Bartography

Oct 12

A Texas Lone Star nomination and two new reviews for Can I See Your I.D.?

The full list of nominations for the Texas Library Association’s 2012 Lone Star award for YA books is out now, and I’m thrilled that Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities is on it. Anyone looking for recommendations for new books for young adult titles now has a terrific place to start.

Can I See Your I.D.? has also been nominated for the Cybils, and with that nomination have come a pair of thoughtful new reviews of the book. From Not Just for Kids:

One thing Barton does particularly well is to throw the reader directly into the deception. Along with the use of the second person narration, each fraud is already in full swing when the reader joins. … While the individuals involved might have had plenty of time to plan how they were going to carry out their impersonations, the reader does not and needs to be ready to run with the situation from the get-go. Barton does take a small step back to provide some background information, but then it is back to the business at hand, which is basically, ‘will you pull this off?’

And from Wrapped in Foil:

Starting with a young man who manages to trick the New York City Transit Authority into letting him operate the A Train, to a high school dropout who serves as a navy surgeon, to a woman who passes herself off as a male soldier during the Civil War, it is truly amazing what these imposters are able to carry out. In fact, reading the book might entice someone to give it a try if Barton hadn’t included so much information about how stressful it was to pretend to be someone else. In many of the examples the deception was not voluntary, but a response to a desperate situation.

Oct 2

Go forth and nominate!

The time has arrived to nominate your favorite children’s and YA books from the past year for the 2011 Cybils. You’ve got only until October 15, so I’ll keep this brief.

(Actually, I’m done. So go nominate something already!)

Sep 25

In which I identify a bunch of YA titles about identity…

I spent this past Friday in San Antonio at the regional Library Resource Roundup. Highlights of my day included:

Meeting Adam Gidwitz, the Brooklyn-based author of A Tale Dark & Grimm. Adam not only gave the keynote address — he also gave me a lot to think about (starting with, “How can I make the audience laugh as much as he did?”) as I prepare for my own keynote at a similar event in Waco in November. During an informal Q&A (as opposed, I guess, to the rigidly formal Q&A sessions the librarians have come to expect from children’s authors), Adam discussed the eye-opening usefulness of a certain screenwriting guide. Well, that same guide — Save the Cat! — happens to be the very one I’ve been using to help me out in rewrites of my current manuscript, so I knew he was good people, even if he did set an unwelcomely high bar for keynotes.

Hearing Viki Ash of the San Antonio Public Library — and chair of the 2012 Newbery Award Selection Committee — explain the process for choosing the medal winner. Understanding better how it all works makes me all the more hopeful that I can be in the room in Dallas this coming January when the latest crop of ALA winners is announced.

Debuting my new presentation, “Can You See Their I.D.’s?”

When we’re teenagers, we’re all trying on new identities, we’re all on an adventure, and we’re all at least a little bit off. Author Chris Barton brings those three elements together in his YA nonfiction thriller Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities. In this presentation, he’ll discuss how books — from the comic to the tragic — with characters in the throes of identity crises can better equip teen readers to deal with their own.

As part of the presentation, I provided a couple of reading lists. Why, here they are now:

A Pretty Thorough List of Books for Young Readers Written in Second Person
Barton, Chris – Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities
Benoit, Charles – You
Jenkins, A. M. – Damage
Lynch, Chris – Freewill
Montgomery, R. A. – Choose Your Own Adventure 1: The Abominable Snowman

A Highly Selective List of Books for Young Readers With Identity As a Major Theme
Barton, Chris – Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities
Bjorkman, Laura – My Invented Life
Cannon, A. E. – The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love
Cottrell Boyce, Frank – Cosmic
Fletcher, Ralph – Also Known As Rowan Pohi
Larbalestier, Justine – Liar
Perkins, Mitali – First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover
Sonnenblick, Jordan – Zen and the Art of Faking It
Tashjian, Janet – The Gospel According to Larry
Ziegler, Jennifer – How Not to Be Popular

Which titles would you add to either list?

Sep 10

I hate to use the word “done,” but…

For now, at least, I’m done with my part for The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, my forthcoming picture book biography (published by Eerdmans) of a guy who in 10 years went from teenage field slave to U.S. congressman during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

This one has already had a long history. I completed my first draft in early 2007, sold it to Eerdmans two years ago this month, and made a research trip to Mississippi and Louisiana this past spring, along the way visiting the plantation where he was born, the mansion where he was a house slave, and the old Mississippi capitol building, where he began his political rise in his early 20s and soon thereafter served as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives.

My first immersion in my research materials occurred close to five years ago, and in conjunction with revisions and my research trip, I’ve gone back in up to my neck over the past year. But as of late July, with the completion of a revision, with the addition of a brief author’s note and “for additional information” section, the manuscript is done (or “done,” as I’ve come to accept through my experiences with my first three books), awaiting the illustrator’s half of the magic. So, that was that, right?

Not quite. I love researching, but after two deep dives for this project, I’m not interested in doing a third when The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch is published. Reconstruction itself is a major presence in this story, and I don’t want to have to reacquaint myself with the details — which are as complex as they are essential to an understanding of U.S. history — in order to get the facts just right when producing essays, articles, blog posts, etc. in support of the book’s publication.

So, I’ve written them now. I’ve produced a detailed bibliography that will most likely be published only online. I’ve put together a five-page timeline tying together key events in John Roy Lynch’s early life with the milestones of Reconstruction in Mississippi and on the national stage. And I’ve written a few long pieces about the subject and my writing of the book, all ready to be removed from cold storage in a couple of years, give or take.

My final act has been to go over my research contacts for this project to make sure that everyone has been properly thanked (well, as properly as is possible before there are copies of the finished book to send out) for their contribution to my efforts to tell Lynch’s story. Sure enough, I found a couple of key people that I had overlooked, so I’ve sent thank-you notes to them. My momma raised me right.

Now, I wait for the illustrations. And move on to the next thing.

Sep 8

2011 Texas Book Festival Q&A

Q: Did they announce the lineup today for the 2011 Texas Book Festival, to be held in Austin on October 22-23?

A: Yes

Q: Am I on it?

A: Yes

Q: Am I at least as excited about the other authors who will be appearing as I am about my own participation?

A: Well, let’s see — the lineup includes Jay Asher, Mac Barnett, Libba Bray, Doreen Cronin… And those are just some of the children’s and YA authors up through “C” in last-name alphabetical order, at which point I start to get the vapors. So, you tell me.

Q: How might one go about seeing the entire list?

A: By clicking here.

Q: What if someone wanted to see a Marc Burckhardt-designed Texas Book Festival poster with a flaming horse?

A: In that case, they would click here.

Q: Could I have been any more delighted by the writeup you received, including a description of Can I See Your I.D.? that says it “acutely captures the breathless suspense of the long-con,” praises “the fun of I.D.‘s unconventional storytelling,” and concludes that “After a while, you can’t imagine telling the tales of deception and white-knuckled suspense any other way”?

A: Nope.

Aug 15

A peek inside the latest edition of Bartography Express

From my occasional email newsletter, Bartography Express, which got sent out last night (and is available online for the next few weeks):

“Amid the work I did this summer on the sequel to Shark Vs. Train and my next picture book biography, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, I got to take part in three terrific events that fueled me and fired me and reminded me of just how lucky I am to get to spend so much time with other writers and readers and lovers of books.”

Click here to read the rest, and to become a subscriber (and get in the running for a signed-book giveaway), look for the “Join” button at the bottom right.

Aug 3

Can we get at least a Train Day, too?

Jul 24

So, you think you’ve got an impressive children’s book collection?

At the Southampton Children’s Literature Conference earlier this month, librarian/storyteller Connie Rockman and historian Leonard Marcus schooled me on the world of children’s literature archives, museums, and other historical collections.

I knew about some of these already — I got to visit the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at Southern Miss this past spring — but others were completely new to me.

Here are the ones we discussed. Are there any you would add to the list?

Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
The University of Florida
Gainesville, FL
“[C]ontains more than 100,000 volumes published in Great Britain and the United States from the mid-1600s through 2007. Its holdings of more than 800 early American imprints is the second largest such collection in the United States. The product of Ruth Baldwin’s 40-year collection development efforts, this vast assemblage of literature printed primarily for children offers an equally vast territory of topics for the researcher to explore: education and upbringing, family and gender roles, civic values, racial, religious, and moral attitudes, literary style and format, and the arts of illustration and book design.”

de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
“The de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection is one of North America’s leading research centers in the field of children’s literature. Although the Collection has many strengths, the main focus is on American and British children’s literature, historical and contemporary. Founded in 1966 by Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond, the Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations of more than 1200 authors and illustrators, as well as 120,000+ published books dating from 1530 to the present.”

International Youth Library
Munich, Germany
“The International Youth Library is the largest library for international children’s and youth literature in the world. Ever since it was opened in 1949 by Jella Lepman, it has been continuously expanded to an internationally recognised centre for the world’s children’s and youth literature.”

Kerlan Collection
The University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
“[O]ne of the world’s great children’s literature research collections. The Collection includes books, original manuscripts and illustrations, and many related materials. The materials in the Collection are studied by teachers, librarians, students, authors, illustrators, translators, and critics who come from Minnesota and other states as well as from many foreign countries.”

Mazza Museum
The University of Findlay
Findlay, OH
“The Mazza Museum: International Art from Picture Books is the world’s largest museum devoted to literacy and the art of children’s picture books. Founded in 1982, the Mazza Museum now contains nearly 5,000 original artworks.”

Weston Woods Institute
Weston, CT
“As of this writing, after visiting 210 museums for this “quest,” the unknown and not-even-really-a-real-museum-yet Weston Woods hidden away deep within the Weston woods (seriously) is exactly that: My personal favorite museum in Connecticut.”

Jul 17

How to write like a finely tuned concert piano

If you read just one book on writing (or six, for that matter) this year, you might as well have a terrific time doing it. Having just finished reading aloud James Howe’s entire Tales from the House of Bunnicula series (including the riotous Harry Potter parody Howie Monroe and the Doghouse of Doom, about the writing of a Harry Potter parody — by a dachsund), I can’t imagine a more fun perspective on the trials and tribulations of writing in general and of writing books for young readers in particular.

Outlining? Check. Collaborating with another author? Check. Revising, angling for the Newbony award, and overusing certain similes (see above)? Check, check, check, and then some. The one drawback is that these books seem so effortlessly funny and faux-slapdash that you’ll might wonder whether anyone really needs to do much thinking about how to write, or else be intimidated by the standard they set, or both.

Oh, well. As Howie put it in The ~~Amazing~~ Odorous Adventures of Stinky Dog, “Life is so unfair. Especially when you’re a dog. And a writer.”

Jul 10

Getting back

At this particular moment, I’m on a bus leading me away from the Southampton Children’s Literature Conference, toward the flight that will take me back home to Texas. But I’m also, at this very moment, trying to figure out just how soon I might make it back up to Long Island for another experience like the one I just had.

Folks, I am fired up. I have had more new story ideas in the past few days than I’ve had in I don’t know how long. I’ve read aloud unpublished manuscripts of mine in front of rooms full of strangers (well, they used to be strangers) for the first time in, I think, eight years. Since Wednesday afternoon, I’ve had the enormous pleasure of working with and learning from a host of creative, enthusiastic, and quite brave writers and authors ranging from complete beginners to some of the most accomplished talents our industry has to offer.

And to think that I enjoyed all these benefits and opportunities at a conference where I was not a paying student but rather a member of the faculty — well, it really feels like I’ve just gotten away with something.

Did I mention the cross-pollination? The readings of hilarious and bold and not-at-all-for-children new plays? The on-stage conversations I witnessed with director Chris Weitz (About a Boy, A Better Life) and with Jules Feiffer, a one-man graduate course in creative cross-pollination? The fact that I twice sang — OK, warbled — in public, one of those times in the presence of a somewhat well-known woman who knows a thing or two about The Sound of Music?

I’m gushing. A bit. I’m gushing a bit. That wasn’t what I set out to do here. I set out to thank Emma Walton Hamilton for inviting me to join the Southampton faculty, and to thank the other children’s lit faculty members (Andrea Davis Pinkney, Tor Seidler, Patricia McCormick, Peter H. Reynolds) and guests (Leonard Marcus, Susan Raab, Kate and Jim McMullan, Connie Rockman and Kate Feiffer), and the playwriting and screenwriting and digital media instructors, and my picture book students and everyone else’s for giving so much of themselves.

I was not entirely sure I had it in me to teach a three-day class. Honestly, the prospect scared me a bit, but it was that little surge of fear that clued me in to the fact that I really had to do this. And even before I arrived in New York, the mere act of preparing for my class had taught me so much I didn’t know (or had forgotten that I knew) about writing picture books that those hours I’d invested were already more than made up for, many times over.

(And here I must thank the many authors whose books and, in most cases, conversations with me about their books helped me zero in on what I wanted my students to know. The work and insights from these immensely creative folks helped fuel many conversations about — and, I hope, much inspiration for — writing both playful fiction and seriously researched nonfiction picture books. The complete reading list for my class is below.)

What does all this add up to? I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally, I’ve never been more excited about getting back to writing, and about carving out time in my life to make that writing a priority. And it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been willing to tolerate at least a little fear of what I was getting myself into when I told Emma, “Yes.”

For a long while, I’ve been reluctant to look for inspiration in the same place twice, lest a once-thrilling experience become too comfortable and easy to take for granted and result in diminishing returns. With the Southampton Children’s Literature Conference, I do believe I’m willing to risk making an exception.

***

Reading list for “You Don’t Have to Choose: Balancing Playful Picture Books with Rigorous Research”

Bubba and Beau, Best Friends by Kathi Appelt; illustrated by Arthur Howard
Miss Lady Bird’s Wildflowers: How a First Lady Changed America by Kathi Appelt; illustrated by Joy Fisher Hein

The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School by Laurie Halse Anderson; illustrated by Ard Hoyt
Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson; illustrated by Matt Faulkner

Handel, Who Knew What He Liked by M.T. Anderson; illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
Me, All Alone, at the End of the World by M.T. Anderson; illustrated by Kevin Hawkes

Audubon: Painter of Birds in the Wild Frontier by Jennifer Armstrong; illustrated by Jos. A. Smith
Once Upon a Banana by Jennifer Armstrong; illustrated by David Small

Not So Tall for Six by Dianna Hutts Aston; illustrated by Frank W. Dormer
A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston; illustrated by Sylvia Long

Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life by Molly Bang & Penny Chisholm
Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang

The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer’s Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors by Chris Barton; illustrated by Tony Persiani
Shark Vs. Train by Chris Barton; illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld

Ice Cream by Elisha Cooper
Magic Thinks Big by Elisha Cooper

A Big Cheese for the White House: The True Tale of a Tremendous Cheddar by Candace Fleming; illustrated by S.D. Schindler
Seven Hungry Babies by Candace Fleming; illustrated by Eugene Yelchin

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca
The Racecar Alphabet by Brian Floca

A Book by Mordicai Gerstein
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein

Eggs by Marilyn Singer; illustrated by Emma Stevenson
Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer; illustrated by Josee Massee

Mozart, The Wonder Child: A Puppet Play in Three Acts by Diane Stanley
Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter by Diane Stanley

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten? by Audrey Vernick; illustrated by Daniel Jennewein
She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story by Audrey Vernick; illustrated by Don Tate

Boogie Knights by Lisa Wheeler; illustrated by Mark Siegel
Mammoths on the Move by Lisa Wheeler; illustrated by Kurt Cyrus

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino
Lawn to Lawn by Dan Yaccarino

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Mark Teague
The Perfect Wizard: Hans Christian Andersen by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Dennis Nolan