I’m on the run today, so just a quick note to say:
Nominations for the CYBILS are now open!!!
I’m on the poetry panel this year, so I want to put out a special call for those nominations,
but don’t stop there, folks!

What were your hands-down all-time top-notch favorite books of the year for children and young adults?
Nominate them!!!
 

We’ve been talking about book banning at our house and I promised to get it on record that my daughters are a little fired up about the whole thing.

Harry Potter?
Tom Sawyer?
The Lorax? 

Sheesh!
Is nothing sacred?

But it was when Roald Dahl got tossed into the fray that my Small One said,
"That’s it. Now I’m really kind of mad about this."

I’m with her.

For a nation that spends a whole heck of a lot of time and space talking about freedom, we’ve been a little lackadaisical when it comes to the freedom to read. The lists of books that have been successfully banned — pulled off of shelves, taken off of syllabi, shut out of libraries — is formidable. And, I’m not ashamed to say, some of my favorite books — and my kids’ favorite books — are on those lists. 

I’m okay with other folks not reading them if they don’t want to, but I’m not okay with those folks telling us we can’t read them. That’s just be a little bit too 1984 for our own good. Y’know?

So. 
This week is Banned Books Week.
Not a bad time to pick up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Or The Chocolate War.
Or James and the Giant Peach.
And read it. 
In public.
To your students.
Or your children.

To talk about how reading is a right, about how reading this book or that book is a choice — a choice we sometimes make with guidance or advice, but a choice nonetheless. One that ought not be taken away from us unless we want to get ourselves confused with the, um, regimes we consider dictatorial and unenlightened. We wouldn’t want that, would we?

One of the cruelest bits of cancer’s collateral damage at our house
has been the falling out my husband’s had with food.
And when I say falling out, I mean full-on break-up.
Thanks to radiation and chemo, cuisine became food became nutrition became survival became blended liquid concoctions taken via tube.

Now, though, as we step further and further away from his treatment, all that’s changing.
He can swallow.
He can swallow more than soup.
Not everything tastes like sawdust. 
Some things actually taste good.
(Enter angelic choir singing hallelujahs here…)

Our girls envision an entire feast month, during which every meal will be replete with treats, favorites and pleasures, once he’s up for that. But in the meantime, each day is a brand new experiment, both tentative and joyful, as nutrition slowly becomes food again and, slowly slowly slowly, becomes cuisine…

The Invention of Cuisine

BY CAROL MUSKE-DUKES

Imagine for a moment
the still life of our meals,
meat followed by yellow cheese,
grapes pale against the blue armor of fish.

Imagine a thin woman
before bread was invented,
playing a harp of wheat in the field.

(Read the rest here…)

We’re having our trees trimmed.
It’s always a little sad, those branches, tossed into the trailer to be mulched. 
This time around, we actually had to bring a whole tree down — an old, ailing pecan that’s been losing limbs and vitality for awhile, while still sucking up the sun and water its neighbor trees need.
It’s just a stump now, and soon even that will be ground up and gone. 

But there is new light coming in at that corner of the lot. 
And the oaks?
It might be my imagination but honestly, they look greener already without the deadwood.

It isn’t easy to do — tending to the things around us (our trees, our closets, our manuscripts) with enough clarity to know that sometimes parts of the whole have got to go, in order to let in light and oxygen, in order to let what IS there shine. 

If we don’t, we just muck along — dodging dead limbs, believing that we’ve not got a thing to wear, thinking that our stories are lost causes.

Sometimes with a little judicious pruning you find a bird’s nest, a book, the perfect little black dress.

First off, I’m so excited to be sitting on this year’s Cybils Poetry Panel!
I’ve done this duty one other time and it was a delight.
I mean, really, how could it not be?
Reading this year’s best books of poems for children and then talking about them with smart, wise, thoughtful, funny, passionate poem readers?Win win win all over the place.

And speaking of the Cybils Poetry Panel, our fearless leader — Kelly R. Fineman — has a poem featured in a new anthology called Breaking Waves. It’s downloadable and all proceeds go toward oil spill relief in the Gulf Coast. Thank goodness for that. Kelly’s poem closes out the collection (of poems, stories, essays and the like) and is particularly potent (no wonder) because she does not shy away from vigorous language or strong form or big ideas. Go get the anthology and you’ll see what I mean.

And speaking of big ideas, book banning isn’t one. It’s a small, small, fearful idea. Banned Books Week is coming up soon, making it a darned good time to buy those books, talk to your children about them, and just generally kick up a bit of a fuss.

And speaking of kicking up a fuss, I recently finished reading Mark Salzman’s True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall. I loved it almost as much (but not quite) as Sam Swope’s I Am a Pencil, and if you haven’t read either of them, do. Together they illustrate and validate the powerful one-two punch that is self expression and being heard, read and received. 

And speaking of being heard, read and received, I’m working my way happily back into blogsville these past few weeks — both as a reader and a writer and I sure do like it. Glad to have you all…

Namaste.

We got so much rain this week — I’ve never seen so much rain.
It rained until the creeks spilled their banks and the roads washed out and the water mains broke and the trees lost limbs and the rocky cliffs crumbled.
And then it rained a little more. 

When weather is that epic in proportion, it’s hard not to assign it greater meaning, not to read it like tea leaves. Maybe there’s a message or a lesson or a story.
Or maybe it’s just rain…

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

BY SYLVIA PLATH

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

(Read the rest here…)

I just had the loveliest morning with a friend, talking about teaching. 
Well, O.K.
Full disclosure.
It was mostly lovely because I got to hold her six-week-old baby while talking about teaching.
Hold her and kiss the top of her head and straighten her socks and kiss the top of her head again.

But.
There really was talk about teaching, I assure you.
And about how to make more efficient the process of critiquing student work, which takes (those of you who do it, know this) forever. I’m sure I’m not alone in obsessing, reading multiple times, commenting on every little line break and word choice.

But today we stumbled upon something really important, I think.

It is the broadest, most universal lessons and messages that resonate most deeply with our students, that are transferable to multiple students, numerous manuscripts, and various circumstances. It is the broadest, most universal lessons that help writers grow their craft overall.  It is not the icky-picky nitty-gritty edits to any particular piece that really matter. (Those are best used in critique groups and in the pre-publication stage.)

So, what this says to me is that my energy should be spent on hugely focused, engaging, exploratory class sessions. Helping students see patterns (the good, bad and ugly) and encouraging them to act on those.

Each individual piece? That’s practice. That’s personal. That’s yoga. 
Not that there aren’t ways I could comment on those pieces in order to allow my students to see the challenges and opportunities more clearly, but that’s secondary to what I should offer in a larger sense. 

Most of their stories and poems (most of my stories and poems, too, if I’m honest) aren’t ever fully realized. 
We run through their hoops in order to learn something. 
So as teachers, we shouldn’t devote all our energy trying to help any one student make any one piece perfect. 
Instead, our efforts should go into helping all of our students become more conscious of their own work so that, moving forward, there will be something truly fine there to critique.

(Now we’ll see if this actually changes the way I read my students’ work.)

(And maybe you guys already realized this 5 years back, you critique with speed and ease, and play croquet in your spare time.)

(In my spare time I’m going to hold more babies and kiss the tops of their heads and straighten their socks and kiss the tops of their heads again. So there…)

Twelve years ago today (on Labor Day!), my Tall One arrived and I became a mom.

Scroll through the cliched-but-only-because-they’re-so-truisms here:

The love was deep and instant.
My life was changed forever.
It’s all gone too fast.

And then, add to that, this:

She combines old soul with innocence better than anyone I know.
She has a wildly curious mind and a deeply compassionate heart.
She has a sure sense of herself and, somehow, an easy nonchalance.
She fills our lives with ideas, thoughtfulness, beauty, music, humor, pathos, depth and love.
She inspires me every single day and I am a better person because of how deeply good she is.

That’s pretty much the sum of it. 
It’d break my heart if it didn’t make me so dang happy.
Y’know?
Lucky me.
Lucky us.

Happy Birthday, my sweet…
xxxooo

Last week I shared a Neruda poem here, and ever since then I’ve been tripping over poems
that feel similar to me, that arrive bearing the same reminder.

To take time.
To be still.
To feel the pulse of the moon.
To open all the windows and listen to birdsong.

Here is the one I found this morning and have read a number of times now, aloud.
I’m going to post it here and then go walk the dog in the rain…

How To Be a Poet

BY WENDELL BERRY
(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity.

(Read the rest here…)

I’m really honored and surprised to have been named a finalist for the 2010 PEN USA Literary Awards.

In the Children’s/Young Adult category, I join finalists Kate DiCamillo for The Magician’s Elephant and Benjamin Alire Saenz for Last Night I Sang to the Monster, along with winner Paul Fleischman for The Dunderheads.

This may be the closest I ever get to a dinner date with the three of them, and I am happy to pull up a chair to that table…