Girl power, boy power, kid power, story power

The adorable Kidsmomo recently did a podcast on "girl power" in honor of Women's History Month. The follow-up theme: books with boys' names in the titles. That got me thinking about the strange looks, at least, that they would've gotten if they'd done a podcast on "boy power."

There are so many great girl power moments in children's lit, of course. Jo March flouts convention and we cheer. Stargirl flouts convention and we cheer. Both are expected by some to fit into a fairly narrow model of what a female should be, and both make us proud by doing more than others expect of them.

But are girls the only ones with that power? I just picked up The Whipping Boy in Sid Fleischman's honor, and found myself cheering for Jemmy just as I did for Jo. Like so many literary ladies, Jemmy belies others' expectations. Expected to stand and wait during the Prince's lessons, Jemmy instead pays attention and learns to read, write, and do sums, and I don't know about you, but I'm darn proud of him. Class and position do for Jemmy what gender does for so many female characters, making us want to see him empowered because he isn't born with power.

Even the simple fact being a child can have that effect. Incantations and intrigue notwithstanding, kid power is a big part of the Harry Potter books' appeal. Harry and his contemporaries do more than wizards their age are expected (or, in many cases, allowed) to do. And we cheer.

How about you? What makes you root for a character?

Library Appreciation Day

It's Library Appreciation Day here in the children's lit blogosphere, and that's definitely worth a second post today. My to-read shelf at home is pretty full, and I work in a bookstore. Logically, I shouldn't need to go to the library very often, unless I'm looking for something specific, right? Yeah, right.

I actually keep a steady stream of library books going. There's something empowering about selecting books to bring home and read, and it sure is nice to know that it doesn't really matter if I choose wrong. All I have to to do is bring the books back on time--and I can even renew them if I don't get through them fast enough. Talk about forgiving!

If I were a little newer to reading and a little more apprehensive about it, I know that freedom would make me feel better about trying it. No one bugs you in a library. You can take yourself on "reading retreats" or stare indecisively at the same stack for ridiculous periods of time. You can check out material at any reading level and on any subject without having to explain yourself.

I, for one, want to live in a community whose members can access books as easily as they can access television shows. Libraries, you have earned my appreciation and then some.

Literary Love: The Alice books

There comes a time in a young reader's life when she* wants her reading material to acknowledge that the world has Mature Content. Perhaps she wants to prove she can handle it, or wants a private space to learn about and think about things she could never, ever ask her dad. Of course, there's no shortage of books (or movies or TV shows) whose teenage characters engage in activities that would make her dad faint. But jumping straight out of bedtime stories and into, well, bed with such characters can leave a reader pretty confused. Is this what I'm supposed to do in high school? she might wonder. Why doesn't my life look like these girls' lives? What's wrong with me?

Enter Alice McKinley, star of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's The Agony of Alice and its many sequels and prequels (she's eleven when we meet her and ages through the series). Alice lives in a real world located somewhere between the sanitized one of many middle-grade novels and the fast-paced one of much YA. She's funny and flawed and full of embarrassing questions. Alice often feels like she missed a day or two thousand in how-to-be-a-woman school, and attributes that deficiency to the fact that she's grown up without a mother. But I suspect millions of readers with and without mothers breathe sighs of relief as they learn things from Alice that they thought everyone else already knew. And in between all that learning, they get to know characters who are both lovable and real.

The Alice books are my wholehearted recommendation of the day. There will be more, particularly of books that might be either overlooked or maligned. 'Cause sometimes in our routine booklust, we forget the books that just need some literary love.

*"she" for the purposes of this post, but boys can certainly enjoy and learn from these books. I would have a lot of respect for any boy open-minded enough to check them out.

"I don't really, um, like poetry."

I hear the above confession a lot, often from people with a really healthy love of literature. It's often a sheepish admission, but it needn't be. Really.

Personally, I've spent a lot of time celebrating poetry and making it part of my everyday life. My thoughts tend to get set to whatever meter I've heard recently. When I hear a good rhyme in a song, I point it out. I've driven others a little crazy with my observations on what songs' lyrics fit to other songs' melodies. ("Mary Had a Little Lamb" to "Go Down, Moses," anyone?)

See a pattern here, though? A lot of my interest in poetry is related to rhyme and meter. That's not to say I don't like any unrhymed poetry; I do, and that includes both children's and adult poetry. But I know I'm unlikely to rush out to read oblique (or bleak) postmodern free verse.

And that's what's great about poetry. It's lots of things. I've found the things I like, so I'm able to declare that I love poetry even if I don't love every poem out there. If a young reader says he or she doesn't like poetry, it might be worth asking, "Have you read anything by Douglas Florian? Joyce Sidman? JonArno Lawson? Helen Frost? Marilyn Singer? Read any haiku, any verse novels, any dirty limericks?" (I'd save that last one for not-too-young readers, of course.)

Poetry isn't supposed to be stressful, and I think it is for many people. Here's hoping you can find what you, yes, you love about it.

February *Isn't* National Poetry Month

Months that lack for scented air,

for blossomed and contented air,

have pleasures of their own with their

bright ice, red leaves, and grilling-ware.

The scent is just a bonus

for the soul and for the nose.

Words that aren't poetry--

no language lavished lyrically--

give readers a variety

of plot and thought and inquiry.

But poetry's a bonus,

like an Aprilling of prose.

Confessions of a chunk reader

My "currently reading" pile includes:

• one ARC from the bookstore
• one book to review
• one book borrowed from a friend
• two library books, both by authors I'll hear at the New England SCBWI conference next month (one started before my Passover trip but not brought with me, the other started on the trip)

I was a strict one-book-at-a-time reader as a kid, but now that my reading has lots of practical purposes attached, this kind of pile is typical. Yes, enjoyment is virtually always one of the purposes, but so is reviewing, so is recommending books to customers, so is keeping up on the genres in which I write, so is returning library books on time, etc., etc. By reading lots of books at once, I make sure none of these purposes falls by the wayside. I also make sure I always have a book in the pile to suit my needs when I go out; if I'm going to be walking around a lot, I choose a book that's easy to carry, and if I know I'll have lots of time to read, I choose one I'm far from finishing.

I prioritize, of course, at least when I'm at home and have access to the whole stack. If a book has no deadline, I might read 20 pages at a time. I'm reading 100 pages at a time in the book I'm reviewing for promptness' sake, and I just upped the chunk size for the borrowed book from 30 to 40 pages because hey, it's Catching Fire.

In fact, I've even cheated by a page or two at Catching Fire, which is something I rarely let myself do. I question my oh-so-scientific reading system every once in a while, and CF is making me revisit those questions. My system does mean that I have to abandon books as I'm getting into them, though when I like some books in the stack better than others, it distributes the favorites nicely. Reading so many books at once also means I take quite a while to finish anything. It's not that a 100-page early chapter book takes me a week to read, it's just that I have to read 200 pages of other material between the first half and the second half...

I don't know if I'll change anything. Just musing. Are all your reading lives this complicated, or am I just weird?

School visits and "visits"

Kids don't care if you're what we SCBWI members call "pre-published," which is how I've twice landed the role of "visiting children's poet" in elementary classrooms in New York's Capital Region. It also helps that my sister Leora was student teaching in both the classrooms.

Since I am Boston-based, the first visit took place over Skype. The connection wasn't perfect and Leora had to do some translating, but having a teacher on a giant screen was a novelty for her second graders (and I resisted the temptation to boom out, "I am the great and powerful Oz!") I read a hyperbolic poem about cold weather and a descriptive poem about thunderstorms, and we talked about using the five senses in descriptions, which the students then did ably in a class poem about oceans. We also had a Q&A session about writing, poetry, and whatever else was on the students' minds, complete with debate on whether or not Leora and I look alike. (The question has never been settled.)

Today, since I'm in Albany for Passover, I got to kick off National Poetry Month with an in-person visit to Leora's new student teaching placement. After her kindergarteners came in from recess and sang some songs, we discussed what they already knew about what poems are. Since I'd been thinking during the songs about how songs are a kind of poetry, I was delighted that one of the students made that connection, too. We read a poem about spring with lots of personification, and the students pointed out things in the poem that couldn't really happen and also highlighted their sight words (and these kids have a lot of sight words!). We also read a poem about animal and human movements, which the students acted out, adding suggestions of their own. Afterwards, they illustrated both poems; hopping bunnies were a common motif.

Writers, if you can do a school visit, I highly recommend it. There's nothing like kids to make me feel like a real, live poet!