Superbowl
OKay, it's only a game, it's only a game.
A heartbreaker, though!
Day 203
As you can imagine, I get a lot of interesting email in addition to the usual "How do you get your ideas?" type.
Today one came from a college senior who tells me he has read THE GIVER 30+ times, and that he is currently midway through a project of taking a self-portrait every day. He sent me the link to Day 203 out of 365, because it involves THE GIVER.
Fun to look at! I'll attach it so you can see it (click to enlarge), but to read the accompanying text you'll need to go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thp365/2229090899/
Big WHO?
Yesterday I drove up to Portland, Maine and spent the night at my son's house before visiting my grandson's first grade class to talk to the kids this morning.
I slept in my grandson's bedroom, recently redecorated by their dad in red, white, and blue and with a larger-than-life-size David Ortiz on the wall...so huge that his bat extends onto the ceiling. When I said to my son, "I've always dreamed of sleeping with Big Papi" he said, "Mom, you're disgusting."
The first-graders were wonderful: lively and giggly, and guess what they voted unanimously for when I told them a story, stopped short of the ending, and suggested that it could have an ending that was...happy, sad, scary, or gross. No wonder Captain Underpants and Walter the Farting Dog are hits with this age. Gross wins hands down.
I didn't think to count the number of children in the class. But when it was time for recess, just as I was leaving, I watched them all head for their outdoor clothes: boots, snow pants, mittens, hats, etc. etc...this is Maine in january. It made me remember when I had four small children, all born in less than five years, and how I would bundle them up one after the other, just for a trip to the grocery store. All those mittens! All those boots! At least the first graders could get their own clothes on.
A new Gooney Bird book, coming out next spring, takes place in January and has a scene when the children are arriving in the classroom on a snowy day. Here's an excerpt:
Gooney Bird Greene entered the classroom with the other children, and they began to remove hats and mittens and jackets and boots. They all kept indoor footwear in their cubbies. One by one they lined up their wet boots and changed into their dry slippers and clogs and crocs.
“What on earth are those, Gooney Bird?” Mrs. Pidgeon asked, watching as Gooney Bird sat on the floor and tried to wrestle something off her feet.
Gooney Bird scowled. “Well,” she said, “I thought they were high-fashion boots. I got them at the Goodwill Store, on the half-price table. One dollar and forty-five cents.”
“Quite a bargain,” Mrs. Pidgeon commented, still looking at Gooney Bird’s feet. “Need some help?”
“Thank you.” Gooney Bird hobbled to a nearby bench, sat down, and held her legs out. One at a time Mrs. Pidgeon pulled off the wet boots. They were bright blue, with very high, thin heels.
When Mrs. Pidgeon had set them side by side on the shelf, next to the long puddled row of ordinary rubber boots, Gooney Bird looked at them with distaste. “I thought the stiletto heels were very cool,” she said. “Stiletto means a thin, pointy stabbing tool, and that’s why they call these stiletto heels. See?” She held one up. “But they’re not comfortable. They do stab. And they were slippery on the ice. I fell twice on my way to school. Look. My knees are all wet.”
Mrs. Pidgeon felt the damp knees of Gooney Bird’s black tights sympathetically. “Goodness,” she said.
“I have buyer’s remorse,” Gooney Bird said.
The Bag of Gold
Someone asked if I would post a photo of the bag I bought in the Zurich Airport. Here it is, in all its splendor..
And here, unrelated to the bag, is a photo I've just received of a new paperback jacket for MESSENGER. Many of you know that each of the books of the trilogy, in paperback, has two very different covers: the first, as I recall, green, then blue, and now this one in red/orange..and each showing a pair of hands. The reason is that these "other" versions are intended to be sold in the "adult" sections of bookstores. The text, of course, is exactly the same.
Teachers
I have been trying to find time, here and there interspersed among other commitments, to write the answers to questions in an interview for Scholastic's TEACHER. And I'm just coming up on the several questions that deal with schools and teachers. Here's an example:
What concerns you about education today? What would you like to see change? What has changed for the better.
If you could give a gift to teachers, what would it be?
I haven't answered those yet for Scholastic, but they are waiting; and in the meantime, today I got an email from a teacher in Oklahoma. Here is part of what she wrote me:
One of my students had a very tough week because of his homelife. It has been a pretty heartbreaking week, and I came home tonight feeling pretty worn out emotionally and physically. I got on the computer and went to your site because my 23 fourth graders had so many questions about you. I ended up reading your speeches. Thank you for sharing them with everyone! “Bright Streets and Dark Paths” especially touched my heart. It was the encouragement I needed tonight. Thank you. I am going to quote your wise words in the last part of your speech, “Down those treacherous bright streets and the dark paths today’s children travel, they need our companionship, our respect, our outstretched hands.” I hope you don’t mind if I write them in red ink across my lesson plans for next week to remind me to keep doing all I can for them.
Well, I'm gratified that she found something of value in one of my speeches. But much more: I am moved to be reminded of what teachers do, how they care, how they struggle, often—not just to drum the spelling words and math rules into those small heads, but to make a difference in their lives, to understand how tough some young lives are, to shape and mold and comfort and give hope along with knowledge.
It's what I do, too, of course, in writing. But I can get up from this desk and go to a movie, or chat on the phone, or fly to California to visit a friend...as I will do soon...and while I am doing those things, teachers everywhere are remaining in their classrooms, day after day after day, and they struggle often: against the administration sometimes, against parents, sometimes, against the demands of testing—and the lure of higher-paying jobs.
Well, my soapbox is wobbly and uncomfortable to I will step down from it now.
Hooray for Hollywood
I'm just back from —Brrr COLD —St. Paul where I spoke at the graduation of MFA students in Writing for Children and Young People at Hamline University, one of the few universities that offers such a program. Good people, good time, but it is bitter cold in St. Paul, and snowy when I was there. I did, however, get to go to the bookstore owned by Garrison Keillor —sadly, I forget its name—an important stop because I read and finished the book I'd taken with me, and therefore had nothing to read on the 3 hour plane ride home. Few things are worse than a bookless plane trip!
I decided, incidentally, to go ahead and read the story "Snowbound" despite a few children in the audience. I substituted some milder expletives where I could and blurred the f-word so that it sound like furgghhing. So, in the scene where the college girl nudges her repulsive boyfriend in the night and whispers, "Sweetie? You're snoring".....he now replies angrily, "So? I told you I have a furgghhing deviated septum!"
Maybe it's a medical term.
I have received a comment to the last posting which asks about the status of THE GIVER movie so I will try to fill you in.
For a number of years Jeff Bridges held the rights to make the movie of THE GIVER and he was very committed to it, very enthusiastic abut it. He is a good and decent guy so it was fun being friends with him during that time. But his option expired last March and reluctantly I did not renew it, because he had simply not been able to get the major studio backing required for financing.
Immediately after his option expired, it was bought by Red Wagon Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers. So the financing was in place, and they hired British director David Yates (HARRY POTTER) who is currently doing the next (and last) HP film. He is set to begin work on THE GIVER when he finishes that project.
HOWEVER...there is always a however, isn't there?....the screenwriters' strike, which has now been going for several months, has thrown a monkey wrench into everything in the movie industry. Writers are not allowed to write, to meet about writing, to talk about writing, to think about writing, until it ends. Many films are stalled and some have been scrapped. As far as I know, THE GIVER is still in the works but nothing more can happen until the strike ends.
I will keep you posted.
In the meantime, here's a lovely photo of some second graders in Pennsylvania who are big Gooney Bird fans. Note the outfits.
I'm really beet
This mysterious photo is a salad. A beet salad, to be exact. And it's a lousy photo...taken with my cell phone....because you can't really tell that it was the most incredibly beautiful beet salad I think I've ever seen, with red and golden beets in cubes, carefully arranged on the plate and decorated with tiny nasturtium leaves.
This was the first course at a lovely restaurant called ELEVEN MADISON PARK in New York, at a luncheon yesterday in honor of "The Willoughbys." Publishers do wonderfully gracious things to announce a new book, and this was Houghton Mifflin's highly edible welcome to the Willoughby family, with some terrific guests, all of them from the publishing/media/library world, all of them book lovers. Two of them just back from serving on the Newbery Committee! and though of course they can't describe their process of deliberation...at least I was able to tell them what a wonderful choice I thought they had made with this year's winner.
I am now back home in Cambridge after two busy days in New York, trying to get organized to go off to St. Paul on Sunday. Sunday evening I will give a reading at Hamline University. I thought I had the perfect selection...a short story I once published, called "Snowbound," set during winter (and it is certainly winter in St. Paul, Minnesota!) and—I think— quite funny, and appropriate to a college/university audience. Ah, therein lies the problem. I suddenly (fortunately) realized that this event is open to the public...and so there will very likely be children in the audience. And the winter story, the funny story, the college story, has some bad language in it. Sigh. I guess I had better read something else.
PS: Do Not Make Assumptions
When I was hanging around the Zurich Airport yesterday..several hours to kill before getting a flight to Boston, where things were delayed by a snowstorm...I was irritated by the canvas tote bag in which I was carrying my lapotop, my purse, and assorted other stuff. It had once zipped closed, but Alfie had chewed the zipper once in a fit of bad puppy behavior. And one of the two leather handles had come loose. I kept noticing that as I roamed the airport.
Then I noticed an airport shop that sold, among other things, luggage. I didn't need luggage but I thought it would be a good time and place to replace my failing canvas tote bag. And I found just what I needed, with a roomy padded section for my laptop, and lots of pockets of various sorts. And it snapped closed. So I bought it, transferred all my stuff, and threw the old one in a trash can.
Its price was in Swiss francs. I don't know anything about Swiss francs. Ask me abut pounds, or Euros, and I can tell you. But Swiss francs? Not a clue. The bag, though, cost 275 of them. I paid for it with a credit card, assuming it was like the old Italian lira, where you paid thousands for an ice cream cone and then it turned out to be two dollars in American money.
But now I am here to tell you that I was wrong, it wasn't like lira at all. I just went to a currency-conversion website to see how much 275 Swiss francs is in dollars.
And folks: I just paid $250.00 for a canvas bag.
Home again Home again
I just got in last night from spending four days in Germany. I KNEW I was missing the Patriots game Saturday night so kept my fingers crossed and indeed, they really came through for me once again.
I did NOT know I was missing the Newbery/Caldecott announcments because I hadn't kept track of when that was happening. So it was after I got home and got an email from a friend who said, "What did you think of..." etc. that I went the the ALA website to catch up.
I don't read very many children's books. Last year I was completely unaware of any of the winning titles. This year I had heard of some titles being talked about, but I hadn't read them. And yet.. And YET:
Way back months ago, I talked on this very blog (I just looked it up. September 2nd) about Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village—the Newbery Medal winner— and recommended it. So I feel prescient and smug. Nah, not smug. But thrilled for the author...and the illustrator, because even though the medal is for the text...this book is perfectly, beautifully illustrated.
In Germany, I visited my granddaughter's class. She is in 8th grade, and here I am with her and her classmates (Nadine is fifth from the left, in a dark red shirt). She translated for me while I talked a bit about writing, and books, and my books in particular. The kids had prepared questions, which they asked in English (they study English in school but most are not yet fluent) and their questions...and their clothing...were much the same as those things in American schools.
Similar, as well, to American schools, the public schools in Germany are hard up for money. The library is inadequate, there is a shortage of teachers, etc. etc.
Ironically, I came home to find an email from my friend Middy, who illustrates the Gooney Bird Greene books. She had been visiting her daughter, who lives and teaches in Finland. Here's a photo of Cynde, Middy's daughter, reading one of the Gooney Bird books to some Finnish children.
And here is something Middy said in her email:
The schools, the three that Cynde teaches at, are magnificent. Great design and of course wonderful color. Everyone takes their shoes off at the door, and walks around all day in their stocking feet. They can bring slippers but no one does....The place is absolutely spotless ! Wonderful teachers' rooms, terrific art work all through the school along with the kids' stuff. We in this country are such bozos. I feel such shame after seeing what that small country has done in such a short time. Remember, they really got hit bad in WWII.
She also mentioned that Finland is starting to put libraries into shopping malls! What a great idea!
I don't know that I would call us "bozos" in this country but it does seem that some places, like the Finland she describes, have a pretty good set of priorities.
Nadine, my granddaughter, had her nose in a book all weekend, and it was the German translation of Book 2 of the Stephanie Meyer trilogy about vampires. I haven't read any of those but it was great to see a young person so completely caught up in a piece of fiction that she didn't want to eat or sleep.
Wish i had been one of MINE she'd been so absorbed in!
from Zurich
I have just had a pleasant lunch in the Zurich Airport and have settled in for an afternoon because my plane to Luxembourg doesn't leave for 5 hours. The trouble with my planned afternoon of work is that my mind is groggy. I never sleep well on an all-night flight no matter how tired I am or how often I tell myself, "It is 2 AM"...each time I try to arrange myself in a comfortable position, my mind turns to, "If my left foot just weren't wedged against that metal thing..." which precipitates a whole new rearrangement of body parts, settling in anew, and then: "If I could just keep my knee from poking that thick magazine in the seat pocket..." and on and on. Then I end up in Zurich and veeerry tried.
A long time ago, when it was announced that Switzerland was disbanding its army, I said facetiously, "What will they do with all those little knives?" Well, the answer is that they are all for sale in the Zurich Airport. The irony is, if you buy one, you are not allowed to take it aboard a plane.
It is a beautiful sunny day here today: blue skies over the hills. But my iPhone can't operate in Europe so if I took a picture I would not be able to send it to myself, to attach to this post. Take my word for it, though: the Alps are snowy against the blue sky, cows are wearing flowers around their necks, men in lederhosen are blowing into alpenhorns, and pretty girls have edelweiss wreaths in their hair.
I made all of that up. I am actually looking out at tarmac with Lufthansa and Swiss planes lined up, baggage handlers and small vehicles, and not a single postcard view in sight.
Yawn. I think I'll take a snooze. Oh, but first: here's another picture of the little boy in "The Willoughbys"..the one trying to make his way back to his long-last father. By now (again, click to enlarge) he is starting to look a little bedraggled.
