Creative Mornings: Childhood as Source Material

A few weeks ago, I did a Creative Mornings talk at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum on the topic of "Childhood." This was my attempt to connect children's literature to a broader audience--specifically talking about what it means to work in an industry where the audience (children) are separate from the buyer (grownups). Of special interest might be the anecdote I tell about Tom Angleberger at minute 15 ... an event he has since claimed didn't occur (it totally did). Also, of course, I finish things off with a yo-yo show! 

Enjoy: 

Creative Mornings is a fantastic organization. Find out about the next event in your own city and check it out! 

Flaubert Quote #1

"It is so easy to chatter about the Beautiful. But it takes more genius to say, in proper style, “close the door,” or “he wanted to sleep,” than to give all the literature courses in the world." 

- Gustave Flaubert, Letters 

Hear Me on Public Radio!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of sitting down with Paul Guggenheimer of Essential Pittsburgh to talk about Children's Books. I'm a big fan of public radio, so this was a huge thrill. An excerpt from the transcript: 

Dazzled by the bizarre and eccentric characters of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, children’s author Jonathan Auxier has always been fascinated by peculiar storytelling.

Auxier loves his job, but admits it can sometimes be difficult to write for children of different ages because their maturity and ability are so varied.

He says reading aloud is one of the best ways to connect with a child. Not only is the time great for bonding, but reading a more complicated story to a child can expose them to a reading and thought level above their norm. He tries to juxtapose fun plot lines and characters with interesting rhetorical styles in his own work.

“So in the instance of Peter Nimble, the book is actually fairly dense on a word level, it’s got very complicated language structure. I was working out of a tradition of 18th century neoclassical writers…but the story itself has a very childlike sensibility and I love mixing that.”

You can hear the whole interview (12 min) on the WESA website. 

THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

A few weeks ago, I was invited to write a guest post on the website Books4YourKids about my favorite book of 2013: Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli. 

Many might disagree, but I would argue that this is perhaps one of the most important children's books written in my lifetime. Here's an excerpt in which I discuss how this book interacts with Peter Pan: 

It has been observed that I am somewhat obsessive about JM Barrie’s Peter Pan. More than once, people have asked me what I think about Pan adaptations and sequels written by contemporary writers. My usual response is that I think those writers could better use their time creating their own characters to discuss similar themes. Spinelli has done just that. The fugitive shadow of Peter Pan skitters all throughout Hokey Pokey without ever once needing to be mentioned. To every person hoping to write an “updated” version of Oz, or Wonderland, or Grimm’s Fairy Tales, I would direct them to this book. 

The best response to this post came from Tom Angleberger who objected that he didn't actually think this was a book for kids (Betsy Bird wondered as much in her excellent review ... which is what prompted me to pick up the book in the first place). It's an interesting question, and one that I suspect I'll be chewing on for a long time. 

You can click here to read my full review ... better yet, just read Spinelli's book. Because it's AWESOME. 

First Day of Advent ...

Having no star or angel, Max decided to crown himself King of the Christmas Tree!

Journal Monster!

Here's a monster from my journal...

Annie Dillard Quote #1

"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or drowning: in medias res..."-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Good times at AASL!

I just spent a week at the AASL National Conference -- a giant assembly of school librarians and authors.  I had a fantastic time catching up with old friends and meeting a ton of new people.  I was there to moderate a panel about Boys Reading Fantasy with Neal Shusterman, Tony Abbott, Adam Gidwitz, William Alexander, and Jon Scieszka! Here are pictures of them all dressed up as sci-fi/fantasy tropes: 

 

 

 

It was a good time -- it mainly consisted of the panelists making fun of me.  As it turns out, these five authors had incredible insights into the creation and reading of fantasy.  The highlight may have been when Gidwitz paraphrased some seriously brilliant Chesterton:

“Fairytales don't tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed.”

 

More pictures below. Huge thanks to MaryAnn Scheuer and Rocco Staino for putting things together! Pics below:

 

 Up next -- I'll be signing books at NCTE in Boston! Hope to see you there!

Beware . . . THE NIGHT GARDENER!

The time has finally come to unveil the cover of my new book! The Night Gardener will be hitting stores in Spring '14. The cover was drawn by the brilliant Patrick Arrasmith and designed by Chad Beckerman:

From the jacket flap:

This much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Auxier’s exceptional debut, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, is a Victorian ghost story with shades of Washington Irving and Henry James. More than just a spooky tale, it’s also a moral fable about human greed and the power of storytelling.

The Night Gardener follows two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house. But the house and its family are not quite what they seem. Soon the children are confronted by a mysterious spectre and an ancient curse that threatens their very lives. With Auxier’s exquisite command of language, The Night Gardener is a mesmerizing read and a classic in the making.

If you are a reviewer, bookseller, or librarian who wants an ARC, please contact me: jonathan@thescop.com

Peter Nimble and the Sequoyah Book Awards!

Just a quick announcement to say that Peter Nimble was shortlisted for the 2014 Sequoyah Book Award--confirming my long-held suspicion that Oklahoma readers have great taste!

For the next few months, I'll be offering FREE SKYPE VISITS to schools in Oklahoma. If you're a teacher in OK and want me to Skype with your students, please send me a message. 

Kurt Bonnegut Quote #1

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Mother's Day

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd re-post an older piece about how my mum tricked me into becoming a lifelong reader ...

Last month I wrote a post about how my father shaped me as a reader -- so I thought today it would be appropriate to talk about my mum.[1. Yes, Canadians actually say "mum." Why? Because we're adorable, that's why.]  That's her in the photo, reading to my cousins ... but it's a pretty accurate picture of my own childhood.

I come from a family of serious readers.  When my mother was growing up in the middle of South Dakota farmland, she read every book in her local library.  My parents didn't have much money growing up, but they did have stacks upon stacks of books.  In fact, it wasn't until I got to college that I learned that reading at the dinner table was considered rude.  Auxiers were readers -- end of story.

Or at least that's how I remembered it.  But recently, I learned something from my mother that made me take a second look at my upbringing ... and made me love her all the more:

It happened right before I entered second grade.  It was the end of summer, just before class would start, and my parents sat me down to explain that I would not be going back to my elementary school.  Instead I would take a year off for something called "home schooling".  At the time, my mother was completing an MA in Gifted Education, and I suspected at once that this whole home schooling thing was something she had made up.  Not that I objected.  As I recall it, my home school year consisted of playing Construx and memorizing lists of random facts she fed me -- art history, prepositions, the presidents, and other things no seven year-old had any business knowing.[2. Mary has since informed me that lots of kids are forced to learn prepositions -- but nobody can touch this guy for shere awesomeness.]   At the end of the year, I went back to regular school.  Only I didn't go into third grade with my former classmates ... instead I was put into a second-grade class with kids that were younger.  It was only then that I realized the truth:

I had been held back.

I remember being confused at why my parents might have thought me unfit for the rigors of second grade.  I mean, it's second grade.  It wasn't like I couldn't handle the workload.  So why hold me back?  Whenever I asked my mother, she would just shrug and say that she had wanted to spend some more time with me.

My second try at second grade was a blast.  The big thing I remember was a year-long reading competition.  Students were required to fill out little book reports, and the kid with the most book reports at the end of the year got an awesome plastic trophy.[3. In my day, you had to earn those dollar-store trophies, damnit!]  My parents, who are some of the least competitive people I've ever known, were uncharacteristically invested in the event -- there were constant trips to the library, and a gentle-but-unmistakable pressure to make sure I handed in those reports.  All told, I read 88 books that year.  Even better than that trophy (which I totally won), were all the great authors I had discovered!  Over those months, I had transitioned from stupid formulaic mysteries to Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, John Fitzgerald, and Lloyd Alexander.

It wasn't until almost 20 years later that I made the connection between these two memories.  It came while I was teasing my mother for taking me out of school just so I could learn to say all my prepositions in a single breath (which I can still do).  To this she replied: "I couldn't care less about prepositions ... I took you out of school because you didn't like reading."

Huh?  I loved reading!  What was she talking about?!

My mother explained that even though I knew how to read as a kid, my teacher had warned her that I didn't seem to enjoy it very much.  And so she made an executive decision:  pull me out of school and FORCE me to love reading.  Every single day she would sit down and read a book to me, and then she would make me read a book myself.  After that, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted (Construx!).

To this day, I have no memory of this home school reading regiment.  But when I think about the year that followed, about all the wonderful books that I devoured, I start to see that it may have worked.  Thanks, mum.

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Give Irony a Chance

A recent NYT or-ed piece by Christy Wampole entitled "How to Live Without Irony" has been making the rounds online.[1. You know it's popular when my father emails it to me.]  The piece is a lament for the millennial generation's fixation on irony:

The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. [...] He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things.

I feel like a piece like this crops up every year or so, and the consistent factor in all these articles is that the author feels left out of a culture that he/she does not belong to.  This article feels about as accurate as those that came out of 9/11 declaring that irony was "dead."  If anything, the hipsters I have known have been excessively earnest people ... the only way you might think otherwise is if you were extrapolating their entire person from their clothes, facial hair, and twitter feeds.  Lady Gaga may wear a meat dress, but she also gives speeches about bullying.  Those same smirking "harlequins" were the ones who started the Occupy movement.

More importantly, I disagree with the premise that earnestness is inherently superior to irony.  Since when has the ability to laugh -- especially at oneself -- been a bad thing?[3. Re-reading Something Wicked This Way Comes this October (something I do every year), I was struck anew by the simple idea that evil is powerless in the face of smile.]  The author points to 4 year-old children and animals as exemplars of earnest behavior.  From where I stand, those are not necessarily things for adults to aspire to.  To celebrate humanity is to celebrate the ways we are different from animals -- irony is one of the ways we can do that.

Sure, there's a possible danger to too much detachment.  And, as I've discussed before, it can be used to hurt people.  But none of these things are unique to one generation.

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EB WHITE Quote #1

"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."

- EB White

Viva Las Vegas!

This weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging out with thousands of English teachers at the NCTE Annual Convention.[1. The event felt very similar to ALA Annual, but with a somewhat smaller publisher presence ... which actually made it easier to connect with people.]  I'm not a fan of Vegas, but I am a fan of English teachers, and it was a fun time packed with parties and luncheons and various meet-and-greets.  I was able to reconnect with authors like Shannon Hale, Cecil Castellucci, and Jennifer Holm.  I may or may not have teared up when I finally got to meet Jon Szieszka.

Abrams also had me at their booth signing copies of Peter Nimble, which they were selling at cost.  In a convention hall awash in free ARCs, even discounted books are a tough sell -- I felt like I needed to find a way to draw passers-by, which led to this:

I had a stack of 11x17" paper and a pretty steady line of people eager to receive crappy portraits -- so much fun!

The highlight of the weekend was getting to finally meet the geniuses behind the Nerdy Book Club! Colby, Donalyn, and Cindy threw a party on Friday, and it was a blast.  The NBC blog has a convention wrap-up, including a video of me doing an impromptu yo-yo show:

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Remembering Maxine ...

My wife's grandmother, Maxine Burke Markam, passed away this weekend. Today is her funeral. She was smart, beautiful, tough, and the meanest canasta player I have ever seen. Here's a picture of us cutting a rug at Mary's and my wedding five years ago:

Death is never a terribly fun thing, but without it, I'm not sure life would seem quite so wonderful. All last week, I couldn't help but remember two scenes from different plays. The first is Thorton Wilder's Our Town in which Emily has passed away in childbirth, but has been given one last to look at her old life before disappearing to her grave:

EMILY: It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. [...] I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners. ... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking ... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

The second is Vladmir's speech near the end of Waiting for Godot:

VLADMIR: Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.

I would like to think that the gravedigger also enjoys coffee and new-ironed dresses.

Reading for Writers ...

Since relocating to Pittsburgh, I’ve been invited to teach at the MFA program at Hogwarts Chatham University.  This is a thrill, as my students will be actual creative writers of Children’s Literature!  It will also be a challenge.

The educational needs of creative writers are slightly different from those of straight academics.  The questions/vocabulary/theories that serve scholarship aren’t necessarily the ones that help a writer become better at their craft.[2. For more on this difference, you can check out my post on poetics vs hermeneutics] The goal of this course will be to combine the reading list of an English Lit class with the vocabulary of a creative writing workshop. 

I’ll be writing pieces on this blog about each of the books that we’ll be discussing in class.[3. Some readers will remember that I blogged through the Children’s Literature course I taught last year.] Here’s the first half of our reading list.  You’re welcome to follow along!

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum (1900)

I’m not actually the biggest Baum fan.  His books often feel like rambling journeys where each chapter has no relation to the larger story.  The first book in his series, however, is a welcome exception.  Even better, Baum’s famous introduction to that book is a great way to start a course on the genre -- it’s the Declaration of Independence of Children’s Literature.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)

One of the recurring tropes in Children’s Literature is the creation of enchanted spaces -- especially ones that are controlled by children.  What better example of this than a book that manages to create such spaces without needing to resort to magic?[4. My one regret is that I will not have space in the course to pair this book with its natural bookend: Bridge to Terebithia]

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885)

Now that last year’s Huck Finn debacle seems to have blown over, it seemed like it might be fun to explore this book -- one of the rare children’s literature titles that has gained full acceptance in the larger canon.  From a writing perspective, it will also provide a chance to examine the quest narrative in greater detail.

Peter and Wendy by JM Barrie (1911)

My love of this book is well documented.

 Charlotte's Web by EB White (1952)

I'm actually more of a Stuart Little guy myself, but with this book recently topping the School Library Journal's list of Top 100 Children's Books, I thought it would be worth looking at.  One of the things I love about Charlotte's Web is how (seemingly) effortlessly it manages to combine prosaic American farm life and talking-animal magic -- with Charlotte being the nexus between those two worlds.

Pictures of Penny

As many of you know, a few months back, my wife and I brought home our very first human baby.  In advance of the birth, I had made a point of leaving Mary cute little sketches of what our baby might look like -- most all of which she deemed "terrifying."  I thought I'd share them with readers ...

And now, here's the real deal!  This is Penelope Fern Auxier.  Not quite as many fangs as I'd imagined ...

Won't You Be my Neighbor?

Please pass the word to any-and-all librarians you know that the historic CC Mellor Library in Pittsburgh is looking for a new children's librarian!  This library is two blocks from my house and it is a truly lovely building in the middle of a charming, safe, historic neighborhood. 

If you don't live in Pittsburgh, you should know that it is an incredibly livable city -- some people (ahem, Forbes Magazine, The Economist) would even say it is the most livable in the United States. Also, it is home to Mr. Rodgers.  Try and tell me you don't want to come to work in a place that looks like this:

Just to sweeten the pot: I'll take whoever gets the job to D's Six Pack and Dogs for dinner -- you have not lived until you've eaten a salad with french fries on top.

You can find all the info about the position here.  Tell your friends!

Book Reviews and the Epidemic of Niceness

Children's literature maven Monica Edinger recently wrote a thoughtful response to a recent Slate piece on the "epidemic of niceness" that plagues the modern publishing industry.[1. if the name sounds familiar, I posted about her last year]  Both writers voice their frustration over the dearth of negative book reviews online.[2. This is a problem that goes beyond just books. Just a few weeks ago, there was the notorious fanboy uprising against the reviewers who dared criticize the latest Batman movie.]   Here's an excerpt from the original article:

"But if you spend time in the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you'll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer's biggest fan. It's not only shallow, it's untrue, and it's having a chilling effect on literary culture, creating an environment where writers are vaunted for their personal biographies or their online followings rather than for their work on the page." Jacob Silverman, Slate

For me, reading is too often an experience of discovering that the emperor has no clothes. When that happens, I feel betrayed by my community (Somebody should have warned me!).  And yet, when I read an openly negative book review, it turns me off.  While I agree to the importance of quality criticism, quality criticism is no fun.[3. As Edinger points out, things get even more complicated with children's literature because adults are not the primary/sole reader. Who wants to be the jerk who disparaged a child's favorite book?]

There is, however, one safe place where negative reviews thrive: the celebrated book

While I  bite my tongue about contemporary books I dislike, I am more than comfortable speaking out against boring old books.  I am not alone here; the internet is awash in snarky takedowns of overrated classics.  For more contemporary targets, one only need look at the upper echelons.  For every hundred glowing reviews of Freedom, you can be sure there will be a BR Meyer review attacking it. 

Sometimes these dissenting voices come off as prophets, other times they come off as attention-hungry trolls (Armond White, anyone?).  I think there is a sense that a successful work can afford to be taken down a few notches.  Perhaps this is true, but since when has that been the purpose of criticism?

In Edinger's comments, she mentions that SLJ's Heavy Medal blog stands out as a place where honest criticism is alive and well.  I agree with her, and I think the blog gets away with that because of its conceit:  any book mentioned there is already a contender for the Newbery.  There is no such thing as a bad book on that blog, only varying levels of good.

I think the success of Heavy Medal speaks to a larger point.  Perhaps the reason bad books do not get panned is because we subconsciously know they are undeserving of critical engagement?  And perhaps this is the way it should be?  What is the value of our greatest literary minds attacking Fifty Shades of Grey, a book that has no literary aspirations? 

Let us save our very best criticism for our very best books -- because those are the books whose flaws are worth discussing, and those are the authors who we want to see grow. 

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