Ambassador Paterson

I was so pleased to hear that Katherine Paterson has been named the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature. It was hard to imagine who could follow comic genius Jon Scieszka in this role, but Ms. Paterson's own brand of genius is certainly up to the task.

I didn't read Bridge to Terabithia until I was in college. A friend of mine gave it to me to read over break (I don't think it was in our library because of that whole banned books thing). I sat in my childhood room and cried my eyes out, partially because of Leslie, and partially because I had missed out on this book as a kid. It's a beautiful story about friendship, imagination, joy, belonging, and grief.

We need stories like this in the world. Of course I think kids need to laugh. A lot. But they also need books that deal with and help them process all the other things that go on in life. Thank goodness for the Jon Scieszkas of the world and for the Katherine Patersons. We need them both desperately.

There's a great interview with Ms. Paterson at the School Library Journal. Here's a taste:

As children’s book ambassador, what’s your most important role?
In some ways, I feel like what they’re asking me to do is what I’ve been doing for 30 years. It just has another name. Because what I’m trying to do is to encourage people to take books seriously and to take children seriously—their spiritual and intellectual needs, as well as their bodily needs. It’s more of a platform for the things I’ve been saying for a long time.

What was your reaction when you found out that you’d been selected?
It was a big thrill. I felt like a kid, really. And then I thought, Gee, I’m 77 years old, and I’ll be 79 before I finish, since it’s a two-year term. But I still have a good bit of zip for an old lady, and I hope that they know what they were doing.

Has Jon Scieszka given you any advice about your new job?
Well, you know Jon. [Laughing.] He’s told me about the cape and the helicopter and the jet-pack that doesn’t work. But his chief advice was just to enjoy myself—and I will. I love people, and I love to talk about what I care about. So I can’t imagine the job as a chore.

For the rest of the interview, please visit SLJ.

Grab Bag Friday: Paula Poundstone

I spent much of my exciting Friday evening in Frequent-Flyer-Miles Limbo, doing my best to get out to Idaho for my younger sister's thesis defense (woohoo Anna!) To treat myself after hours of sitting on hold and searching flights, I've been watching some videos from my favorite Wait Wait Don't Tell Me panelist...the hilarious Paula Poundstone.

Here's a good old bit about shoulder pads and airplane views that made me chuckle:

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Up Above My Head (Music in the Air)

My new friend Helmut Sporgersi posted this video on Facebook and it's one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe has always blown my mind. She melded secular jazz and blues with gospel in a way that just wasn't being done at the time. There's a new biography out by Gayle Wald called Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer SisterRosetta Tharpe, which I have to check out. In the meantime, I'll enjoy watching her shred that Les Paul!

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Up Above My Head

J.D. Salinger: With Love and Squalor

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

  

I went to high school at the kind of tiny, rural, public school that had two English classes available to seniors: "Business English" and "College-bound English." In "College Bound English," we read westerns by Louis L'Amour, mysteries by Agatha Christie, and what my teacher called "page-turners" by Robert Ludlum. We read a cartoon version of Hamlet where mouse incarnations of Hamlet and Ophelia went about in Shakespearean garb and talked in modern American slang.

So my extracurricular reading tended to be a little bit different than you might expect from your typical teenager. Starting in about eighth grade, I began to take breaks from my school work to read classics like The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf. Strange, but true.

I still remember the summer I picked up The Catcher in the Rye. I devoured it. I'd never seen anything like it. The snarky, first-person narration. The stylistic wit. The dialogue! As with so many teenagers, Holden Caufield's open disdain for the inanities of society hit a nerve deep in my 16-year-old soul. I headed back to the library and checked out Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, and Nine Stories. When I'd finished them all, I read The Catcher in the Rye again.

I enjoyed Dave Eggers memorial piece on Salinger because it echoes so many of the thoughts that went through my head last week. What has he left behind? Scraps of dialogue? Lines scribbled willy-nilly on paper napkins? Fully developed novels just waiting to be read (gasp)? Even if the answer is absolutely nothing, I can't complain. I will always feel grateful for the Glass family and that liar, Holden. They opened up new worlds to me...literary and otherwise.

I do hope, in the end, J. D. Salinger came to feel he had achieved some kind of perfection, on his own terms, not anyone else's. He certainly achieved it on mine.

Grab Bag Friday: The Good Old Days

This is a few weeks old, but I got a big kick out of John Oliver's bit on The Daily Show about "the good old days." I hope it makes you laugh, too!

And if I may, I'll preface with a quote from the President's State of the Union Address:

It’s tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable – that America was always destined to succeed. But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt. When the market crashed on Black Tuesday and civil rights marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday, the future was anything but certain. These were times that tested the courage of our convictions, and the strength of our union. And despite all our divisions and disagreements; our hesitations and our fears; America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, and one people.
Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history’s call.

John Oliver: Even Better Than The Real Thing

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Even Better Than the Real Thing
www.thedailyshow.com
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Ray Charles: Georgia On My Mind

I'm so glad to have my friend Matthew visiting from all the way across the country this week. There's nothing quite like old friends who know all your back-story and still stick around to see where the plot might take you next.

In honor of all the time we used to spend swapping Ray Charles tunes, here's an excellent live performance of one of his classics, written by one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Hoagy Carmichael. Believe it or not, Carmichael was working for an investment company, trying to write songs on the side when he composed this gorgeous piece.

Ray Charles: Georgia On My Mind

Newbery Awards!

Last week the ALSC announced the big kidlit awards for 2009. I was so excited to hear that two of my favorite books of the year received Newbery Awards!

Rebecca Stead's mysterious novel When You Reach Me won the Newbery title and Phillip Hoose's enlightening book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice won a Newbery Honor. (If you missed my previous posts raving about the titles, you can find them here and here.)

If you haven't picked these books up yet, I guess now you have another reason. Hooray!

To see the rest of the winners, as well as the winners of the Caldecott, Corretta Scott King, and Printz Awards, please visit the ALSC.

Grab Bag Friday: Haiti Relief

If you haven't pitched in to help with the devastation in Haiti, please do consider donating to one of the many humanitarian groups that are trying to give aid. So many people have lost their homes and families and so many have been wounded that recovery will take a very long time. Even a small donation can make a big difference down the line.

If you don't know where to start, here are just a few organizations to consider:

• UNICEF
  
• Doctors Without Borders
• Partners in Health
• MADRE 

If you want to make a donation that seems more concrete, here's a link my friend Kate sent me:
The Goods: Gifts That Give Back

Over at UNICEF, you can listen to a podcast of a young survivor telling his story.

Thank you for helping out. If we all pitch in, we really CAN make a difference.

Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star

Last night, one of my piano students chose "Swinging on a Star" as her "challenge" piece for the month. I've always loved this song. I remember singing it in the car with my siblings, cracking up at the depictions of the animals. My brother and I would always point to each other meaningfully when we got to the lines, "All the monkeys are in the zoo, every day you see quite a few."

"Swinging on a Star" was written for the movie Going My Way (which I highly recommend) with Bing Crosby. According to wikepedia, the song came about over dinner:

Song writer Jimmy Van Heusen was at Crosby’s house one evening for dinner, and to discuss a song for the movie Going My Way. During the meal one of the children began complaining about how he didn’t want to go to school the next day. The singer turned to his son and said to him, “If you don’t go to school, you might grow up to be a mule. Do you wanna do that?”

 Here's Bing singing "Swinging on a Star" with the boys from the movie:

Annie Dillard: The Writing Life

Well, it's a new year, and I'm getting ready to send out my manuscript (a novel for kids) to literary agents. I always need a little encouragement and inspiration for these things, so in preparation, I've been reading Annie Dillard's beautiful musings in The Writing Life. I love this passage about why we read:

"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking."

This is the amazing thing about books. In 2009, I was swept away and shaken awake by The Hunger Games, The Book Thief, Olive Kitteridge, Robert Hayden's poetry, and Claudette Colvin. I can't wait to be inspired in 2010. What have you read that has caught you by surprise and pressed upon your mind the majesty and power of the deepest mysteries?

Merry Christmas!

"Found in the Snow" photo by Just B

Merry Christmas, everyone! I'll be away from my blog until mid-January, but in the meantime, have a wonderful holiday, stay warm, and give lots of hugs to your family and friends. See you in the new year!

Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games

Every so often a book comes along that I simply can't put down. If I *must* go to work or leave the house, half of my brain is still stuck inside the book, reliving scenes, thinking about the characters, wondering what will happen next. It probably should be illegal for me to drive when I'm in the middle of a book like this.

Kevin and I read The Hunger Games last week and were both so absorbed that we let the dishes, bills, and laundry pile high while we attended to the more important business of finding out how Katniss and Peeta were going to escape almost certain death at the hands of the Capitol.

I have to say, on the surface, the premise of this story sounded ridiculous. It took some convincing to get Kevin to read a book set in a futuristic, post-apocolypitc world where each year, 24 children are thrown into a televised Colosseum style fight-to-the-death (yes, actual death) as a form of entertainment and fascist control. Seriously. But somehow, Suzanne Collins manages to craft this story so well that it grips you within the first 20 pages and never lets you go.

I won't say any more because I don't want to ruin the story, but I will give you a warning. The ending of The Hunger Games is such a cliff-hanger that you will be forced to go out and buy the the sequel (Catching Fire) in hardcover whether you want to or not. Kevin and I broke down and bought it this weekend. Which means that I'm only writing this with half a brain right now. The other half is busy worrying about a certain huge decision Katniss has to make that could seriously endanger the life of her sweet little sister Prim! In fact, I have to go now...

p.s. If you want a more thorough and detailed review, you'll get a great one at Fuse #8 where she (as usual) gets down to the heart of the matter and says everything just right. I especially enjoyed the paragraph where she describes the way "this book throws a big fat wrench into the boy book/girl book view of child/teen literature."

Grab Bag Friday: The National Holiday Project

Yesterday I was talking to one of my student assistants who is, as you can imagine, *very* excited for winter break. She was so excited to go home and spend the holidays with her sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews...she couldn't wait to surround herself with family.

As I get ready to get my own home all cozy for my family visitors, I can't help but think of all the people who *don't* have family during the holidays. For instance: did you know that 50% of nursing home residents have no close relatives?

The National Holiday Project is dedicated to organizing holiday visits to nursing homes across the country. If you'd like to visit a nursing home this season, you can go to their site and find a contact for your area. If your area isn't listed, you can call a local home to set up a visit. To volunteer at a nursing home year-round, contact your local facility, or sign up for the Friendly Visitors program to be matched with a conveniently located residence.

For other tips on how to make a difference in your area during the holidays, please visit my previous posts: The Local Level.

Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye: Sisters

In preparation for the holidays, here is the most hilarious scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, White Christmas. Just looking at Danny Kaye in that get-up is funny enough, but his facial expressions kill me. What a genius.

I can't wait to see all my sisters (& brother!) over the next month! Hooray!

Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye: Sisters