Rainbow Rowell's Blog, page 8

Learn to read, kid, but don’t fall in love.

It’s not enough that your kids learn to read. You want them to love to read.

It’s the love of reading that’s linked to success and happiness — to better education, better jobs and fewer cavities. The more kids read, the better they do, period. So it’s your job, as a parent, to make them love it . . .

Except you can’t really make anyone love anything.

All you can really do is read to them and read around them, and hope that reading is like chicken pox, that they’ll eventually succumb to it with e...

Park, Side B — an “Eleanor & Park” playlist

So this is the fourth and finalEleanor & Parkplaylist, and I have to say, I’m sad to be almost done. I thought that writing about these playlists would be a tedious chore. (My literary agent suggested I do it.) But it made me feel connected to Eleanor and Park again, and helped me understand why I made some of the choices that I did.

The first draft of this book was mostly written over the summer of 2010, and it was written in a very intense WHOOSH. It felt more like exhaling than writing. And...

Eleanor, Side B — an “Eleanor & Park” playlist

Okay. I’m determined to write about this playlist without spoiling Eleanor & Parkfor you.But it’s going to be hard. Because this isEleanor, Side B, and Side B is where things gets pretty intense in the book.

To recap:

I always make playlists when I’m writing a book. And I take them really seriously. I soundtrack the scenes as I’m writing them, and often use specific songs to help me maintain the same tone in a scene that might take me days or even weeks to write.

Which means some songs get playe...

Park, Side A — an “Eleanor & Park” playlist

This is the second of FOUR posts about music andEleanor & Park. (Read the first blog entry here.) I know it would make more sense to have one post and one playlist, but I just couldn’t make that work . . .

When I was writing the book, I built four playlists — one tape with two sides for each character. I didn’t want to jam those playlists together and cut a bunch of songs, just to make it more digestible. (It’s like I don’t care about your digestion at all.)

Last week I blogged about Eleanor, S...

Eleanor, Side A — an “Eleanor & Park” playlist

This is the first of FOUR posts about music and Eleanor & Park. Excessive, I know, but I can’t help it.

When I start a new book, I start a new playlist, too, and I work on them concurrently. WithEleanor & Park,the playlists took the shape of mixed tapes for each character. So I ended up with four playlists — two mixed tapes with two sides each.

If you want to skip my director’s commentary on the music, you can also:

Listen to Eleanor, Side A andEleanor, Side B on Spotify.

Listen to Park, Side A a...

Behold! The “FANGIRL” cover! Is it not GLORIOUS?

This arrived in my inbox yesterday. I freaked out.

It’s the cover for my third book,FANGIRL,which comes out next fall. It was designed by the amazing Olga Grlic, who also designed the Eleanor & Parkcover.

And it was illustrated by Noelle Stevenson.

IT WAS ILLUSTRATED BY NOELLE STEVENSON.

I still can’t even believe this is true. It’s like someone said, “Hey, Rainbow, what would your dream book cover look like?” And I told them, “Oh, I don’t know, but it would be illustrated by Noelle Stevenson.” A...

Behold! The “Fangirl” cover! Is it not GLORIOUS?

This arrived in my inbox yesterday. I freaked out.

It’s the cover for my third book,Fangirl,which comes out next fall. It was designed by the amazing Olga Grlic, who also designed the Eleanor & Parkcover.

And it was illustrated by Noelle Stevenson.

IT WAS ILLUSTRATED BY NOELLE STEVENSON.

I still can’t even believe this is true. It’s like someone said, “Hey, Rainbow, what would your dream book cover look like?” And I told them, “Oh, I don’t know, but it would be illustrated by Noelle Stevenson.” A...

Hope my kids ask Santa for books . . .

Me, thinking to myself:

I should write a blog post about all the books my kids are getting for Christmas . . .

And then:

But what if one of them reads my blog?

Three seconds later:

HAHAHAHAHA! Nobody reads my blog.

Two seconds after that:

HAHAHAHA! My kids can’t even read.

Then:

So why have I bought them so many books?

I wrote this headline for an outdoor (billboard) parenting campaign back when I worked at an ad agency. The illustrator is the amazing Calef Brown.

I have two kids, both boys — a 5-year-o...

Somebody made a ‘Twilight’ movie and forgot to invite Edward.

Just got home from Breaking Dawn 2. It was terrible.

Not awesomely terrible like last time. (Remember last time?)Just terrible.

One problem — a fairly big problem — is that the movie doesn’t make sense.

You can’t blame this on Stephenie Meyer.Breaking Dawn, the book, might be INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE, but Stephenie Meyer shows her work. When Renesmee starts drinking blood or when the vampires start showing up at Cullen Manor, you, the reader, know what’s up.

Maybe the filmmakers figure that everyon...

The Land Before Trolls: How I let anonymous commenters win for a while.

So today I read this Oatmeal comic, which perfectly captures what it feels like to be a writer or artist – or someone who gets paid to be creative for an audience.

EVERY PANEL OF THIS COMIC RESONATED WITH ME.

But the part that really got to me was this bit about reading online comments. I think it’s OK for me to take a screenshot of just that panel . . . (Fair use?) You should definitely click through to check out the whole thing.

“And lastly let’s not forget about comments.” See the rest of thi...