Jeannine Atkins's Blog, page 49

What I'm Reading: The Heart is Not a Size by Beth Kephart

School's out for me, grades turned in, and I'm able to open some of the books I've been piling up since January, or, ahem, longer. One of the first I slipped out was Beth Kephart's http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/ novel for teens, The Heart is Not a Size. It's a story largely about a friendship between two girls, told through the point of view of Georgia, who calls herself "terrible at taking it easy:" and this is junior year in high school, with pressures fierce. She has brown hair and glas...

New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference

Sunday at the NESCBWI conference http://www.nescbwi.org/ began with Melissa Stewart http://www.melissa-stewart.com/ asking great questions to novelist and picture book writer Cynthia Leitich Smith http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/ who gave thoughtful, often humorous, and always generous answers about how and why she's changed the focus of her work, collaborations with her husband Greg Leitich Smith, teaching, multicultural books, Dracula, and many other things.

Kelly Fineman kellyrfineman s...

The Albany Children's Book Festival

The Albany Children's Book Festival http://www.albanychildrensbookfestival.com/
welcomed us with a sign this morning.



And I like it when four students, one with a nametag plastered to his forehead, open the doors. The mural in the hall was what really got me though. It was too big and beautiful (and there were some easels in the way) for me to capture the whole thing, so here's my favorite end with Marie Curie and J.K. Rowling cozy together.



I took a few pictures before the wonderful book-lovin...

From Pat, Pat, Pat to Bridge to Terabithia: Katherine Paterson's Roots in Poetry

It's a good year when Katherine Paterson, author of novels that have won Newbury and other honors, is speaking across the country to encourage reading. To celebrate Children's Book Week, the Children's Book Council is offering two Katherine Paterson essays as a free download here http://www.cbcbooks.org/news/20 until May 24. After that, more e-chapters will be available before Clarion publishes a paperback edition of Read for Your Life: Speeches and Writings of Katherine Paterson. Several edi...

Thankful Thursday and the Albany Children's Book Festival

1. I was delighted by the review of Borrowed Names on Letter Blocks: the B&N Parents and Educators Blog http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Letter-Blocks-The-BN-Parents-and/Remarkable-mothers-remarkable-daughters/ba-p/525836 Sarah A. Wood also cites books related to the mothers and daughters who inspired my poems.

2. Slightly early congratulations to Ashley Winn, a former student who has almost completed grad school and can focus on "just" teaching English in the fall. I was touched by h...

Looking for Last Lines

Yesterday my attention was snagged by a picture of red-brown ants crawling over drying, leaves. But, reading the comments on Tracy's blog http://tracyworld.livejournal.com/149164.html , apparently not everyone found the picture as stunning as I did. So if you click the above link, depending on how you feel about insects, you may want to go straight for Tracy's words. She wrote about reaching the end of the novel she's writing. She knows the end of her narrative, but is wondering about the las...

Coffee Break Tuesday: Interview with Debbi Michiko Florence

It's Coffee Break Tuesday at Debbi Michiko Florence's LiveJournal http://d-michiko-f.livejournal.com/509156.html One Writer's Journey: The Bumpy Road. Debbi is featuring an interview with me about writing books from Aani and the Tree Huggers to Borrowed Names. I hope you'll click on the above link and stop by if you're procrastinating, or looking for inspiration, or trying to tell those two states apart, and I hope some of my words help. Coffee Break Tuesday is a wonderful series of intervie...

Coming Home

I had a wonderful weekend at the Children's Literature New England colloquy http://www.clne.org/ , where Peter Sis charmed us with the story of his life, Ashley Bryan read poems for an hour, and many amazing writers talked brilliantly about books we'd read beforehand. We were reminded that anything can happen in Vermont as we admired pear trees in bloom and we walked, at least through the parking lot, under falling snow. I joined a discussion about nonfiction, which was fascinating, though I...

May

I came across these white trillium while walking along a trail in Essex, Vermont. I tread carefully around the flowers, but didn't watch out for the muck. My feet got kind of soaked. It didn't lessen my enchantment. I felt like a child finding a secret forest where fairies seemed bound to live. A place where I was alone, but felt in hushed and wonderful company. A place of secrets, and every one of them benign.



Alone and in company is how I feel when my writing is going well. And among secret...

Writing Poetry about the Past

I've long been haunted by a line from Marianne Moore's "Poetry" http://poets.org/m/dsp_poem.php?prmMID=15654 "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Moore begins: "I, too, dislike it…" though she doesn't catalogue what she finds annoying about poetry. I like verse that makes me wonder, but not that make me think "huh?' while feeling no one has any idea of how to clear up the muddle. I like poems that wake up my inner eye, the way Moore's do, and I like plenty of real toads. I find my ow...