A.C.E. Bauer's Blog, page 10

Appearing at Tassy workshop in New Haven tonight

This evening I'll be presenting a workshop for writers and illustrators at the New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street, New Haven, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with author/illustrator Deborah Freedman, and Donita Aruny from the Shoreline Arts Alliance. We'll discuss writing and illustrating children's books and give helpful information about the annual Tassy Walden Awards: New Voices In Children's Literature.

Drop in and say hello!

Challah music

I made challah listening to the Pogues. Somehow it seemed appropriate today.

Marzi, a review

Marzi, a Memoir, by Marzena Sowa, illustrated by Sylvain Savoia, and translated by Anjali Singh, is a wonderful book. Marketed for adults, completely accessible for kids, the graphic novel tells the story of a girl growing up in Poland in the ten years before the communist regime’s eventual fall. The book is episodic, told in two- to six-page snippets, starting when Marzi is two and working its way to her teenage years.

We see Poland from her eyes—the long lines, stores without goods, playing in stairwells. We witness the confusion and fear of Chernobyl from the point of view of people under the radioactive cloud. We watch the rise of Solidarity, the quiet and not so quiet protests against communism—all from the point of view of a child mystified by adults who don’t explain, until, eventually, on the verge of puberty, she begins to understand and soak it all in like a sponge.

Marzi’s extended family is large, varied, and not of one mind. But we get to know them and their foibles. We learn how they outwitted a regime that thrived on people’s deprivations. We learn how people in the city and in the country saw the world.

And we also witness the very real growth of a child—her games, her loves, her fears, her complicated relationship with her parents, other children, and adults.

The comic format is surprisingly regular, yet brilliant: each page has six hand-drawn square panels which do not vary in size or placement. This regularity matches the world in which Marzi lives—one carefully circumscribed by her mother, the structured life of childhood, and the oppressive communist regime. This closed-in feeling, even outdoors, is enhanced by the palette—a combination of browns, beiges, and the occasional slightly-rusty red.

I also impressed by Savoia’s line work. Though Marzi is simply rendered, she lives in a world filled with interesting people, objects and places.

The story, at its heart, is life-affirming. Though set in an oppressive time, Sowa recounts her childhood with wit and compassion. I read through it, without wanting to put it down. I recommend the book without qualms for both kids and adults.

Elvis Costello on Sesame Street

Elvis Costello, Elmo and Cookie Monster. What more do you need?



(Thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden for the link.)

Take Back Halloween!

Here is a website for women who love Halloween but want to wear something other than "Sexy _____": Take Back Halloween!

As they explain in their About page:

Take Back Halloween isn’t a store. We’re not selling any of this stuff. We’re a resource guide: we come up with the costume designs, explain what you’ll need to pull off the look, and provide links to where you can buy the various components.

Our overall approach is about creating great costumes with stuff that is readily available: either already in your closet, on sale at eBay or some other retailer, or in stock at a costume store. No sewing!

The site is fun to browse. It's filled with mini biographies of glamor grrls (their spelling), goddesses and legends, queens and notable women. And, as promised, it provides useful and practical advice about how to create the costumes.

If you want to wear something sexy, that's fine, too. But it's nice to have alternatives.


Thanks to Teresa Nielsen Hayden for the link.

Priorities (via xkcd)

The Important Field



Hover text: I hear in some places, you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It's interesting who has the incentives to care about what mistakes.

Thank you xkcd.

Guest post: The Challenges of the Challengers

by Greg R. Fishbone

Thanks to Alice for hosting this 22nd day of the Galaxy Games Blog Tour. She suggested I discuss some of the more difficult aspects of writing The Challengers, which is something I've only touched on briefly elsewhere on the tour. Every book is challenging to write but this one did have a few additional twists.
 
One challenge I faced was capturing the flavor of Japanese culture and emphasizing the differences in lifestyle and outlook between Tyler, as a Japanese American boy, and Daiki, as a Japanese boy. I had some personal experience from living in Japan and all the research I could do, but I was constantly aware that I approaching an important subject as an outsider. It was gratifying when my publisher ran the manuscript by a Japanese cultural consultant who only suggested a few tweaks and said the characters really resonated with him. Score!
 
Another challenge was the first-chapter promise. Every book should make at least one major promise to its readers in the first chapter and then keep that promise by the end of the book. In the first chapter of The Challengers, I promise to deliver "the most important event in human history," which actually takes place in the middle of the book. Then I had to build up to even bigger and more important events in the climax! That was a challenge I certainly hadn't faced before.
 
A third challenge particular to this book was realistically depicting a serious situation--a supposedly imminent end of the world--while maintaining an appropriate level of humor. With all the characters under stress and emotions running high, humor turned out to be a useful coping mechanism, but it required the reader to know from the start that the danger was overblown. The real humor came from the reader being in on the joke when the characters were too overwhelmed to see the situation for what it was.
 
The last challenge particular to writing this book was the timeline. There are three main point of view characters: one in Japan, one in the United States, and one in space. That meant three different time zones leading to a single event that would bring them all together. In an earlier draft, I was also tracking events in China, Brazil, Germany, and Mexico using a big color-coded chart. How full would the moon be on a certain day in December, 2012? Where would all the planets be? What's the mid-week train schedule like in Shanghai? It was a nightmare to make it all work, and most of those scenes were cut from the book anyway.
 
While I'm on the subject of challenges, organizing and executing this blog tour has easily been as difficult as actually writing the book. There's a new deadline every day for a month! I just hope everyone is having as much with the tour as I have been.
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Here’s puzzle piece #22 of 31 of the Galaxy Games Blog Tour:



The Challengers is available from booksellers, online and off, and as an ebook. To find Greg's next post on his tour (and much, much more), visit the Galaxy Games site, or visit his Galaxy Games page on Facebook. For more about Greg and his other writings, visit his website or his author page on Facebook.

Penguins in sweaters--for a good cause

Yes. Those are penguins in sweaters. And no, they are not being abused.

The penguins were caught in a New Zealand oil spill. The sweaters serve the dual purpose of keeping them warm until they are well enough for the oil to be removed from their feathers, while also preventing them from nibbling at the oil. I doubt anyone expected them to be so cute. (You can read about it here.)

13 Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance

Among my favorites:

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

Read them all here.

A call for submissions: New Voices in Children's Literature

When I first started out as a writer, I steeled myself for rejection. I knew it could take a while before anything I wrote was published. But as months rolled into years, and the rejections piled up, my confidence began to flag.

In 2001, word got around of a new children's book contest: the Tassy Walden Awards, New Voices in Children's Literature. It was juried by reputable agents and editors from large publishing houses, and winners were given a small cash prize. Why not, I thought.

My manuscript for a young adult novel came in as a finalist. I submitted a middle grade novel the following year, and that also came in as a finalist. Two years later I submitted a third novel, and that one didn't even place.

Now you'd think that would have soured me—three novels, three rejections. But it didn’t.

See, coming in as a finalist meant that the agents and editors who read my manuscripts thought they had promise. The criteria they were using was whether the submissions were of a professional quality. Winners were the best of the bunch—and some years they decided not to chose any winners because no one reached a high enough standard for the category. That I had placed two years in a row meant that I should keep going. That I didn’t place two years later meant I needed to put more work into what I was doing.

And more work is what I did. The result: one of the manuscripts that came in as a finalist became No Castles Here. The one that didn’t place at all became Come Fall. Both have received starred reviews, and I have a third novel ready for release in February, 2012.

The Tassy contest does something many contests don’t: it makes you step up to a publishable level. Winning doesn’t guarantee that what you write will be published, but submitting forces you to reach a professional standard. That is no small thing.

The 12th annual Tassy Walden Awards: New Voices in Children's Literature is now open for submissions. The competition is open to unpublished Connecticut writers and illustrators. This year has five submission categories: picture book (text only), illustrated picture book, children's book illustrator's portfolio, middle grade novel, and young adult/teen novel. The deadline for submissions is February 3, 2012.

For more information, an entry form, and the schedule for upcoming free workshops (these last are still being scheduled and will take place in another month or so) visit the Shoreline Arts Alliance website.

And for those of you wanting to write or illustrate books for young readers who happen to live in Connecticut—submit.