Jason Rodriguez's Blog, page 3
June 5, 2015
Breathing, Reflecting
April and May were insane. Paris (including two events at the American Library in Paris), a school assembly presentation, an all-day workshop in Boyce, VA, a Northeast tour with 8 events, Gaithersburg Book Festival, two events at Fantom Comics, St. Louis, a four event stop in Denver, New Orleans, and then AwesomeCon. It was exhausting.
Most of the adult-oriented events were low-to-mid attended but the kids events were always packed, bringing in at least 30 kids for almost everything I did. And what we did was make comic books.
Turns out, kids love to make comic books. Even if they’re unsure at first or roll their eyes, once they start drawing it’s hard to get them to stop. Five-year-olds, middle schoolers, even high schoolers - everyone draws their comics and shares their work afterwards.
When I do my workshops I try to teach the kids a little something. If it’s a science theme, I’ll give them a little science lesson and then help them create a science or science fiction comic. If it’s a history theme, I’ll give them a little
history
lesson and then help them create a historical or
historical
fiction comic. When I taught at a high school I had them adapt sections of SIDDHARTHA and THINGS FALL APART, two of the books they were reading for class.
By doing this, they learn how to apply their knowledge in a creative way. Something that they take home to their parents or share with their class and take ownership of. It’s an extension of STEAM and Maker and Legos and Minecraft - kids don’t like to necessarily be drilled on facts, they want to explore the concepts that they’re learning, apply them and extend on them, experiment with them.
It’s a challenge, sometimes. The one complaint I get every time is, “I can’t draw.” At that point, I like to show them comics that feature stick figures or rough pencil work - I show them how terrible my own artwork is - and try to make them understand that EVERYONE can draw, some people just do it differently than others. That comics isn’t always about perfect draftsmanship, that storytelling is more important. Normally, that gets them drawing.
Sometimes kids get a bit of writer’s block. I try to encourage collaboration. I always make their teachers or parents draw comics if they’re sitting in. Have the adults bounce ideas off the kids. I always make my own comic, and I walk around the room and show each of them what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll say something like, “Oh, you’re using a dragon. I kind of want to use a dragon in mine - do you know how I can work one in?” They’ll tell me, I’ll include it, and credit them as a co-writer. I’ll also give them suggestions if they’re stuck, or ask them if they can draw a cat in my comic because they draw cats better than me.
Collaboration, education, creative endeavors - comic workshops leave a real impression on the kids who take them. Many of them follow-up with me down the line, send me their comics they’ve worked on since the workshop. I try to teach them what constructive criticism looks like, because so few people really see it by the time they enter adulthood. I tell them what’s good, offer suggestions on what they can do to improve the work.
There are just so many lessons that come out of a single workshop. I love doing them. I hope to continue to do them for a long time.
June 4, 2015
Giveaways Galore!
I currently have two different TRY LOOKING AHEAD Giveaways going on.
The first is on Amazon - all you gotta do is click this link and then click the box. Every twenty people will get a free copy of the book, up to five copies.
And then on Goodreads, I’m giving away another signed copy of the book to one lucky winner. Click here to enter.
And, as always, keep looking ahead.
June 1, 2015
Friends! Today is the official release date of TRY LOOKING...
Friends! Today is the official release date of TRY LOOKING AHEAD, my collection of Sci-Fi shorts for young adults. It will be in some bookstores, but it is also available on Amazon for the low price of $7.95 ($3.99 for the Kindle).
I would greatly appreciate any shares you can give, especially if you’ve already read the book. This is a book that I really believe in, one that started out under the working title, “Stories I’ll Tell My Future Kids.” The stories are ultimately about time and history, and how they can sometimes hold back our progress as individuals and as a society. I believe in the future, the book believes in the future - but it’s sometimes easier to let the past dictate the present, and this collection aims to inspire people to look ahead, instead.
The final title comes from the TWILIGHT ZONE episode, “Walking Distance.” In this episode, the main character’s car break downs and, while it’s being repaired, he walks to his hometown only to find himself transported into his own past. He realizes how happy he was as a kid and how unhappy he is as an adult and decides that he doesn’t want to go back to the future. His father has a heart-to-heart with him and tells him, “Maybe when you go back, Martin, you’ll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right place. You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.”
The stories for this volume include:
1 - The Boy Who Could See Through Mountains: A young kid is able to see through the mountain that separates his village from their vile and evil enemies.
2 - Reggie & Becky: A boy can’t accept the fact that his dog is getting older, and wants to be an old dog.
3 - Detective Know-It-All and the Glittered Up Glue Stick: The world’s youngest detective knows the answer to every question and will work your case if the price is right (usually three candy bars, full size).
4 - Rocket Ruiz Builds a Warp Drive: Rocket Ruiz has competition at this year’s soapbox derby race, the son of Precision Automobile’s founder. His racer is rumored to be better than her’s, so her only hope to retaining the title is to build a warp drive.
5 - The Monster Hunter: A kid learns how to stop the monsters coming out of his closet, by shooting them with his finger gun. But when he journeys into his closet to kill the remaining monsters, he learns what it means to truly be a monster.
6 - The End of Stars: Only one girl in the village realizes that the sky is falling, but can she convince her neighbors in time before everything is destroyed?
7 - Anita’s Dreams: Anita is able to travel through time when she dreams and learns that sometimes the future is more hopeful than the past.
8 - Try Looking Ahead: A story about gender, identity, gravity, and family.
Thank you for your consideration, and please let me know what you think if you decide to pick-up the book.
May 31, 2015
Big, huge thanks to all the wondeful young (and young-at-heart)...
Big, huge thanks to all the wondeful young (and young-at-heart) artists who stopped by my booth at Awesome Con and doodled for me this weekend. I had the best table skirt at the show!
And, of course, thanks to the people who bought COLONIAL COMICS, TRY LOOKING AHEAD, DISTRICT COMICS, TRICKSTER, and WILD OCEAN.
May 28, 2015
Will you be at Awesome Con this weekend? So will I! Table K12...
Will you be at Awesome Con this weekend? So will I! Table K12 with TRY LOOKING AHEAD, COLONIAL COMICS, and DISTRICT COMICS. I’ll also have Matt Dembicki’s TRICKSTER and DISTRICT COMICS! And I’ll be on two panels, “Bringing Comics into the Classroom and Beyond” on Friday at 3:30PM (room 141) with Matt Dembicki and Maria Sosa and “Making History” on Saturday at 3:15PM (Room 143) with Lora Innes and Sarah Vaughn. On Friday Matt will be hanging at my table and on Saturday Colonial Contibutor Matt Rawson will be hanging out with me. I have no-one to hang with me on Sunday, yet but who knows…maybe I’ll find a friend.
May 22, 2015
Woke up at 5:30AM because I’m a guest teacher at Denver West high school today. We’re...
Woke up at 5:30AM because I’m a guest teacher at Denver West high school today. We’re going to be doing comic adaptations of Siddhartha and Things Fall Apart. I was up until almost midnight putting the finishing touches on the lesson plan.
I don’t know how you teachers do this everyday, but I just wanted to let you know that I respect and love y'all.
May 19, 2015
Try Looking Ahead - Kindle edition by Jason Rodriguez. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Well, it looks like the Kindle Edition of TRY LOOKING AHEAD is available a full two-weeks before the print edition. It’s only $3.99 and if you a) have a Kindle, b) prefer books on your Kindle, and c) want to be awesome you should consider getting it!
May 18, 2015
TRY LOOKING AHEAD will be released on June 1st! Long-time...
TRY LOOKING AHEAD will be released on June 1st! Long-time readers of this blog might remember reading four of the nine stories back when they were Kindle Singles with the covers shown above. Well, now you can read them again (with some edits), along with a handful of never released stories. Get to pre-ordering, it’s only $7.95!
May 13, 2015
Try Looking Ahead: Golly Gump Swallowed a Nanobot
I will be premiering TRY LOOKING AHEAD at the Gaithersburg Book Festival THIS Saturday. I will have close to 100 copies with me, but five of them will have original, handwritten stories inserted inside of them. These stories will be just for you, complete with your name written on it and everything (I’ll fill that part in if you happen to get one). The stories include things like a tortoise and a hare talking about the theory of relativity, a person who can’t count to ten without thinking of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” and a guy named Golly Gump who wanted to swallow a spider to eat the fly in his stomach. I’m publishing the Golly Gump story below, just to give a little taste of what some folks will be getting (the story is an homage to Joanna Cole’s wonderful Golly Gump Swallowed a Fly). I’ll be selling the books for $5 at the show, so it’s kind of a real steal. Can’t make it? Get it on Amazon! Or enter the GoodReads giveaway, which will also have an original story inserted inside! Ok, story after the cut.
Golly Gump swallowed a fly.
He felt the fly zipping around in his stomach, buzzing and diving and stopping to crawl along the walls of his belly to eat little bits of pizza crust and drink little bits of milk. The fly was making him feel sick. Nauseous over the very idea of a fly in his stomach. Maybe the fly will have fly babies who will have more fly babies and, before long, Golly Gump’s stomach would be filled with flies to the point that they won’t even be able to fly. They’ll just all be packed in, making more fly babies until Golly Gump explodes.
“That sounds terrible!” Golly Gump exclaims. “Maybe I should swallow a spider to eat the fly?”
“Wait a minute, Golly,” Golly’s sister Gloria says, “Then your belly would be filled with spiders. That sounds much worse.”
“Well…I can eat a toad to swallow the spider,” Golly replies, pleased with himself.
“That’s not any better, your belly would be filled with toads!”
“I can swallow a cat to eat the toad!”
“Golly,” Gloria says with a sigh, “I don’t even think you can swallow a cat!”
“I’ll swallow a dog to eat the cat!”
“Golly, stop, you’re not thinking this through.”
“I’ll swallow a…a…what eats dogs?”
“GOLLY!” Gloria yells, “STOP. You’re not going to swallow a spider or a toad or a cat or a dog or whatever else. Hold on.” Gloria goes into the house for a few minutes before returning to Golly who is getting more and more sick with the fly buzzing around in his stomach. “Swallow this.”
Gloria hands Golly the tiniest of pills. “What’s this?” Golly asks.
“It’s a nanobot. Well, there’s a nanobot in the pill somewhere.”
“A what?”
“A nanobot, a robot so small that you can’t see it. The nanobot with kill the fly and then shut down. It won’t make nanobot babies.”
“You made a tiny robot? Just now?”
“Yes, I made a tiny robot. Just now.”
Golly believes his sister because she’s so much smarter than him. He swallows the nanobot. After a couple of minutes, he can no longer feel the fly. “It worked! I can’t believe you made a tiny robot that can kill flies in your belly! It even tasted good!”
Gloria smiles at her brother and heads back to the house. She hides her package of Tic Tacs in her desk draw so that Golly doesn’t stumble across the evidence. She then goes back to her biology homework, reading about the amino acids in a person’s stomach and how they destroy almost anything we swallow.
Tomorrow, she’ll convince Golly that she made a nanobot that can eat his brain if he doesn’t do the dishes.
May 6, 2015
Book giveaway for Try Looking Ahead by Jason Rodriguez
Reminder: You have until May 15th to request a free signed copy of my new book, TRY LOOKING AHEAD, on GoodReads. In addition to the signed book, you will get an insert featuring an original, hand-written, ~500-word story that will never be published ANYWHERE except for the paper it is written on. I may try to do some more of these for a charity drive, but this will be your only chance to get one for free!
So get to requesting! And get to pre-ordering, too! And remember, likes are nice but sharing is caring. More on the book after the cut…
The title comes from the TWILIGHT ZONE episode, “Walking Distance.” In this episode, the main character’s car break downs and, while it’s being repaired, he walks to his hometown only to find himself transported into his own past. He realizes how happy he was as a kid and how unhappy he is as an adult and decides that he doesn’t want to go back to the future. His father has a heart-to-heart with him and tells him, “Maybe when you go back, Martin, you’ll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right place. You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.”
The central theme in this book is time and history, and the effect it has on us, both positive and negative. Aimed at a Young Adult audience, TLA features an assortment of modern-day twists on classic fables and science fiction standards that tell of a girl who can live in yesterday, a boy who can see through mountains, and a sky that’s actually falling.
