Dear Annie,
Oh my, you've posted so many things recently that I want to respond to thoughtfully. I have other books by George MacDonald, and the wonderful combination of L. Frank Baum and Charles Santore sitting by the computer waiting for scanning and blogging. I need to comb through my shelves for some good books with Latino characters. And I'll get there too -- just not tonight.
I was in the store 11 hours today, working flat-out the whole time. Hanukkah starts tomorrow, so the holiday rush has heated up more quickly than in some other years. (Heaven knows what'll happen to shopping madness next year when the first night of Hanukkah is the evening before Thanksgiving.) Some of the many things that happened to me today:
-- In YA: at closing time, we had only one copy each of Every Day, The Fault in Our Stars, and Where Things Come Back: I suspect they'll all sell out before noon tomorrow (more coming on Monday). We seem to be selling more YA books than in the past. There's a great crop of new ones this year, but I also suspect that more families that have been shopping in my book section since their kids were tiny now have teenagers -- and they keep coming back!
-- After giving a very enthusiastic description of the Anna Hibiscus books to one customer, I reached for the first in the series, only to find it completely gone. I know that we had 20 copies a little more than a week ago. A thorough search unearthed our last four copies in the back of an overstock shelf, but I ran to the computer to place an urgent order for another few dozen to get us through the next weeks.
-- An African-American grandmother asked if we had an early chapter book series starring a black girl. As I pulled books to show her -- we had five series in stock -- another woman (white) came over to listen because that was one of her interests. There was only one copy of a few of the titles I was showing; I worried about that, but left them amicably perusing all the books.
-- A discussion of the depressingly bad grammar in the Junie B. Jones early chapter series veered into talking about Latin -- the customer teaches it at the college level -- and its strict grammar. I really liked the woman, and before long we were talking about college texts of the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic. I could have gone on in that conversation for a while, but too many others called.
-- Someone walked past me carrying volumes 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Wrinkle in Time books, leading me to worry that we were out of #1. No, she smiled, her daughter had read the first and wanted to read all the rest of them. That quick interaction meant I didn't have to stare at the gap on the shelf trying to remember what had been there.
-- The man who ordered the gorgeously illustrated three-volume hardcover boxed set of The Lord of the Rings ($100) came to pick it up. But I have yet to sell one of our four-volume paperback boxed sets of the complete Calvin and Hobbes comics (also $100).
-- I had to explain that although, no, we don't have a book with animal characters that would explain sex to a three year-old, we do carry some good ones with people. I don't know what the outcome was on that.
These conversations are all part of daily life in the job of a bookseller, but the volume and variety increase at this time of year. It's what makes things interesting.
Love,
Deborah
Showing posts with label John Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Green. Show all posts
Friday, December 7, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Three book guys
Dear Annie,
This weekend was the National Book Festival on the National Mall here in D.C. I went down for a few hours to hang out in the Teens & Children tent. The audiences really make the event: it's always fascinating to see who attends, and how they react.
The day started with John Green, about whom we've written here, here and here. And he definitely attracted a crowd: I couldn't even make it into the tent:
The crowd was mostly female, mostly between the ages of 14 and 30, with more probably at the upper end, and wildly enthusiastic. Green spoke mostly about The Fault in Our Stars, calling it "in some ways...my first novel -- the one I always wanted to write." He spoke about wanting to "make it okay to look at death. You have to be brought to a place that it's okay and not scary to look at it: a place of love and respect." "I wanted to argue that a short life can be a good life, a rich life."
Green says he writes a book every three or four years -- Fault went through some massive revisions. He so clearly cares about every aspect of his writing. And as you've pointed out so well, imbues it with many layers of meaning.
Next up was Mike Lupica, sports writer and author of a slew of middle grade novels about sports -- most of them centered on boys. There's a whole sub-group of parents who believe that their child (usually a son) won't read anything other than books about sports.* So an accessible, action-packed series of sports books comes in handy. He says he writes two books a year -- and they have that feel.
But Lupica, too, is a man who cares about what he writes. "My books are about friendship, teamwork and loyalty." His first kids' book was based on his own family's experience when his seventh grade son was cut from his basketball team because he was too short. He pulled a group of rejected kids together into an independent team which went on to prove the redemptive power of trying hard and not giving up. "I'm gonna have characters who get knocked down. How they get back up is what my stories are about." His fans weren't the packed-together screaming crowd that Green attracted. But the lines at the microphones for questions were heavily populated with boys grasping their copies of his books and asking about different characters in the stories.
Walter Dean Myers, who is currently national ambassador for young people’s literature, spoke of the transformative power of reading. One felt all three of these guys hadn't prepared a speech for the event: they were giving their well-used stump speeches -- but they were still interesting. Myers told the story of his life, which includes warm memories of sitting on his foster mother's lap as she read true romance magazines out loud, following the words with her finger. He eventually learned to read and would read them out loud to her as she did housework.
Myers is 75, and had a tough childhood, but spoke fondly of a number of teachers who steered him to classic books, and later to writing. "I loved the Little House books -- I loved them for taking me out of Harlem (which I loved) and putting me in the big woods." One of Myers' predecessors as national children's lit ambassador was Jon Scieszka, a very funny and entertaining writer whose big focus is to get more boys involved in reading. Part of Scieszka's schtick is that adults give boys too many old-fashioned "girl books" that they can't engage with. The Little House books are the ones he tends to cite as not-for-boys. It was a lovely contrast to hear Myers, whose books often focus on the difficult experiences of young men, appreciating how imagination can be fed.
Love,
Deborah
*I think they just haven't found the right books yet -- but that's a discussion for another day.
This weekend was the National Book Festival on the National Mall here in D.C. I went down for a few hours to hang out in the Teens & Children tent. The audiences really make the event: it's always fascinating to see who attends, and how they react.
The day started with John Green, about whom we've written here, here and here. And he definitely attracted a crowd: I couldn't even make it into the tent:
 |
| there he is in front of that green screen in the middle |
Green says he writes a book every three or four years -- Fault went through some massive revisions. He so clearly cares about every aspect of his writing. And as you've pointed out so well, imbues it with many layers of meaning.
 |
| Lupica - a little closer |
But Lupica, too, is a man who cares about what he writes. "My books are about friendship, teamwork and loyalty." His first kids' book was based on his own family's experience when his seventh grade son was cut from his basketball team because he was too short. He pulled a group of rejected kids together into an independent team which went on to prove the redemptive power of trying hard and not giving up. "I'm gonna have characters who get knocked down. How they get back up is what my stories are about." His fans weren't the packed-together screaming crowd that Green attracted. But the lines at the microphones for questions were heavily populated with boys grasping their copies of his books and asking about different characters in the stories.
 |
| Walter Dean Myers |
Myers is 75, and had a tough childhood, but spoke fondly of a number of teachers who steered him to classic books, and later to writing. "I loved the Little House books -- I loved them for taking me out of Harlem (which I loved) and putting me in the big woods." One of Myers' predecessors as national children's lit ambassador was Jon Scieszka, a very funny and entertaining writer whose big focus is to get more boys involved in reading. Part of Scieszka's schtick is that adults give boys too many old-fashioned "girl books" that they can't engage with. The Little House books are the ones he tends to cite as not-for-boys. It was a lovely contrast to hear Myers, whose books often focus on the difficult experiences of young men, appreciating how imagination can be fed.
Love,
Deborah
*I think they just haven't found the right books yet -- but that's a discussion for another day.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Summer reading, fallen angels and woodpeckers
Dear Annie,
Here I am in Maine, with the usual several days of getting systems functional. We have internet now -- and it has survived the first crashing thunderstorm.
I'm glad you've managed to revisit some more YA books of your youth. Like you, I've started reading some books I'd set aside for this part of the summer.
Today's treat is
Where Things Come Back, a first novel by John Corey Whaley. It provoked some cheerful speculation about the state of young people's literature when it won the Printz Award (best YA literature) in January. It's a fascinating melange of philosophical musings, small town claustrophobia, family trauma, mystery and media spectacle. Reminds me a bit of John Green books in the ways the characters are trying to make sense of their lives in trying circumstances. Not as consciously intellectual, but wonderfully written. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers in what follows, but am offering enough to let you know it's not just a nice book about a woodpecker.
We start with 17 year-old Cullen and his younger brother Gabriel, their good friend Lucas, their dead-from-an-overdose cousin and the hazing tensions of high school in a small Arkansas town. Then a birdwatcher comes to town and claims to have spotted a rare bird which was believed to be extinct. As the town slowly realizes the business potential involved, the boys resist the mounting enthusiasm.
Near the end, Cullen speculates about the meaning of life.
Love,
Deborah
Here I am in Maine, with the usual several days of getting systems functional. We have internet now -- and it has survived the first crashing thunderstorm.
I'm glad you've managed to revisit some more YA books of your youth. Like you, I've started reading some books I'd set aside for this part of the summer.
Today's treat is Where Things Come Back, a first novel by John Corey Whaley. It provoked some cheerful speculation about the state of young people's literature when it won the Printz Award (best YA literature) in January. It's a fascinating melange of philosophical musings, small town claustrophobia, family trauma, mystery and media spectacle. Reminds me a bit of John Green books in the ways the characters are trying to make sense of their lives in trying circumstances. Not as consciously intellectual, but wonderfully written. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers in what follows, but am offering enough to let you know it's not just a nice book about a woodpecker.
We start with 17 year-old Cullen and his younger brother Gabriel, their good friend Lucas, their dead-from-an-overdose cousin and the hazing tensions of high school in a small Arkansas town. Then a birdwatcher comes to town and claims to have spotted a rare bird which was believed to be extinct. As the town slowly realizes the business potential involved, the boys resist the mounting enthusiasm.
A new, apparently unrelated character pops up in a Georgia fundamentalist community: Benton Sage, who in alternating chapters goes on a mission to Ethiopia, becomes disillusioned, and is introduced to The Book of Enoch, a strange and ancient text about the fall of angels and God's reasons for sending the flood. So we have an elusive bird redeeming a town called Lily, and searching-for-meaning Benton, when -- wham! -- Cullen's brother disappears. Things become more confusing and scary. Most of the book is from Cullen's perspective, muddling through an awful situation. More characters appear. The moment at which they all cross paths is a stunner. But the point of the book isn't the solution to the mystery.It's hard to say what bothered me so much about John Barling and the whole bird thing without painting myself as an angry-for-no-real-reason teenager dressed in black and moping around like Charlie Brown all the time. But it was the same for Gabriel, and Lucas, too. It was as if we got the joke that everyone in town had been told. We knew the punch line. And it would've been much easier to sit back while all of Lily fell under the awe-inspiring spell of the possibility of second chances, or rebirth, but we just couldn't do it. I may not have liked the people in Lily that much, but I felt sorry for anyone being massively scammed.
Near the end, Cullen speculates about the meaning of life.
Definitely worth putting on your next-summer list.I'll tell you now that I still don't know the meaning of mine. And Lucas Cader, with all his brains and talent, doesn't know the meaning of his, either. But I'll tell you the meaning of all this. The meaning of some bird showing up and some boy disappearing and you knowing all about it. The meaning of this was not to save you, but to warn you instead. To warn you of confusion and delusion and assumption.... To warn you of two-foot-tall birds that say they can help, but never do.
Love,
Deborah
Monday, July 23, 2012
John Green's intelligent name-dropping
Dear Aunt Debbie,
In my ongoing reveling in the extra reading time afforded by summer, I read two John Green books last week in three days. They made me want to go right out and find everything else he's written -- I'm a convert. That's not to say that I'm diving into the Nerdfighter world myself, but Green's appeal to smart YA readers is crystal clear.
I'd previously read Will Grayson, Will Grayson; last week, I finally read The Fault in Our Stars, after being exhorted to check it out by a few of my students, and followed it up with
Looking for Alaska, which won Green a Printz Award in 2005.
What strikes me about all three of these books is their intelligence, their smooth incorporation of complex intellectual ideas into readable, compelling narratives. In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the Will Grayson written by John Green uses the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment: a cat is put inside a steel box with a small amount of radioactive material, which may or may not decay over the course of an hour, causing the release of acid which would kill the cat. Before opening the box, the idea is that the cat has an equal chance of being alive or being dead -- that it is both alive and dead at the same time. Green applies this idea to the growing relationship (or is it not a relationship?) between Will and a girl named Jane, who spend much of the book dancing around each other. In The Fault in Our Stars, we get Zeno's Paradox (the one about Achilles and the tortoise) and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In Looking for Alaska, there are extended meditations on the reputed last words of Francois Rabelais: "I go to seek the Great Perhaps," and about Buddhist philosophy. There are also literary quotes and references up one side and down the other: Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, T.S. Eliot, the list goes on.
Green doesn't make this name-dropping feel obnoxious. It's sometimes the narrator who introduces the complex concept or quote, sometimes another character who gets the narrator thinking about the idea for the first time. There's a spirit of inquiry and pleasure in ideas throughout. There's also that excellent YA sense of sticking with a narrator who's a bit of an outsider, an observer, as he or she works to find a place in a community.
Both Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars deal quite directly with teenage death, and more specifically with the deaths of characters you really care about. They aren't light reads, but they leave you thinking. I can imagine each of them encouraging teenage readers to pick up the other materials referenced, and go further on their own.
Love, Annie
In my ongoing reveling in the extra reading time afforded by summer, I read two John Green books last week in three days. They made me want to go right out and find everything else he's written -- I'm a convert. That's not to say that I'm diving into the Nerdfighter world myself, but Green's appeal to smart YA readers is crystal clear.
Looking for Alaska, which won Green a Printz Award in 2005.
What strikes me about all three of these books is their intelligence, their smooth incorporation of complex intellectual ideas into readable, compelling narratives. In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the Will Grayson written by John Green uses the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment: a cat is put inside a steel box with a small amount of radioactive material, which may or may not decay over the course of an hour, causing the release of acid which would kill the cat. Before opening the box, the idea is that the cat has an equal chance of being alive or being dead -- that it is both alive and dead at the same time. Green applies this idea to the growing relationship (or is it not a relationship?) between Will and a girl named Jane, who spend much of the book dancing around each other. In The Fault in Our Stars, we get Zeno's Paradox (the one about Achilles and the tortoise) and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In Looking for Alaska, there are extended meditations on the reputed last words of Francois Rabelais: "I go to seek the Great Perhaps," and about Buddhist philosophy. There are also literary quotes and references up one side and down the other: Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, T.S. Eliot, the list goes on.
Green doesn't make this name-dropping feel obnoxious. It's sometimes the narrator who introduces the complex concept or quote, sometimes another character who gets the narrator thinking about the idea for the first time. There's a spirit of inquiry and pleasure in ideas throughout. There's also that excellent YA sense of sticking with a narrator who's a bit of an outsider, an observer, as he or she works to find a place in a community.
Both Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars deal quite directly with teenage death, and more specifically with the deaths of characters you really care about. They aren't light reads, but they leave you thinking. I can imagine each of them encouraging teenage readers to pick up the other materials referenced, and go further on their own.
Love, Annie
Friday, June 29, 2012
Escapist reading
Dear Aunt Debbie,
Since finishing up my grading and saying goodbye to another school year, I've found myself craving YA lit as an entry into summer. I'll get to some of my bigger must-reads in later weeks; for now, give me a good page-turner (or two, or three, or four).
I started at the end of last week with Gregor the Overlander, book #1 in Suzanne Collins' five-book series, The Underland Chronicles. I knew Collins only from The Hunger Games, her best-known series, about which you and I have both raved here. It's no surprise that this earlier series is both gripping and filled with compelling characters.
The series skews a little younger than The Hunger Games. Our hero, Gregor, is an 11-year-old boy living close to poverty in an apartment building in New York with his mother and two younger sisters, Lizzie (7), and Boots (2), and grandmother. Their father, an engaging and involved parent and excellent science teacher, disappeared without a trace two years before the beginning of the first book -- homage to A Wrinkle in Time? Gregor and Boots are down in the laundry room one day when they fall into an open grate, are caught by misty currents, and land impossibly far down below New York City in Underland.
It turns out there's a whole world down there, populated by very pale humans, descendants of a British explorer from centuries earlier, and giant talking bats (friendly, bonded with humans), cockroaches (keep to themselves) and rats (bad, at war with the humans). Bartholomew of Sandwich, the original settler, was also a prophet of sorts. In Regalia, the gorgeous stone-carved capital city of the humans, he left a room filled with prophecies carved into the walls. Soon after Gregor's arrival, the people of Regalia decide that Gregor is "the warrior" mentioned in a number of prophecies, and he and Boots embark on a quest to find and save their father, and possibly all of Underland.
It's a fine exploration of the "Who, me? I'm no hero. Okay, well, maybe I am" theme. Gregor is appealing as he tries to resist the prophecies but starts to realize he might actually be something special, and Boots, the two-year-old, is a hoot. She's totally fearless, and bonds immediately with the giant cockroaches, who revere her as a princess. Speaking of princesses, one of the other major characters is Luxa, the underage queen of Regalia. She's strong and at first quite cool -- her parents were killed by rats, and she's in training to take on the full powers of the throne when she turns 16. She and Gregor don't like each other at first, but come to have a grudging respect, which develops into real caring as the series goes on. (As of early in book 3, no romance yet. They're only 11.) There are many adventures and hairsbreadth escapes -- Collins is a master of the cliffhanger chapter ending -- and semi-major characters die in the fighting. It's a good read.
After finishing Gregor the Overlander in a day, I quickly updated my library hold list to request the second and third books in the series: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane and Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods. While I waited for them to come in, I took a more realistic turn with a book you'd recommended a while back, Will Grayson, Will Grayson. The alternating chapters by John Green (The Fault in Our Stars) and David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy) worked together well, and I found myself speeding through it with great enjoyment.
I like summer.
Love, Annie
Since finishing up my grading and saying goodbye to another school year, I've found myself craving YA lit as an entry into summer. I'll get to some of my bigger must-reads in later weeks; for now, give me a good page-turner (or two, or three, or four).
The series skews a little younger than The Hunger Games. Our hero, Gregor, is an 11-year-old boy living close to poverty in an apartment building in New York with his mother and two younger sisters, Lizzie (7), and Boots (2), and grandmother. Their father, an engaging and involved parent and excellent science teacher, disappeared without a trace two years before the beginning of the first book -- homage to A Wrinkle in Time? Gregor and Boots are down in the laundry room one day when they fall into an open grate, are caught by misty currents, and land impossibly far down below New York City in Underland.
It turns out there's a whole world down there, populated by very pale humans, descendants of a British explorer from centuries earlier, and giant talking bats (friendly, bonded with humans), cockroaches (keep to themselves) and rats (bad, at war with the humans). Bartholomew of Sandwich, the original settler, was also a prophet of sorts. In Regalia, the gorgeous stone-carved capital city of the humans, he left a room filled with prophecies carved into the walls. Soon after Gregor's arrival, the people of Regalia decide that Gregor is "the warrior" mentioned in a number of prophecies, and he and Boots embark on a quest to find and save their father, and possibly all of Underland.
It's a fine exploration of the "Who, me? I'm no hero. Okay, well, maybe I am" theme. Gregor is appealing as he tries to resist the prophecies but starts to realize he might actually be something special, and Boots, the two-year-old, is a hoot. She's totally fearless, and bonds immediately with the giant cockroaches, who revere her as a princess. Speaking of princesses, one of the other major characters is Luxa, the underage queen of Regalia. She's strong and at first quite cool -- her parents were killed by rats, and she's in training to take on the full powers of the throne when she turns 16. She and Gregor don't like each other at first, but come to have a grudging respect, which develops into real caring as the series goes on. (As of early in book 3, no romance yet. They're only 11.) There are many adventures and hairsbreadth escapes -- Collins is a master of the cliffhanger chapter ending -- and semi-major characters die in the fighting. It's a good read.
After finishing Gregor the Overlander in a day, I quickly updated my library hold list to request the second and third books in the series: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane and Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods. While I waited for them to come in, I took a more realistic turn with a book you'd recommended a while back, Will Grayson, Will Grayson. The alternating chapters by John Green (The Fault in Our Stars) and David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy) worked together well, and I found myself speeding through it with great enjoyment.
I like summer.
Love, Annie
Thursday, June 14, 2012
"A room full of elephants"
Dear Annie,
Emily's poetry post is spectacular. I've ordered a few of the books for the store -- such knowledge and enthusiasm. Thank you, Emily!
It's been a week since I was at Book Expo America, and I've finally found a site with Lois Lowry's speech, and some other excellent ones given at the Children's Author Breakfast. Navigation there is a little odd. Here's the site, then click on "Author Breakfasts and Editors' Buzz" so that tab turns green (you won't go to a new page), and look at the videos listed in a line beneath the video screen. Tenth from the left is "Children's Book and Authors Breakfast," running 01:07:26. Speeches during that hour, and their hit times:
As you may have already seen in his video blog, Green speaks at breakneck speed, only occasionally implying commas or periods. My transcription:
I hope your grading frenzy is easing up. Your guest bloggers are excellent, but we all look forward to your return.
Love,
Deborah
Emily's poetry post is spectacular. I've ordered a few of the books for the store -- such knowledge and enthusiasm. Thank you, Emily!
It's been a week since I was at Book Expo America, and I've finally found a site with Lois Lowry's speech, and some other excellent ones given at the Children's Author Breakfast. Navigation there is a little odd. Here's the site, then click on "Author Breakfasts and Editors' Buzz" so that tab turns green (you won't go to a new page), and look at the videos listed in a line beneath the video screen. Tenth from the left is "Children's Book and Authors Breakfast," running 01:07:26. Speeches during that hour, and their hit times:
00:06:00 - Walter Dean Myers, current Ambassador for Young People's Literature (our post here) made opening remarks.In the order of things that morning, as you can see, John Green spoke before Lowry. He's both a good YA writer and a masterful internet and social media communicator. Although he wears both hats, he gave an impassioned ode to the empathetic power of reading. At one point, he described the setting -- a booksellers' convention -- as " like being in a room full of elephants, as an elephant, talking about how great elephants are." Not sure how I feel about being an elephant, but it captured the we-all-love-books feeling in the room. His speech got eclipsed a bit by Lowry's knock-out one, so I'm offering some excerpts here.
00:25:00 - John Green, about whom we've written here, with more below.
00:40:10 - Lois Lowry.
00:53:30 - Kadir Nelson, illustrator and author -- see posts here and here.
As you may have already seen in his video blog, Green speaks at breakneck speed, only occasionally implying commas or periods. My transcription:
A lot of applause for that line.The thing about books is that because they are composed out of text, because there is this act of translation that one has to do when reading, because I have to turn these meaningless scratches on a page into ideas that exist inside my head, I become the co-creator of the story when I read the story, in a way that I don’t become the co-creator of any other kind of medium. Which is precisely why reading takes concentration and it takes focus and it is an activity that you can’t do while you do other things. It’s a very unpopular kind of activity these days. But it was through stories and through people like Scout Finch and Pecola Breedlove and Holden Caulfield that I came to understand that other people were really real – and those people being real by extension made you real....I don’t think we need to become something that you look at while you do other things. I don’t think we need to become twitter or tumblr – and god knows that I don’t think we need to become angry birds. I can take a break from creating a Power Point and glance at twitter. I can play angry birds for 20 seconds while I’m waiting for lunch. But that is not how I read a book. Reading is quiet and contemplative and immersive and that’s why I like it. And that’s why it matters. And that’s how we’re going to compete, is by being the thing that we’re great at....I do believe that someday someone will create a multimedia text-based narrative that lights the app store on fire but I don’t think that it will succeed because it has a lot of bells and whistles or social media integration or whatever. I think it will succeed because of its story. I believe that story trumps everything.
I hope your grading frenzy is easing up. Your guest bloggers are excellent, but we all look forward to your return.
Love,
Deborah
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