Why I (still) love the Con

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.

New Frontiers: THE WESTERN MYSTERIES

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.

Ricky Gervais for Newbery/Caldecott Banquet?

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

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.

Sidewalk art

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?

Men Who Read

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.

Poetry Friday: Ben

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

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.

Why I like MoCCA

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

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.

Separated at birth?

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.

The new job

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

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

Daylight Savings Time Is Relative

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.

The Patron Saint of Editors

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

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.

...after these messages

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.

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

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

"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!)

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.