Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 149
January 4, 2011
Synchronicities
Synchronicity: 1. the quality or fact of being synchronous; 2. the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality
This list of similarities and coincidences among the 2010 Cybils YA Fiction nominees is humbly submitted to you by the seven members of the 2010 Cybils YA Fiction first-round panel. It is no way to be considered completely exhaustive, as we are certain some nominated books and coincidences will have been missed. This list developed as the seven of us read our way through the 182 titles. If you know of a nominated title that should be included in one of the synchronicities below, please feel free to submit it in the comments! To get the entire list, you'll have to visit all seven blogs:
• Amanda Snow, A Patchwork of Books [TW] 1-10
• Ami Jones, Three Turtles and Their Pet Librarian [TW] 11-21
• Cherylynne W. Bago, View from Above and Beyond [TW] 22-32
• Jackie Parker, Interactive Reader [TW] 33-42
• Justina Ireland, The YA 5 [TW] 43-52
• Kelly Jensen, Stacked [TW] 53-63
…and I'm bringing up the rear with SYNCHRONICITIES #64-72.
64. Swim Lessons: Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin; When I Was Joe
65. Swingsets: Hold Still; Love Drugged; Will Grayson, Will Grayson
66. Taylor Swift: Friend is Not a Verb; Perfect Shot
67. Texting/IM Conversations: Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin; The Secret to Lying; Will Grayson, Will Grayson
68. Thieving Fathers: Compromised; The Daughters; Heist Society;
69. Titles with a Little "Little" in Them: A Little Wanting Song; Dirty Little Secrets; Every Little Thing in the World; Little Blog on the Prairie
70. Verse Novels: After the Kiss; Firefly Letters; Glimpse; Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs; Three Rivers Rising; Wicked Girls
71. War: Abe in Arms; Bamboo People; Revolution; Sweet, Hereafter; The Things a Brother Knows; Thunder Over Kandahar; Woods Runner
72. Non-book-Related: Kelly and Jackie came to the realization they are naming their first born daughters the same thing… And no, they aren't telling you what that is. (Wilma Grayson?) (Kelly says it's Xander!)
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Music to My Ears
Announcing the Betsy-Tacy Songbook
I can finally learn the Cat Duet!
And "Dreaming,"
"Because You're You,"
"Morning Cy,"
"Same Old Story,"
and all those other good old tunes.
From the Betsy-Tacy Convention site:
Hot off the presses! The Betsy-Tacy Songbook is now available at Willard's Emporium!
Join Betsy Ray and her Crowd as they gather around the piano and sing the popular hits of their day.
The Maud Hart Lovelace Society has lovingly and painstakingly researched the songs mentioned (and sung, and danced to) in the Betsy-Tacy books and assembled a "greatest hits" list of songs for your musical enjoyment.
The book is 212 pages long, spiral bound in green, and contains 40 songs mentioned in the Betsy-Tacy books, with scanned original vintage copies of the sheet music covers and the sheet music itself. There is information about each song and where it appears in the Betsy-Tacy books, as well as biographical information about two of the musical stars of Betsy's day, Chauncey Olcott and Joe E. Howard.
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January 3, 2011
Monday Morning Reading
The Strictest School in the World, Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken, by Harold Whitehouse.
This is a book I read about at Hilltop Farm a while back, and at Big A little a a much longer while before that but then I forgot about it until the Hilltop Farm post reminded me. Methinks we're going to enjoy this tale, which gets off to a fine start with lively characters such as a young female aeronautics enthusiast, an eccentric natural-foods-loving auntie given to serving up dishes like earwig curry and rhubarb-centipede-dandelion crumble, and a tactful Sikh butler. I'm reading it to Rose and Beanie (the others are welcome to listen in), and it'll be the centerpoint of a little cruise we'll be taking through the Victorian era during the next month or two.
Who better to pull off the shelf next than Tennyson? We read "The Mermaid" and "The Eagle" and, because his language practically begs you to, talked about alliteration and imagery and simile. Like that gorgeous bit in Mermaid when "that great sea-snake under the sea / From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps / Would slowly trail himself sevenfold / Round the hall…" Wonderfully creepy, that, and then the surprise of the sea serpent not attacking but instead looking "in at the gate /With his large calm eyes for the love of me"—delicious. And the Eagle's lonely lands and wrinkled sea, so incredibly evocative.
This particular volume, part of the Poetry for Young People series, only includes the first two stanzas of "The Mermaid," so perhaps we'll look at the third stanza another day, as well as its companion poem, "The Merman," while we're at it.
After that we indulged in a bit of Lewis Carroll—"Jabberwocky" at the 12-year-old's request. Reading that poem aloud may be rather like eating a rhubarb, centipede, and dandelion crumble—all sorts of intriguing and unnerving textures in the mouth.
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Book-A-Day Almanac
I'm in love with this new blog already. Love its layout, love the concept, love the nifty things I learned. Going to be a fun daily visit, I can tell.
tags: books kidlitosphere
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
(Testing out this post-to-blog feature at Diigo. Did you see COD's comment on my post yesterday, about Delicious being on shaky ground? Diigo seems a good alternative & easy transition. I'm investigating.)
__________
(OK, so the formatting is a little off. Easily tweakable and I liked the oneclickness of it. Could be a decent way to share stuff.)
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January 2, 2011
Blogkeeping
Scott: Whatcha doing?
Me: Oh, just a little housekeeping.
Scott: Who are you and what have you done with my wife?
Me: No, I mean in my sidebars.
Scott: Aha. It all becomes so clear!
Seems like every year as the calendar rolls over, I feel the need to do a little pruning and sprucing here on the blog. For those of you who read me mainly in a feed reader, here's what's new: a trio of booklists in the righthand sidebar. One is my running list of 2010 Cybils finalists for the Cybils Shortlist Reading Challenge I mentioned yesterday; one will be an ongoing record of our family read-alouds, including picture books read to the small fry; and the third is my own 2011 booklog. All three of these lists are imported from my Delicious account, if you'd rather peek at them there. The pertinent Delicious tags are cybilschallenge, rillabooks, and booklog, respectively.
This is also the time of year when I take a look at how I'm using social media and try to streamline a bit. I enjoy poking around various platforms to see what they've got to offer, but of course for practical use it's best to keep things simple. I tend to layer and layer and layer and then chuck it all and start afresh. (Jane teased me the other day about my profound devotion to the fresh start, the clean slate. She is so right.)
So—this year I've decided I'm tired of having my shareworthy links scattered between Google Reader Shared Items and Delicious. I'll just stick with Delicious. That means shareworthy links and booklogs are on Delicious now. One-stop shopping.
I'll keep using Tumblr to record stuff I read online that I don't necessarily want to share but do want to be able to find again myself. That worked really well for me in 2010.
I'm kind of in love with TeuxDeux, a clean, uncluttered, week-at-a-glance to-do list. You can easily drag tasks from one day to the next or click to cross them out when they've been accomplished.
Where else to find me: Twitter. My Facebook author page. And here.
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January 1, 2011
Cybils Shortlists and a Reading Challenge
Okay, I knew I wouldn't last long before I came up with some kind of reading plan for the year…what's a nice clean slate for if not to write on it?
See, I just had a fun idea: now that the eagerly-awaited 2010 Cybils shortlists have been announced, how about a Cybils Shortlist Reading Challenge?
If I'm counting correctly, there are a total of 76 books shortlisted across the 11 categories. (The odds of my having counted correctly, mind you, are slim. Feel free to correct me.) That means if you haven't read any of them—and you've probably already read at least a few—you could read all 76 titles by tackling six or seven books a month. Many of these books are picture book and early readers, remember, so seven is a totally attainable number.
Of course those of us who served on a first-round panel (or who read lots of new books) will have a head start. I haven't yet counted how many shortlisters I've read in total, but I did see several books I enjoyed on the lists already. I think I might only have to read four or five shortlisters a month to complete the challenge.
If you're game, please chime in in the comments!
Serving on the YA fiction panel was a joy and (speaking of) a challenge. I gave up fall gardening—and here in San Diego, that's one of our best garden seasons—in order to keep up with my reading responsibilities. (People are always asking me how I find so much time to read, and there's your answer. Something's gotta give. My 'something' usually has more to do with cooking and floor-scrubbing, but those are things that gotta give during ordinary times, and a stint on a first-round Cybils panel is not an ordinary time.) My fellow panelists are wonderfully insightful readers, women with wit and wisdom. We enjoyed our three months of book discussions so much, in fact, that when it was all over, we decided to keep this good thing going via monthly book-clubbish conversations. Maybe some of these other-category titles will provide some of the fuel for our sparky talks.
I hope to write more about our panel—and our selections—in the days to come, but for now if you'd like a peek behind the scenes, here's a writeup by Kelly Jensen of Stacked.
Being a part of this panel was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. It was completely exhausting and at times emotionally draining, but after three months of reading wildly, it all came down to a 4.5 hour discussion the day after Christmas.
Kelly, Amanda, Ami, Cheryl, Jackie, Justina, I loved getting to know you, laugh with you, argue with you, read with you. I look forward to many more lively fights conversations to come. Also: In-and-Out burgers!
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December 31, 2010
2010 in the Rearview
The early part of the year was all about bread. And crows.
In the spring we spent a good bit of time in the Middle Ages.
Because my kids are getting older, and their stories are their stories, this year I mostly blogged about books.
And posted pictures of this guy.
Looking back, I see it was a kind of mellow first half of the year, which is nice. The pace grew pretty intense come July, beginning with Comic-Con…
…and almost immediately afterward we were zooming off on our cross-country adventure, me and the kids.
We saw some beautiful sights…
…and got to spend time with so many dear friends-and-relations. (I'm still bummed that I didn't remember to take any pictures during our super-fun visit with Sandra Dodd in Albuquerque. She made the most wonderful monkey platter for my kids, and we talked and explored and played, and the kids never wanted to leave, and then it started to rain and we dashed for the car because I wanted to get to our next stop before the rain got too bad, and I was backing out of her driveway before I thought of the camera. C'est la vie!)
2010 was a year of literary fangirl dreams coming true, beginning with our visit to Rocky Ridge Farm, home of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri.
(Dear Kim-from-the-gift-shop, if you are reading this—thanks again for the wonderful warmth and hospitality you showed us!)
In October, after enjoying the heck out of myself at KidLitCon, I had that splendid day in Mankato, Minnesota with the amazing Kathy Baxter and my beautiful, beautiful friend Margaret. I'm sure you remember Maggie's hilarious account of our Betsy-Tacy tour. It was such a great day. (And then I got to spend the night at Margaret's house and meet her brilliant children, and that was pretty great too.)
Kathy Baxter, me, and the smile that ate my face. Margaret's photo, shamelessly stolen.
Mrs. Ray's brass bowl. I about died.
The memorial walk. My feet. Margaret's photo.
Winona's wall. Margaret's photo. My bliss.
Betsy's porch! My Margaret.
Also in October, the reissues of Carney's House Party/Winona's Pony Cart and Emily of Deep Valley came out with the new introductions by Mitali Perkins and me. And that was pretty darn exciting. Not just because I got to write an intro for a book I cherish deeply, but because Carney and Emily came back into print.
To celebrate the event, a wonderful San Diego-area children's bookstore named Readers Inc. hosted a Deep Valley Book Party, at which I got to share my enthusiasm for all things Betsy-Tacy with a packed house of kids and parents. I read aloud the Everything Pudding episode from Betsy-Tacy and Tib, and we had lots of Q and A and cookies.
My favorite part of that whole event: the fabulous T-shirt made by one of Jane's good friends, the lovely Miss E. Sanchez, commemorating Betsy's Crowd and their songs, adventures, and catchphrases.
Awesome.
That was November, and then came this past month's blur of CYBILs reading, and everyone being sick and getting better, and my parents visiting, and Christmas, and here we are. It was a fast year, a full year, a fine year.
I can't wait to see what's coming our way in 2011.
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"And once again I am blessed…"
These are poems that grabbed me this week. The Wendell Berry was quoted by Anne Lamott just after the Bird by Bird passage I posted on Wednesday. The Dickinson came my way in the recent New Yorker review of C. D. Wright's One With Others, a book which sounds well worth seeking out.
Tell All the Truth
by Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
The Wild Rose
by Wendell Berry
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart.
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
This week's Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Carol's Corner.
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December 30, 2010
Hit Me
What was your favorite read of 2010? Or *a* favorite, if you, like me, have a hard time committing to One Most Favored Favorite.
I'm hopeless at naming favorites. In grade school I always had to give valentines to everyone in the class lest someone's feelings get hurt.
I was going to write a list of "Ten Books I'm Really Glad I Read This Year." But in looking over my 2010 book log, I see hardly any titles I'm not glad I read. Even if I didn't care for a book, I'm happy I read it. I learn as much from the books I don't like as from the books I do.
Some books I'm super especially happy I read this year (I would put an extra heart sticker on their valentines) include:
Scrawl by Mark Shulman. A funny, wry, touching YA in the voice of a high-school boy who hides his intelligence behind acts of petty thuggery. The price he pays for narrowly escaping a juvie sentence is to write a journal during a month of detention under the watchful eyes of his guidance counselor. This journal is the book, and it's a treat to get to know Tod as he slowly reveals himself on the page. I'd hand this one to any parent or teenager.
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark. Tart, wry, ascerbic, all those words that make your mouth quirk. My first taste of Spark, and I loved the pucker.
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset. Has been on my TBR list for over a decade. Made three attempts at in years past. This time, after reading Sally's post that mentioned the new Tina Nunnally translation, I finally sank into it and it was a gorgeous, lyrical, heartstabbing experience. Afterward I was eager to dive into the next book in the trilogy, but the CYBILs were looming and Franzen's Freedom had just arrived from the library after months in the queue. So now I have the next leg of Kristin's journey to look forward to.
Feed by M.T. Anderson. Everything that already alarms you about our tech-addicted world will alarm you all the more after reading this book, but in a good way. It felt like an important cultural-literacy read to me, and I immediately passed it on to my 15-year-old despite mature content (ahem) and strong language.
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. It troubled me, consumed me during the reading, fascinated me in an entirely uncomfortable way. Like Byatt's Possession, I'm finding that this one won't leave me alone, even now, months after I read it. I can hear its footsteps creaking the floorboards in the attic of my brain.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. All of you who said I'd love it, you were so right. Reminds me, now I can finally read the Noel Perrin essay on this book in A Child's Delight (which is where I first heard of Capture).
Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis. Two teenage girls drive cross-country with their feisty grandmother. (Had me at hello.) Turns out Mare (grandma) was a private in the African-American regiment of the Women's Army Corps during World War II, and her stories put us right there with her. Fascinating, engaging, full of warmth and candor. Loved it.
Argh, this post is KILLING ME. I keep scrolling down my book log and thinking "Oh! I need to add that one! And that one! And that one!" Can we just consider this a part one? More to come? If I am not too busy reading? Because I have a whole bunch of new stuff about to come into the library…
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December 29, 2010
What You Really Needed
"But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony."
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
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