Geoff Rodkey's Blog, page 6

Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp, Part Three

Today’s letter is the first one I ever sent to my kid at summer camp.

Although technically, it wasn’t camp. But it was pretty much the same thing: the first time he ever went a way for an extended trip, when he spent two weeks at his grandmother’s apartment in Paris.

(I know! Nice, right? Too bad it’s only a 300-square foot studio, and she’s not willing to put up anyone bigger than a 10-year-old…which was my kid’s age when I sent this to him.)

 

Subject: Re: Paris

Date: July 1, 2010 6:59:13 AM EDT

Xxxx [again, not his real name]:

Thank you so much for the update!  It is very good to get emails from you.  I was also relieved to hear that you fixed the problem with the flip video.

Now I have a problem that I am hoping you can help me with.  Since you’ve been gone, no one has left their underwear on the bathroom floor.  You might not think this seems like much of a problem, and when you left for Paris, neither did I.

But to my surprise, I have discovered that if I don’t have to remove dirty underwear from the bathroom floor every evening, my life feels strangely empty and lacking in purpose.  I have tried to leave my own underwear on the bathroom floor and then remove it later, but it’s just not the same.

I spent most of last night lying awake in bed trying solve this problem, and I have come up with two potential solutions.

First, would it be all right with you if I took some underwear from your bedroom and left it on the bathroom floor for a while before picking it up and taking it to the laundry room?  Before you answer, consider the fact that — and I am not certain of this, but I strongly suspect it — for my life to feel truly purpose-driven, the underwear must be dirty.  Which means I will have to make one of your brothers wear it around for a while beforehand (I would wear it, but I am too big; and I would ask your mother, but she is too picky about her underthings). I assume you would prefer that Zzzz wears the underwear and not Yyyy.

If you do not approve of this, there is a second option.  I believe that if I take the phone into the bathroom at the usual hour of 8pm, call you, and yell at you to come pick up your underwear, my life might feel just as meaningful as if you and your dirty underwear were actually present.  Given the time difference, I’d be calling at 2am Paris time.  Would this be all right?

I realize it is something of an imposition to call you in the middle of the night, but to make it worth your time, while we’re on the phone I could also yell other things — not just the obvious “Xxxx, will you PLEASE hang up your towel?” but also things like “Get your shoes on!”, “Seriously, you HAVE to get off the computer now!”, “Stop touching Zzzz!”, and “Are you listening to me?!  What did I just say?”

Thanks in advance for helping me with this.  You are a good son.

I hope you’re having a great time!  Has Grandma taken you to see the view of Paris from the steps of the Sacre-Coeur yet?  I know I can’t pronounce that name, but I believe I spelled it correctly.

Love,

Dad

 

Tragically, this may be the end of the series — at least until my kid gets to camp next week and I start sending him letters again — because while I have more of them, the quality tails off pretty dramatically after this.

But you can always re-read the first two! They’re here:

Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp, Part One

Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp, Part Two

And if you’re hungry for quality reading material, there’s always The Chronicles of Egg series! Which you can purchase by clicking one of the links under “Get the Books!” on the right-hand menu. Or, for more information, click on the “About The Chronicles of Egg” link on the top menu.

Or just email me and ask for a free copy. I probably won’t send you one, but you never know.

Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp, Part Two

 The first Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp went over well enough that I’m raiding my archives (and exploiting my kid) for another one.

This is from two years ago, and it contains what I like to think is some very valuable career advice.

July 25, 2011

Dear Xxxx [still not his real name],

[Mostly dull opening paragraphs redacted; they included a discussion of the camp's policy of forcing newly arrived campers to write a two-sentence-minimum note to their parents, which was then scanned into a computer and emailed to us as proof that they were still alive.]

Candles. I understand, unless I misread your handwriting once it was scanned into the computer, that among your activities is “candles.” I assume this refers to the making of candles and not, say, the lighting of them, which seems like it would get old in a hurry.

Now, look here: this is fine so far as it goes – you want to make some candles at summer camp, I won’t stand in your way – but I have to strongly caution you against falling too deeply in love with the candle lifestyle. Candles as a means of illumination – and, by extension, a marketable consumer product – have been obsolete for well over a century. Personally, outside of Hanukkah and birthdays, I have not used a candle since the mid-1990’s, and offhand I struggle to think of a single personal acquaintance who has not similarly switched over to electric light, usually exclusively.

What am I trying to say here? Only this, and please forgive me for being blunt: there is no future in candles, son. If you don’t believe me, do a Google search on “Top Careers in 2020,” which is approximately when you will be entering the work force. You will find “Candle Manufacturing/Sales” near the rock-bottom of the list, sharing space with such dead-end, dustbin-of-history occupations as “Blacksmithing” and “Screenwriting.”

I want you to have fun this summer. I do. And if candle-making floats your boat, have at it! Go nuts! Just don’t get too attached. Because in the long run, candles will only break your heart.

Also, I understand you can change your electives at the midway point. Do they offer accounting in the second half? Think about it. I’m just saying.

Anyway… I love you and miss you. I am also jealous of you. Not so much for the candles, but the kayaking and the sailing. And also the part where you write “the sleep situation is fine.” I wish I could say the same. Your mother can be a very trying bunkmate. And your brothers…eeesh. Don’t get me started.

Love,

Dad

Click here for Part One of Letters To My Kid at Summer Camp…or click here for Part Three.

Letters To My Kid At Summer Camp

It’s been a while since I posted. Partly, this is because writing books, while a fine way to make a living, has the unfortunate side effect of decreasing the amount of time I can spend writing blog posts that have absolutely no financial value whatsoever.

Mostly, though, it’s because I haven’t had any good ideas for blog posts.

Sadly, that’s still the case. But in honor of my oldest son’s imminent departure for summer camp, I thought I’d dig into my archives and post the following letter, which I sent to him while he was at camp last summer.

If you enjoy reading this kind of thing, please post a comment to that effect — if there’s sufficient interest in my continuing to exploit my family for material, I’ll post others.

August 3, 2012

Dear Xxxx [not his real name],

By the time you get this letter, over a month will have passed since I dropped you off (nauseous and underfed, but really, whose fault was that?) at the airport departure gate.

Which means I have gone an entire month without writing you a single letter.

I apologize for that. But it has been quite a busy month. As you may know, the Olympics are currently underway in London, and when I was driving back from dropping you off at the airport, it occurred to me that at 41 years old, I am not getting any younger, and this may be my last chance to represent my country in an Olympic event.

So I spent the next three weeks in intensive training at the U.S. Olympic Center in Colorado Springs, hoping to secure a spot on the national judo team.

I was unsuccessful.

And I can tell you this: it stung. Words cannot express the pain of seeing your dreams collapse into dust, even if they are dreams you only had for a couple of weeks.

Also, judo itself is painful. Some of the other fighters are pretty merciless, even in practice, and the fact that I was not an “official” member of the squad—and so was facing them not in the practice ring, but in the parking lot as they walked to their cars at the end of the day—meant that our bouts usually ended in a few seconds, with a submission hold resulting in loss of consciousness.

At least, I think that’s how it went down. I kept waking up in the parking lot, to the sound of cars pulling away, and with no short-term memory of the previous several minutes. (Here’s a fact, by the way, that might surprise you—in my experience, the women’s judo team is much more ruthless in combat than the men’s team, especially if you startle them while they are holding a set of car keys).

So that was a tough three weeks. After it was over, I went through a period of soul-searching. Judo had been my whole life, at least for the better part of July, and once it was gone, I felt a yawning emptiness that I didn’t know how to fill.

For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to fill it with letter writing. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I’m in a much better place now. And I’ve learned a lot, too—about the value of hard work, the wisdom of letting go, and why you should never challenge a martial arts expert to a fight in a parking lot.

What else can I tell you? It turns out it was a mistake to rent your room out to the elderly Uzbek man who smelled like rotten cheese. His check bounced, and when we confronted him about it, he skipped out on us. So, lesson learned. But we can’t get rid of the rotten cheese smell in your room, so I guess in a manner of speaking, he’s still with us.

Zzzz [my youngest son; also not his real name] has been difficult lately. I now think that among our family members, he is more likely than Yyyy [my middle son; ditto] to end up in jail. His soccer camp counselors think so, too.

Your mother—as she may have already told you—will not be contacting [Xxxx's friend]’s mom about the summer reading list, or mailing you the appropriate books, because this is the kind of thing that you are old enough to be responsible for yourself. There will be plenty of time to read the books when you get home, unless you blow it all playing Ipad Monopoly or watching Storage Wars.

I hope you are having a great time! We miss you.

Love, Dad

(Click here for Part Two of Letters to My Kid At Summer Camp.)

The Germans are NOT fooling around

I’d been wondering what the deal was with the German edition of Deadweather and Sunrise, because I hadn’t heard anything about it in the more than two years since the rights sold to the lovely people at Carlsen. 

Which is a pretty long time–I mean, the French rights didn’t sell until almost a year after that, and Le Trésor des Okalus has been available in fine French bookstores (and hopefully the less fine ones, too) for a couple of months now.

The lack of news from Germany was actually starting to worry me. Not to engage in cultural stereotyping, but you wouldn’t ordinarily think the Germans would take second place to the French in the speed-and-efficiency department.

Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. Apparently, Carlsen just needed the extra time to get a running start at the truly Teutonic levels of Sturm and Drang that are going on with this cover: 

Seriously! Right? I mean, if covers could talk…

Hey, let’s imagine they can. Here’s what I’m figuring is on their minds:

 

Spanish cover: Wheeee! What an adventure!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French cover: Ah, bonjour! Let us bake a cake!

 

 

 

 

 

 

German cover: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

 

 

 

Dreckswetter und Morgenröte won’t be out until October 2nd — which is probably a good thing, because it’s going to take a while for the schoolchildren of Germany to prepare themselves for the onslaught.

The Chronicles of Egg: Now Internationally Awesome

What’s that you say? Can’t get enough of The Chronicles of Egg? Tired of re-reading the first two books while pining for the release of Blue Sea Burning next April? 

Why not try reading it in Turkish? Or Italian! Or French! Or Spanish!

Not that you would. But you could! Just look at these:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You could even read it in British English, which is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE!

Okay, that’s not actually true. The text of the U.K. editions is basically the same, except for a couple of innocent-seeming American words that turn out to be totally filthy in England… But the covers make them look like a whoooole different series: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crazy, right? I mean, are these really the same books as these?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, yeah. They are. Covers are funny things.

Speaking of funny things, if you haven’t seen the Turkish TV ad for Deadweather and Sunrise, it’s worth checking out.

Out Of Print, Not Out Of Mind

(Reposted with thanks to the wonderful people at the The Nerdy Book Club, where I originally guest-posted this.)

Hello, Nerds! I’m Geoff Rodkey, author of the comedy-adventure-coming-of-age series The Chronicles of Egg and a big fan of the Book Club. When I got the chance to contribute a post, I was thrilled–and immediately spent the next several days meticulously crafting a 2,000-word essay about how Bridge to Terabithia scarred me for life.

I was convinced I’d written something truly special–poignant, heartfelt, existentially profound–until I showed it to my wife, who helpfully pointed out that it was actually turgid, boring, and painfully self-indulgent.

So I added my 2,000-word Bridge to Terabithia reminiscence to the unfortunately long list of Things That Seemed Like A Good Idea Until I Ran Them By My Wife and decided to take a different tack.

This is still a reminiscence, it’s still about books that meant a lot to me as a kid, and even though nobody dies in an emotionally devastating fashion in any of them, it’s still a little poignant–because in a sense, these books are dead themselves.

In other words, they’re out of print. They survive in libraries (I hope), and you can still fish them out of the Internet’s vast ocean of used book stores, but other than that, they’ve passed on. If you can track them down, though, I’d strongly recommend checking them out. They’re worth the effort.

Well, some of them are. Read on and you’ll see what I mean:

THE PUSHCART WAR, by Jean Merrill

I still can’t believe this is out of print. It’s a made-up history of a war on the streets of New York City between a triumvirate of more-or-less-evil trucking companies and an eccentric band of pushcart peddlers who organize themselves to fight back (with pea shooters) when the truckers start trying to run them out of business. It’s got an offbeat, singular, very funny tone, and the plot works on multiple levels–as a comedy, an underdog story, an object lesson in standing up to bullies, and a parable about the vulnerability of conventional military forces to guerrilla tactics.

That last one might be a stretch. But not by much. And The Pushcart War holds up incredibly well, for readers of any age–I sat down with a copy a while back and had as much fun with it as I did when I was ten.

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED, by Leonard Wibberly

This isn’t technically a kid’s book, but I read it when I was a kid, and my twelve-year-old loved it, so I’m counting it. It’s the story of a tiny, Andorra-like European country that decides, for reasons too complicated to get into, to invade the United States…using a small platoon of longbowmen, even though it’s the Atomic Age. And, for reasons that are also too complicated to get into, they win.

If this sounds even vaguely intriguing, hunt this book down. It’s a gem. The Mouse That Roared was also the basis for a Peter Sellers movie that I’ve never seen, because honestly, I don’t know how it could top the book.

 HARRY CAT’S PET PUPPY

One of several sequels to The Cricket in Times Square, this is the story of how Harry Cat and Tucker Mouse adopt a stray puppy, then have to find a home for it when the puppy grows into a sheepdog and no longer fits in the drainpipe where they live. I read it to my 7-year-old last year, and we both had a fine time with it. I’m not sure why it’s out of print when, say, Tucker’s Countryside (another Cricket sequel that, if you ask me, is no better or worse than this one) is still kicking around.

Incidentally, I liked the Cricket series so much as a kid that I wrote fan fiction about it. Rereading it as an adult (the book, not my fan fiction), I started to wonder what the deal was with Tucker and Harry’s relationship. Two confirmed bachelors, one of them highly fastidious, sharing a one-bedroom in the Theater District? Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

THE MCGURK MYSTERIES

If there was any justice in the world, the McGurk Mysteries would be as big as Encyclopedia Brown. The books, of which there were at least a dozen in print at one point, were about a detective agency of 10-year-olds who solved funny, age-appropriate mysteries around their neighborhood. In Ocean’s Eleven fashion, all the kids had a specialty: McGurk was the charismatic, Clooney-esque leader; Willie Sandowsky had a massive schnoz and a correspondingly exquisite sense of smell; Wanda Grieg was the muscle; Brains Bellingham was (big surprise) the brains; and Joey Rockaway didn’t bring all that much to the table other than being the narrator, but he–or, rather, author E.W. Hildick–was very, very good at it.

My youngest son would love these books if I could just convince him that the 30-year-old copies I bought on the Internet are okay to pick up even though the paper’s disintegrating and they smell like an elderly person’s closet.

IRVING AND ME

This was late New Yorker cartoonist and Danny and the Dinosaur creator Syd Hoff’s only novel for older kids (I think), and I kind of get why it’s out of print. Which is not to say it wasn’t a pleasure to reread. The story of Artie, a 13-year-old Jewish kid from Brooklyn who moves to Florida and semi-reluctantly befriends big-eared, slightly odd Irving, still holds up reasonably well–Artie’s narration is breezy, likable, and contains a pleasant whiff of Borscht Belt; his problems are entirely relatable; and the ending’s even a little touching.

But it’s very much of its time, by which I mean the 13-year-olds in it occasionally smoke cigarettes, look at dirty magazines, obsess over girls, and generally act in ways that, while true to the lived experience of 13-year-olds both in 1967 and today, tend to get contemporary kid-lit gatekeepers a little bent out of shape.

Speaking of bent of out shape, the last stop on my preteen literary nostalgia tour is…

THE SERGEANT: BLOODY BASTOGNE

Let me be very, very clear: THIS IS NOT A CHILDREN’S BOOK, AND I HAD NO BUSINESS READING IT WHEN I WAS ELEVEN.

But hoo-boy! The Sergeant: Bloody Bastogne was one of a series of pulp novels for adults written under the name Gordon Davis, which must have been a pseudonym, because…hoo-boy! I stumbled on this one at a shopping mall bookstore in Rockford, Illinois when I happened to have $2.25 plus tax in my pocket, and I decided to buy it because at age eleven, I was insatiably interested in World War II.

Whether due to incompetence, apathy, or a loophole in the local blue laws, the checkout clerk sold it to me. And oh, man! Did I get a thrill out of reading this book. Sergeant CJ Mahoney was a US Army Ranger who was expert at two things: slaughtering Nazis in ridiculously graphic ways, and engaging in even more ridiculously graphic behavior with the Belgian farm girls who conveniently wandered into the narrative whenever there was a lull in the combat.

This was like the literary equivalent of playing Grand Theft Auto. You know how some people believe that it doesn’t matter what a kid reads, as long as he’s reading? They’re wrong. But I will say this: The Sergeant: Bloody Bastogne unquestionably opened my eyes to the almost limitless potential of books to expose a reader to new worlds.

Hoo-boy!

Got a favorite book that’s out-of-print? Drop a line in the comments–I’d love to hear about it.

NEW LANDS has nearly landed…

New Lands, the second book in The Chronicles of Egg trilogy, arrives in stores on Thursday, and it’s REALLY GOOD.

Just ask Kirkus Reviews:

“Occasionally gruesome, often funny and full of suspense, this one is sure to win Egg some new fans.”

Or Examiner.com:

“…fantastic characters and non-stop action…very difficult to put down…like riding a racing locomotive downhill with no brakes…”

Or this review from an actual kid!:

“New Lands is a MUST read book… I don’t want to give away the secret Egg discovers in the Okalu temple, but I didn’t see it coming and it made me so happy…all my friends at school can’t wait to read!

Take it from the kid–get a copy today from…

Your favorite indie book store via Indiebound!

Or Barnes & Noble! Or Amazon!

Or, if you live in NYC, you can drop by the Strand on 12th Street, where last Friday they had two New Lands hardcovers in stock for $8.50. Which is annoying, for like five different reasons. But don’t get me started.

Beavis, Butt-head, Al, Arianna, Etc.

Yesterday, I stopped by the HuffPost Live studio for a long-ish interview about my writing career that wound up focusing mostly on the nearly 20 years of film, TV, and political satire that preceded the Chronicles of Egg books.

The highlights of the segment are two clips from TV projects I co-wrote that I hadn’t seen in over a decade: the Beavis and Butt-head “Cow Tipping” episode from 1994 and the Politically Incorrect ”Strange Bedfellows” segments from 1996 that featured Al Franken and Arianna Huffington arguing about politics while lying in bed together wearing pajamas (for those of you too young remember, this was back when Arianna was still a Republican).

The clips are pretty great — they’re buried in the interview alongside stories about Eddie Murphy, Rush Limbaugh, the undocumented nanny who cost Arianna’s husband a Senate seat, and a misbegotten road trip involving Harrison Ford and Danny Devito that led to the movie RV. 

It’s fun to watch. At least, it is for me. Your mileage may vary. Since I’m still incompetent to embed any video that’s not from Youtube, you’ll have to click this link to see it.

Endangered Authors Tour Diary: THE FINAL DAY

The tour wrapped up yesterday, and I’ve never been more sad to see the end of something that left me totally exhausted. I haven’t been this tired since my kids were toddlers.

Incidentally, if you’ve been reading these diary entries and are still totally confused as to what the show was like, click here for a great writeup on Examiner.com from journalist/super-librarian Pam Kramer.

Our last day found us in New Jersey, courtesy of the wonderful folks at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair (thanks again, Marisela and Liane!), where you can get autographed copies of all our books. So go there now! If you live in New Jersey.

The second-to-last show was at Charles H. Bullock Elementary in Montclair, where the kids were fantastic, and so were PTA parents Adriana and Kathleen, who helped organize the whole thing, brought coffee and muffins (which were delicious), and posed for this picture with us before the show:

Then this happened. The photographic record of which I just swiped from Adriana’s Facebook page:

Notice the spiffy new hat Curtis is sporting, which he bought at the Goorin Bros. hat shop on Bleecker Street in Manhattan. If you think you can pull off a look like that (I can’t, probably because I’m not British), they are fine purveyors of quality hats.

After a delicious lunch at the Comfort Food Kitchen next door to Watchung Booksellers (try the eggplant parmesan! It is crazy-good), we headed to the Ridgewood Avenue School in Glen Ridge, home of awesome librarian Joyce Mooney.

We couldn’t have asked for a better crowd of kids to finish the tour, and Peter in particular was in rare form.

Here he is (with many thanks to awesome Penguin sales rep Dawn Zahorik for the photos) threatening to read from my private diary while I try to look dismayed. Over 23 shows, my look of cartoonish dismay definitely improved. Not sure what to do with this skill now that the tour is over:

And here’s Peter cracking up a bunch of the Ridgewood kids:

I think that shot says a lot about how much fun everybody had on this tour.

And now that it’s over, some people need to be thanked:

First, Elyse Marshall and Molly Sardella of Penguin, who worked incredibly hard to make this tour not just happen, but run remarkably smoothly considering all the moving pieces. I am eternally in their debt.

Second, my tour companions Adam Gidwitz, Jacqueline West, Curtis Jobling, and Peter McNerney. I’d never met any of them before the tour, and I liked them all so much that, just 24 hours removed from being stuck in a van with Curtis’s luggage digging into the back of my neck, I get a little choked up just thinking about them.

I feel like I’ve made four lifelong friends.

At least, I think I have. We’ll see if they return my phone calls.

But even if they all secretly hated me, they’re incredibly talented people, and I was very, very fortunate to be paired up with them, because they’re all more successful than I am, and riding on their coattails did a whole lot more for me than I did for them. 

In the unlikely event that you haven’t read them already, please check out A Tale Dark and Grimm, The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows, Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf, and all their sequels. There’s something for everyone in these books.

 

 

And if you live in or near NYC, please check out Peter’s improv show, Trike, on Saturdays at 10:30pm at the Magnet Theater. I’m headed there with my 12-year-old next month, and I know we’re going to have a fantastic time. Even–or perhaps especially–if it’s totally age-inappropriate.

 

 

Thanks also to all the phenomenal librarians, language arts teachers, PTA moms, administrators, and everybody else at the 23 schools we visited! We could not have done this without you.

And thanks to the kids! Who should also be thanking their teachers and librarians. Can you believe they let you out of class for such a thing?

Finally, a sincere and heartfelt thanks to the fantastic independent booksellers who hosted the tour along the way, all of whom have autographed copies of all our books in stock:

In Lexington, Kentucky: Joseph-Beth Booksellers

In Decatur, Georgia: Little Shop of Stories

In Fairhope, Alabama: Page and Palette

In Miami, Florida: Books & Books

In Houston, Texas: Blue Willow Bookshop

In Austin, Texas: Perma-bound

In Naperville and Downer’s Grove, Illinois: Anderson’s

In Oak Park, Illinois: The Magic Tree Bookstore

In Winnetka, Illinois: The Book Stall

In Alexandria, Virginia: Hooray for Books

In Madison, Connecticut: R.J. Julia

In Montclair, New Jersey: Watchung Booksellers

Please, please shop at these stores, because they are the beating heart of the book world, and if it weren’t for them, we’d all need day jobs.

Speaking of day jobs… The Chronicles of Egg: New Lands comes out next week… 

It’s good! And I’m not just saying that because I wrote it.