Jim Averbeck * Words and Pictures

Tooting My Own Horn (or rather letting others)

2011-01-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Today is the release date for my new picture book EXCEPT IF. It is getting great reviews. Here are a few excerpts:

School Library Journal
"EXCEPT IF is an entertaining, intriguing mental adventure..."

Kirkus
" a deceptively simple yet delightful tale... Averbeck proves that he grasps the incredible power of the page turn. Every time readers think the situation is set, two singular words—except if —change everything... The existential question posed holds huge potential for organized classroom exercise and solo flights of fancy alike."

Horn Book
"Clever children will quickly pick up the progression and enjoy the surprise of each page turn ...that neatly upends their suppositions... the sequence of surprises continues all the way to the satisfyingly circular ending. Teachers often look for books that use inference, but here's one that shows the downside of inferring too quickly, otherwise known as jumping to conclusions.

Publisher's Weekly
..."it's a book in which the action unfolds in the mind as much as it does on the page."

Booklist
"It’s a concept that starts cleverly and then, almost sneakily, warms the heart."

Interview with David Small

2010-11-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

I was asked by the Northern California Children's Booksellers' Association to conduct Red Carpet Interviews at the Otter Award Gala in San Francisco. Here's my interview with Caldecott Winner David Small. Many more interviews can be found on the Otter Red Carpet.

Beware: Sometimes Words Mean What They Say

2010-08-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

(Time Warp Series #1 : An accounting of things that should have been blogged ages ago.)

I went to China a while ago to do some research for a book I am writing. One of the things I did was take a trip down the Li river near Guilin. The region is famous for its tea made from the flowers of the Osmanthus tree. On the boat, a man was selling something stronger made from the flowers - Snake Wine. As you may know, the Chinese have many poetic euphemisms in their language. So I thought: Snake Wine? Undoubtedly named for the twisty, viney nature of the Osmanthus flower. Well, as it turns out - No.

I asked the guy if I could see the bottle. Here's what he showed me.

Okay then. Not a euphemism. And those worms in the tequila bottle are looking pretty whimpy right about now.

"What kind of snakes are those?" I asked. The man struggled to find the word in English, but finally came up with it. "Cobras."

Oh. I see. So I should expect a fine floral bouquet with an under-essence of venom... Well, we travel the world to experience new things don't we? Bottoms up!
Turns out the name was a euphemism after all. Wine? I think not. This stuff was somewhere between brandy and 190 proof hooch. I was breathing fire after the first sip. Perhaps they should call it Dragon Wine.

Hanging Out with Moishe and Bernard

2009-09-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure a similar image to this will be showing up on many Bay Area kidlit blogs, but I wanted to be the first. This is the entrance to the Maurice Sendak show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. I don't have my wolf suit, but I am doing my best Wild Rumpus dance.
The show itself is fun, if a little small. ( I imagine that, with the Wild Things Movie coming out, the PR people have split up Sendak's enormous body of work for viewing in cities around the US...but I could be wrong.) The space is filled with Sendak's original art for his many beloved books including Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There, and In the Night Kitchen. The exhibit focuses on "the other story" that Sendak's art brings to the stories he illustrates, which seems to mostly involve the Holocaust and the fragility and vulnerability of children. As a picture book writer who has heard from more than one of his colleagues about their editor telling them their story is too "scary" I wonder if Sendak would even be published today.
The exhibit also features several 3 or 4 minute video interviews with Sendak and a timeline of his life. Most of the information I already knew, from reading and studying about Sendak in the past. But I did learn a thing or two. Did you know that the Wild Things have names? Apparently, Sendak named them after relatives. Moishe and Bernard are the ones mentioned in the show. I think those are the two I am pictured with above. Wikipedia lists the others as Tzippy, Bruno, and Emile. In one of the videos Sendak mentions that he named the ugliest WT after an uncle he despised. After The Lindbergh baby kidnapping/murder, young Maurice was afraid to sleep without his father guarding his room. The despised uncle once told Sendak's dad "who would want your kids, anyway?" Sendak apparently still holds a grudge about this admittedly insensitive remark. He says he lost a couple of cousins over his creation of the Uncle/Ugly Wild Thing.
Another new bit of info was that Sendak is gay and had a 50 year relationship with a man who recently died. He came out in 2008. Now I always figured he was gay from reading between the lines of articles and books about him, but I had no idea he just came out.
I left the exhibit delighted but also a little sad. I mean a 50 year closeted romance and a 70 year grudge just seem kind of....sad.

Needful Things

2009-08-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

I am in Cabo working on my novel, as are my friends
Lynn Hazen, Ellen Hopkins, Kristin Howell, and our host, Amy Laughlin.

There are things you need when writing a novel in Cabo. Here are some of them:

A view to ignore.
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A sarong - because you don't want to waste time getting dressed
when there are chapters to revise.
----------------------------------------------------

Caffeine and sugar in liquid and solid form, because
proper nutrition is important to growing authors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Adolfo the butler, to keep guacomole bowl full
and the margarita pitcher clean (for later use.)
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Four motivated and talented friends to set a good example.
(clockwise from bottom left: Lynn, Hazen, Ellen Hopkins, Amy Laughlin
and Kristin Howell ignoring the view, sacrificing for their art.)
---------------------------------------------
Not pictured: a vivid imagination, a knowledge of the craft,
a willingness to be critiqued,
sunscreen.

Tweet Me, Baby

2009-06-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a luddite. I admit it. Months ago the kidlitosphere was chattering about this new thing called twitter. I completely dismissed the idea. I mean, what can a writer say in 140 characters? And the name...twitter... it sounded vaguely obscene.

But soon twitter was everywhere. All we were hearing was about congressmen tweeting at the State of the Union address and 9-year-olds tweeting that mommy had fallen down and she couldn't get up.

I realized that I was once on the cutting edge but now I'm a crusty old man who says, "Damn these kids today! How short is their attention span anyway?

So I am turning over a new leaf. I am at a social media with Lynn Hazen and Susan Taylor Brown.

See:

I am embracing my inner twitterer, flickrer, facebooker, redroomer, tumblrer...whatever. I am linked in.

At least until I find it is taking too much time.

Top Ten Picture Books

2009-04-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Fuse#8 over at SLJ is compiling a list of Top 100 Picture Books and asked folks to give their input by sending her their top 10 favorites of all time. Here's my list:

I am going to have to disqualify my own book, because of course I love it best of all, but it is with a parent’s eyes, and I know that really my little Johnny won’t be president someday... Oh and I am sure if you asked me next week, this list would change. I guess I'm just fickle that way.

1 - Where the Wild Things Are So elegant, so short, so much fun. The “per word” delight level on this one is very high.
2 - Outside Over There I love the lyric language and I am all for scaring the pants off children.
3 - Kitten’s First Full Moon When this one came out, I told my friends, “If there is any justice in this world, this will win the Caldecott!” Thank God it did.
4 - Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel It is the little kid in me voting for this. As an adult, I have no idea if the book is good. As a child I LOVED it. And the thoughts of children ought to count for something in the world of children’s lit, shouldn’t they?
5 - Millions of Cats Because when I read it as an adult, I was transported directly back to Miss Rita Lewandowski’s kindergarten class and anything that can do that must be powerful.
6 - Little Golden Books Can I do that? It isn’t a single title that was marvelous, but the whole collection. I especially liked “Scruffy the Tugboat” and the one about the cat who jumped into a dish of blue dye. And wasn’t it cool the way, if you put them on the shelf in order, the spines made a picture?
7 - Tuesday Flying frogs. Need I say more?
8 - No, David! I defy you to read this book without laughing. And the ending: perfect!

Okay..now I am getting to the point where I just don’t know.... So...ummm...

9 - Just a Minute Who could have imagined a visit from Death would be such fun?
10 - Harold and the Purple Crayon Just because...

Most of these were written decades ago, which just goes to show how hard it is to be a picture book writer today. We compete with the past and parent’s sense of nostalgia... Hmmm... Why did I choose this career again?

The Blessing of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

2009-03-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

So the coolest thing ever just happened to me. I have started writing at the Mechanic’s Institute Library, a private library in downtown San Francisco. I sit in a comfy leather chair next to the little area set aside for children’s books. They have a small collection because it really isn’t a library for children, being downtown in the financial district and all. On display was my very own “In a Blue Room.” But that’s not the cool part.

In the little reading area was a grandma and her little granddaughter. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the little girl pick out my book and bring it to grandma. She said “we have to read this one, but we have to buy it too” which appealed to both the idealistic writer in me and the guy with a mortgage. I snuck over and hid behind the bookcase so I could listen. Grandma gave a lovely, spirited reading. When she was finished, I went over and asked the little girl, Vivian, if she liked the book. “Yes,” she said. Then grandma asked if I had written it and I said I had. Seems this wasn’t the first time they read it and Grandma Katherine had read the bios on the flap a previous time and knew I lived in SF. So when I came over she thought I might be the author. But here is the best part. As she was explaining all this, little Vivian tugged on her sleeve and politely, if impatiently, demanded, “will you read it again!”

And Grandma Katherine did.

Me Am Confused

2009-03-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

So, I have a Google Alert set that tells me when new review for my book goes up. I followed the link in one of the alerts today and ended up in a sort of “Bizarro” kidlitosphere. (Me am hating you Bizarro Lois. Marry me!)

The blog seems to take other reviews from the internet and randomly replaces certain words with (sometimes obscure) synonyms.

Check it out, it is pretty funny (provided you aren't the original author of the stolen review:)
http://bedtimeba4i.blogspot.com/2009/03/in-blue-room.html

So, from the SLJ review, “This dreamy bedtime book doesn't have a single unnecessary word” becomes "This dreamy bedtime hall doesn’t have a sole unjustifiable synonym” and “This lovely book works well as a one-on-one bedtime read, but it would also be the perfect final selection for a pajama storytime" becomes “This endearing book works all right as a one-on-one bedtime read, but it would also be the unfaultable final inspection all for a pajama storytime”

And my favorite, from Publisher’s Weekly, “The final appearance of the blue room, which sounded so impossible at first, will feel to children like a promise kept” becomes “ The essential parallel of the pitch-black legroom, which sound accordingly impossible firstly, will annex the condensation to children close to a declare kept.”

I guess some clever programmer decided that the best way to get those Amazon affiliate kickbacks would be to just steal others’ reviews, have a program alter them slightly, and stick them in a blog. But oddly, he still credits the original reviewer. If I were one of them, I think I'd track this guy down and serve him a cease and desist order (or a terminate and abstain order.)

I’m not sure whether to be amused, annoyed, or alarmed.

Hmmm... Maybe I’ll use this method to write my next book. I’ll call it “Place Where is Found the Uncivilized Objects.”

I Knew All This

2009-03-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Jen Bryant and I and our Zolotow Honors
--------------------------------------------------------

On March 7, 2o09 I attended the awards ceremony for the Charlotte Zolotow Medal. Following are the remarks I made after accepting a Charlotte Zolotow Honor for my book, In a Blue Room. Several of the attendees encouraged me to post this on my blog (and indeed to make a picture book based on it.) So here it is. Oh... and a special shout out to Bridget Zinn. Your friend Julie thought you might enjoy this:

Thank you members of the CCBC for recognizing my book, In A Blue Room, with a Charlotte Zolotow Honor.

When the CCBC first emailed and told me I’d have 5 minutes to speak at this ceremony, I thought “ 5 minutes? What can I say in 5 minutes?” Then I sat down to write my speech, and after writing “Thank you members of the CCBC for recognizing my book, In A Blue Room, with a Charlotte Zolotow Honor.” I realized I still had 4 minutes and 54 seconds left to fill. And I thought “5 minutes? What can I say for 5 minutes?”

So I asked the members of my critique group, the Revisionaries, for some help.

My book is about a bedtime ritual enacted between Alice, a color-obsessed little girl, and her very patient mother. So when I asked my critique group friends what I should speak about, they said, “Tell them why you wrote the book. Tell them about your own childhood of peaceful nights and the calming rituals which sent you drifting off to sleep in your own blue room, and how that inspired you.”

And I told them, “But that isn’t true. My nights were nothing like Alice’s. Although my mother was just as patient, my nights were far from peaceful.”
As a child going to bed, I can recall feeling anything but safe. It’s because I knew that the world was full of monsters who came to get you when the lights went out.

I knew this because I read it in a book.

And my own bedtime rituals were built around this fact.

I knew that goblins might sneak into a room after dark, and steal a child from its bed.
How did I know this?

Because I read it in a book.

My older brother made fun of me, because each night I slept wedged in the crack between the mattress and the wall, with one arm and one leg jammed between the mattress and box springs. I reasoned that pulling me from my bed while I slept would be too much trouble for the average goblin, so they’d take my older brother instead. Goblins are essentially lazy.

I knew this because I read it in a book

Futhermore, I knew that when the lights went out, if you weren’t careful, your room might turn into a jungle with trees all around and out would pop some wild things who would roll their terrible eyes and grin their terrible grins and gnash their terrible teeth…

and you were basically screwed.

I knew all this because I read it is a book.

So each night before I went to sleep, I lined the perimeter of my bed with all my stuffed animals - my own wild things which would be my allies against any attack - each animal touching the one above and below it, or touching the wall against which the bed stood, because any gap in the perimeter provided a spot where these terrible wild things might slide in. It may seem like a lot of trouble to go to, but if the wild things got in they would eat me up.

I knew that because I read it in a book.

And I knew that, even if the wild things didn’t come on a particular night, there were also vampires to contend with. And when I was a child, vampires didn’t just sneak into a teenage girl’s room and pull a chair next to her bed as she slept to watch her in a creepy stalker sort of way.

The vampires of my youth were more ambitious. Their goal was to bite you on the neck and drain you of all blood, which would end with you becoming a vampire as well.

I knew this because I read it in a book.

So each night, after setting up the stuffed animal perimeter, I went about devising neck protection. My mother told me I would strangle myself if I wore my scarf to bed, so each night I donned a turtle neck under my pajamas, which may seem like it was protection enough against vampires.

But I knew some vampires also sucked blood by biting you on the wrist. And you know how I knew that?

<<<<>>>>>

Sorry trick question, I actually knew that because I saw it in a movie called “Queen of Blood” about these astronauts who pick up a green alien lady in a cat suit and a wicked pointy beehive hairdo who sucks blood from their wrists and then lays bright pink eggs on their ship as it is headed back to earth.

Anyway, I was fortunate because in those days, Catholic schoolgirls wore knee-socks and I just happened to have three sisters attending Our Lady of Victory grade school. So I’d sneak into their room (in a not at all creepy stalker way) and steal their knee-socks and wear them on my hands, rolled up past my elbows… just in case.

Now, you might think I was a terrified and rather odd little child, lying there in my turtleneck, with knee-socks up to my elbows, jammed between the mattress, box springs and wall, surrounded by stuffed animals lain out “just so.” And I suppose you’d be partially right. I was certainly odd, but perhaps less terrified that you might think.

Because I also knew I would survive.

I knew a child could cleverly defeat a goblin by getting it to reveal its true name…

and that children were stronger than vampires, because we could play in the morning sun, that they ran from for fear of turning to dust.

And I knew if you stared into the wild things’ eyes, without blinking once, you would conquer them and be their king and eventually find your way out of the jungle and back into your very own room, where your mother would be waiting with a meal, and it would still be hot.

So I knew a child could survive by being be resourceful and strong and courageous and smart.
And I knew all this…

because I read it in a book.

ching ching

2009-02-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

(l to r) Emma Dryden, Maria van Lieshout, Jim Averbeck, Yuyi Morales, Lynn Hazen, Gianna Marino

I just found out that I sold 2 books to Namrata Tripathi of Atheneum, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. What joy!

At Christmas time each year, my critique group, The Revisionaries, sets aside our ongoing work and does a writing assignment based on some theme or another. This year's theme was "baby book" which meant it could be a book about babies, or for babies, or a baby-sized book, or a book about something that was like a baby-like etc.

The book I ended up with is called "Except If."

It is also a Revisionary tradition to toast the sale of a book with champagne. We were so lucky this year that Emma Dryden, publisher at S&S who oversees Atheneum and McElderry, was in town for a conference, so we got to toast with her.

Cheers!

Awards Awards Awards

2009-01-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

It is the season for awards for children's literature. Gold and silver medals are raining down from heaven and sticking onto the covers of a few books. I had a little site that rounded up the "mock" award lists from around the country. Lets' see how they did at predicting the major award winners.

I took the top 15 titles from each of the roundups (Caldecott, Newbery and Printz) to see how many won awards and which ones they won. I wanted to include results here, but frankly the formatting is a nightmare. Check out the lists at http://sites.google.com/site/inablueroom/ to see more.

The Mock Caldecott lists did the best at predicting award winners. Nine of the top 15 titles (by number of mock mentions) won 12 major awards- including my own shiny silver Zolotow Honor for "In a Blue Room." AND Top Roundup vote getter "A House in the Night" took the Caldecott Medal.

The Mock Newbery Roundup didn't do as well. Of the top 15, only 4 title took a total of 5 awards.

We didn't have much participation in the Mock Printz roundup. I guess because the award is newish, or maybe because it is for older readers? In any case, all four Printz Honor winners were on the roundup, but the winner, Jellicoe Road, was nowhere to be seen.

Next up: The Notables and SCBWI's Golden Kite, among others.

Yes We Can

2009-01-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

And we'll do it in this cool Obama shirt by Yuyi Morales.

Happy Inauguration Day, everyone.

What an Honor

2009-01-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

In a Blue Room has been named one of five recipients of the Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book Award for picture book text. This is so exciting! Here are excerpts from the press release:

Bob Graham Wins 2009 Charlotte Zolotow Award

How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham is the twelfth annual winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture book. The award is given by the Cooperative Children's Book Center, a library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The 2009 Zolotow Award committee named five Honor Books: How I Learned Geography, written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz, edited by Margaret Ferguson, and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; How Mama Brought the Spring, written by Fran Manushkin, illustrated by Holly Berry, edited by Julie Strauss-Gebel and Donna Brooks, and published by Dutton; In a Blue Room written by Jim Averbeck, illustrated by Tricia Tusa, edited by Samantha McFerrin, and published by Harcourt/Houghton Mifflin; A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, written by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, edited by Shannon White, and published by Eerdmans; and Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad, written and illustrated by James Rumford, edited by Neal Porter, and published by Roaring Brook Press.

Established in 1998, the Charlotte Zolotow Award honors the work of Charlotte Zolotow, a distinguished children's book editor for 38 years with Harper Junior Books, and author of more than 70 picture books, including such classic works as Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Harper, 1962) and William's Doll (Harper, 1972). Ms. Zolotow attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison on a writing scholarship from 1933 to 1936, where she studied with
Professor Helen C. White. The award is given annually for outstanding writing in a picture book for children in the birth through seven age range published in the United States in the preceding year.

Pas de Deux? Mais Oui!

2008-10-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

I’ve begun to give talks at bookstores and schools about my recently released picture book In a Blue Room. During the talks I sometimes pass around the original illustrations I did for the book. These were not a part of the final product, since Harcourt (brilliantly as it turns out) decided to hire Tricia Tusa to illustrate instead. People ask if, as an illustrator, I am "okay" with having my work illustrated by someone else.

The answer is an enthusiastic YES when that someone does as beautiful of a job as Tricia Tusa did. I decided I wanted to use this post to talk about why I love what Tricia did for In a Blue Room, and how I think she brought more to the work than just illustrating the story, making it better than it was before.

Tricia’s style feels perfectly suited to the lyrical nature of the story. Her light, whimsical watercolors let the book soar with a sort of dreamy quality that can be hard to achieve. I am delighted with how she used light in the illustrations, the bright yellow of the lamp, the cool blue of the moonlight.

I love the little details Tricia put into her illustrations. Take a look at subtle changes of the dolls that sit around little Alice’s bed. When Alice is wound up and rowdy, they look a bit dismayed or even alarmed. But as she settles down, they begin to smile, and when she is close to following asleep, one appears to yawn. And there are all the tools and works of Alice the artist scattered about the room. No wonder she is obsessed with color. And there is the way the parachute shape of the blue blanket Alice is using as she jumps foreshadows the celestial blue dome that covers her world at the end.

One concern I occasionally hear from folks is that the room is yellow, although the words repeat over and over “in a blue room.” I have to admit that I wondered about this myself when I first saw the color sketches, but when I came to the end I was blown away by the Tricia’s clever interpretation of my words. She zooms out in the end to show the entire planet Earth as the figurative “blue room” of the title. These last pages really bring a universal feel to the story. You can imagine a world filled with young boys and girls, all sleeping fast in their individual blue rooms. And Alice always is in a blue room, right from the beginning: the blue room that is Earth. Tricia’s interpretation makes the words and pictures match perfectly, while allowing the “aha” moment when the room turns from yellow to blue to have a stronger impact than it might otherwise have had. (I’ve heard from parents and reviewers that kids ask about the yellow room too, and when the parent suggests the child wait to see what happens, the kids gasp or giggle when the room becomes blue. And isn’t that what we want: for children to see the world in a new way after reading a book?)

One reviewer said she thought my words and Tricia’s pictures danced a “pas de deux” and I couldn’t agree more. So... THANK YOU, Tricia (and Sam, the editor who chose her) for making my story the best it could be.

You're a Nation

2008-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

There is a type of book in children’s literature that should probably have its own genre. I’d name the genre “body fluid books.” These are the ones in which the author describes in detail and at length the [fill in the body fluid of your choice] as it flows/spurts/oozes from the character’s pores/orifices/wounds. These descriptions are often seen as something that will appeal to boys and, indeed, a “boy book” hardly seems complete without one. Personally, I’ve never had a desire to read paragraphs about snot, piss or puss, so it is surprising that I am sharing the dream I am about to.
I had this dream at the recent Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in LA. For those who have never been, about 1000 writers for children attend this wonderful conference each year. Nine out of ten of them are women. The organizers, in their wisdom, take over some of the men’s rooms for use by the women. The women seem pleased with this arrangement and the men are only too happy to comply, because the restroom left to us has a sitting room with a couch and chairs, something we guys aren’t used to, so we feel we are in the lap of luxury despite having only one restroom.
So that situation might explain why I had this dream:
I was at a giant warehouse sale – a sort of BigLots of my dreams. The store was going to close in 5 minutes. I needed to buy some bath towels, but first I really had to pee.
I went to the men’s room, but the sale was so crowded that a group of women had taken it over for their own needs. There was a line leading through the door and up to the stalls. Fortunately, the urinals were across the room in their own little alcove.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but nature calls.” And I walked across to the little alcove, angling myself properly so no one could see a thing.
But suddenly, the women were all around me, even though it was quite obvious that none of them had any business being there.
Now I am rather shy and with all the staring there was just no way, if you know what I mean. One of the younger women pointed to me and said “uh-uh…Daddy can’t do his business.”
“What,” I snapped in reply, “do women hold hands or something when they urinate!”
“Sometimes,” she said.
Just then, the great English actress, Hermione Gingold, walked in with her retinue. She was wearing a large, fur-trimmed overcoat and carried a cane. Seeing the commotion, she approached the alcove.
“I bet she knows the proper etiquette,” I said to those around me, “Tell me Dame Hermione, what is the proper distance for a woman to stand away from a man when he is urinating?”
“Eight feet, to the tip of her nose.” She replied, her stentorian voice not missing a beat.
“You see,” I told Miss Daddy-Can’t-Do, “I knew this was just a problem of education and not cultural difference!”
Then I woke up.
I often get ideas for my books from my dreams, but I think I’ll just leave this one alone… though “eight feet to the tip of her nose” just might turn up as a line of dialogue somewhere along the way.

Feargret

2008-08-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me recently if all my blogposts would be about being fearless.
No.
I don't think so.
But if there seems to be something to write about that relates, I guess I'll go ahead and mention it.
Which brings me to today's post.
This is the year without fear. But do you lose anything else when you face life fearlessly? I’d argue that you’ll have a lot less regret as well. In fact, regret follows on fear’s heels so closely that I’m proposing a new word to describe them both: feargret. It saves time, since one rarely comes without the other.
I had a little case of feargret quite recently. It was the evening of the Newbery/Caldecott awards banquet. Maria van Lieshout and I had plopped our red bathmat down in a corner of the hallway and had a great time interviewing the gliterati of the literati as they arrived. We’d even talked to some of the winners earlier in the day and a few had promised to stop by. But of course, we hadn’t really reckoned with how busy they would be on their big night. There was a green room near the banquet hall where we figured they would be before the speeches, but we didn’t want to crash it. We didn’t want the ALA to send out any enforcer librarians to chase us away.
After the speeches there was a receiving line to meet the winners. We again let fear (albeit mild) get the better of us. We figured the winners would be exhausted and we didn’t want to annoy them with a bunch of questions. So Maria went back to the hotel and took the video camera with her. Too bad we hadn’t realized that the winners were totally pumped up on adrenalin, and wouldn’t come down for a while. I had time to go have a drink at the bar with Linda Sue Park to discuss A Long Walk to Water, the novel I will be illustrating for her, before the line cleared up enough for me to hop onto the end of it. I had a wonderful chat with Laura Amy Schlitz and Brian Selznick, the Newbery and Caldecott winners. But I didn’t have the camera.
So I am left with regret of not having captured Amy in her long silk jacket with the bear paw prints down the back (you'll have to find a copy of her Newbery speech to understand) or Brian in his gold boots and Swarovski crystal shirt, being as charming and joyful as two luminaries of the children’s lit world can be.

Ah well, maybe next year will be the year without feargret.

auf wiedersehen

2008-07-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

A little something Maria and I did at ALA:

Full interviews can be found at
www.redcarpetinterviews.blogspot.com

Catching Up

2008-06-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

I vowed to start a blog this year, and now that we are almost at the halfway mark, I finally am. But the late start has left me with some catching up to do.

I am naming my blog "Year Without Fear." Here's the story:
In January '07, my better half had what I thought was a stroke or a heart attack at a friend's birthday party. Ends up it was only a fainting spell, but, despite a thousand medical tests telling us nothing was wrong, I held on to the fear of loss through the rest of the year. Not a good feeling to hold onto, I realized, as I spent The Eve of 2008 with friends in Hawaii reflecting on the previous year.

So on January 1st I declared 2008 would be my "year without fear." I decided to do what any rational, sane guy would do who felt the need to conquer his fear: I jumped off a cliff. I had seen a someone do it the day before and had commented that the guy was crazy. A fearless woman on the beach assured me that it was perfectly safe - "as long as you jump out far enough to clear the rocks at the bottom."
Gulp!

As I looked over the 50 foot cliff (or maybe it was forty feet and I was standing on top of 5 feet of fear and 5 feet of ego), I had a conversation with The Partner that went like this:
Me - "Is this foolish? Am I crazy? Am I going to going to end up on America's Stupidest Testosterone-Driven Videos?"
The Partner - "No. Yes. Maybe."

But I did it anyway and here's the proof:

I have to say that the drop was long enough for me to think "What the hell have I done?" And I came up happy to be alive, exhilarated, with NO wish to do it again. I also landed slightly on my bum and couldn't sit comfortably for 2 or 3 days.

Oh..and all fear was gone. Replaced, I suppose, by adrenalin.