CONTEST!!!, Or, Janet Reid is Sneaky and You Stand to Benefit.

If you've met me at a publishing event in the last 15 months or so, or if you follow me on Twitter, or if you're my friend on Facebook, you've probably heard me talking about this book, YOU, the debut YA from Charles Benoit.

YOU is without a doubt one of the most important books I'll have a part in bringing to life in my entire career, no matter how long that career turns out to be. There aren't enough adjectives to describe how masterfully crafted Charles Benoit's story is, and how excited we are that he's found his way from the adult mystery world into writing YA. And working beside my amazing boss on YOU has been a phenomenal experience--15 months after our first reads of it, we're still unable to stop ourselves from talking about it near-constantly. Most of all, the support of the children's/YA writing world for this new-to-our-world author and his story has been inmmensely humbling. The ARC, in fact, looks like this:

It's gotten more early praise than we could even fit on the cover! As we like to say, "People are talking about YOU." (And yes, you really should click each of those links to read the fantastic reviews and conversations that are starting about this book.)

So why am I showing you the ARC? Because you have a chance to win it. Head over to Agent Janet Reid's blog, where she's doing the Robin Hood thing of snitching ARCs and giving them to the masses, ergo YOU stand to benefit. But hurry! The contest ends at high noon on Sunday.

And then on August 24th (a mere 96 days from now!) get yourself to a bookstore and buy this astonishing book (or, you know, go pre-order it right now in anticipation), and read it and share it with everyone you know who works with teens, or is a teen, or has ever been a teen. And then you, too, will be one of the many people talking about YOU.

On belonging

I've been pondering the notion of "belonging" over the last few days, trying to piece together this blog post. True to form, all the scattered bits of my ideas converged mentally while I walked the 10 blocks home from the subway to my apartment last night. (Hence the name of this blog, as well as proof that, for the sake of the blog, I should never-ever move--even if the piles of books that regularly threaten to entirely take over my wee studio apartment do eventually win by crowding me into having only one tiny corner allowed for all the non-bookish parts of living....)

So. Anyway. Belonging.

Last week, I visited a friend who just adopted a sweet dog from an animal rescue organization. I expected the dog to perhaps be skittish or shy...she'd only been in her new home for two days, after all. Instead, she was calm, and politely interested in meeting me, if perhaps a little less excited about the whole encounter than I was. Why? Well, it became very clear over the course of my visit was this was a dog well on her way to being vastly content. Why? Because my friend belonged to her now. In two short days, Madeline-the-dog (named for this Madeline, of course) had already claimed her new owner in a complete, wholehearted way. And not that I didn't love my friend before, but I left her apartment a few hours later smiling, because, well, I think it's impossible to not change for the better anytime one is loved fiercely, whether by person or by beast. In short, I think it's quite likely that my friend is going to become an even better person than she already is, now that she belongs to a dog. (Hmm, I suspect I must take advantage of this opportune moment for book suggestion, even if it ruins the evocative mood of this blog post. Need a picture book to articulate the small but critical difference/nuances between a dog belonging to a person, and a person belonging to a dog? Try the Christmastime charmer The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy or, the poignant and pitch-perfect Orville: A Dog Story.)

Thinking later about this idea--the peculiar loveliness of belonging and how it changes us--made me flash back to an understanding that's bubbled up in me the last few times I've traveled. Over the last year or two, I've gotten into the habit of, whenever possible, taking late-night flights back into NYC instead of daytime ones. To me, there's something breath-taking, and breath-giving at the same time, about descending from a dark sky toward Manhattan's city-island full of lights. It goes deeper than just being a sight that's "magical," or any adjective one might use to describe beauty. It's even somehow beyond the simple notion of home. It's more about a sense of completeness. Trying to articulate how it makes me feel to a friend recently, the only way I could express it was to say that flying into the light-filled city reminds me that, after eight years here, I belong to New York now. It feels as if NYC is reaching out to reconnect and reclaim me as its own. And this often-hard-but-always-glorious city makes me a better person, I think, because I belong to it.

In a similar sort of way, a certain handsome guy in my life belongs to a particular corner of the Pacific Ocean, because he grew up surrounded by its waters. I've watched him for years, observing the fact that if he's away from "his" ocean too long, he becomes jittery, stress-laden, unhappy. By contrast, even a short trip back to visit it gives him a sense of peace, and returns him to his most complete self. In a mysterious, hard-to-define but definite way, I think it's fair to say that he's a better person purely because he's spent his life belonging so intensely to that ocean, even when he's far away from it.

And the "click" moment of last night's ten block walk: that this all connects, and deeply, to a line from one one my very favorite lyrical, literary YA novels, Cynthia Rylant's I Had Seen Castles:

"I want to have that morning. The walk to school with the guys, the banter, the wisecracking, the cuffing and shoving that boys must do to claim ownership of each other."

I've loved that line since the very first time I read it, because it expresses something so entirely true. That is exactly how pre-teen boys act, exactly why their rough-and-tumble antics are actually so important, because they reveal their feelings of belonging to their tribe, and to each other, on their way toward becoming themselves.

So. Ownership. Belonging. You could call it connectedness, too, I think. As I think about it, I realize these are transformational words, transformational experiences. It seems there's something about belonging--to a person, to an animal, to a place, to an idea, even--that makes us our best selves, makes us more whole. Why is that? Does anyone know?

I think it's time to end my rambly thoughts on the idea here, but I know it's one I'm going to keep pondering. And I'd love to hear your own thoughts and responses and ponderings in the comments. And I'm curious, too, of course. Outside of the most obvious answer of your family, your beloved ones--who or what or where do you belong to, in a way that transforms you, that makes you your best self, that makes you more whole?

Poetry Friday on a Sunday: "Letter to a Young Activist"

...because it seems that someone, somehow, keeps stealing all the hours out of my Fridays (and Saturdays, too, for that matter)!

Last week, while in Milwaukee to meet with the oh-so-warm-and-welcoming writers of SCBWI-Wisconsin, I got to spend a few hours roaming the campus of my alma mater, Marquette University. I'm a bit sappy and reflective by nature, so it should probably have been no surprise to me how much a visit like that would get under my skin, and sure enough, it did, leaving me profoundly grateful for my four years there. In a sense, Marquette marks for me the place and time where I first truly woke up to the world, just as I'm sure so many other MU alumni would say. It's where I first encountered all the rich possibility that comes from being human, and also the responsibility that comes from an awareness of one's humanity. It's where I learned that to be fully alive, one must be both firmly rooted in what one holds true and yet also open and engaged with the world, allowing and expecting growth to happen in unexpected ways and and shapes and places.

A decade after my graduation, I'm proud of my University--proud of its Jesuit mission, and that it continues to develop students who see the importance of living as "men and women for others." I'm proud of its focus on social justice and its activist spirit, and of the faith at its core, and that walking around campus last week made it clear to me that it's full of the same passionate vibrance and energy and awareness of and commitment to the world around it that I remember being constantly inspired by. I'm proud of the fact that it continues to attract smart, determined young people from all over the world who are determined to "Be the Difference." I'm proud of the ways it's committed to maintaining on-going links to, and conversation with, its family of alumni. And I'm proud that I can see almost an infinite number of connections between the person I am today and the education--intellectual, personal, spiritual--that I received at Marquette.

But! Poetry Friday, right? (I promise I'm getting there!) One of the first things I received as a freshman at Marquette--it was in my dorm room when I arrived, as in every other freshman's--was a gift, on behalf of our University Ministry office: a small book filled with reflections, prayers, quotes, and writings. One of them struck me deeply the very first time I read it, and in fact, it's been a guiding philosophy of my life ever since. It's not quite a poem, but to me, at least, it stirs the soul and provokes a certain sense of truth in the same way that a good poem does. And it's meant something entirely different yet equally important in each stage of my life thus far: as student, as youth minister, as children's book marketer, and now, as children's book editor. And if you read it with a writer's eyes, I expect it has something to say to writers, too.

Letter to a Young Activist
by Thomas Merton

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on ...you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything....


(If so inclined, you can read the full letter here.)

"Every waking hour I'm / reading my submissions"

From the Department of Randomly Weird Things That Sometimes Pop Into My Head For No Good Reason: a remix.

Agents, writers, this earworm's dedicated to you (with love, I promise)!

"That's me in the corner;

That's me on the subway, I'm

Here with my e-reader--

Trying to Keep. Up. With you.

And I don't know if I can do it.

Oh no, I've read too much;

I haven't read enough...."

(If you miss me, I promise I'm not dead. Just busy reading-reading-reading. And editing. And y'know, reading some more.)

*Alternate, amusingly-publishing-appropriate (& entirely unadulturated) lyrics from the original that were runners-up possibilities for the title of this post: "That was just a dream / Just a dream, just a dream," "What if all these fantasies / Come flailing around," and "Consider this."

P.S. Just for kicks, how about a live version?

And away we go!

I'm off to one of my many adopted hometowns tomorrow, this time to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is home to my wonderful alma mater Marquette University! And the glory that is Kopp's Frozen Custard! And wonderfully friendly people who call their water fountains "bubblers" and their ATMs "Tyme Machines." Best of all, I'm off to meet the good folks of SCBWI-Wisconsin, who have graciously invited me to speak at their Spring Luncheon. I'll be talking about why editors fall in love--and keeping my fingers crossed, too, that one of the writers in attendance just might have a story in the works that will make THIS particular editor fall in love. Cross your fingers for me!

P.S. Please don't break the internet or Twitter or let Facebook change their design again while I'm gone this time, okay, kids?

Yes. This.

"But what I really crave in a good bookshop...is a touch of irregularity, a chaos that is partly disorder and partly the inner order of the proprietor's mind....The reason we still go to good bookshops is also the reason we have a few friends over for dinner instead of inviting everyone. We like the selectness of the company, the likelihood of sharing common interests, the chance to make discoveries guided by minds and sensibilities we already trust."--Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Book Lover's London," Travel + Leisure Magazine.


Do you know a great bookstore that fits the description above? Tell us about it in the comments!

Poetry Friday: "April is the cruellest month..."

True confession time: In high school, I had a temporary obsession with T.S. Eliot, due mostly to the fact that my friend Daniel, who was the most Serious Writer Guy I knew, said that Eliot was the best poet, period. I had unfailing faith in Daniel's literary wisdom (after all, he was a senior, and I was a lowly underclassman), but what I didn't confess to him was that Eliot's poems didn't actually make sense to me at all. Instead, I spent a few months prominently toting a volume of Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Collected Poems around in public and jotting things in its margins in hopes that people would recognize that I was, clearly, a Serious Writer Girl, too.

Ah, high school.

The discovery, a few years later, that entire university courses were devoted to studying "The Waste Land" made me feel retroactively better about all the parts of it that I just "didn't get" at age fifteen. Those early repeated attempts to read and understand "The Waste Land" left the first handful of lines etched in my brain, though, with an odd sort of fondness attached to them. Perhaps that's why I get such a delight out of this video, which accompanies a recording of Eliot himself reading the opening section. Take a moment and listen, even if you have no erstwhile literary crush on Eliot in your own past--there's something eternally magnificent about hearing an author read his/her own words aloud.

The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Read more of "The Wasteland" here. And happy April--don't forget that it's Poetry Month!

Why I Work in Publishing (in brief)

There are a million reasons I could tell you. Catch me in person some time, in fact, and you'll be hard-pressed to avoid me telling you some of them, probably whether you've even asked or not! ;) In fact, maybe "Why I Work in Publishing" should become a regular feature on this blog.

But for now, as the simplest answer to that question, I'll point to this. Reviews like this--heartfelt responses from readers like this--are why I work in publishing, and specifically, why I work in children's/YA books. Because I get to help make books that carry this much power, for readers of every age. Because stories become a part of us and stay with us forever and shape the person we become in the world and the mark we choose to leave on it. Because the things a writer has to say, and the words s/he crafts, can become black marks on white paper (or the technological equivalent thereof) that just might make someone else want to become a better person. And I get to help make all of that happen.

Does there need to be any other reason?

Because sometimes a photo really is worth a thousand words

...even if the photo is blurry because of pouring rain and bad angles and late night darkness.

(Explanation: this is how the Circus Elephants arrive in NYC and travel from the Midtown Tunnel into Madison Square Garden every year. They march down 34th Street at midnight. More (and better!) photos here.



P.S. I heart NY.

Of zombie cows, rainbows, and a glorious thing called "vacation"

It's taken me longer than expected to put this post up, sorry. (Someone really needs to do something about whatever scientific fluke causes three days out of the office to somehow equal, like, seventeen days' worth of work before you begin to feel caught up again.) In any case, and without further ado, I give you a brief highlights reel from VACATION:


Mountains = not in NYC anymore



Nope, not Brooklyn, either. Not even close.


A million gorgeous miles away, in fact!
(That's Abiquiu Lake)


Travel Companion and I had a fairly singular goal: to escape the dreary February-ness of our respective locales, run away to somewhere entirely different, and be inspired for a few days. Abiquiu, New Mexico--famous for inspiring much of Georgia O'Keefe's artwork--was the exactly what we'd hoped for. (Abiquiu is about 50 miles north of Santa Fe, and about 60 miles west of Taos, which means that both learningtoread and christinetripp had awfully close guesses. I'll be emailing both of you about your promised prizes, and thanks to all who played along and suggested a locale.)


Want to see some more gorgeousness?



They called it a casita, but this "little house" was approx 200 (okay, 5, but still!) times bigger than my apartment!


Mountains in the front yard!! They delighted me all
over again every morning when I woke up & rediscovered them.


Oh this? Just the side view from the casita--starring
the bee-yoo-tiful (if still half-frozen) Chames River.

It's impossible, really, to do a place like this justice in words, so I'll just sum it up in with a Nature count (hey, when you live in a city of concrete like NYC, Nature becomes a delightful novelty) and let you imagine the rest:


Nature Count:
Prairie dogs seen scurrying into holes: 2 (so cute!!)
Stars in the night sky: Approximately a bazillion, all of them gorgeous.
Hours spent staring at stars: Many. (What is it about stars that moves us so deeply?)
Shooting stars seen: 1, and it was oh-so-perfect.
Coyotes heard howling from the mountains at night: Loved 'em, but decided it was better not to know how many there were out there, thanks.
"Cow crossing" warning signs seen: 1 approximately every 1/2 mile, for many, many miles.



Actual cows seen, crossing or otherwise: None. Nada. Zip.
Zombie cow theories resulting from mismatch: 1, fairly half-baked.
Spontaneous side trip that may or may not have been to a local brewery (but that had nothing to do with zombie cow theories, I swear!): 1.
Picture-perfect vacation ending (i.e. rainbow over the mountains as my flight departed): 1. Ain't it gorgeous?




Inner Dixie Chick satisfied: 1, most definitely.
(You know you want to sing along!)





Where should I go the next time I run away from NYC? All suggestions happily accepted in the comments!