The Day Before April

Some readers have asked me to reprint this post in honor of the day, so here it is:

My mother was an elementary school teacher as well as a writer of a few published stories for children. Her love of reading and writing is where I get my love of reading and writing. My sister and I were raised on poetry. One of our favorite collections was Silver Pennies, edited by Blanche Jennings Thompson ("A Collection of Modern Poems for Boys and Girls" - modern, meaning at that time, published in 1959). The preface to the book begins with the lines:

You must have a silver penny
To get into Fairyland.

The premise of the book was that poems themselves are these silver pennies.

Of all the silver pennies in the book, this poem was the one we loved best, by Mary Carolyn Davies:

The Day Before April

The day before April
Alone, alone,
I walked in the woods
And sat on a stone.

I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God's making
But I made the words.

My mother, my sister, and I have long celebrated "the day before April" as a holiday, a Mills family women's holiday. A few years ago I hosted a "day before April" party, with my mother and my boys (who did think it was a somewhat strange party) as the only guests. I usually gave my mother flowers on that day.

I've dreamed of writing a book with the title The Day Before April. Maybe someday I will.

It is the day before April today. I'm going to go buy some flowers - daff0dils, probably. Two years ago, when I first wrote this post, I took daffodils to my mother, who was in a rehabilitation center after a fall that broke her hip and arm; she died two months later. Today I'll buy daffodils in memory of her.

Happy day before April, everybody.

Lessons Relearned

One of my pleasant spring break tasks is going through the beautifully edited manuscript for my forthcoming novel, No Exceptions, about a seventh-grade student who brings her mother's lunch to school by mistake, a lunch containing a knife to cut her mother's apple, and who now faces expulsion under her school's zero-tolerance policies for possession of drugs or weapons.

Margaret had a lot of great queries for me to answer, ones that I'm still wrestling with, but mainly she just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. I found myself blushing as I saw the passages she had excised: so flabby! so overwritten! so belaboring of the point! so self-consciously clever! so violating the principle of "show, don't tell"! Once, to my shame, she even wrote "Show, don't tell" in the margin by the deleted paragraph. I do a presentation for elementary school kids on this very principle! And yet I still told when I should have showed - or rather, told, when I had already showed.

I showed Sierra's principal giving a long self-congratulatory speech to a principal visiting from another middle school, as Sierra needs to talk to him to explain her situation. Then I wrote, "Sierra had to tell him, but she didn't know how to disrupt the flow of his self-congratulatory speech."

Margaret: "Does the speech show us this? No need to describe?"

And, oh, the needless repetition!

I wrote, "Sierra had never kissed a boy. The closest she had come to kissing a boy was imagining kissing Colin."

Was that first sentence needed? No, it was not.

Did I need TWICE to explain that the boys play with their Gameboys under the table so that Ms. Lin won't see them? (Margaret: "How they play with the Gameboys is already established.")

Did I need TWICE to have someone try to avoid saying something "that could never be unsaid"?

The best invention ever made for writers, I am now convinced: the delete key. And today I am using it liberally. I am using it a lot.

Did I need BOTH of those last two sentences? No, I did not!

Blue Ribbons

Greetings from Missouri, where I'm doing two days of school visits in North Kansas City schools.  I'm at Ravenwood Elementary right now. The second graders here just finished reading my picture book Ziggy's Blue Ribbon Day.  In that book, athletically challenged Ziggy is dreading track-and-field day.  For each event the children are awarded ribbons, with blue ribbons as best, then red, then gold, and then silver - which Ziggy says isn't really silver, but a "dull, dismal gray." Ziggy knows that his day will bring nothing but a slew of silvers. But when Ziggy uses his drawing talent to decorate his ribbon-holding envelope (if it's going to have gray and gloomy contents on the inside, it might as well be bright and cheering on the outside), his classmates start trading him their blue ribbons in exchange for his decorating their envelopes as well. So Ziggy ends up having an unexpected haul of blue ribbons, after all.

The media specialist at Ravenwood had the second graders each fill out "blue ribbons" of their own, listing their own special talent.  I'm looking at them as I type this:

Baseball
Cheer Leading
Lego Building
Art
Running
Gymnastics
Video Games
Basketball
Fixing TVs
Kick Ball
Legos!
Dancing to Rap Music
Help People

The second grade spelling on some of these was quite wonderful, too: "vityo games," "backitboll").

Of course, I'm curious about the child whose talent is fixing TVs.  I'd like to see the child who dances to rap music.  My heart is warmed by the child whose talent is helping people. 

And my heart is also warmed by educators who encourage all children to recognize and celebrate their talents, whatever they may be.

Spring Break

I used to look forward to spring break as a chance to catch up on all the work I had left undone during the hectic pace of the semester. But now I look forward to spring break as a chance to catch up on the life I left behind in Colorado when I departed to go teach in Indiana. So few precious days back in Colorado! So much of my sweet life to connect with again.

On my spring break to-do list:
1) Go to church TWICE - this coming Sunday and next Sunday, which is Palm Sunday - Hosanna!
2) Hike as often as I can with Rowan on the beautiful South Shanahan trails in our neighborhood
3) Meet with a writing mentee to give her comments on her middle-grade novel manuscript, which I read on the plane as I was flying home - lots to talk about!
4) Meet with a doctoral student about the first couple of chapters of his dissertation on a philosophical argument for an open borders immigration policy - lots to talk about!
5) Dentist for cleaning and checkup
6) Dying Easter eggs with Gregory and mending a torn pocket on his CU sweatshirt
7) Lunch or dinner with Maureen, Diane, Elizabeth, others!
8) A special session meeting of my writing group to accommodate the timing of my return
9) Finish writing my paper for the conference in China
10) Regain the love of Snickers by as much cuddling as she will permit

That is my to-do list for the week. I can't wait to start crossing off each blissful item on it.

Me and Marco Polo

I have been working hard on organizing my trip to China that is coming up in June: I'm one of ten American children's literature scholars invited to take part in an inaugural symposium focused on the theme of "The Image of the Child in Chinese and American Children's Literature." Ten Chinese scholars will also be presenting. All the papers will be translated English-Chinese or Chinese-English. The symposium will be held at Ocean University in Qingdao, China.

I've been busy trying to buy my plane ticket, a project which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. I'm flying Indianapolis-Chicago-Beijing-Qingdao. I tried to book the whole thing through United, but couldn't seem to do it. Each time I called United, I would get a recording that announced, "Your wait time to speak to a representative is approximately . . . . twenty minutes." I would wait for twenty minutes, then speak to someone in some distant part of the world who couldn't understand what I was saying, then I'd ask to speak to a supervisor, then I'd find out that there was a problem arranging the Beijing-Qingdao segment of the trip on Air China, so I had to wait twenty-four hours and try again. . . or I had to be on a wait list. . . or I had to call Air China myself.

When I finally did call Air China myself, with much trepidation, what a pleasant surprise! My approximate wait time to speak to a representative was no wait time at all. "Brad" spoke better English than the United Airlines folks. I did have to email him a photocopy of my passport, my credit card front and back, and fill out a form to send in. But once I did, the ticket was booked right away.

Then I had to start looking for my hotel in Beijing, as I'm going to stay there for a couple of days before heading up to the conference. Once we get to Qingdao, everything will be taken care of for us there. Luckily, one of the other scholars already had her hotel reservation, so I just copied her, after a few failed tries on their website - actually, successful tries, but each time I hadn't realized that I succeeded, so I kept trying again, and so ended up with a slew of reservations I then had to cancel. And it was scary to sign up to pay 1917 RMB for the three nights. I had to go find out what kind of currency an RMB is, and what it is worth in dollars. It turns out that the whole three-night stay in what looks to be a very fancy hotel will be just $340.

I still have to get the visa, which also doesn't look easy. I'm going to use a special visa agency based in Chicago. Oh, and then, I still have to write the paper that I'm presenting, which is due on April 1 to allow time for the translation. Mine is on the gendered representation of the child in mid-century American chapter books, particularly Henry Huggins and Ramona by Beverly Cleary.

So it's been a big job. But I keep telling myself not to complain. It's going to be a wonderful trip of a lifetime when I get there. And, hey, Marco Polo had a lot of preparations for his trip to China, too. He didn't even get to sit in a comfortable office chair booking his travel on his computer, or by telephone. Put in perspective, approximate wait times of 20 minutes aren't too terrible. Not for me and Marco Polo.

Close Call

The Children's Literature Festival here in Warrensburg is exhilarating, but grueling as well. It is draining to have to be a larger-than-life exuberant personality in front of four large groups of children four times a day, saying the same thing over and over again as if inventing it on the spot through sudden inspiration. It's emotionally intense to see so many dear friends and share a year's worth of accumulated stories with each one.

So this is why I keep leaving things everywhere.

I went to turn off my cell phone this morning before my first session and realized that I had left it in the motel room, in its charger, after having packed up everything to check out. That wasn't too hard to deal with. One of the festival's wonderful helpers drove back to the motel to get it.

Scarier was what almost happened to Charlie. Charlie is the tiny duck friend of one of the Warrensburg authors; actually, Charlie began life as a padded, furry, elongated-duck-shaped bookmark sold by Barnes & Noble, but he became Pat's beloved friend and a Warrensburg mascot. One year Pat forgot to bring Charlie to the festival. Luckily, we have illustrators here as well as authors, so talented R. W. Alley drew Pat a new Charlie, which she managed to stuff with some cotton, so we had faux Charlie to keep us company.

Well, this year I was feeling a bit melancholy the first night here for no good reason, so Pat loaned me Charlie. He spent the night and next day with me. When I went to return Charlie to Pat last night, she suggested that Charlie would enjoy coming to our author party in the motel's meeeting room, and indeed, Charlie did seem to welcome the festivities. I was tired, so slipped away early to bed.

This morning I saw Pat over at the festival. "Where's Charlie?" she asked.

"I thought YOU had him!" I almost shrieked.

She, too, had left the party early. She too had left Charlie behind.

Frantically, I called the motel. What if - what if - could it be that Charlie had been - no, surely, he wouldn't have been THROWN AWAY?

All right, time for the happy ending: the motel staff hurried up to the meeting room ("It's urgent!" I told them). Charlie has been found. He is safe at the motel registration desk, ready to be reunited with Pat later today.

I plan to get a VERY good sleep tonight, when I'm back home in Indiana. No more forgetting cell phones! No more forgetting little duck friends!

Once a Year in Warrensburg

I'm here in Warrensburg, Missouri, for the 44th Children's Literature Festival sponsored by the University of Central Missouri. This is my fifteenth or sixteenth time attending. This year thirty-four authors are in attendance, about half of them local to Missouri and surrounding areas, about half flown in from around the country; four thousand schoolkids are signed up to come to the university campus today and tomorrow, accompanied by a thousand supervising adults.

It is all so wonderfully familar to me:
Dinner at Hero's restaurant as we arrive on Saturday
Sunday morning walk by a few of us to see the cows
Sunday luncheon, and then reception and book signing
Sunday evening reception at White Rose Pavilion
Four talks to kids on Monday
Monday afternoon outing to the old-timey downtown shoestore to buy shoes
Monday evening dinner in the library
Four talks to kids on Tuesday
Tearful farewells
Fly home

I love when things stay the same, but this year some things are different. A few of the best-loved authors who have been coming the longest are not here this year, for reasons of health - their own ill health, or the health of their families. In the past year, two cherished festival authors have passed away. People all sound a bit more discouraged this year about the state of the publishing world and the state of the larger economy. It's harder for even veteran authors to get contracts. Books go out of print at faster and faster rates. Slashed school budgets mean less money to fund author visits; high stakes testing means less time for curricular "extras" like having a visiting author come to town.

But the spring here in Warrensburg has never been prettier: magnolia, cherry, crabapple, red bud all in bloom. The cows were truly excellent! I'm SO ready for a new pair of shoes! I love these authors and this festival so much. The publishing world may be scary right now, but Warrensburg isn't. It's a sweet, dear, familiar, beautiful, affirming place to be.