Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Blog, page 65
May 23, 2015
#BookADay | THE YETI FILES: MEET THE BIGFEET by Kevin Sherry (Scholastic)
Yetis! In Canada! What's not to love?
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More info: Donalyn Miller's Summer Book-A-Day Challenge | Archives of my #BookADay posts.
May 22, 2015
May 20, 2015
#BookADay: NOW THAT YOU'RE HERE (Duplexity, part 1) by Amy K. Nichols
Donalyn Miller has announced her 7th Annual #BookADay Challenge! See this great post about Summer Reading as well more details about the challenge.
I just finished reading Amy Nichols's NOW THAT YOU'RE HERE (Knopf Books For Young Readers) and loved it. Amy and I met back in 2010 (I think it was 2010?) when we were both taking Krista Marino's YA writing workshop at the SCBWI Summer Conference, and I was excited when Amy announced that her debut YA was coming out from Knopf last December.
You can find out more about Amy and her work at AmyKNichols.com. You can read more about NOW THAT YOU'RE HERE on the Penguin Random House website.
The book trailer:
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More info: Donalyn Miller's Summer Book-A-Day Challenge | Archives of my #BookADay posts.
April 29, 2015
Stop comparing yourself to others and find your own journey
Constantly comparing yourself to others can suck joy out of creating. Find your own pace and savor the journey.
April 28, 2015
April 27, 2015
Comic: The Paperless Office
I recently received an Apple Watch for my birthday, which I am loving. Not because it keeps me in touch with the digital world -- in fact, I've turned off notifications for most social media and have decided NOT to check Twitter or FB via my Watch. I mainly plan to use it for fitness tracking as well as tactile reminders (it taps me on the wrist if I sit in my office chair too long) to get up and move around every once in a while.
As I hunted around for a place to put the charger, I couldn't help but think how ironic it is that the so-called paperless office often turns into a wire-laden office instead. In my case, I have lots of paper AND wires!
April 24, 2015
Advice For Young Writers, Tea, Books and Office Owls: Three Questions With Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple
Today, I'm delighted to have Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple visiting Inkygirl. Jane and Heidi are co-authors of YOU NEST HERE WITH ME, a new picture book that recently came out from Boyds Mill Press, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. I've also been a longtime fan of Jane's work, especially her fairy tale retellings.
I asked both Jane and Heidi to answer Three Questions for me, and here are their answers:
Three Questions With Jane Yolen
Three Questions With Heidi Stemple
Three Questions With Jane Yolen: Advice For Young Writers, Books, Tea and YOU NEST HERE WITH ME
For Part 1 of my YOU NEST HERE WITH ME series, please see Three Questions With Heidi Stemple.
Photo: Jason Stemple.
I was thrilled to meet Jane Yolen at a recent SCBWI conference, and even more excited when Jane read my f&g of Where Are My Books? and liked it (see photo at the very end of this interview). Jane Yolen is the renowned author of many children's books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil's Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Her books, poems and stories have won many awards, including the Caldecott Medal.
You can find Jane at her website, JaneYolen.com, on Facebook and on Twitter. She and her daughter Heidi Stemple run a Picture Book Boot Camp (next one is Sept. 10-13, 2015), which is a Master Class in her home:
Her newest book is YOU NEST HERE WITH ME, a picture book co-written with Heidi Stemple (see Heidi's Three Questions interview in Inkygirl.com earlier today) and illustrated by Melissa Sweet, published by Boyds Mill Press in March 2015.
Synopsis of YOU NEST HERE WITH ME:
This lyrical bedtime book is an ode to baby birds everywhere and to sleepy children, home safe in their own beds. As a mother describes how different species of birds nest, secure and cozy with their mama birds, she tucks her own child into bed with the soothing refrain, “you nest here with me”—easing her little one and readers alike to slumber. Perfect for a young audience, this poetic text begs to be read aloud, and is accompanied by Melissa Sweet’s incredibly warm and original art.
Q. Could you please take a photo of something in your office and tell us the story behind it?
Photo: Heidi Stemple.
Like most writers, I have an enormous research library in my home and when I am working on a particular project, those books get scattered around my writing room.
As I am currently working on two very different manuscripts--one set in the Holocaust (the first section in the Lodz Ghetto) and the other a graphic novel trilogy set in 1930s Edinburgh, I chose to pick out a book from each of those piles to feature in the photograph. At the top is a day-by-day catalog of what happened during the ghetto years in Lodz, and in the second materials about Scotland through the ages. Fiction has to take the real and massage it into a story that nay (or may not) have actually happened. We recreate (hi)story and bring our readers along.
Photo: Heidi Stemple.
From Jane, about the photo above: "I can't seem to write without a cup of tea (British decaf with demarara sugar and a splash of Lactaid milk.) I keep making cuppas coming all day long."
Q. What advice do you have for young writers?
Read, read, read.
Write something every day.
Never take no for an answer.
Don't believe your reviews--either good or bad.
Heart on the page.
Know that books are not just written, but rewritten.
(Above: Listen as Jane reads and critiques her very first poem)
Q. What are you excited about right now?
Two of my old books recently splashed out big: HOW DO DINOSAURS GET WELL SOON (Scholastic) won the Colorado One Book Award, and BAD GIRLS (Charlesbridge)--written with daughter Heidi Stemple--won the Magnolia Award, Mississippi's Children's Book Award for the middle grades. Plus the latest book Heidi and I just published--YOU NEST HERE WITH ME (Boyds Mills) with amazing illustrations by Melissa Sweet--has recently had a tremendous start and after only a month is getting a second printing.
But honestly, I am always most excited about the manuscript I am working on now. That's where my heart is, where my soul is. That is where my tomorrow is.
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For more interviews, see my Inkygirl Interview Archive.
Three Questions with Heidi Stemple: Advice For Young Readers, Owls and YOU NEST HERE WITH ME
For Part 2 of the YOU NEST HERE WITH ME series, please see Three Questions With Jane Yolen.
Heidi Stemple didn’t want to be a writer when she grew up. In fact, after she graduated from college, she became a probation officer in Florida. It wasn’t until she was 28 years old that she gave in and joined the family business, publishing her first short story in a book called Famous Writers and Their Kids Write Spooky Stories. The famous writer was her mom, author Jane Yolen. Since then, she has published twenty books and numerous short stories and poems, mostly for children.
I had a chance to hang out with Heidi at the SCBWI Summer Conference last year. She's smart, she's funny and she's so supportive of others in the industry. Then partway through a group conversation, I also discovered that her mom is Jane Yolen (!!).
Heidi and Jane run a Picture Book Boot Camp (next one is Sept. 10-13, 2015), which is a Master Class in Jane's home:
Where to find out more about Heidi:
Heidi's website - Twitter - Heidi's Author Page on Facebook - Facebook page about the yearly owl count
Synopsis of You Nest Here With Me (Boyds Mill Press, 2015):
This rhyming bedtime book is part lullaby and part introductory field guide for the smallest ornithologists. But, at its heart, it reminds baby birds and children alike that home is wherever you are safely tucked in with your family. If you look in the back of You Nest Here With Me , you'll see that part of the dedication is to The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If you want to know more about birds--including listening to owl calls, visit them at: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478.
Heidi's office. (The cat is named Romeo)
Q. Could you please take a photo of something in your office and tell us the story behind it?
I love birds. All birds. But, especially owls.
"Think I'm kidding about the owls? I even have owl nesting dolls."
I have about a hundred owls in my house. Actually, I’ve never counted them, but there are a lot.
Heidi's living room. "See the owl in the rafters? His name is Wilbur and he watches out over the house." My mother, author Jane Yolen, wrote a book you might know called Owl Moon. It’s about a little girl who goes out owling with her dad. What you may not know is that the little girl is me and Pa is my father, David Stemple, who was a great owler. He was the one who taught me to call owls and now, once a year, I lead a team of owlers for the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. On our best year (so far) we called down 67 owls from midnight to 7am.
These (pictured above) are probably my favorite owls—they make up a bookend that my dad had in his office. Now they sit on the bookshelf right next to my desk and remind me of him.
Q. What advice do you have for young writers?
When you live in a family of writers (my mother and both my brothers work in children’s books) you know that inspiration comes from everywhere. You never know when and from where an idea for a story will pop up. Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open at all times for those ideas. And, write them down because ideas are slippery little buggers.
Prep for the Owl Count
Every writer has all sorts of notes jotted all over the place with ideas for stories or poems or essays or speeches. I even have the beginning of a story on my iphone—you can’t really understand it because I dictated it with voice-to-text and it got most of the words wrong. But, it’s good enough for me to figure it out later when I am ready to write that story.
Q. What are you excited about right now?
I am always excited about my newest book and the book (or usually books) I am working on. So, besides the projects I am writing and researching right now (which involve pirates, the civil war, the Christmas Bird Count, cookies, the moon, monsters, and soup—yes soup) I am probably MOST excited about my brand new book You Nest Here With Me (co-authored by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Melissa Sweet). This is a book that took 12 years to get published. We sold it twice—to the same editor at 2 different publishing companies—and then waited 3 years for the illustrations. I am glad we were patient because we are so happy with the way it turned out.
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For more interviews, see my Inkygirl Interview Archive.
