Author: Kurtis

People found this blog today by googling “Jon Sciezka,” “Daniel Pinkwater,” and “EB White”. It’s only because I’ve talked about them, of course, but it makes me happy to think that their fans might end up here. If you like books for boys, I got you covered. If you like silly books with heart, I got you covered. And if you like stories set in New England featuring pigs, be patient — I’m working on it.

Whoever decides this thing made another great choice when they selected Katherine Paterson to replace Jon Scieszka as the National Ambassador to Young People’s Literature. I admire Paterson very much as an author, and her Bridge to Terabithia is definitely one of those “now this here is what I’m trying to do” type books. I love this decision because she is also quite different from the first ambassador, except that she’s also perfect, and someone who will connect with kids and inspire adults. I also think this really cements this position as one bestowed on the highest achievers and most respected men and women of letters who write for young people.

Thanks to everyone who entered! The winner will be notified in the next day or two.

I forgot to mention the donation to MN SNAP, in the video, but that donation will indeed be made in your name by my wonderful and caring wife Angela.

I am excited for the giveaway later, and Elwyn has been practicing nervously. I think he’s going to do just great. In the meantime, I am watching the Vikings play the Giants (now up by 10! Skol!), so if you need to kill time while you wait, here are some good things to read.

One of the best blogs you’ll find about the children’s book industry is Editorial Anonymous. I was giddy to get an honorable mention in EdAnon’s contest to come up with a new publishing myth. And I totally accept the silver; the winner’s was great.

I was thrilled to see that somebody was writing Mrs. Piggle Wiggle fan fiction, and even thrilleder that it was my pal Laurel Snyder, author of Any Which Wall and other wonderful old school-style books, which makes her the perfect person to pen that pastiche. I was a big Mrs. Piggle Wiggle when I was in my chapter book phase. She and Paddington Bear and Encyclopedia Brown populated my dreams in first and second grade.

And finally, what a pleasure to see my book voted as “book with the most heart” by Jody Sparks. It’s always nice to see a good review or listed, but I was especially flattered to see that designation.

I popped into a bookstore tonight after dinner, did the usual vanity check to see if they had my own in stock (they did not), and browsed a little. I was struck by the way the YA section was laid out. I mean, I’d seen Twilight prominently featured, with the Bella/Edward merch front and center, but this YA section was basically, at a glance, and even at a closer look, the Twilight section. ALL of the featured titles were paranormal romances, with a little Gossip Girl on the fringe. The “mainstream” fiction was shoved off to the side, comprising less than half of the shelf space given to the fantasy and series books.

I’m not having a go at the books or the people who read them or the people who write them, but I did wonder: Why would a boy think there was anything there for him? Seriously, would a teen boy who happened to be there even feel comfortable poking around for something he would want to read, let alone confident that he might find it?

Several young women were browsing, and I overheard one joking that somebody wouldn’t even go in the YA section with them, which I assume was a male friend or relative who, being a teenager, was pathologically self-concious like all teenagers, and didn’t want to get got caught dead in the Twilight section. Which, considering the fact that boys are not as likely to read, and are less likely  to see reading as something guys do, is not really good. I guess the bookstore wants to push the stuff that’s already selling, but I was disturbed at the fact that one bookstore had given up on selling to boys all together.

Happy 2010. Remember that you can (and should) enter to win stuff by Sunday. The official deadline is halftime during the Vikings-Giants game.

Here is the cool stuff you can win (cat not included):

Shown are the advanced readers copy of MAMBA POINT and a small Liberian flag and toy snake that represent the two major themes of that work, as well as a pig and a recipe for mushroom soup which are inspired my current work in progress, WAKE, ME. Not shown (but symbolized by Bertie) is a donation made on your behalf to “MN SNAP,” an organization providing reduced spay and neuter services to qualifying pet owners and animal shelters.

Here’s a close up of the pig, which I drew this morning and am quite proud of.

Please consider spreading the word of the awesome prize package, and happy new year!

I meant to avoid lists or anything like them, but I did intend to mention in the last post that while I read many great books for young readers this decade, two really stuck it to me, made me feel like I needed to be a better writer and (I hope) nudged me in that direction. You’d like to think at the age of 40 and being a published author, you’ve pretty much shaped yourself as a writer and are beyond the realm of influence, but I am not. The two books were The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson and When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Besides originality and cleverness and good storytelling, what both books impressed me with was the courage of the authors to do something weird and difficult and trust young readers to keep up. They raised the bar for all of us.

And while I’m at it, I might as well say that Jeff Kinney’s books make me laugh and that Mo Willems’ books just make me happy.

We’re nearly done with with the decade and we never decided what to call it. The oughts never took on. It makes us sound like Grandpa Simpson, you know. I myself will call them the 00s, pronounced “Ooze,” as in, “remember the ooze?” and “I spent most of the ooze in Minneapolis.”

So the end of a decade means two things. One, an increasing number of reflexive lists, enummerating the best of this and the most memorable of that. Two, an increasingly uninteresting debate about whether or not the 0 year is part of a new or the last decade. I’ve decided to resist doing either, but feel compelled to recap the last ten years.

It was a pretty good stretch for me, personally — houses bought, wives married, books published, cats adopted, and some 3653 days met head on and made through. It’s true that some of my auld acquaintances seas between us braid hae, but new ones have gies mine a hand to tak  a right gude-willy waught, as some drunk Scottish guy once shouted in my ear.

The world had it rough, so I keep my gloating to a minimum. The falling of the World Trade Center, the flood in New Orleans, the boxing day tsunami, various pandemics, and the global recession are likely to dominate the chapter on this period in history books. The first African American  U.S. president, the Harry Potter craze, and the rise of the LOL Cat added a silver lining of sorts, but it’s still a pretty gray cloud. Or a grayish ooze, if you will.

I’ll be my pint-stowp yet, in the wish that the next 10 years are as good to everyone as the last 10 were to me. And at least we don’t have to wonder what to call them.

I’ve seen a lot of hits lately from people looking up book report info on Mick Cochrane’s excellent YA novel, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies, because I’ve written about it previously. For example, in the last few days I’ve seen multiple hits for “Setting of The Girl Who Threw Butterflies” and “Tone of The Girl Who Threw Butterflies.” I’m glad teachers are assigning it, and while it’s a lovely book that would only take a few hours to read, I understand that today’s students are stressed and busy, so I’ll give you some quick help here.*

PLOT: It’s about a girl who masters the ancient Japanese art of butterfly hurling, under the tutelage of a sage mentor.

CHARACTERS: Renesmee, the heroine, and Yogi, her mentor. Mutt, her best friend, and Jeff, her dog. Her parents’ names are Punch and Judy.

SETTING: Mobile, Alabama in the 1960s.

THEME: You can do anything if you put your mind to it, unless it is winning the regional butterfly hurling championship, which is astonishingly hard even if you do put your mind to it.

TONE: Bawdy.

There, I hope that is helpful. Godspeed, young book reporters.

*No need to even glance at the book and verify. Just print off this blog entry, scribble your name at the top, and hand it in.

It’s time for the second annual year-end prize giveaway bonanza™! Last year’s winner went on to publish a debut novel with two starred reviews, move uptown, and learn ballet.  What good fortune awaits this year winner, only time will tell, but so far every single winner of this honor has gone on to have extraordinary success in the following year. Coincidence? Perhaps. But, on the other hand, do you want to snub opportunity?

Speaking of opportunity, our awards committee have been really knocking themselves out over the holidays to assemble this extraordinary collection:

1. An advanced review copy of Mamba Point, which most people can’t even read until it’s officially released in July.
2. A small Liberian flag which you can keep on your desk so your friends can mistake it for a the Texan flag, which actually looks different, but which people often think it is anyway.
3. A toy snake that is more cute than scary.
4. A recipe for mushroom soup.
5. A picture of a pig with a toy pail, both important characters in my third novel, hand-drawn by me.

In addition to this bounty, a donation made by my lovely wife in your name to MN-SNAP (an organization that has nothing to do with Minnesotans snarking on other states and everything to do with curbing pet overpopulation so that every puppy, kitten, bunny and hedgehog has a forever home).

All you have to do to win is leave a comment (using a real email address in the email address field, which will only be seen by me) so I can contact you if your name is drawn from my faux-fur winter hat that everyone makes fun of by Elwyn* on Sunday, January 3, 2010.

Posting this to your own blog, Facebook, or Twitter will not increase your mathematical odds of winning, but will greatly increase your karma towards winning. What I’m saying is, I can’t track down who really did do that stuff, but please do!

*Last year’s winner was selected by Charlotte, our paper-abscombing kitty who we celebrate today for having lived in our fold for one year. Due to suspicious aspects of last year’s contest, we have retired Charlotte from her duties and elected Elwyn, a very nice pig, to do the honors.

I accidentally planted a clue to this one, without remembering I had a standing trivia question on the topic. The Christmas story by the creators of Frances the Badger is none other than my favorite Christmas story, Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. How much do I love this story, especially in Muppet form, I can’t begin to tell you.

If you’ve been reading this blog through your aggregator, you (might) see a flurry of posts from me today, after a 3-week seeming absence. It seems like my rebuilt (and hopefully more spam-free) blog was blocking Google Reader and other aggregators like Feedburner, probably due to overzealous security installs on my part. This has been fixed, at least for now. My holiday present to my blog followers was finally figuring this out; I knew it wasn’t working but didn’t have a chance to plumb the depths of WordPress configuration to figure out why. (I’m partly posting this update to verify that new posts will appear promptly… wish me luck!) (Edit: it worked. To paraphrase Tiny Tim, Google bless us, every one.)

What holiday fable was adapted for the stage as a musical by Mel Marvin and Timothy Mason? Answer by January 8 to win. (Enter Here)

My wife bought me a stuffed hedgehog for Christmas, which I received early. Her name is Trudi. When a friend and fellow writer suggested that my picture book career would now commence, I quickly composed the following story, which is sure to be a timeless classic with songs, TV specials, and other treatments. Why, I’m convinced that if Trudi is not the next Rudolph, she is at least the next Olive. Here’s the story.

Little Trudi wanted nothing but bugs for Christmas.

“Yes,” she said. “Bugs. I eat bugs. You got a problem with that Santa? Because it just so happens I’m an insectivore.” She was on Santa’s knee at Macy’s, telling him what she wanted for Christmas.

“Um, no, I don’t have a problem with that at all,” he said. “Actually, I have a bit of an infestation at the workshop. Trudi, with your little claws and teeth so capable, won’t you come to the North Pole and exterminate the bugs who’ve made my workshop intolerable?”

“Of course!” said Trudi.

They left the Santa Village at the department store and hurried off in Santa’s sleigh to the North Pole, where Trudi fattened herself up on the cockroaches that had gotten into the workshop, nibbling off their legs and then cracking open their shells to suck out their yummy cockroachy inner goo.

By Christmas, the roaches were gone and Trudi weighed 14 pounds, which is really big for a hedgehog. It was a merry Christmas for everyone.

The End

Questions nobody asks but should: What’s your favorite holiday movie?

Of course the answer to this is usually going to be a Christmas movie. How many other holidays have movies? Especially ones that aren’t of the mad slasher genre? The answer is, practically none.

For me the answer is not exactly a movie, but a one-hour Christmas special featuring non-canonical muppets and a story by the great Russell Hoban, music by the underappreciated Paul Williams, and performed by Marilyn Sokol and the extraordinary Jerry Nelson (the only man on earth who can sing a song as a baby frog and make you cry.) I’m talking of course about Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas.

For my birthday, my wife found me a copy of the out-of-print book that inspired the special, and as luck would have it, it’s a first edition. It’s amazing how much of the special really does come from the book–blocks of dialogue from the text, scenes clearly based carefully on illustrations.

In lieu of a good trailer, here is a blooper reel from the special that shows puppeteers getting punchy as a scene goes into the upteens of takes. Happy holidays!

A reader alerted me to this very cool gallery of snake photos. And by “a reader,” I mean, “my wife.”

http://www.thisblogrules.com/2009/12/amazing-photographs-of-snakes-like_16.html

She also directed me to this video, which she found via the same neatorama blog. This is one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with snakes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA6XSrM0V_0

For some reason this morning I thought of this stirring poem by Robert Browning: How They Brought the Good News From Ghent to Aix. It’s an old favorite. I read a lot of Robert Browning in high school, and if that surprises you, it is because you aren’t familiar with Robert Browning, who is way different from his wife. Both are great poets, but Elizabeth Barrett wrote sentimental sonnets (e.g., “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) and Robert wrote tough-nosed narratives poems, stories that were often thrilling and as often grotesque. Poetry for teenaged boys, you might say.

This is one of his most famous poems, and is simply about three men on a furious horseback ride. We never know what the good news is, or why it is so urgent. It doesn’t really matter. There is no historical incident that inspired it, Browning said. It’s just a poem that occurred to him. It’s not about the men and their good news. It’s about the ride, and the heroes are the horses.

The poem is incredible for the way it maintains the same urgent, desperate pace as the horses. It’s a master class on poetics. Enjoy the ride.

I had misgivings about a movie-length interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, even in the hands of a capable director. The movie surpassed my expectations — it was far more of a disaster than I even imagined.

In this version of the story, Max (a far more troubled boy than the one in the book) escapes inside his imagination, but even his imagination is fraught with dysfunction. The wild rumpus ends in finger-pointing and shouting, and the next 90 minutes is more of the same, making it feel like nine hours. The monsters spend more time grousing over petty jealousies than capering. The ostensibly fun scenes are brutal. An ostensibly affectionate dog pile of monsters is shown to be suffocating. One of the monsters knocks sad-looking owls — supposedly her new best friends — out of the sky with rocks. Another monster gets an arm ripped off. Love is expressed through violence, anger through more violence. Everything anyone builds is destroyed. Max leaves the place even more miserable and damaged than it was when he found it.

It is common enough to say that this or that movie didn’t do justice to a book, but I’ve rarely felt that a movie did more injustice to its source material.

We do not know if Max’s supper is still hot, when he gets home, and I guess that’s all that needs to be said. Max is a miserable little boy, has a miserable time with miserable monsters, and comes home late to a meal that has (we are sure) become cold.

Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa or חנוכה, I’d like to invite you to Margie Gelbwasser’s week-plus-a-day of festivities. Margie is the author of Inconvenient, a debut novel which will get published by Flux in 2010. She’s invited a spate of her fellow 2010 debut authors to share their writing tips, and thrown my own guest entry in the middle like the big candle in a menorah. As a sophomore, I should be hazing these frosh, but I like them all so I’ll be cool. For now, at least. Tomorrow, who knows? I’m as unpredictable as a dreidel. Yes, I really had to work to set up that last simile. Zot, you think Hanukkah similes are easy? They’re a latke of work.