Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 53

Fictional Motherhood #5: Switched At Birth

If you haven’t seen this ABC Family series, I think you should. The
premise is that two teen girls discover that they were switched at birth
and it’s too late to really unswitch them, but both want to get to know
their biological families, so many complications ensue, perfect for a
soap opera. My interest here is in the portrayal of the two mothers,
Regina Vasquez and Kathryn Kennish.

Regina Vasquez is a divorced mother who is struggling to make ends
meet as a hair stylist while she fiercely champions her deaf daughter’s
rights. (I could go off on how great the portrayal of deaf culture is
here and how interesting the debate about cochlear implants, but I will
refrain.) She dates some pretty hot men, but it also drawn to her ex
(Angelo). She ends up living with the Kennishes for the sake of her
daughters, but it is a very uncomfortable alliance for her. She wants to
be independent and she can’t be. She also has a past as an addict that
she is quite open about and she was a former very promising visual
artist.

Kathryn Kennish is a rather privileged woman married traditionally
who doesn’t work, but spends most of her time doing charitable good
works and looking after her children and husband, a former sports star
who now owns a car dealership. When she discovers her daughter was
switched at birth, she goes along with her husband’s insistence that
they must sue the hospital, but eventually realizes that she has always
wanted to be a writer and chooses these sensational circumstances to
write about.

This show could have chosen to be about only the two teen daughters.
The writing is good enough and the younger actors are certainly
captivating enough that I would have watched the show for the teen side
alone. The producers could have chosen to write the show with the teens
as the stars, and the parent stories being backdrop and less important.
Instead, the show is truly an ensemble, so that no one’s storyline is
really more important than anyone else’s.

What I love about the treatment of the mothers is how real it feels
to me. John and Kathryn Kennish have what many might think of as the
perfect life. There are a few hints that things aren’t perfect, but I
don’t think this is sensationalized. When Kathryn realizes another man
is attracted to her, she is briefly tempted. And then she keeps pretty
far away from that man. When Kathryn suspects her husband of cheating on
her with another woman, she is horribly upset, but the writers don’t go
there. John loves Kathryn, even if he makes certain assumptions about
her that many men in traditional marriages make about their wives.

I love that when Kathryn writes her book she gets invited for
interviews and has to juggle family and work in a real way. She has to
make sacrifices and she seems torn by the choices at times. At other
times, she acts like a grown woman who knows what she wants and she
points at it and gets it. She isn’t exactly the poster child for the
modern feminist movement. In fact, I might argue she is the reverse of
the poster child. But she is nonetheless a true mirror of what many
women in middle America are experiencing. The world is changing. The
roles of women are changing. And that is challenging and refreshing at
the same time. I love that Kathryn calls John on some of his idiocies,
especially his expectations of her. I suspect that a show like this may
actually change more minds in America than a more radical one would.

I also love Regina Vasquez. I’m not sure I love that she knew that
Bay and Daphne were switched at birth for years before the truth came
out. This seems a fairly typical play about women being devious and
vampy, as they are often portrayed in traditional soap operas. (Whereas
Kathryn gets to be the nice woman, the good wife and mom, etc.) Despite
that, I like that Regina is strong and independent. I like that she
fights living with the Kennishes. I like that she has a difficult past. I
love how open she becomes about her addiction and how that becomes part
of the show that everyone talks about, and that when Bay starts
misbehaving, Regina really knows where she is coming from. I love that
Regina has her own love life, which she has to work around her
daughters. I love that she has her own art show, even though Bay is
“supposed” to be the talented one.

I really dislike the fact that Regina has now been “forced” into a
marriage of convenience with her ex Angelo. I am pretty tired of
marriage of convenience story plots from the 70s. If Angelo turns out to
be her true love, I am going to start throwing things at the screen.
Regina is just too smart to go back to someone who has done what Angelo
has done. All his protestations to changing to the side. I feel like the
show’s writers are punishing Regina for her bad-girl past. She is the
one who ends up with the deaf child, because no rich parents could
possibly have that happen to their child. Yes, the writers have the guts
to make that part of the storyline, but still. Regina has to be
punished, as well, for her independence, and is constantly scraping for
money and pushing help away. It seems like she is also being punished
for having a sex life. She has to marry Angelo, and then her boyfriend
dumps her, even after he has told her he has not interest in marriage.

I am not sure if I am disappointed with the show for this, however. I
think there is a lot of truth to what is being depicted here. Our
society does punish single women who try to be independent. It does
punish women who want to have a sex life while trying to raise
daughters. And keeping a family together often means that women make the
most sacrifices. If you can see that while you’re watching the show,
good. Rail at society, make changes. And point it out wherever it
happens.

Monday Book Recs--A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan and Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan

I haven’t read romances for probably 15 years. The reasons are pretty
simple. I got tired of the same old tropes. I got tired, also, of the
rape culture that seemed part of every romance novel that I read. I was
angry at the insistence on certain feminine features in all heroines. I
was angry that men had to be romantic in certain ways and no others.

I love romance, don’t get me wrong. But it seemed like the only
romance I liked was showing up in sf/f because that was where you could
ask questions about romance and really rip it apart and put it back
together in a new way.

Warning: This is not by any means a clean romance read. There is sex
here, and it’s pretty graphic and I think, pretty wonderful. But if that
bothers you, this book is not for you. Or you’re going to have to do
some page skipping (I used to do that).

Justine Larbelestier casually mentioned Courtney Milan to me in a
Twitter conversation about romance. Since I had been trying to read
romances for the last five or six years, only going by friend
recommendations and still finding anything that I liked, I was
skeptical. I got a sample of A Kiss for Midwinter. And then I spent the
next three days devouring everything Courtney Milan has ever written.

This is an ebook novella and it is like a cross between Bones and
Jane Austen. Frank conversation about sex that ends up being absolutely
hysterical. A Victorian era doctor who tells too much truth meets a
young woman who is definitely not your typical virgin heroine. I don’t
laugh easily, but this book had me laughing all over the place. I don’t
even care if the characters are historically accurate. Lots of the
medicine, I suspect, is.

Other things I loved about this book:

1. Vulnerable characters whose pasts felt real.

2. An obstacle that isn’t easily glossed over for a happy ending.

3. Sex that isn’t necessarily perfect the first time.

4. A real life look at the “other” people in this time period, not just fancy balls and pretty white people.

5. The insistence that the woman initiate sex and be always a
willing, active participant. No hints of rape culture in the positive
sex here.

6. Dialog that is snappy and funny.

7. Quick vacillation between comedy and tragedy.

8. A real reason for the two main characters to hate each other to
begin with, and an equally real reason for them to slowly come to know
each other.

9. A hero who is celibate the moment he falls in love. No sleeping around with other women to try to get over the heroine.

10. No experienced male/inexperienced female dichotomy here.

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

This book has some of the best prose I have ever read. Crisp, clear,
and perfect. I get annoyed with writers who seem to be trying to show
off the words they learned in grad school, or who are trying to hide
information from the reader. Not so here. The story is told so plainly
that I never once wanted to ask the writer what was going on. It was
going on right under my nose.

This is a story about a woman who has disappeared for twenty years
and suddenly reappears with a completely unbelievable story about having
been in fairyland for a few months, and having lost all that time. No
one in her family believes her, really. She willingly goes to a
psychiatrist, who has several explanations of why she might have made
this up.

But what do readers think? I think Graham Joyce has such respect for
readers that he ultimately lets us choose for ourselves, if we want to
believe or not believe. And for people like me, who want to do both at
the same time, you can do that, too. To have two narratives told at the
same time is such a great thing.

I feel like that’s the way I view the world a lot. Politically, I can
see the conservative narrative right alongside the liberal narrative
and sometimes both make equal sense, even though they are mutually
exclusive. I don’t know if that makes me crazy or more understanding,
but I felt the same as I read this book. It will blow your mind if you
let it. Or it will simply be a great read. There are so many levels
here, and yet it is a very simple thing: a perfectly told story.

Friday Tri: Strong Women

One of the things
I have been most impressed with at the Cross-Fit gym I go to is the
number of extremely buff women who are there. I'm not talking about
women who have done aerobics enough to make themselves very thin. I
am talking about women with muscles bulging. There is a sign up that
says “Strong is Beautiful,” and I have to say, I agree.

But strong is also
just, well, strong. I don't know people very well there yet, but
there are women who have small children who started out coming to
Cross-Fit to get fit themselves and now are teaching classes to both
men and women. In fact, as far as I can tell, most of the instructors
are women. The whole place is run by women! Yes, there are a couple
of men around. The Olympic weight-lifting person is a man, but when I
see these women teaching how to lift weights, they are doing things I
really thought women could not do. Not just doing pull-ups (which I
still cannot do, after 9 years of triathlons), but throwing huge
weights around on the floor, doing headstands, and a bunch of moves
I'm not sure I even know the names for, but they look impressive.

I am fascinated to
have found a place at last where women do not think of thin as the
ideal. Clearly, they do not aim at shaping their bodies to fit the
fashion, but at dressing their bodies, which have become the shape
that they are because of what they want their bodies to do. And when
I say these are muscular women, I do not mean that they are the kind
of women you would necessarily see oiled up for a Ms. Universe
pageant. Some of these women might “look” overweight, but then
you see them doing pullups or squats and you realize that if there a
layer of fat there, it's on top of some really big muscles.

It reminds me of a
moment a few weeks ago when a neighbor of mine, who seems
self-conscious about her weight and says to me all the time how she
could never do what I do and so she will just have to be “fat,”
was helping us put away tables and chairs after a community event at
the church. She was able to move those tables around when I had given
up putting them back in the proper place. I felt definitely schooled
in my assumptions about weight and size in women.

I think I'm going
to like this place. I think I may have found my tribe. I am so tired
of women looking at numbers on a scale and being determined to be
“just one size smaller” and that being the definition of health.
Lots of different bodies can do lots of different things, and surely
they are all beautiful in the ways in which they move. Yes?

Writing Wednesday: Beginning with the Ending

I have found
myself doing this again this year. One of my favorite projects wasn't
working and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I loved the first
few chapters, and then the story just had nowhere to go. I kept
writing it, and there was a resolution somewhere that I sorta liked,
but everything between the first few chapters and that ending was
going to have to go. But what was going to replace it? I spent a year
puzzling over this and finally came to the conclusion that the first
few chapters I really loved were actually the climax of the book.

Ah ha! That's why
they were wrong. That's why there was so much back-story that I
didn't know how to put in. That's why the timeline was so screwy, and
I kept going back to tell whole chapters in the past, then flashing
back forward to the present—for the entire book! I had told the
whole thing backwards.

Not that there is
anything wrong with a novel that chooses to tell a story out of
sequence. Some novels work very well this way, so long as the author
is aware of what she is doing, and is giving the right information to
the reader all along. These novels may feel like they begin with the
climax, but what they actually begin with is a teaser, and then the
real climax, told from beginning to end, is right where it should be,
near the end of the novel. Because if you don't do it that way, guess
what? Reader interst flags with everything that isn't the climax, and
plus they are confused about things in the climax they shouldn't be
confused about.

I have made this
mistake now in 3 books. The first was The Monster In Me, where the
climax of going back to her mother happens off-stage before page one,
and then it was a mess. The second book was The Rose Throne, where
the first chapter I wrote was actually (no spoilers!) the climax for
one of the main characters where the truth comes out. As long as I
kept writing drafts where that climax appeared early in the novel,
the book was a disaster. Now that it's in the right place, I think
it's a fabulous book. We'll see where this current manuscript goes
and if it is published or not. And no, not everything that a writer
writes gets published, and that's the way it should be.

Fictional Motherhood #4: Tami Taylor--Friday Night Lights

I am not a football fan. At all. I do not watch sports except sports
that I actually participate in myself, which therefore includes
swimming, running, the Tour de France, and triathlon. I realize these
are all boring to people who do not participate in them. That is why I
do not understand how it is that I can love a show like Friday Night
Lights so very, very much. I admit, it took me about 10 episodes to
become absolutely hooked. Then it was one of those shows that I just
gulped down.

Probably my favorite scene EVER is the one where Tami Taylor finds
out that Julie has slept with her boyfriend and sits her down to hand
out her “punishment.” The whole episode is just hilarious and painful in
equal doses to me. I love when Coach Taylor walks into the room and
sees his daughter half dressed and realizes. And then walks out again
and is just fuming. I love Julie’s reaction of terror and shame. But
best of all is the punishment scene. Julie is expecting to be grounded
or told that she can’t see Matt anymore. But her mother tells her that
the punishment is, in fact, discussing sex with her mother.

I am told by my own children that this is, in fact, the worst
possible punishment for a teen. My teens are always running away saying
“TMI, MOM!” when I try to talk to them frankly about sex. It amuses me,
especially when I consider how nervous I once was about how I would
manage this topic, since my mother never talked to me about sex (to be
fair to her, the woman had 11 children and she claimed she meant to talk
to me, but got me confused with one of the other kids). Being a mother
means telling your teens information even when they don’t want to know
it. So many TV shows have moms who talk about sex in vague terms
(possibly afraid of sensors or parental reaction). Or the moms degrade
sex. Tami Taylor does neither. Sex is special to her and she wants it to
be that way for her daughter, but more than she cares about her own
religious values, I think she cares about her daughter’s physical
safety.

Tami and Julie have a frank discussion about birth control and about a
woman’s choice in sex. Tami tells Julie that just because she wants to
have sex once with her boyfriend does not mean that she is obligated to
keep doing it just because he wants to. It’s her CHOICE. Tami isn’t
ready for her daughter to have sex with her boyfriend. She’s only what,
15? But she faces it head on. This is happening. My daughter has become a
woman. Now she needs a talk about what it means to be a woman in this
world. I so love this.

Being a woman is a hard thing. Sometimes I wish I could spare my
daughters from being women. But I can’t. There are so many TV shows
where being a woman is equated with being a sex object or being girly
and afraid of lifting heavy objects or having to get dirty. This annoys
me because being a woman is not a trivial thing. And Tami Taylor is a
strong woman. She is a traditional woman in the sense that she has
stayed home with Julie and she has supported her husband in his quest
for a perfect job for him. But she is no pushover. She can love her
husband disagree with him. She can love her daughter and disagree with
her. She can shout and rage against the world and it isn’t about her
being weak. It’s about her being strong.

When she finally goes back to work when her only daughter is in high
school, she finds out she is pregnant. Here is a woman who always wanted
to have another child, and yet this is the least convenient time for
her to have a new baby. She takes it in stride. And by that, I don’t
mean without crying or wondering what she is going to do. It isn’t easy.
But she manages to find a way to (eventually) keep her family together.
There are sacrifices on both sides for this to work, I think. Real
sacrifices. And Tami keeps her job and ends up moving forward in her
career to become a principal. She and Eric do a bit of a switch where
her career takes precedence for a while. Guess what? It doesn’t kill
either of them. It doesn’t make him less manly or less womanly.

Being a mother doesn’t make Tami Taylor any less of a multi-faceted
person than being a father does to any male character shown on
television. Tami has things that she likes and doesn’t like. She is
neither the perfect mother type who only wants to help her family nor is
she the Roseanne type mother who is selfish and only occasionally
sympathetic. She is always sympathetic. She has a sister who she has to
deal with, whose help she needs. I love how the sister comes in to watch
the baby and the conflict between these two strong women. Because why
shouldn’t two strong women have issues to deal with? And these issues
are not trivialized.

But back to motherhood and the scene about sex, I love how this shows
Tami Taylor accepting her daughter’s growing up. Think about how many
TV mothers cannot stand to not be needed anymore. They desperately cling
to their children protectively, long past when the children need to
become independent. There is never any sense here that Tami Taylor will
have nothing to do with her life if her children grow up and leave her.
She will still be their mother, but I hope I’m not going to be pilloried
if I say that she isn’t a mother first. I don’t mean her children
aren’t a top priority or that her marriage isn’t. I’m saying that she as
a person has a lot of non-motherly interests and plans for her life.

As a mother myself, I am a big fan of letting your children fail. I’m
not saying it’s pleasant. I hate it sometimes. But there is also an
element of fun in it and I hope that doesn’t sound sadistic of me. The
idea for me as a parent is to make sure that you let your kids fail
early and often so they realize the world isn’t coated with bumpers and
learn caution rather than thinking that they are rebelling against a
parent who is trying to stop them from trying their wings. Let them try
their wings. Let them break bones. (I’m not saying let them run into the
street and get killed, mind you.) Let them buy things that they realize
were a bad deal. Let them be swindled. Let them go to the wrong
friend’s house and be unhappy there for a sleepover. Let them take the
wrong class and get a bad grade in it. Yes, even if it will be on their
college application.

I hated it when school teachers or counselors tried to tell my
children that their grades were so important that if they didn’t get
straight A’s, they wouldn’t get into a great college. The reality is
that great colleges want kids who have seen a bit of the real world. I’m
not saying every kid who has a 4.0 is going to choke without Mommy and
Daddy at college, but I think colleges are afraid of that. One college
asked my oldest daughter what would happen if she got a bad grade in a
class and my daughter was able to say truthfully she didn’t worry about
that. She’d already done that and we praised her for her effort, not the
grade she got. We want our children to be independent, happy adults,
not to continue to be our kids and reflect glory to us. We want them to
not need us anymore, don’t we?

Julie can go off to school and her parents obviously miss her, but
her mother isn’t weeping every day. She has a life. Her life will go on.
There are other important things for her to do, people to help, a job
to manage, a career ladder to move up on. These are good things and they
don’t make Tami Taylor less a good mother or a good wife.

There is a sign up on the freeway by my house that reads, “You don’t
have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.” I hate this sign because
actually, you do have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. No one is a
perfect parent. Why is that what anyone would want to be, anyway. But
there is a kind of straight jacket in American TV programming that
suggests you have to be either a perfect mother or a horrible, laughable
one. Tami Taylor isn’t perfect. But guess what? We never doubt her love
for her family for one minute. And when she has to make a choice
between what is best for her and what is best for her family, that is
really a struggle. So what? That doesn’t make her a bad mother.

I firmly believe that one of the best things that we as mothers show
our children is that we are people, flawed people with personalities and
interests beyond our children. This teaches our daughters that they can
become mothers without giving up everything that makes them unique. And
it teachers our sons that they should look for strong women to marry
who will not simply disappear into the role of motherhood.

Monday Book Recs: Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo and Weekend with Mr. Darcy by Victoria

Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo

On a Jane Austen-inspired junket this holiday season, I read these two novels. I enjoyed this one a little more, in part because it did not try to have a happy ending. I think that is one of the mistakes of a lot of romances. Yes, romance readers want happy endings. But there are a lot of good books to be read about romances that almost worked, but not quite. In fact, I suspect most romantic couples may not necessarily have an HEA ending.

This is about Emma Grant, who has always believed that she was living the life of a Jane Austen heroine. She is a professor at a university who specializes in Austen, at least until her life falls apart, her husband admits to having an affair with his intern, who has also stolen credit for Emma's latest research and thus gets her kicked out of her job. She goes to England after a mysterious woman sends her a letter which hints at a spectacular discovery about Jane Austen. Emma is determined not to let herself be sentimental, and she is going to out Jane Austen in order to save her career. She has no intention of falling in love with the old boyfriend she rejected years ago, either.

I like romances in which I feel that the romance is not forced. Too often, it feels like "Mr. Right" is simply right because he is standing there, in the spot labeled "Mr. Right." I don't feel like there are other choices. (Not that I like love triangles, either.) Honestly, I don't like many romances at all because they feel about all the things that I find superficially romantic, but not romantic at all, like flowers, chocolate, and love songs. Real romance is about cleaning out the toilet together, in my opinion.

Also about the other person seeing you at your worst and helping you see how to be a little bit better. Not magical, complete transformations mind you. And not necessarily the kind of hurts that are overly dramatic. But small stuff, little hurts that are part of everyday life and real marriages, which are the real stuff of romance.

I liked this book because it felt real to me. I believed the twists and turns in the romance. More than that, I absolutely believed the Jane Austen part of the story, and that surprised me. I'm not an Austen expert, but I know enough about the academic world to be pretty skeptical. Yet the idea that there might be a secret society that had some of the letters that Jane's sister Cassandra had supposedly destroyed about Austen's real romance? I bought in completely.

Emma's dilemma about choosing to honor Jane's wishes or not was also real. OK, there were some hokey twists when it came to the end, but I still liked it. And I liked that in the end, Emma had to give up her academic position and make a new life for herself. I liked that she wasn't sure how love would fit in that new life, and that there wasn't this need to push the romance to an untimely conclusion.

Weekend with Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly

This is a double romance and it suffers from some of the same problems that double romances often do (one of the romances is better than the other). There is Warwick and Katherine and Jace and Robyn. Warwick and Katherine are secret pen-pals (secret to Katherine, who thinks the person she is writing to is a female writer of Regency romance called Lorna Warwick). They meet at a Jane Austen conference. Some of the best parts of this book were, for me, the descriptions of the conference. I especially loved the Undressing Mr. Darcy section, but I felt all of them were true to life, and I enjoyed the conference vicariously.

Warwick and Katherine fall in love, and predictably, the truth is revealed, Katherine feels betrayed, but Warwick humbles himself, begs for forgiveness a la Mr. Darcy and gets his second chance with her.

Jace and Robyn were a trickier romance for me. Robyn comes to the Jane Austen conference with an old boyfriend. In some ways, this made it harder for me to root for her new romance with Jace, but on the other hand, it felt real to me and it gave me a sense of choice. That is, she doesn't have only one Mr. Right to choose from. Her relationship with her old boyfriend was touching and yet not complete. I liked how he proposed to her and she said yes, then turned him down later. I liked how this mirrored Jane Austen's life.

On the other hand, there were a lot of predictable "romance" moments, so I don't know if everyone would love it.

Friday Tri: Trying Something New

I thought about
hiring a coach, but ended up not being able to find anyone
live-coaching near me at the moment, so after hearing some real
stories from friends about how great Cross-Fit is, I decided to give
it a try. I did a free session, liked it, and then signed up for a 4
month commitment. I started last week, and did 3 sessions of
“Foundations,” which means, as an idiot beginner.

Turns out I really
dislike being an idiot beginner. But the only way to learn something:
be an idiot beginner for as long as it takes to stop being an idiot
beginner.

I hate walking
into the new Cross-Fit gym. Not because anyone there is rude to me.
It's just not a space I am used to. I don't know where to go. I don't
know where the things are. I don't know who the people are. I don't
know who I am going to be here. I don't like asking questions.

So I do stupid
things and do them wrong, and wait until someone is patient enough to
come over and explain to me how to do them right. Doing things right
is the reason I am coming in the first place. You'd think I'd be more
eager to ask about it. But I'm not.

I've never done a
pull-up successfully without assistance in my life before. There
seems to be a hidden promise here that I will, at some point, master
this skill. I have done weight lifting for years, and even hired a
personal trainer for a couple of months. But we are doing serious
Olympic weight-lifting here. No machines. No little barbells.
Kettlebells and motions that look ominously dangerous with that kind
of weight are the everyday expectations here.

I can do the
running. I'm not great on a rower, but at least it's the same motion
over and over again. How hard can that be. I can do stretching
(though the IT band stretch with the foam roller is pure torture
since I've got an IT band injury on my right side at the moment).

I am trying to
make small, achievable goals. I want to give myself enough
satisfaction that I keep going back, that I enjoy this. But another
part of me wants to push-push-push so I can do it faster, and not be
the idiot beginner EVER AGAIN.

USAT

In the OCD news today, I am currently at #137 in USAT national rankings for my age group. This interests no one but me and #136, I think.

Cover for The Rose Throne (May 14, 2013)

You can preorder at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rose-Throne-ebook/dp/B00AGV8NY8/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1357228752&sr=8-13&keywords=mette+ivie+harrison

On Paid Author Visits to Schools

Questions to Ask About Free School Visits:

If you accept the offer of a free school visit from an author, ask yourself if this is a professional author, one whose books are at the level that you would normally accept into your school library? Have you read the book/s yourself? Has someone recommended these books or this author? Or have you accepted an author's offer simply because it is “free”?

If you accept the offer of a free school visit from an author, ask the author why s/he is coming for free. How can a professional adult afford to give up several hours in a day to visit a school? Could you take time out of your schedule to give a presentation for free to students about your work? How often could you do this?

If you accept the offer of a free school visit from an author, ask what obligation you are putting yourself and your school under. Will the presentation itself contain any hard-selling to the students? Will the presentation be about books and writing, or it will be a long sales pitch to the school? Will there be pressure to “win” prizes to encourage children and parents to make purchases?

If you accept the offer of a free school visit from an author, ask how many presentations the author will be giving that day. Think to yourself how difficult it will be to get individual attention from an author who is doing 5-6 presentations to different schools. Will the author be on auto-pilot or will the author be focused intently on every question asked?

If you accept the offer of a free school visit from a bookseller or publisher, ask yourself if you are treating books like any other commodity? Would you open the school up to free visits from McDonald's or from Dairy Queen? Would you question whether or not the school should be promoting food that some parents or teachers might not consider appropriate?

If you accept the offer of a free school visit, consider what message you are sending to children who would like to grow up to be authors or artists of any kind. Are you suggesting to them that they should not expect to be paid for their time because this isn't a “real job”? They should somehow find a way to be independently wealthy so they can travel to schools for free? Or they should find a way to get time off their day-jobs in addition to all the time that they take away from family and personal obligations after their day job is over in order to write and/or promote their work?

I believe that paid school visits are good for schools for many reasons:

Paying for an author visit can be part of the excitement leading up to the visit itself. Ask the kids and parents to be involved in a fundraiser to pay for the visit and you may be surprised to discover that they read more books and get more out of the author visit than if you simply accept the invitation of an author when the author or publisher choose a convenient time to coincide with the publication of a new series being promoted.

Paying for an author visit, you may discover that the quality of the visit is very different than the free author visits you have seen, which are more like commercials and you think do not deserve to be paid for.

An author paid for a visit will spend more time with the children at your school, and may keep contact with them in later years. An author who is doing a hundred school visits in the course of a week will not possibly remember an experience with one child at one school.

An author paid for a visit may offer additional services, like reading student stories or judging contests in association with a school visit. These can promote reading and writing and bring extra excitement to the event, as well.

An author paid for a visit may be willing to sit with a select group of students and give them real advice on how to become an author and how to deal with problems in their specific stories. A free author visit is not likely to allow this kind of attention.

An author paid for a visit is more likely to be an author that will be on national and state awards list, which may be something you would like to draw attention to, if you care about children reading the best of “literature.”

An author paid for a visit and recommended to your school by other schools who have paid for visits is more likely to have books that have been vetted by professional journals, whose work has been meticulously edited and kept to the highest standards of writing, a standard that you want your school children to model. Have you ever had a free school visit by an author whose work is riddled with typos and whose free gift of a book for the library is an embarrassment to the school?

An author paid for a visit shows a model of how artists can work and live in a community that supports art financially.