Big name YA authors address their teenage versions on a breadth of topics, in a range of tones and formats: Dave Roman creates a comic strip; Robin Benway compiles a funny list of “9 Things You Need to Know” (e.g. “You need to let your bangs grow out. I’m serious.”); Kekla Magoon relates her biracial heritage and bisexuality to her teenage need for fitting in; Ellen Hopkins summarizes the differences between her then-skewed self-perception and reality; and Sara Zarr asks herself “What is a friend?” Both a browsable compilation and a readable page-turner, this book has an audience with everyone — adults will laugh, relate, and mourn their own adolescent confusion; teens will find much to learn about themselves, their peers, and what being older and wiser is all about. And it will almost certainly inspire everybody to follow suit and draft a letter of their own.

Pick up a copy on October 30 and head to the blog in the meantime.

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Rookie Magazine, an online magazine aimed at teenage girls, was created to address the lack of teen magazines that “respect reader’s intelligence,” as Tavi writes in the introduction. Rookie attracts more than teenagers though; Tavi and the rest of the Rookie Mag board snag interviews and essays from Joss Whedon, Lena Dunham, Miranda July, Aubrey Plaza, David Sedaris, Dan Savage, and Zooey Deschanel, among others.

Rookie Yearbook One is organized by the online magazine’s monthly themes such as secrets, transformation, and exploration. Fresh, unapologetic articles and personal stories cover movies, music, style, relationships, drugs, and general interest (for example, the “Literally the Best Thing Ever” series of articles, featuring deep-sea creatures and outer space). Two of my favorite pieces were “How to Not Care What Other People Think of You,” and “How to Approach the Person You Like Without Throwing Up,” both rife with advice that would have made my high school days easier. Fashion photo shoots and clips of style icons, movie characters, and music moguls mix with wallpaper flowers, lace, and glitter in the collage-style design. Yearbook photos, signatures, and notes fill the inside covers. And this compilation includes stickers, a plastic record of Rookie tunes, and a paper crown—what more could any burgeoning fashion icon want?

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Tomorrow,  September 21, Printz award winner Libba Bray will be speaking and signing at the Brookline Public Library. The event begins at 3:00 pm. More information on the event and her just-released novel The Diviners here.

On Monday, September 24 at 10:00 am, author Sarah Stewart and illustrator David Small will sign their latest collaboration, The Quiet Place, at Porter Square Books.

We’re very excited to catch up with our Boston Globe–Horn Book award winners—Joan Sommers and Amanda Freymann, Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and R. Gregory Christie, Julie Fogliano and Erin E. Stead, Mal Peet, and Elizabeth Wein—at the third annual Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium on Saturday, September 29. Registration is still open for this day-long event.

And once you’ve recuperated from all the BGHB festivities, go see author/illustrator Grace Lin at Porter Square Books on Sunday, September 30 at 3:00 pm. She’ll be discussing and signing her new book, Starry River of the Sky.

October looks like it’ll be even busier, with Louise Erdrich, Lesléa Newman, and Lois Lowry at Porter Square Books; Sherman Alexie at Brookline Booksmith; folklore/fairy tale scholar Maria Tatar at Harvard Bookstore; and the annual Boston Book Festival.

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The model pieces and instructions are included in The Titanic Notebook: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Ship by Claire Hawcock (Insight Editions, March). Though the browse-worthy Notebook is jam-packed with pop-ups, foldouts, and trivia, Ariel headed straight for the model—and stuck with it for the next three and a half grueling hours.

supplies: instructions, punch-out pieces, glue, and (this one is crucial!) coffee

Ariel explains, “It was doable, but took some time to figure out. The diagrams are not exactly clear.” She found the pieces to be well-made and sturdy, but the shiny cardstock was “not glue-friendly”. A good deal of Scotch tape was needed to avert disaster.

Ariel hard at work

Based on Ariel’s experience with decoding the instructions and coaxing the parts together, the recommended age of  seven years and up may be a bit ambitious; this is probably a better bet for older kids or a kid-and-adult team. But as Ariel says, “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?!”

the final product...

...complete with ice-cube iceberg

For more Titanic, see Horn Book Magazine contributor Betty Carter’s annotated Titanic bibliography.

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Check out these Fuse #8 and Seven Impossible Things posts for Betsy Bird’s and Jules Danielson’s intriguing explorations of the connections between children’s illustrators and The New Yorker.

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I have a serious Etsy addiction, and an incredible shop I just discovered is not helping.

Spoonful of Chocolate sells recycled book purses and e-reader covers; now I am lusting over a Hunger Games handbag made from an actual copy of The Hunger Games. (They have other chapter book and YA selections, too.) My favorite, though, might be the ornate Pride and Prejudice bag complete with ladylike “pearl” handle.

both bags by Etsy seller Spoonful of Chocolate

The only downside is the handbags aren’t big enough to carry a book with you—not ideal for the daily grind. But how geek chic to carry one to an award ceremony or Kidlit Drink Night!

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For those of you like me who do like the Muppets—and especially “Mahna Mahna”—here is some joy to end the year:

Happy New Year!

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Above and beyond the awesomeness of Neil Gaiman, the episode is worth watching (even if you’re not a big Simpsons fan) for its smart commentary on children’s book publishing.

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This past Saturday I had the pleasure of attending “The Exquisite Conversation: An Adventure in Creating Books,” a program at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium co-sponsored by MIT, the Cambridge Public Library, and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance. The panel, consisting of several of the contributors to The Exquisite Corpse Adventure (published in print by Candlewick, August) and moderated by NCBLA executive director Mary Brigid Barrett, was a stimulating mix of august personages (Susan Cooper, Katherine Paterson, Natalie Babbitt, Steven Kellogg, Patricia MacLachlan) and relative newcomers (author-illustrator James Ransome, illustrator Timothy Basil Ering). And M.T. Anderson, who somehow manages to be both…

They were all there to discuss the creation of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, which began life as a progressive story published on the READ.gov website “as the foundation of a national reading and writing initiative created by NCBLA and the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.” The panel opened, appropriately, with a progressive reading of the first episode of the book while the three illustrators present drew on easels set up behind the readers—which was only partially successful since the easels were…behind the readers. But never mind—the conversation soon picked up.

Tobin Anderson reported that the Library of Congress estimated that somewhere between 500,000 and two million readers around the world visited the website as The Exquisite Corpse Adventure unfolded. Mary Brigid spoke movingly of a teacher in Venezuela who, lacking books and other resources, printed out a new episode every month and traveled extensively throughout her region to share it with kids.

Patty MacLachlan pointed out how different creating the book was from the typical writing process because there was no revising or editing—each chapter was published as originally written, even in the printed book; there was no attempt to go back and polish rough spots or reconcile plot anomalies. Mary Brigid defended this decision: “This is different; this is a game.”

(There was no question-and-answer period, but I would have loved to ask the participating writers: how much did the “game” element change your own writing process? At times, reading the book, it almost seemed as if the primary point was to compete against one another; to try to impress one another. I’m sure this element is always present to some extent: you want to please your editor, your writers’ group, etc. But in this case did it tend to overtake the mission? Or not? Responses welcome.)

Anyway, back to business, and in fact this next bit is somewhat related to my question. Tobin divided up the contributors into two categories: what he called the “generative” writers, those who saw their roles as generators of as much incident, twists and turns of plot, and outrageousness as possible, and “rationalizers,” the ones who tried to keep the chaos under control and make all the randomness cohere into a rational story. He said it was interesting to see who fell into which category, and that it wasn’t a predictable division. Steven Kellogg asserted that “the rationalizers need the lunatics—they complement each other.”

We learned that the writers were privy to the episodes as they unfolded so that they could advance the plot and take up the challenge of preceding wicked chapter-ending cliffhangers, but this was not necessarily true for the illustrators. The irrepressibly enthusiastic (he tended to stand up whenever he spoke, which was highly endearing) Timothy Basil Ering said that he never looked to see what the other illustrators were doing—how they had portrayed characters and setting—he wanted the freedom to imagine them for himself.

The conversation then turned to a discussion of writing in general. Mary Brigid threw out a variation on the perennial question “Where do you get your ideas?” to ask “How do you begin?”  Natalie Babbitt gave her oft-supplied answer: that her childhood was the most intense period of her life and that all her stories have stemmed from the large questions she had as a preschooler. Susan Cooper described the day she was cross-country skiing with her then-husband and looked up at the falling snow and the lowering sky, and knew she would write about it, but put the moment away for two years until it re-emerged and became the impetus for The Dark Is Rising. Others said they had vivid mental images of scenes or events that sparked their stories. Susan proposed that ideas for books are like butterflies—you just have to reach out and grab one. Tobin responded that the problem with that approach is that you kill the butterfly.

A conversation about picture book texts was launched by James Ransome, who said, interestingly, that even though he is an artist, when he writes picture books he doesn’t see any images in his head. He puts the manuscript away and returns to it weeks or months later, and only then does he “see” the illustrations the text requires. Susan Cooper compared the writing of a picture book to the writing of a screenplay: in both cases, “you have to leave room for the pictures.” Patty MacLachlan commented that she had no problem turning over her picture book texts to editors and illustrators, likening her texts to teenage offspring: “At some point you have to let them go and make their own way in the world.” Tobin thought that was OK unless the illustrator turned your characters into hedgehogs.

Tobin Anderson and James Ransome

I have to say there wasn’t much content in the program for children, who (ten and up) had been invited to attend.  But the signing afterward was a huge success, and gave both kids and adult fans plenty of opportunity to interact with beloved authors and illustrators. The lines were long and the interactions between signers and signees seemed to be extensive and personal.  For those who had the opportunity to meet some of their favorite children’s book creators, it must have been an exquisite ending to a good day.

Katherine Paterson chats with a fan

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This universality of heartache inspires Handler not only in this novel, but also on his related blog, The Why We Broke Up Project, which asks for personal stories from his audience, including famous authors. (One of my favorites is Brian Selznick’s: “I knew I had to break up with Ann Rosenberg after she chose a teal dress for the prom. I had never heard of teal. Also, I was gay.”) There’s even a section on the blog where Handler hilariously and cleverly responds to some of the readers’ experiences.

The breakup testimonials are varied—some funny, others sad—but you and I, and everyone, everywhere who’s been through one will appreciate their honesty and insight. Join this catharsis-party to share your pain, be soothed and entertained by others’, and start the countdown until the novel’s December 27 release.

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