I have no idea how anyone who isn’t well read expects to write well.
Reading counts as writing time. It is also the best, most painless way to improve your craft.
From now on, I’m going to start opening conversations with beginners with “what children’s/YA books have you read lately?” I’m going to work the question more into speeches,
Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez (Simon & Schuster, 2005). It’s the summer before college and Jason, who made national news when he came out to his coach and basketball team, has been asked to travel across the country to speak at the opening of a high school for gay and lesbian teens in Los Angeles. Jason’s boyfriend,
Congratulations to my very cute husband, author Greg Leitich Smith, whose author copies of his second novel, Tofu and T.Rex (Little Brown, 2005) arrived yesterday.
The novel is a companion book to his award-winning debut, Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo (Little Brown, 2003)(Recorded Books, 2004), and will be available for sale in July.
Yesterday, I was honored to receive a couple of letters from readers of “Riding With Rosa,” a short story of mine that was published in the March/April 2005 issue of Cicada, a YA literary magazine, (p. 69, Vol. 7, No., 4).
Thematically, the story looks at the dynamic of a biracial boy, passing as white,
I met Cyndi Hughes, former director of the Texas Book Festival turned literary agent/publicist, for lunch today at Green Pastures in South Austin.
Cyndi and I are both University of Kansas J-school graduates (AKA Jayhawks), so we have bonded on that and a book level.
Cynsational Links
Do As The Spider Does from Out of My Mind from Sharon A.
Texans love all things Texan, and this month we love writers in particular.
It makes me feel important and appreciated. Woo woo!
I’m just back from my local indie bookstore, BookPeople (2005 Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year), and the staff was celebrating Texas Writers Month in style.
The fancy-schmancy table in the BookKids department featured: Too Many Frogs by Sandy Asher,
It’s a tough time in publishing right now with school/library cutbacks, a contraction in the picture book market, and so forth.
So, today, I’d like to ask cynsations readers to perform one random act of kindness for another book person. A writer, illustrator, teacher, librarian, bookseller, publicist, young reader–whomever.
It doesn’t have to be big or expense or dramatic,
Sketches From A Spy Tree by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, illustrated by Andrew Glass (Clarion, 2005). Sketches aren’t only drawings on the page but also pictures formed by words. In this case, poems. An invitation… To step into Ann Marie’s family portrait and snip out the father who snipped out some time ago himself,
Far From Xanadu by Julie Anne Peters (Little Brown, 2005). Between working out, playing softball, and keeping up the plumbing business her dad left behind, Mike’s days in Coalton, Kansas are if not full, at least familiar. Then one day, she walks into class. Xanadu. The most beautiful, smart-ass, conflicted girl in the world. Mike falls fast, and the two seem to connect.
Today, I received contributor copies of the Journal of Children’s Literature: A Journal of the Children’s Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English (Vol. 31, No. 1, spring 2005), focusing on Special Collections of Children’s Literature, Book Illustrations, and Picture Book art.
My article “Social Justice in Native American Literature For Youth”
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