In these days of celebrity sex tapes, televised hate-mongering and story after story of mothers drowning or starving or otherwise harming their children, how happy I was to meet Sameh M. . Sameh is eighteen years old, a Palestinian. We met at a dinner welcoming international students to the college where I teach. He was one of twenty or so young people representing every corner of the world -- China, France, Nepal, Romania, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe. Young people. Some of them away from home for the first time. High-spirited, nervous, full of questions about the journey on which they were about to embark.
On the table, covered with a checkered cloth, the chicken was piled high. Next to it, the potato salad. The potato salad next to the slaw. And among them bowls of chips, plates of cheese, baskets of fruit and bread. An abundance of typical American summer fare. And summer it was. The temperature that day had climbed into the high nineties.
After the introductions, obligatory welcoming speeches full of praise for the students' courage and admonitions about the temptations awaiting them, the students dug in. Everyone except Sameh. He sat in a glider, swinging slowly back and forth, watching the others. It was the holy month of Ramadan, the month when observant Moslems are asked to fast during the daylight hours. The time was nearing seven o'clock. The sun wouldn't set for another twenty minutes or so. Sameh hadn't eaten the entire day. Not a bite. Nor had he swallowed a single sip of water. (Very observant Moslems don't even swallow their own saliva during this sacred time.)
This gangly boy was far away from his family that night, far way, in fact, from any other person who shared his faith. There was no one there to see if, just twenty minutes early, he'd allow himself a handful of chips or pour himself a cup of soda. But for Sameh, that wasn't the point. Deprivation, I mean. Participating in this tradition, alone, thousands of miles away from home, Sameh wasn't giving up anything, and I envied, in fact, what he seemed to be gaining, the connection to his Moslem brothers and sisters all around the world.
I wonder if this is what frightens the Koran burners of this world, the connection to something we have lost, the connection to each other and to something larger than ourselves. Maybe we should forget about celebrity sex tapes for a while.
(By the way, to those Koran burners, I'd like to say that I think they would be hard pressed to get Sameh to burn any kind of book. He graduated at the top of his class from one of the best schools in The Middle East. He wants to be a doctor.)
I told my wife Barbara about this experience."These days it's beautiful to see anyone believing in anything," she said. I wish I knew Sameh's parents. I'd like to tell them what a good son they have raised.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Monday, April 28, 2008
#6 Quadrooped!
In the past week or so, two college-educated adults have picked up my latest middle-grade novel and read the title aloud: Jeremy Cabbage and the Living Museum of Human Oddballs and Quadruped Delights. A mouthful, I know. But when they got to Quadruped, they faltered a bit, and then read the word as if it were two, rather than three syllables, as in -- quadrooped. This, as you might imagine, is disheartening, especially so because one of them is an elementary school teacher. Good heavens! What is happening? While quadruped might not come up in our daily conversation, it certainly can't be considered arcane, can it? It's not a word like chthonic, after all, or analemmatic. (And for you dirty-minded types, analemmatic is not what you think it might mean.)
I could have used four-footed in the title, I know, but why should I have? There is a perfectly good word -- quadruped -- that means exactly that. Besides, with its combination of soft vowels and hard consonants it reminds us how playful our language can be; it's fun to say, and, until recently, I thought, to read. This is part of the joy of language, no? And this joy is what I want to pass on to kids. It's one of the reasons I write.
When The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle came out in paperback, the publisher suggested we change the title simply to Roscoe Wizzle. When these kinds of issues come up, as they often do in publishing, I try to be flexible, but in this case I was obdurate (or should I say, stubborn?) Why? Because a year or two before, during a school visit, a boy had tugged excitedly on my shirtsleeve and said, "The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle. Transmogrification! When I hear that word, it . . .it . . . it just makes me want to read the book!" Here was a boy who was experiencing the fun of his own language. Why deny him, and others like him, this very deep pleasure? By the way, I can't tell you the number of adults who have mispronounced transmogrify. Kids seem to get it right every time.
Recently, the second Evangeline came out in paperback as well. Before I realized what was happening, the title was changed from Evangeline Mudd and the Great Mink Escapade to Evangeline Mudd and the Great Mink Rescue. Escapade was apparently too difficult. I wish now I had been with it enough to make a fuss. To me, this kind of change demonstrates a lack of faith in our children. And when adults start to lack faith, the bar can only go down, down down.
All in all, this is very dismaying. In fact, I'm feeling . . let's see . . . what's the right word? Yes! I've got it! I'm feeling quadrooped!
I could have used four-footed in the title, I know, but why should I have? There is a perfectly good word -- quadruped -- that means exactly that. Besides, with its combination of soft vowels and hard consonants it reminds us how playful our language can be; it's fun to say, and, until recently, I thought, to read. This is part of the joy of language, no? And this joy is what I want to pass on to kids. It's one of the reasons I write.
When The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle came out in paperback, the publisher suggested we change the title simply to Roscoe Wizzle. When these kinds of issues come up, as they often do in publishing, I try to be flexible, but in this case I was obdurate (or should I say, stubborn?) Why? Because a year or two before, during a school visit, a boy had tugged excitedly on my shirtsleeve and said, "The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle. Transmogrification! When I hear that word, it . . .it . . . it just makes me want to read the book!" Here was a boy who was experiencing the fun of his own language. Why deny him, and others like him, this very deep pleasure? By the way, I can't tell you the number of adults who have mispronounced transmogrify. Kids seem to get it right every time.
Recently, the second Evangeline came out in paperback as well. Before I realized what was happening, the title was changed from Evangeline Mudd and the Great Mink Escapade to Evangeline Mudd and the Great Mink Rescue. Escapade was apparently too difficult. I wish now I had been with it enough to make a fuss. To me, this kind of change demonstrates a lack of faith in our children. And when adults start to lack faith, the bar can only go down, down down.
All in all, this is very dismaying. In fact, I'm feeling . . let's see . . . what's the right word? Yes! I've got it! I'm feeling quadrooped!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
#5 Letters About Literature
It's spring now; I know that because in our field there are eleven lambs. The sheep don't belong to us. (For better or worse, we're not exactly the farming types.) But the 4-H family who do own them needed a field, and we had one which was overgrown and a mess. So, it's perfect. I think it must be impossible to really understand the nuances of the verb unless you have had the good fortune to watch lambs gambol in the spring.
And on a completely narcissistic note, I am pleased to announce that Lydia, the third in this family of four children, has named the lamb she will show at the local fairs this summer, David the Writer. Having been a black sheep for most of my life, I am redeemed at last by a six-year-old. Thank you, Lydia!
This year, I was a judge for Letters About Literature, a national contest sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress (in partnership with Target.) Young people from grades four through twelve write letters to the authors of their favorite books. The contest is administered by the fabulous Catherine Gourley at the Center for the Book. Cathy does a terrific job of keeping all the letters straight, managing the arcane judging, and in general making sure it all happens. Good on ya, Cathy!
I was one of three judges reading Level II -- grades seven and eight. We read over forty letters, all of which had won at the state level. The letters were charming, heartfelt and often beautifully written, but what struck me most was how many of them centered on tragedy: the death of loved ones, serious illnesses, addicted family members. Was this, I wondered, a result of the kinds of books we are putting into kids' hands? A reflection of the Reality TV world in which we all now live? A preference of the judges at the state level for "serious" letters?
It made the letters difficult to judge. I had to remind myself over and over again that I wasn't judging the life situation of the writer (which was sadder? the dying father or the alcoholic mother? -- that kind of thing) but the letter she had written. It's worth noting, by the way, that nearly all the letters were written by girls. This, in itself, is a tragedy.
I don't know yet if the winners have been announced, but when they are, I'll put a link to the two winning Level II letters on the blog. They're worth reading. In the meantime, congratulations to all the contestants and to the authors of the books they were responding to.
And on a completely narcissistic note, I am pleased to announce that Lydia, the third in this family of four children, has named the lamb she will show at the local fairs this summer, David the Writer. Having been a black sheep for most of my life, I am redeemed at last by a six-year-old. Thank you, Lydia!
This year, I was a judge for Letters About Literature, a national contest sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress (in partnership with Target.) Young people from grades four through twelve write letters to the authors of their favorite books. The contest is administered by the fabulous Catherine Gourley at the Center for the Book. Cathy does a terrific job of keeping all the letters straight, managing the arcane judging, and in general making sure it all happens. Good on ya, Cathy!
I was one of three judges reading Level II -- grades seven and eight. We read over forty letters, all of which had won at the state level. The letters were charming, heartfelt and often beautifully written, but what struck me most was how many of them centered on tragedy: the death of loved ones, serious illnesses, addicted family members. Was this, I wondered, a result of the kinds of books we are putting into kids' hands? A reflection of the Reality TV world in which we all now live? A preference of the judges at the state level for "serious" letters?
It made the letters difficult to judge. I had to remind myself over and over again that I wasn't judging the life situation of the writer (which was sadder? the dying father or the alcoholic mother? -- that kind of thing) but the letter she had written. It's worth noting, by the way, that nearly all the letters were written by girls. This, in itself, is a tragedy.
I don't know yet if the winners have been announced, but when they are, I'll put a link to the two winning Level II letters on the blog. They're worth reading. In the meantime, congratulations to all the contestants and to the authors of the books they were responding to.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
#4 Sideways Stories from the Wayside School
Generally, our household is a healthy one, which means that our medical supplies are limited to the basics: bandaids and aspirin. But on Wednesday evening, my fever seemed to be climbing and so Barbara drove to our friends, Wendy and Scott Hanwell --the parents of young twins --to borrow theirs. We were both puzzled by the instrument she returned with; it measured only to 100 degrees Farenheit. There was space for the mercury to rise higher, but no numbers registering the actual temperature. Weird. Only later did we discover that it was a basal thermometer.
For the uninitiated, basal thermometers are used to alert women to the actual day they are ovulating.
Apparently, I was.
I wanted to take a moment to mention another book I love: Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from the Wayside School. Completely different from Tuck, but brilliant in its own right. And yet, at a conference a few years ago, I heard a doyenne of children’s literature announce to an audience of well over eight hundred that until Sachar wrote Holes, it was thought he was “capable of writing only B fiction.” Yikes!
Let's put aside for the moment the incredible arrogance (not to mention just plain bad manners of saying such a thing publicly) and ask ourselves why the Wayside School and its inhabitants were dissed so out-of-hand. Is it, one suspects, simply because the book is funny? If so, it seems terribly short-sighted since the surreal humor in the book, as well as its masterful structure, cloak, among other things, astute observations about human nature and the wonderfully subversive relationship between children and adults. But even if this were not so, isn't it enough that the book makes us laugh? What about humor for its own sake? Good heavens! Must a book always teach children something? What about the sheer value of story? Somebody! Tell me! When did we get to be such fuddy-duddies?
The truth is that kids still love the Wayside School nearly thirty years after it was published. Hooray for them! I can't help but wonder if that will be true of the A fiction of which the aforementioned doyenne seems to approve.
More on this next time. Still foolish . . . er . . . I mean fluish.
For the uninitiated, basal thermometers are used to alert women to the actual day they are ovulating.
Apparently, I was.
I wanted to take a moment to mention another book I love: Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from the Wayside School. Completely different from Tuck, but brilliant in its own right. And yet, at a conference a few years ago, I heard a doyenne of children’s literature announce to an audience of well over eight hundred that until Sachar wrote Holes, it was thought he was “capable of writing only B fiction.” Yikes!
Let's put aside for the moment the incredible arrogance (not to mention just plain bad manners of saying such a thing publicly) and ask ourselves why the Wayside School and its inhabitants were dissed so out-of-hand. Is it, one suspects, simply because the book is funny? If so, it seems terribly short-sighted since the surreal humor in the book, as well as its masterful structure, cloak, among other things, astute observations about human nature and the wonderfully subversive relationship between children and adults. But even if this were not so, isn't it enough that the book makes us laugh? What about humor for its own sake? Good heavens! Must a book always teach children something? What about the sheer value of story? Somebody! Tell me! When did we get to be such fuddy-duddies?
The truth is that kids still love the Wayside School nearly thirty years after it was published. Hooray for them! I can't help but wonder if that will be true of the A fiction of which the aforementioned doyenne seems to approve.
More on this next time. Still foolish . . . er . . . I mean fluish.
Monday, March 31, 2008
#3 More About Tuck
I had a signing Saturday, and by the time it was done, I realized I had the flu. So to Warren and his younger sister, Meg, who were visiting New Hampshire from their home in Philadelphia: It was terrific meeting you (and your parents). I hope you like Evangeline and On the Farm, and thank you for buying them. But spray them with a strong disinfectant and put on your Hazmat masks before you touch them again. Don't hate me. I didn't know until it was too late.
Back to Tuck. Okay: The language is the life of the novel. We know that now. But it isn't only Natalie Babbitt's language that gives Tuck Everlasting its numinous quality. (Yes! Numinous!)
It's also the structure of the book, its architecture. The Prologue is one of my favorite short passages in all of literature. Not only does this little masterpiece introduce us to the image upon which the rest of the book revolves, the wheel, but through its precise use of language (and by such features as invoking the number three) it becomes the equivalent of those magical four words once upon a time. The Epilogue brings us back to where the narrative starts -- on the road to Treegap. The same road but changed, too, through the passage of time. By leaving us where we be began, the book itself becomes a circle, a wheel. To me, this is brilliant writing; the structure of the book, just like its language, is telling a story.
Once upon a time. A fairy tale. It's not a revelation to say that children know that fairy tales, real fairy tales, not the bowdlerized Disney versions that most children today grow up with, contain truths about their psychological, moral, even spiritual development. They can't articulate these, of course, nor should they, but only the most reductive of reductionisits would say that the tales are simply entertaining narratives. The dilemmas presented in fairy tales are our dilemmas. Am I loved? Am I good? How can I be good if I have "bad" thoughts and feelings? In Tuck Everlasting, essentially a fairy tale, Natalie Babbitt takes on the biggest dilemma, the cold, hard fact of death. In fact, by the end of the book, we understand that Winnie herself has died. Yikes! For young kids?
But here's what I love so much about the book. Babbitt presents this dilemma not by setting up a supposedly realisitic narrative of the O-dear-Mother-is dying-of-leukemia type, (adults in the children's publishing seem to love these books, by the way) but instead engages the child's imagination in exactly the way that fairy tales do so that she (the child) can interpret the book's meaning(s) in any way she chooses. Another way of saying this is that Babbitt allows the child the freedom to plant one foot in her objective reality while keeping the other firmly planted in her imagination. To my way of thinking, this shows an extraordinary understanding of children and a hard-to-find respect for childhood. It's not too much to say that it is even a powerful act of love.
And this is what all of our writing and publishing for children should be. Not about our own talents. Not about our own desires to feel literary. Not about making money. But about our love of children and our responsibility to nurture, understand and respect the world in which they live, which is not our world, but one in which, for example, the fountain of youth may be a necessary possibility.
Back to Tuck. Okay: The language is the life of the novel. We know that now. But it isn't only Natalie Babbitt's language that gives Tuck Everlasting its numinous quality. (Yes! Numinous!)
It's also the structure of the book, its architecture. The Prologue is one of my favorite short passages in all of literature. Not only does this little masterpiece introduce us to the image upon which the rest of the book revolves, the wheel, but through its precise use of language (and by such features as invoking the number three) it becomes the equivalent of those magical four words once upon a time. The Epilogue brings us back to where the narrative starts -- on the road to Treegap. The same road but changed, too, through the passage of time. By leaving us where we be began, the book itself becomes a circle, a wheel. To me, this is brilliant writing; the structure of the book, just like its language, is telling a story.
Once upon a time. A fairy tale. It's not a revelation to say that children know that fairy tales, real fairy tales, not the bowdlerized Disney versions that most children today grow up with, contain truths about their psychological, moral, even spiritual development. They can't articulate these, of course, nor should they, but only the most reductive of reductionisits would say that the tales are simply entertaining narratives. The dilemmas presented in fairy tales are our dilemmas. Am I loved? Am I good? How can I be good if I have "bad" thoughts and feelings? In Tuck Everlasting, essentially a fairy tale, Natalie Babbitt takes on the biggest dilemma, the cold, hard fact of death. In fact, by the end of the book, we understand that Winnie herself has died. Yikes! For young kids?
But here's what I love so much about the book. Babbitt presents this dilemma not by setting up a supposedly realisitic narrative of the O-dear-Mother-is dying-of-leukemia type, (adults in the children's publishing seem to love these books, by the way) but instead engages the child's imagination in exactly the way that fairy tales do so that she (the child) can interpret the book's meaning(s) in any way she chooses. Another way of saying this is that Babbitt allows the child the freedom to plant one foot in her objective reality while keeping the other firmly planted in her imagination. To my way of thinking, this shows an extraordinary understanding of children and a hard-to-find respect for childhood. It's not too much to say that it is even a powerful act of love.
And this is what all of our writing and publishing for children should be. Not about our own talents. Not about our own desires to feel literary. Not about making money. But about our love of children and our responsibility to nurture, understand and respect the world in which they live, which is not our world, but one in which, for example, the fountain of youth may be a necessary possibility.
Friday, March 28, 2008
#2 Homage to Tuck: Part 1
Barbara read the first post and told me it was too coy and to stop trying to be so "cute." She's right, of course, but that doesn't mean I have to start speaking to her again, does it? We all need our critics, but possibly not one who yells "yeck!" from the other room.
I'm often asked -- by kids, by parents, by teachers, by my writing students -- what my favorite kids' book is. It's an impossible question, really, and one which needs clarification. YA? Picture book? Middle grade novel? When it comes to the last in that harmonious trio, I love the Roald Dahl books. I love Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga, especially the first three in the series. And I love many of the classics: The Secret Garden, Pippi Longstocking. Like kids, I love any book that makes me laugh out loud. (More on that later.) But if I had to choose just one, painful as it is, there's no question. Tuck Everlasting.
In an NPR interview a couple of years ago, I heard Cynthia Ozick say that the life of a novel is in its language, by which I think she might mean that the language of the novel delivers more than the story's content, its information. The choice of vocabulary, sentence structure, sentence length and variety, syntax, punctuation, even something as mechanical as paragraph breaks or as seemingly perfunctory as punctuation -- all of these combine in some ultimately mysterious way to tell their own story. Its when this story, the story of the language, pulses through the veins of the actual narrative that a book begins to stand and breathe on its own. To my way of thinking, Natalie Babbitt accomplishes near perfection in this regard. Here's a very specific example. The first two sentences of Chapter 1.
"The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a heard of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow."
That second sentence, the one describing the road, is the road. The sentence itself wanders, sways and ambles. And not only through its loose, meandering structure. The road didn't just sway it swayed off and up. It didn't just amble down, it ambled down again. Not sideways but sidewise. The vowels and consonants are working, too. Curves and easy angles. Fringes of bee-hung clover. The sentence is telling its own story, and nearly mesmerizes us, or at least me, in so doing.
If you're interested in this idea, you might also take a look at Feed, by Tobin Anderson. What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman. The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block. Very different from each other and very different from Tuck, but each, in its own way, seamlessly integrating the story of the language and the story of the narrative.
There's plenty more to say about Tuck, but for now, I'd better get back to my own work (he said, coyly).
Later.
David
I'm often asked -- by kids, by parents, by teachers, by my writing students -- what my favorite kids' book is. It's an impossible question, really, and one which needs clarification. YA? Picture book? Middle grade novel? When it comes to the last in that harmonious trio, I love the Roald Dahl books. I love Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga, especially the first three in the series. And I love many of the classics: The Secret Garden, Pippi Longstocking. Like kids, I love any book that makes me laugh out loud. (More on that later.) But if I had to choose just one, painful as it is, there's no question. Tuck Everlasting.
In an NPR interview a couple of years ago, I heard Cynthia Ozick say that the life of a novel is in its language, by which I think she might mean that the language of the novel delivers more than the story's content, its information. The choice of vocabulary, sentence structure, sentence length and variety, syntax, punctuation, even something as mechanical as paragraph breaks or as seemingly perfunctory as punctuation -- all of these combine in some ultimately mysterious way to tell their own story. Its when this story, the story of the language, pulses through the veins of the actual narrative that a book begins to stand and breathe on its own. To my way of thinking, Natalie Babbitt accomplishes near perfection in this regard. Here's a very specific example. The first two sentences of Chapter 1.
"The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a heard of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow."
That second sentence, the one describing the road, is the road. The sentence itself wanders, sways and ambles. And not only through its loose, meandering structure. The road didn't just sway it swayed off and up. It didn't just amble down, it ambled down again. Not sideways but sidewise. The vowels and consonants are working, too. Curves and easy angles. Fringes of bee-hung clover. The sentence is telling its own story, and nearly mesmerizes us, or at least me, in so doing.
If you're interested in this idea, you might also take a look at Feed, by Tobin Anderson. What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman. The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block. Very different from each other and very different from Tuck, but each, in its own way, seamlessly integrating the story of the language and the story of the narrative.
There's plenty more to say about Tuck, but for now, I'd better get back to my own work (he said, coyly).
Later.
David
Thursday, March 27, 2008
#1
O dear! Now that I've wasted an entire morning figuring out how to get this going, pestering friends and in general, making a nuisance of myself, I find . . . well, I find that I have nothing much to say. It's humiliating, really. Kind of like a blind date, only worse because I set it up myself. After all, no one asked me to . . . er . . . blog, a verb, by the way, I thought I'd never use and at which the school marm in me clucks her tongue. Still, there may be those moments, in the distant future, when I might have an insight which could be interesting to someone who is perhaps interested in writing for kids.
Well, yes. But the truth is that it's more likely to become the forum for my many crackpot notions on that topic. My wife says I shouldn't do it. "You're not discrete," she says. "You're sure to make somebody mad." She's right. But I hope not.
Okay, friends, I've taken the plunge. I'll be back in a day or two with more substance. Possibly. Maybe not. Now though, I want to do something useful. Like walk the dog.
Well, yes. But the truth is that it's more likely to become the forum for my many crackpot notions on that topic. My wife says I shouldn't do it. "You're not discrete," she says. "You're sure to make somebody mad." She's right. But I hope not.
Okay, friends, I've taken the plunge. I'll be back in a day or two with more substance. Possibly. Maybe not. Now though, I want to do something useful. Like walk the dog.
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