Bartography

Earlier this week, I polled Facebook friends and Twitter followers on a Very Important Matter. Responses were lively and informative but inconclusive, so I thought I’d repeat the question here:

What do the children you know call the wooden, plastic, and/or metal structures that they climb and play on at parks and playgrounds?

…that some things are way more fun than you’ll ever know if don’t at least give them a try.

Take Segways, for instance. I’d always sort of snickered at them, and at people who get around on them when they could easily just walk.

But then I got the idea that it might be amusing to treat my son to a Segway tour of downtown Austin for his birthday.

And then the time I made our reservations for turned out to be as beautiful a February afternoon as you could hope for.

And then actually riding those suckers turned out to be an absolute blast.

I can only assume that a few of the folks we passed were snickering at us. But they just had no idea.

In case you missed it, last night there was this:

That’s me chatting with authors Melissa Wiley and Jennifer Holm and moderator Kristen Rutherford about children’s books on the Geek & Sundry #parent show. Let me tell you — an hour goes by fast when you’ve got a great subject and good company to discuss it with. I hope we can do it again.

And in case you don’t subscribe to my monthly Bartography Express newsletter — in which case you’ve just missed out on chances to win one of my books and Liz Garton Scanlon’s newest title — here’s a little of what Liz had to say about Happy Birthday, Bunny!:

I was thinking about birthdays, about how they’re really considered the end-all and be-all events of childhood, and then I thought, Are they really always all that? Because here’s the thing: Little kids don’t really get birthdays at first. They’re noisy and overwhelming, there’s all sorts of secret protocol, you have to share, food gets set afire. Really, it’s a lot to absorb!

Click here to read the rest of my quick interview, and get signed up to receive the March issue — with which I’ll be giving away Tanya Lee Stone’s new picture book biography, Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell.

My next few picture books will spend 2013 making their way through the publishing process, but I do have a part in one book due later this year, and it’s this one here:

What is Break These Rules about, and who all is in it? Check out what project editor Luke Reynolds has to say about it.

And what did I write about? Here’s a glimpse:

The official publication date from Chicago Review Press is September 1. Whether you follow the rules or break them in the meantime is totally your call.

I said “No” a lot during the latter half of 2012. I had some writing projects that I wanted to focus on, and I’ve learned how hard it is for me to balance writing time and school visits along with all the other bajillion-and-twelve opportunities and obligations that life offers. So, for several months, whenever I got an invitation for a school visit, or store visit, or conference presentation, my answer was “No.” Or, at least, “Later.”

I had expected it to be difficult to pass up or even just defer chances to get out there in front of readers and librarians and other book lovers, because they’re pretty much my favorite people on the planet. And it was indeed difficult — at first. And then it became easy.

No — not just easy. Intoxicating. Nearly addictive. To my surprise, I found that I really liked allowing myself the freedom to take a pass even on opportunities that appealed to me.

It provided a terrific sense of calm to know that I could get by without jumping on every invitation that came my way. Did I miss out on some events and gigs that won’t come my way again? Maybe. But I believe that the (perhaps illusory) sense of confidence and control that came with saying “No, thank you — how about next year?” was worth whatever benefits I would have realized had I said “Yes” to those events.

Also, the writing. Yes, I got a good deal of work done there during those months when I was not visiting schools and (with the exception of the Texas Book Festival, for which I volunteered) participating in other events. Some of it might even get published, which would mean more invitations coming my way down the road.

And now it’s February, and I’ve got my first school visit in several months freshly under my belt. I loved it. I’ve got visits to more than half a dozen other schools in store for me this spring, plus three conferences, and a newly received invitation to do a reading at a store that I’d said “No” to last summer. This year, I think I might just say “Yes.”

After all, there’s only so long that I can bear to stay away from pretty much my favorite people on the planet.

Do you need a book recommendation for Australia Day (January 26)? Editor and publisher Anita Silvey offers John Flanagan’s epic adventure Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan.

Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac How about for Squirrel Appreciation Day (January 21)? Anita suggests Mélanie Watt’s picture book Scaredy Squirrel.

And for what would have been the 101st birthday of painter Jackson Pollock (January 28)? Try Action Jackson, the biography by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker.

So says Anita. And nobody knows or loves children’s literature more than she does.

That fact is evident on every page of her recently released Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac. The almanac offers an essay on a beloved book for young readers for every day of the year (including my own Shark Vs. Train for May 2), along with a satisfying dose of historical and literary trivia.

Though you can also access the essays through Anita’s website, the print edition is so simply and thoughtfully organized — it indexes books by type (biography, fantasy, mystery/thriller, etc.) as well as by age (from babies and toddlers all the way up through high school) — that nothing could make it any easier to find the right book for the right child.

I gave my younger son an early birthday present the other day — a Lego set that I figured he’d get going on and have completed by the day he actually turns 9. But it’s not going happen, because he’s got way more discipline at building with Legos than I do with researching.

Legos sets come divided into plastic pouches numbered 1 through whatever, and my son announced that rather than get caught in mid-build when he had to go do something else, he would stop with pouch #1 for that first day. I doubted he would stick to that limit; I fully expected to hear, “Okay, maybe just one pouch more” a few times before the day was done. But he proved me wrong. He finished the first pouch and called it a day, spending the next long while playing with what he’d built so far instead of proceeding to the next phase of the instructions.

Contrast that with the research I’m doing now — not for a book, but for my own family tree. Once I get going (which is frequently), I have a hard time stopping. There are lots of resources out there, and I’ve made lots of progress, but every bit of progress — every new name or date or place — leads to more research that I could do, more progress that I could make. And every dead end I hit just shifts my attention to a new way of searching for the piece of information I’m trying to find.

For example, if I can’t find what I’m looking for on a great-grandparent’s parents, I can just switch to looking for that great-grandparent’s siblings, and that can lead to what I was looking for in the first place. Or not, in which cases there’s always something else I can try, even if it’s just hopping over to another line of my family where I haven’t hit a wall.

Now, that sort of doggedness can come in handy. It allowed me to find details about a great-great-great-grandmother who previously I knew of only as a name. But I get the sense that it also means that I’m missing out on some of the joy in savoring what I’ve already discovered. Now that I’ve found that great-great-great-grandmother, do I hurry on to her parents and siblings, or do I pause to appreciate the efforts — mine and others’ — that have made this discovery possible? Do I take a little time to ponder what her 39 years on this planet might have been like?

I ought to, it seems. If nothing else, I’ve learned from my son that the next pouch will still be there waiting even if I don’t hurry to it right away.

Capped off a satisfying year of writing by sending a picture book biography revision off to my editor this morning. Thank you to everyone who has read, edited, critiqued, inspired, encouraged, or otherwise contributed to my work this year. You make this author business a whole lot of fun.