Ron Koertge's Blog, page 5

Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II has been named a Booklist Editor’s Choice for 2011

For the full list of Booklist selections, click here.

Wake Up Stupid

Ron’s latest essay: “Wake Up Stupid, What My Last Book Taught Me – A Look Into Now Playing: Stoner and Spaz II was just published in Hunger Mountain.

Wake Up Stupid

I have a friend who says she takes a Do Not Resuscitate placard into the Macy’s dressing room. She can’t believe that’s her in the three-way mirror and if she collapses she doesn’t want to be revived.

My friend is a quipster, but looking in the mirror is no laughing matter to Ben Bancroft, the narrator of Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II. His sixteen-year-old body is marred by cerebral palsy. One good side (the right) and one not so good (left). Early in the novel he compares himself to a tree struck by lightning, a tree that managed to survive. But barely. (read the rest here)

“Lunacy” In The Horn Book Magazine

Remember all the hubbub surrounding the publication of Go the F*ck to Sleep a while back? Here’s Ron Koertge’s humorous take, from the November-December 2011 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Lunacy

Mother Goose waddled to the window. Ah, there was the moon, perfect and round, its light streaming into bedrooms everywhere. She sighed.

Mother Goose was upset. How could parents say that…word, that awful word, to their children? How could they use it in front of innocent little darlings almost fast asleep? Their drowsy eyes. Well-washed hands clutching the crisp, white sheets.

She loved children. Why, tonight she was baby-sitting Jack and Jill, Little Jack Horner, and the Three Little Kittens. When they were ready for bed, they would be tucked in and read to, not shouted at. Not sworn at.

Whiskers, Cuddles, and Boots mewed at her feet. So sweet. They’ve lost their mittens. Well, they can’t be far.

Mother Goose looked toward the corner where Little Jack Horner was jabbing his thumb into an already mutilated pie. And then holding his hand up so the purple, sticky juice ran down his arm and stained his new shirt. Good Lord.

“Oh, look. Here are your mittens. Now go and play while I try to get young Mr. Horner cleaned up.”

Why didn’t he cooperate? Why did he kick at her slightly swollen ankles? And why did she have to listen to Jill and the other Jack bicker:

“I didn’t trip you. I just wanted to carry the pail for a change. But oh, no. Mr. Big Shot, Mr. I’m-All-Testosterone-All-the-Time has to carry it.”

“You’re a girl. You’re supposed to just hold my hand.”

“Oh, bullshit. And you should go to Urgent Care. Head injuries can be fatal. That would make a lovely bedtime story—’Jack and Jill went up the hill / but Jack fell down and died from a subdural hematoma.’ That’ll send the tots right to Dreamland.”

Mother Goose shushed them both as Jack Horner pointed with his one clean hand and laughed diabolically. “Look!”

Oh, for God’s sake. Whiskers had his head stuck in a mitten and appeared to be suffocating.

“He did it,” shouted Boots, pointing to Cuddles, who made his wide eyes wider: Who, me?

Mother Goose managed to wrestle the mitten off of Whiskers, who promptly hissed and bit her in the wing.

“Go to bed!” shouted Mother Goose. “All of you. To bed. Now!”

Muttering to one another, and dragging their feet, everyone got into the big bed Mother Goose was so proud of.

“That’s better,” she said. “One story. And then right to sleep.”

Cuddles whispered to Boots, “I’ll bet you can’t eat a whole mitten. I did and it was delicious.”

“Has anybody seen my pie?” asked Jack Horner.

Jill sat straight up. “Is that what that is? I thought Jack was bleeding out.”

Mother Goose arched her long neck. She spread her wings so a giant shadow fell across the bed.

“Go to sleep!” she shouted. “I mean it. Go the f— !”

She almost said it.

The room darkened on its own. The kittens huddled together. Jill searched for a hand to hold. Little Jack Horner whimpered and pulled the covers over his head.

Mother Goose limped to the window. There was that moon—a cold, dead rock in the sky spreading its feeble, borrowed light over a whole new world.

THE END

Ron Koertge Interviewed In School Library Journal

Da Do Ron Ron: Ron Koertge’s sequel to ‘Stoner & Spaz’ is even better than the original.

A Word From Ron Koertge

Not long ago somebody pointed out that I was one of the oldest kids' writers around.   I'm not so sure. I turned seventy in April, and there's no way to call that middle-aged.

Sometimes I walk into a classroom for a school visit and the students look at each other with a Who's-the-old-guy? expression on their faces.  I don't blame them.  It seems odd to me, too.  If my readers are around fifteen, I'm about five times as old as they are.

Polite kids will say, "Gee, you don't look really old," and most days I don't.  Not really old.  My wife and I walk three or four miles every day, I do a little yoga, I'm fairly careful about what I eat.  I have good genes.  And you can't get those at The Gap.

I didn't start out as a kids' writer.  Not many people from my generation —  men especially – did.  But I wanted to write.  And I did.  I met people in college and grad school who took writing seriously.  So I wrote a novel and eventually got it published when I was around forty.

I thought that was the beginning of a real career.  Instead, the next novels were awful.  Unpublishable.  I was, in a way, a failure.  Then a friend of mine pointed out that I was chronically immature.  Why didn't I write for teenage boys?

So I went to my local library, got out a couple of YA novels, read them and thought, "These are okay, but I'll bet I can write one just as good."

So I did.  Where the Kissing Never Stops is still one of my faves.  It's very funny and it's pretty long.  (The longer I write, the shorter my novels get.)

Twelve or thirteen books later, here I am.  How did this happen?  For one thing, I've been reading and writing poetry nearly all my life, so words and how they sound and how they fit together are important to me.  So I actually write pretty well.

For another thing, I believe in Something.  Maybe not the same thing that regular churchgoers believe in,   but it's definitely Something. When I was in my thirties and behaving badly, I thought I didn't believe in anything.  That is, I believed in Nothing. But that wasn't very satisfying and it sure wasn't any fun.   And things happened that made me see there was Something going on.  I'd get the right ideas at the right time.  Stoner & Spaz, one of my most popular novels, didn't have a boy with cerebral palsy in it until Something guided two boys with CP right at me.

What's next?  More books, I hope.  And a long and happy life.  I've had my flu shot, so I should be good at least till June.

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Ron's latest book, Now Playing, is out now.

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