Summertime Fairy Dust

Today my sister Cheryl came to NYC with me on the bus from her house in North Plainfield, NJ (also our childhood home), where I'm staying right now. We walked thirty blocks from the Port Authority up to Alice's Teacup on West 73rd Street for tea, scones, and fairy dust. She ordered a berry crepe and a pumpkin scone; I had an egg-white omelet with roasted asparagus and pears, together with a lemon raspberry scone. Afterward we were both sprinkled with their fairy dust. Cheryl cleverly brought a flash drive from her computer for her sprinkling, so all the documents on it received the magic treatment. I limited myself to a sprinkling on the ARC (advanced reading copy) of my new book to try to ensure its success with reviewers and customers.

The magically happy day continued with a fascinating exhibit of FROGS at the American Museum of Natural History, where 200 actual live frogs from all around the world were on display; some of them were amazingly colorful like animated tiny toy frogs; others were carefully camouflaged. Then in the afternoon we toured the Guggenheim Museum, featuring an exhibit of the Japanese post-minimalist artist Lee Ufan. The day concluded with a forty-block stroll back to the bus.

There is hardly anything in the world more fun than a sister day in New York City complete with scones and fairy dust.

Conference Fini

The Children's Literature Association conference finished last night with the annual banquet, this year held outside on the lawn of the beautiful academic quad on the campus of Hollins University. The centerpiece of the banquet is always the presentation of various awards, such as awards for the best scholarly book and article in the field of children's literature, and climaxing in the acceptance speech for the association's Phoenix Award.

The Phoenix Award is an award given to a children's book published twenty years ago that did not win a major award at the time of publication but that has stood the test of time. It's hard to imagine a nicer phone call for an an author to receive than to find out that her book is receiving this kind of recognition a full two decades after its initial foray into the world.

This year's Phoenix Award winner was The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolf, originally published in 1991. Virginia was present to receive her award and in her speech shared fascinating stories about how she had actually followed up on letters sent to her by young musician fans fifteen or twenty years ago, something she was able to do via the Internet for those who had distinctive enough names to trace and who also had an Internet presence - which these now no-longer-all-that-young persons did, as most of them had gone on to continue their passion for music with musical performance careers. My favorite line of her speech was a line taken from one fan letter, in which the writer reported having heard a recent rendition of the same Mozart violin concerto that character Allegra plays in the book; she decided that Allegra's (fictional!) performance was the superior of the two.

So now I need to go back and try to remember which books I published in 1992, 1993, 1994, so I can begin fantasizing about getting that phone call of rebirth from the ashes, a second chance at immortality, one more reason for hope to spring eternal in a writer's breast.

Greetings from Paradise

I've just finished day two of the blissful Children's Literature Assocation conference. I was lucky enough to find an abandoned computer where I can type this blog post; I have the unfortunate combination of being someone who is addicted to email and to blogging, but who is even more addicted to carrying nothing with her on a trip, thus no laptop, so this feels fortunate.

I don't think there is anyplace I go on this earth where I walk in and have so much of a feeling, "THIS is my world. THESE are my people." I feel even more this way when I am with children's literature scholars than when I am with children's book writers, even though I am a much more prolific and successful author of children's books than I am of scholarly articles on children's literature. But it's just that, above all, I am a LOVER of children's literature, even more than a maker of children's literature. And here I'm with people who love what I love, people who can discuss turns of plot in Lousia May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl, or why Betsy's Wedding is so much more satisfying than other 1950s wedding novels, or why the predictable plot of Ginger Pye somehow doesn't count against it. There is nothing more wonderful than being with people who love all the same books that you love - and have read them all at least fifty times.

So far I have heard papers on topics including graphic novel versions of The Wizard of Oz, World War I patriotic propoganda, teen wedding novels of mid-century, Disney's placement of Tinkerbell in US Department of Energy public service announcements, adaptations for children of Oliver Twist, a theatrical production of Heidi set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an amazing biographical sketch of the author of Pollyanna in Hollywood. I gave my own paper on wartime dreams and disillusionment in Rufus M as well as a "Writers on Writing" author talk on my book One Square Inch. I had dinner with the ChLA International Committee, of which I'm a member. I had lunch with old dear author friends. I had margaritas with Lisa and Jeff and Andrea, with whom I spent time two summers ago in Taiwan. And tonight is the midnight feast.

This is my world. These are my people.

Packing for Roanoke

Well, I finished my Rainbow Fish-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-Nietzsche paper for the Philosophy in Children's Literature collection. It didn't look ridiculously short in my nice old-fashioned Courier font, but when I reformatted it into the prescribed Times Roman it shrank alarmingly. It really does look pitiful now! But I said all that I have to say, and maybe brevity is not only the soul of wit but the soul of something deep and philosophical as well.

When I had my review for tenure a decade ago, I remember being worried that my tenure file was "scanty, skimpy, and quirky," where "scanty" referred to the number of articles, "skimpy" to their length, and "quirky" to their content. And, hey, I did get tenure anyway. So I hope my skimpy Rainbow Fish/Nietzsche paper will pass muster with the volume's editor. And if it doesn't, maybe he'll have some good ideas for things to add. And in any case, right this minute it's off my desk and onto his.

So now I can pack for the Children's Literature Association conference in Roanoke. I'm giving a paper on Rufus M, by Eleanor Estes, making the fourth in a series of papers I've given/published on her books - one on The Hundred Dresses, one on The Witch Family, one on The Middle Moffat and The Alley, and now this one on Rufus M. It's also skimpy, but that's good for conference presentations, and I know the wonderful supportive audience at the conference will have great suggestions for expanding it into publishable form. And I need to find something to read at our annual "midnight feast," where a bunch of us crowd together into one of our rooms, garbed in pajamas if possible, and read aloud to each other from favorite children's books.

So right now I'm off to start my packing pile with a light conscience from having added another skimpy entry to my no-longer-all-that-scanty list of quirky papers.

Forty-Eight Hours

In forty-eight hours I'll be on my way to Roanoke for the Children's Literature Association conference, and then heading from there up to New York City for what promises to be a wonderful symposium on philosophy for children held at Columbia Teachers College. So I have two days to do everything I need to do before this eight-day trip.

I'll meet with my two children's book mentees, Peggy and Susan. Peggy and I will discuss the stunning finish of her middle-grade novel-in-progress, which I had the chance to read yesterday evening. Susan and I will plan together the stunning finish of hers.

But the main thing I have to do before I leave is write a paper for an edited collection on philosophy and children's literature, for which I submitted an abstract a year ago. My paper is on a Nietzschean reading of The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Each year when I teach Nietzsche in my Intro to Ethics class, I read my college students The Rainbow Fish (with an appropriate high squeaky voice for the little blue fish and deep resonant voice for the wise old octopus), and then I tell them, "Now we're going to talk about why Nietzsche would hate this book." We then examine how the book seems to glorify "slave morality," the "green meadow happiness of the herd."

So I have a good start on the paper. But I'm not quite sure how to fill out that good start. I just read over my four-page abstract, and while I liked it well enough, I also have the fear that it says just about all that I have to say on this subject. But I have to fill it out somehow into a respectable-length scholarly paper.

Oh, well. As Roxanne says to her tongue-tied lover, Christian, in Cyrano de Bergerac, after he manages to stammer out only "I - love - you": "You have your theme: improvise! rhapsodize!" So today and tomorrow I'll be improvising and rhapsodizing about The Rainbow Fish.

Home from Utah

I’m back from five intense and wonderful days teaching at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop held on the manicured grounds of the posh Waterford School in Sandy, Utah. Each morning I taught a four-hour critique-based class to fourteen extraordinarily motivated writers, and for the rest of the time I attended stimulating talks by my fellow faculty members, and gave a couple of talks myself.

Highlights of the week:

A talk by National Book Award finalist Kathleen Duey supposedly on the topic of “scene layering,” but actually on dozens of topics that provided glimpses into her fascinating writing process. Among her great lines: “The assignment for every writer is to get you to read the next sentence.” Among her boldest instructions: “Don’t outline! Force your characters to act on their own.” This, she claims, and I think I may almost be persuaded, is the key to elevating mere craft into art. In lieu of outlining, she starts with a character and “interviews” him until he finally yields up his story.

A talk by National Book Award finalist Martine Leavitt on theme. Theme, Martine says, asks a question; “message” or “moral” delivers an answer. Martine argues that message/moral-driven writing is disrespectful of the reader, an attempt to make children convert to social conformity. In an impromptu author panel following her stunning talk, I gamely tried to defend the contrary point of view: isn’t there a role for some fiction that attempts to deliver a powerful searing message? (E.g., my childhood favorite, The Hundred Dresses, with its unforgettable indictment of prejudice.) But Martine did make a powerful anti-message case.

A talk by brilliant and hilarious Carol Lynch Williams, who SHOULD be a National Book Award finalist and winner, on using real life in our stories: how to shape real life into a more interesting shape that can provide a satisfying story arc, when we go too far in making fiction track real life. One dazzling line from her forthcoming book: “I still believe in God. But I don’t know if God believes in me.”

And finally, a potluck reception on a perfect Utah June evening at The King’s English independent bookstore in Salt Lake City, a charming, book-filled readers’ paradise. It’s hard to imagine a more appealing store or a more supportive community of writers than I met that evening.

Now: unpacking, laundry, and preparing to leave on Wednesday for the Children's Literature Association conference held this year on the campus of Hollins University in Roanoke. Whew!

Off to Utah

I leave tomorrow for a week teaching a class on writing middle-grade fiction at the wonderful Workshop on Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers, held this year in Sandy, Utah, organized by the brilliant and hilariously funny Carol Lynch Williams, one of my most favorite authors in the whole wide world.

Each day I'll teach a four-hour class in the morning. It sounds harder than it is, because all of my fourteen students already have novels-in-progress, and the bulk of class time will be spend in a supportive critique group session on the manuscripts submitted. In the afternoon, the various authors on the faculty will give breakout session talks; mine is a reprise of a talk I gave for a local SCBWI conference a couple of years ago. Here's the blurb I'm using to advertise it.

Most of us hear a chorus of hideous voices in our heads trying to shout down the voices of the characters in our stories: “I should be cleaning my house instead”; “This idea has already been done before a thousand times”; “It’s impossible to get published”; “My mother will die if she reads this”; “Kids today don’t ready, anyway.” Claudia Mills promises to offer snappy comebacks and brilliant refutations to silence these devious, disillusioning, deafening voices forever.

There will also be time to hang out with the other faculty members, talk shop, sign books, hug old friends, meet new ones. I'm ready!