore sanctioned only good books for good children. (Which is why Margaret Wise Brown's work didn't merit a place at the NYPL, either. Eloise, as always, was in the best company.)

All this I learned when I went on a hunt for original editions of Eloise, Eloise in Paris, Eloise at Christmastime, and Eloise in Moscow in 1998. That was the year Kay Thompson died, and her heirs felt that it was time to reissue all the Eloise books -- three of which Kay had decided, pretty much on a whim, to put out of print. My job was to match the reissues as closely as possibly to the original printings. I thought, maybe, there might be a few first editions squirreled away in the annals of the library. But did I find a first edition? No. Did I find any edition? Not one.

The Library had never added Eloise to their collection. She did not exist in the card catalog, on the shelves, or skittering through the hallways. (The irony is that she was in the Brooklyn Public Library's collection, but could not be found in any Manhattan branch. I don't think Eloise ever set foot in Brooklyn in her six-year-old life.) I ended up buying first editions on eBay, and Hilary and I worked on matching the new printings to those (though he liked the second printings of most of the Eloise titles better, but that's another story).

It was only after the resurgence of Eloise in the late 1990's and early 2000's that the NYPL finally and added these seminal New York books to its shelves. And now, the library will have the Eloise archive, too. Lucky them!

Here's the thing of it:
Saying no to Eloise is not allowed.

Oooooh I absolutely love a happy ending.

Poetry Friday: Disobedience

2009-10-02T10:56:00.009-04:00

I have been intending to write about my semi-star-studded commute the other day, but that post is yet to be committed to this blog. But as it's poetry Friday, and in honor (?) of the new Winnie-the-Pooh book, which was published today, here is A. A. Milne's glorious "Disobedience," instead. It pounded through my head all the way home tonight, from 59th Street to the upper 100's.

It's an old favorite of mine -- I used to recite it to my daughter as I pushed her on the swings in Hippo Park. And I used it as a choral speaking exercise at the Vermont College of Fine Arts one summer (a young David Levithan was in the audience, I believe). So here's "Disobedience" for you. Try to keep it from lodging in your brain for just about ever.

James James

Morrison Morrison

Weatherby George Dupree

Took great

Care of his Mother,

Though he was only three.

James James said to his Mother,

"Mother," he said, said he;

"You must never go down

to the end of the town,

if you don't go down with me."

James James

Morrison's Mother

Put on a golden gown.

James James Morrison's Mother

Drove to the end of town.

James James Morrison's Mother

Said to herself, said she:

"I can get right down

to the end of the town

and be back in time for tea."

King John

Put up a notice,

"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!

JAMES JAMES MORRISON'S MOTHER

SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.

LAST SEEN

WANDERING VAGUELY:

QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,

SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN

TO THE END OF THE TOWN --

FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!"

James James

Morrison Morrison

(Commonly known as Jim)

Told his

Other relations

Not to go blaming him.

James James

Said to his Mother,

"Mother," he said, said he:

"You must never go down to the end of the town

without consulting me."

James James

Morrison's mother

Hasn't been heard of since.

King John said he was sorry,

So did the Queen and Prince.

King John

(Somebody told me)

Said to a man he knew:

"If people go down to the end of the town,
What can anyone do?"

(Now, then, very softly)
J. J.
M. M.
W. G. du P.
Took great c/o his M*****
Though he was only 3
J. J. said to his M******
"M*****," he said, said he,
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town
if-you-don't-go-down-with-ME!"

-- A. A. Milne

Signs of the times

2009-09-19T23:12:00.003-04:00

Let's hope so.

Poetry Friday: This fall, it's all about Keats

2009-09-18T07:56:00.006-04:00

Jane Campion's Bright Star releases today. It tells the fevered love story of Fanny Brawne and (doomed) Johnny Keats. I was as in love with Keats -- or possibly more -- than Fanny Brawne could ever have been, or at least that's what I believed when I was about thirteen. At one time I had almost all his sonnets by heart, including the one that lends its name to Campion's film. My sister and I used to recite together "When I Have Fears," and I spent many a biology class writing out "Ode to a Nightingale" so I would be able to memorize it. (Now I turn it over in my head when I'm in the dentist's chair. Very calming.)

I thought about posting "Bright Star" here today, but I have to say it was never one of my favorites. So here's a little ditty that I have long loved, and that I'm even now working with a most-admired artist to turn into a picture book. It was written with a different kind of love by Keats for another Fanny, his younger sister, Fanny Keats. Now, in my dotage, this might be my most beloved Keats poem of all.

There was a naughty Boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be --
He took
In his Knapsack
A Book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels --
A slight cap
For night cap --
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New Stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This Knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his Nose
To the North,
To the North,
And follow'd his nose
To the North.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry --
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a Pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And Postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout,
And without
When the weather
Was warm --
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one's nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one's nose
To the north!

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good-
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little Baby's
Little fingers --
O he made
'Twas his trade
Of Fish a pretty Kettle
A Kettle --
A Kettle
Of Fish a pretty Kettle
A Kettle!

There was a naughty Boy,
And a naughty Boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see -
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red --
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England --
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd.

-- John Keats, 1816

Shaving My Legs for Dan Brown

2009-09-14T21:37:00.010-04:00

When I was growing up, shaving your legs was a political act. Shaving was one of the things we were liberating ourselves from. If we shaved our legs, we were on the side of the Establishment. Our consciousness was not raised. We had bought in.

Of course, I was picking up all this sloganeering from my older sisters, and was torn, so terribly torn. I wanted to shave my legs. Desperately. I remember convincing myself that I had super-hairy legs and that I couldn't be grown up until I had permission to savage them with a sharp object. This was back when we had parents who monitored these kinds of things.

A sweet little pink ladies' razor won out over politics: a harbinger of my later life. (My sister's the labor union president; my brother is the policy wonk.) I loved that little razor so much. I got it as a present for my 12th birthday. And I must have shaved my legs at least eight times before I realized what a sap I was for buying into this particular aspect of personal grooming. Shaving your legs wasn't political for me. It was just hard work (those cuts!) and relentless (it grew back!) and time consuming (I could have been reading Little Women!).

This morning, I forgot to shave my legs in the shower. I usually don't -- turns out I don't have such hairy legs and I have pretty much reduced shaving to Memorial Day and 4th of July. But tonight I was headed to the publication party for Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, which is represented by our agency. I thought that shaving my legs was the least I could do. That's when the little pink razor came back to me.

The party was elegant; the cake was fanciful (a replica of the Capitol); the speeches were polished; and nobody noticed what shape my legs were in, except me. We all got a copy of the book, signed, and I was home in time to start reading. Tonight, my politics will take the form of chasing around D.C. with Robert Langdon. Tomorrow, I'll air-kiss the razor goodbye till next summer.

And at some point, I'll tell you where I stand on lipstick.

Why SCBWI is like the changing room at Forever 21

2009-08-12T21:55:00.012-04:00

My daughter got home from camp "desperate" for new clothes. And in fact, it was true: The camp decided, at the last minute, to ship her trunk back, which resulted in her having only two t-shirts and one pair of shorts until the cargo arrives. So today we made a date to go shopping at Forever 21, a store whose doors I had not previously darkened. I am not their demo: I don't like their music, I don't fit into their sizes, and I don't need a pair of black sequined track shorts. This season, anyway.

But I hadn't seen my daughter for weeks, so I couldn't think of a more happy-making way to spend a couple of hours at lunchtime today helping her find clothes and than telling her she looked adorable (she did!) and waiting in long dressing-room lines so she didn't have to.

Not a lot of people know that I was a shop-girl in another life, at the Laura Ashley that once existed on Bow Street in Covent Garden in London. I measured fabric, calculated yardage for curtaining (must take into account the drop!), hung smocklike dresses on hangers, and monitored the communal changing room.

That last was the job nobody wanted. The communal changing room, on the lower floor of the shop, was low-ceilinged, hot, and often smelly. We had to watch and abet as the women -- some sliding, some struggling-- wrangled the buttons and belts of Laura Ashley's signature Victorian-style wear. And today, sure enough, there was a beleagured (Dutch?) 20-year-old trying to keep some order in the Forever 21 dressing room, which was awash in discarded clothing.

But there is something very wonderful about a women's dressing room, especially in a place as chaotic as Forever 21 at lunch-hour, or Laura Ashley during the January sales. Women are extraordinarily generous to each other. They comment freely, and frankly, on each other's choices: Wow, what a great color on you! Or, Honestly, I think it pulls a little across the back. They zip one another's zippers. They pass garments from one person to the next. Friends make trips out onto the floor to find different sizes. And people come out of the rooms to look at themselves in the mirror in the most risky dishabille. Sometimes it's a little giddy. Brastraps are pushed down, pants are hiked up, jeans don't button, shirts are baggy or too tight. It's not sexual, it's not show-offy; it's the only way to get the job done.

Occasionally, a man braves his way in, either to try on things for himself (Forever 21 is multi-gender) or to advise on his girlfriend's efforts (brave, brave man!). And curiously, the climate in the dressing room does not change one iota when a man is around. If you're down in the trenches, Comrade, the women seem to say, you're going to fight the war with us.

And this is why the dressing room at Forever 21 today was like the 2009 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in LA last week. In attendance were eight-hundred women and one hundred-forty men. People blogged, partied, gossiped, analyzed. The women were extraordinarily supportive, telling one another, in the kindest possible way, that a certain book idea was like a skirt that made you look hippy; or brimming with praise when another was like an LBD that turned you into a siren. And the men were bemused, indulgent, engaged, and surely getting something out of the conference that the women could only guess at.

Sherman Alexie made the observation that while adult-book authors circle one another at such events with the aggression of a cannibal, teeth bared for the kill, children's book writers greet one another with only the tiniest bit of self-preserving competition, nibbling away, at worst, a little toe.

So it is at Forever 21 and the SCBWI. I left each place with toes intact, happier for the communal experience, knowing that out of the racks of tangled hangers and crumpled sketches and piled dresses and sequined query letters, almost everybody unearthed a treasure.

Sidewalk art

2009-08-12T20:44:00.008-04:00

Just a quickie tonight, so that the blog does not feel completely unloved.

There's a sidewalk artist who works in our neighborhood. His subjects so far have been Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (during the election), and Michael Jackson, after June 25 of this year. Today, I passed his handiwork, and am still guessing the identity thereof. I have an idea, but what say you?

And here's an easy one: Who'll be the first to make the connection to a children's book?

The Sunday Table: The Well of Loneliness

2009-07-28T19:20:00.009-04:00

You never know what the Sunday Table is going to turn up. This time, it's a surprising edition -- bound in leather & marbled paper binding -- of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. In Danish. (With a typo on the spine.)

Have I read The Well of Loneliness? I have not. I started trudging through it many years ago, but never got to the end. Will I ever read it in Danish? I would say no.

But it gives me an excuse to tell a story, maybe apocryphal, maybe not, of how Loneliness fared in Hollywood. The book was a hot property in 1928, when it was published. It was banned in Boston, so there was much scandal around it, and many headlines, and no publicity is bad publicity, as Oprah herself would admit. Thus Radclyffe Hall's painful story of a woman who loves a woman came to the attention of Samuel Goldwyn, who had been recently forced out of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and had hung out a shingle of his own. (A shingle that would later produce Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, and The Best Years of Our Lives.)

From what I understand, Goldwyn wanted to snap up the rights to Hall's book before any of his competitors could get to it.

"Mr. Goldwyn," says his factotum, "it's a real sad story."
"That's okay," says Goldwyn.
"Sir," says his flunky, "it was banned in Boston."
"I don't care," says Goldwyn.
"Sam," says his flack, "it's about a lesbian."
"So," says Goldwyn, "in the movie, we'll make her American."

If only he had made her a Dane!

Why BEA should be more like Comic-con

2009-07-27T09:46:00.011-04:00

Here's what strikes me about Comic-con -- besides the fact that it is a riotous celebration of visual arts, design, gaming, movies, TV, outsiders, and, oh right, comics. What strikes me is that it's also a riotous celebration of books. Johnny Depp makes headlines around the world when he appears on behalf of Alice in Wonderland. Pixar teases the masses with footage from The Princess and the Frog. Twilight's Robert Pattinson walks into a room and strong women faint. Even Ursula the Sea Witch got her start in a book. All while Harry Potter 6 opens worldwide.

What's wrong with us?

Why isn't BEA like this, for Gandalf's sake? When did we fall asleep at the wheel?

People have fun at Comic-con. They don't take themselves too seriously, even though it is Big Business. I found, the times the I went -- not this year, alas! -- that people were unfailingly generous to each other. Of course it's work and it's hot and crowded and sometimes the masks are scary. But mostly, it's a let-your-purple-hair-down fest of fun things to play with, look at, and read.

As BEA feels more and more dull, Comic-con feels more and more alive. Maybe it's time to open the gates to the Javits Center, and see where the crowds lead us. Can 125,000 story-loving people really be wrong?

PS: Thanks to Tony and Angela DiTerlizzi for the photos of themselves, the Ursulas, and Eoin Colfer.

The Sunday Table

2009-07-20T21:34:00.012-04:00

Today is Monday, but I'm a bit of a tardy person, so Monday is a perfect day to introduce a new feature on the Bunny Eat Bunny blog: The Sunday Table.

I live in a building -- we can call it 1455 West End Avenue -- that's filled with bookish people. A poet lives underneath us. An editor lives upstairs and down the hall. There are a couple of leftist journalists and bloggers, one on each elevator bank. And so, like many buildings in New York, 1455 has a book depository: a ponderous old walnut table in the hall where volumes that are unwanted by one apartment's denizens are happily -- even greedily -- snapped up by another's.

It entertains me to see what stays, what goes. And Sundays are a particularly good day to rifle through the table, because people are always making resolutions to clean and pare down and edit on the weekends, so the table fills up. (I have already found Steve Martini's The Judge on our own kitchen table, courtesy of my husband's very very bad book habit.)

If you look very carefully you can see that The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks is covering up a Dick Francis volume, though I can't see which one. I tend to date my career in publishing by volumes like The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks. In 1988 I was working at Scholastic's Apple imprint, editing books very like this one. We all went in for those photo-real images back then: covers that screamed,"Oh my gosh, what wacky things are happening in this story?!?" I'm glad that trend is past, but I know a lot of kids who still love that look. And note the success St. Martin's had with Ted Bell's Nick of Time just last year.

What do you bet that John Grisham's The Chamber is gone next Sunday, if not sooner, and that Time's Great People of the 20th Century will have trouble finding a home. High Blood Pressure for Dummies seems like too silly a title for anyone to pick up ("It's the salt, stupid!"), but there are niche markets in every building, so I won't bet on it.

My own contribution to the table this week, E. Lockhart's Dramarama, of which I owned two copies, disappeared between taking these photos in the early afternoon and coming home in the early evening. Maybe it was the sexy cover or the title or the author's excellent name. Or maybe the Sunday Table is too hard to pass by without taking a bite.

Men Who Read

2009-07-14T21:43:00.007-04:00

Is there anything hotter than a man who reads? ALA was in Chicago this past week, and I was able to spend a few hours at the Art Institute. I steered myself away from their astonishing collection of Impressionist paintings, and headed for my faves, the Northern Renaissance masters, but on the way, I turned into a small gallery and beheld....HIM.

Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. He's usually in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for those of you who follow such things. But there he was, in his intellectual and impatient and dark-eyed glory, waiting for me in Chicago.

Don't you just love that El Greco caught him looking up from not one book -- but two! I picture it this way: El Greco walks into Fray H's cell, says, You have to have your picture painted. Abbot's orders. And Fray Hortensio is like: I'll give you a minute to paint me, because yes, I am absolutely gorgeous, but I have got higher things on my mind. I am a 17th-century priest, after all. I am composing sonnets! Writing music! I am reading two books -- at the same time! I'm comparing texts! I am cross-referencing!

To this I say, a scant 400 years later: Let me interrupt your studies, Fray Hortensio! Please!

I flatter myself to think that if I'd encountered guy at the Hungarian Pastry Shop when I was in my salad days...well, he might not have hearkened to his calling. Actually, in that scenario, he would have ignored me for beautifully-proportioned lithe earth-mother of a waitress who would quickly have taken his order. But enough.

The point of this is that men who read are sexy. Especially if they have a Chicago connection. Like this guy...

...and my husband. But that's a blog for another day.

The agent's hat

2009-07-06T20:07:00.003-04:00

My first day at the office at Sanford J. Greenburger. What I did today: solved a contractual problem and signed a visionary and innovative client; waited for the computer to recognize that I was a bona fide member of the company; bravely called a publisher to make a deal; happily received flowers from good friends. Read some good unsolicited material, too. All in all, an excellent day.

So today the agent's hat definitely looks like this.

The Little Red Lighthouse

2009-07-02T10:11:00.008-04:00

My husband has a sailboat, which we keep in the Hudson River. I have long wanted to take the boat up the Hudson to catch a glimpse of the Little Red Lighthouse from "at sea." So on Tuesday, we took the boat out.

It was a glorious day. Sunny skies, not a cloud in sight. Current was heading in and the winds were favorable. We zoomed up the river and took some glorious shots of the lighthouse.

We also saw this curious Quonset hut, decorated with the image of naked Neptune, a half-naked mermaid, and the Brooklyn Bridge (clad in steel). Also a random angel fish. It's truly wonderful what you can see from the water that you can never see from the shore.

Then, within three minutes, the weather changed dramatically. The wind was fierce. Thunder was rumbling. The sky was black. Lightning split the horizon. The Coast Guard advised "small crafts to seek shelter and put down anchor immediately. If you can hear thunder, you are in danger of being struck by lightning."

Great.

But there's no sheltered cover on the Hudson River, and as the rain beat down on us and we fought to the wind to get the boat anchored, I thought: Wow, what I won't do for my blog.

Poetry Friday: Ben

2009-06-26T09:34:00.006-04:00

Who else remembers this paean to a rat as tenderly as I do? I wish I could post the video but I am defeated by technology. It's worth cutting and pasting the link below, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJV4p0aet4

I never saw Willard (too young at the time and I have always hated horror movies) but I did love this love song to a rodent. Could be why I settled in New York.

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me (you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go (you've got a place to go)

I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben (a friend)
Like Ben (like Ben)
Like Ben

-- "Ben," by Don Black & Walter Scharf, 1972

Michael Jackson, 1958 - 2009

2009-06-25T20:39:00.009-04:00

It's hard not to have your heart break a little for Michael Jackson. Remember the utter joy he displayed in his early performances? As if singing and dancing were the most happy-making thing in the world.

Here's just one more thing to add to his legend. You know who told him to wear the light-colored socks? To draw attention to his feet?

Fred Astaire.

Poetry Friday: Ted Geisel

2009-06-18T22:08:00.010-04:00

My brother's little daughter is almost two years old, and of course impossibly adorable. I babysat her not too long ago. Her favorite tape (she's still analog) is a recording of "The Cat in the Hat," by Dr. Suess, of course, read by David Hyde Pierce. I was only with her for 36 hours but I heard it at least 9 or 10 times. Easy.

On the way to the train station, at the end of my stay, the tape was on in the car. My brother (David) and I got to talking about how very subversive the whole poem is. Suppression of ego in favor of id. Sexual desire as personified by the Cat. Abandonment issues. Confessional narratives. Goldfish as Chorus. Et al.

Which led us to ask each other (as the adorable niece dozed in the car seat): What is the BEST line in that book? What's the single most daring idea, most challenging to the status quo?

I don't remember what David said, but for me it has got to be this one:

You sank our toy boat,
Sank it deep in the cake,

"Sank it deep in the cake"!!! That is just THE most anarchic line a writer could write. The pathos of "You sank our toy boat." (The poignancy of "toy boat.") The sadness of the realization that a toy boat can be sunk! AND AS IF THAT IS NOT ENOUGH -- where did the Cat sink it? DEEP IN THE CAKE! The madness that suggests! How can a cake and a toy boat even be in the same place? And if it's deep in the cake, then the cake must be a layer cake. The effort it takes to make one of those (and in 1957, yet -- no mixes). And to frost it. All ruined in a moment. In two lines of handsome dactyls, we understand the enormity of the havoc the Cat has wreaked. Toy: demystified; boat: sunk; cake: ruined; home: violable; thin membrane that holds society together: DESTROYED.

And the niecelet: she may be only two, but as you can see, she was not missing a thing.

If there's another candidate for best Dr. Seuss line, bring it on.

Poetry Friday: Dylan Thomas

2009-06-12T18:39:00.002-04:00

In April, I went to the Antiquarian Book Fair here in New York. I love going to this event. The books are beautiful, old, and lavish. MoCCA is Bizarro Antiquarian Book Fair, in fact.

At Ursus Rare Books I spent too long leaning over the glass counter reading a tight-packed letter from Dylan Thomas. There is nothing like a letter from a genius in his own hand. He doesn't count this as his own poetry; it was something sung -- over and over -- by his then-mistresss, Wyn Henderson, whom he described as "not quite my cup of night custard." Maybe it's not up to the standards of "Do not go gentle into that good night," but it sure counts for Poetry Friday.

There was a bloody sparrow
Flew up a bloody spout
Came up a bloody thunderstorm
And blew the bugger out.

-- As recorded by Dylan Thomas, April, 1936

Why I like MoCCA

2009-06-11T23:58:00.011-04:00

So it was a little disorganized. And hot. But because they opened the doors an hour late, I got to stand in line with a great mom who was bouncing with enthusiasm and restrained pride for her son (booth #608). And I met a man who had long ties in the children's book world. And behind me was a young comic book artist who was carting in 100 copies of her latest work, heavy as it was, so she could barter with others just like her.

The people at MoCCA understand something about books. Books are permanent. Books mean work is final. Books are to be passed along, read, re-read. Of course all these artists and writers are web-savvy -- even that term is way too naive for them. It's like saying artists 50 years ago were pencil-savvy. But savvy as they are, they love print. They love its limitations, they love the tooth of paper, they like to sew up seams and fold paper and figure out how to use color on color. They like to see how they can make things look old even when they are shockingly new.

If something deserves to be printed, I heard them saying with their gorgeous tiny hand-printed volumes, then it deserves to be a beautiful object. Even if it's a few pieces of stapled Xerox paper, there is thought in every panel. The effort it takes to make books -- after work, late at night, whenever the muse strikes and when it doesn't, and all with very little money -- that effort is worth nothing unless the book itself is a work of art. And you are so right, MoCCA folk. Why print unless you can't do anything else?

Maybe I'm romanticizing a little. So what. I love the raw unstoppable passion of these artists. I am filled with deep admiration at their willingness to help one another. Honestly, with country's biggest publishers heading further and further down the virtual road, I'm glad there is a vanguard of new artists who believe in printed books. Because, dudes, I believe in you.

Vegetarians: Stop reading now

2009-06-10T00:29:00.006-04:00

This was the slightly surreal scene at Madison Square Park, just a couple of blocks from MoCCA this past weekend. Imagine my surprise when I got out of a cab to find a suckling pig laid out on a park bench. The piggie was about to be carved without sentiment of any kind by a short woman with a long knife. A really long knife.

Just the perfect entry into the world of cartoonists and comicbook writers.

More about them soon, truly.

MoCCA

2009-06-09T22:18:00.004-04:00

Today was my day to post about MoCCA but I didn't get a chance to do it. As an opening salvo, here's the best quote from the 2-day fair.

The scene: A very small table, being shared by 3 aspiring comic book writer/artists. One person's work particularly catches my eye. I stop to talk to the open-faced young artist about her delicate, wryly funny drawings:

ME: Have you ever thought of doing a children's book?

ARTIST: Only in my dreams.

Which reminds me: Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Separated at birth?

2009-06-07T21:42:00.005-04:00

Jack Nicholson.

Mo Willems.

Can you believe I had never actually seen Easy Rider before this Friday night? A disgrace, I know. And when I at last did view this trippy movie, all I could think of was Mo Willems. NOT because it was trippy, no no. But every time I looked at Jack, I thought...Mo. Whoa.

Which is a nice segue into tomorrow's blog post about the Musem of Comics and Cartoon Art festival in NYC this weekend. (Mo Willems is on the MoCCA Advisory Board.) For tonight let's just say there is a future to publishing, and it was in exhilarating evidence at the Lexington Avenue Armory this weekend. More anon.

Poetry Friday: Alternate Side of the Street Parking

2009-06-05T17:28:00.008-04:00

This week, here in Gotham, I had a horrible run-in with a fellow New Yorker. The reason for the altercation was alternate side of the street parking. I won't go into it, except to say that it made me realize how lucky we are in this town not to have to rely on a car. And in honor of my 1999 Subaru Outback Wagon, and of the four winters I spent at college in Maine, here is a poem for a cold Friday:

Starting the Subaru at Five Below

Ater 6 Maine winters and 100,000 miles,
when I take it to be inspected

I search for gas stations where they
just say beep the horn and don't ask me to

put it on the lift, exposing its soft
rusted underbelly. Inside is the record

of commuting: apple cores, a bag from
McDonald's, crushed Dunkin Donuts cups,

a flashlight that doesn't work and one
that does, gas receipts blurred beyond

recognition. Finger tips numb, nose
hair frozen, I pump the accelerator

and turn the key. The battery cranks,
the engine gives 2 or 3 low groans and

starts. My God it starts. And unlike
my family in the house, the job I'm

headed towards, the poems in my briefcase,
the dreams I had last night, there is

no question about what makes sense.
White exhaust billowing from the tail pipe,

heater blowing, this car is going to
move me, it's going to take me places.

-- Stuart Kestenbaum
from Pilgrimage, (c) 1990, Coyote Love Press

You know it's a quiet BEA when...

2009-06-03T10:46:00.007-04:00

...you don't run into any of your former office-romances at the Javits Center. Granted, I was not at the fair the whole three days, but I did not have to avoid a single past significant other. For a moment I thought I'd spotted an ex- in the line at the coffee place right at Exhibitor Registration, but it was just another darkly handsome broody brainy guy in his convention suit and badge.

How to fix that? Let the public come in. Richard Nash on his PW blog says it eloquently and passionately. I would point to Comic-con as an example of how people -- masses of people -- can be intellectually ignited by what publishers have to offer. People read at Comic-con. And they'd read at BEA, too -- in the hallways, on the floor, on the buses, in line -- if only we asked them in. Then there'd be plenty of exes to avoid.

I taught a class this weekend at the Little Airplane Academy. Part of the weekend was spent at BEA. Afterwards, one of the students, who by day designs board games, said that he couldn't really tell what anyone was pushing. I told him it was a trade fair, so the pushes were different, and not necessarily discernible in the booths. He raised an eyebrow. "Missed opportunity," he said.

Poetry Friday: Emily Dickinson

2009-05-29T16:26:00.009-04:00

Not too long ago, on my way to Brattleboro, VT, I pulled off the highway so I could stop at Emily Dickinson's house. I had never been there before. It was a beautiful late-spring day, and as I drove into Amherst I was hearing the children's children's children's children of the birds Emily might have heard, seeing the branches' branches' branches of the branches Emily sat under for shade.

The museum had just opened and the volunteer at the ticket desk was very kind. She recommended a tour, and I signed up. The docent who was assigned to the small group who had assembled that morning was knowledgable, so knowledgable! But oh, she did not fit with my expectations of what my pilgrimage to Emily's house would be!

Thankfully, I had already told our host that I might have to leave early, so after the first half hour -- spent in the sitting room, narrated with a history of the Dickinson family -- I excused myself, and spirited away.

A very young woman, with a straight backbone and a plain and friendly face, was seated at the base of the stairs to Emily's bedroom. She offered to lead me up to the second floor. Quietly, we climbed the stairs together. Then she walked down the hall, said "This is where Emily wrote," and led me to the open door. There was the small bed, with Emily's own shawl draped over it. There was the tiny, tiny, modest writing desk. And there were two photographs of women over the dresser. Emily's own heroes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.

The silent guide left me alone to weep on the threshold. I mean it -- tears poured down my face. (They're welling up now, even.) It was the two other writers' faces that did it to me. The continuum of women writers. The idea that Emily had her own idols. That she didn't know she would prove to be an idol of so many writers herself. That she couldn't be sure.

After a couple of minutes I took a breath and said, "Is everyone overwhelmed when they come in here?" And my lovely guide said, "I am, every time."

Wild Nights -- Wild Nights! 
Were I with thee 
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!  

Futile -- the Winds -- 
To a Heart in port -- 
Done with the Compass -- 
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden -- 
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor -- Tonight -- 
In Thee!

--Emily Dickinson

The new job

2009-05-27T21:03:00.013-04:00

Today, I switched from editor to agent. A different side of the same desk. It's a very big change for me: doffing the mantle of publisher and donning that of agent at Sanford J. Greeburger Associates. You can read a little about it in today's PW Children's Bookshelf. But in case you're seeking a more in-depth analysis of this move, look no further. I asked my old friend, Brenda Bowen, Ex-Publisher, to interview my new self, Brenda Bowen, Girl Agent. We caught up with each other on the eve of BEA. Here's what the world's greenest children's book agent had to say about her choices.

BBXP: So Brenda -- an agent? How come?
BBGA: It's been a long time coming, I think. I've seen other people -- Nancy Gallt, Michael Stearns -- make the change successfully. Maybe I can do it, too.

BBXP: How come Greenburger? Why not hang out your own shingle?

BBGA: SJGA is the home of Dan Brown, Fancy Nancy, and Kafka. Can't beat that. And they're experts in areas where I'll need expertise: contracts, royalties, rights.

BBXP: How are you going to find clients. Is that the word -- clients?
BBGA: Actually, I like to use the words authors and illustrators. I'll look for them through blogs and conferences and in magazines and newspapers. I'll ask authors and editors for referrals. I'll eavesdrop on people's cell phone conversations while I'm getting a pedicure.

BBXP: You know, you've moved around a lot. What's the deal with that?
BBGP: Change is the only constant.

BBXP: No cliches, please.
BBGP: Fair enough. I made this move because I've finally come to the realization that I'm old enough to be working for myself. SJGA is a loose federation of independent agents; so I'll have colleagues, not a boss. I'll ask advice; not permission.

BBXP: Nicely put. Is it true you're also a writer?
BBGP: Yes, like many people in publishing, I've had a little sideline as a writer. It will help me as an agent, I think, to have had experience as an author, too. And I have a new agent -- Faith Hamlin, also at SJGA.

BBXP: Why exactly are you becoming an agent, when the entire industry is crumbling about our ears?
BBGA: Not crumbling. Reimagining itself. And what better time to be closer to the creative community than this? Books will survive, in whatever form they may take.

BBXP: Hmmm. We'll see about that. What exactly is your take on new media?
BBGA: Maybe I'll auction the first American cell-phone novel for teens. Who knows. I'll be open to great stories and book ideas wherever they come from.

BBXP: And you're packaging too? And taking on adult authors?
BBGA: In the fullness of time.

BBXP: You're very ambitious.
BBGA: My weakness and my strength.

BBXP: How would you describe yourself as an agent?
BBGA: I see myself as the love-child of Dan Lazar and Marilyn Marlow: texting editors at 2AM, only in 19th century prose.

BBXP: Thanks so much for your time.
BBGA: My pleasure.

Poetry Friday: Billy Collins

2009-03-27T19:49:00.007-04:00

Here's a neat little commentary on one of the pillars of our literary canon by the inestimable Billy Collins. Reprinted, shamefacedly, without permission from his collection Ballistics, published by Random House last year.

That roast beef has stopped me more than once, too, though I imagine the middle piggy in front of a bloody joint (as the British say), not a deli sandwich. It surely can't be the only nursery rhyme that stops us in our tracks, can it? Who's looked at the Opie collections lately?

My favorite line here is the one about the smug self-satisfaction of Jack Horner. We want to be Little Jack and we want to smack him in the face at the same time. Or maybe that's just Billy and me.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe -- this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here --
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

-- Billy Collins, 2008

George Washington and Bernie Madoff

2009-03-24T08:52:00.006-04:00

Separated at birth?

Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz

2009-03-21T20:37:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, on the vernal equinox, there was a memorial service for the two great librarians who died at ALA Midwinter in January. Brian Selznick created a wonderful piece of art for the occasion -- a cross between Giotto and Rousseau. The black & white reproduction above does it no justice! There were storytellers at the service, and kids, and library volunteers, and a politician. Pat Scales gave a dignified and moving account of Kate and Kathy's professional influence, and Brian Selznick told us an uncanny story of a baby born at the Denver Public Library the very day that Kate and Kathy left us. I have written about Kate before on this blog, but a number of people have asked for the text of the comments I was honored to deliver at the service. Here it is:

Memorial service for Kathy Krasniewicz and Kate McClelland Old Greenwich, Connecticut, March 20, 2009

My name is Brenda Bowen, and I am honored to speak on behalf of the children's publishing community.

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote on the ALSC site after hearing the news of the death of Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz: "Deepest condolences to all of you who knew them well from one who admired them so much and loved their work and generosity to so many in the realm of READING and THINKING and BEING. The world has darkened utterly. What can we do to keep them alive?"

Today's celebration is keeping Kate and Kathy very much alive. Every single one of us carries a piece of their spirits in the way we read, how we think, who we are. To know Kate and Kathy was to be inspired by them. These ladies had style, and class. Kate -- who at 71 years old (and who knew she was 71?) -- was an agent of radical change. She was not content with the status quo. She rewarded risk and venturesome creativity. Kathy was a beacon of warmth and intelligence. She was the practical application of our work as publishers. Children always first with Kathy.

And children and young adults all over this country have found books to love because of Kathy and Kate's work and passion. We publishers have made better books because of them. We can still feel the grip of Kate's hand on our forearms as she leaned in close to ask..."What is Jinny up to?" We can see Kathy with her dazzling smile and her regal bearing, eyes bright with excitement about what was coming out next season. "Tell me about your books, " she'd say. They never stopped, never got tired of hearing what was coming next.

They pushed us, these ladies. They pushed us into bringing authors to conferences to speak to other librarians. They pushed us to get artists to talk to kids about drawing. They were so pushy on behalf of books. They had passionate opinions. They couldn't let a good story go unnoticed. They could not stop working to spread the word of children's books to the world. They were working, it is safe to say, up to the moment they died. They are working now.

The great English writer Virginia Woolf had something to say about women like Kate and Kathy, in a line Kate liked to quote: “I have sometimes dreamt…" Woolf wrote, "that when the Day of Judgment dawns…the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, ‘Look, these have no need of reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.’”

Woolf had her picture of heaven (only Kate and Kathy would have appeared at the Pearly Gates with galleys, not bound books); I'll add to Woolf's vision with mine. I think Kate is up there right now, getting up to mischief with Bill Steig. Conspiring with Lloyd Alexander and -- whoa! -- maybe she's making peace between Anne Carroll Moore and Margaret Wise Brown. She could do it!

And Kathy is right there next to her, the sensible one, the steady, constant companion and quiet leader. She's reading to the young children and booktalking to the older kids and writing letters home to her girls, her beautiful girls.

I think any of us in publishing has had the thought: I don't think I can face another season. Not another list. Is there really anything new under the sun? And then you're at your desk, and you open an email attachment from a new writer, and you start reading on the screen, and you can't stop reading, even though your eyes hurt. Because there in front of you an amazing story is spinning out -- a story you've never read before, told in a voice you've never heard. And your heart actually quickens with excitement.

Or you get back to your office to find a huge brown-paper-wrapped package, and you carefully, nervously undo the wrapping to discover a picture book from years ago that you thought would never get delivered and you open it and it is astonishing -- and you think, Oh my God: This is why I'm in it. This is why I love making books.

And right away your mind goes to the next thought: But who's going to get this? Who's going to read it and love it and spread the word and get it to kids? Oh -- there's Betty Carter! And there's Karen Breen! And there's Kathy and Kate!

But now there's not Kathy and Kate any more. Which is why it is so urgent that we leave this place with Kathy and Kate on our shoulders. One on each. We'll take Kathy's red coat and Kate's fabulous kimonos and wrap them around ourselves as armor. We'll recall Kate's chunky jewelry and Kathy's beautiful family rings when we see a literary gem in the rough. We'll peer over Kate's half glasses and look at the world half full; more than half full. We'll steal their enthusiasm, their drive, their optimism and use it to fuel ourselves. It's uncertain times these days. Radical change is in the air. But the stories and the songs and the pictures will go on because they must go on. Our job as publishers, writers, artists, readers is to imbue our own endeavor with the fierce love of Kate and Kathy felt for children's literature and children themselves.

It's the least we can do for them.

A book Kate loved was Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse. It's the vernal equinox today -- such a good day for a celebration of life. Here is a poem about spring from Karen Hesse's book that evokes Kate and Kathy and the gifts they will continue to give us, as long as we live.

"Apple Blossoms"

Ma
has been nursing these two trees
for as long as I can remember.
In spite of the dust
in spite of the drought,
because of Ma's stubborn care,
these trees are
thick with blossoms,
delicate and
pinky-white.

My eyes can't get enough of the sight of them.
I stand under the trees
and let the petals
fall into my hair,
a blizzard
of sweet-smelling flowers,
dropped from the boughs of the two
placed there
in the front yard by Ma
before I was born,
that she and they might bring forth fruit
into our home,
together.

Poetry Friday: Vernal Equinox

2009-03-20T10:42:00.007-04:00

Just a quickie today, from the gifted poet Anon, in his Brooklyn incarnation:

De spring is sprung,
De grass is riz;
I wunneh wear de flowers is.
De boid is on de wing --

Absoid! De wing is on de boid!

No flowers, barely any birds, and only chicken wings in this corner of the world on today's snowy start to spring.

It's a free country

2009-03-17T20:47:00.004-04:00

"It's a free country, I can _______ if I want to." Didn't you say that a LOT as a kid? I did. "It's a free country, I can take your clothes if I want to" (to my sisters). "It's a free country, I can eat chocolate before dinner if I want to" (to myself). Of course I couldn't say it to my parents, because talking back was the worst of all possible transgressions in my household.

But when was the last time you heard a kid say "It's a free country"? I have not heard it in a long time. Because now we're a "If you see something, say something" country. Now we're a "You will be photographed country."

How is this filtering down to the books we read? The books we choose to publish? It would be interesting to know.

Poetry Friday: All the single ladies

2009-03-13T09:02:00.013-04:00

I've been obsessing just a little about Beyonce's hit, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), so I am using Poetry Friday as an excuse to explore why.

Things I love about it: The title (the parentheses). The simple trips up and down the major scale. The call and response. The bridge. The post-post-feminism empowerment lyrics. The schoolyard chant. The beat. The video. Oh yes, the video.

Why can books never employ that parentheses trick? The best we seem to be able to do is use "or," as in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. I suppose we give books nicknames (e.g., HP7), but we don't memorialize those nicknames in the actual titles of literary works. I don't know what Beyonce's memoir will be called, but I hope it shatters literary convention and includes an alternate title (in parens).

Don't you just love and admire the way song just skips way up and down a regular old major scale? It's a simple schoolyard chant with a driving beat. The S&M Mary Janes worn in the video by Beyonce and her two relatively heavily-clad backup dancers are a little nod to the schoolyard, too. At least that's what I like to think.

And how about the call and response? Calculated to get all the single ladeies -- and every single woman -- out on the dance floor, it still evokes a deep-seated recognition in the listener, at least in this one.

Then there are the lyrics! The song is credited to Thaddis Laphonia Harrell, Jr; Beyonce Knowles; Terius Youngdell "TheDream" Nash; Christopher "Tricky" Stewart -- it's an Oscar-worthy cast. I know, I know, it's so heavily produced that it's barely a song at all, but look at the words and tell me how anyone can help but sympathize/empathize with the singer. This is an anthem for anyone who's been wronged by a no-'count man. And, much as I love and adore men of all stripes...who hasn't been wronged by a no-'count man at least once in her life?

I'm blameless, she says. I have the moral upper hand. You had your chance and you blew it. So long sucker. All the things we want to say but we can't find the words. Well, here they are.

So "infinity and beyond" makes us all think of Buzz Lightyear. So the symbol of a ring to show a woman's worth in objective terms is against what we and our foremothers fought for. So no one can really move like that without a few breathers between takes (right?). I don't care, and neither do the forty-six MILLION viewers of her video.

Plus, you know you've really arrived when your song has its own brass band sheet music. Happy poetry Friday, Beyonce. I like it.

Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) Lyrics

All the single ladies (7x)
Now put your hands up
Up in the club, just broke up
I’m doing my own little thing
Decided to dip but now you wanna trip
Cuz another brother noticed me
I’m up on him, he up on me
Don’t pay him any attention
cried my tears, after three good years
Ya can’t be mad at me

[Chorus]
Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

[Chorus]
Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

I got gloss on my lips, a man on my hips
and we tated up in my Dereon jeans
acting up, drink in my cup
I could care less what you think
I need no permission, did I mention
Don’t pay him any attention
Cuz you had your turn
But now you gonna learn
What it really feels to miss me

[Chorus]
Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

Don’t treat me to these things of the world
I’m not that kind of girl
Your love is what I prefer, what I deserve
Is a man that makes me and takes me
And delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond
Pull me into your arms
Say I’m the one you want
If you don’t, you’ll be alone
And like a ghost I’ll be gone

All the single ladies (7x)
Now put your hands up

[Chorus]
Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

Daylight Savings Time Is Relative

2009-03-08T13:46:00.009-04:00

The glamorous Yuyi Morales just announced on her Facebook page that she woke up this morning not knowing it was Daylight Savings Time. DST is one of my pet peeves (actually, the fact that it is not DST all year round is my actual peeve), but that is a post for another kind of blog. For this blog, let me tell a good story:

Klaus Flugge of Andersen Press once hosted a dinner party in Bologna to honor the late Max Velthuijs, a whimsical and very wonderful Dutch author/artist. Held in the magnificent Sala Farnese at the Palazzo d'Accursio in the center of town, the party was as classy and stylish as Klaus himself. It was springtime in Bologna, the light was beautiful and spirits were high.

At first the guests were so charmed by the rooms and by each other that they didn't notice the guest of honor had not arrived. The cocktail hour did seem to go on a wee bit long, though, and just as we were all wondering whether dinner would indeed be served, Klaus stood up and made his first announcement. Max was still in The Hague, he said, but he would arrive very soon, and could we all have another drink and wait for him? Of course we could, and did.

The announcements came periodically throughout the evening. During the pasta course, Max was in the air. When the secondi piatti were taken away, Max was landing. For the dolci, Max was in Bologna at the airport! By the grappa, Max was in a taxi!! Max was almost here!!!

When the great man finally arrived, to a fairly soused standing ovation, he offered his explanation:

Daylight Savings had started one week before the party, and the news of it did not reach Max, in his tiny house in his tiny village in The Netherlands. He therefore missed his plane to Bologna, not because he wasn't at the airport, but because he was "enjoying a sausage" while he waited to board, oblivious of the real time.

No one who attended that dinner party in Bologna will forget it, or Max Velthuijs, or Daylight Savings, or the sausage. Which just goes to show that artists are all the more memorable for late arrivals, and steering clear of real time.

Poetry Friday: Infinite Space

2009-03-06T22:50:00.009-05:00

One prominent recently laid-off publishing big wig confessed to me the other day that, since he lost his job, he's been plagued by bad dreams. Me too. It's hard to see one's position change, one's ambitions evolve. So that line of Hamlet's kept turning over in my mind -- the one about bad dreams. Then it turned up on another friend's Facebook page, so I'm thinking it's in the wind. It's not truly poetry, but it's poetic, and it's late on Friday night, so I'll post it by your leave.

To go with it, a bad dream of my own, albeit with a serendipitous ending:

I'm in the kitchen. Lots of people are there -- we're preparing a meal. There's a white paper bag in the middle of the floor, and it's been sent to me by Angela and Tony DiTerlizzi. Everybody seems to think there's a bomb in it. So we can't touch the bag, or get too close to it, because it could explode at any second. Still, we have to get the meal made. But how? We're endangering our lives with every step.

But I look that dangerous white bag and I say: If it's from Ang and Tony it can't be bad. And, against all calls to the contrary and to everyone's vivid horror, I open it.

First I find...a note, from Ang. An early drawing of Tony's. And then, delicately wrapped in tissue, deep in the bag: AROMATHERAPY CANDLES.

Some bomb.

Hamlet
Denmark's a prison.

Rosencrantz
Then the world is one.

Hamlet
A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons. Denmark being one o'the worst.

Rosencrantz
We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet
Why then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz
Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.

Hamlet
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Guildenstern
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.

Hamlet, II, ii, William Shakespeare

Poetry Friday: The Poetry Catalog and Archibald MacLeish

2009-02-27T17:05:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, the Poetry Spring/Summer 2009 catalog arrived in my mailbox. This was the first time I'd encountered the Poetry catalog. It's not a list of folks eking out a tenuous living writing verse: it's a women's fashion line. The catalog made me feel bad for poetry. Angry, in fact, on poetry's behalf. Is this its image? This weak, anemic, limp, misty-eyed bunch of blank-eyed women in shapeless clothes? If poetry were this droopy, the heavenly muse would have expired 4000 years ago.

So, from Archibald MacLeish, here's a killer poem to counteract Poetry. It professes not to be about beauty, truth, poetry, immortality ...but it is about all of those things. It's one of my favorites (the qualification for "my favorites" being poems I wish had been written about me). And about it's a little bit about fashion, too.

"Not Marble Nor the Gilded Monuments"

The praisers of women in their proud and beautiful poems,
Naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes,
Boasted those they loved should be forever remembered:
These were lies.

The words sound but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten.
The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more.
The sleek throat is gone -- and the breast that was troubled to listen:
Shadow from door.

Therefore I will not praise your knees nor your fine walking
Telling you men shall remember your name as long
As lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English
Rings from a tongue.

I shall say you were young, and your arms straight, and your mouth scarlet:
I shall say you will die and none will remember you:
Your arms change, and none remember the swish of your garments,
Nor the click of your shoe.

Not with my hand's strength, not with difficult labor
Springing the obstinate words to the bones of your breast
And the stubborn line to your young stride and the breath to your breathing
And the beat to your haste
Shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men to remember.

(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost
Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation
Like dream words most)

Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women.
I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair
And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders
And a leaf on your hair --

I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:
I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.
Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken
Look! It is there!

Archibald Macleish, 1930

Guest blogger: Barack Obama

2009-02-25T08:35:00.005-05:00

I'll let the president be a guest blogger today:

"In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child."

These words are more valuable than any bailout.

Poetry Friday: Robert Graves & Wallace Tripp

2009-02-20T12:47:00.004-05:00

As I debated whether to take a bus or a taxi this afternoon in the chill New York wind, the four wallop-packing lines below came to mind. I first encountered them in one of the great poetry anthologies, Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet, collected and illustrated by the uncompromising Wallace Tripp, edited by the brilliant Walter Lorraine, and published by the redoubtable yet now-owned-by-a-failing-Irish-venture-capital-firm, Houghton Mifflin. Robert Graves brings a laser's intensity to the artist's life. Do we stick with our comic rabbits and live in their comfort? Or do we give them up, try comic hippos, and risk all?

Epitaph for an Unfortunate Artist

He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid.
Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

-- Robert Graves

And if I told you which mode of transportation I ended up taking, you'd think the less of me. So I will leave it to your speculation.

"A Brownstone Bookman"

2009-02-17T23:48:00.005-05:00

I didn't open the Times today until just now, and saw this obituary for Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. I had the privilege of working at the one last iteration of Atheneum, the Atheneum Books for Young Readers that is now an imprint of Simon & Schuster (which bought Macmillan, which had bought Scribner's, which was what Atheneum had become after selling 10% of itself to Raytheon; see below, and therein hangs a tale of American cultural history). The late Jean Karl was the publisher of Atheneum; it was she who introduced to the world E. L. Konigsburg and Ashley Bryan. Her books won five Newbery medals and six Newbery honors. Quite the publisher. Jean's legacy lives on in Atheneum's sparkling list: Olivia, The House of the Scorpion, True Believer, Kira-Kira, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Tweak.

And it was Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., who spotted Jean's talent. The obituary below is laudatory and informative, but I do take issue with the line "Atheneum got lucky fast." Publishing three bestsellers in your first three lists is not luck: it's hard work, acumen, hunch, intuition, and smarts.

Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., Influential Publisher, Dies at 90
Published: February 16, 2009

Alfred A. Knopf Jr., who left the noted publishing house run by his parents to become one of the founders of Atheneum Publishers in 1959, died on Saturday. He was 90, the last of the surviving founders, and lived in New York City.

Alfred A. Knopf Jr. in 1978; in 1959, a brownstone bookman.

The cause of death was complications following a fall, his wife, Alice, said.

The only child of the publishing giants Alfred A. and Blanche Wolf Knopf, Pat Knopf, as he was called, worked at his parents’ company, concentrating mainly on sales and marketing, when he approached his father about hiring the editor Simon Michael Bessie as the Knopfs’ eventual successor. Mr. Bessie had recently been passed over for the position of editor in chief at Harper & Row in favor of Evan Thomas.

When his father refused, blaming his mother’s resistance (she apparently didn’t like Mr. Bessie), Mr. Knopf said in an interview in 2005, Mr. Knopf (pronounced with a hard “k”) decided to join Mr. Bessie and Hiram Haydn, an editor at Bobbs-Merrill, in founding Atheneum. They lined up four backers, each willing to put up $250,000, and established their offices in a four-story brownstone on East 38th Street. Cornelia Schaeffer, who would later become Mr. Bessie’s wife, joined the house as an editor about a year after its founding.

Atheneum got lucky fast. Its first three lists produced three No. 1 best sellers: “The Last of the Just” (1960), a novel about the Holocaust by André Schwarz-Bart; “The Making of the President, 1960” (1961), the first in Theodore H. White’s series on presidential campaigns; and “The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait” (1962) by Frederic Morton. These books were acquired by Mr. Bessie, although by informal understanding each of the founders had to agree on every book the house published.

Other projects, if not best sellers, also did well for the house. The first list included Jan de Hartog’s crime novel “The Inspector,” Wright Morris’s “Ceremony in Lone Tree” and William Goldman’s “Soldier in the Rain.” Atheneum later published Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1962), which sold more than 70,000 copies in hard- and softcover editions. On the other hand, having published Mario Puzo’s second novel, “The Fortunate Pilgrim” (1965), the house turned down “The Godfather” (published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1969). Mr. Haydn thought it “junk,” Mr. Knopf said.

Although the founders called on their backers for what Mr. Knopf said was almost a second million, in part to start up a children’s book division in 1964, Atheneum prospered, and the three founders were able to exercise options to buy the company’s stock. “We had good lawyers,” Mr. Knopf later commented in an interview. “Everybody, including the original backers, was very happy.”

In the 1970s, economic conditions began to make it harder for independent publishers to stay afloat. After selling 10 percent of the company to Raytheon, the electronics conglomerate, Atheneum in 1978 merged with Charles Scribner’s Sons, another independent house, to form a third entity, Scribner Book Companies, of which Charles Scribner Jr. became chairman and Mr. Knopf vice chairman, although both houses continued to operate independently. Mr. Haydn and Mr. Bessie had both left Atheneum by then.

In 1984, Scribner Book Companies was acquired by Macmillan Inc., and Mr. Knopf assumed responsibility for all adult books put out by Scribner’s houses. He continued as a senior vice president of Macmillan until his retirement in 1988.

Mr. Knopf was born in White Plains, N.Y., on June 17, 1918. At 7 he was sent to boarding school, first at the Riverdale Country Day School, in the Bronx, then from 1933 until 1937 at Phillips Exeter Academy. The summer after he graduated from Exeter, according to a 1959 story in Time magazine, he ran away from home, despondent over being turned down by Princeton and determined (he said in a note) not to return until he made good. Following a police search, he was found in Salt Lake City, “barefoot, hungry and broke.”

After attending Union College for three years, he was inspired by the Veronica Lake film “I Wanted Wings” to join the United States Army Air Force, which called him up in December 1941. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his work in the 446th Bomb Group in the Eighth Air Force, rising to the rank of captain. (Union awarded him a B.A. in 1945.)

When he was discharged, he telephoned his father, who asked what he planned to do for a career. “I guess I’m going to work for you,” he said, and did. In 1952, he married Alice Laine. They had three children, Alison Insinger and Susan Knopf of New York and David A. Knopf of San Francisco.

Jo vs. Amy

2009-02-13T21:43:00.009-05:00

Here's the central dilemma of my publishing life. Am I Jo or am I Amy? Meg I'm not, as I have never put up jam or borne twins. Beth -- well, anyone who thinks she's Beth makes me worried. (I do know that at least one extremely powerful woman in publishing claims she's a Beth, but I have never seen her take a stitch, much less embroider slippers.)

But I am on the horns of the Jo vs. Amy dilemma. Which horn I'm gored by will determine much of my future.

Like most readers of literary press blogs, I thought I was Jo. For years. I wrote romances (The Adventures of Charles and Caroline). I used a fountain pen. I was earnest and bookish. I dated men with foreign accents who drank strong coffee and dosed strong medicine to anemic prose. Argumentative and proud with a strong, even crippling, mutinous streak. That's me.

Other times, I Amy'd it right up. Trips to London and Paris. Impeccable manners, fine conversation. Kid gloves, button-up boots, high moral standards. I'm sure I would have loved pickled limes, too. Amy wanted the manor house and the large staff and the oh-so-good-looking boy who adored her. Lunches at Union Square Cafe and the Hotel Baglioni in Bologna. That's me too.

So who's it to be? Can one person be Amy (employee incentive plans) and Jo (McSweeney's) at the same time?

We're changing things up a little

2009-02-13T17:20:00.000-05:00

Watch this space.

if u cn read this, u cn get a gd job!

2009-02-13T06:02:00.007-05:00

Right after Bowen Press was closed down, folks started posting on my Facebook page. Words like "sorry" and "laid off" and "good luck" seem to have triggered a banner ad change on my profile page. I went from "Lose stomach flab! Follow this one rule!" to "You can earn up to $5000 a month -- from your home!"

Older readers among you might recognize the title of this blog from subway ads of yesteryear. Before there was texting, there was ersatz shorthand. I think the idea was that if you could learn to write very very fast, you could be an exec sec'y.

My first job -- at Harper, in 1981 -- required that I be able to take dictation. Having seen many of those ads (along with "Draw Sparky!") I knew I cld get a gd job. So I wrote really really fast, and my career in publishing began.

Today is the official last day of Bowen Press at HarperCollins -- I cease to be an employee of that august and important American publishing house as of this afternoon at 5PM. Harper gave Bowen Press a huge launch, for which I'm grateful. The books we published and signed up there will flourish.The authors and artists will find good advocates among my former colleagues.

Now I have a logo, a motto, and a blog -- in last year's economy, that would have given me a market cap of $2.5 million -- so let's see what to do with it.

More soon.

Exaggeration

2009-02-11T21:34:00.004-05:00

Mark Twain says it best, of course. But if one is not feeling quite so cavalier, below is Elizabeth Bishop on the subject. Before she begins her exacting and heart-tearing villanelle, you might want to look at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal about the early demise of Bowen Press. Let's all remember that publishing well is the best revenge. Bowen Press will live on, though in what iteration, now known or hereinafter to be discovered, it remains to be seen. Wish us luck!

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned from Comic-con

2009-02-07T21:14:00.010-05:00

1. Line up fair and square and you'll get a big reward.

2. Whatever wasn't covered by the Ten Commandments can be printed on a T-shirt.

3. Strange is not a crime.

4. The pen and the airbrush are mightier than the sword.

5. The sword is plenty mighty, though.

6. Reading for fun is fun.

7. People look cool in costume.

7 (a). Not everybody has the body of a movie star.

8. It pays to bet on a dark horse.

9. Much kindness is shown by outsiders to outsiders.

10. The geek shall inherit the Earth.

Icarus: "We're going to be in the Mediterranean"

2009-02-05T21:54:00.004-05:00

I've been listening to the Sullenberger tapes -- the flight controller recordings from the US Air 1539, plane that went down in the Hudson -- and they are riveting. If you haven't heard them yet, listen in here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100280783.

The incident again and again made me think of Auden's "Musee des Beaux-Arts," so here it is, a little early, for Poetry Friday. Certainly I was at my office, walking dully along, when the plane went down a few blocks away.

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
.......................................dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W.H. Auden (December 1938)

The Patron Saint of Editors

2009-02-01T00:30:00.006-05:00

My mother emailed on Friday to tell me that Jan. 31st is the feast day of Saint John Bosco, Patron Saint of Editors and Publishers. His connection to editors and publishing seems a loose one, and mostly related to the creation of tracts and treatises. As a young man, though, Bosco was a juggler, a magician, and acrobat. As an adult, upon discovering that his vocation was to work with/educate disadvantaged children, he used those same skills with a different goal; once he attracted an audience with tricks and sleight of hand, he would begin to teach, and the youth gathered would listen more willingly than if lessons had been forced upon them.

When I think of the many acts of multitasking performed by an editor, I have to admit that some days it indeed feels like juggling, magic, and acrobatics are required in order to get everything done, though I don't recall that those skills were officially listed in my job description. But I also love that, not unlike the manner of the Saint himself, editing is a profession that allows me to put to good use many skills collected from my own past--among them, my background in marketing books to teachers and librarians; my understanding of classrooms, teachers, and young readers, gleaned from my training as an elementary school teacher; and my belief, picked up from my days as a youth minister, that relationships are at the core of all that that's important in life. In fact, I feel like I realize anew each week the importance of the many relationships that add up to create a book's life. At Bowen Press, our colophon is "Only connect!" and I believe relationships are an enormous part of that goal--we aim to inspire and be inspired, not only by our own connections as editors to artists, authors, agents, teachers and librarians, but also by the even-more-important connections of authors and artists to characters, and characters to readers.

I wish I could claim to have celebrated the feast day of my profession by having juggled and done acrobatics. Instead, since it was Saturday, I spent the day feasting in ordinary but important, soul-filling ways: soaking up life, connecting with some of the people and things that inspire me, contentedly wandering my neighborhood, and NOT doing work on the weekend for a change. I did, however, see my favorite local character--the guy in my neighborhood who "walks" his dog while riding his unicycle along the sidewalks of Brooklyn--an urban acrobat of sorts. I suspect St. John Bosco would have liked him a lot!

Last word

2009-01-30T12:42:00.007-05:00

Kate and Kathy would not want us to spend too much of our minds and spirits mourning them. They would rather we equaled their energy in doing what we do: reading, storytelling, painting, drawing, publishing, parenting, loving. So one more post to close this sad week, and then we'll follow John Milton's advice, at this poem's end:

Lycidas

A Lament for a friend drowned in

his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637

YET once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melodious tear.

...

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th'Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

Kate McClelland

2009-01-29T06:19:00.007-05:00

Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz died yesterday and the world is a poorer poorer place today. It's not possible to take in this news yet. I didn't know Kathy so well, and I'm sure there will be others who to euologize her. Kate's the one I know. I knew.

There was nobody like Kate McClelland. She wasn't just one in a million, she was one in a lifetime. Children all over this country have benefitted from her work and her passion. We publishers have made better books because of her.

You slog to these conferences in the middle of winter and over 4th of July weekend, and you wonder why you do it, and then -- there's Kate. In chunky jewelry with the asymmetrical hair and the glasses on the beaded chain and the japonaiserie and the huge hug and the conspiratorial voice and you think -- Oh, that's it. That's why I'm here. I'm here because of the Kate McClellands of this world. Not that the plural even applies.

Go to the Perrot Memorial Library site and just take a look at what Kathy and Kate did in their town. Then expand that to New York publishing and American librarianship and you'll begin, begin, to understand why they will be so profoundly missed. This is the sad sad posting on the site this morning:

There will be no children's programs on Thursday, January 29th, or Friday, January 30th.

Kate dear -- I hope to God they have wi-fi wherever you are, because last night my husband asked me how old you were and I told him early sixties? Sixty-five maybe? And I read in the paper you were 71! Seventy-one! You were sure fooling me, babe.

At the ALA you and I were talking about how some people never age. Well, darling Kate, some people will never die, and you are one of them.

...after these messages

2009-01-27T13:48:00.011-05:00

The month of January is always a bit of a joy-suck. The holidays are over, New York is silent and gray, work hits hard after slowing down a bit at the end of December, and it takes something really special like Terry Pratchett receiving a well-deserved Printz Honor to really get the spirits up. At the same time, January's chronological placement allows for procrastination from said work by compiling Tops Of the Year lists. For me, that means going through the stacks of great books and records and movies that came out last year and whittling them down to a personal best-of. And so before resuming regularly scheduled programming as we move out of January, I figured I'd take a break from the typical purview of this blog and post my fifteen favorite (not necessarily "the best") records from 2008. These are the albums I had on repeat while reading or editing manuscripts at home or on the train, so I suppose you could say that there's a bit of these in each of the books I've worked on this year.

15. Feed the Animals, Girl Talk
14. In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy
13. Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Rós
12. In Her Gentle Jaws, The Depreciation Guild
11. Stainless Style, Neon Neon
10. Jim, Jamie Lidell
09. Los Angeles, Flying Lotus
08. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
07. Made In the Dark, Hot Chip
06. Chunk Of Change EP, Passion Pit
05. April, Sun Kil Moon
04. Elephant Shell, Tokyo Police Club
03. Dear Science, TV On the Radio
01. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver* (tie)
01. Saturdays = Youth, M83 (tie)

Anyone else have favorites that they want to share?

*For Emma, Forever Ago was self-released in 2007 but didn't see wide release until this year, so I'm not sure if it ought to be included, but, frankly, it's got enough great stuff on it for two years of best-of lists anyway.

The Teen Session at BBYA, or, "I really, really loved this book."

2009-01-25T17:40:00.010-05:00

Fresh from the YALSA Best Book for Young Adults discussion today at ALA, here are some of the more memorable quotes from the wonderful, erudite, thoughtful, smart, eloquent, passionate, honest, remarkably-well-read teenagers. Here, too, is the whole list for those of you who want to look up authors and ISBN's. A huge thank you to the librarians who wrangled the teenagers and organized their visit to Denver in the snow. I wish I could thank each of the teenagers by name, but in lieu of that, here are their words, faithfully transcribed. (And note: for "rr" please read "really really." Or sometimes "really REALLY." Or else "REALLY REALLY!!!")

Graceling: When I found out there was a sequel I almost started hyperventilating.

Down to the Bone: It's a book about lesbianism and I am really really opinionated about that right now.

Gollywhopper Games: I really enjoyed this book, mostly because I never grew out of Roald Dahl.

Airman: We listened to this book on tape while we were driving up to Canada and I thought we'd hear half of it on the way there an half on the way back, but my family and I spent all day listening to this book sitting in the living room of in this really expensive house that we rented instead of going outside.

Little Brother: I rr loved this book. It's very similar to 1984 and I think the government could really do that to you.

The Luxe: I just finished it at 4 AM this morning. The author tells the end of the story first so for once I didn't have to read the end first.

Paper Towns: I'd read John Green and rr liked him but felt he hadn't reached his full potential, but in this book he does reach his full potential.

Ten Cents a Dance: This was an excellent book. I went to the library while I was reading it and found out what taxi-dancers were.

Forever Changes: Not what I expected at all. Rrrr thought provoking. It made me think.

Night Road: Very thought-provoking. A different point of view on vampires. It made you see them as just a different kind of person, not a monster.

Ivy-a-Novel [this is the charming way the two girls who read the book referred to it]: I really liked the dialogue because it was all written in British. And everything's better if it's British.

The Order of Oddfish [The teen who spoke on behalf of this book wore a 3-foot long red-and-white fish hat in its honor]: Incredibly, ridiculously funny. You just don't see books like this very often.

The Graveyard Book: I just read this and I understand now why there were 70 holds on this book.

Tender Morsels: When I read the ending I was like, "That's just mean."

How They Met: This is my favorite book by this author. I wasn't too excited to read it because the only short stories I had read were Metamorphosis which was really boring and something by the guy who wrote Madame Bovary. But I absolutely loved it. It made me decide to write my own collection of short stories.

Hunger Games: You can't really describe this book to anybody so you just have to give it to them and make them read it.

Ink Exchange: Once again Melissa Marr entranced me. This book is just short of addictive. I really loved the reappearance of Seth, who is one of my top fictional boyfriends.

Living Dead Girl: I loved it because it pissed me off.

The Smile: Awesome.

Knife of Never Letting Go: It made me giddy.

Lock and Key: I know some people who have talked about suicide and I can tell them to read this book and it gives them hope.

Poetry Friday: "The Bell"

2009-01-23T17:04:00.011-05:00

Thinking today about the power

of connectivity,
and about how inspiration finds us....

"The Bell"
by Richard Jones

In the tower the bell
is alone, like a man
in his room,
thinking and thinking.

The bell is made of iron.
It takes the weight
of a man
to make the bell move.

Far below, the bell feels
hands on a rope.
It considers this.
It turns its head.

Miles away,
a man in his room
hears the clear sound,
and lifts his head to listen.

They say time flies when you're having fun...

2009-01-21T17:31:00.004-05:00

The world's been busy looking toward the future—and indeed, the present!—over the last few days, so it's perhaps an odd day to be posting about the past, but I hope you'll indulge a wee self-indulgent moment of looking back, even still. Because in looking at my calendar, I realized that today marks an anniversary of sorts for me—six years ago today, I walked into my very first job in the big, bad world of NYC publishing.

Within a few weeks of starting that job, a dazzling number of authors and illustrators (real, live, authors & illustrators!), some having their very first book published and some honest-to-goodness luminaries whom I'd worshipped for years, proceeded to walk off my bookshelves and into my reality—into my email, my mailbox, and through the other end of my telephone. And though I'd long admired the books, the words, and the art of so many children's books creators, what I hadn't known when I first began dreaming of working in publishing was how wonderful and fulfilling a life filled with the people connected to books would be.

Six years certainly isn't a long time in any career, and in fact, I kind of get excited when I think of how much I don't know yet—how much more there is yet to soak up and experience over the next few decades. But six years is long enough to know this for certain—that the world of children's books (and not just the writers and artists, but the publishing folk, booksellers, teachers, librarians, agents, reviewers, and readers, too!) is truly is home to some of the finest, most passionate, most inspiring, and most creative minds in the world: people who are, I believe, doing some of the most important work in the world. They've also proven to be some of the most wildly brilliant, remarkably fun, and astonishingly generous people I've had a chance to know.

I'm immensely proud of the many books I've worked on marketing, publicizing, and editing over the last six years, and perhaps even more excited to think of the books of the future that I'll have a part in creating and putting into the hands of readers. But, today, I think it's the people behind the books that I'm most grateful for, and who are a very real part of what makes this truly a dream job. My thanks to you all.

Poetry Friday: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

2009-01-16T13:54:00.009-05:00

"I am what I am." It's a statement usually made to excuse behavior--behavior, if we're being honest, that the speaker knows he or she ought to apologize for, but for which the speaker really isn't sorry. Sometimes, though, that feeilng of being trapped inside one's body, with nothing but one's own thoughts and feelings and particular way of doing things, can be more guilt-inducing than guilt-absolving. And sometimes it's tough to tell the difference.

That's one of the many mysteries tangled up in Will Oldham's "Wolf Among Wolves," a standout track from his gorgeous, understated third record as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Master and Everyone. I saw Mr. Oldham perform this song about four years ago at Sound Fix, my favorite of Williamsburg, Brooklyn's many fine record stores, and the planet-sized sense of longing, fear, and resignation captured in his small-town warble haunts me to this day. At those times when we are forced to question the choices we've made, in the publishing business and otherwise, it's important to remember every once in a while that, in many cases, there really was no choice.

She loves a soul that I have never been

A dog among dogs, a man among men

And every day, when I come home to her

She holds a phantom, she kisses and she hugs him

And I am not averse to how she loves him

Why must I live and walk unloved as what I am

Why can't I be loved as what I am

A wolf among wolves, and not as a man among men

She craves a home that she can go in

A sheltered cave that I have never seen

Not in my life, and not even in my dreams

Why can't I be loved as what I am

A wolf among wolves, and not as a man among men

The music is every bit the words' equal - you can hear the album version here (ignore the video, it's just amateur video shot to post the song, not official).

On Perspective (and literary chickens!)

2009-01-15T15:14:00.006-05:00

I spent last weekend in Syracuse (home of the world's largest snowplow, or so I'm told) at an SCBWI Conference. It was a great event, and, as always, I enjoyed the chance to talk with so many authors, illustrators, and creative-minds-in-the-making. One of the best parts of the trip, though, had nothing to do with the conference itself. The kind author/SCBWI RA Emeritus of the region who picked me up told me we needed to make just one quick stop on the way from the hotel to the airport, to tuck in some special folks for the night. And that's how it came about that I spent Friday night petting friendly sheep, curious (and HUNGRY!) goats, and a gaggle of the most literary chickens I suspect I'll ever meet. (And I'm sure Pippi, Alice, Wendy, Jo March, Junie B. Jones, and Anne Shirley would send their regards if they knew I was writing about them.) City girl that I am, I was charmed. I'm quite sure there are farm animals somewhere in NYC, as it's the city that reportedly has everything, but I haven't found 'em yet.

More importantly, it got me thinking about PERSPECTIVE, and the eyes through which writers and artists see the world and how they then reflect, recreate, or utterly re-imagine those worlds in their books. I've always thought that one of the best things I've inadvertently managed to do for myself as a person is to live many different places--because while I love NYC and my corner of Brooklyn furiously, I'm regularly reminded that my inner Texan is always just under the surface of myself, as is my awareness of other places I've lived and known--Canada, the Midwest, the South. Somehow, they all add up to the worldview that is particularly my own, and the eyes through which I participate in art, as a reader, and as an editor, too. Even still, this weekend's trip reminded me of how good it is to journey outside one's sense of the ordinary, and to be nudged into recalling how many varied perspectives and worlds exist outside of one's immediate, everyday environment. And I think that's a realization with which Jo March and Anne Shirley (and all the other literary namesakes belonging to that flock of chickens) would heartily agree.

So what would be your advice for the 2009 Newbery Committee?

2009-01-12T21:11:00.010-05:00

I've been thinking about the Newbery a lot these days. I've read Anita Silvey (provocative) and Marc Aronson (historical/contextual) and Salon (op/edish) and Betsy (blogtastic) and Liz B. (cozy, smart) and Roger (sage). But where do the publishers stand?

I'll tell you where this publisher stands. We are damned lucky to have the Newbery and Caldecott awards -- to have any and all the awards from ALA. The only reason the Newbery has any coinage at all is because of librarians. And as librarians' recommendations, these awards are not designed to put books on bestsellers lists or to get them front-of-store placement in chain stores -- though they do do that. These awards are rather a way to say, Hey, here's a good book. Try it. Give it a read.

Betsy Bird gives a glancing reference to the Newbery Honor books in a recent column, and I agree with her that not enough attention has been paid to the Honors. Don't we all understand that the Newbery committees are citing a suite of titles with the Award and the Honor Books? Taken as a group, the Newbery name is attached to a books as disparate as Princess Academy and Hitler Youth. And does a child at the library or bookstore really make a distinction between one medal (above left) and another (above right)?

Many a long year ago I used to rail about the Newbery committee's choices. Why did they overlook this brilliant piece of literature or that groundbreaking new format? Usually, this was just a way of saying, Why didn't they pick a book I edited?

Now I'm more chill, as the kids say. What institution in this country other than the ALA has consistently bestowed a book award for eighty-seven years and counting? A book award that remains so relevant that people are still debating the committees' choices in the national press?

So I say, Good luck to you, 2009 Newbery Committee. You're under a bit of a microscope this year. Go into that windowless room somewhere in the mile-high city and pick whatever book strikes your fancy. It's your award, after all.

Poetry Friday: "Lines for Winter"

2009-01-09T10:15:00.006-05:00

Winter can be a cold time, a lonely, inward time, a doubtful time. It can also be a time when we recognize most clearly the things that nurture us, illuminate us, and carry us through. That's why one of the New Year's Resolutions I'm looking forward to keeping in 2009 is one I'm repeating from years past, as it's made for a better year each time I've tried it--to regularly take time out of the chaos to read poetry And, so doing, to remind myself, as Mark Strand says here so evocatively, "of the tunes my bones play as [I] keep going," and the things that make me "love what [I] am." Here's hoping your New Year is likewise filled with quiet moments of illumination.

"Lines for Winter"

by Mark Strand
for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

I Went to a Marvelous Party

2009-01-03T21:19:00.004-05:00

It's Poetry Friday, and the end of the party-going season, alas! But our livers and waistlines will thank us as we put our noses to the grindstone once again next week. In the meantime, I'll whisper in your ear that I went to a marvelous party last night, full of New York creatures, at the impeccable apartment of a fabulous creative director whose work is well known to you all. His view, more or less, is what you see in the photo above. His name is my secret. But it put me in mind of Noel Coward's deathless ditty, "I Went to a Marvelous Party," a snippet of whose lyrics appear frivolously below.

I went to a marvellous party.
We played the most wonderful game,
Maureen disappeared
And came back in a beard
And we all had to guess at her name!
We talked about growing old gracefully
And Elsie who's seventy-four
Said, "A, it's a question of being sincere,
And B, if you're supple you've noting to fear."
Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier,
I couldn't have liked it more.

Hats off to SIR TERRY PRATCHETT!

2009-01-01T22:49:00.008-05:00

Interrupting the holiday quiet for some raucous cheering!!

This news made me smile enormously when it was casually mentioned to me by an industry colleague at a New Year's gathering last night--the first I'd heard of it, since I've been a wee bit disconnected from industry chatter while away from the office over the last two weeks. There's something transcendent about the power of Terry Pratchett's imagination, a fact that I think the literary world has been all too aware of since he went public with the difficult news of his battle with Alzheimer's Disease just over a year ago, and I'm just filled to the brim with pleasure that he's been so well-honored.

I love this quote from his video interview with the UK's newspaper The Telegraph about the news of his Knighthood--"It’s amazing what can be achieved if you just do something fairly quietly but quite well for a very long time." A statement to inspire many writers, I think.

(And as an aside, if you have a holiday bookstore giftcard that's burning a hole in your pocket, I'd humbly suggest Terry's newest YA novel Nation--a tale that by turns will challenge you, make you laugh, make you teary, and best of all, make you think deeply.)

Raising a glass or three of champagne, then, to master storyteller Sir Terry (it just *sounds* right, doesn't it?), and to his likewise brilliant editors, including the Bowen Press's own Anne Hoppe, who edits his children's and YA books, and to Jen B, editor of his adult works. Huzzah!

2009 Predictions: You heard it here first

2009-01-01T15:01:00.009-05:00

Here are my predictions for publishing in 2009:

January
Anita Silvey won't be happy with this year's Newbery, either.

February
There'll be no federal bail-out of anyone's backlist.

March
Books will have to be more beautiful and skillfully made to deserve ink and paper.

April
Anyone who does go to Bologna/Comic-con will find a treasure.

May
Authors will outnumber booksellers at BEA.

June
Jo Rowling will announce her next project -- a "cozy mystery."

July
See April.

August
Obama will have disappointed us from time to time.

September
Something (surely!) will be the next Twilight/Wimpy Kid.

October
One significant publishing company will close its doors right before Frankfurt.

November
Bowen Press will be thankful not to have been that publishing company (tempting fate, I know).

December
_____________________

Any ideas for December, or corrections/changes/additions gratefully received. I'd especially like to be right, however, about November.

Remembering Eartha Kitt

2008-12-26T19:16:00.004-05:00

I saw Eartha Kitt perform only once, at the Cafe Carlyle in the early 1990's. My publishing friend David Bennett was in town from London, and he had always wanted to go the Carlyle. Neither one of us had seen Ms. Kitt sing live before.

She was fabulous, of course. I don't remember what she sang, although I can recall the timbre of her voice, the sophistication of the Carlyle, the energy of her performance. But what I remember best was her dress and how she wore it. It was a blue sparkly affair, with a deep, revealing back covered with a sheer netting. And underneath the netting was not the expanse of Eartha's back you might expect, but a straight-up black bra, the strap of which you could plainly see.

I date the emergence of the bra strap as a part of everyday clothing not to Madonna but to Andie McDowell in Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Hers was the first bra strap I remember seeing frankly emerging from the shoulder of her sundress: the birth of post-modern lingerie. And before it was truly a trend, or an accepted part of any woman's clothing -- the way sneakers frankly have laces -- there was Eartha, proving to the world that a 72-ish-year-old lady would be damned before she'd wear a long line strapless brassiere, if it was easier to wear a regular one. Which made it sexier, too.

So, since it's not only poetry Friday but the day after Christmas, here are the lyrics to a song that nobody could put over like Eartha. We believe in you, Eartha. Thanks for the memory.

Santa Baby

written by J. Javits and P. Springer

Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree, for me
I've been an awful good girl
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Santa baby, an out-of-space convertible too, light blue
I'll wait up for you dear
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Think of all the fun I've missed
Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed
Next year I could be oh so good
If you'd check off my Christmas list
Boo doo bee doo

Santa honey, I wanna yacht and really that's
Not a lot
I've been an angel all year
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Santa cutie, there's one thing I really do need, the deed
To a platinum mine
Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Santa baby, I'm filling my stocking with a duplex, and checks
Sign your 'X' on the line
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Come and trim my Christmas tree
With some decorations bought at Tiffany's
I really do believe in you
Let's see if you believe in me
Boo doo bee doo

Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing, a ring
I don't mean a phone
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Hurry down the chimney tonight
Hurry down the chimney tonight

Poetry Friday: Christmas carol edition--"Night of Silence"

2008-12-19T12:30:00.010-05:00

The Bowen Press went on a holiday adventure recently, to see the fabulous Babar exhibit at the Morgan Library. We ooh-ed and ah-ed over the elephants, and the editorial corners of our brains were all delighted by how amazingly similar--and yet totally different!--the bookmaking process of Jean de Brunhoff's era was to the one we know today.

Our evening was capped off perfectly by a quartet of holiday singers serenading us in the Morgan Café, which couldn't have been more welcome--after what has been a long few weeks in the world of publishing, suddenly, it really felt like the magic of the holiday season was finally upon us. Our conversation turned, then, to favorite Christmas carols, and I realized that hearing people tell of their favorite carols is just as much a treat as learning about people's favorite books. My favorite carol is one that isn't terribly well-known, and since songs and poetry are close cousins, I thought I'd share it here today. These lyrics give me a chill that I wait for with quiet anticipation every Christmas season. To me, they are breathtaking lovely--evocative, haunting, and lonely but full of quiet promise, all at the same time--and they fill up my soul in the way beautiful words always do.

"Night of Silence"
by Daniel Kantor

Cold are the people, Winter of life,
We tremble in shadows this cold endless night.
Frozen in the snow lie roses sleeping,
Flowers that will echo the sunrise
Fire of hope is our only warmth--
Weary, its flame will be dying soon.

Voice in the distance, call in the night,
On wind you enfold us, you speak of the light.
Gentle on the ear you whisper softly,
Rumors of a dawn so embracing
Breathless love awaits darkened souls--
Soon, will we know of the morning.

Spirit among us, shine like the star,
Your light that guides shepherds and kings from afar.
Shimmer in the sky so empty, lonely,
Rising in the warmth of the Son's love
Star unknowing of night and day--
Spirit we wait for your loving Son.

**For anyone curious about the song itself, it's a companion to the far better known "Silent Night." Often, it's sung in rounds with "Silent Night", then layered/harmonized against (sorry, I don't know the technical musical term for that!) "Silent Night." You can give it a listen here, where a lovely Irish choir sings "Silent Night" first, then "Night of Silence," and then blends the two in wonderful harmony.

Edited to add: What's *your* favorite carol? And is there a story to the "why" of it being your favorite?

A New Hope

2008-12-18T10:25:00.013-05:00

From the earliest moment I can remember, I have always been a huge Star Wars geek. I'm a white guy with glasses who was born in 1981, so this isn't exactly a revelation, especially at this point in our cultural history. Still, I feel I should preface this post with that statement, because it's going to be important later.

It's also no revelation that our business is in dire straits right now. Sales are down, layoffs are up, and I can't tell what's more disconcerting: the panic that set in when the first rounds of serious layoffs occurred about a month ago, or the relative complacency with which similar news is received today. What's our problem? Can we blame the economy, or the fact that people don't read as much anymore? The former shouldn't affect books as much as it might other businesses, and the latter was a problem before the recession. Are we instead, then, running out of good ideas? Responding to these questions (or ignoring them, depending on your point of view (and, as Obi-Wan tells us, "most of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view")), the book business has been pushing a "Give the Gift of Reading" campaign for a little while, arguing that books make the best holiday gifts. They're right, of course. Books are relatively inexpensive, appropriate for nearly anyone, and, most of all, they're thoughtful. Giving someone a book that you love is more than just giving them an object of a certain monetary value. At its heart, it's giving someone a piece of who we are. And it doesn't matter how old the book is - if the givee hasn't read it, it's going to be new to them. I'm sure there are people out there giving Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to someone this Christmas, as funny as that might sound to most of us who are reading this blog.

In this vein, my uncle and I decided to give a wonderful gift, a piece of who we are, to my little cousins, Ian and Mary, when I was visiting them last weekend. Ian is five and Mary is four, and we decided it was time that they saw A New Hope (the first film, Episode IV of Star Wars, for the uninitiated). We concluded they were both at a fine age for it, since I have distinct memories of being four years old and watching a videotape of the movie every day until it broke. Needless to say, they loved it. Ian was mesmerized by the Stormtroopers, and Mary tied a black towel around her neck for a cape and walked around the rest of the day making Darth Vader's breathing noises. But the most amazing moment, and one we didn't expect, happened right when the movie ended. Mary turned to us and said, with complete interest, and in complete earnest, "how did Luke's dad die?"

The fact that these are the most beautiful words a woman could ever utter to me aside, it came as a complete shock to us. It still feels amazing to write it: there is someone who doesn't know who Luke Skywalker's father is. As much as I knew all that stuff I wrote above, it had been a long time since the truth of it had been thrown into such sharp relief. We reminded Mary that Obi-Wan tells us Darth Vader killed him, which pacified her for the time being. But she knew something was up, and didn't know what it was. Regardless of the fact that it was revealed to the world a scant ten months and five days before I was born, I can't remember a time when I didn't know that (SPOILER ALERT) Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. It just is. And yet: there must have been a time when I didn't know. When that story, so well known to the world, was completely new to me. I know this because I saw it in Mary's eyes. And it wasn't just that bit of plot of which she was unaware, but also of the fact that Harrison Ford would be the only actor that would really have a career after these movies, or of the latter-day sins committed by George Lucas in the prequel trilogy, or of the fact that in the real version of these movies, Greedo actually doesn't shoot first. All of that stuff, inextricably linked to those movies for me and for most of the world, just fell away, and the movie was just a great bit of story all over again. Can you think of anything more beautiful than that? It almost makes me feel selfish - who was this gift really for?

So the questions remain: What's our problem? Are we running out of good ideas? As important as that question is, it might assuage our fears a bit to ignore it. We are still going to be mesmerized by a great story, and will look to share our favorites with the people we love, because the great ones will always be new to someone. From the business side, we'll certainly need to come up with some new ideas to deal with the realities of the present and the ones on the horizon. But we have a solid foundation, I think, and that's something we shouldn't forget. If my little cousins are any indication, there is an especially huge amount of potential energy out there to drive the business of children's books. I can only conclude that the force is with us.

Star Wars is not the kind of gift that you can give to too many people, and virtually no one over the age of ten. But there are a lot of great stories with moments like that which will be new to people for whom we're buying this year. And I'm going to keep an eye open for Mary's look in the eyes of the friends to whom I'm giving Jeff Smith's Bone and Graham Greene's The End Of the Affair this Christmas. It'll be my gift to myself. And it's one that I think we'll all be able to afford.

Outsourcing

2008-12-15T15:53:00.004-05:00

Is this the solution to the industry's present editorial retrenching? Innodate Isogen believes so:

Outsourcing Content Origination and Authoring:
How to Create New Content and Stay Ahead

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Vincent Henderson, vice president and director of consulting for Innodata Isogen's Publishing Practice, will offer real-world examples of how publishers are generating high-quality content for demanding audiences, growing market share and improved profitability by outsourcing content origination and authoring to a leading offshore provider of editorial services.

Refer a Colleague >>
http://email.dm2decisionmaker.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/eBCzj0Uo3tO0d5P0HUZk0Ef

-- Quoted verbatim from an email that arrived in my in-box just minutes after the announcement that more publishing layoffs happened today. Who's interested in attending this webinar?

A Peek Inside My "Sent Mail" Folder

2008-12-11T12:39:00.007-05:00

Or, Reason Number One Million and Three Why I Love This Job! (Other possible but eventually discarded titles for this post included: "Emails That Make You Laugh Out Loud As You Write Them" or "Emails That Make Me Sound Crazy But Are Actually Totally Professional.")

Amidst a busy few days of paperwork, reading, meetings, and more paperwork, I had an utterly delightful moment that amused me so much that I thought I'd share it. From my Sent Mail folder, then--the following note to one of our author/illustrators:

"Dear XXX, I'm just sending you a quick note to let you know that the hippos arrived via Fedex today, just as expected."

There is something sublime--and wildly, fantastically delightful--about the fact that a statement like that (and the wonderful visual image it evokes) is all in a day's work for a children's book editor. Truly, there's never a dull moment at the Bowen Press!

Poetry Friday: "Character and Life "

2008-12-05T12:00:00.011-05:00

Every writer has probably heard, one time, if not many times, the sage advice, "Kill your darlings." It's a quote that's usually attributed to Faulkner, though I've also seen it convincingly attributed to Hemingway, Samuel Johnson, or Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, among others. Regardless of whoever uttered a variation of the idea first, I suppose it's unsurprising that so many writers would arrive at the same conclusion about a necessary, but tragic, part of the writing process. But despite the number of times I'd heard--and repeated!--the advice myself, I've never seen it so vividly, poignantly, painfully portrayed as I do in this poem from Jane Hirshfield's lovely collection, After.

"Character and Life"
by Jane Hirshfield
The young novelist held underwater
the head of the character in his
book he loved best.
In the book, and as he wrote,
he counted until he
was sure it was finished.

Black Wednesday

2008-12-04T09:34:00.005-05:00

It was a dark day for publishing yesterday. Layoffs, squeeze-outs, consolidations, cancellations. It was such a hard day that I for one didn't sleep last night. Couldn't get the whole morass of change out of my mind.

But I'll tell you, there was a small but very bright spot at Bowen Press, yesterday afternoon. And that was the moment that we opened two FedEx boxes from Peter Reynolds, in which we found his watercolors for a book we're publishing next fall, called Tess's Tree.

The text is by Jess Brallier, and it's the story of a girl who loves a tree -- a tree that is so old that it needs to be cut down. Tess sees it fall, and only lets go of her anger and sorrow when she has a funeral for her tree, celebrating its life, and learning about its small but important role in the fabric of her neighborhood in the process.

Of course there's a parallel in Tess's story to the events of yesterday, but that's not what I want to say here. What I want to say here is that we all stopped what we were doing when the shipment arrived. We gathered around a table and carefully opened the boxes. (Truth be told, Jordan manfully ripped off the flap of one box because there are NO EXACTO KNIVES around original art.) Peter had packed a lovely simple black box within the FedEx box, and when we opened it, truly, it was like opening a treasure chest.

I'll post the images as soon as I get to the office, but let me tell you, there is no thrill like seeing pictures you've only seen as jpegs or scans or sketches in their original state. The texture of the watercolor paper is toothy, the white is rich. The tissues over the art crinkle and you have to lift them like a bride's veil to see what's underneath. And then the art itself -- sweet, delicate, powerful, with impeccable line and (to our surprise) really drenched in color.

We'll publish Tess's Tree next fall. There will still be books, and there will still be children who turn to books to learn about themselves and the world. So black as Black Wednesday was, for me it will always be linked to that moment of ripping and opening and crinkling and wonder at the sight of something new, something unique in all the world.

On the tenacity of independent booksellers

2008-12-01T23:20:00.004-05:00

Tonight I went to a party at Books of Wonder, an independent children's bookstore in New York City. Peter Glassman, the owner, gave a toast to the assembled crowd (mostly artists) and reminded us of the little "hole in the wall" his store was when it opened. A lot of things collided in my mind as he spoke: images of his former stores (there have been, I think, four locations); Peter taking me out to lunch and telling me what's wrong with publishers (a lot); Peter and his late partner, James the Silent and Steady and Buff; Peter pushing, always pushing, to get the books and authors and artists he needed to keep the doors open and the people coming in.

And I thought about New York and all its iterations: how it was emerging from the gritty 1970's when Peter first opened his doors in 1980; how it weathered the AIDS holocaust (much on my mind since seeing Milk this weekend); how it boomed during the careless '90's; how it's trying to figure itself out now.

Peter has had to be and stay larger than life just to keep the place going these 28 years. "Sorry the invitations were so late this year," he told me (mine had arrived that afternoon), "but you can always count on our party being the first Monday of December." And we all did count on that, because we all showed up.

Peter and I share a history, as his store opened just a few months before I started in publishing. So before I wax too nostalgic, here's to all those tenacious booksellers. You keep your doors open, and we'll keep showing up. And vice versa.

One from the archives....

2008-11-25T18:08:00.006-05:00

Something I've been pondering a fair bit lately--in part because I continue to watch my distant past stumble into my present via the magical powers of Facebook--is just how fully formed we are as people at an early age. Sure, we grow up, we get better hair, we (hopefully!) mature and grow wiser as the decades turn. But overall, I'm realizing that the core kind of person we are--including what we treasure, fear, and define ourselves by--really doesn't shift all that drastically from who we were as children to who we are as adults.

Some proof of this fact? Not too long ago, my parents, who recently moved, sent me some files that they'd extracted from an ancient computer. Their most amusing discovery was a dreadfully earnest, terribly overwritten original story by yours truly. And if you must know: it was about a Christmas Elf figurine named Jingle who desperately wanted to become a Christmas gift. You'll be happy to hear that he indeed found a home, with exactly the sort of Angelic Crippled Girl that you'd expect to find in a knock-off Victorian-esque Christmas tale. (The Bird's Christmas Carol, anyone?) The clincher of it all? Though I have no memory of actually writing it, my story was oh-so-craftily saved to the shared family computer under the file name "AlgebraProject" (Because, really, who would ever think THAT file would be interesting enough to bother opening it?)

***

Nearly two decades later, I'm still fascinated by stories and their telling. And I'd still MUCH rather be thinking about stories than doing Algebra homework. Wouldn't everyone?

Emily Dickinson for Friday

2008-11-21T14:55:00.001-05:00

As the temperatures plummet in the New York area (and rather quickly - it was only last Saturday that I was walking to the laundromat in sixty-degree weather, wearing a t-shirt), I have had my favorite bit of Emily Dickinson set like a thick rug under my thoughts this week:

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

It's the third and final stanza of a poem of hers called "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." I'm not dealing with any great pain right now, but I think we probably spend a lot of time fumbling with the pieces of our lives, frustrated that we can't control everything. In the midst of this, I have always apprecaited the sentiment that there are some pieces that aren't going to fit, and some questions in our lives to which there are no answers. In recognizing this, we establish a connection that wasn't there a second ago, which is always the point, anyway.

Postscript: the last bit of that poem serves as the inspirition for the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy record The Letting Go, which I can't recommend enough. The perfect record to accompany a mug of something warm on a quiet winter evening. In fact, I just figured out what I'm going to do tonight.

Maybe I'm just waiting for the musical?

2008-11-18T11:40:00.025-05:00

As I walked to work this morning, a bus stopped at the corner opposite me with an enormous advertisement for the 20th anniversary of Phantom of the Opera. My inner theatre buff, who thrills at any opportunity to start internally belting showtunes, was activated. But before I could get through more than just the first few bars of "Think of Me Fondly," I was stopped short. Because I realized something.

Ponder this:

And then these:

Edward Cullen is to 2008 what The Phantom was to...1988.

Why haven't I noticed this before?! Still unconvinced?

Then take a look:

At this: And then this:

And now, rather than penning a lengthy comparison (though I'm tempted!) between a 108-year-old vampire who seduces a teenage everygirl and a Phantom who lives underneath the Paris Opera House and seduces a teenage ingenue, I will just be sitting here, mentally rewriting Phantom lyrics, Twilight-style, in my head ALL DAY LONG.

"I'm watching you / Watching you sleeping / Ev'ry single night..."

Feel free to play along in the comments . . . I hate singing alone.

Friday off: Morandi, Master of Moulins, the Met

2008-11-16T17:43:00.011-05:00

The Morandi show at the Metropolitan Museum was one of those must-sees that I was about to miss, with the holidays coming and my attention dates being what it is. So I took Friday OFF from work, and headed across town to the Met. It's partly under construction, very gussied up, and the floorplan is mystifying, and I thought when I got there that Elaine Konigsberg would hardly recognize the place any more. But at last I found the exhibit and got lost in Morandi's serene, small, domestic landscapes for a while. I learned to my shame there is a Museo Morandi in Bologna that I have never visited. Sometimes, the Met just makes me feel bad.

When that happens, I follow my nose and it always takes me to the paintings I love: the works of the Northern Renaissance. And is it any wonder why? The one above is by "the Master of Moulins" -- one of those painters about whom there was so little known that he didn't even have a name for a long time (though he's now identified as "Jean Hey").

The whole little Northern Renaissance room looks like an exhibit of children's book jackets and interiors. Here a Catherine, Called Birdy. There a Rapunzel. Every so often a graphic novel. I love that you can tell the story just by looking at the picture. I love how direct the gazes are, how ordinary the lives. There are symbols to be decoded, little visual narratives within the narratives. All so flat and easy to read.

Refreshed and hopeful, I went out into the glorious autumn day. And went to see Synecdoche, New York -- which is a story for another day.

Bowen Press website

2008-11-15T11:35:00.001-05:00

Here is is, if you are feeling in the mood for a promotional blast:

http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/harperchildrens//Kids/gamesandcontests/features/bowenpress/default.aspx

Bertolt Brecht for Friday

2008-11-14T19:34:00.003-05:00

Molly informs us that the there is a long-standing tradition among children's book bloggers to post a poem of a Friday. Here's one I was introduced to by anthologist and publisher Neil Philip of the Albion Press, whose New Treasury of Poetry was published many years ago by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, and is still a model collection. Brecht's poem had a place on my own bulletin board for many years, but the original copy is sadly lost. However, I have it by heart, and I hope never to misplace it:

And I Always Thought

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.

If you'd prefer to read in the original, click here.

On falling in love (editorially)

2008-11-13T09:56:00.001-05:00

Being a junior editor is a bit like being in junior high all over again, I think. It's a world of thrillingly, terrifyingly wonderful possibility. Like, eek! Who will my friends (read: authors) be? What will the rest of the world think of me and said friends (authors) and the stuff we like to talk about (read: make books about). Will the cool kids (read: librarians, booksellers, book reviewers, and bookbuying-world-at-large) think we're cool, or will they post mean things on the bathroom wall (read: on Amazon) about us? And will I ever-ever-ever find a boyfriend (read: manuscript to buy) of my very own?

And if you're not tired of this analogy yet, I can take it a little further. When I was in junior high, one of the key differences between me and my fellow classmates--or so it felt--was that most of the other girls around me fell madly in love with a different guy approximately every 0.13 seconds. Not me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I spent an awful lot of time desperately wanting to BE in love. But Real Love. So, I nursed the same ridiculous crush for over a year. Erm, possibly two years. Uh, possibly longer. (Perhaps my memory gets hazy here in direct proportion with the amount of embarrassment I caused myself?) In my mind, there was no reason to abandon that crush for a new one because that one S.O.S. (that's Some One Special, just in case you never had reason to scrawl it all over your folders in hot pink glitter pen) never stopped making me laugh. Plus he was smart. And deep. And fascinating. Also, I was exceedingly loyal (read: stubborn).

And as an editor, I see folks around me falling in love (read: making deals on Publishers Lunch) all the time. And I have lots of friends (read: agents) telling me, "Hey, isn't this guy (read: manuscript), like, sooo super-fine and cute! You should totally like him! And tell him you like him! And ask him to the dance! (read: And pay a gazillion dollars for it at auction!)" And it's tempting to pick a new crush-worthy manuscript to flirt with every week, just to make everyone happy. But then I remember, I'm a long-term girl, no different than when I was in 7th grade. If I'm going to have a crush (read: work on a book) for 2+ years, then I have to want to do more than just scrawl Mrs. Molly Manuscript on all my folders. I want to really BE in love. Real Love. With a project that makes me laugh for years. One that is smart. And deep. And fascinating. One that's earned my intense loyalty.

So at the moment, I'm looking hard for an S.O.S (read: Superb Original Story) that makes me fall in love. And I can't wait to tell you when I've found it!