I thought I was writing a boy’s story. It was only Catia’s reading of the story, and her amazing paintings, that turned the narrator into a girl.I love when this happens in a collaboration, when an illustrator interprets the work in a way that radically alters the text. I really feel strongly that my job is to let go of the steering wheel once I’m finished with my part, that a book is a product of many makers. The illustrator and the editor and the designer and the copyeditor and the fact checker–there are so many people involved. If I tried to control the process I’d go nuts, and the book would be less wonderful in most cases. I love that [the narrator] is a girl.

(check out the whole interview, over at PW)

Know anyone working on a middle grade or YA novel, interested in crafting their work, talking about process, getting into the nitty gritty?  I’m offering a class this summer at the Yale Writers’ Conference. Send them my way. There will also be chances to meet with agents and editors, commune with other writers, and gab.  It promises to be a ton of fun!

The Wild Ride:  writing for children and young adults.

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

Books for children and young adults vary wildly, from fantasy romps to gothic thrillers to achingly realistic love stories.  What unifies them is often their intensity—their willingness to gofurther.  They can be expansive, brutal, or hilarious in their approaches, but they are almost never dull.

While such books can be amazing fun to write, they pose certain challenges.  How do we know when we’ve gone too far?  When does our character become unbelievable or inauthentic?  When does our world-building begin to distract our reader?  Are there limits to how dark or mature a book for teens should be?  How much do we really need to think about logic in a magical world?

In this session we’ll work on the craft of fiction, and discuss the basic elements of the novel.  We’ll talk about the particularities of the market, and how to get a book ready for submission. But we’ll pay particular attention to these important questions of intensity, and to that elusive thing we call tone, which is so often part of the answer.

I’ve been sick in bed for three days now, with a fever and everything. But the GOOD news is that my illness meant I was home when the UPS guy came.  LOOK!

I’m not much good at facts and figures, statistics and predictions.  When people at a party start having “future of the book” conversations I usually just blurt out a few  Richard Nash quotes, and then head for the appetizer table.  But this article in the WSJ today about how PRINT IS HERE TO STAY is interesting to me.

And here is where I stand:  I SIMPLY LOVE PAPER BOOKS.

This is not an opinion about technology or the environment, nor is it an academic argument about literature and literacy, the modes in which we consume information.  I suppose, on some level, it’s a knee-jerk response, rooted in nostalgia. I’m getting older, and I don’t like how fast things are changing.  I don’t use a smart phone. I hate to text. I spent five weeks road-tripping with my kids this summer, and didn’t have a DVD player or ipad for them to stare at, and we didn’t use a GPS. Instead they learned to read a map.  So yeah, I’m an old fashioned girl.

But it’s not just nostalgia, my position.  I really believe that books are a perfect technology.  I believe that simplicity can often be more functional than complexity.

The same way I don’t need a food processor to do the work of a mortar and pestle. The same way my dad likes to joke that his ’93 Corolla has a SPECIAL LUXURY feature: he can roll his windows up when the car is off! (ha ha, Dad!)

Books are just… perfect.  Crappy broken-spined paperbacks or gorgeous new hardcovers? All of them!  Books serve so many purposes in my life.

They’re easy to loan to a friend.  It’s a snap to make notes in the margins.  They serve as great coasters on a coffee table. They decorate walls like nothing else.  Strolling around a house for the first time, I can learn so much the owner from the books that clutter their shelves.  I open my old stained JOY of Cooking, and out flutter notes from my grandmother, amending the recipes.  I’ve collaged the art from books that couldn’t be saved, to make cards and gifts and to decorate cigar boxes, and in one case, a set of chairs!  I’ve framed particularly amazing color plates from old picture books that had fallen apart, to decorate my walls.  I’ve found old books in houses I moved into, full of ephemera from ages  gone by, and spent years trying to piece together the mystery of the original owner.  In used bookstores, I’ve stumbled on  hilarious inscriptions from the author, that unlocked secrets about the poems I was about to read.  Books are perfect for the bath!  When you fall asleep reading you don’t run down a battery.  Paper books don’t contribute to my insomnia (which there is some indication that reading screens before bed will do).

I can go on and on, forever pretty much. The uses and reasons to love a book are infinite.   But the biggest one?

The biggest one is that I believe in BROWSING. And in a world of digital books, browsing all but disappears.

I’m not talking about searching for a title. I’m not talking about the informed suggestions Amazon or Goodreads will make for you, based on your past reading patterns.  I’m also not talking about a totally random shuffle.

I’m talking about something in-between. A mixture of intent and randomness.  Of staring at a shelf (in a bookstore or a library or at home, it doesn’t matter) of books, colors, spines, widths and heights and fonts. It’s a tactile process. Some of them books I’ve read and some I’ve never heard of and some I’ve been meaning to get to.  I stand there, and run my fingers along the spines. I stand on tiptoe to see the top shelf. I sit on the floor to see the bottom shelf.  ANd at some point, I have an AHA! moment. I realize that the very perfect book for me to read at that moment in time is THIS ONE.  So I pull it from the shelf, and fall in.

Sometimes it’s a random book I would never ever read otherwise (this is how I found KING RAT as a teen, and the thought of it still gives me shivers).  Sometimes it’s a book I’ve attempted to read before, and not been able to penetrate, only THIS time I’m a little older, or the weather is right, and the book becomes a favorite (ANGLE OF REPOSE happened for me this way).  Sometimes it’s a book I already love, but I wasn’t thinking about it, until suddenly I saw the cover and KNEW it was the perfect moment for a reread (I’ve revisited BRIDESHEAD about 10 times this way).

The point is that I wouldn’t have that experience with an ereader.  I wouldn’t BROWSE.  And I can’t overstate how much that experience matters to me.  There is something magical about the process– an alchemy of me being ultimately in control of what I read, but also giving myself up to the randomness of the shelves, the fact that there are lots of things I’ve never heard of. The willingness to be surprised, and stumble into something new. Because the cover is a lovely shade of blue, or because someone mentioned it just last week.

I’ve already had this issue with music. I forget so much of what’s saved in our digital system, that I gave up on it and reverted to a small cluttered stack of CDs on a kitchen shelf, because I like the visual reminder of what my options are… I don’t want a shuffle, but I also don’t want to have to SEARCH for something. Because I never seem to know what I want until I spot it.

Imagine this process in a restaurant, can you? Imagine if menus were digital and options unlimited.  Imagine if you lost that experience of sitting down with a menu, encountering new foods and descriptions. Imagine if your only choices were either to have the waiter SURPRISE you, or to have to describe exactly what you wanted to eat.  I’d find the world less magical, less interesting, less surprising… and I’d end up eating the same things over and over, or I’d end up with dishes I absolutely hated.

Now, I’m not in a position to assume I know how YOU eat or read, or what your relationship to browsing is. And maybe you have plenty of coasters, and aren’t an insomniac. Maybe books on screens make sense for you.  I only know that they don’t for me.

And as a parent, I know that the pile of books my kids rifle through daily, on the floor of the car, are a joy to see.  And when Mose and Lew spend hours (HOURS, no lie) each day, staring at the pages of the books I grew up with, engrossed, in love… and then I come in and find half the books pulled from their shelves, my heart swells.

Because I know my kids love to browse too.  And for me, that’s the future of books.

So, it’s that time again, when we hang up new wall calendars, stare at them, and wonder… what happens next?

2012 was a good year, a great year!   But (like most of you) I’ve been thinking this week about what I want to do differently in 2013.  Because if things can’t always be better, it’s true that they have to change.

So I’ve come up with two big goals.

The first is obvious and dumb and basic, and everyone makes this resolution.  But now I’m joining the team. I want this to be the year I start taking better care of myself physically.  I want to go back to dance class, and I want to  visit the dentist when I’m supposed to, and I want to drink more water and take my stupid vitamins and eat better food.  Somehow, though I work very hard to take care of the kids, my well-being tends to get set on the back burner, and that has to change.  So I’m putting it out here, on the blog, essentially so that my mom can remind me I committed to it this year.  (Got that, Mom?)  This time next year I expect to be THE PICTURE OF HEALTH.  Roses in my cheeks, lustre in my hair, a bounce in my step.

The second is that I want to make a promise to myself, about my writing.  I want to try very very hard not to think about selling the books I write. I want to scribble poems again, and I want to take bigger leaps with my prose and my picture books, be more daring.   I have two picture books out this spring, a novel coming in 2014, and another picture book in 2015.  There’s plenty in the pipeline, and no excuse not to take some time to dabble a little in the weird.

Recently, I began working on a story for Mose and Lew, JUST for Mose and Lew, ABOUT Mose and Lew.  It’ called THE MAGICAL THAT, and it’s been such fun to tinker with, precisely because in no part of my brain am I thinking I can sell it.  It’s tailor-made for two very particular kids I love dearly, and that’s enough.   More than enough.  It’s so much fun to write for specific readers, to tweak and twist the vocabulary for them, add in details I know they’ll like (ninjas, mostly). I’ve never done that before, and it feels great.  (if violent). I want to see where this leads me, creatively…

I think I need to do this now. I think I need to get back to just playing with words. The work changes when it’s under contract, when a deadline looms, when other eyes are on my drafts. That’s not a bad thing at all, and I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. In fact, I’ve learned a lot from the process.  But it’s different. Right now, I want to play. I want to dream. I want to wander a little.  Make sense?

So that’s me, in 2013. Nothing major, but enough.

Of course, I’d also love for remarkable things to happen to my books already in print.  I’d love for some producer to fall in love with Any Which Wall and make it a movie. I’d love to sell foreign rights to everything. I’d love for my February book, The Longest Night, to get spectacular reviews.  I’d LOVE those things. But they’re beyond my control, so they can’t be resolutions…

What about you?

I wonder– in this strange world we’ve got at the moment, with bizarre weather systems and fiscal cliffs and Mayan doomsdays and neverending election cycles and speeding technology and constant contact, what do YOU want from 2013?

Got any resolutions? Any goals? Any dreams?

I have no belief in reliable year-end lists.  I’m always disappointed when I try to read ALL the books anyone recommends.  And when anyone has 32 “favorites” of the year, I tend to take that list less seriously.  Just because there aren’t THAT many truly extraordinary books in my opinion.

I believe deeply that every book is the best book for someone, and that everyone is the best reader for some book.  But that no book can be the right book for everyone.  Except maybe Elephant and Piggie, if you’re four.

All that to say… it’s been an interesting year for me as a reader.

For a large swath of 2012 I avoided middle grade reading, because when I’m really drafting, I tend to avoid my own genre. I don’t want to accidentally “borrow” someone else’s voice.  So while I read some interesting novels this year (Only and One Ivan, Three Times Lucky, Crow, Humming Room, One Year in Coal Harbor, Son)  there’s a ton I missed.  Hence I can’t really play the Newbery prediction game. And in fact, not a single book stands out for me as THE book.

But one YA book (a genre I almost never read) did.  Me and Earl and the Dying Girl BLEW ME AWAY. I mean– it had me rolling on the ground laughing, shouting to my (annoyed) husband, “No, no, one more—listen to this, ‘TWO BOOBS!’”  So if you’re into YA books that shock and surprise, or you just like laughing a ton, and can handle things like cancer and poverty (treated in an altogether irreverent, and yet important/ real way)…  this is my BOOK OF THE YEAR. Officially. I hope it wins a Printz.

Likewise, one picture book rises above the rest for me. And that’s Extra Yarn.  And yes, I know about the damn knitting needles, and no, I don’t care, and it really bothers me to think that we’d let knitpicky (ha ha, get it?) reality tangle up (hee hee?) the realm of imagination.  For me, this book does what a picture book does better than anything else in the world. It creates a universe of its own, with its own rules, and colors and shapes, and voices.  A picture book isn’t like a novel. I don’t import my own images into a picture book. I dwell in it.  I disappeared into Extra Yarn more than any other book this year.  Holding it for the first time, I melted into those pages. I don’t pretend to understand how the Caldecott gets determined, but I think this is the best picture book of the year. I think it will last.  So there’s that.

For adult fiction, I read two books published this year that really stuck. The first is Arcadia, which kind of killed me.  Set in the past, present, and slight future, it follows people I have known (and maybe been, a bit), or people very like them. Reading it made me feel sad, and dirty, and disappointed, and so so swallowed up.  I was overwhelmed by this book. I may have been its perfect reader.  In which case, maybe it isn’t the best book for you, but it was for me.

And then, my most recent discovery of 2012, the book I’m still basking in– Beautiful Ruins. Gosh, I don’t know where to begin. I like books with big scope, and this book has that. I like movie stars, and this one skirts in and around the lives of such people. I like alternate timelines, and Beautiful Ruins does that dance perfectly.  Heck, I like Italy a ton too!  But in the end, this book made me weep, and that’s something I remember forever. When a book really makes me cry, that’s special.  My tear stained books are the books I treasure most, and for longest, I think.  Owen Meaney and Garp, Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety, Brideshead Revisited and Little Women.  I can count on two hands the books that have choked me up like that through the years.  This book managed it, and I thank Jess Walters.   Does that make it a “best” book?  Eh.  DOes that make me a sap? Pretty sure it does? Do I care? Not in the slightest…

So there you have it, whether you want it or not. I recommend these four books to everyone.  Everyone.  But it’s fine if you loathe them all.

What are your best books of the year? Or rather, forgetting “best,” what are your most memorable reads?

From Kirkus:

Working as hard as any adult slave, this young girl expresses her bewilderment and fear as leaping frogs and itching, biting fleas disturb the masters. Fatal illness creeps in, affecting beast and man except in the Jewish homes marked with lamb’s blood. Rhyming verse carries the Passover story with a lyrical flair. “Made our way to sifting sands, / Scrambling feet, but clasping hands. / Thirsting, thrilling, full of fright— / None of us were slaves that night.” Ominously dark and murky paintings done in acrylic portray the frightened, fleeing throng finally reaching a wild, thrashing sea that is “ripped in two!”  Confusion and trepidation turn to joyful surprise, as indicated by the rose-colored backdrop behind a smiling daughter and mother, thrilled to have crossed over to the open land and freedom. This poetic, child-oriented interpretation brings a dramatic insight and illumination to the ancient legend.

A vivid and compelling introduction to the 10 plagues portion of the Seder ceremony. (author’s note, glossary) (Picture book/religion. 5-7)

I want to write something more about this book soon here, about what it means to have written it, to have it coming out. It felt so so so so impossible, when I began to write it, years ago.

But for now, i just want to say how honored I am by Catia Chien’s powerful art, the amazing job Schwartz & Wade has done with it. And I’m so so pleased that Kirkus llikes it too!

And so am I!

Handed the book in, starting all manner of new things.

I have lots to say about all of that, but I can’t…

Because I’m ON VACATION!!!! In snowy Iowa.

I’m sleeping and resting and reading and sigh…

See you in 2013!

They might disappear into their room and emerge with something like this.

I wonder what comes next… Lego tooth brush?