Dancing boys and beautiful women

Just a reminder--if you are at the ALA conference this weekend do stop by the Horn Book booth, #1564. I'll be there on Saturday, pretty much all day, and Sunday afternoon. We are giving away copies of the January-February issue of the Magazine, and on Saturday I'll be conducting the following "Five Questions for . . ." interviews:

11:00 a.m. Kristin Cashore
12:00 p.m. Mitali Perkins
2:00 p.m. Lois Lowry
3:00 p.m. M.T. Anderson


Hope to see you there!

Five questions for . . .

Click the link for the interview schedule at ALA Midwinter. And if you have any questions for Kristin Cashore, Mitali Perkins, Lois Lowry or M. T. Anderson, leave 'em in the comments. (But, no, I will not ask Lois if she's sorry to have won the Newbery for The Giver.)

Two Scary Stories

Julianna Baggott (aka N.E. Bode) writes in the Boston Globe about a scared-silly principal, who apparently isn't down with her homonym.

And Jon Scieszka leads off the Library of Congress's Exquisite Corpse adventure. (Thanks to Leila for the tip.) I'm not sureI am down with the LC reading software but my eyes are old.

Bring Pack Back!

Another duckling disappears.

We're still here . . .

But the Horn Book, Inc. has a new owner. See details on our website.

Go west, young man, WEST!

Childlit has been debating historical accuracy in fiction--what's dramatic license and what's a betrayal, basically. It makes me think of the many romances of stage, screen and text where Elizabeth R and Mary, Queen of Scots excitingly rail at each other, when in real life they never met.

It also makes me remember when Elizabeth (L) and I saw When Harry Met Sally and laughed about the improbability of these two chipper coeds actually attending the University of Chicago when they were so clearly Northwestern types. We were outraged, however, when the film sent them on their way from Chicago to New York by heading NORTH on Lake Shore Drive, which would only take you to the East Coast if you went via the Soo Locks.

Yesterday I was reading a (terrific) novel which in one spot took its main character to my neighborhood. I got a little worried for him when he got off the subway and walked five blocks east when in real life there is no there there. The street he was on only heads west. A shame, really--he was an intriguing character and the right direction would have practically brought him to my doorstep!

It of course doesn't matter and few will notice (and fewer care). But maybe it's a lesson about our standards regarding accuracy--we mostly only notice when it hits home.

Craigslist or Freaky Friday?

Missed Connections: leaving Stony Brook station around 6:00 PM yesterday. Me, tall middle-aged man in a bowtie listening to iPod. You, medium-height young woman reading the Horn Book.

Any authors out there ever similarly catch a reader unawares?

Another Phone Call from the Past

I realized a forty-year-old dream last night when we went to see a community theater production of Hair. The Rent of its day--although far more transgressive--Hair was the Big Thing for little show-tune freaks, given even more appeal by the fact that we had to listen to the record (which was all we knew of the show, since we certainly wouldn't be allowed to see it. Nudes!) out of earshot of our parents. I remember clandestinely (I thought) listening to my older sister's recording and my mother overhearing "Happy Birthday Abie Baby" ("emanci-motherfuckin'-pator of the slaves") and pitching a fit. Has High School Musical ever occasioned such perfect drama?

Growing up in Boston added allure, too, as, when the show came to town in 1970, it was promptly shut down and banned for a month until the Supreme Court allowed it to reopen. I remember faking illness to stay home from school one day because the cast was going to perform on some local TV talk show. How ironic that "America's oldest community theater" (the Footlight Club opened in 1877) would be presenting it thirty-some years later without fuss, obscenities and (discreetly lit) nudity intact.

I didn't get half of the sex jokes back then, and certainly didn't recognize just how druggie it was--my exposure to illegal substances was then limited to the "awareness tablets" that a cop had brought into our junior high and lit in front of the classroom to demonstrate what marijuana smelled like so we would know when to blow the whistle on a party, I guess. Last night, at fifty-one, I had little patience with the show's loosey-goosey free-range dialogue that was supposed to convey the inspiration of drugs and wondered how anyone could have ever heard it as meaningful or even sincere.

But to think of drugs as "mind-expanding" is even more taboo today than in 1968, as is the show's gleeful employment of racial epithets. Forget getting banned in Boston; can it play in L.A.?

What I mostly thought last night, sentimentally and dolefully, is that now I'm the parents and, really, so is the show. I'm betting the sweet kids on stage were as bemused by the LBJ jokes they were spouting as I had been by "Sodomy."

People Are Not Inherently Evil

I'm just back from a run; it was hot and my legs felt like they were encased in molasses. But about halfway through I came upon a great scene: a family of geese crossing the Jamaica Way. I hate geese, but this gaggle of two adults and seven young ones was inspiring. The grownups led the way, pausing at the curb to let a few fast-moving cars by, then sauntering, leisurely but with a definite aim, across the street while each of the four lanes of cars stopped in turn. (This is Boston, where nobody is sentimental about geese, and in no way was the entire flow of traffic going to stop for them.) If you know that street, you'll know how dangerous it can be to drive, much less cross. My hat's off to the Sunday drivers!

I have a story about Boston ducklings, too, and I'll put up the link to that tomorrow.

A reader requests . . .

. . . a "children's lit. guide to Boston." She'll be visiting from Australia next month and wants to know what children's-book places she should try and see. I don't get out much, but of course you can't miss the ducklings, and while you're there you can see the original address of the Horn Book at 270 Boylston Street. Some excellent contemporary bookshops for boys and girls include The Children's Book Shop in Brookline Village and the Curious George store in Harvard Square.

J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 could probably be called upon to point out some of the more historical connections; I'm personally grateful to the Freedom Trail for the time I got lost on the way to work and it led me right to the Horn Book's (former) door.

Moving a bit further afield, don't miss the Little Women stronghold in Concord, and I would urge a day trip to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst--catch up with dear, demented Emily while you're there.