I've got blisters on my fingers!

A Monster Calls

2012-01-22T18:32:00.002-06:00

“Stories are wild creatures,” themonster said. “When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?” Indeed. “A Monster Calls” (CandlewickPress, 2011), by Patrick Ness, wrought all sorts of havoc with this reader’semotions.

Atseven minutes after midnight, Conor O’Malley awakes from his nightmare—the nightmare, the one that beganhaunting him after his mother began cancer treatments—to find a monster at hisbedroom window. The monster—part giant, part yew tree, ancient and wild—appearsevery night at 12:07. It tells Conor three stories, parables really, thatoverturn expectations. The good prince does a terrible thing. Innocent girlsdie. Stories don’t always have happyendings. And after the third tale is told, the monster demands the mostdifficult thing from Conor: the truth.

“AMonster Calls” is an extraordinary book about coming to terms with the impendingdeath of a loved one. Conor knows, deepdown, that his mother is dying, but he is in denial, believing each newtreatment to be the one that will save her. The monster guides Conor as the boydeals with a father who lives far away with his new family, his increasingisolation at school, his terrible anger, and a difficult grandmother who lovesher daughter with the same kind of ferocity that Conor feels for his mother.Each character, even the bully who makes Conor’s life even more hellish, is drawnwith care and compassion. The monster may be the best character of them all.

“AMonster Calls” is also a beautiful book to look at, with illustrations by JimKay. Kay’s interpretation of the monster is both haunting and menacing, and theimages work perfectly with the text.

Ness, author ofthe terrific Chaos Walking trilogy, based “A Monster Calls” on the final storyof idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her fromwriting it herself. (I reviewed two of Dowd’s books, “Bog Child” and “Solace ofthe Road.” If you have not yet read anything by this amazing author, I highlyrecommend them.) In an author’s note, Ness writes that he felt as if Dowd hadhanded him a baton. “And now it’s time to hand the baton on to you,” Nesswrites. “Stories don’t end with the writers, however many started the race.Here’s what Siobhan and I came up with. So go. Run with it. Make trouble.”

Read this bookwith a box of tissues.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, January 22, 2012 edition of The News-Gazette.

2012-01-06T11:51:00.000-06:00

High-flying adventures in Africa

In 1936, aviatrix Beryl Markhamflew solo across the Atlantic—from England to North America, a much moredifficult feat than Amelia Earhart’s west-to-east 1928 trek—and became one ofthe most celebrated women in the world.

“Promisethe Night,” (Chronicle Books, 2011) Michaela MacColl’s latest historical novel,weaves newspaper and journal accounts from Beryl’s transatlantic flight intothe story of her remarkable childhood.

BerylClutterbuck was born in 1902 in England, but she moved to British East Africa(now known as Kenya) with her parents and brother when she was two years old.Living conditions there were difficult and primitive by British standards, andBeryl’s mother soon abandoned her husband and daughter to return to Englandwith a British officer she met in Nairobi.

If life in Africawas too demanding for Clara Clutterbuck, it was heaven for the adventuresome Beryl.She explores the forests, adopts the local Nandi tribe as her substitutefamily, and learns to speak Swahili. She fervently wishes to join her Nandifriend, a boy named Kibii, in becoming a Nandi warrior. Taught by Kibii’sfather, Arap Maina, Beryl learns to jump “higher than her head” and even takespart in a hunt for the leopard. On her father’s ranch, she and Kibii learned tobreak horses. (Before becoming a pilot, Beryl was the first licensed femalehorse trainer in British East Africa.)

Beryl rebels atevery attempt to turn her into a proper young lady, even as she comes tounderstand the daughter of a British colonialist can never really becomeAfrican.

I received anadvance review copy of “Promise the Night” believing it to be a young adultnovel, but it is ideal for younger readers—say, ages 9 to 12. Younger teenswould like it as well.

Older teens andadults interested in learning more about Beryl Markham should check out her remarkablememoir, “West With the Night.” I recently listened to the unabridged audio version(Blackstone Audio, 2005), read by actress Julie Harris. It is little wonderthat Ernest Hemingway, who was not often in the habit of praising otherwriters, wrote, “[she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselveswriters.” Her fine prose is especially remarkable given her early dislike ofreading and writing, although some have suggested that “West With the Night”was ghostwritten by her husband, a Hollywood screen writer.

No matter. Both“Promise the Night” and “West with the Night” are high-flying adventures.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, January 1 edition of The News-Gazette.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

2011-12-14T20:57:00.005-06:00

In a year that brought about anumber of stellar books for readers of young adult fantasy fiction, includingLauren Oliver’s “Delirium,” (reviewed here January 30, 2011), Laini Taylor’s“Daughter of Smoke and Bone” (Little, Brown, and Taylor, 2011) is a realstandout. The New York Times selected it as one of the five notable young adultbooks of 2011, and with good reason—it’s a paranormal romantic fantasy withreal emotional and mythic depth.

Karouis a seventeen year –old art student in the Czech Republic city of Prague. Likemany arty-types, she’s got her own quirky style—bright ultramarine hair, forstarters. In Karou’s case, her hair really isblue, although she’s happy to let her fellow students believe she dyes it. Andthen there’s the matter of her family—or the closest she has to family. Karouwas raised by chimeras: Brimstone, a horned monster with horns and the goldeneyes of a crocodile; Issa, a serpent from the waist down, with the hood andfangs of a cobra; giraffe-necked Twiga; and Yasri, a woman with a parrot’sbeak.

WhenKarou isn’t attending art school, she is running errands for Brimstone,traveling through magic portals to Paris, Marrakesh, and some place in Idaho.She collects teeth for Brimstone—human, crocodile, bear, even elephanttusks—and lots of them. She’s not crazy about the work, but Brimstone pays herin scuppies, which can be used to grant minor wishes, like making herex-boyfriend itch in unmentionable places, or causing a mean girl to grow apermanent unibrow. Why Brimstone needs them is one the great mysteries ofKarou’s life. So are the indigo eyes inked into the palm of her hands, and thefeeling that she was meant to be living another life.

Soon,beautiful winged things begin burning black handprints into the doors ofBrimstone’s portals around the world. One of those angelic beings is Akiva, aseraph. Although it is clear that the two are in opposing sides of a war thatKarou does not quite understand, they are immediately drawn to each other. And,as with other star-crossed lovers, they soon find that the stakes are highindeed.

Taylor’sworld-building—whether describing the city of Prague, where “Gothic steeplesstood ready to impale fallen angels,” or Elsewhere, with its two moons—is firstrate, as is her character development. Even secondary characters, like Karou’sfunny and smart friend Zuzana, are well drawn.

Thebook ends on a real cliffhanger—or, more precisely, with Karou in the skysomewhere above the Atlas Mountains—that sets the stage for the second book ofthe trilogy.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, December 11. 2011 edition of The News-Gazette.

Blood Lie a realistic tale of bigotry, forgiveness

2011-11-29T11:19:00.001-06:00

The Blood Lie

It’s September 22, 1928, andsixteen-year-old Jack Pool is itching to leave his small town in upstate NewYork. A talented cellist, he has an audition at the Bentley School of Music inthree days. Acceptance to the elite boarding school will be his ticket out ofMassena. It will also mean leaving behind the girl that he knows he can neverhave: Jack is Jewish, and Emaline Durham is Christian.

Inthe opening pages of “The Blood Lie: A Novel,” by Shirley Reva Vernick (CincoPuntos Press, 2011), we learn the connection between the two: their mothers hadbecome friends as newlywed brides recently moved to Massena. The mothers’unlikely friendship—and a such a close relationship between Jewish andChristian women was unlikely in asmall town at that time—spawned a friendship between their children as well. Butwhen Emaline’s four-year-old sister Daisy goes missing after playing withJack’s little sister, Jack finds himself the prime suspect in herdisappearance.

It is two daysbefore Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews,and someone in town with a definite interest in the case has revived thecenturies-old lie that Jews sacrifice Christian children for their rituals—theblood libel.

“The Blood Lie” isbased on a true story, which is described in an author’s note at the end. As asophomore in college, Vernick was given the assignment of identifying a localcontroversy—past or present—in her hometown, and writing a paper about theoutcome. This is her interpretation of the story that she uncovered.

Vernick’safterward also makes the point that the blood libel has not died. Stories ofthe Jewish sacrifice of Christian children persist, with a 2008 campaign in aRussian city claiming that Jews were “stealing small children and drainingtheir blood to make their sacred bread.”

The book is notwithout its flaws. I found the ending a bit too abrupt. What’s more, afterDaisy was found—safe, if a little unsound—there was speculation that the littlegirl had been molested, prompting some of the townsmen to vow that they wouldtake their revenge on the Jews. I fully expected a dramatic confrontation, butoddly enough, there was none.

Still,“The Blood Lie” is an engrossing story of forbidden love, terrifying bigotry,and, eventually, forgiveness. The rabbi in particular has some graphicremembrances that would be disturbing to younger readers, but this book isappropriate to middle grade and young adult readers. And honestly? Adults,too.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, November 20 edition of The News-Gazette. The review copy was supplied by the publisher.

Sasquatch--really? Well, maybe...

2011-11-15T19:07:00.001-06:00

I’ve never really thought that Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it’ssometimes called, is anything more than a myth fueled by a series of clever (ornot-so-clever) hoaxes. And so I was more than a little skeptical when I beganreading Kelly Milner Halls’ latest book, InSearch of Sasquatch (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). I knew Halls to be a terrifically talented and prolific writer ofnonfiction books for young people (Savingthe Baghdad Zoo, Mysteries of the Mummy Kids, and Tales of the Cryptids are some of her better-known books)—butSasquatch? Really?

Leave it to Halls to make you think just a littledifferently about your worldview. After reading In Search of Sasquatch, I can’t say that I’m packing to go on aSasquatch search expedition, but I’m willing to entertain the notion that itmay very well exist.

The many people Halls has interviewed for the book includean anthropologist, a linguistic expert, a biologist, and several people whoclaim to have sighted Sasquatch. While acknowledging that Sasquatch hoaxesabound, she bolsters her argument for the possible existence the mysteriouscreature by example: for centuries, paleontologists believed that the coelacanthwas a long-extinct prehistoric fish—until a living coelacanth was discovered in1938. Similarly, the giant squid was a thing of Greek legend—until it wasdiscovered in 2004.

Her text is accompanied by gorgeous illustrations,additional resources, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography and sourcenotes. Kids who are drawn to the weird and wonderful will love this book. Sowill adults.

Myracle’s New Book “Shines”

2011-11-03T14:15:00.000-05:00

When the National Book Foundation called Lauren Myracle to tell herthat her book "Shine" (Amulet Books, 2011) was a finalist for theNational Book Award in the Young People's Literature category, she wassurprised--and thrilled. A short time later, in an unprecedented move, theFoundation added a sixth finalist, Franny Billingsley's "Chime" (DialBooks, 2011). Two days later, Myracle got another call from the Foundation. Itseems there had a been a mix-up: the judges had read their list of finalistsover the phone, and apparently the Foundation heard "Shine" insteadof "Chime." Myracle was asked to remove her book from the list"to preserve the integrity of the award and the judge's work," theauthor told the New York Times. Myracle was crushed, but agreed to do so. Soon,there was an outpouring of support for Myracle, and Amazon sales of"Shine" skyrocketed.

So is"Shine" worthy of being a National Book Award finalist? I haven't readthe books on the list yet, so I couldn’t really say. But if they are betterthan this dark and beautiful novel, then it is a strong field indeed.

Seventeen year-oldPatrick is found near death, strung to the pump of the local gas station wherehe worked with the nozzle of a gas pump in his mouth and an anti-gay slurscrawled across his chest. The sheriff of his local small North Carolina townis quick to pin the blame on out-of-town gay bashers. But Cat, his childhoodfriend, suspects that perpetrator is home-grown. Driven by love for her friend andguilt over a past betrayal, she is determined to find Patrick’swould-be-killer, despite the urging of her friends and family to stay out ofit. As Cat uncovers the ugly truth about the crime, she confronts her owndemons—the demons that caused a rift in her friendship with Patrick and others.Filled with memorable characters, richly atmospheric, "Shine" throwsan important light upon anti-gay bigotry and the meth epidemic in rural areasof this country.

Some good has come of the"Shine" debacle. Rather than giving Myracle the $1,000 she would havereceived as finalist, the National Book Foundation has agreed to donate $5,000to the Matthew Shepard Foundation, an organization that promotes tolerance ofgay teens. The foundation is named for a student killed in a notorious anti-gayhate crime in 1998.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, October 30 edition of The News-Gazette.

Forensic science in the news: October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month

2011-10-26T13:59:00.001-05:00

Do hackers have it in for Sony, or have they just found an easy--and very large--target? Back in April, hackers broke into Sony's PlayStation Network and walked away with personal, and possibly credit card, information of 100 million customers. The company had to shut down several online services and rework its security system.

Intruders once again hacked into Sony's network this month, stealing tens of thousands of IDs and passwords. Sony quickly locked the accounts emails users on how they could reset their passwords; the company said that credit card numbers were not at risk.

Still it's a reminder of just how important it is to protect yourself online. One quick tip: don't use the same password for online gaming that you use for your bank account, for example.

Visit www.staysafeonline.org for the latest cybersecurity tips. Or you can check out my book Cybercrime: Data Trails DO Tell Tales, especially Chapter 3, "Viruses, Bots, and Zombies--Oh My!" and Chapter 4, "You've Got Spam!"

Forensic Science in the News: RIP, Steve Jobs

2011-10-09T22:26:00.000-05:00

I came on board pretty early with Apple. It must have been 1984 or 1985 when my research advisor at the University of Chicago bought a few computers for the lab. I hadn't had a lot of experience with computers at the time--well, who had?--but this one seemed different from the other clumsy personal computers that were available at the time. I loved it. I wrote much of my thesis on it. When it came time to buy a computer of my own, I didn't think about anything other than a Mac.

Fast forward. I'm writing this on my new 27-inch (the better to accomodate my aging eyes) iMac. I've worked, reluctantly, on PCs at other jobs, but at home I've always had Macs, iPhones, and now an iPad. I'm not an acolyte, exactly, but I know what works for me, and Apple has always worked for me.

So Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and the genius behind the modern brand, has always been a special figure in my life. Something you might not know is that Jobs and Steve Wozniak, co-creators of the original Apple computer, had been inspired by a 1971 article in Esquire magazine (reprinted here) about "phone phreaks," a group of people who realized that they could manipulate the computerized phone network to place free calls anywhere in the world.

You can learn more about Jobs' involvement with phone phreaks* and the history of computer hacking in my book, Cybercrime: Data Trails DO Tell Tales (Enslow Publishers, 2011). Jobs, like the other early computer hackers, weren't interested in stealing data--they simply wanted to understand the ways in which computers and computer networks worked.

*"Phreaking" is a portmanteau word made by combining "freak" an "phone" (and, in some definitions, "free"). Lewis Carroll, the author of Through the Looking Glass, adopted the word "portmanteau"--the French word fo suitcase--to describe combining the sound and meaning of two words to create a new one. (Cybercrime: Data Trails DO Tell Tales, Enslow Publishers, 2011, p. 26)

A Love Story for Dog Lovers

2011-10-09T18:06:00.000-05:00

“A hundred and two days.” So beginsPaul Griffin’s young adult novel, “Stay With Me” (Dial Books, 2011). That’sprobably about the length of the average teenage romance, Griffin writes, butthe relationship between Mack Morse and Céce Vaccuccia is anything but average.

Mackis a shy fifteen year-old high school dropout with a learning disability and acriminal record. His mother has been AWOL since he was eight, driven away byhis brutal, alcoholic father. But he has gift: he has a way with dogs. Herescues, rehabilitates, and trains abused and abandoned fighting dogs.

Fifteenyear-old Céce is no child of privilege, either; she lives with her loopy motherand brother, just barely making ends meet. But their goodbyes always end with,“Love you like a crazy person,” and Céce is a straight-A student hoping to beable to transfer to a school for the gifted and talented.

Writtenin chapters that alternate between Mack’s and Céce’s points of view, “Stay WithMe” is the story of the star-crossed teens’ 102-day romance. Mack isstrong-armed into looking out for Céce by her brother (who also happens to beMack’s friend) when he enlists in the Army. Despite a rocky start, the two aresoon a couple, and they begin to dream of a future together. Mack is training arescued pit bull that he calls Boo. He hopes to gives it to Céce, who has grownto love the dog. And then Mack makes a terrible mistake, and suddenly theirfuture together is impossible.

Griffinhas such a way with characters. Mack is deeply conflicted and struggles withhis anger, yet he has a huge heart. His tenderness and love for Céce and hisdogs is touching. Céce is funny, insecure about her weight (one of the things Ilove about Mack is that he doesn’t seem to notice that she’s a littleoverweight), and cares deeply about her family.

Even thesupporting characters are complex and memorable. Anthony, Céce’s older brother,and Vic, the kind-hearted owner of the café where they work, are steady moralcompasses throughout the story. Céce’s mother dyes her hair crazy colors,drinks too much, and bakes inedible holiday-themed cornbread to cope with theanxiety of her son’s impending deployment.

“Stay With Me” contains sexual themesand some violent scenes that make it appropriate for older teens. The book doesnot have a “happily-ever-after” ending, but it is full of heart, redemption,and hope for a better future. It may just make you want to take in a rescuedog.

Advance review copy provided by the publisher. This review originally published in The News-Gazette, Sunday, October 9, 2011.

Forensic science in the news: Ned Kelly's Bones

2011-09-20T12:06:00.000-05:00

Ned Kelly the day before his execution.
Note the awesome hairdo and beard!
(Source: Wikipedia)

As promised, to celebrate the publication of my forensic science books, I'm starting a new series on this blog: "Forensic Science in the News." First out of the circle is an article that appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, "A Hero's Legend and a Stolen Skull Rustle Up a DNA Drama."

Now, before reading this article my knowledge of the Australian folk hero Ned Kelly was pretty much confined to the fact that there is an Illinois chain if steakhouses named after the man--or at least there used to be, until they all went belly-up, leaving some employees unpaid. Ned Kelly would have been rolling in his grave, if not for the fact that his bones are at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. Well, all but his skull. But I'm getting ahead (pardon the pun) of myself.

Ned Kelly was born in 1854, the son of an Irish convict exiled to Australia. He took up arms against the British colonial authorities, robbed banks, and stole cattle. He dictated a letter describing the mistreatment of Irish Catholics by the police and British authorities, which the historian Alex McDermott called "one of the most extraordinary documents in Australian history." He was arrested after a shoot-out, wearing homemade metal armor, and was hanged in 1880.

He was buried in a mass grave, but his skeleton was recovered in 1929 when the site was slated for development. The remains were reburied, but in the chaos that ensued, two skulls, thought to be those of Kelly and notorious serial killer Frederick Bailey Deeming were stolen. Fast-forward to 2008, when yet another excavation uncovered the remains--at least 3,000 bone fragments, which were sent to the Institute. Some of them might belong to Kelly, but how could they tell after all this time? To make matters more complicated, a man named Tom Baxter came forward with a skull he'd had for three decades, claiming that it was Kelly's.

The forensic scientists compared the skull with historical photographs and a copy of Kelly's death mask. They sent samples of the skull and other remains to a forensic laboratory in Argentina, where scientists there were able to extract DNA from the old and degraded samples. They found one of Kelly's distant relatives, a schoolteacher who was descended from Kelly's mother, who agreed to submit a blood sample for DNA analysis. They compared the DNA samples from the teacher, the skull, and the bone fragments. The verdict? The fragments, including a palm-size piece of skull, belonged to Ned Kelly. But DNA from the stolen skull was most definitely not Kelly's. Scientists at the Institute are trying to determine whether the skull belonged to the serial killer, Frederick Deeming.

You can learn more about how forensic scientists used DNA to confirm the identify of a set of bones thought to have belonged to the notorious Angel of Death Joseph Mengle in the "Cold Cases" chapter of my book, Bones: Dead People DO Tell Tales.

The Poisoned House: A Ghost Story

2011-09-19T14:47:00.000-05:00

Take a plucky but downtrodden scullery maid, a tyrannicalhousekeeper, the Lord of the House teetering on the brink of madness, a veryinsistent ghost, and what do you get? “The Poisoned House: A Ghost Story”(Albert Whitman & Co., 2011), a deliciously creepy new gothic horror storyby Michael Ford.

That plucky scullery maid is fifteen year-old AbigailTamper—Abi, to her friends. As the book opens in 1850s London, Abi isattempting to escape her miserable life in Greave Hall, an elegant butincreasingly troubled household. The chief architect of her misery is thetyrannical housekeeper, Mrs. Cotton, who punishes Abi for the slightestinfraction. The return of Lord Greave’s son Samuel, injured in the Crimean War,seems to have only worsened his Lordship’s mental condition. And the ghost isnone other than Abi’s mother, who had been Samuel’s childhood nurse before herdeath a year earlier.

After Abi’s foiled escape from Greave Hall, strange thingsstart to occur. There is a mysteriously closed bolt that should be been leftopen. A handprint appears on both the inside and outside of the library window.Lord Greave’s drinking glass is shattered—but by whom? At first, Abi feelscomforted by her mother’s ethereal presence, until she realizes that the ghostis trying to warn her of something. She is no longer safe at Greave Hall—if sheever was.

Although the plot of “The Poisoned House” is somewhatpredictable (it does, after all, follow the conventions of the gothic novel),its many twists and turns provide plenty of suspense. And Ford has a real knackfor creating terrific characters. Abi makes for a wonderful companion; she isresourceful and sympathetic, a young woman still trying to find her way in aworld that seems not to love her. Mrs. Cotton is a villain in the finest Gothictradition: cruel, petty, and domineering. I suspect Ford had the most funcreating her character, because aren’t villains always the most interesting?

Teens who enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” asyounger readers will like “The Poisoned House.” And if gothic novels are yourcup of tea, you really must read Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” one of thegreatest gothic novels of all time. Preferably (with apologies to Miss Brontë)when the cold autumn wind brings with it “clouds so somber, and a rain sopenetrating, that further out-door exercise is now out of the question.”

Advance review copy provided by the publisher. This review originally published in The News-Gazette, Sunday, September 18, 2011.

Look at what the FedEx man brought!

2011-09-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

That's right...author's copies of Bones: Dead People DO Tell Tales, Cybercrime: Data Trails DO Tell Tales, and DNA & Blood: Dead People DO Tell Tales (Enslow, 2011).

I nearly threw my arms around the FedEx guy and kissed him, but fortunately for both of us I merely smiled and signed for them.

If dead bodies, bloody footprints, or zombie computers are your thing, I've got the books for you. And, I'm happy to report, they are available both in library and paperback editions. You can order them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookstore.

To celebrate, I'm going to start a series of blog posts about the true crime stories and forensic science featured in the books. First up: The Murderous Beginnings of Forensic Anthropology.

First Descent

2011-08-28T17:19:00.001-05:00

Pam Withers sets the pace for her latest novel, “First Descent” (Tundra Books, 2011), with the opening sentence: “When the shot rang out, I leapt from my bed, lifted a corner of the bedroom curtain, and looked down on the river bend.” (It’s not what you think.)

At the age of seventeen, Rex Scruggs is already a world champion kayaker. Now, he is determined to descend the Furioso, a Columbian river that lives up to its name. Only one man has ever attempted to kayak the Furioso: his legendary (and thoroughly unpleasant) grandfather, Malcolm Scruggs. This is Rex’s chance to carry on the family legacy—and prove his worth to the gruff old man. His grandfather’s one request was that Rex find the Calambás family: a starving daughter, so the story went, had given him a necklace in return for an avocado sandwich. The necklace has become Rex’s good luck charm.

Once in Columbia, Rex meets the young woman who will be his guide along the river, Myriam Calambás, an indigenous Columbian who has lived along El Furioso her entire life. At this point, you may have deduced that Myriam has some connection to the necklace, but it’s not as far-fetched as you might imagine. In Myriam’s chapters, which more or less alternate with Rex’s, we learn that her community is beset both by the guerillas, who supposedly fight for the poor, and the paramilitary soldiers, hired by the rich landowners to fight the guerillas. Myriam dreams of attending college and becoming a journalist so that she can make others aware of the plight of her people.

Rex, who in many ways is like his grandfather—narcissistic, dismissive of others, and over-confident—soon learns that the real danger in this new world is not the river, but the guerillas and paramilitaries. Can he achieve first descent, and do right by the people he has come to care for?

Pam Withers is a former whitewater kayak instructor and raft guide, and her expertise shows. I’m not a kayaker, but the book’s whitewater passages are so full of strategy, muscle, and energy that you can almost feel the water’s spray as you hurtle down the page.

In her effort to familiarize readers with Columbian life and culture, Withers sometimes explains the obvious. Most American readers, after all, will not need to be told that empanadas are “meat and cheese pastries.” But the occasional authorial intrusions are a minor quibble with what is otherwise a compellingly readable tale of courage, sacrifice, and adventure.

I received an advance review copy of this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewer program. This review was originally published in the News-Gazette on Sunday, August 28, 2011.

Wild About Nature

2011-08-21T19:51:00.000-05:00

I just got an emergency delivery of chocolate from Switzerland from my dear husband, so the writing should be zipping right along in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I'd like to encourage you to check out my author interview on the blog Wild About Nature. Thanks to Laura Crawford, the author of In Arctic Waters and many other terrific books for kids, for interviewing me!

Review: Dreamland Social Club

2011-08-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

I recently visited Coney Island, famed for its Cyclone rollercoaster, the Wonder Wheel, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, and freak shows. So of course I was primed to read Tara Altebrando’s young adult novel “Dreamland Social Club” (Dutton Books, 2011).

Set in Coney Island, this book perfectly captures the nostalgia and gritty wonder of Brooklyn’s legendary playground, full of quirky, colorful characters.

Sixteen year-old Jane Dryden and her older brother have spent much of their lives moving from one place to another, following their father’s work as a rollercoaster designer and engineer.

Still grieving ten years after the death of Jane’s and Marcus’s mother, the family inherits their mother’s childhood house in Coney Island from a grandfather the children never knew, Preemie. “There was an amusement part here in the early nineteen hundreds,” Jane’s father explained. “Dreamland. Incubators had just been invented…Your grandfather was part of a premature baby display when he was born,” who later made a living “harassing people on the boardwalk into playing a carnival game where you shoot clown mouths with water guns.”

Her grandmother, Jane learned, was a sideshow act, supposedly part bird. Jane is determined to explore the secrets of her mother’s past, a life she both loved and longed to escape.

Jane is a wonderfully complex character who just wants to find a place where she can fit in, call home. But at Coney Island High, her new friends are Leo, the Tattooed Boy; Babette, a goth dwarf; Debbie, who sports a peach-fuzz beard; H.T., who has no legs; and a giant named Legs. Normal never seemed so…weird. Jane discovers that her mother founded the mysterious Dreamland Social Club, something that everyone seems to know about but her.

Over the course of the year, Jane finds herself in the middle of a decades-old family feud involving a carousel horse chained to the radiator the living room as well as an ongoing battle between a development company that might have a job for her father and preservationists who fear that their beloved Coney Island will be turned into another slick theme park and shopping mall.

This book is steeped in Coney Island history and the carnival-like atmosphere of Jane’s new world. If you’ve ever been to Coney Island, or know anything of its history, you’ll be nodding your head in delighted recognition throughout the book. If you’ve never been there, you may well find yourself making travel plans—or wishing you could. Fortunately, Altebrando lists some excellent resources for readers wanting to learn more about The People’s Playground.

This review was first published in The News-Gazette, Sunday, August 7, 2011.

Inspiration

2011-07-25T21:30:00.001-05:00

There's nothing like travel to get the writerly juices flowing. Today I, along with several members of my family, hit Coney Island. We went on The Wonder Wheel (89 years without an accident!)

And...The Cyclone (um, no signage about accidents or lack thereof).

These are things you owe it to yourself to do, unless of course you are afraid of heights or being hurtled down steep heights and around tight corners at terrifying speeds, especially on rides that'd have been around for a very very long time.

Overheard conversations:

"Dear God I'm no ready to die!" (on the Cyclone, naturally)

"I love, love, love Pop-Tarts. There is nothing better than Pop-Tarts."
" "
"Pop-Tarts are poison!" (on the subway to Coney Island)

"...an' his hat all cock-eye like this, you know, 'cause he just got hit upside the head..." (on the boardwalk)

All fodder for stories. Have you taken any trips lately that inspired you to write something new?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Cultivating literary touchstones

2011-07-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

I just saw the final Harry Potter movie with one of my daughters and my son. My daughter, now 23, grew up along with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. My son, 18, was a precocious reader after a rocky start, finishing the first Harry Potter book by the time he'd finished first grade. We began reading the series together and then, as the kids got older, individually, passing the books from one person to another. I've really loved reading those books and watching the movies with my kids, watching them grow to adulthood as my children did the same.

As it turns out, it was my son who introduced me to a series of books that would become the real literary touchstone that we would turn to when the alternative was sullen silence or argument. We had just moved to Geneva, Switzerland for six months. The year was 2006, my son was in 8th grade, and for obvious reasons very unhappy about the move. He had begun reading George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, and loved the books. He urged me to read them, and although I don't normally read a lot of fantasy, I knew it was important to him. I was training for a half marathon, so I downloaded the first book on Audible.com and explored Geneva and its environs as I listened to Martin's marvelous story. That first book led to the next, and the next, and now of course we've been watching the TV series together (the racy scenes are a bit much to watch with him, but we both kind of avert our eyes). I've yet to download the latest; my son is reading it on his Nook, and he's already pressuring me to do so.

My relationship with my son continues to be somewhat rocky. But we know that when other topics of conversation will inevitably lead to an argument, we can always fall back on Martin and Rowling and those other storytellers who find a way to bring us all together.

Book Review: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

2011-07-18T11:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it’s July, and you and I both know that at some point this summer you’ll have to crack open whatever book the schools have decided you need to read this summer. Fine, you gotta do what you gotta do. (Can you tell I’m no great fan of assigned summer reading?) Here, then, is my antidote to the summer reading assignment: “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack,” by Mark Hodder (Pyr, 2010). It’s a rollicking, head-spinning steampunk adventure that is unlikely to find its way onto any summer reading list.

The book’s hero is Sir Richard Francis Burton, the great British explorer, linguist, and scholar, and his diminutive sidekick, Algernon Charles Swinburne, the thrill-seeking young poet. (In an appendix titled “Meanwhile, in the Victorian Age,” Hodder gives brief biographies of these and the many other real-life characters who appear in the book.)

Although it opens in London, 1861, this is not the familiar Victorian London. For one thing, the young Queen Victoria was assassinated in 1840; her husband, Albert, is King. The country is in the midst of a technological and social upheaval. Engineers, part of the new Technologist caste, have created steam-driven velocipedes, flying rotorchairs, and giant crab-like robotic street cleaners. Eugenicists, the other half of the Technologists, have created messenger parakeets with the unfortunately tendency to pepper their messages with insults, giant swans pulling passenger-carrying box kites, and most frighteningly, werewolves that carry off young chimney sweeps. The new Libertines oppose repressive laws, while the Rakes dabble in magic, drugs, and anarchy.

Enter Spring Heeled Jack, a bogeyman legendary for groping young women, leaving them shocked or permanently damaged. After an encounter with the strange creature, Burton is commissioned to investigate. I don’t want to give too much away, but the Rube Goldberg-style plot reveals just how Victorian London was transformed into Steampunk London, and it’s satisfying indeed. Throw in a talking orangutan, a sinister albino panther-man, appearances by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and Florence Nightingale, and you’ve got one heck of a fun summer read.

I found this book on the adult science fiction shelf in the library, but it’s suitable for older teens. There is some rough language, the most colorful of which is spoken by the messenger parakeets (“Message for the Marquess of buttock-wobbling Waterford!”), talk of attempted rape, and the sort of violence you’d see in superhero movies, including exploding werewolves. If you liked this book, Burton and Swinburne return in “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” (Pyr, 2011).

This review originally published in The News-Gazette, July 17, 2011.

Corpse Flower

2011-07-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

Mme. Hardy

One of the criteria I have for the roses I plant in my garden is that they must be fragrant. I hate those hybrids that look OK but have no smell. You might as well stick some plastic roses in the ground. Shakespeare got the point of a rose, after all, when he wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Corpse flower

Recently, though, I've become a little fixated on a flower currently blooming at the University of Illinois' Plant Biology Conservatory, Amorphophalus titanum. Native to Sumatra, it's more commonly known as the Corpse Flower, due to the Eau de Rotting Flesh fragrance it gives off when it flowers. Rotting flesh? Yes indeed--all the better to attract the carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies that pollinate it. To add to the illusion, the texture and reddish-purple color of the plant's large spathe, or petal. resembles...rotting meat. AND! If those things weren't clever enough, the temperature of the spadix, the baguette-shaped thing in the middle, rises to about 100 degrees, which helps release all of that lovely perfume into the air. Here's a picture I took this morning--it's not fully open, but oh, boy, does it smell...not like a rose.

Here's what it looks like when it's fully open. It's really kind of pretty, isn't it? Whether you call it Amorphophalus titanum or corpse flower or any other name, it still smells rotten.

What a character!

2011-07-03T07:12:00.001-05:00

Have you ever met someone and thought to yourself, "Wow, now HE'S a character!"? I've been following the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky with my husband, a writer friend, and her husband this weekend, and we've met our share of the characters along the way.

Take our innkeeper at the B&B in Louisville. A small, prim man with a Colonel Sanders goatee, he was clearly uncomfortable in the role of host. It was a bit of a challenge to get him to serve us orange juice, because he didn't think we'd indicated it on our breakfast card the night before (we did). And then, probably because he had read in Hosting a B&B for Dummies that you should tell stories to your guests, he told us a tale about visiting a Dairy Queen on his honeymoon with his wife in Arizona, and his extreme surprise at this thing called a Blizzard! With Snickers or any old kind of candy mixed in! His Puritanical mind, he said, couldn't quite accept such excess. We were not quite sure what the point of his story was.

Later, in Frankfort, we found Rick's White Light Diner, which we soon found had been featured in the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." (The food, by the way, excellent! I recommend the pulled pork BBQ sandwich and the coleslaw.) Rick, a bearded old hippie, cheerfully greets everyone in his tiny diner and dispenses his political philosophy (far left) in colorful and often profane language.

Two characters, one day, both ideal fodder for writers. Can you imagine a conversation between these two? Write it down, see where it takes you. They may just become characters in your next short story or novel. (Thanks, Alice, for the idea!)

The Bourbon Trail, in case you're wondering, is just a collection of distilleries in the region in between Louisville and Lexington. Many of the distilleries offer tours and tastings--we visited Buffalo Trace and Makers Mark, both well worth the trip. More about the tours when I can post some photos.

Review: 13 Little Blue Envelopes

2011-06-27T14:21:00.000-05:00

Every girl should have a quirky but loving aunt, a free spirit unencumbered by the responsibilities of motherhood who encourages her niece to think outside the box and embrace the unknown. I had one. So did seventeen year-old Ginny Blackstone, in Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperTeen, 2006).

This whirlwind of a book begins with a letter to Ginny from her Aunt Peg, an artist. Aunt Peg has enclosed $1,000 cash for a passport, a one-way ticket from New York to London, and a backpack, along with four rules and instructions to pick up a package at 4^th Noodle, the Chinese restaurant under her old apartment in New York City. The package turns out to be a packet of thirteen letters, the first of which is to be opened on the plane.

This kind of action was just something Ginny might have expected from Aunt Peg, who had mysteriously left New York City two years earlier for an open-ended trip to Europe.

But Aunt Peg had died of a fast-moving brain tumor three months earlier.

Guided by the letters and Aunt Peg’s friends, Ginny visits London, Edinburgh, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, the Greek island of Corfu, and finally, back to London. Along the way, Ginny collects pieces of information about her beloved and enigmatic aunt, finds romance, and learns something about herself.

At times, Johnson’s plot seems a little implausible. Would Ginny’s practical mother really allow her daughter to go to Europe solo on an adventure orchestrated by her unpredictable sister Peg? My advice is to suspend disbelief and just enjoy Ginny’s European adventure. Let go, as Aunt Peg might have said, and live a little. Harrod’s of London, Rome’s narrow and bustling streets, Parisian cafés, the canals of Amsterdam, a trip on a modern-day Danish Viking’s houseboat to see the windmills, the impossibly blue waters of Corfu—all come to life in Johnson’s vivid, lively descriptions.

Why am I recommending a book that came out in 2006? Because the sequel to “13 Little Blue Envelopes,” titled The Last Little Blue Envelope, was just released in April of this year (that one’s for another review!). If you want to join Ginny on her next European adventure, you really owe it to yourself to read the first one. Perfect summer reading for high school girls with a little wanderlust but no Aunt Peg to send them to Europe.

And now a note about what I think was brilliant marketing. Maureen Johnson offered a free download of 13 Little Blue Envelopes to coincide with the publication of the above-mentioned sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope, betting (rightly, in my case), that reading the first book would motivate people to buy the second. This seems like a great strategy for authors of series books. I rarely (never?) pick up a book mid-series without having read the first one. What do you think?

Based on my review originally published in The News-Gazette, June 26, 2011.

Double rainbow

2011-06-22T16:34:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a road trip to St. Peter, Minnesota to help a dear friend celebrate her 60th birthday. It's a 9 hour drive each way, although I would drive any distance for this woman. I generally like road trips, unless I happen to get caught in a raging, pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road-because-I-can't-see thunderstorm as I did--twice!--on the way back. But I was rewarded after the storm by the sight of this double rainbow, somewhere near LeRoy, Illinois.

"Revolver" Loaded With Suspense

2011-06-17T11:41:00.002-05:00

"Even the dead tell stories."

So begins Marcus Sedgwick's terrific novel “Revolver” (Roaring Book Press, 2010), a Prinz Honor Book for 2011. Fourteen year-old Sig Andersson had heard his father say these words many times before. Now, with his father's frozen corpse lying on the table in his family's cabin somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, Sig waits for the dead man's story to unfold.

The main action of Revolver takes place in just three days in 1910 outside of Giron, a lonely outpost in northern Scandinavia. The Giron chapters are interspersed with passages set in Nome, Alaska in 1899-1900 that fill in the back-story. Sig has found his father, fallen halfway through the ice where he’d tried to cross the nearby lake on his dogsled. Sig realizes that his father must have been in a terrible rush to get home, violating his own advice, "Never cross the lake by the river mouth; the ice is always thinner there. Even in wintertime." But what—or who—could have caused his father to abandon all caution in his haste to get home?

After his sister and stepmother (their mother was murdered in Nome) leave to get help, Sig’s first clue to the mystery of his father’s death arrives in the form of a terrifying visitor, a giant of a man named Günter Wolff. Wolff claims that Sig’s father owes him a share of gold, stolen while both were working in Nome. Sig knows nothing of the gold; neither does his sister Anna, who returns alone. Now both Sig and Anna are Wolff’s captives. He makes it clear that he will kill one of them to get the other to reveal the location of the stolen gold.

Sig realizes that their only hope lies in his father’s beloved Colt revolver, hidden in the storeroom near the cabin. Although Sig’s mother and stepmother were both devout, nonviolent women who hated the revolver, Sig’s father called it, “the most beautiful thing in the world…after your sister, and your dear mother, that is…. things can be “beautiful from the inside, because of what they can do.” In the remarkable passage that follows, Sig’s father describes exactly how a gun works and shows his children how to shoot. In his words, it is indeed a beautiful thing, although, as Anna says, “what happen when the bullet hits something? Someone, I mean. That’s not beautiful. That’s terrible.”

Gradually, Sig comes up with a plan for using his father’s revolver to defeat Wolff, while at the same time honoring his mother’s pacifism. Teens who like the books of Gary Paulsen and Jack London will love “Revolver.” It’s a quick read, but the questions it raises—truth-telling versus deceit, faith versus action, violence versus pacifism—will stick with you for a long time.

Originally published in The News-Gazette, Sunday, June 5, 2011.

I'm BAAACK!

2011-06-17T11:24:00.003-05:00

I can't believe my previous post was dated February 14, 2009! Well, actually, I can. A lot has changed since then, and I've decided it's time to give blogging a go again. I have three new books on forensic science coming out this fall, and I wanted to be able to tell you all about them. I hope that all of my old readers will come back, and that I'll get some new ones as well.

I have a new website (see the link at the right), which I hope you'll check out. I discovered that for some reason websites created with iWeb often are not correctly formatted (or sometimes not at all) on the Chrome browser, so I decided to switch to a free website creator called Weebly . So far I'm pretty happy with it. Let me know what you think.

Every three weeks I write a review of YA books for our local newspaper, The News-Gazette. I had all of my book reviews posted on my old website's blog; eventually I hope to transfer them all to this blog. I'll start with the most recent and work my way back.

Creative genius

2009-02-14T18:20:00.002-06:00

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, invites us to think of the concept as genius as the ancients did. Geniuses are not people, but rather more like a muse. We all have a genius; the trick is to learn how to capture it. Watch this TED talk when you feel that the well of creativity is running dry. (Oh, and she's funny, too.)

Saying goodbye

2009-02-13T22:20:00.004-06:00

Our local independent bookstore, Pages for All Ages, held their going out of business sale beginning today at 10 a.m. I happened to have a flexible morning, so I went over there at 10 after hitting the gym. And stood in line to get in. It was swamped; and I'd be tempted to say, "Where were all of you before when it mattered?" but I could tell that most everyone HAD been here before. It just wasn't enough, I guess.

Many of us had gift cards purchased for Christmas or Hannukah; we all wanted to cash in on those. But it was more than that; this was a local independent going down, and those of us who could wanted to be there to say goodbye.

The lines to purchase our discounted books and merchandise were long, but we had no idea how long. I got into line around 11:45. By 1:30 I had become friends with my line-mates: a school librarian, two college students, and a woman named Gail. At some point we realized the utter foolishness of standing in line for hours to get a 40% discount (50% for CDs, 70% magazines). Surely our time was worth more than that. But by that time a curious line psychology had set in: once you've been waiting in line to 1.5 hours, you're willing to stick it out because by god you don't want to say you wasted an hour and a half in line for nothing. So you stick it out for twice that time, and more.

One good Samaratin brought in a plate of cheese to share:

By 3:30 we discussed getting a bottle of wine from Friar Tuck's down the street. By 4:25 I was checked out, having spent my gift card and then some, and the day with some complete strangers that I now think of as line friends. Think about it: I didn't have to stand in line this long to see Obama in Springfield when he announced Biden as his running mate. Sigh.

Goodbye, Pages, our last major independent bookseller. We'll miss you.

A wild and curly scarf

2009-02-05T18:10:00.003-06:00

Crocheting things for my daughters this Christmas reminded me how much I enjoy making things with a hook and yarn. I made Alison a spiral scarf using a beautiful soft white wool/silk blend; I thought it turned out pretty well (although shorter than I would have liked), so I decided to make something similar with bold, bright colors. Unlike Alison's scarf, it's not subtle:

In fact, Alison said it reminded her of a sea slug. I've decided to take that as a compliment, as sea slugs are very interesting creatures. It's made out of 100% cotton yarn, which means that it's stiffer and holds the curl better than the silk/wool blend. Of course, the stiffness also means that it's less comfy and the fact that it's cotton makes it less warm.

In writing-related news, I'm wondering what the National Academy of Sciences report on the quality of forensic science as practiced in the nation's crime labs (hint: it's not good) will have on my upcoming forensic science books. It was a front-page article in the NYT.

More from the kitchen

2009-02-04T11:34:00.009-06:00

I discovered TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks a week or so ago after reading Virginia Heffernan's article in the New York Times Magazine, "Confessions of a TED addict."

Karen Armstrong, Jeff Bezos, Jared Diamond, Peter Gabriel, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Nellie McKay, Isaac Mizrahi, and Rick Warren have all given TED talks. Sounds interesting, right?

So I ambled over to the TED site, searched for an interesting talk among the hundreds available, and found one by Peter Reinhart, baker and author of several books, including Brother Juniper's Bread Book. This is one of my favorite bread books because, as its subtitle indicates (Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor), it is more than just a collection of recipes, it is also a meditation on bread-baking.

Reinhart explains in his lecture that bread-baking involves no fewer than three transformations. The first one occurs when we harvest living seeds; the seeds become dead things, and we grind them into flour. The second occurs when you make the dough. Yeast re-animates the flour, in a way, and the dough becomes a living thing that dies once again when you put it into the oven. The third transformation occurs when we eat the bread, and it becomes once again part of a living thing.

So Jesus was spot-on in using bread as a metaphor when he said, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger...the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

I was inspired to make Brother Juniper's signature bread, Struan. Struan is a Scottish bread made on the eve of the feast of St. Michael, the guardian of the harvest. Traditionally, it is made with all of the grains harvested during the year. Brother Juniper's is made from wheat, corn, oats, brown rice, and wheat bran; moistened with buttermilk and sweetened with brown sugar and honey. The dough is heavy and difficult to knead, but the result is delicious!

Here is a recipe for Struan, based on Brother Juniper's recipe, although the one I followed doesn't call for an initial soaking of the ingredients. And here are two loaves that are winging their way to two lucky daughters even as I write this:

kitchen makover

2009-02-04T11:21:00.005-06:00

Just a small one, really, but a little color makes a big difference.

Before (the inside of the cabinets with a kind of faux-woodgrain look):

After:

The color was suggested by my color-savvy sister; thanks, Susan! The shelves are actually painted a shade darker than the rest. I think it looks really pretty and brightens up the kitchen. I still need more space for my cookbooks, though.

Thanks, Mister Postman!

2009-01-30T13:51:00.003-06:00

Here's what he delivered today:

(Am I the only one who wonders how the heck you're supposed to open these boxes if not with sharp objects?)

Ta-da! Copies of my latest books, ten each.

2009-01-30T08:24:00.001-06:00

Test

Sent from my iPhone

Six word memoir

2009-01-25T21:54:00.003-06:00

The Six Word Memoir seems to be all the rage these days. Here's mine:

Sometimes I like to break the rules.

How about you?

The sad tale of Bloggie

2009-01-23T13:55:00.003-06:00

I once had a pet that I loved. Let's call him Bloggie (in keeping with other similarly named pets I've had, including Tumbly, Piggie [that's a soft "g," as in pigeon], Blackie, and Callie). At first, I relished the thought of feeding him clever new words and grooming him with new links and gadgets.

But, like many kids with short attention spans, I eventually grew tired of Bloggie. He languished in his cybercage for days, even weeks on end. "What, you want more words?" I'd snap. "I just fed you a week ago!" Some of his links grew tangled, and I told myself I didn't have time to comb them out.

A presidential inauguration that I'd anticipated for so long came and went. I'd occasionally think about feeding Bloggie some of my thoughts (like the way the snowflakes winked and sparkled in the sunlight as they fell outside my window during the inauguration ceremony, made all the more profound by the closing lines from Elizabeth Alexander's poem, Praise Song for the Day: "In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praise song for walking forward in that light."), but then it seemed too much trouble to shake Bloggie out of his torpor and apologize to him for being such a bad owner, and thought better of it.

But some readers (Pat) have apparently noticed Bloggie's silence, and are beginning to whisper about blog neglect. So, dear readers, what do you think? Is it time to take Bloggie to the pound in the hopes that someone else will love him, haul him out to the country and leave him near a friendly-looking farm, or put him down? (By the way, did it ever bother anyone else that that phrase is also commonly used for putting babies down for their naptimes?) Or should I give myself a good talking-to and develop a new, more mature appreciation for Bloggie?

Twilight (abridged)

2008-12-15T13:37:00.002-06:00

I read an advance reading copy of Twilight shortly after it came out, and was not impressed by the writing, Bella's self-sacrifice and submissiveness, or the thinly disguised Mormon propaganda about abstinence. So I haven't been even slightly tempted to see the movie. But I did enjoy this synopsis of the movie: "If 'Twilight' was 10 times shorter and 100 times more honest."

Art & Fear

2008-12-08T14:38:00.002-06:00

When I need encouragement with my fiction, I turn to certain books for inspiration. One of the best is Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles & Ted Orland. I am now working on Into the Fire, version umpty-million, so this passage resonated with me:

William Kennedy gamely admitted that he re-wrote his own novel Legs eight times, and that "seven times it came out no good. Six times it was especially no good. The seventh time it was pretty good, though it was way too long. My son was six years old by then and so was my novel and they were both about the same height."

Obamafied!

2008-12-02T13:25:00.001-06:00

Yes You Can Obamafy yourself with this PhotoBooth plug-in by Dubi Kaufmann. If you have a Mac running OSX 10.5 Leopard, that is. Download it here:
http://www.dubster.com/obamafy/

Local Matters WRFU Benefit

2008-12-01T16:49:00.005-06:00

If you live in the Champaign-Urbana area, or even if you don't, I'll be at the Jane Addams bookstore as part of the Local Matters art sale in downtown Champaign from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 6. The art sale is part of the Local Matters benefit for WRFU at the Cowboy Monkey, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. The benefit is being held to raise funds towards a new permanent tower for WRFU (104.5 FM), a local progressive radio station collective operating out of Urbana committed to social justice, focusing on public affairs issues, and the arts.

I'll be selling signed copies of Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery. There may be prizes!

For a detailed schedule of the show, go to www.myspace.com/whatmattersbenefit

Prairie Writers' Day 2008

2008-11-21T10:59:00.001-06:00

Writers and other publishing types who live on the coasts tend to feel a bit sorry for those of us who live in those flyover states of the Midwest. Maybe not so much anymore, now that our President-elect’s vacation home will be in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, but still. What they might not realize is that we can get the cream of east-coast children’s publishing to come visit us, thanks to our fantastic local SCBWI chapters.

I present to you: Prairie Writers’ Day 2008, courtesy of the Illinois Chapter of SCBWI. On November 15 2008, 175 published and pre-published childrens’ writers from Illinois (as well as a few from neighboring states) gathered for the 4th annual Prairie Writers’ Day at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. You might want to make yourself comfortable, because this is long!

First up was Harold Underdown, editorial consultant, go-to-guy for all things KidLit on the internet at The Purple Crayon and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Children’s Book Publishing. Harold introduced his two sidekicks, Mr. P (a.k.a. Mr. Glass Half Empty) and Mr. O (Mr. Hey, That There Glass is Half Full!) for an overview of the childrens' book publishing industry. Mr. P got his say first, as he so often does. Yes, the publishing industry has consolidated to the extent that the Big 5 publishing houses account for 1/2 of all the published books in the U.S. Many of the houses have closed their doors to unsolicited (or unagented) manuscripts. This has led to a loss of institutional memory in the industry, which seems now to be more interested in publishing safe spin-offs of old series and pushing movie and toy tie-ins than finding and cultivating new talent. And then, of course, there is the huge elephant in the room: the recession. Could things be worse?

Enter Mr. O! Not only could they be lots worse, but there’s much to be hopeful about! Turns out, Mr. P gave you only part of the picture. Yes, children’s book publishing has gone multi-national, but so has the rest of the world. Live with it. And there are still many independent presses and small imprints within the Big 5 that understand and love the children’s market and continue to do well. There are still many opportunities for unagented authors to reach editors, especially in the nonfiction and picture book markets.

But isn't technology rotting our childrens’ minds? Not necessarily! Consider the wonderful audiobooks that bring children’s books to entire families trapped in a car as they drive from, say, Illinois to Kansas for Thanksgiving. Think, for example, Bruce Coville’s Full Cast Audio books. E-books? Just another way of reading.

Loss of institutional memory? Dig a little deeper, my friends! The next speaker on the panel, Martha Mihalick, editor at Greenwillow, can trace a direct lineage back to the great Ursula Nordstrom. Take that, Mr. P! Yes, there is some schlock being published nowadays, but---who knew?—that sort of stuff has always been around. We just don’t remember it because it hasn’t lasted! Ha!

And as for the 800 pound gorilla that is the recession—well, perhaps it weighs only 600 pounds. Look at it this way: would you rather be making and selling SUVS, luxury jackets and the like, or books? ‘Nuff said.

Harold’s virtual handout is available on http://www.underdown.org/wik08-handout.htm

Next up: Martha Mihalick, editor with Greenwillow Books. She drew the “character” straw in the craft discussion, and a good thing, because she said that she is strongly drawn to character-driven books. She most often finds herself turning down manuscripts when the characters fall flat. Populate your books with memorable characters! This is not just true for novelists, but picture book writers as well. Think of Lilly, Olivia, Fancy Nancy, Max (the Wild Things) and the Pigeon who wanted to drive the bus. Characters should be identifiable as types (jocks, nerds, etc.) but there should also be characteristics that set them apart and make them memorable.

Using some Greenwillow books, Mihalick illustrated the categories that can reveal character: objects/possessions; people around them; actions (and reactions); opinions. I’m looking forward to reading or re-reading the books she mentioned with an eye to character: The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner); Tracking Daddy Down (Marybeth Kelsey); Me and the Pumpkin Queen (Marlane Kennedy); Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (Kevin Henkes); The Last Apprentice series (Joseph Delaney); Deadline (Chris Crutcher). Well-rounded characters, Mihalick ended by saying, gain the reader’s trust.

Editor Cheryl Klein (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) talked about plot. There are two types of plots, she said: those based on character, and structural plots. But in either case, any plotline must also include an action plot (the changes in circumstances) and an emotional plot (changes within the protagonist). I won’t go into Klein’s talk in detail, because she has posted the outlines of some of her talks on plot on her website, Talking Books. Highly recommended, especially for those of us who struggle with plot.

Caroline Meckler, Wendy Lamb Books editor, took on that most elusive beast, voice. We all know it when we read it, but what is voice exactly, and how do we find our story’s voice? The elements of voice, she said, are diction (choice of words); detail (life and color); imagery (sensory details); syntax (sentence structure, length, cadence, etc.), and tone. The voice that works for I Capture the Castle (one of Meckler’s favorite books) would obviously not work for, say, a John Grisham novel. Author Joan Aiken (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) wrote, “Nothing encourages the flow of a story so much as the discovery of the voice in which it is to be told. I once sat down and began a book with the lines, ‘It was dusk—winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills…” In those fourteen words I had already fixed the whole mood and atmosphere of the story so firmly that, though the book they began was interrupted after three chapters by outside circumstances, and not recommenced until after a gap of seven years, when I took it up again, I had not the slightest difficulty in going on from where I had left off.” (The Way to Write for Children: An Introduction to the Craft of Writing Children’s Literature, p. 33).

Jennifer Rofé (previously Jaeger), of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, works closely with her clients on revisions. Using her clients’ books as examples, she outlined some of the revision questions you need to ask yourself when you’ve finished your first (or second, or third…) draft. Is there a good balance between direct and indirect characterization? Read Milagros, Girl From Away, by Meg Medina, for good examples of characterization. Make sure you—and your reader—understand what motivates your characters. She cited The Year the Swallows Came Early, by Kathryn Fitzmaurice (coming out February 2009) as a good example of character motivation. Is the story moving forward effectively, and are all the scenes and dialogue necessary? Check out The Farwalker’s Quest, by Joni Sensel (coming out in February 2009) for a well-paced read. And finally, are the plots and subplots sufficiently developed? Is the storyline unfolding sensibly? Read Cynthea Liu’s Paris Pan Takes the Dare, coming out in June 2009.

Pretty rich stuff for writers, no? But SCBWI-Illinois, much like the Cat in the Hat, had still more tricks to throw at us. Sharon Darrow, faculty chair of the MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts, did a terrific teaching session using a complete rhymed picture book manuscript and the first few pages of two longer manuscripts submitted by SCBWI-Illinois members. SCBWI-Illinois’ very own Carol Grannick, a licensed clinical social worker, talked about Learned Optimism for Writers (check out Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, by Martin E.P. Seligman). And SCBWI-Illinois member and fitness instructor Mary Loftus led us in two much-appreciated fitness breaks, with specific tips for staying fit while writing. (This might be a good time to stretch!)

If you’d like to improve your craft, whether you’re published or just starting out, I highly recommend attending an SCBWI writers’ event near you. You can find a local chapter at http://www.scbwi.org/. Many of the editors who come to these events agree to accept unsolicited manuscripts from attendees (after the event, of course!). I know of quite a few people who say that they sold a manuscript as a direct result of attending an SCBWI event. And you never know when you’ll meet someone who can help you advance your writing career—or just make a new friend.

Happy Writing!
--Sara Latta

(cross-posted on KidLit Central News)

Prairie Writers' Day teaser

2008-11-16T21:37:00.005-06:00

What do Harold Underdown (The Purple Crayon), Martha Mihalick (Greenwillow Books), Jennifer Rofe (Andrea Brown Literary Agency), Caroline Meckler (Wendy Lamb Books), and Cheryl Klein (Arthur A. Levine Books) have in common? Well, aside from being some of the top names in children's publishing and really nice people, they all joined 175 aspiring and published childrens' writers at Dominican University in River Forest IL on Saturday for the 4th Annual Prairie Writers' Day. I'll be blogging about the conference over at KidLit Central on Friday, November 21, so if you're interested in writing for kids be sure and check it out. I'll post my report here as well.

In related news, I recently stumbled upon the Illinois Authors Wiki, a project of the Illinois Center for the Book. I'm pretty pleased to be listed on the same website as Jane Addams, Sherwood Anderson, L. Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, and Gwendolyn Brooks, among many others. Pretty cool!

A gem of a book

2008-11-16T18:39:00.004-06:00

The Newberry Library's exhibit Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books was interesting but ultimately disappointing. The chronological organization was vague and often confusing, with a case featuring a 1970s-era book sitting willy-nilly by one featuring Renaissance-era books. And although the individual descriptions of the artifacts were well-done, I didn't think the exhibit conveyed the overall theme of the evolution of children's books from rather grim, moralistic teaching tools to the books we enjoy today. Still, worth a visit if you're in the area.

But I was to be richly rewarded! Outside of the bookstore (which is excellent and part of the Seminary Bookstore and 57th Street Bookstore co-op, so I got a discount) there was a small library cart of used books. I found this lovely little volume of poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002 National Book Award Finalist):

I was thrilled with this find, because I'd been wanting to read her poetry, and at $2.50 you couldn't beat the price. And then I turned to the title page and read this inscription in Shihab Nye's neat hand: "For Senator Obama and his beautiful family. Naomi Shihab Nye, 2007."

I was thrilled, of course, but part of me is sad that Obama (or more likely, some staff member) didn't hang onto this book. I think that he, Michelle, and especially their sweet daughters would love these poems. So, First Family, if you want the book back, it's yours. For $2.50.

Veterans' Day

2008-11-11T14:27:00.002-06:00

Thanks to those veterans who have given so much of themselves in the service of our country. I came across this amazing book of poetry, Here, Bullet, written by Iraq War vet Brian Turner. As a science writer, I was particularly struck by this lovely poem. A note at the back of the book explains that the poem refers to Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, a scientist from the turn of the first millenium who made advances in the fields of physics, among others. (For a longer review of Here, Bullet, visit Guys Lit Wire.)

Alhazen of Basra
by Brian Turner

If I could travel a thousand years back
to August 1004, to a small tent
where Alhazen has fallen asleep among books
about sunset, shadows, and light itself,
I wouldn't ask whether light travels in a straight line,
or what governs the laws of refraction, or how
he discovered the bridgework of analytical geometry;
I would ask about the light within us,
what shines in the mind's great repository
of dream, and whether he's studied the deep shadows
daylight brings, how light defines us.

Canvassing, revisited

2008-11-08T17:18:00.003-06:00

I've been thinking about my canvassing experience in Indiana a lot lately, and so I was fascinated to come across this letter from a book I found in a used book store recently, Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999 (Lisa Grunwald & Stephen J. Adler, eds., The Dial Press). The poverty Les Johnson describes sounds terribly familiar.

The summer of 1964--"Freedom Summer"--would remain among the most memorable in the lives of hundreds of students participating in the efforts of the SNCC to register Mississippi blacks for the vote. Volunteer Les Johnson wrote home...the same month that President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Canvassing is very trying, you walk a little dusty street, with incredibly broken down shacks. The people sitting on porches staring away into nowhere--The sweat running down your face! Little kids half-naked in raggy clothes all over the place--this is what you face with your little packet of "Freedom Forms."
We don't canvass except between 4 and 7 at night because most people are in the fields in the day.
I've spent 3 hours, talking and got only 2 forms signed, other times I've gotten 10 in an hour.
We've gotten almost 2000 registered now in Clarksdale.
Unfortunately, Freedom registration is terribly remote to these people. I almost feel guilty--like I'm playing for numbers only; for you walk up to a porch, knock on a door and enter another world. A world made up, mainly, like Pop Art. The walls are inevitably covered with a funeral hall calendar, a portrait calendar of President Kennedy, old graduation pictures. Maybe a new cheap lamp from Fred's dollar store.
You meet an afraid, but sometimes eager, curious face--one which is used to--many times over 70 years worth--saying "Yes Sir" to everything a white man says--and not really listening. You see their pain, the incredible years of suffering etched in their worn faces; and then if you convince them to sign you leave. You walk down the deteriorating steps to the dirt, to the next house--the next world and start in on your Sales pitch again, leaving behind something which has broken you a little more. Poverty in the abstract does nothing to you. When you wake up to it every morning, and come down through the streets of it, and see the same old many playing the accordian on the ground, the same man selling peaches out of a basket too heavy for his twisted body, the same children, a day older--a day closer to those men--after this everyday, pov erty is a reality that is so outrageous you have to learn to be unshocked and become jaded for the moment--or else be unable to function.
Little hands grope everyday for a nickle--it's hard to say "no" to kids who's lives are already a Hell which White America refused to care about.
These children represent a tremendous amount of energy, a talent, and value--all of which the white world says--"let this energy pitch cotton, and clean up after me, and do work I don't want to do." That energy is finally coming to the surface in Harlem and Rochester and as Mr. Baldwin has said, "if we don't find a productive channel for that energy we will be destroyed by that energy."

The children that Les Johnson describes are my age or a little older now. The folks I met in those broken-down neighborhoods are white and black and Hispanic now, but the most notable difference between Les Johnson's experience and mine was the palpable feeling of hope for a better future.
Yes we can.

A night to remember

2008-11-05T11:08:00.003-06:00

Meet the next First Family of the United States: Barack, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha Obama. Barack--and all of us who knocked on doors, made phone calls, gave money, and of course VOTED--made history yesterday. Three hundred eighty nine years after the first African slaves landed on our shores, 145 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and 43 years after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, we have come together to elect a black man, Barack Hussein Obama, as president.

This is an historic event not just for all of the African-Americans whose dreams seemed to be so often deferred, but for all Americans. Barack Obama showed us how to look beyond the divisions of class and race, red and blue states, "real" and I guess "fake" America, and embrace our common goodness. His refusal to engage in name-calling and partisianship in this campaign, his cool in the midst of the financial crisis, and his intellectual curiosity are all encouraging signs of the kind of president he will be.

Over the course of the campaign, I've spent days canvassing for Obama in Indianapolis and Lafayette, Indiana. For anybody who has never knocked on the doors of complete strangers to talk about politics, I recommend it. Seriously. It will force you to examine your stereotypes. At times, you will be way out of your comfort zone. And often, it will warm your heart. A few anecdotes:

A bright 18 year-old with a developmental/medical disability who had decided to vote for Obama after studying each candidate's health care platforms. He was clearly excited about being able to vote for the first time.
A 39 year-old woman of very modest means who recently registered to vote for the first time because she saw in Obama a man who cared and would make life better for her and her family.
A man who told me that his entire family, including his son in Iraq, had already voted for Obama. He saw in Obama the candidate who would be most likely to bring his son home safely and to ensure that vets receive the care and benefits they deserve.
An older black woman who wanted an extra door hanger as a keepsake to pass on to her grandchildren.
And even a 76-year old white man who admitted that "he'd like to see the n****r in the White House. I don't like black people," he said, "but I think he'd make a good president."

Given the amount of time I've spent in Indiana, then, I felt a special thrill when I read--only this morning--that the state went for Obama. First time Indiana has gone for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964. I like to think I own a tiny part of that achievement!

I haven't been blogging much lately because obsessively checking the political blogs eats up a lot of time, if you know what I mean. Obama's win has put my world to rights again.

Do the math

2008-09-26T22:32:00.002-05:00

A lot of folks seem to think that the Republicans traditionally beat the Democrats on economic issues.

Wrong. Since World War II the Democrats have been overwhelmingly better at running the economy. Hands down, case closed, beyond any statistical doubt. They've borrowed less money, created more wealth and opportunity, and left the next generation in better shape. YA author Scott Westerfeld does the math and shows us why Obama is the candidate to lead us out of the fiscal mess that the Republicans have gotten us into. Check it out: YA for Obama.

KidLit Central

2008-09-26T11:28:00.002-05:00

I'm blogging today over at KidLit Central about interesting behind-the-scenes stories about childrens' literature. (Teaser: Did you know that Margret and H.A. Rey were German Jews who bicycled out of Paris in 1940 on the day the German army moved in to occupy the city; they eventually made their way to the U.S. via Brazil. One of the few things they carried with them was the manuscript for Curious George. True story!)

YA for Obama

2008-09-22T11:10:00.004-05:00

YA author Maureen Johnson recently started a social networking site for YA writers and readers, YA for Obama. Loads of talented YA authors have joined. I did too; so can you! Check it out by clicking on the widget below. Here's what Judy Blume has to say in a post titled, "Why I support Obama":

All I ask is that you make an informed decision. It's about the issues. It's about health care, the economy, education, the environment, a woman's right to choose, equal pay for equal work -- it's about who will be appointed to the Supreme Court, and it's about never rushing into war again - not without all the facts, not without trying everything we can to prevent war first. This election is too important for all of us to decide in any other way.

Visit YA for Obama

Tattoos!

2008-09-15T15:46:00.005-05:00

Remember that April Fool's joke I made on this blog about my manuscript, Mommy's Visit to the Tattoo Parlor?

Sminthophile, aka Jacqueline, alerted me a new book, Mommy Has a Tattoo. From the website:

For the LOW cover price of $16.95 you will receive a SIGNED first edition copy of MOMMY HAS A TATTOO, while supplies last! MOMMY HAS A TATTOO tells the story of a little boy named James, who is afraid of his tattooed neighbor until he discovers that his own mother has a tattoo as well. Tattoos are a source of pride for lots of Mommies, and a source of endless curiosity for their kids. Discover why tattooed families across the country are falling in love with this book!

Who's laughing now? Phil Padwe, that's who. It's self-published, I think, but I bet there's a pretty decent niche market for it. My sister and I could be raking in the dough if we'd run with this. I know at least one reader of this blog who was looking for this VERY book.

Meanwhile, for those of you unwilling to make the jump to permanent ink, I have just the thing for you, especially if you have to be an assistant prof of information science at the University of Iowa. The Illustrated Librarian: 12 Temporary Tattoos for Librarians and Book Lovers. Available at Patina Stores.

David Foster Wallace

2008-09-15T11:50:00.002-05:00

When I heard that David Foster Wallace had killed himself, I felt momentarily sucker-punched. Not just because I love his nonfiction (no, I never tackled Infinite Jest), although I do. I felt as though I knew him, although I have never met him. He grew up in Philo, a small town near Champaign-Urbana, the son of academics here in town. He wrote about our particular spot in the midwest with bitingly funny detachment. Harper's Magazine has made available, in PDF form, the essays he wrote for them. Two of my favorites are "Tennis, Trigonometry, and Tornadoes: A Midwestern Boyhood," and "Ticket to the Fair."

RIP, DFW.

Sarah Palin's choice

2008-09-13T16:07:00.002-05:00

I have been talking with a number of my women friends about Sarah Palin's choice to have Trig. We are all pro-choice. One of them has a brother with Down Syndrome; another has a niece with Down. The brother and niece are both loved and cherished. Personally, if I found out that I was carrying a child with Down Syndrome, I know I would have the baby and love it with all my heart. But the point is, that would be my choice. And thank goodness that Sarah Palin had a choice.

My friend Beth Finke has a disabled son, now 22 years old. She writes movingly about the decision she and her husband made to carry that baby to term, despite the risks to her own health (she has Type 1 diabetes). But the point is, no one forced her to have Gus. It was a decision that she and her husband made.

You can read Beth's op-ed piece here: "When choice is part of the equation."

9/11 memories

2008-09-11T12:04:00.003-05:00

Today, of course, is the seven-year anniversary of the day that changed all of our lives. It started off as a beautiful day--sunny, with just a hint of fall's approaching crispness. I remember it so well--the kids had gotten off to school and Tony was at work. I was sitting here in the kitchen, finishing my coffee and getting ready to go upstairs and write when I heard the news on the radio. First one plane, then two, and then a third. And even as this darkness seemed to descend on us all, the sun continued to shine as brightly as ever, indifferent to our hate and fear and sadness. And so life went on for those of us left behind.

Butterflies on the sedum in my backyard. 9/11/08

The LHC

2008-09-11T11:07:00.005-05:00

Sorry for my prolonged absence; as Barack Obama said on the Letterman show last night, we've entered the silly season of politics. All I could think of to write about was politics, and I didn't want to turn this into a political blog. So I just kept quiet. I'm in the process of revamping my website and hope to get back to blogging on a more regular basis.

But for today, anyway, I had to jump back into the action and give a shout-out to my husband, Tony Liss, and all of the other physicists involved in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN! Because, amidst the "lipstick on a pig" flap yesterday, the world learned that the LHC finally turned on. He and his colleagues at the U.I. were interviewed for an article in the local paper, "UI Team Takes Part in Worldwide Science Experiments," and they appeared on the local TV news stations. Even though they they won't begin collisions or taking data until October, it's still pretty exciting. Either they find the Higgs boson--which will be pretty cool--or they won't, which in its own way may be even more exciting, because physicists will be forced to re-evaluate their theories. And then there's the possibility of determining the nature of--drum roll, please--dark matter!

Stella Brite, the sequel. Yes?

Stop GOP handouts for big oil!

2008-08-19T19:14:00.002-05:00

I know I've been absent for quite a while...but here is the video I made from the MoveOn.org clean energy rally that took place today in downtown Champaign:

More to come later on the skull I found in my backyard, my worm farm, and my new gadget.

KidLit Central

2008-08-07T22:24:00.003-05:00

I'm blogging over at KidLit Central today--check it out: KidLit Central News.

Having been alerted to the fact that there may be a link to the blog on Cynsations, I decided against posting a cute video of a sleepy bear cub in favor of something more, oh I don't know, more useful to writers. That said, I still think it's really cute, so a special treat for you:

CERN rap

2008-07-30T20:32:00.002-05:00

Well, in case you wanted to know more about the science behind Tony's sabbatical in Switzerland, here you go. Laugh and learn:

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

KidLit Central

2008-07-30T17:40:00.000-05:00

Hey, all you writers! I'm going to be a regular contributor at a new blog, KidLit Central News, featuring children’s publishing news, reviews, entertainment and more. It will feature folks involved with children's literature in and around the Central U.S., including Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. I'll be blogging on Friday, August 8. Check it out!

The science of satire

2008-07-30T16:59:00.003-05:00

Mahzarin R. Banaji, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has a good article called "The Science of Satire" up at The Chronicle of Higher Education. (It's free.) Lots of smart people have weighed in on why the notorious New Yorker cover is not good satire, but Banaji explains why depictions of the Obamas as terrorists leaves an indelible imprint on our brains, even if we do not believe it to be true:

For decades, psychologists have described the "sleeper effect" — the idea that information, even information we might reject at first blush, ends up persuading us, contrary to our intention, over time. That often occurs when the content of the message (Obama=Islamist) and the source providing the message (The New Yorker trying to be cute) have split off in our minds. When satire isn't done right, as in the case of the Obama cover, the intended parody easily splits off from the actual and more blatant association. The latter then has the power to persuade over the long haul, when conscious cognition isn't up to policing it. Communicators of mass media should be alert to that, so that decisions about particular portrayals are based on knowledge of their full impact, and the justification for the supposedly sophisticated cognitive function they serve offered in light of such basic knowledge.

The wisdom of Mark Twain

2008-07-23T22:38:00.003-05:00

I spent an entire semester reading and studying Mark Twain in college, and it was one of the most enjoyable classes I ever took. My novel in progress owes a huge debt to Twain. So when I saw Time magazine's recent cover feature on Twain, I had to read it. The first article was written by Roy Blount Jr. (talk about a writer who owes a huge debt to Twain!). Blount points out much of Twain's scathing commentary could have been written about today's news:

What about those Abu Ghraib photographs? In "King Leopold's Soliloquy," a fulminating essay he published in 1905, when he was a very cantankerous 70, Twain imagines the ruler of Belgium pitying himself for the inconvenience of photos showing natives of the Congo whose hands have been cut off by Belgian exploiters. In the good old days, Leopold complains, he could deny atrocities and be believed. "Then all of a sudden came the crash! That is to say, the incorruptible Kodak--and all the harmony went to hell! The only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe."

Waterboarding? In 1902, American soldiers were involved in a war to suppress rebels in the Philippines, which the U.S. had taken from Spain in the Spanish-American War, then decided to keep for itself instead of granting the Filipinos the independence they thought they had been promised. That outcome enraged Twain. So did "the torturing of Filipinos by the awful 'water-cure.'"

"To make them confess--what?" Twain asked. "Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless."

The companion article to Blount's is by Stephen L. Carter, "Getting Past Black and White," in which he argues that Twain was the "man who popularized the sophisticated literary attack on racism...Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a member of a Confederate militia, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to rile the nation over racial injustice and rouse its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century who has lifted a pen.
Or typed on a computer."

The articles sent me back to my 2-volume set of Twain's Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, published by the Library of America in 1992. In response to a lynching that occurred in Missouri, Twain wrote an essay titled, "The United States of Lyncherdom."
But what struck me, in the context of my novel, was this passage:

It is thought...that a lynching crowd enjoys a lynching. It certainly is not true; it seems impossible of belief. It is freely asserted--you have seen it in print many times of late--that the lynching impulse has been misinterpreted; that it is not the outcome of a spirit of revenge, but of a "mere atrocious hunger to look upon human suffering." If that were so, the crowds that saw the Windsor Hotel burn down would have enjoyed the horrors that fell under their eyes. Did they? No one will think that of them, no one will make that charge. Many risked their lives to save the men and women who were in peril. Why did they do that? Because none would disapprove. There was no restraint; they could follow their natural impulse. Why does a crowd of the same kind of people in Texas, Colorado, Indiana, stand by, smitten to the heart and miserable, and by ostentatious outward signs pretend to enjoy a lynching? Why does it lift no hand or voice in protest? Only because it would be unpopular to do it, I think; each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the race, is more dreaded than wounds and death. When there is to be a lynching the people hitch up and come miles to see it, bringing their wives and children. Really to see it? No--they come only because they are afraid to stay at home, lest it be noticed and offensively commented upon.

Twain proposes that we remedy this situation by stationing one morally courageous man in each community to "encourage, support and bring to light the deep disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places of the heart." But Twain doubts that there are enough brave people for the task, and so proposes bringing American missionaries in China back home to the lynching fields, because "our country is worse off than China."

My novel is about a boy who becomes one of those brave men. I hope to do him justice!

NYC

2008-07-22T20:52:00.004-05:00

Just got back from a lovely, wonderful long weekend in which Tony, Alison, Caitlin, Eli and I converged to celebrate birthdays and general family togetherness. I like this picture of the five of us:
As well as this one, taken in front of the storefront of a place called Gray's Papaya, which according to Tony is an institution on the West Side:

Oh, yes we can!

Concerning books as art, daughters, writing, and the circus

2008-07-13T21:16:00.011-05:00

That's just a lazy title to say, this entry is going to be about a lot of things, because there's been a lot of water under the bridge since I wrote my last entry. And also to tell you about a bunch of new pictures I've posted on my Mac web gallery.

Last Sunday I drove up to St. Paul to visit Alison, one of my lovely daughters, who just moved into new digs along with about 50 of her friends. OK, eight of them are renting an entire duplex. Nice place with a backyard in a great neighborhood. I saw more of the Twin Cities on this visit than ever before; I'm beginning to understand why people love them so much, despite the cruel, cruel winters. We visited the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. I'm quite sure that if I lived nearby I would be taking classes on hand typesetting, book binding, paper making, and book art design. As it is I contented myself with a handmade book--Pulling Wire, a short story by Barry Lopez. Quite reasonably priced.

The next day we visited the Bakken Library and Museum, "a center for education and learning that furthers the understanding of the history, cultural context, and applications of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and their benefits to contemporary society." Despite that rather dreary-sounding mission statement, it was really a pretty cool place, especially the historical exhibits. There was a working theremin, the first electronic musical instrument. You play it by moving your hands around two radio antennae, one controlling pitch and the other, volume. We weren't able to get much out of it besides squawks, but it was a lot of fun. There such amusements as the magnetic hairbrush, which in the 19th century was thought to help prevent balding. There was a terrific multi-media tableau of Victor Frankenstein's laboratory and Mary Shelly's study (Shelly was influenced by Luigi Galvani, who conducted a series of experiments on severed frogs' legs that led to the discovery of animal electricity). And Alison was thrilled to learn that the library contains a large collection of primary works on mesmerism and hypnotism, which might be helpful in writing her senior honors thesis on feminism and the spiritualist movement in 19th century America.

AND that is not all we did! We visited the Walker Art Center sculpture garden (the museum itself was closed) and saw many cool things, including Claes Oldenberg's famous spoon with cherry sculpture and this fun kinetic sculpture, featured here with the lovely Alison.

On Wednesday, I said goodbye to Alison and the Twin Cities for the second half of my writer's vacation and drove down to Baraboo Wisconsin, home of the Circus World Museum, for a couple of days of research for my novel and quiet writing time. Baraboo, it turns out, was the winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus. If you love the circus, you should visit this place. Loads of history as well as ongoing shows. I feel a little guilty for enjoying the dancing elephant act as much as I did, but what can I say? Hannah Louise charmed me:

You can view more circus photos, including old wagons and a video of a working calliope, here and here. Be aware that many of the figures depicted on the wagons are pretty objectionable--you know, stereotyped and exaggerated ideas of "exotic" folks. (Look at the "Americas" wagon and you'll know what I mean.) There is ample fodder here for a thesis, if it hasn't been done already. My visit to Circus World actually answered a couple of questions I had about framing the circus in my book, so it was totally worthwhile.

And then let me end tonight with a plug for the Willowood Inn, this terrific little mom and pop motel that I stayed in near Baraboo, just up the road from Devil's Lake State Park. At only $60/night, I was a little afraid that it might be a flea bag. I was wrong! It was charming:
Each room has its own theme; I got the western room:
And to top off my really fun writer's week, I had lunch in Madison with Sminthia, aka Jacqueline Houtman, who until Friday was my email/bloggy friend, but is now a real face to face friend. Hi Jacqueline!

Oh, and on Saturday the lovely Alison and her equally lovely sister Caitlin celebrated their 20th birthdays! Happy birthday to my favorite twins!

Wordle

2008-07-03T12:49:00.002-05:00

I finished researching and writing up proposed outlines for two new books for Enslow's new True Crime: Forensic Science series (this should make for interesting dinner table discussions) and finally, finally I'm hunkering down and making good progress on revising my novel.

Which is not to say that I haven't done a little procrastinating. Wordle is a fun little application that makes word clouds from text that you provide. Here's what I made for Little Red Cap (aka Little Red Riding Hood):

 
Try it--it's fun!

Words in the Woods

2008-06-23T22:05:00.004-05:00

Just got back from Words in the Woods, a wonderful children's writers retreat near Springfield, Illinois. Joining us for the retreat were speakers Barry Goldblatt (agent extraordinaire); Holly Black (author of the Spiderwick Chronicles, among other excellent books); and Namrata Tripathi (super-savvy editor, Hyperion Books for Children). For me, one of the most valuable aspects of the retreat were the suggestions and feedback from my critique group on my manuscript. I'm intent on finally finishing my revision of Into the Fire this summer, and I came away with some great ideas. From the speakers, lots of great stuff on plot, building characters, setting, and revisions.

The super-duper organizers of the retreat, the Springfield Scribes, wrote some incredibly funny skits to introduce some of the sessions. I'll try to post a video of one of the skits later. In the meantime, I got to play Pink Pain in the character catwalk. Apparently I had an alter ego I never knew about:

Yes, that's a whip I'm wielding. And I'm told I handled it convincingly.

2008-06-16T20:11:00.004-05:00

Remind me why these the the legal union of these two women, in a committed relationship for over 50 years, pose a threat to the institution of marriage:

Congratulations, Phyllis and Del.

Dad

2008-06-15T21:15:00.004-05:00

Happy Day After Father's Day! (That's only an official holiday in my house.) Did you know that Father's Day was not recognized as a national holiday until Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972? Me neither, until I heard it on NPR.

My dad, like many of his generation, was not a particularly hands-on kind of parent. It wasn't that I didn't see much of him--quite the contrary. A dairy farmer is seldom far from home, and we were often together, milking cows and doing other chores. But the business of overseeing schoolwork, music lessons, etc.--you know, parenting--was mostly left up to Mom. Not that she minded; I think Mom loved raising us.

A funny thing happened when my siblings and I became adults. Dad began reaching out to us in ways that he never had when we were younger. A few years ago, he began sending us letters on Father's Day, telling us how important we are to him. I always open his Father's Day letters with a mixture of gratitude and resignation, because I know that in addition to his now kind of sappy expressions of love there will also be a good amount of preaching. I know he still hopes to bring this strayed lamb back into church, but I guess the bright side is that he won't give up on me.

So, thanks Dad, for the Father's Day gift. We may disagree on many things, but I think we both agree that we love each other.

Sexism and the media

2008-06-10T11:57:00.003-05:00

In keeping with the idea that Ida B. Wells did not receive her due in part because she was and independent, outspoken women, I'd like to offer up this excellent video by the Women's Media Center:

You can sign a petition to send a message to the media that "Sexism Sells, But I'm Not Buying It!" here.

Books, art, and rain

2008-06-09T10:43:00.004-05:00

It was that kind of weekend. The Great Basement Flood of '08 is small potatoes compared with the terrible floods in Indiana and elsewhere in the Midwest; I know that. Still, I had been looking forward to the Printer's Row Book Fair and the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago for weeks, and I really needed to get away from that basement.

Am I glad I did! On Saturday afternoon, Eli and I picked up my sister and her daughter from Park Ridge and drove down to Hyde Park for the 57th Street Art Fair and a chance to use our 20% member's discount at the 57th Street Bookstore. I have a real soft spot for Hyde Park-- that's where Tony and I met and began our lives together. But I also have fond memories of the Art Fair, not least because that's where we discovered Aaron Macsai, the jeweler who would make our wedding rings. And of course, the bookstores. Just as it began to rain, we hit 57th Street Books, and Powells, a terrific used bookstore right across the street from our old apartment (and place where I spent too much money back in the day).

The next day was even more bookish. Eli, my niece and I (my sister had to work) took the train into the city for the Book Fair. First on my agenda was a talk by Paula J. Giddings, the author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Her talk, which was being taped for CSPAN (archived on Book TV), was interesting, particularly her observation that Wells' campaign against lynching went unacknowledged or was marginalized in the writings of white and black activists of her time. Giddings noted that the oversights could be explained, in part, by her reputation as a "difficult" woman. She writes,

Wells was certainly that, even when taking into account the double standard applied to assertive, independent women. During the latter period of her life, Wells was more militant than all of the reform figures mentioned above and publicly crossed swords with them...On the other hand, history books are filled with the names of combative and highly individualistic people...I concluded that Wells's legacy was the victim of those same progressive movements of which she was a part. Predominantly white reform organizations could never subscribe to her views about race; those with race-based agendas, sucha s the NAACP, the NACW, and to a lesser extent the Urban League, could not accommodate her views regarding leadership and class.

After the reading and booksigning, I browsed the bookstalls for a few minutes. It was starting to sprinkle when I popped into the poetry tent to join my niece to hear Maxine Kumin's poetry reading. It wasn't long before the sprinkles turned to torrents, and for once a poetry reading was jam-packed. She gamely read on, if a little rattled, as the wind and rain whipped the sides of the tent, and thunder periodically drowned out her words. At some point, soaking fair organizers ran into the tent and called the reading to an end, saying that they would have to turn off the power and get us to a safer place. As I was leaving the tent, I couldn't help but notice that all of the tents had metal spikes in the middle, surely tempting targets for Zeus's lightening bolts.

There was so much that I missed at the book fair: my pal Beth Finke; Chicago Tribune Young Adult Book Prize recipient S.E. Hinton; Marianne Wiggins, who wrote Evidence of Things Unseen, one of my favorite books ever and more recently The Shadow Catcher, which will probably be one of my favorites when I get around to reading it. But all in all, a great bookish weekend.

On the drive home, we had to detour around a section of I-57. The reason, I found out when I got home, was downed power lines due to a tornado touch-down. Enough already!

Circles

2008-06-05T16:57:00.002-05:00

Pat Bracewell, a writer friend and reader of this blog sent me a link to her most recent essay, "Circles," in the June issue of Skirt!.

She writes about singing Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game" for at her friend's 20th birthday party, and then playing it again for her friends 38 years later. And now, of course, they all have sons and daughters of their own, and the words take on a new meaning. It's a good read, and if you, like us, also have college-age kids, it may even bring a few tears to your eyes.

A day to remember

2008-06-04T09:51:00.003-05:00

I love this picture of Barack and Michelle doing a fist bump before his speech in St. Paul. It marks a historic day in American politics, and I can't wait to see them in the White House. (Note to Hillary: you lost. Really. So it's time to admit it and rally your troops around the Democratic nominee.)

But June 3 was memorable, to me anyway, for another reason. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. that morning to a terrific thunderstorm. I made the rounds, closed all the windows, and settled in on the couch beside a very agitated Gracie, who panted and whined until the storm died down. Neither one of us got much sleep. So I was not in a very good state of mind when I got up at 6:45 yesterday morning. And then I found an inch of water in the basement.

A piece of advice: put on rubber boots and rubber gloves before picking up your son's live X-box 360 from an inch of water. Because otherwise you might get a little shock. I speak from experience.

Our main sump pump chose this moment to die (although I guess you wouldn't know if it died when it was dry, would you?) and the valiant little back-up sump pump just couldn't keep up.

So I spent the day cleaning up a big mess (it's still not done). And of course, Tony was in Geneva. We have a joke that some calamity always happens when he's gone, and it's at least partly based in reality. When the girls were toddlers, one of the hoses in our aquarium popped off, pouring 40 gallons of salt water onto the floor. Tony? At Fermilab. When Alison was a little older, she fell down the basement steps. You now where Tony was. Of course, he feels terrible about this, but there you are.

Bird brains

2008-05-30T22:22:00.002-05:00

OK, for my pal Sminthia, who has been suffering through my prolonged silence while her DH watches Kung Fu movies (did I get that right?), I have some interesting science-related links:

The first one is New York Science Festival, which I would be attending if I were anywhere nearby. Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia University and festival organizer, said,

“We all start out as little scientists,” Dr. Greene said, but adults often lose touch with that, which is dangerous. “Science is an element in our lives,” he added. “We need a general public that is willing to engage with the ideas of science.”

That is one of those things that I like to remind myself of when I am writing science books for young people. I really hope that I am inspiring future scientists, or at least kids who are engaged in science.

The other thing is that I just discovered an interesting website, 3quarksdaily, a collection of science, design, current affair, literature, and art. Here is a great video from the blog about the intelligence of crows. I love this:

Obama: coolest presidential candidate ever

2008-05-29T16:54:00.003-05:00

As evidenced by this picture:

Note the shades, the patrol car in the background, his casual-yet-elegant clothing. And of course, there's the finger holding his place in a book. Other women can swoon over men in uniforms; give me a man who reads any day. And now I have a confession to make: I was contemplating photoshopping in Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery for the book he's really reading (Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, interestingly). But alas, I lack those skills.

Hair

2008-05-27T21:26:00.003-05:00

OK, so I had come just THIS close (imagine my thumb and pointer finger poised a millimeter away from each other) from writing farewell, friends and family. A blog suicide, of course, not a real one! It not so much that I had nothing more to write about--although living in Illinois v. Switzerland does remove some of the novelty, doesn't it?--but that there were just too many things that merited comment. How to choose? Current events (aka the primaries and Obama), writing, etc. I felt paralyzed. And when it came to current events, by the time I got around to commenting about something, it was already old news.

But then I finished reading a book titled What I learned about beauty, sex, work, motherhood, going gray, authenticity, and everything else the really matters, by Anne Kreamer. Purchased, dear reader, because I have been considering throwing off the shackles of coloring my hair monthly and going natural (aka gray). And now I think I might have one or two more thoughts to contribute before putting this blog to rest.

The good news is that going gray does not, in general, signal your eminent demise. Unless you live in L.A., unless you are Jamie Lee Curtis, role mode extraordinaire (more about that later) or hold an upper-level managerial post that values, um, experience. Academics and creative types, unless we are trying to sell to Hollywood, are just fine. And as a science writer, I kind of consider myself to straddle both of those fields.

So what bothered me about this book, which is supposed to empower women considering going gray? It's the fact that when she talks about gray-haired women whose look she admires, they are nearly always "slim," or "well-dressed," but usually both.

Well, I'd love to drop about 25 pounds, and I struggle to get dressed when the occasion doesn't call for jeans and a t-shirt. So I have a problem with Kreamer's thesis that gray hair can be awesome if you are slim dress fashionably. But I think I'm pretty fit, even though I can't help but see my mother every time I look in the mirror. So am I doomed to dowdiness?

Still, I think that I am ready to go ahead with this. When I was in Geneva, I noticed a lot of older--well, very old--women who obviously colored their hair. These 85 year old ladies would have chestnut-red hair in their coffins. At some point, sooner rather than later, I decided I would rather just go natural. Cutting my hair short was the first step. I thought it would be easier to transition to gray that way. But eventually I may very well go back to long(ish), because I like that.

So, at least for now, the blog lives. But for long? I don't know. But you've been warned, and I'll keeping checking in on your blogs.

Beowulf

2008-05-18T22:10:00.002-05:00

I flew out to Hartford, CT last week; the plan was that my parents would meet me at the airport a couple of hours after I arrived and we would drive to Smith (at Northampton, MA) to visit daughter Caitlin, and then drive up to Hanover NH to visit my niece Cassie, a first year resident at Dartmouth Medical Center. Well, we eventually got to do all of that, and we had a lovely time, but my planned three hour layover in Chicago and unplanned additional 2.5 wait for Mom and Dad in Hartford gave me lots of reading and working time.

So I started and finished a book that'd I'd been meaning to read for quite some time: the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf. Please don't berate this poor former English major for not reading Beowulf until after the movie, which I must say was alternatively entertaining and embarrassingly awful. (Hint: in the book, Grendel's mother bears little resemblance to Angelina Jolie.)

Heaney's translation lived up to its stellar reputation--no surprise. Heaney is my favorite living poet. I was struck by one passage in his translation notes:

...the poet who had first formed my ear was Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a chip off the Old English block, and the earliest lines I published when I was a student were as much pastiche Anglo-Saxon as they were pastiche Hopkins: 'Starling thatch-watches and sudden swallow/ Straight breaks to mud-nest, home-rest rafter" and so on.

Read aloud (and, like Hopkins, much of Beowulf is best read aloud) this passage, describing Grendel's defeat:

He is hasped and hooped and hirpling with pain,/limping and looped in it. (975-976)

Pure Hopkins; not just for the imaginative choice of words and alliteration, but also for the rhythm and cadence of the poetry. For sheer beauty of language, there are few poets who surpass Hopkins at his best. And so, in celebration of the season which finally, FINALLY, seems to have arrived, from Hopkins' poem Spring:

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring--
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightenings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

Millennium Park, Chicago

2008-05-13T21:38:00.005-05:00

Tony and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary on Saturday. We celebrated--a day early--by visiting Millennium Park in Chicago and eating out at the terrific MK restaurant. If you go, you MUST have a side order of pommes frites with truffle cream. You will not regret it.

Here's our anniversary portrait in "The Bean" and a shot of Frank Gehry's band shell. I've been to Chicago tons of times since the Park was completed in 2004, but for some reason I'd never had a chance to visit.

Dialogue and class differences

2008-05-08T11:17:00.005-05:00

One of the things I try really hard to do in in my fiction is pay attention to dialogue, especially dialect and vernacular. Even though my novel in progress takes place in rural Indiana, I find myself re-creating the rural Kansas dialect I grew up with. When I listen to midwestern speakers, I find that the differences are more pronounced between rural versus urban speakers than in, say, Indiana versus Kansas speakers. Believable dialogue reveals loads about the character's class, attitudes, and mood.

So I was happy to see that there is a prolonged discussion of dialogue over at Through the Tollbooth. It's fascinating and required reading for fiction writers. She provides several links to sites devoted to dialects, including the International Dialects of English Archive from my very own University of Kansas. My favorite sound recording is of a Kansas grave-digger and grave-witcher in his sixties; both for the homey familiarity of his dialect and for the story he tells!

Also worth checking out is the Pop vs. Soda page. I'm pop, by the way. What I really don't understand is the Southern tendency to call carbonated beverages "coke." Especially since, at least in the past, that used to be R.C. Cola territory. Am I right?

Weekend in Indy--part 2

2008-05-07T15:59:00.002-05:00

I stayed an extra couple of nights in Indy after the race to volunteer for the Obama campaign. On Sunday and Monday, I canvassed for Obama, talking and distributing information to literally hundreds of people. I figure I probably walked at least another half marathon over the course of those two days. (Actually, I recommend a good healthy dose of walking following a distance event; I felt great.)

I had some memorable conversations along the way.

One retired white guy who had previously been an enthusiastic supporter of Obama was now furious over the Wright affair; he said he wouldn't be voting for Hillary or Barack. He went to great pains to assure me that he wasn't a redneck racist, but...well you get the picture.

My last precinct was one of the most rewarding. Largely African-American and relatively poor, nearly every person I talked to was both a supporter of Obama and planning on voting in the primary. With the exception of one old black guy who, with a few front teeth gone AWOL, looked like he'd been around the block more than once. No, he was not registered to vote, but he had plenty of opinions. The main one being, no black man will ever be elected president. First he tried to tell me that the constitution says that the president has to be Caucasian. I assured him that wasn't the case. Then he said that white folks would never accept a black president. I pointed out that I'm white, and that there a whole lot of white folks who feel the same way I do. Then he said that if Obama were elected, he'd just be assassinated. That, I said, was a risk that Barack and Michele had decided to accept. Then he asked me for my Obama pin. I gave it to him, and I could see that even though he doubted that the U.S. had come so far, he harbored some hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd see a black man in the White House.

So you can imagine that I was more than a little obsessed with the primary results on Tuesday evening. And given his big showing in North Carolina, his close second place finish in Indiana looks a lot like a win.

----------------
Now playing: GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTR - JOHN GORKA
via FoxyTunes

A big weekend in Indy--Part 1

2008-05-06T20:08:00.004-05:00

I had quite an exciting weekend in Indianapolis! I drove to Indy on Friday afternoon for the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon, which many of you know I ran this year to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Thanks to the generous people who responded--and many of you dear readers are among them--I am happy to say that I raised over $2300. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

At the Team in Training pasta party, we heard from the mother of a young leukemia survivor who talked about how important the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has been in her son's recovery. This was one of many tear-inducing moments that evening. I was really struck then, when that talk was followed by one by a man (I don't remember his name) who had won the Mini-marathon with a time of about 62 minutes in the past and is now working with Team in Training. I know that elite athletes often disparage charity runners, or recreational runners in general, as bringing the sport down. It's a long-standing debate. But here was a guy who was really in the game, looking out at his audience of folks who were pretty fit and not so fit, and he got it. He listened to the Mom who talked about her 5 year old son who had to undergo chemotherapy, and he got it. He surprised the audience and himself, I know, as he teared even as he was talking about this cause. And that? That made me tear up, too.

The weather was perfect for the race; overcast and cool at the beginning, then warming up to maybe the mid-60s and sunny later on. I wasn't really expecting much for my performance--I'd been injured, and hadn't really trained much--and so I wasn't too disappointed with my time. If you want to know what it was, you have to look it up.

"My Beautiful Mommy"

2008-04-21T09:45:00.004-05:00

For those of you who thought "Mommy's Visit to the Tattoo Parlor" was an April Fool's Day joke (and I have to admit, I thought it was too, especially since I was the one making it), Newsweek reports that there is a book about Mommy's visit to the plastic surgeon:

"My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

Doesn't she look really, really pretty and sparkly? The book is self-published by a plastic surgeon wanting to help his "mommy-makeover" patients explain the procedure to their little tykes.

Yes, Johnny, carrying you around in my tummy for nine months, the last of which I thought my skin would break, and nursing you (see Milk Pistols) so long that my breasts came to be on speaking terms with my knees, well, that totally, totally ruined Mommy's body. It's all your fault, and I wouldn't exactly say you're not WORTH it, but Dr. Michael will make it all better.
----------------
Now playing: John Mayer - Gravity
via FoxyTunes

I felt the earth move...

2008-04-18T13:50:00.005-05:00

Yep, like a whole lot of other Midwesterners, my husband and I were awakened this morning by the floors shaking and the windows rattling. Now for some of you, a 5.2 magnitude earthquake may be just another day in sunny California, for us it was a pretty big deal. The epicenter was in southeastern Illinois, near the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone (which I'd never heard of before) and not the New Madrid fault. Apparently it was felt as far away as Kansas, upper Michigan, and Georgia. I went to the U.S. Geological Survey website to learn more about the quake, where I was intrigued to read, "...earthquakes east of the Mississippi are felt more widely than those in the west."

Now why is that? Do the mountains in the west somehow dampen the tremors so that they can't travel as far? Any thoughts?

In other news, I see Busby and Berkeley, as we have taken to calling our pond ducks, less frequently. I am afraid that she has found another spot to lay her eggs. I was going to take a video of the ducks for your viewing pleasure, but now all I have is an earlier photo of Berkeley, and then the fish wanted to get in on the fun, so here they are:

Safe and Sound gets a shiny silver medallion

2008-04-12T17:36:00.003-05:00

My friend and fellow SCBWI-Illinois writer Beth Finke just won an award for her book Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound. She's getting the Henry Bergh Children's Book Award, given out every year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The ASPCA is flying Beth and Hanni out to Anaheim in June to receive the award at the American Library Association conference. You can learn more about it at Beth's blog.

Congratulations, Beth!

Dark matter

2008-04-12T17:26:00.003-05:00

I think it's not an overstatement to say that it's quite a challenge to explain dark matter to elementary school kids. To convey to kids the idea that something like 95% of the universe is this mysterious dark matter and dark energy, I used this:

That's right. The stuff that we can detect--you and I and the world, the stars and planets in the universe--are represented by the colored jelly beans. All the rest? Licorice jelly beans.

The guy at Art Mart was very helpful when I told him I wanted to buy a mixture that was 95% licorice and 5% colored. I told him it was a teaching aid and commented that it must be an unusual request.

"Oh, you'd be surprised," he said.

Catch-up

2008-04-11T20:29:00.010-05:00

I'll be playing a bit of blog catch-up today...seems like I've been doing quite a lot of that lately. You'd think from my silence that I don't care about the Jayhawks' win--but I do, I do! Or about Obama's Wright problem, or now his supposed elitism--not true! It's just that, sadly, blogging has taken a back seat to other concerns.

Such as: my visit to Havana. Hola, everyone! No, not that Havana. On Thursday I did a school visit at New Central Elementary in Havana, Illinois. Havana is a nice town of about 4,000, two hours west of Champaign on the Illinois River. They were a great bunch of kids, not to mention the teachers, administrators, and the PTO folks who coordinated everything.

Since most of my published books are about science, I talked about the importance of curiosity and imagination for both scientists and writers. As proof of my childhood imagination, I brought a prop:
Members of my family will remember that I once had a pet tumbleweed. Named Tumbly, of course. (My good imagination did not extend to names, it seems. We also had a pigeon named Pigey, a possum named Possie, I named my calico cat Callie.)

I didn't have my original Tumbly, of course, and tumbleweeds are not common creatures in central Illinois. But of course you can find anything on the internet. Sure enough, I found the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm in Garden City, Kansas. For $15-25 dollars (depending on size), plus shipping and handling, I could have my very own tumbleweed. That seemed a little steep. So I asked my brother Eric, who also lived in Garden City, if he could send me one. And he came through, with not one, but two, and I think you'll agree that he had a good time doing it:

That's right, I got a couple of rescue tumbleweeds. I'm trying to take good care of them. More visuals in the next post.

Milk Pistols

2008-04-07T13:16:00.002-05:00

I don't have time to write a thoughtful post about writing or spring (although the ducks are still on the pond!), so to make up for it I give you an ode to breast-feeding by a U.K. all-women punk group called The Mothers. It's called "Milk Pistols," and it's a hoot.

Good news!

2008-04-01T11:45:00.003-05:00

I just got email from an editor in response to my query for a new picture book, Mommy's Visit to the Tattoo Parlor. She wants to buy it! Hooray!

I've posted my query letter here in case you'd like to read it.

Signs of spring, part 2

2008-03-30T11:23:00.002-05:00

I woke up at 6:30 this morning to what sounded like a duck in distress. "Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack..." And on and on. Was there a duck stuck in our backyard fence, maybe? I couldn't see anything from the window, so I put on my bathrobe and went outside to see what was going on. The quack-quacking was clearly coming from the pond. As I got closer, it stopped. And then I saw them: a male and female Mallard duck, swimming around, trying to look innocent. "Quacking? I didn't hear any quacking. Janet, did you hear quacking?"

This is a family blog, so all I'm going to say is that I don't think anybody was in distress. But I hope to see some cute little ducklings paddling around on my pond soon.

I realize I've been neglecting my blog, but these past couple of weeks have been busy. I finished the revisions for Lava Scientists and have nearly all of the photographs rounded up. I think it will be a great-looking book!

----------------
Now playing: Mark Knopfler And Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning
via FoxyTunes

Signs of spring

2008-03-18T13:23:00.005-05:00

Yesterday my sister--yes, the one with the lovely snowflake tattoo, which I would showcase on my blog if she were to send me a picture of it--said that I seemed to be having writer's block. It's more like blogger's block, but she has a point. Whining about being too busy cuts no mustard with Susan, and with good reason. She knows that I have time to do other things.

Like running with my pal and fellow kids' book writer, Alice. Once a week, through rain, sleet, snow, and sometimes even sunshine, we run in beautiful Meadowbrook Park. Two loops through the park--with a recreated tallgrass prairie and groves of trees, bisected by a creek and featuring sculptures scattered throughout--is four miles and plenty of time to talk about writing, family, and politics.

This morning, we ran in a cool gray misty rain--and everywhere I looked, there were signs of spring. There seemed to be red-winged blackbirds on every other stalk of prairie grass, filling the air with their chirr-chirrs. Pheasants and robins were out in force, and I saw a hawk with a white breast--too large for a red-tailed hawk, it seemed. (I wonder if anybody who might be reading this and taking an ornithology class at Macalester would know what kind of hawk it was.) And then, most surprising, a good-sized crawdad in the middle of the concrete running path. I picked up the confused little guy, his claws waving furiously, and put him back by the nearby creek.

I suppose spring makes everyone a little foolish at times.

When I got back from my run I spotted these snowdrops peeking through the leaves in my front border. Yes, we're all ready for spring.

Inspiration

2008-03-16T18:41:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I got back from the Illinois Reading Council's annual conference in Springfield. This is the second time I've attended this conference, geared primarily toward teachers and librarians. Not my immediate audience, but the people who bring my books to my readers--the kids. So it was great to sit with a table of educators--with a centerpiece designed and created by school kids, no less!--to talk about the books they'd like to use in their classrooms. And you know what I heard?

We'd like to see more science integrated with literature.

Well, holy cow. Me too, because these are the kinds of books that I really dug as a kid: science as literature. Here are my two favorite books I read as a kid: My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, and Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell. And what they had in common was this: a kid on his/her own, dealing with the natural world. And although I read everything placed in front of me as a kid, I can only imagine how much more inspired I would have been about science and literature if I had been given the opportunity to study them at the same time.

So it was so nice to hear teachers say, "Yeah, bring on the science!"

Here is a picture of me with a couple of the teachers at the table, along with the awesome poster designed by kids at the Mt. Olive School:

That was one highlight of my trip. The other highlight was hearing Christopher Paul Curtis give the closing talk at the Saturday luncheon. I was introduced to his books when I was at Lesley, and I thought he was a genius. Now I know that to be true, and he's funny too! ("If you've seen pictures of me before, you know that I look different now. [He used to have dreadlocks; no more.] There's nothing more pitiful than getting out of bed in the morning, only to find that two of your dreads decided to stay in bed.")

But what you need to know about Curtis is that he went straight from high school to putting doors on cars in an assembly line in Detroit, worked there for 13 years, and wrote his debut novel, the astounding and award-winning The Watsons Go to Birmingham after his wife encouraged him to do so.

What I got from CPC--aside from writing inspiration, no small thing--was an idea of how to incorporate my story into my next school visit.

First lines

2008-03-05T21:45:00.003-06:00

Every writer knows how important first lines are. It's the equivalent of having a storyteller pull a chair up real close to to someone, saying, "You ever hear about..."

The reader is your captive. Or so you hope, if you're a good enough storyteller.

Richard Peck did a whole session in last weekend's workshop about opening lines. And while he made the comment that the first chapter should foreshadow the entire book, the opening line is what pulls you in to the first chapter.

The classic perfect first line in children's literature (or perhaps any literature) comes from E.B. White, in Charlotte's Web: "Where's Papa going with that axe?"

Where, indeed? And, Papa, WHY?

And so I'm beginning my own mid-week (because there's too many other things to write about on Monday) feature on great opening lines.

Here's one of my recent favorites:

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close: my careening, zigzag existence, my wounded brain and faith in God, my collisions with joy and affliction, all of it has come, in one way or another, out of that moment on a summer morning when the left rear tire of a United States postal jeep ground my tiny head into the hot gravel of the San Carlow Apache Indian Reservation. -- The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, by Brady Udall.

I'm hooked...are you?

Richard Peck wisdom

2008-03-03T16:04:00.003-06:00

I'm still recovering from this weekend's Richard Peck writer workshop. We had a great turnout, and I heard lots of comments that this was one of the best workshops they'd attended. What a relief!

Richard was terrific. I've long admired his writing (A Long Way From Chicago; A Year Down Yonder; and A River Between Us being some of my favorites) but a good writer is not necessarily a good teacher. In Richard's case, those qualities exist happily within the same body.

I'm not going to write a summary of everything he said, but he suggested one technique that I found especially intriguing. When you are writing a scene, block it out, as if you are directing a play. Stand up, move around the room, speak for your characters. (Don't do this in Starbucks.) I will often speak dialogue to myself while writing, but I tend to do it in my chair, in front of my computer. I'm interested to see how blocking will help me in writing scenes.

Richard was kind enough to pose for a picture with me:

----------------
Now playing: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova with Marja Tuhkanen and Bertrand Galen - This Low
via FoxyTunes

Virtual Barber Shop

2008-02-26T17:07:00.003-06:00

What with getting ready for the Richard Peck workshop this weekend (which I think will be awesome, and I'll blog about it when it's over), raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through their Team in Training program (click here if you're interested in contributing to a great cause and helping me meet my fundraising goal), and working on revisions and getting photo permissions for the Volcano Scientists book, I haven't had much time to blog. But I just had to give you a heads-up for one of the coolest auditory illusions I've ever heard: The Virtual Barbershop.

Listening to it, you feel as though you are in a barber's chair, with the barber moving around you, clipping away at your hair. The illusion demonstrates our ability to locate sounds in space; by comparing the inputs to the two ears, we can work out where a sound is coming from. You'll need to listen with headphones:

Aren't you glad it wasn't the virtual dentist?

I discovered this and four other auditory illusions on The New Scientist's web exclusive, part of their special music issue. I've been interested in auditory illusions for years, since I went to a talk by Diana Deutsch, who studies the perception and memory for sounds and has discovered a number of musical illusions and paradoxes. I think that this kind of stuff would make for a great kids' book--but it would have to be accompanied by a CD. I wonder if anybody would be interested. Hmmm.

----------------
Now playing: Sam Moore with Wynonna, BeBe Winans & Billy Preston - I Can't Stand the Rain
via FoxyTunes

Temptation

2008-02-21T22:56:00.003-06:00

OK, so I just went to see The Spirit of the Marathon with caraf and, as it turns out, a whole movie theater full of running pals. See the trailer:

As it was beginning, I told her I hoped seeing this movie didn't make me want to run another marathon. I've sworn off them! I always get injured! 13.2 is half the distance, twice the fun!

So she waited until the end of the movie to tell me that in April 2009 Champaign-Urbana will host a brand-spanking-new marathon, the Illinois Marathon. Maybe I'll run another one after all.

Writing and running

2008-02-20T15:25:00.003-06:00

My friend Inga just forwarded me this link to a very interesting interview with Japanese author Haruki Murakami (Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Kafka on the Shore) in the online, English version of Der Spiegel.

He has a book, coming out in German translation next week about the importance of running for his work as a writer. Needless to say, I want to read it! How about that English translation?

Here's a thought-provoking excerpt from the interview:

SPIEGEL: Are you a better writer because you run?

Murakami: Definitely. The stronger my muscles got, the clearer my mind became. I am convinced that artists who lead an unhealthy life burn out more quickly. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin were the heroes of my youth -- all of them died young, even though they didn't deserve to. Only geniuses like Mozart or Pushkin deserve an early death. Jimi Hendrix was good, but not so smart because he took drugs. Working artistically is unhealthy; an artist should lead a healthy life to make up for it. Finding a story is a dangerous thing for an author; running helps me to avert that danger.

SPIEGEL: Could you explain that?
Murakami: When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic. My stories are located in a dark, dangerous part of my consciousness, I feel the poison in my mind, but I can fend off a high dose of it because I have a strong body. When you are young, you are strong; so you can usually conquer the poison even without being in training. But beyond the age of 40 your strength wanes, you can no longer cope with the poison if you lead an unhealthy life.

Read the entire interview here

Conspiracy theories

2008-02-20T14:54:00.003-06:00

A visit to a tattoo parlor can be a bit of an eye-opener if you don't happen to frequent that sort of place often. As my sister and I found out yesterday. My sister's tattoo artist turned out to be pretty chatty, after an initial semi-surly period. (Perhaps he was just shy.)

"Are you allergic to latex?" he asked, donning his latex gloves.

No, she was not. Good, he said, and went on to explain that he and his high school girlfriend found out, the hard way, that she was allergic to the stuff.

Well, okey-dokey, then. And so the conversation went. The fact that we have daughters in college came up, which led us to Northern Illinois. Now, I haven't written anything about Northern Illinois because...what could I say, other than to add to the chorus of whys resonating across the blogosphere.

But apparently that week's spate of awful school killings--add the shootings in Louisiana, Tennessee and California to the NIU massacre, not to mention the shootings at the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park and probably a mess of other gun-related tragedies--have spawned an interesting conspiracy theory. According to tattoo artist, it was all a set-up. I'm not sure I followed what passes for logic in his argument, but I think it went something like this. There is pending conceal-carry gun legislation, and those sissy gun-control people don't want that it to pass. So they arranged, somehow, to put guns into the hand of this kid with a serious mental illness (did they make him go off his meds, too?) so that the conceal-carry legislation would fail.

Evidence? Well, the campus police responded within 5 minutes! Unheard of! (That emergency response plan they'd been developing and fine-tuning since Virginia Tech was just for fun.) And, get this--there were more doctors than usual working at the ER that day!

All we need is to have a whole nation full of people like this walking around with guns stuck into their jeans. The man made a pretty snowflake, though.

I hope the title of this post doesn't bring up nut cases hoping to find support for their pet conspiracy theory.

----------------
Now playing: LISTENING TO LEVON - MARC COHN
via FoxyTunes

Sister love

2008-02-19T22:18:00.005-06:00

When our oldest brother just became a grandfather for the first time, my sister--four years older than I--complained that now she really felt like a middle child. Me, the little sister with her new tattoo, and David with new grandchild. So I suggested--merely suggested, I'd like to emphasize!--that she should just get a tattoo as well.

So today I drove to Chicago to take her out to Frontera Grill for lunch for her birthday today. I'll let you guess where we ended up:

She got a beautiful blue snowflake on her left should blade, in honor of her move from Dallas to a very wintry Park Ridge.

We are two bad-a** sisters. I'm telling you, we had the best time today! Yay Susan!

Racing for a cure

2008-02-12T19:11:00.000-06:00

Seven years ago, my good friend Patty Conlin sent me a challenge: She was running a marathon to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The society's mission is to cure lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and myeloma, and to improve the quality of life for patients and their families. Patty's former husband, father of her daughters, had lymphoma, and she wanted to do something to help. Did I want to join her?

Now, at that point I had never run more than six miles at one time. I had only run 5K races, and so 26.2 miles seemed pretty daunting. I thought I might do my part for the cause by writing a narrative piece about a first-time marathoner running for Team in Training.

Silly me. I became that first-time marathoner, although I have yet to write that piece. Still, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. That June, I ran the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon in Anchorage, Alaska, raising over $4,000 for research to help cure blood cancers.

Now I've learned that a friend and fellow children's writer, Becky Mabry, has been diagnosed with lymphoma. My friend Alice McGinty and I have decided to run the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon on May 3, 2008 to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Becky's honor. Here's how you can help: I am asking you to help me meet my fundraising goal of $2,000. You can pay online at my website: http://www.active.com/donate/tntil/tntilSLatta.

And here's the deal: I'm going to sweeten the offer: the first person to make a contribution of $25 or more on my website gets a pair of Team in Training socks! Yes! I will send them to you! I'm sure they're nice and comfy and they're probably purple and green, which I think is a rather nice color combo. Plus, your contribution is 100% tax-deductible and helps save lives.

If you prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, and I'm not making any judgements here, you can send your check, made out to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, to me at Sara Latta, 1101 W. University Ave., Champaign, IL 61821.

OK, end of pitch. You all are gems. Take care.

----------------
Now playing: John Frizell & Randy Edelman - My Home Is Virginia
via FoxyTunes

Our stories, ourselves

2008-02-10T21:32:00.000-06:00

On Friday, I heard a remarkable piece by Barbara Bradley Hagerty on NPR titled "Understanding the Gospel According to Huckabee."

In it, she cited several of Mike Huckabee's biblical references--and the surprising lack of people, including evangelicals--who failed to get his point. For example, Huckabee said in his Super Tuesday victory speech:

"Sometimes," the former Arkansas governor told his supporters, "one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor."

Well, to me that was obvious: he's referring to David and Goliath. No brainer, for those of us who went to Sunday school and learned all these stories, right? Not according to the people NPR interviewed, and not according to Boston University professor Stephen Prothero, author of the book Religious Literacy, who says that "Half of Americans can't name any of the four Gospels, and that includes the Christians."

The interviewer goes on to ask people what Huckabee might have meant by his reference to the widow's mite ("Is it a spider?") or the feeding of the crowd of 5,000 with two fish and five loaves. (Although Huckabee tells it as a boy feeding the crowds, and in my memory it's an adult Jesus, am I correct?) And people just don't know what he's referring to. No idea. And these are people who said they were evangelicals. So I was strutting around like a peacock when I learned that I understood ALL of Huckabee's biblical references--every single one.

Now here is the point where I say that I haven't gone to church in quite some time. I guess you could say I'm agnostic now. I'm not a Huckabee supporter. But I was raised a Baptist, and I remember these stories from my childhood. For those of us who care about stories that speak to the human condition, they resonate. David vs. Goliath? The little guy can prevail, if right is on his side. The widow's mite? It's not how much you can give, it's the commitment. The loaves and the fishes? Faith can make a difference. These are stories, human stories. I'd be willing to bet that other writers raised in the Christian tradition would recognize Huckabee's allusions as well; they are damn good stories indeed.

My novel in progress uses Daniel in the lion's den as one of its prevailing themes; it's about the willingness to walk into the fire believing in the faith of your convictions.

Super-duper Wednesday

2008-02-06T14:45:00.000-06:00

Why is it super-duper? Well, there's the obvious, of course; it now appears that Obama not only won more states than Clinton but also has more delegates. So that makes me very happy.

But from the perspective of this election judge, yesterday's primary has left me with a real feeling of hope and faith in the electorate. It felt more like a general election than a primary; none of us had any time to read or do soduku puzzles or crochet; lunch was snatched in 30-second intervals. The precinct (CC38) with which we shared a polling place always, and I mean ALWAYS, had a line. Sometimes very long. (Our precinct, CC33, was one-third the size of the other one.) And this despite the fact that there was pouring rain for much of the day that left many of the roads flooded.

Some numbers for our two precincts:

Turnout of registered voters:
41% (CC33), 45% (CC38)

Obama
74% (CC33); 76% (CC38)
Clinton
25% (CC33); 23% (CC38)

Romney
39% (CC33); 44% (CC38)
McCain
30% (CC33); 39% (CC38)

Best comment from a voter in response to my standard, "Hi. Would you like a Democratic, Republican, Green, or Nonpartisan ballot?"

"Democrat! I'm here to make history!"

Most puzzling comment to that same question (by a woman with her daughter, both obviously very excited):

"I don't know, I've never voted before! I don't know who any of the candidates are. Oh, I guess I'll go with Republican." (Daughter, like the baby kangaroo, said, "Me too.")

And, with apologies to John Mayer, we're not waiting on the world to change. We're MAKING change happen, every time we vote.

----------------
Now playing: John Mayer - Waiting On the World to Change
via FoxyTunes

Fired up, ready to go

2008-02-03T14:48:00.000-06:00

Oh, my gosh, this video was linked to Yes We Can on YouTube. Forgive the Obama mania, but it's great:

Yes we can!

2008-02-03T14:37:00.000-06:00

Check it out:

If you have a primary or caucus on Tuesday, I urge you to get out and vote--no matter who you support! I voted yesterday, because I'm going to be an election judge on Tuesday outside of my precinct. Make your voice heard.

Science debates

2008-01-30T14:45:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Sminthia, over at the Sminthophile (that means a lover of mice to you and me), I learned of the call for a bipartisan presidential debate focusing on science and technology. Here is an excerpt from their website:

Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens. The signatories to our "Call for a Presidential Debate on Science & Technology" include Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, presidents of universities, congresspersons of both major political parties, business leaders, religious leaders, former presidential science advisors, the editors of America's major science journals, writers, and the current and several past presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among many others.
We have noticed that science and technology lie at the center of a very large number of the policy issues facing our nation and the world - issues that profoundly affect our national and economic security as science and technology continue to transform our lives. No matter one's political stripe, these issues pose important pragmatic policy challenges.

So if you'd like to see the presidential candidates engaged in a debate about science policy, head over to their website and click to support Science Debate 2008.

In keeping with the theme of this post, I present you with an amusing demonstration of mitosis (Courtesy of The New Scientist's guide to the best videos online):

Extreme ironing

2008-01-29T17:35:00.000-06:00

Okay, so the female protagonist in my WIP practices yoga. And Chris, my male protagonist, would be a runner. Yin and yang, you know? But then I thought, how about a more interesting sport? So I googled "obscure sports," and sure enough the internet delivered. I discovered the U.S. Association of Rock Paper Scissors and the World Finger Jousting Federation, among many others. But I think my favorite obscure sport has to be Extreme Ironing. Their website, called the Extreme Ironing Bureau (heh, heh), calls extreme ironing "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt."

There's synchronized extreme ironing cycling:

Underwater extreme ironing:

And mountain climbing extreme ironing:

On second thought, I think I'll just leave Chris as a runner.

New blogs

2008-01-29T11:47:00.000-06:00

I added a couple of new (to me) blogs to my blogroll, WriterBear and Children's Books Chica. Both are written by fellow Lesley MFA people, with an emphasis on writing for young people. Jana, aka WriterBear, is also one of the administrative people at Lesley who helps the residencies run like well-oiled clocks. And her WIP involves--get this!--a bear. Am I right, Jana?

Children's Books Chica (what's up with that name?) is the home of Jessica, who also happens to be a senior marketing manager at a Big Name publisher in NYC. Read her blog to get the word on marketing children's books.

Right now I'm supposed to be working on a synopsis of my sci-fi road caper. Geez, don't I have a root canal that needs to be done or something? Oh, good, the dog threw up.

Why is writing a synopsis so painful? Am I being a baby about this?

----------------
Now playing: YOU'RE THE WORLD TO ME - DAVID GRAY
via FoxyTunes