In prepping for class tonight, I’ve re-read one of my favorite books about reading and kids, Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader.

Here is why I love it so:
(I dare you not to choke up, at least a little.)

"… that ritual of reading every evening at the end of the bed when they were little — set time, set gestures — was like a prayer. A sudden truce after the battle of the day, a reunion lifted out of the ordinary. We savored the brief moment of silence before the storytelling began, then our voice, sounding like itself again, the liturgy of chapters…. Yes, reading a story every evening fulfilled the most beautiful, leas selfish, and least speculative function of prayer: that of having our sins forgiven. We didn’t confess, we weren’t looking for a piece of eternity, but it was a moment of communion between us, of textual absolution, a return to the only paradise that matters: intimacy."

" ‘Again, again…’ really means ‘We must love each other, you and I, if this one story, told and retold, is all we need.’ Reading again isn’t about repeating yourself; it’s about offering fresh proof of a love that never tires."

"In French slang we talk about being ‘tied to’ a book. Figuratively speaking, a big book is a ‘brick.’ Untie yourself, and the brick becomes a cloud."

"As a teacher, you will only patch up your student’s relationship with reading on one condition: that you ask for nothing in return. Nothing. Don’t bombard them with information. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t add a single word to what you’ve read. No value judgements, no glossing the meaning of difficult words, no textual analysis, no biographical information… Reading as a gift. Read and wait. Curiosity is awakened, no forced."

See what I mean?

Ages ago, Cynthia Leitich Smith invited me to do a guest post about my experience at ALA in June.
I said yes – who wouldn’t? – but then I didn’t do it.
I kept putting it off.
(While she remained exceedingly kind and patient…)

Finally I started it, but it felt incomplete. Like it needed context. Like posting about the events of that weekend would be akin to reading just the 2nd book in a trilogy, without a lot of sense or connection.

So, here’s my attempt at the context, calendar-style.
And the actual details on that gala weekend in June?
They’re at Cynsations today – as promised.

September, 2009: My second book, All the World, went out into the world in a way that felt both brighter and scarier than anything I was used to. By the time it was released, it had been given starred reviews in Kirkus, Horn Book and School Library Journal, and I was feeling dizzy. Despite my desire to hide underneath my bed ‘til things blew over, I celebrated the launch at BookPeople in Austin, Texas, with zillions of generous and reassuring folk. I signed a lot of books and did not faint.

October, 2009: I shared All the World at the Texas Book Festival. A class of 2nd graders sang an original song about the book by way of introduction. I had a stool there, so if I had fainted, nobody’d be the wiser.

November, 2009: I had so many gratitudes piling up that it would’ve taken the better part of Thanksgiving dinner to list them all. All the World was a New York Times, Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2009, a Scholastic Book Club pick, and it appeared to be headed for Cheerios boxes. Plus, my friends who get pedicures had seen a blurb in People magazine. It was almost too much. My family and I went backpacking in Big Bend National Park and skipped the feast.

December, 2009: People started whispering predictions about the American Library Association Awards. Y’know, Newbery, Caldecott and the like. I put my fingers in my ears and sang, “La, la, la…”

January, 2010: I was in Big Sky, Montana, with my sister, wallowing in our first weekend away together since we’d had our babies a decade earlier. We skied hard, giggled and generally slept well, but on Monday the 18th, crazy-early Mountain Time, I woke to the news that All the World had been awarded a Caldecott Honor. I received so many emails in such a flurry that I thought my computer had a virus. I hugged my sister, took a hot tub, drank a bunch of coffee, called Marla, and cried.

February, 2010: And then All the World landed on the NYT’s Bestseller List. Sheesh.

March, 2010: In a most stunning counterbalance to what was turning into one of the best years of my life, my husband was diagnosed with cancer three days after we arrived home from Spring Break. I was suddenly dizzy again, but in a hard, new way.

April, 2010: My husband spent the month recovering from surgery, and shoring himself up for chemotherapy and radiation. I read and signed All the World at the Texas Library Association Conference, the Corpus Christi Book Festival, and a bunch of elementary schools. Together we went to some 27-trillion doctor’s appointments.

May, 2010: At my husband’s insistence, I followed through on plans for a retreat with my agent and agent-mates in Chicago. It was kind of all about books, and kind of just about life. It was perfect. The day I got home, Kirk had his first of 39 radiation treatments. The morning after, he started chemo.

June, 2010: After eight endless weeks of medicine designed to heal-him-if-it-didn’t-kill-him, we marked Kirk’s final treatment with kiss. I left an hour later for the American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. As I sat on the plane I wondered if I was dreaming a very long and very vivid dream, but when I got to D.C., everything felt really real. (See my post at Cynthia’s!)

July, 2010: I finished up the very last itty bitty edits on my next book, and illustrations were begun for the book after that.

August, 2010: It is a new year. Our girls have gone back to school and Kirk is getting well. All the World has a shiny silver sticker on its cover now. And I no longer want to hide underneath my bed, because if I did I’d miss way too much.

Which I guess is why I felt compelled to add this context. A weekend like the kind of weekend I got to have at ALA could be understandably mistaken for a fairy tale. But really, all of our lives are bigger than one dreamy weekend. And our books aren’t created in bubbles – they’re created inside of those lives. In the end, we take the lumps with the luck, making them both all the better.

With hope and peace and love and trust,

Liz

We may be land-locked in the middle of Texas, but we are not without our watery blessings.
If it weren’t for the cold, constant springs here, I’m not sure I would’ve made it 18 months, much less 18 years.

So I started today with a swim. 
I don’t know why I don’t do that more often — it makes me feel so awake and relieved.
So different from a run — hot and pounding, or even yoga, indoors. 

While I swam I thought about Neruda — water often makes me think of Neruda — and of this poem especially:

Poet’s Obligation

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come…

(Read the rest here, or watch and listen here…)

So this morning I was on my way out for a run when I realized I needed something to distract me.
Because it was, even in the dark early dawn, 83 DEGREES.
I was not the only one unhappy with that fact, really.
The dog, the cats, the potted plants all wilted.
But I was the only one going for a run.
So.
Distraction was my goal.

But. 
My iPod was dead. Go figure. 
So I grabbed my daughter’s off the kitchen counter and scooted out the door.
Before long I was grooving around the trail to Buddy Holly, Fountains of Wayne, Taylor Swift, Free to Be You and Me.
And honestly, it was more than distracting. 
It was funny and revealing and sweet, and I felt a little like I was running with my Small One. 

I ran with a friend’s iPod once and had a similar experience, listening to her New Orleans’ blues, Jewish liturgical music, and even a cut of my friend in her days fronting a rock band. 
She was in my head as I ran, and I was in her head.
It was really a most amazing thing. 

This morning, running with my daughter that way, it was a comfort.
But I’m thinking now that it’s also a lesson, a reminder, that as a writer and as a person I should get outside of myself sometimes.
There’s so much to know about so many people.

Namaste.

Hurrah — I get to share the delightful news that the illustrator for one of my upcoming picture books —  THINK BIG  — is the very talented Vanessa Newton.

I love her work and feel so honored that she said yes to this project.

THINK BIG will be published by Bloomsbury in Spring 2012, under the loving and watchful eye of editor Michelle Nagler. 
Lucky me…

So the other day, my Small One says, "French didn’t really click for me. I think I’m ready to take on Latin."

This was very, very funny for a multitude of reasons, including the minor technicalities that she hasn’t taken French, and Latin’s not offered ’til middle school.

But the more I thought about it, the more I loved it for it’s presumption.
She’s pretty sure that if she finds the language that’s right for her, she will know and speak it.
She’s pretty sure she has the capacity to learn, um, anything. 
She’s pretty sure that anything she imagines can be her’s.

Where does that go, all that fabulous, dreamy, determined, confident presumption?
Where does it go??

Forgotten Language
By Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.

(Listen the rest here….)

My Tall One, who is entering middle school in the fall, has her first annotation assignment this summer.

I don’t know if I knew how to properly annotate a book when I entered college, much less middle school, but I guess that’s human evolution for you.

Anyway. She is a good student and is plugging through the assignment (which happens to be Walter Dean Myers’ Bad Boy) but she’s not loving the process. The annotation is interrupting the flow of her reading. Her notes are thoughtful and critical and insightful, and I’ll bet the discussion in those first few Language Arts classes will really be something. But the actual reading? Bumpy.

And here’s when I start worrying that the pleasure of books is going to be undercut by the next 7 to 13 years of school. I’m pretty sure that’s not the ex- or implicit point of these assignments, but we all know it happens. So, my current hope? That she finishes this in the next few days so she has time for a few good beach reads before school starts. I might try to fit in a couple myself.

I have to admit that I hesitated to read the newest novel by Francisco X. Stork. 
I’ve had it on or near the top of my pile for awhile, but I hesitated.
Because, really, I thought, there’s no way it’s gonna live up to Marcelo.

And that, my friends, is where I was wrong. 

This is not to say that my loyalty to Marcelo has wavered. 
I have pressed that book into more hands than you can imagine. 
But now I’m going to add The Last Summer of the Death Warriors and make it a two-fer.

I do not want to give anything away about this book — either book, really — so instead I’ll just say that the thing I admire most about Stork’s writing is that he is not afraid to allow young adults to be wise. Thoughtful, spiritual, complex and really pretty wise. I love that. I think it’s really respectful and really hopeful. Don’t you?

Just a quick note to share the happy news that my next book, Noodle & Lou, has a release date of March 8th, 2011.

My agent shared the cover image last week on Facebook, but for those of you who aren’t Facebookians, here it is:

I’m completely biased, but I think it’s pretty darn cute.
(And I’ve got all the proofs here on my dining room table — it’s not just the cover!
The other pages hold up pretty well, too. 🙂

I think illustrator Arthur Howard (of Cynthia Rylant’s Mr. Putter and Tabby series) is a master at combining whimsy with heart. I’m so grateful for what he’s done with this funny little tale…

If I were to try to categorize the poems I love, I’d say that my favorites are about how we live, in spite of it all. How we wake up; how we push through and feel love, joy and gratitude; how we struggle to stay here — breathing, and in it.

I mean, I have nothing against poetry about hummingbirds or politics or Grecian urns, but the ones that hit me in the center of my breast bone, the ones that leave me aching and relieved at the same time, are the ones that lay out that fundamental dance between living and dying, struggle and desire, pain and pleasure.

My friend Carrie Fountain writes a lot of those, even when they’re not overtly so. They are historical revelation or contemporary narrative, snapshot or reflection, but almost always with those biggest of curiosities underneath the stories, holding the words on the page.

Carrie’s new book, Burn Lake, was a winner of this year’s National Poetry Prize and it’s no wonder. There is so much there — truth and humor and fight and surrender — to take comfort in, even as we’re put on uncomfortable edges. I read the whole thing fast and furiously, like a beach book, a potboiler, and then went back to take it in more carefully. And not for the last time, either. I’m keeping it on my bedside table.

I would really like for you to have and to read this book.
In the meantime, though, here’s a little taste:

(Please note: It’s called Burn Lake 2 here, but in the book it’s Burn Lake 3)

Burn Lake 2
by Carrie Fountain

We found a duck, a mallard, dead
on the shore, head split, eyes loose,

For a while I’d had a vague idea
I could kill myself by holding my breath.

Yet when I locked myself in my room
and tried it, I fainted, fell face-first

I’d done it…

(Read the rest here…)

(And on an only slightly off-topic tangent, Carrie’s recently become a new mum, which makes that "pressing harder into life" ever keener. Wishing some docile days to them as they wake up to this new world…)