Well, two really lovely things happened today.

#1. It snowed. I am not kidding you. It wasn’t kind of whiteish sleet. It was big fat flakes and they fell for a long time. Most of it melted pretty quickly but there were snowballs thrown and everyone was laughing. Everyone. Not just kids but teachers and postmen and people at the grocery store.

And #2. I did writing workshops with 4th and 5th graders at a very sweet Young Author’s Day. There were quite a few high points, including the fact that we were given beautiful handthrown pottery bowls in appreciation of our participation. But naturally, the real shine was the kids and their work.

We talked about metaphors and how our job was to create a real image in our readers’ minds. And lo and behold. Kids are so original, unencumbered by the cliches that both tempt and haunt the rest of us.

Two boys, in particular, really blew me away. The first was not pleased to be there. He wouldn’t open his notebook and his arms were tightly crossed — until I checked in with him and he revealed that his puppy had died two days ago and he was "just having a bad day." The next thing you know, his arms unwrapped and he wrote about being:
 
"as thin as a penny/I could slip through cracks/I could be easily lost."

Mercy. I could hardly breathe.

Then, there was another little guy who had really severe dyslexia and disgraphia. I realized it quickly and I’m ashamed to say that I immediately went to worst case scenario. I worried that it was going to be really hard on me (to tend to him and all the others) and really hard on him (I imagined he’d be frustrated and maybe embarrassed.) Boy oh man was I wrong. I got the others started and squatted down next to him to see if he’d be willing to dictate a piece to me. Um, yeah. How about this? 

"I am as funny as a comic/or a cartoon character./I am as funny as a bug on a cane."

And that was only the first one. I think if I’d been willing to carry on, we might still be there. And he followed up by asking if he could share it aloud with the class. Like I said, blew me away.

Almost as much as the snow.
What sweet surprises….

In the past few weeks, I’ve spoken at two university children’s literature classes… three elementary schools… two conferences… two bookstores… and a juvenile detention center. Tomorrow I do a Young Author’s Day at another school.

Ordinarily, I blog right after talks and school visits — there’s always so much humour and poignancy — but this month I’ve found it all a bit dizzying. The schedule, yes, but also just the intense shifting of gears — from college students to troubled youth to toddlers with sippy cups.

I think I do okay when I’m on, but I drive home in a daze and my family often catches me later, staring off into the middle distance. This was never more true than last Friday when I spoke to two groups at the Williamson County Juvenile Academy in Georgetown, Texas.

It’s hard to know how to sum up the visit except to say these are kids who are not disengaged.
Or disenchanted.
Or hopeless.

They are in a tough spot, to be sure, but they were not afraid to raise their hands to say they liked poetry or kept journals, they were not afraid to call out suggestions when we wrote as a group, and they were not afraid to cheer what we came up with.

In honor of that fearlessness, their poems.
With my gratitude for their words and their attention…

________________________________________________

I AM

I am cherry, blueberry and white chocolate

I am the bagpipes and the drums

I am an airplane, a rollercoaster

and a transformer

I am black
 
I am blue

I am

_____________________________________

I AM
 

I am red like fire

I am green like grass

I am a rabbit and a beast

I am stormy. 

I can make it rain.

I am a rock. 

I can’t go anywhere.

I am.

__________________________________________________

I AM

I am a motorcycle,
fast and black and dangerous.

I am 100 degrees farenheit.

I am enthusiasm.

I am a bassoon, a snare drum, a violin.

I am brown, I am white,
I am.

_______________________________

I AM

I am purple like a grape.

I am red, too, like a cherry.

I am an eagle and a mountain lion.

I am rain and snow.

I am a diamond,
hard and clear.

I am.

Nine and a half years ago, I saw Lucille Clifton read in a little chapel on a Sunday morning
at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

I was pregnant with my second daughter, and both filled up and utterly exhausted after a weekend full of words. So it’s no surprise that I cried as she read.

There was something about her poems that just split my heart open and then something about her voice that offered comfort. She did not shy away from darkness in the least, but she herself was awash in light.

Lucille Clifton died this week.
It is a terrific loss to the poetry world and, I’d go out on a limb and say, to the human world, too.

I’ve been thinking of her a little every day since then, mostly during moments of goodness and joy, but also yesterday when a man flew a plane into a building here in Austin, Texas — out of anger and futility. And I’m thinking of her again this morning as I head off to speak to young people at a local juvenile detention center — young people who must have their own anger and futility simmering. it’s everywhere, really. It’s just a matter of what you do with it. Lucille Clifton turned it into words.

won’t you celebrate with me

by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Go here to listen to Lucille Clifton read.
Or here…

In gratitude.
Namaste.

My Small One came home so excited about her homework yesterday.
And people, I have to tell you, this is not a child who gets "excited" about homework.
She’s a bit of an eye roller sometimes.
OK, often.

But yesterday?
Yesterday she was asked to use half of her spelling words in a poem.
"It’s like a puzzle," she declared, and got to work.

And you guys? 
THIS is what she wrote.
I know I’m her mom and totally and completely biased, but seriously.
It’s pretty sweet.
Don’t you think?

When at the park you might start to stare
at an open plot with open air.
The longer you stare into the night
the more you think you’re wanting light.
And then right then before your eyes
a little tiny insect flies.
Not just one, about fifteen!
A very glorious wonder seen.
But the quick odd fellows ended the show.
Now they’re black insects on the go.
You pull your coat over your head
and squeeze back home ready for bed.
In a second you’re on Viking Lane
with thoughts of fireflies on your brain.

 — WKS, 2/2010

The bloggers in the kidlitosphere blew me clean away this weekend by declaring All the World
the picture book (fiction) of the year.

I about spit my coffee and fell off my chair, to tell you the truth.

Because I really, really (times ten) admire the Cybils folks — for their smarts, witticisms, read and to-be-read lists, and seemingly bottomless stores of can-do.

So. I am just super honored and humbled… and double-triple thrilled that my friend Chris Barton’s book The Day-Glo Brothers took home the picture book (nonfiction) honor.

All the World has also been named to the 2010 Texas 2×2 Reading List
and Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Reading List. Swwooon.

________________________________________________________________

Also on the All the World front is this moving and amazing video of my friend and friendly illustrator Marla Frazee talking about children and picture books and how much she loves and respects them both. I’ve watched it a bunch of times and it’s still really, really good…

_________________________________________________________________

And speaking of kids, a couple of upcoming EVENTS to share with you. Come on out!!!

• For Austin folk, this coming Saturday (February 20) I’ll be doing a storytime at BookPeople at 11:15!

• For Texas folk, I’ll be signing at the Texas Library Association Convention on Friday, April 16 at 2 pm.

• For Chicago-area folk, I’ll be at Deerfield Public Library on Thursday, April 29 and at The Book Stall in Winnetka on Sunday, May 2nd.

_____________________________________________________________________

Happy Fat Tuesday.
Hope you find a little plastic baby in your coffee cake!
 

 

I save up all my TV watching for two years so that when the Olympics happen I go all in.
Seriously. I do.
I love the Olympics.

I loved the Opening Ceremony last night (especially since I was surrounded by 9-year-olds hopped up on birthday cake).
My highlights included:
The 3D whales.
The golden prairie/Peter Pan/Both Sides Now segment.
KD Lang singing Hallelujah.

I loved the short track semifinals tonight, including the discussion with my girls about whether Apolo Ohno should shave his soul patch.
Not that he asked us.

And I love that it is snowing big fat flakes in Whistler.

Oh, I’m also really kind of glad that they mellowed out the luge track because, jeez, this is supposed to be fun.
Not deadly.

That’s all for now.
Happy Valentines Day, friends.
Happy CYBILS day.
Happy Chinese New Year.
Namaste…

(Read the rest here…)

One of the most exciting things about the ALA Awards this year was how many of my friends and writing buddies were recognized and will be getting pretty stickers on their books.

And it just so happens that I was actually reading two of these award winners when they were announced.
(I’m psychic that way.)
Mare’s War, by my poetry sister Tanita Davis, is a Coretta Scott King honor book.
And The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by fellow Austinite Jackie Kelly, is a Newbery honor book.
Woot and double woot!

Now, disclaimer.
I really, really like both of these women and I really, really like reading books my friends wrote.
I do.
But I promise you, people — you need not know the authors to be blown all the way away by these books.
I promise you.

What Tanita does in Mare’s War is a most difficult and risky thing:
Telling a story in alternating voices and having them live up to each other.

My fear, when I start a book like that, is that I’m going to love one viewpoint so much more than the other that I’ll want to skim half the chapters in order to get back to the good stuff. But in Mare’s War, it’s all good stuff! 

On one hand, we’ve got sisters Tali and Octavia, road-tripping-by-force with their kookie grandmother and struggling with moods, speed limits, and family roles and expectations along the way. On the other, we’ve got that kookie grandmother as a young woman, joining the African American Women’s Army Corps during WWII — to escape her own small town and family traumas. In both realms, the story unrolls like a movie — real, vivid, beautiful and funny. Somehow, we walk away from the book thoroughly moved and entertained, and righteously educated! We’re in the hands of a master here, folks, and dang, if that medal isn’t right where it belongs…

Now, the thing about Calpurnia is that it is timeless.
The last book I read that made me feel this way was The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall.
In both books, there is the sense that you’re spending time with real children — charming, funny, sometimes rascally, honestly flawed but totally loveable children.

We read Calpurnia aloud as a family and we were all in agreement — we’d want her as a friend.
Both of my daughters started carrying around naturalists’ notebooks — in part to record the fallen pecans and passing cardinals, yes, but mostly just to be Calpurnia for a little bit.

She doesn’t have it easy. It’s 1899, afterall, and options for girls are rather proscribed. But she steps into herself in spite of the societal and familial limitations and that is the kind of story that’ll just knock my socks off. (Read: that’ll make me gulp and cry while my family waits patiently for me to get through the chapter.) The Newbery Honor could not have happened to a nicer book.

You all can carry on with the books you’re currently reading if you want.
Or, you can quick up and order Mare’s War and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate from your local indie or the library.
Which is what I recommend.
I’m just sayin…

This past weekend, at the Austin SCBWI conference, I had a conversation I’ve had before.
Numerous times.
It was about rhyme.

The writer really wanted to write in rhyme.
Her story had come out that way.
She couldn’t stop herself.
"But I know I shouldn’t," she said, "because editors don’t like rhyme."
Whereupon I gave my standard response.
"Editors don’t like bad rhyme. That’s a whole ‘nother beast. Good rhyme is good."

I’m reading Mary Karr’s Lit right now, for pleasure.
If reading about somebody walking through the depths of psychic hell can be pleasurable.
But y’know, it’s Mary Karr.
She’s so … smart.
And funny.
And man, can she turn a phrase.

It occurs to me that I feel about memoir the way editors feel about rhyme.
A little skeptical.
A bad memoir can peel the paint off even a very well-made day, and there are so many bad memoirs.
But a good one?
I can’t put down…
 

Have you ever turned the page on your calendar and seen, in your own handwriting, an event that completely perplexes you?

i.e., you don’t know what it is, where it is or how you’re involved?

Seriously, you guys, I have TWO such events in the next week.

Plus, yesterday, I came home from the grocery store with two bigs tubs of hummus instead of one hummus and one tabouli.

I need sleep and a mother.
I mean, I have a mother but she’s no longer in charge of such things.
I am!
Oi.

I also need to write.

I’ve been so focused on kicking off my semester, critiquing manuscripts, and prepping for this past weekend’s conference that I’m not in the usual swing of things and it’s making me the taddest bit grumpy.

So, I think my blogging might be rather spare for a couple of weeks here as I gather my wits about me, figure out the secret code words on my calendar and get some tabouli in the fridge.

But, before I go, let me just say that the Austin chapter of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators put on one heck of a shindig this past weekend. I didn’t take a camera (mine is still not operational as a result of a rather damp kayaking excursion — yet another loose end in my life ) and I didn’t get to hear all the talks since I was doing critique sessions a good portion of the time. But what I did hear was dynamite, my 12 one-on-ones were really fruitful, and I loved catching up with so many writerly friends and acquaintances. (HUGE highlights for me were spending the weekend with my dear pal and beloved illustrator of All the World, Marla Frazee, and getting to know my poetry chum, the brilliant and fabulous Sara Lewis Holmes!)

Here are the blow-by-blows by a few of the other faculty members and attendees. Enjoy!

Kirby Larson
Don Tate
Carmen Oliver
Texas Sweethearts
Cristin Terrill
Vonna Carter

That’s all for now.
Must go re-group.
Be well….