Spring Boy Book Extravaganza

Okay, so girls are welcome to read them. I'm a girl, and I did! But, with one possible exception, these books seem squarely aimed at boy readers. In order from youngest to oldest target audience, I give you: the Guys.

The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless by Allan Woodrow, illustrated by Aaron Blecha

Horrid Henry meets Greg Heffley in this new series about a boy who wants to be evil, but only sort of evil, when it comes right down to it.

"Bwa-ha-ha!" he cackled. Zachary knew every self-respecting rotten evildoer needs a gleeful, evil cackle. But although he practiced almost every day, his cackle needed work. It sounded like a hyena with the hiccups.
Zachary continued walking past the two-story houses along his street, and then turned into Plentyville's small downtown. He read the sign on the side of the road: Plentyville, Where Plenty of Good things Happen!
Zachary knew plenty of bad things also happened in Plentyville.
In fact, he made sure of it.

Zachary's aspirations to evil range from the grandiose—"Alter the gravity of the earth so it crashes into Pluto"—to the mundane—putting snakes in people's mailboxes. And because he's such a sweet-looking boy, who blinks a lot, no one suspects him of wrongdoing, ever. I got a little tired of the recurring joke about the blinking, but I did not get tired of the joke about Zachary and other citizens yearning to qualify for entrance to a secret society of villains. And then there's Amanda Goodbar, Zachary's opposite number, a girl who looks like trouble and so gets blamed for Zachary's pranks. ("'You can't fool me with your blinking eyes,' said Amanda. 'I'm onto you.'") But my favorite character is Zachary's new henchman, Newt, who concedes that he would be willing to stop liking puppies in order to hang out with our budding supervillain.

Zachary is not happy to discover other aspirants for membership in SOURBALLS (Society of Utterly Rotten, Beastly, and Loathsome Lawbreaking Scoundrels). In his attempts to eliminate the competition, Zachary might just accidentally do something good!

This tongue-in-cheek offering reminds me a little of Mark Walden's H.I.V.E. books, but it's a shorter, easier read, apparently aimed at younger or reluctant middle grade readers, say, boys ages 8 to 10. Zachary's desire to walk on the bad side is tempered by absurdity and a lack of real malice. The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless is not a character-driven book, but I will say that at heart, this boy seems to be mostly a bored daydreamer. I think kids will enjoy watching his interplay with Newt, not to mention his success in filling a giant inflatable fish with mustard.

Try pairing this book with How to Grow Up and Rule the World by Vordak the Incomprehensible. (See my review here.)


Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger

Angleberger is the guy who wrote a whole book about a fortune-telling origami Yoda, so it probably won't surprise you when I tell you the full title of his latest: Horton Halfpott or The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor or The Loosening of M'Lady Luggertuck's Corset.

The story begins with Lady Luggertuck unexpectedly asking her maid to tie her corset a little less tightly. She's never done that before, and the household practically falls into chaos as a result. As the back jacket copy puts it: "Shelves go undusted! Cake is eaten! Lunch is lukewarm!"

Then a family heirloom disappears, and the servants naturally get the blame. But Horton and his friends, the stable boys, who sound like a slightly objectionable law firm (Blight, Blemish, and Bump), are determined to discover the real thief. Along the way, Horton falls hard for a girl above his station and the Shipless Pirates complicate things considerably. Besides which, there's the obligatory sneering villain to make life hard for our hero.

Tongue-in-cheek is Angleberger's rallying cry in this book, as he takes on a traditional genre (um, Upstairs-Downstairs Melodrama? Gothic English Manor House Mystery with Highwaymen?) and makes it his own. Here's where we meet Horton:

"Lazy, lazy, lazy boy!" roared Miss Neversly, a middle-aged woman with two hundred years' worth of meanness in her. Her wild black hair whipped across her furious face as she swung her spoon at the servant boy. "Wretched wart-covered ape!"
Beware, Reader, do not form an opinion of Horton based on Miss Neversly's cruel words. True, he had just been a trifle careless in the matter of firewood fetching. However, he is to be the hero of our story and it is only fair to point out that he was ill-paid and ill-treated for his services, which mostly involved the washing of dishes and was normally done quite carefully.

Be sure to watch for the author's parody of Hercule Poirot and his ilk, AKA The Greatest Detective in all of England. Plus the harried and harrying members of the press. I also really enjoyed Angleberger's frequent references to previous volumes about Lady Luggertuck, e.g., "Faithful readers will remember that M'Lady Luggertuck had a fear of forks ever since the events recounted in 'M'Lady Luggertuck Hires a Tattooed Nanny.'"

Outrageous? Oh, yes! But very funny, and very fun. I suspect this one requires a rather different sort of reader than some of the other books listed here, but for the kid with a taste for farce, Horton Halfpott will be just the ticket.


The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander

If you make your way to the fourth stall in the East Wing boys' bathroom of a certain elementary/middle school, you will find the offices of a kid who's a slightly shady problem solver. Mac and his best friend Vince are in business, and they're good at what they do. They're also saving every penny they earn so they can get tickets to the World Series, where they hope to watch the Chicago Cubs get their due at last.

Until suddenly things go south. A mysterious high school crime lord named Staples orders his bookies and thugs to undercut Mac's business. Mac retaliates in his usual clever fashion, enlisting the help of the baddest of his school's bullies, but Staples is ahead of him every step of the way—all because Mac has agreed to offer his protection to a worried third grader.

The Fourth Stall has a mafia thriller feel as it escalates, with Mac's every effort stymied and even those closest to him falling under suspicion. Walden Pond Press is known for its book-to-film crossovers, and it's easy to picture this one as a movie. If they do make it, I hope they don't lose the strongest things about the book: Mac's voice and the buildup of suspense. You almost wish the story wouldn't end: as in movies like The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense, it's almost more fun not knowing just why things are going so very wrong for your hero! I'll leave you with a glimpse of Mac from early in the book.

I was sitting behind my desk in the fourth stall from the high window. Maybe I should stop here to explain how we fit my desk into the stall. A lot of kids will tell you that the toilet was cleared out years ago due to a huge accident. They say some joker tried to flush a whole box of Black Cats and four cherry bombs down the toilet. Supposedly, the porcelain shards exploded everywhere and severed his arm and he now has a hook for a hand and lives in some special institution for kids who think they're pirates.
I know the truth, though, because I have connections the other kids don't.

Warp Speed by Lisa Yee

Yee is famous for her humor, but there's something awfully poignant about Marley's story. The major theme here is bullying, which reminds me just a tad of a recent fantasy novel, Ellen Booraem's Small Persons with Wings. With all the accounts of cyberbullying and other student persecution in the news lately, I suppose it's no wonder that the topic is cropping up in MG/YA more often these days.

Marley Sandelski's life is one endless round of being bullied. In answer, he puts on the speed. But when he accidentally wins a race for the track team that's been trying to recruit him, Marley isn't necessarily interested. For one thing, he doesn't want to abandon his own little group of geeks. For another, he runs for himself.

One of my favorite things about this book is how it mocks the clueless, pointless way well-meaning adults address bullying—with goofy assemblies and messages the bullies alternately jeer at and incorporate into their own ruthless schtick.

Warp Speed is another book in the Millicent Min series, with appearances from characters like Stanford, Emily, and Millicent. Yee perfectly captures the voices of these middle school kids. The audio-visual club is a great setting for Marley and his equally unpopular buddies, and I especially enjoyed the endless arguments about which is better, Star Wars, Star Trek, or—thanks to a newcomer—Batman. Here's Marley, climbing the bleachers for a school pep rally:

As I push my way up the bleachers, I get punched in the arm three times. This started last year. Some guy hit me for no reason, and now he and his two idiot sidekicks do it all the time. I call them the Gorn, after the evil slow-moving beast who first appeared in "Arena," Star Trek: The Original Series (a.k.a. TOS), Season One, Episode 18. The biggest Gorn is the leader. His head looks like a giant pink grapefruit, he's got a beak nose, and he's missing a front tooth. The middle Gorn is missing part of his left eyebrow. He hits the hardest. The smallest Gorn is crazy scary, laughs like a little girl, and appears to be missing a brain. All of them have shaved heads and wear letterman jackets with no letters on them. They used to play football, but got kicked off the team for not playing by the rules. Each time any of them lands a punch, they high-five. Forget touchdowns—just hit Marley instead.

And the Gorn aren't Marley's only bullies, though the boy who forces him to do his homework, Digger, ends up having secrets of his own. I think you'll find that Marley's matter-of-fact approach to the depressing realities of his life at school is one of the most painful things about Warp Speed. You'll be rooting for this kid to survive, let alone to get out from under those Gorn fists, Digger's homework racket, and the sneers of the popular kids.


The Secret of Rover by Rachel Wildavsky

This one's the exception because its main characters are a brother-and-sister team. However, it's not the exception in that it's an adventure story, a book that's plot-based with a capital P. Besides which, the girl, Katie, is kind of irritating—or at least, irritated—throughout the book.

Katie and her twin, David, are left with a nanny while their parents fly to Eastern Europe to pick up the baby they're adopting. Only the nanny acts creepy even before their parents take off, and after they do, she really shows her true colors. Even worse, Katie and David's parents stop answering their phones...

This is our introduction to the new nanny:

[T]he woman stared back from beneath straight black brows. She was short and squat and everything on her crackled with newness. Her neat skirt and blouse, her sensible low-heeled shoes, and even the twin suitcases that she clutched in each fist seemed to have been slipped from their plastic packages and arrayed on her person just moments before she appeared at their door. Her eyes flickered over them and for an instant her straight black brows drew together.
And then she smiled. It was a smile that seemed to glide out from the middle of her face on a slick coat of syrup. Wearing this slippery grin and gripping her suitcases, she leaned toward David. They were almost the same height.
"Hi, sweetie?" she said. "I'm your new nanny?"

Mr. and Mrs. Bowden are scientists who have invented a top-secret project called Rover for the government, and their disappearance is no accident. The fake nanny is in on the plot, part of a military group from a small country that wants to get its hands on Rover. Once they are in control, they make it clear that Katie and David are prisoners and should be grateful if they even get fed. It becomes apparent that the kids will be killed soon.

But Katie and David manage to make their escape, hoping to get to their reclusive Uncle Alex, who also worked on the Rover project. Most of this book is one really long chase scene in which Evil Nanny and her cohorts try to recapture the twins. The kids have a number of near misses and come up with some daring ways to evade their pursuers.

We eventually do get to meet Uncle Alex. The reason for his seclusion strains credibility a bit, but then, this is one of those secret weapon/spy adventures, so credibility isn't its primary goal. More to the point, The Secret of Rover is a daring adventure that I think kids will like. Pair it with Gordon Korman's series, On the Run.


Death Cloud by Andrew Lane

Of all the "younger versions of famous literary figures" out there, Sherlock Holmes has got to be one of the best picks. As the jacket flap tells us, "Fully authorized and endorsed by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, Death Cloud launches a new series of books that will take the teenage Sherlock Holmes, along with his tutor and friends, to America, Russia, and beyond."

I do wonder how many contemporary teens are as drawn to historical mystery as adult readers might be, but putting that aside, this is a promising endeavor. I'm sure the recent Robert Downey Jr. incarnation of the great detective, while it may have shocked purists, can only help sell these books. While Holmes tends to be remembered for his cerebral prowess, he makes a perfectly good adventurous hero, too.

Death Cloud begins, not with Sherlock, but with another boy. Matthew Arnatt is a 14-year-old living hand to mouth, and when he sees the bizarre cloud going in and out of an upper window, followed by a terrible scream, he simply runs. Later we learn more about who died, although how, exactly, is a mystery for much of the book.

Here is the scene is which Sherlock meets Matthew (Matty):

"For a townie you really can sit still, can't you?"
"So can you," Sherlock responded to the voice behind him. "You've been watching me for half an hour."
"How did you know?" Sherlock heard a soft thud, as if someone had just jumped down from the lower branches of a tree onto the ferns that covered the ground.
"There are birds perching in all the trees except for one—the one you're sitting in. They're obviously frightened of you."
"I won't hurt them, just like I won't hurt you."
Sherlock turned his head slowly. The voice belonged to a boy of about his own age, only smaller and stockier than Sherlock's lanky frame. His hair was long enough to reach his shoulders. "I'm not sure you could," Sherlock said as calmly as possible under the circumstances.
"I can fight dirty," the boy said. "And I got a knife."
"Yes, but I've been watching the boxing matches at school, and I've got a long reach."

Matty soon tells Sherlock about the mysterious cloud, which is only the beginning of the plot and its attendant horrors—a plot young Sherlock is determined to unravel. After all, he has been bored stiff after being exiled by his older brother to spend the summer with his dull aunt and uncle at their country estate. Things begin to pick up when he meets Matty, and then Sherlock is assigned a strange tutor from American, Amyus Crowe. Crowe has a pretty daughter, but she's not the demure type, and Sherlock isn't quite sure how to talk to her. Virginia ends up helping him out, however, and it's a good thing his list of allies is growing. Sherlock has come up against a perverse supervillain who would be only too happy to kill anyone who interferes with his plans.

The actual conspiracy is a little off-the-wall, reminiscent of the plans of a James Bond villain, but the adventure is thoroughly enjoyable, and I think you'll enjoy watching an untried Sherlock as he learns from his mistakes as well as from people like his unusual tutor, the sensible Matty, and the intrepid Virginia.


The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Wild by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon

Then there's the new Young Jack London series, made all the more intriguing by the authors' decision to introduce elements of the supernatural. This was perhaps inspired by the fact that Jack London's mother, a troubled woman, actually worked as a spiritualist in San Francisco for a time. Other astonishing claims in The Wild—that London worked as an oyster pirate at 13, then went to sea and traveled to Japan, lived as a bum after his return to the States, and was jailed for six months, all before the age of 18—are true. (What's more, though it's not in this book, Jack finally attended high school after all of these adventures, writing for the school paper!)

Note that Jack is arguably more memorable than any one of the characters he created, except maybe the dog in Call of the Wild. Golden and Lebbon have chosen to make Jack a few years younger as he sets off for Alaska and the Klondike Gold Rush. Oh, and they've thrown in Native American nature spirits and monsters, not to mention some very bad bad guys. But it's true that Jack London got scurvy while in Alaska.

Take a look at the wilderness as seen through the fictional Jack's eyes:

The landscape was incredible. He came to see it as the great white silence, because if he stood still out in the snowfield, all he could hear was his own breathing and the thudding of his own heart. There was not a breath of wind out there, as if the air itself were frozen into inmobility. The land slept beneath the thick carpet of snow. Sometimes it snowed some more, but other times the air was crisp and clear, and even though the sun didn't rise so high above the horizon, he could see a long way. Closing his eyes, standing out in the snow, he always knew from which direction his watcher observed.
Because it was still there.

The Wild is an adventure story, which is obviously fitting for anything focusing on Jack London. Jack's personal/spiritual evolution in the book is at times a little self-conscious, and I'm not too sure about his stint living in a patch of enchanted forest with a lovely, lethal demigoddess, but I did enjoy the wolf guardian, and the whole thing's a refreshing take on a genre that has gotten rather bogged down with Alex Rider imitators over the past decade or so.

In fact, looking at this crop of books and others that have come out in the past year or two, I would say that authors and publishers have stepped up to the plate, meeting the challenge to produce better books for boy readers.


Note for Worried Parents: Zachary Ruthless's stated goals may be of concern to some parents, while The Fourth Stall's Mac is a rule-breaker in his own right, plus people get beat up. The bullying in Warp Speed can be upsetting. The kids on the run in The Secret of Rover break a few laws along the way as they try to avoid being captured. Young Sherlock has his first exposure to opium, and there are various threats and murders in Death Cloud, a book intended for teens. Another work for the Young Adult reader, The Wild is pretty mature, particularly when it comes to violence, of which wendigo-type cannibalism is only one example. The book deliberately highlights the brutality of mankind and of nature.

Update, 5-1-11: For another take on young Sherlock Holmes, try Shane Peacock's series, starting with Eye of the Crow. Peacock's books have an air of melancholy about them and are very well written. On a related note, Anthony Horowitz, author of the best-selling Alex Rider YA spy series, has been asked by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to write a new adult Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Update, 5-15-11: Here's a nice video interview with Chris Rylander, author of The Fourth Stall. Among other things, we learn about major plot points in the sequels.

Notes from a Children's Book Conference

This weekend is the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Conference, conveniently located just across town from me here in Los Angeles. I'll try to squeeze in a book review later this weekend, but for the moment, let me give you a few observations from the conference. I'll continue to add to these as the conference progresses. (For more extensive blog notes, go to the SCBWI site, where a team of bloggers is reporting on the conference.)


DAY ONE

Keynote speaker SHERMAN ALEXIE made me think, Wow, I would have paid the $450 just to hear this talk! He was passionate, funny, and (deliberately, I suspect) more than a little nuts. It's not the kind of thing I can recreate here, but hearing him prompted me to retrieve The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from slightly lower down in my massive To Read pile and move it to the top. He joked around about the banned book elements in his work and the odd friendliness of our crowd, as opposed to the world of publishing for grown-ups. (That world is cannibalistic; the world of Young Adult literature, he said, is still a little ruthless, but you'd only come away with a pinkie toe missing, not your whole body.) By telling the story of a poignant personal experience with a reader, Alexie reminded us that if, as authors, our books touch only one kid, we've done our job and it's all worth it. He also pointed out (sharing examples from two groups of readers who sent him fan male, one from a rich prep school and the other from the Crow reservation) that most teens, rich and poor, sound a painfully common theme: "My choices are being made for me."

The second speaker was brilliant picture book author-illustrator DAVID WIESNER. He started with some video from the old movie, Frankenstein, in which Igor cries, "It's alive." Using this as a repeated theme about how inspiration strikes, Wiesner walked us through the genesis of his ideas for key books. It turns out early science fiction films and books are major inspirations. 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly its match cut from the thrown bone to a spaceship, is one such influence. Match cut-style illustrations and worlds within worlds appear over and over in Wiesner's work. It was fascinating to see how the bits and pieces of Wiesner's visual inspirations came together to help create his unique work. For example, Flotsam was originally the story of a round piece of crystal shown traveling through time till it washed up on a beach, but the boy who appeared late in that draft came to dominate the story, as did a single sketch of a girl holding a picture of another child holding a picture of another child. We learned that Wiesner painted each of the children in the series of photos-within-photos separately and inset them using the computer rather than painting them with what would have been an increasingly rough brushstroke relative to the size.

Naturally, I couldn't attend all the workshops. To start with, I chose INGRID LAW, curious to hear from the woman whose debut book won a Newbery Honor award earlier this year. Law's topic was supposed to be "Writing a Strong Voice in a Willly-Nilly, Namby-Pamby Way," but someone accidentally typed it up as "a Strange Voice," so she incorporated the error into her presentation with panache. The most important thing I can tell you about Law is that she loves and collects words. As she told us, "Words sort of rule voice for me." Law recommended a book called Spunk and Bite (a parody of the classic Strunk and White); she also encouraged us to have a piece of cake (which she brought on the plane as part of an object lesson) and to take creative risks. Law said she was unhappy with the manuscript she was working on one day, so she took out a piece of paper and just put down the craziest sentence she could think of: "When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he'd caused it." With a minor word change, that sentence became the first sentence of Savvy; it also contained the seeds for much of the book. I am happy to report that Law is nearly done with a companion book, tentatively titled Scumble. It's about a boy in Wyoming (cowboy country) named Ledger Cale. Let's hope for a 2010 release!

Next I went to RICHARD PECK's workshop on the topic of setting because I had heard one of his presentations a few years ago and knew he was an amazing teacher. Peck walked us through various examples of setting, helping us see that setting details have to earn their pay by telling us things about character and plot instead of just lounging around. He told us that a story always works from the idea of an epiphany, "a sudden new awareness that is acted upon" by the main character--unlike in real life, he quipped, where we generally run from epiphanies and the thought of change. In addressing authors' tendency to "overdress the set" with too many details, Peck observed, "Happy writing makes for sad reading" and encouraged us to cut back. "I'm not fifteen; I don't want credit for everything I write," he noted. The author also gave us a look at his next book, a YA ghost story called Three-Quarters Dead. It's due out in 2010 and sounded wonderfully creepy, so put it on your list. One more thought from Richard Peck: "Setting is the exterior landscape that reflects the interior of our characters."

The last speaker I heard was BETTY BIRNEY. She's the author of a middle grade series about a class hamster named Humphrey. Her sense of humor made me want to take a look at this series for younger readers, which sounds clever and appealing. The first book is called The World According to Humphrey. Fun facts: Birney worked at Disneyland for years, and she does not own a hamster. She's pretty sure her dog wouldn't like it!


DAY TWO

I wasn't going to mention yesterday's panel of editors, but I've realized that JENNIFER HUNT from Little Brown offered us a nuanced categorization of the best kinds of books on what she calls (beautifully) a publisher's "well-curated list." Hunt spoke of (1) A backlist gem, a book which just seems to quietly stay in print, year after year--e.g., Wendy Mass's A Mango-Shaped Space, (2) The great debut, a book which quickly acquires a solid fanbase looking forward to the next book from that author--e.g., Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer, (3) A book in which an author noticeably finds his/her voice, creating a true and unique style in comparison to previous publications--e.g., Julie Anne Peters's Luna, (4) A career changer, a book which solidly puts a previously less-noticed author on the map and off the midlist--e.g., Sarah Zarr's Story of a Girl, (5) [A work with] Vision, a book which may be unconventional, a risk on the publisher's part, but which is a unique success--e.g., Peter Brown's The Curious Garden, and (6) The phenomenon, a book which shoots meteorically to the top, not only of the list, but of the national/international consciousness--e.g., Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.

I missed most of a panel on picture book collaboration with Melinda Long, Eve Bunting, and Kadir Nelson, conducted by Arthur Levine, because I was upstairs having breakfast with a group of fellow fantasy writers from the Enchanted Inkpot. (It's always nice to eat scrambled eggs while watching famous authors like Richard Peck stroll by.) What I caught at the tail end of the panel was that illustrators don't mind talking to authors as much as editors seem to think they might, and that the illustration process truly is a separate creative endeavor--most of this from the great KADIR NELSON (see We Are the Ship and Abe's Honest Words, among others).

KAREN CUSHMAN, creator of Newbery honor winner Catherine, Called Birdy, and Newbery Medal winner The Midwife's Apprentice, was up next. She shared some great quotes, including this one from W Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." She went on to caution us, "Don't listen to advice. Even mine, which of course I am going to give you anyway." Cushman then talked about the ways in which her own writing process bucks conventional wisdom. I was surprised to hear how late her own writing career started--she said she had been telling her husband story ideas for years, and he always listened. When she was about fifty, she came to him with an idea, and he refused to listen. "Write it down," he told her, "and I'll read it." She was irritated, but she did it, and the book became Catherine, Called Birdy. Cushman scoffed at the idea of "writing what you know," pointing out that if she did that, she'd write this: "Got up this morning, made stuff up, went to bed." Instead, she told us, "I say, write what you want to know." The author said that she is concise to a fault. Her first drafts are usually only fifty or sixty pages long, prompting her editor, Dinah Stevenson, to call one such manuscript "a bouillon cube of a book."

I attended HOLLY BLACK's workshop on "How to Be Good Critiquers and Critique Partners" mostly because I like her writing and wanted to hear from her. I won't give you a lot of what she said because it's pretty off topic for this blog, but she did say she thinks that by working with a critique group or partner, you can learn things from watching someone else go through the revision process. She also mentioned "The Envy Test," saying that if someone's work makes her a little envious and angry, she figures it's ready to go out to the publisher. Speaking of generosity, Black said, "You have to believe that there will always be more ideas." The author was delightful! This may sound obvious, but one of the nicest things about attending an SCBWI Conference is finding out how fun, funny, smart, and kind the author presenters are, almost without exception.

ELLEN HOPKINS then addressed the entire conference. She was self-effacing and light-hearted, in contrast to her books--young adult (YA) novels in verse about extremely difficult topics, or rather, teens in extremely difficult situations. She explained that her first book, Crank, came out of a painful personal situation: Ellen was forced by a judge to send her bright high-school age daughter to spend time with her drug dealer father. The girl took up with a bad boy and became a drug addict. Hopkins talked about getting as far as she has in the world of children's books by "sheer stubbornness," explaining that while people like Stephenie Meyer take a helicopter to the top of the mountain, most of us are in for a long, hard climb.

After Ellen spoke, we heard from a panel of agents, who agreed that even if these tough economic times, children's books are doing fairly well. That is, the publishers have had lay-offs, but they are still buying and selling books. A few factoids: YA is going strong, especially since more adults are reading them. Brenda Bowen, a senior editor who was laid off and switched to being an agent earlier this year, said she looks for strong voices; confident, assured writing; creative language; and humor in acquiring books. All six agents--BRENDA BOWEN, SARAH DAVIES, STEPHEN FRASER, DAN LAZAR, KELLY SONNACK, and MARIETTA ZACKER--said that they usually work with authors on editing manuscripts before sending them on to editors. As Sonnack concluded, "All of us here want to fall in love. We want to fall in love with your work."

I then attended a workshop with EVE BUNTING called "What Makes a Good Picture Book Better." The author had some good advice, but best of all was hearing her talk about her books. In case you weren't aware, Bunting has written a number of picture books about serious topics like the Vietnam Memorial, the Holocaust, and homeless people living in airports. However, Eve Bunting is not a somber person, and even though she looks like a dear grandmother type, she is nice and feisty. Perhaps the best thing she said was during the Q&A at the end, when someone asked her "When do you do your thinking?" (Bunting had said that she spends a lot of time pondering her ideas before writing anything, which she considers part of the writing process.) The author's answer? "While my husband is talking." Perhaps her best advice was "Never be boring." She pointed out that parents will have to sit through repeated readings of picture books. "You can escape this pitfall with a little humor and a fresh idea." She also advised us that if someone asks us what we do and we say we write for children, and they get a condescending look on their faces, "Slap them!"

Wow, I am so running out of gas... Conferences are rewarding, but draining. I will try to add to these notes in a few days. Meanwhile, I've posted a book review!

DAY THREE

Author-illustrator-animator DAN YACCARINO spoke to the group on Sunday morning. His theme was "Yes!" After years of hard work and training in illustration (doing pieces for newspaper editorials, for example), he broke into children's illustration and animation partly because if anyone asked him whether he could do something, he'd say he could, even if it was new to him. I like this line, which belies a lot of misconceptions about creating for an audience of children: "You can't be precious about this stuff." He later added, "Kids can smell it on you a mile away when you're insincere."

Yaccarino is inspired by things like robots, cartoons, Mad Magazine, and toys and packaging from his childhood. He showed us a page from his first book, My Big Brother Mike, with the comment, "I still haven't forgiven my big brother for breaking my toys." Later in his presentation, he showed us a picture of his art studio, which is filled with cool gadgets and toys. "This is my studio. So I got back at my brother." Yaccarino showed us that he works on personal art projects on the side to fuel his work; some of the styles he tries end up appearing in later projects.

Asked if he knew how to do animation, Dan Yaccarino said, "Yes!" He ended up creating multiple TV shows for children, including Nickelodeon's terrific program for preschoolers, Oswald. Yaccarino did the initial character design for the Backyardigans, another well-known show. His newest animated program will appear on cable this fall: Willa's Wild Life. He is very proud of his work re-envisioning the Little Golden Books for a new audience; for example, take a look at his urban Mother Goose. I'm interested in reading his biography of Jacques Cousteau, as well, and the book he has coming out next spring sounds hilarious: Yaccarino described Lawn to Lawn as "The Incredible Journey meets lawn ornaments."

HOLLY BLACK addressed the entire conference on the topic of fantasy writing, "Examining the Strange." It was very fun to hear that she grew up in a decrepit Victorian with a mother who believed in the supernatural. Black said that as a child she asked her mother, "Mom, are there things out there like vampires, werewolves, and witches that might come get me?" Her mother's response? "Well, probably not." Black's mother also warned her never to astral project because if she left her body empty, something might come and take it over before she got back!

The author of Tithe and the Spiderwick Chronicles told us, "I believe that all writing is a conversation with what came before," so we should "Read enough that we are part of the conversation." She had an interesting take on the audience we write for: "As children's book writers, we are in a genreless genre." She said that since children don't know a lot about categorizing books by genres, we can invent things that are entirely new, and the kids won't know that. They're a wonderfully fresh audience.

Black explained that she doesn't think fantasy is more escapist than any other kind of literature. "Fantasy is the language of metaphor; it actualizes metaphor." This lends itself to working with themes in rich ways. For example, "When we write about something alien, we will also write about alienation." Black expounded on this idea, saying that fantasy gives writers and readers a safe place to deal with difficult issues such as anger. "You can't be mad at someone for being a werewolf. You can't say, 'It's not nice to be a werewolf.' You have to say, 'Okay, now what?'"

The author differentiated between horror and fantasy, saying that the latter may evoke both awe and fear, but the former only evokes fear. With fantasy, "You get the sense that the world is bigger and stranger and greater for having those strange things in it." And she quoted adult fantasy writer Gene Wolf as saying, "All novels are fantasies. Some are just more honest about it." She went on to say that Gene Wolf had said that realistic fiction made him feel like something was missing--the spiritual, the mysterious, the divine. Then she quoted from a rather caustic essay from Ursula LeGuin which stated, "A writer may use all the trappings of fantasy without ever imagining anything." Black added that we have to believe in Elfland when we read fantasy. It has to feel real. Like historical fiction, good fantasy convinces readers that they've been somewhere they've never actually been.

Holly Black then told us about "closed fantasy" with "day logic," or fantasy which has predictable spells and rules, e.g., Harry Potter. She contrasted this with "open fantasy" that has "night logic," where the rules are seldom spelled out and magic users must work more intuitively. The example she gave for this is Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire series (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood).

I next attended a workshop about the current children's book market given by agent (and former editor) STEPHEN FRASER, who said, "I think this is an era of no mediocre books." He explained that in tough economic times, publishers are unwilling to buy books that don't have strikingly fresh plots and voices supported by amazing craftsmanship. The bar has been raised, which is good news for readers! Picture books are the part of the market that is shrinking the most, while middle grade books are holding steady and YA is on the upswing. On the whole, children's books are doing better than most adult genres in terms of sales these days, the exception being mysteries and thrillers. I liked what Fraser said of middle grade kids: "They're really fervent readers." He said something thought-provoking about YA, as well. He talked about the increase in edgy books, but said that he didn't mean edgy in terms of shocking topics. Rather, the newer books are edgier when it comes to authentic writing, humor, and over-the-top drama. They're "extra special," he said. (Printz winner Jellicoe Road is an example that came to my mind when he said that.) Asked about the effect of publishing house mergers on the market, the agent said that yes, it has an impact on writers. He quipped, "There's this little corporate quirk called greed."

As far as trends, Fraser predicted that the current vampire fad (prompted by the success of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight) will end soon. He sees a need for books about boys, especially by male authors, and really good books about Latino and black characters.

At the GOLDEN KITE AWARDS luncheon, we heard from the following:

BONNIE BECKER, winner for A Visitor for Bear for picture book text, quoted E.B. White as saying, "All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world." Becker changed the quote for herself, saying that she would end it, "I love people." Hence her lovely characters, the bear and the mouse in her book.

HYEWON YUM won for best illustration with her lovely book, Last Night. SCBWI president Steve Mooser introduced her with a quote from editor Arthur Levine, "We're looking for books that show unmistakable originality." Yum was very soft-spoken, apologizing for her limited English--which kind of matched her wordless winner! I did look at her book later, and it's a darling read for 2- to 5-year-olds.

PAMELA S. TURNER is part of my group over at Enchanted Inkpot, since she's currently writing a fantasy. But she is best known for really terrific nonfiction. Turner spoke about her winner for nonfiction, A Life in the Wild: George Schaller's Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts. We were touched to hear that she's donating her royalties and her winnings to George Schaller's wildlife conservation foundation. It turns out George Schaller is the father of the modern conservation movement, and the first to suggest studying live animals in the wild (as opposed to their corpses!). He went out in the wild all alone and showed that it could be done, and that it was highly effective, studying gorillas, lions, and pandas, among other animals. His work with gorillas inspired Diane Fosse. Well, anyone who studies animal behavior in the wild is following in his footsteps. (Turner's new book The Frog Scientist also looks fascinating--plus the scientist is black, which I appreciate as an educator. I picked up a copy at the conference.)

STEVE WATKINS won the Golden Kite award for fiction. His book, Down Sand Mountain, is set in the late sixties. I didn't take a lot of notes, but the author was very personable, and his racism-themed coming-of-age YA is obviously a troubling and touching work, intended to make readers think about what it means to be human.

DONNA GEPHART won the Sid Fleischman humor award for her book, As If Being 12 3/4 Weren't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President! Sid Fleischman was unable to attend, but Steve Mooser quoted him as saying, "The author knew the secret of comedy: it's tragedy wearing a putty nose."

Then RICHARD PECK spoke, and I have to tell you, he's the most quotable person on the planet. What a way the man has with words! I'm trying to think of the male equivalent of the term grand dame, but the closest I can come is grand master, as in chess. Here are some of the lines I caught on paper:

--"You have to read 1000 books to write 1."
--"J.K. Rowling never attended Hogwarts, and Beatrix Potter was never a rabbit."

--"A story is always about going forward because you can never go back."

--"Nobody ever grows up until he has to, and in our stories, everyone has to."

--"Boys do not wish to make imaginative leaps; boys like to make clear connections."

--"You can teach children, or you can fear their parents; you cannot do both."

--Speaking of writers, who have become today's most powerful teachers of children: "We can't be fired; we're unemployed."

--And "We are a subversive counterculture."

--At the airport, "The checked bag is the badge of the amateur."

--"We write in a time when maturing itself has become an elective."

--Speaking of despair, "...when the self-pity comes in like the tide..." and "in a world of sexting and Twitter and the communal stupidity of MySpace." Later he added to his description of "a world disfigured by sorrow and chatrooms... and the double-barreled despair of Barnes and Noble."

--"We're growing older every minute while our readers stay mysteriously the same age."

Near the end of his talk, Peck recounted visiting a group of eighth grade writers at a middle school and telling them, "All stories turn upon epiphany." He then asked the class for a definition of epiphany, and one boy responded with "An epiphany is when everything changes and you can't go back." Peck said that that was the best definition of the word he'd ever heard. After the students filed out, the teacher explained to Peck that the boy had discovered his father in the bathtub two years earlier, dead of an accidental overdose. The mother was already deceased. With great tenderness, Peck told us that as an author, when you meet a boy like that, a child in a dark place, "You wonder if story can help, and give him a little companionship." (Aha, I've got it! Peck is an elder statesman. But I still like grand master.)

Speaking of epiphanies, after that I went to a workshop on voice given by ELLEN HOPKINS, who introduced us to several teens by showing us their MySpace letters to her, their profile descriptions, and their pictures. She wanted us to understand that each kid has a unique voice, one affected by his/her experiences. Hopkins also asked us how many of us loved high school, and how many hated it. She gave us some pointers about using a YA voice, then asked us to write a few paragraphs describing a life-changing moment in our own high school experience. I have to say, the piece I wrote felt pretty epiphanic to me. It also shook me up: I cried when I read it to the group. Although I do cry easily--blush blush. But hey: I walked out of there thinking differently about teens, let alone voice! (Note for Worried Parents: Hopkins's books are not for the faint of heart, as they're about topics like drug abuse, mental illness, abuse, and teen prostitution. Yet she is really meeting the needs of her readers, many of whom are themselves struggling and clearly feel understood and connected when they read her work.)

Egmont editor ELIZABETH LAW ended our day with her address to another full session. Like many of the other editors and agents at the conference, she emphasized the need for unique, powerful premises/plots. She cited Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, Ingrid Law's Savvy, and Laurie Halse Anderson's "spectacular, terrifying" Wintergirls as examples of striking books that stand out in a crowded market. I have to say, Richard Peck also talked about Wintergirls, saying how superb it is! I tend to shy away from the darker YAs (because I'm a big softie), but these endorsements make me curious. One interesting observation from Law: She pointed out that although people gripe about the awards process (Newbery, Printz, etc.), the awards encourage publishers to continue to acquire literary works in a business that is increasingly oriented toward more commercial books.

DAY FOUR

Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editor DINAH STEVENSON opened the last day of the conference with a talk about "The Four C's" required for a successful book. She included numerous brilliant quotations from various literary figures. Her Four C's are:

1. Creativity--"an essential strategy for writers" and, she noted, "something you do."

2. Craft--She talked about creativity growing in the garden and craft happening in the kitchen; you grow creativity like vegetables, then apply craftsmanship to them to turn them into something delicious. Craft is "artistry, skill, insight, and how to use language."

3. Community--although writers are naturally competitive, we must support and nurture one another. Through helping others, we help ourselves.

4. Chocolate--or some other kind of treat or celebration. Writing should be a joyful act.

Another good piece of advice from Stevenson was "Make yourself indispensible by writing what only you can write."

INGRID LAW addressed the conference next. Her talk was titled "Writing Magic: From the Head to the Heart." She told us, "Don't be too careful, because that is part of the magic that you create.... All of you are enchanters, and all of you are potion-makers." The rest of her talk was a story, an allegory about writing in which a man aspires to make magical potions but goes about it all wrong, or rather, learns a lot along the way. It is only when the aspiring potion-maker includes the shards and tears from his own years of pain and worry that he is finally able to create a true potion. The story was touching and a little funny, like Law's book Savvy.

After the two keynote speakers finished, I went to a workshop by agent SARAH DAVIES, who has one of those wonderful Gaiman-esque accents. She told us that a love of language had created the path for her life, and went on to give us five (actually six) ingredients for creating a breakout novel:

1. Unique--an inspired concept; "I see a lot of very similar stories."

2. Larger-than-life characters--A main character must be vivid and true, must leap off the page into our hearts and minds. Get to know your characters very well.

3. A high-stakes story--e.g., Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, though in realistic fiction, the stakes may be emotional rather than physical.

4. A deeply felt theme--a moral or spiritual message delivered without preaching or teaching overtly. It's something that stays with the reader after the last page is turned.

5. A vivid setting--one that is imbued with emotion, almost becoming a character. E.g., the setting in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

6. That special alchemy called voice--"You need to develop a musicality about language."

Davies quoted Anthony Trollope as saying, "There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily." She also quoted an anonymous person who stated, "What I like in good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." Davies noted that "[publishing] is so hard because we are at that painful interface between creativity and big business."

Then I attended a panel on cross-genre writing given by Simon and Schuster editor ARTHUR LEVINE (filling in for Sid Fleischman) and authors LINDA SUE PARK and LISA YEE. One of the points they made is that different arts and genres cross-pollinate: Sid Fleischman started as a magician and a screenwriter, Linda Sue Park was originally a poet, and Lisa Yee worked in copywriting. All three built on strengths from their previous creative endeavors when they began writing children's books. Writing across genres seemed like a natural extension of this practice. The funniest moment in the workshop came during a Q&A at the end, when someone asked the panel, "Have you ever thought about writing under a different name?" To which Lisa Yee responded immediately, "I write under 'J.K. Rowling.'"

The conference concluded (no, really!) with a talk given by KATHLEEN DUEY, who said that she revised her remarks that very day so as not to cover the same ground as the other speakers. She spoke of the need for having a reentry strategy after attending the conference--specific techniques for maximizing the ideas learned during the course of the weekend. Duey is the author of the YA fantasy Skin Hunger, which I confess is languishing in my gigantic To Read pile. The sequel, Sacred Scars, was just released. Duey wrapped up her talk by saying, "I want to talk about this thing we do, this story thing we do.... I think stories are the connective tissue for lots of things, for many things... stories don't only teach, they also shield." She added that stories "can serve a thousand, thousand, thousand uses every day of our lives."