squeetus

On the road again

I've updated my events page. Look out Michigan, here I come! I've just posted the public events, so I may be at your schools or signing stock in your local bookstore as well. But I'll most likley be offline for all of next week. Ouch, my heart hurts just thinking about how much I'm going to miss Max. In a weird way, it's a comfort to me that one of the kids will be coming along, albeit in utero.

Website is updated! We posted hastily, so all the kinks aren't worked out yet, but the new design will be easier for me to upkeep as I keep adding books onto the list. And we finally have the river secrets section up, so some fun stuff for those of you who have read it or to keep those of you busy who are waiting for a library copy.

Currently reading: The Life of Pi (still getting into it)

Currently writing: book of a thousand days. My editor believes this will be the final draft, and that TERRIFIES me. I have a hard time letting go. "But wait...did I do...what if...and if I neglected to...?!" I think I'll do two more drafts. Well, actually, it'll end up being three. Last week I read through the book, making notes. This week I enacted the notes and am making more changes. When I finish this draft, then I'll go do another run through. I'm terribly pleased by this book. Bad sign, I know! But Dashti, the main character, she's become a real pal and I just love telling her story. (it'll be out fall 2007)

On the backburner (for now): the fourth Bayern book (no, I won't be giving any more details than I already have. Remember--I am The Spoiler Freak); sequel to rapunzel's revenge (the art is looking SO amazing for RR! You guys are going to eat this one up); and next adult novel (20,000 completed! And will stay that way for perhaps another year).

Austenland is moving swiftly into production. Copy edit completed, cover design even now being hatched by my brilliant editor and the Bloomsbury folk. They sent me pages of the interior design (title page, font choices, that sort of thing) and it looks so GORGEOUS. Very exciting. This was a small side project I've been fiddling with for seven years and I never thought it would actually see publication, so everything about this book is dessert for me. Just a big ol' bowl of carrot pudding with rum sauce. Or whole grain oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. With milk. Or pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. Or fudgy mint chocolate brownies. With milk. Gotta have the milk.

Ack. I need to go pack. It's so depressing. My maternity wardrobe is seriously lacking.

Sassy Women Songs

To continue the heartening spirit of sassitude, I thought I'd post here a songlist from a mix CD my sister and I call "Sassy Women Songs." If you're ever feeling your sassiness level slipping, I highly recommend playing some of these beauties rather loudly and dancing about. Not that I would ever do that, especially being 5 months pregnant and all. I would look ridiculous. Don't even try to visualize it. Don't do it...don't you do it...oh you sneaky visualizer, you.

Any other sassy women songs you'd recommend? How about some jaunty men songs?

• I Enjoy Being a Girl - Peggy Lee
• Turn Back, O Man - Godspell
• Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
• The Dirty Dozens - The Color Purple soundtrack
• These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra
• Dr. Feelgood - Aretha Franklin
• Iko-Iko - Zap Mama
• Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
• What I Am - Edie Brickell
• Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby - O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack
• Heart of Glass - Blondie
• Respect - her majesty, Aretha Franklin
• Miss Celie's Blues - The Color Purple soundtrack
• I'm a Tree - Imani Coppola
• Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics
• Fever - Peggy Lee
• Lady Marmalade - Patti Labelle
• Theme from Jem & the Holograms

Ode to the sassy

Yesterday while driving in my car, I was feeling pretty good and was trying to identify the sensation. Was I feeling sexy? Close, but not quite. Finally I hit on the word--sassy. I was sassy. The sassiness had something to do with the combination of no traffic on the road, "Superfly" on the radio, and a recent trip to the hair salon.

I began to contemplate, exactly what is sassy and how can one achieve it? Such knowledge could bring civilization to its knees! I don't think it's age specific--I've seen my 4-year-old niece and 95-year-old grandmother both sport admirable sassiness. Is it gender specific? I don't think so, but perhaps our male contingency on squeetus would care to chime in. I wrote up a list of things I think one can do to help realize satisfying sassitude:

How to be sassy

• Always tell the truth
• Create your own style
• Laugh at most everything, especially yourself
• Refuse to hate what everyone else is hating
• Decide that you're cute, even if you'd never admit it
• Dance by yourself
• Never underestimate the power of a great hairdo
• Acknowledge your eccentricities but never give them up
• Lean back and sigh...and when you find yourself worrying too much about things that don't matter, sing to yourself, "Life is just a bowl of cherries..."

Inbox collapsing

I'm so sorry to say that I can no longer answer all my email. I never thought I would get to this point, but I'm afraid the day has come. I know it's so important for many readers to be able to hear back from a writer, so I feel like I owe you an explanation.

Max has stopped taking naps. The 2-3 hours I used to have in the afternoons is gone. This is the time I would write and try to answer email. We're doing quiet time now, but it isn't nearly as long. Some days I get just 45 minutes on the computer, all of which I really need to write.
After this pregnancy, I'll have a new baby plus a toddler and I imagine my computer time will be even more limited.

I will do my best to read all my email and on occassion will answer some of the emailed questions in my blog. I love hearing from fans and really regret I won't be able to answer personally, but I need to put my kid(s) first and still have time to write more books!

Laurie's take

To clarify, books like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, or The Dark is Rising would NOT be considered "classics" in the way we've been discussing it. I certainly think they're classic children's lit or classic fantasy, but they are not part of the classics canon that are currently studied in most high school English classes.

To add another perspective to our discussion, I think it's very important to keep in mind that those of us reading an author's blog (books lovers) and those who make the high school curriculm (literate college graduates) are not representative of the majority of people in a high school English class. I'd like to quote a couple of paragraphs from Laurie Halse Andeson's blog that I found quite sobering:

"Read this from a report of the National Institute of Literacy: 'The ability to read and understand complicated information is important to success in college and, increasingly, in the workplace. An analysis of the NAEP long-term trend reading assessments reveals that only half of all White 17 year olds, less than one-quarter of Latino 17 year olds, and less than one-fifth of African American 17 year olds can read at this level.

By age 17, only about 1 in 17 seventeen year olds can read and gain information from specialized text, for example the science section in the local newspaper. This includes:

1 in 12 White 17 year olds,
1 in 50 Latino 17 year olds, and
1 in 100 African American 17 year olds.'

I wish we had all of our 17 year olds to the point where we could have them enjoy Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thoreau, and, yes, Hawthorne. But to get them to that point, THEY MUST LEARN HOW TO READ. Their chances of developing into literate adults are greatly enhanced if we hand them books that are interesting, engaging, and written in the vernacular. Most of the Classics do not fit that definition." --LHA

The slippery upward slope

Okay, I need to return to an old topic because I've had some feedback from people regarding our "teaching only the classics in high school English classes" discussion. Here's a worry that some people express--"if we stop teaching only the classics, aren't we in danger of getting on that slippery slope where eventually we don't teach any classics? And then how will teens read those books? I loved these books. They changed my life. It would be a huge disservice to kids to take that away."

Okay, I understand your worry, but I think it's founded on faulty assumptions such as: 1. the classics are the only really good books out there, and, 2. since I had a great experience with these books, so must most people.

Everywhere I go in this country, at every grade level, I get to meet thousands of kids and teens who tell me, "I don't like to read." I don't believe this. In most cases, what they're really saying is, "I haven't liked any of the books I've read." The danger of having only one kind of book assigned in high school (the "classics") is that MANY students believe there is only one kind of book out there, period. You may think this sounds small minded, but it really is true. Yes, it would be great if the burden were on the parents instead of English teachers. But I meet these parents. They had to read Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter in high school too, and because of their discouraging experience they stopped reading too, and they have no idea about all the amazing YA or genre books out there that could capture their children's fancy and turn them into lifelong readers. Many don't even realize the importance.

Most of the people who would read this blog are avid readers, go to libraries, have those reading options. But I meet so many kids and teens (not to mention adults) who really, truly don't know how to find a book they will like, and because their reading experiences in the past have been so boring or discouraging, they have no motivation to try. If the assigned reading in high school had more variety in storytelling styles and genres, it's much more likely that more students would find a book that they actually enjoyed reading, sparking them to find other books and keep reading after high school.

And regardless, isn't more variety, more genres and storytelling styles, a GOOD thing? Shouldn't that be the goal? Isn't that part of what we want to be teaching and learning in literature classes? Many people have marvelous, transcendant, life changing experiences from reading a particular classic. But I would argue that more students would have similar marvelous, transcendant, life changing experiences from reading a well-written young adult novel. Again I don't mean to replace all the classics with young adult and genre literature. I mean to supplement.

An argument I hear a lot in favor of the classics is the old AP test whamo. Again, I shrug. Why couldn't a Nancy Farmer book be an acceptable subject of an AP exam? Or a Richard Peck or Marcus Zusak or Jacqueline Woodson? We're so used to assumption that the classics are Better than any other book that we forget to question it. There are these amazing, accessbile books out there. They're great works of literature. They're changing lives. And someday soon, they'll be accepted in your high school.

A week of secrets

I neglected before to post a link to The Squeeter Pig, volume II, so here it is for all you non-subscribers.

In honor of river secrets coming out this week, I thought I'd invite you to post some harmless secrets. Let's keep this light and clean, shall we?

Here's my secret: Despite my general dislike of reality TV and the little time I have for viewing anyway, I made an effort to watch the entire season of Average Joe: Hawaii (except for one episode, which my TIVO somehow missed).

The house of the fourth happiness

Four reasons why I'm so happy (despite the chaos of boxes and new house mania):

1. We now live in a neighborhood where we can take walks without crossing railroad tracks or crunching broken glass beneath our feet. Dean and I take Max out almost every night. It rocks.
2. It's peach and corn season. Mm. The only time of year fresh peaches and corn are so unbearably good that you don't dare sugar or butter them for fear of covering up a spec of that flavor.
3. river secrets now has THREE starred reviews, one from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publisher's Weekly. (princess academy received two starred reviews, and goose girl one, not that I'm keeping track.) This is very cool. It truly is amazing to me how I absolutely cannot anticipate how people will react to each new book. (I thought enna burning would rock everyone's world. I thought princess academy would flop.)
4. This past week, I wrote 50 pages of a new book. This is completely unprecedented for me. It's a new adult book (as in, the main characters are in their 30s and 40s). Who knows how many of the 50 pages are actually worth keeping, but I've never experienced this kind of flow, and I'm trying to ride it as long as I can.