Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 8

new edition

New Edition was one of my favorite groups as a teen but this post isn’t about Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike, and Ralph (and Johnny, for the later fans). I decided last spring to issue a second edition of MAX LOVES MUÑECAS! The illustrations took longer than expected but Bria DuBose did a great job bringing new energy to the narrative. It will take about a week for the new edition to show up at Ingram but once it’s there, your favorite indie bookseller will be able to order the book for you. I got a little teary rereading it…a rather prominent editor once assured me there was no market for this story about Honduran boys learning to make dolls in the 1950s but I’m glad I ignored her. MAX is one of my top-selling Rosetta Press titles…I’ve just ordered a bunch of copies and will be doing a giveaway later this month, so stay tuned!

I haven’t done a newsletter in a while and someone recently let me know that the form on my website isn’t working. My web designer stopped developing websites and mine is about due for an overhaul…so bear with me! I think most folks follow me on social media at this point but I will do a few more newsletters for the folks who prefer all the news at once in their inbox.

 

what counts

I went for a run this morning and felt so peaceful and happy afterwards as I ambled around the Japanese garden. Someone set the bridge on fire so it’s boarded up, forcing me to change my usual circuit. Today I spotted two Great Blue Herons and stopped mid-meadow to photograph a few flame-colored trees. Then I got home and realized I’d forgotten to put on my pedometer—so no credit for the 10K steps I took before 10am. And that’s okay! I have to stop measuring everything I do. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve worked on a novel. Yesterday I got the final pass for Book 4 and just added one sentence to preserve continuity with Book 5. I’m thinking about working on the prequel but I’ve been focused on my apartment lately. Yesterday contractors came and did a great job fixing up my office. This morning I see a couple of issues that weren’t addressed but it just felt so good to have people I trusted working efficiently and professionally. The other contractors I managed to reach haven’t even gotten back to me with their bids so I’m sticking with the crew that came yesterday. I thought I could afford to do both bathrooms this fall but will just focus on the guest bathroom for now. It could take up to a month to gut the room and replace the tub with a walk-in shower but at least I can still use the master bathroom. I leave next week for Scotland and have made some plans but my days will mostly be open.  Make space…that has been a theme for me this fall. It’s not like I have anything planned—I just want room, space to dream, time to explore. I’ve been burrowing, which is easy when the weather turns cool, but will go see Eve Ewing tomorrow evening to hear her talk about the stage adaptation of her poetry book 1919. This weekend is Open House Chicago so I might tour some of the historic churches in my neighborhood. Took a Hyde Park architecture walking tour last weekend. I’m not a total hermit but it’s tempting…

SAY HER NAME has been taken off the shelves in a county in TN and another county is resisting a challenge to A PLACE INSIDE OF ME. I heard from Hendersonville parents and a school principal recently—all expressing their love for my book and determination to push back against book banners. Our #BannedBooksWeek panel last month was recorded by the ACLU of VA—you can watch a captioned clip here. It’s frustrating to have titles meant to empower young readers pulled off the shelves but I’m very grateful for all the folks on the front lines fighting to ensure kids keep their right to read. That’s what counts.

 

September

It finally feels like fall! I had high hopes for this month but October’s nearly here and my To Do list hasn’t changed much. I got back from Toronto on Tuesday and ate half a box of candy…even though I vowed to lay off sweets after seeing my A1C go up again. I’ll have to go back on statins since my cholesterol spiked when I went off them in January, and my potassium levels are high—so no more banana bread. I didn’t get to talk to my doctor before she went on vacation so I’m waiting for her call now and suspect I know what she’s going to say. I knew my iron was low and picked up a bottle of Floradix but will probably need another supplement. I just need to do better! I exercise regularly and my weight is okay but these numbers remind me that good health takes conscientious living. I’ve had the blues for most of this year, which is unusual; I blame menopause but will take responsibility and stop self-medicating with sweets. I’ve ordered in a lot, too, and so will try to cook more often this fall. I make poor choices when I travel and I’ve been taking more trips this year. The Telling Tales book festival was wonderful despite the rain, and I got to see my mother a couple of times before her ward shut down due to COVID exposures. She’s working at feeding herself and not using a tube for nourishment or medication; hopefully we’ll see some progress. My school visit on Tuesday went well; my publisher arranged everything and I got to the school early to sign the hundred books provided for students by First Book Canada. Quick-thinking teachers solved the technical troubles that came up, my new laptop’s battery lasted the whole weekend (I forgot to pack the charger), and the beautifully diverse students were fully engaged. I didn’t try to squeeze a lot into my down time but still came home tired—that could be the anemia. I remembered to bring my US passport this time so had no trouble getting back into the country. Dentist yesterday morning, story time in a Bronzeville garden yesterday evening. Contractor came by today to give me an estimate and it took him so long to take notes on the two bathrooms…I’m sort of dreading his estimate. But he’s the only one who even returned my call and I need to get some work done sooner rather than later since the radiators came on today and the one in my office leaks. It’s brisk here in Chicago! This is the weather I’ve been waiting for and I’m happy to bundle up when I go outside or curl up under a blanket while watching TV. I keep reminding myself that I didn’t squander the summer but I’m between books now, have turned in all my edits, and need to dive into something new. My flights to and from Glasgow were canceled so I had to move my trip up. I’ve now heard back from two Scottish publishers with whom I shared “Blue Boy;” both have been polite but my illustrator seems to have dropped off the map. I don’t expect everything to magically fall into place once I return to Glasgow but it would be great to meet some folks in person. I’ve scheduled another walking tour and hope to line up one school visit. I’m flying through Dublin to avoid the chaos at Heathrow. One editor warned me that it’s already cold so I’ll be prepared for the weather this time around. Saw this thistle atop a lakefront planter in Toronto and it reminded me of the brooch I bought last month. Bre won’t be there when I return to Glasgow so I’ll have to push myself to connect and build community. And not stuff myself with shortbread…

Banned Books Week

A couple of weeks ago I learned that SAY HER NAME has been banned or at least pulled off the shelves in a school district in TN. Like so many others, the ban targets LGBTQ books but for some reason they threw in a few anti-racist titles as well. You can read about it at Bookriot. So that makes three titles of mine that have been challenged so far; I’ll be talking about it this Thursday on a panel hosted by the Virginia ACLU (register here). You can find resources from PEN America and the NYPL has made a list of books that have been targeted, including A PLACE INSIDE OF ME. To my knowledge, my picture book hasn’t yet been banned—folks fought back in VA and I just heard from a parent in TN that they successfully pushed back on an attempted ban there as well. Students in York, PA reversed the ban that included MILO’S MUSEUM so I’ve got a lot to be thankful for this week. As long as most of us continue to support kids’ right to read, #Freadom will win!

in between

I finished a new poem yesterday and shared it on social media so figured I might as well post it here as well. I started it on the 4th and then the Queen passed away so I took a few days to think about what I really wanted to say. It came together a week later and now I have no MS Word documents open for the first time in a long time. I’ve been weepy all week and suspect it has more to do with menopause than recent events. I cry at cat food commercials and I’m definitely not a monarchist so I can’t say that I’m mourning the Queen. But I did remove one line from the original version of this poem—“good riddance, I say”—because it just didn’t feel right. I have no problem with folks dancing on the grave of their enemy; someone heckled Prince Andrew (a “disgraced duke”) as he walked behind the hearse in Edinburgh today and I fully support that person’s right to do what he did. I wouldn’t make that choice but I don’t really have any impulse to defend the members of the royal family. One of the poems I wrote earlier this year is called “You Made Me Love You” and it’s all about the ways culture can be used to seduce and/or gaslight oppressed people. What did Malcolm X say? “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” And it’s not just the media—look at the popularity of shows like Downton Abbey and The Queen. They’re designed to humanize royals and aristocrats whose wealth largely came from the exploitation and oppression of “the masses” and people of color in particular. It’s important to be critical of problematic institutions and there will be no “reform” now that the UK has a king. After spending most of his life advocating for the preservation of the environment, Charles is promising to hide his political views because of “tradition.” If you can’t use your power and platform to create change, to correct the wrongs of your ancestors, then what’s the point? I’m tired of the endless media coverage but I recognize that the Queen was a person and a symbol, and she means different things to different people. I finished my poem and that’s all I have to say…for now.

preorder deal!

June feels like a long ways away but my next picture is already on sale! Today and tomorrow at Barnes & Noble you can preorder A SONG FOR JUNETEENTH and get a 25% discount by using the promo code PREORDER25.

blue boy

I’m in Toronto but my head is still in Glasgow. I even priced a week-long visit in late October; it might be nice to return and spend my fiftieth birthday there. I got back Sunday night and woke the next morning with a story forming in my mind. For weeks I’ve been thinking about a blue boy—couldn’t “see” much more than that, but then last Friday I took a walking tour of Merchant City and learned about a wealthy “tobacco lord” who built the door of his home wide enough so his servants could carry him across the threshold in a sedan chair. These Scottish merchants, whose wealth built Glasgow and relied on the trafficking of enslaved Africans, lived in urban mansions and conducted their business on streets that linked them to New World plantations in places like Virginia and Jamaica. My tour guide told us about an enslaved child named Frederick who was given away in Virginia Court as an incentive for traders to buy the loose tobacco leaves left after all bales were sold. The next day I visited Kelvingrove Museum and saw a painting of the Brownie of Blednoch (below), a troll-like creature that will perform chores in exchange for a bowl of cream. Suddenly the blue boy, the blue door, and the brownie came together in a strange narrative that I’ve been working on all week. I also contacted a genealogist who specializes in Irish/Scottish ancestry and she gave me some really helpful feedback on my recently updated DNA results. 23&Me was calling me Scandinavian not that long ago so I’m taking this with a grain of salt, but Ancestry.com made the same update. I grew up believing we were Irish on my mother’s father’s side, but now it’s clear we’re Scotch-Irish. I have some Scottish DNA on my Caribbean side, too, so maybe between both my parents I really am 37% Scottish. 23&Me was even more specific, listing Glasgow as a place where I share the most DNA with folks. Did I feel at home in Glasgow? Not exactly, though it was easy to get around on foot and the few folks I met were friendly. Mostly I hung out with my friend Bre, and it’s the connections with people that form the basis of any community, I think. But she just accepted a job in California so she won’t likely be spending much time in Scotland. Will I? I don’t know. I found a neighborhood in the West End that was appealing—close to the botanic garden and the university, full of Victorian row houses with stained glass above the front doors. I’m not looking to move and still love my home in Hyde Park, but it’s nice to have a new focus for the fall. After turning in a few manuscripts this summer, I’m feeling sort of adrift. I’ve got loads of unfinished novels that could use my attention; I’ve decided not to apply to the 8-month puppetry lab but found someone who offers private tutorials online so will keep working on Seeds from the Stars. Tried to sign up for a drawing class at an art center near my home but it filled as soon as registration opened. Saw lots of art in Glasgow but haven’t seen any this week. The more art I see, the more I want to try my hand at painting or photography. Meanwhile my mother is still in the hospital, still on a feeding tube. She’s in good spirits but is understandably tired of being in the hospital and her next move will be to yet another…this time for rehab. And then? We’re not sure. She misses her friends at the retirement home but it’ unclear whether she can get the care she needs there. I showed her my photos during one of my visits and felt a slight pang of guilt. I’ve always been aware of the luxury of travel, especially when my friends were touring Europe as teens and I could only boast of going to Florida. My friend’s mother is in her nineties and is getting her passport ready for her first trip to England this fall. I might try to meet them over there. Travel is a privilege I don’t take for granted and tourism is a complicated industry. I haven’t been able to find any sources that verify my tour guide’s story about the enslaved boy in Virginia Court. Did my guide, an actor, embellish or entirely fabricate the story? Does it matter if my narrative is based on another fiction? I can forge a connection with Scotland whether or not my DNA ties me to its people. In a way, their involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade gives me all the permission I need to write my own triangular narratives. Maybe it’s time to dust off my memoir, The Hummingbird’s Tongue, and reflect some more on archipelagoes…

Zetta Elliott & Thomas Taylor Meet Us at The Lamp-Post

A joint interview on middle grade fantasy series hosted by Read to Them. Watch the recording here.

 

how it feels to be free

It’s Emancipation Day in Canada. I woke up to notifications on social media letting me know that CBC Books had included A PLACE INSIDE OF ME in their list to celebrate the holiday. Emancipation Day was hardly ever mentioned when I was growing up in Toronto; we were told that slavery was something that had only happened in the US and instead the focus was on the big Caribbean parade downtown that was organized by recent immigrants. A cousin in Nevis recently sent me a video of performers dancing onstage—lots of feathers, flesh, and glitter. My memories are from the 1970s, before the parade got too big and became a ticketed event instead of a chaotic string of flatbread trucks clogging the city’s main artery. My father took us once, lifted us up onto a truck carrying throbbing, massive speakers, and then joined the crowd of revelers and disappeared…joy and panic. That combination of feelings is part of most memories I have of my father and it seems we spent more time together in the summer. Both my parents were teachers so they were busy with work during the school year. In the summertime, we hitched the camper to the station wagon and took I-95 down to Florida. Or we went to my uncle’s cottage on Mink Lake…or, after the divorce, we flew down to Clearwater Beach with our mother and stayed in a crummy motel for up to a month. I’m heading to Glasgow in a couple of weeks and since my trip to San Juan have been thinking about what it means to take a vacation, what it means to be free. This time around I’m hoping to squeeze in some research; the Viking exhibit I missed in Edinburgh will be in Aberdeen until October. If the train workers aren’t on strike, I should be able to spend a day up there. Last weekend I checked one thing off my summer To Do list—I visited the National Park Service visitor center at Pullman. There are a couple more museums I want to visit here in Chicago and I plan to tour the African American museum in Richmond when I go there this week. I want to swim in Lake Michigan and go hiking, kayaking, maybe buy a bike. I finished Book #5 yesterday and turned it in; I’ll probably still have to do edits for Book #4 this month but I cleared my calendar last week so I have more flexibility to travel this fall. My mother is still in the hospital so I might need to return to Toronto despite my visits in June and July. I have a book festival up there in late September but right now that feels like a long ways away. An author friend’s mother just died and he reached out this morning to let me know how much she respected me. I think I only met her once at the Brooklyn Museum book fair. She was so proud of her son and spent hours at his table as he stopped passerby to talk up his books. I don’t think any of my kid lit friends have ever met my mother. She and I aren’t close but she congratulated me yesterday when I told her I’d met my deadline. When my father was dying, his care fell to me because I was the only child of his that lived in the US. Now the tables are turned. I’m the one who flies in for a couple of days and then gets to go back to my regular life without the daily burden of managing a sick parent’s care. There’s a new British pub in my neighborhood; a friend and I tried it out last week and took a photo to share with a mutual friend in Japan. I look fairly carefree, I think. Not so stressed about my deadline that I stayed home to write. Not so worried about my mother that I couldn’t enjoy an excellent, expensive meal. I sometimes feel guilty about my wide open days and the privilege of having the means to leave one comfortable place to visit another. I worked for these days, planned and schemed to have them. But something is still owed. Will have to work on striking the right balance, I guess. Service to others isn’t the opposite of freedom but sometimes it feels that way…

The Importance of World Read Aloud Day

Zetta Elliott (Award Winning Author), Jenny LeFlore (Parent, Community Builder and Advocate) and Pam Allyn (Literacy Expert and founder of World Read Aloud Day) discuss the importance of World Read Aloud Day.