{"id":2811,"date":"2006-10-12T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-12T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2811"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:47","slug":"cheers-and-cogitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2811","title":{"rendered":"Cheers and Cogitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kudos, kudos, kudos to the cool kids at Not Your Mother’s Bookclub<\/a> who are mentioned with many props in this week’s PW<\/a>! NYMBC loves YA authors and YA readers and bring the two together in some truly innovative ways. This week they’re supporting San Francisco’s literary festival, Litquake<\/a> with a meet-the-author thing that looks like fun. Congrats, NYMBC – may your tribe increase.<\/p>\n

Further kudos to the proud Mommy over at Wands & Worlds<\/a>, whose son’s imagine-the-ending to the Snicket Saga was chosen to be printed by the Washington Post<\/a>. The kid not only writes in complete sentences, he’s … hilarious! Cheers! Another writer on the horizon! Mazel tov to both!<\/p>\n

I don’t know from manga, but…Via A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy<\/a>, this Anne Frank edu-manga<\/a> thing looks like a big, fat, NOOOO!<\/i> to me. And I am a little stunned, too, at the idea of a pop-up book on the Irish potato famine<\/a>… Exactly what could you pop-up to make it more… um… readable? In my mind, pop-ups are supposed to be …fun? However! I will wait like everyone else and read the book before I comment. Any further. Ahem.<\/i><\/p>\n

A post I’m late discovering is via Tockla’s World of Children’s Lit<\/a> and it’s on mixed-race kids books. This is of special interest to me because my book originally had a mixed-race protagonist, and my agent suggested that since I’m “plain old African American” I should take that out.
Hmph.
<\/em>I was fairly steamed, to say the least, especially since a nice letter I got from a senior editor at Jump at the Sun<\/a> who called it “refreshing” that the character was not in any way concerned that she was mixed race, and that the novel did not necessarily concern race. But the real question? Is anybody really “plain old” anything? And I wonder now if I did wrong to change my character. Oh well. As I write more, I learn more, I guess…<\/p>\n

An interesting discussion at AS IF<\/a> on manga and graphic novels and their, er, graphic<\/em> content. Some want to ban all graphic novels. Not really the answer!? Also on this same fascinating weblog, Laurie Halse Anderson<\/a> posts her approach to dealing with challenges to her book, Speak<\/i>, and states she has “no business insisting” that her book is taught anywhere. Very enlightening and enlightened thoughts.<\/p>\n

One of the things I love deeply about literature is that it can bridge cultures and traditions and backgrounds and people, and bring together humans in a commonality of experience that transcends political rhetoric and polarizing speeches. Music, too, can be as fluid and versatile as literature, so today’s “check it out because it is heart-touching and energizing and hopeful and positive” site of the day is NPR, whose lovely pieces from Lullabies from the Axis of Evil<\/a> will make you want to add this CD of Iranian, Iraqi and North Korean lullabies to your repertoire so you can do some peaceful meditative yoga stretches and deep thinking while it plays (if you have no babies to sing to sleep). The CD is about a year old, but the short stories and poetry found in the book by the same title (and aren’t YA) was just released today. The sample story I read is equally beautiful, and pulls my heart to a world that I don’t quite understand, yet is so close to my own understanding of things that I feel I can reach across the chasm and touch it. Music and books: just another way to save the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kudos, kudos, kudos to the cool kids at Not Your Mother’s Bookclub who are mentioned with many props in this week’s PW! NYMBC loves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3725,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2811\/revisions\/3725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}