I mentioned the other day that I’d been crying over all my good reading this fall.

I seem to have chosen an emotionally heavy stack for myself lately — sometimes we just do that — and that includes books for adults as well as young people.

Today’s Poetry Friday feature is no exception.

This spare novel-in-verse, written by the ever-thoughtful Susan Taylor Brown, tells such a big story I had to check the page numbers a few times to be sure it wasn’t longer than I thought it was.

Hugging the Rock lets us in on a whole year of Rachel’s life-without-her-mom in poems that are both conversational and crystalline. The first-person perspective combined with Rachel’s coming-of-age and family circumstances make this a lump-in-the-throat read from the first page to the last.

Here. You’ll see what I mean…

Every morning
Sara meets me at the corner
so we can walk to school together.
We’ve been best friends
forever
and I’ve never kept a secret from her
until now.
I want to tell her
except telling her
will make it more real.

(excerpted from the poem School)

I realize Mom is more than gone.
She’s lost
and doesn’t want to be found.

(excerpted from the poem Lost)

Sara says I look different
but when I check the mirror
I look just the same
to me.

(excerpted from the poem Summer Vacation)

There’s all this and then there’s Rachel’s dad, the rock of the title, who isn’t perfect but is there, in both body and heart.
He about broke mine a few times… in a good way.

Thank you, Susan, for writing such a bare and open book.
It felt good to fall into it as a way to remember the fundamental basics of what a kid needs.
What anyone needs, really…

Oh, I have had such a fine fall of reading.
I was going to say a "happy" fall of reading, but that would be misleading because I have cracked some serious tear-jerkers, my friends.
And I love nothing better than a good book-induced cry.

So, today’s the first of four brief blurbs on the books I’ve loved and cried over recently.

Let it be on the record that I know and love Sara Lewis Holmes, but I’d have embraced Operation Yes if it’d been written by a perfect stranger. Because in Operation Yes-land, nobody’s a stranger for long. Mercy, this is an intimate and heart-felt tale.

Operation Yes is about military kids and the unique challenges and transitions they must reckon with — moving… goodbyes… fear for their parents in dangerous spots. And it’s about how they negotiate those challenges and shore each other up and become their own best selves in spite of — or because of — it all.

Which, of course, is what’s not unique to military kids. It’s what we want for all our kids. It’s what we want for ourselves. To become — in the face of challenge — bigger, wiser, stronger, more generous and more full of love, rather than diminished.

I was only the new kid in school once.
I was 13 when we moved from Colorado to Wisconsin.
It was …. hard.

I did not transcend it the way Bo and Gari do in the book.
I merely plowed through.
I  wish I’d had Ms. Loupe there to inspire me, and a backpack of little green men to hold me accountable.

Because the thing that is so awesome about Operation Yes is that the kids in the book do so much more than is absolutely required. And so does Sara Lewis Holmes. She could’ve written a smaller book — less complicated (structurally), less profound (emotionally), less true (logistically). And it still would’ve been a pretty sweet story about kids stuggling to find themselves with the help of a fine teacher and improv theater.

But why do just what’s required when we can do so much more? suggest Sara, Bo, Gari and Ms. Loupe.
And to them I say, Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

Since before it came out in September, All the World has been received very kindly by a bunch of very fine folk — from bloggers, librarians and reviewers to cereal makers, booksellers and honest-to-goodness kids.

For me, each note or nod acts as ballast to the careening nerves and crises of confidence that beleaguer my everyday work.

Because while I’m mindful that I oughtn’t attach myself too closely to external affirmation, it doesn’t hurt to be told (in not so many words) to carry on.

And that’s what happened this weekend when we got a little love from the New York Times.
THE New York Times.
Seriously you guys.

First, there’s this lovely review that includes one of my favorite spreads from the book.

And then (this totally flipped my lid) we made the top ten list of Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009.

Gulp.
Yipes.
Sigh.

Carry on…

Your bedside table probably looks a lot like mine,
careening to the left with books open and shut,
dog-eared and not-yet-cracked.

Things of beauty and possibility!

There was a time (with small daughters) when I was so tired that it took me months to get through a book.
I’d nod off after reading a page or two.
I loved my babies something fierce but dang, I was off my game.

Now I can stay awake, usually, for a chapter — sometimes chapters on end.
And then there are the ones we read aloud as a family.
And the occasional book-on-tape in the car.

Books, books, books.
My bedside table may be leaning but the world has righted itself…

Here’s a book poem for today, from Henry Vaughan. Enjoy!

The flexible, generous and poetic Elaine has jumped in to host Poetry Friday at Wild Rose Reader!
Head on over there…

I had coffee this morning with my newish department head at ACC.
She’s the bomb.
Smart and calm and assured and idea-centered.

The kind of person with whom you can talk about real stuff and not get rattled

So we were talking about teaching.
And, in particular, about teaching creative work within the confines of an academic environment.

We touched on deadlines and grades.
We touched on craft.
We touched on clever assignments.

And then we settled into how we might help students come to something deeper than just a class — a practice that will extend way beyond December and will allow their writing to become not individual "assignments" but rather bigger works in progress, full of possibility.

The only way to do this, as far as either of us could see, is to encourage openness to revision.

If students aren’t receptive to the concept of revision, willing to listen to critiques and suggestions, and ready to take on the actual practice, then everything they write is sort of a one-shot deal — potentially kind of vivid but quick to fizzle.

And of course the same is true for all of us.
Getting stuck in our own stuff and being unwilling to listen, tweak, undo or mess with means that it will never evolve like it might’ve.
And, likewise, getting paralyzed by workshops, critiques or requests for revisions stops us from fully realizing the possibility of a piece.

So what Charlotte recommends to her students is that they come to the process with a balance of humility and audacity.

Humility = willingness to listen, openness to change, acceptance of critique
Audacity = fearlessness, relentlessness, self-confidence

Most of us tend to fall a little too far on one side of the teeter-totter, but I think she’s right.
We need both to grow our work as big as it can be.

I’m telling my students that and I’m telling myself…

It’s November?
You have got to be kidding me.
I seriously wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have a few wrinkled jack-o-lanterns on my front porch.

I’m having a wild and juggley fall and there are many days when blogging takes a back seat to other business. So, in an attempt to catch up, here’s a scatter-shot of news I’ve been meaning to share:

1. The General Mills Spoonful of Stories poll is now closed. I owe you all a humungous stupendous debt of gratitude for voting with vigor! The official la-de-da announcement won’t come ’til January, but by all accounts ALL THE WORLD is going to be one of five books in select Cheerios boxes in 2010. And that is all thanks to you good people. I’m just tickled, and the kids getting books with their breakfast will be, too.

2. Got word this week that ALL THE WORLD is a Publisher’s Weekly Best Children’s Book of 2009. Yipes! Just reading the other names and titles on this list is enough to bring me to my knees. (And also squee with glee for fellow Austin authors Chris Barton and Jacqueline Kelly…)

3. Also just in — ALL THE WORLD made the New York Public Library’s recommended list of 100 Children’s Books for Reading and Sharing! (Cheers again to Chris and Jackie, and co-Beach Lane Bookers Mem Fox and Jan Thomas!) Yippee!

4. Huge whoppin’ thank yous to Clay Smith and all the good folks at the Texas Book Festival. I don’t know if they arranged for the weather, but boy-oh-man was it perfection. My reading was launched by the most delightful 1st grade class from Casis Elementary who made up a song for me! I’m not kidding! I about fell over and it would’ve been a soft landing if I had because I was on Cloud Nine. Oh, yes I was.

5. This Saturday I’m speaking at the monthly SCBWI meeting in Austin. I’ll be at BookPeople at 11 am, talking about Going with your Gut. (If I can make friends with my PowerPoint program that is.) This event is open to the public and ya’ll are welcome to come on by.

6. Here the books that have recently blown the top off my brain. I will post about them separately and with more attention soon, but in the meantime, scurry to the library and get in line to read:

Operation YES by Sara Lewis Holmes

Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Stitches by David Small

(Yes, to get on my list you apparently have to have a double-barreled surname or be called David.
I can’t explain it… it’s just the way it is.)

7. Happy Wednesday, my friends. Namaste…

When I was a kid in Colorado, it was often so cold we had to wear parkas over our Halloween costumes. Kind of took the buzz off of being a ballerina if you know what I mean.

And still, it was one of my favorite holidays.

Roasted pumpkin seeds, carameled apples and the neighbors with the extra-spooky foyer.

These days I love it all over again.

My kids went truckin’ off to school with their costumes this morning (Betsy Ross and Harry Otter) and they’ll cap off the day with an all-school Monster Mash.

In Small One’s classroom there’s an altar to their loved ones who have passed, with photos and pan dulce and the vivid sugar skulls they decorated yesterday.

And this weekend the clock falls back and — hallelujah — it is chilly in Texas.

In honor of this brisk and soulful season, a poem by Louise Gluck.
Happy Dia de los Muertos, mi amigos…

All Hallows

by Louise Glück

(Read the rest right here…)

Ya’ll know by now that ALL THE WORLD is one of 13 books being considered for inclusion
 in next year’s Cheerios.

Lots of you have been voting faithfully, every day, at the Spoonful of Stories site.

Lots of you are getting a little sick of voting faithfully, every day, at the Spoonful of Stories site,
and I don’t blame you!

You’ve got other things to do, like brushing your teeth, making your bed and feeding your children.
I promise, you can get back to all that on Friday when this contest ends.

See, here’s the thing.
I’m not too keen on competition.
I failed miserably at team sports in school — partly because I have no hand-eye coordination and partly ’cause my heart was never in it. My current athletic efforts are running (which I do far too slowly to ever feel competitive about) and yoga. Enough said.

But sometimes life throws you in the middle of the pit to see what you’re made of.
Fortunately, for this particular contest, I need not know how to pitch, swing, shoot, throw or kick.
I just need to do a little shout-out now and again about my new book.

This is relatively easy except for the fact that I have anxiety dreams about driving ya’ll crazy. (In the olden days, I would’ve written you each a letter, in longhand, included a recipe and a cross-stitch, and been done with it.)

Big ol’ sigh in the age of Twitter.

So why do I bother?

Two reasons:

1. I’m fond of this book and I would really like kids to read it as they eat their cereal in the morning. It’s about connections — between and among us — and I think that’s not a bad little message to lodge in a kid’s heart at the beginning of a busy day. Plus, Marla Frazee’s artwork is lush and expansive and profound and comforting. Even kids who can’t read yet can fall into the pictures and be happy there. Truly, and I can say that because I didn’t have the first thing to do with it.

2. It’s all for a really, really good cause. Seriously. It is. General Mills has, in eight years, given 40 million books to children through their Spoonful of Stories initiative. 40 million! And how do I know that? Because an anonymous researcher-do-gooder-all-around-big-heart uncovered all sorts of important Spoonful of Stories stats and shared them via Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog.

(Laurie also has a horse in this horse race and if ya’ll are twins, could one of you vote for ALL THE WORLD and the other vote for Laurie’s ZOE?)

Anyway, Laurie’s guest blogger is over there giving the scoop on the Spoonful today. (You can read about Zoe first and then, under the heading "NOW, FOR THE GREAT NEWS", you’ll learn about this totally worthy endeavour.) I’d really like for you to read it. It is about literacy and about getting books into the hands of kids who don’t have any. Which is really the whole point.

So, please, go read and then cast a few more votes (one vote a day ’til Friday) for ALL THE WORLD, or ZOE, or any of the books you’d like a kid to wake up to.

And while you’re at it, check out First Book and consider them as a recipient of your generous annual giving.

Thanks friends, and namaste.

I usually start making my first school visits of the year in October.

Everyone’s settled into their routines and, ironically, that’s about when it’s time to shake ’em up a bit.

So, what a delight, this year, to be bearing a new book.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my Pocket Book visits.
I do.
It’s just that I have done a lot of them.
Truly.
You don’t want to know.
And I’m fond of my pocketed fishing vest — my key prop these last few years — but I’m ready to leave it at home for a bit.

Last week I visited a preschool with All the World.
Terra Luz is an especially lovely and intentional place, and I was honored to have been invited.
Although it was gray and rainy outdoors, we met on the covered patio.
I sat in a rocking chair that looked as if it’d been decorated by Demeter.
I sat surrounded by parents and plants and a curious spider.

And then there were three-year-olds.
Quite a lot of them.
Even brighter and more promising than that perfect rocking chair.

(My kids are older now and I forget this age.
It is like they live with one less layer of skin, so alert and open and tender and expressive are they.)

Usually after school visits I share a few of the funny things kids say, but this time I’d like to show you what it looked and felt like. The passionate and creative head of school, Andrea Gaudin Tiche, is (among many things) a soulful photographer. These images are hers:

(All images property of Andrea Gaudin Tiche, Terra Luz Preschool)

Aren’t those just delicious?
Sometimes I cannot believe my luck…

Namaste.

I was thinking this morning about food.
What we eat, where we get it,  how it’s produced.

Jonathon Safran Foer has a new book out called Eating Animals.
In which he apparently takes factory farming to the mat.

And he’s not alone, of course.

We’ve got everyone from Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) to Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions) to Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) suggesting that we be more thoughtful in the way we talk about, grow or shop for, prepare and eat our food.

I grew up eating fresh fish and game — lots of it — and the only growth hormones in my body were my own. I’ve been a pesco-vegetarian for more than twenty years now, but when I quit eating meat, it wasn’t a radical decision. It was more that I was grossed out by McDonalds, I’d never ordered a steak in my life and I still loved sushi. Clear as glass. Over time, I’ve become much more attuned to the subtleties of this decision and the others regarding food. I carry a little card instructing me on which fish purchases are healthiest and most sustainable. I subscribe to a C.S.A. farm basket service. I try hard feed my family of omnivores fresh food full of the good stuff and free of the bad.

Still, gardens and grocery stores are evolving, the planet’s food sources are in flux, and I’m a long way from really learning to cook. It’s an ongoing education. And this morning’s lesson comes from poet Donald Hall. I think I ought to caution you that this is truly graphic but also strangely beautiful — exquisite, even — in its detail. And, it makes me think…

Eating the Pig

by Donald Hall

(Do go read the rest here… )

And namaste.