Been Sick! Been Writing!

And a tip of the hat to Jamie Oliver....

Monday morning the lunch bell rang. Finally.

David steered between the tables and sat down at his usual table in the middle of the room. Jared and Michael were already there. Talking earnestly, seriously, solemnly about (David rubbed his aching forehead)

Basketball.

Jared held out a sheet of paper. “I’m telling you. It says thirty press oms.”

“What the heck is a press om?” demanded Michael.

“Dude,” said David loudly. “Chili dogs.” He took a huge bite. “They're pretty good.”

“Big deal. They serve chili dogs every day.” Jared rattled the sheet David’s face until he wiped his hands on his shirt and took it. “Coach Dubrovnev’s conditioning schedule. For basketball.”

Oh joy. David dropped it on the table and returned to his lunch.

“Today’s Monday,” droned Jared. “We gotta do thirty of them.”

“So, what the heck is a press om,” repeated Michael blah blah de blah. The two of them went on and on while David wolfed down the last couple of bites. He leaned back in his chair and poked idly at the dense purple rectangle on his tray. “I think it’s jello.”

“Yup,” said Jared. “See the chunks? Diced peaches. My dad went to school here. He told me about stuff like this. And that marshmallow fruit salad thing. With coconut. Brr.”

“Ambrosia,” murmured David. “My mom went here, too.”

“Dad said the lunch ladies have a big refrigerator in the basement full of leftovers. Stuff from the eighties.”

“Dude,” exclaimed Michael. “Don’t eat that!”

The Future of Kiddie Lit in the Washington Post....

...or The Continuing Triumph of Sustained Narrative.

So.

The agent guy pointed out this article , which is supposed to have all us book-loving traditionalists running around in a tizzy, but I say: Wow! What wonderful, glorious news about the reading habits our Millennials!

I mean, think about it. So, ostensibly The Post interviews our hero Kinney on the eve of the Wimpy Kid movie release and the tone of the article is pretty sniffy; all over how it's impossible to get kids to read today without the internet, the movie, the visuals---you gotta have all that extra-easy cheating stuff anymore because kids' attentions are going to hell in a handbasket and besides most of the market is going to adult readers anyway. Take TWILIGHT. And HARRY POTTER. Adults readers in droves. End of story. Neener, neener.

Uh-huh. But TWILIGHT and King Harry did pretty well with kids, too.

Your kids, my kids, the neighbor down the street's kid---Millennials are in point of fact THE HARRY POTTER GENERATION---those kids who came of age through the decade-long release of the Rowling books. Boys and girls who celebrated birthdays number ten through seventeen right alongside Hermonie and Harry and Ron. Boys and girls who read every single word of those great big books. Every. Single. Word.

And though nowadays there's movies and online games and fan fiction and all sorts of visuals going on...I still see them everywhere I go. Underaged weightlifters carrying around these great big ol' door-stops of a book around. Dog-eared hardbounds passed down from their annoying older brothers and sisters, I imagine. Noses stuck in a book all day. Hey! Go outside and get a little fresh air, for pete's sake!

In the last fifteen years we've raised a generation of readers who've cut their readerly eyeteeth by downing on a regular basis* huge swaths of narrative fiction in support of story. Characters. Evocative settings. A ton and a half of description. Good triumphs. Justice is served. A bit of bittersweet ending.

And yeah? May I belabor the obvious? Online as we know it can't support something that big and that involved over that long a time. A narrative arc with the space and duration of Kinney's Wimpy Kid could---and did--easily spring originally out of the internet.

But if we long for the good ol' days when kids read books like reading mattered---and read books with heft and weight and breadth, then we have to write books with heft and weight and breadth that (here's the hard part) matter to kids

I'm going to say it again: Millennials are a writer's dream. They've grown up reading reams and reams of words in support of a story and cast of characters. Evocative settings. Tons of description Captivated by everything that goes into a huge narrative arc where good folks triumph, evil-doers are banished; where they close the book and wipe the odd tear and live their lives just slightly better person for having read it...

Honestly. Dickens would've just loved the readerly millennials. Plus just see who's playing young David, above! Bonus!

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* Over a decade, people! SUSTAINED READING OF THE SAME NARRATIVE ACROSS SEVEN-HUNDRED PAGE BOOKS RELEASED OVER A FREAKING DECADE. Sorry, but the rest of us used to run screaming from any book that topped more than two hundred pages when we were their ages and you know it.

Yeah, your Mom's on Facebook, sweetie-pie....

...and a bit of middle-aged lady jubilation as I see that Back of the Class, (whom you've met already on this blog vis a vis Harvard University) has the goods in their hair-metal anthem My Mom's on Facebook.

And while the writer in me can't resist pointing out that the serial mentions of waxing various anatomical portions really needs to be revisited (since the image of wax per se is never expanded in any meaningful way--serving as neither leit motif nor cri du coeur---the repetition strikes this hearer as just an eensty bit lazy) I can't help but snort a little coffee (decaf) out my nose.

Bravo to the Class!

Been Busy! Been Writing!

Here's a snippet and an admonishment:

"Frankly, David had never played basketball in his life. Except that one round of HORSE in fifth grade.

A terrible year. His dog Buster had run away and then Grandpa Jim had died and it felt like winter had come to stay forever. And then suddenly it was spring, the sun bright, the air smelling like the sea. So he’d gone outside, bounced a basketball up and down on the asphalt a couple of times and joined a game of HORSE. Just for fun.

HORSE turned out to be more complicated than it looked. He’d almost gotten up to the O when short, fat Lily Dubrovnev sunk an unbelievable E from way outside the free-throw line and ran around the playground screeching, “David Nickel is a HORSE turd!”

Secret silent tears had filled his eyes.

Of course he chased after Lily’s screeching horse-turd self. Across the basketball court, behind the backstop, around the dumpsters. David grabbed the back of her jacket and yanked her to a halt in the deserted corner of playground where rusty swing sets go to die.

Not that he hit Lily. But…he hadn’t exactly not hit her either. Just grabbed her elbow and ground his knuckle into her beefy arm until she backed into the chain link fence and yelped, Ow! You jerk!

He let go of her arm. Don’t call me a horse turd, he hissed.

Sure, he had been a lot moister back then---tears welled up easily during that terrible year of losing Buster and Grandpa Jim. And since he towered over everybody, even the teacher, it was possible that maybe a little spit accidentally flew down into Lily’s upturned face.

You spit on me. She had wiped her eyebrow in astonishment. You spit on me and you punched my arm."

Everything for a Whole Lotta Dogs

So. If in Flawed Dogs the story deserts its characters and in Dog Days! the character deserts his story, then what about Everything for a Dog, by Ann M. Martin?

Everything is the kind of book I usually steer clear of: a sweet and gentle cover, a dedication to an elderly aunt, the faint whiff of writerly brussel sprouts.* It’s also a companion book to A Dog’s Life, so I’m coming in during the middle of the author’s intent, something that is a bit unfair.

Everything is everything as advertised (sweet, poignant, you’ll thank me for it later), which means over the course of a week I pick up the book and impatiently put it down; pick up, impatiently down and so forth. However, I do finish Everything which is a huge endorsement right there.

Or maybe I should say: it’s a huge endorsement of a story with good writerly bones, because while the story line is certainly well-trodden and brings nothing new to the banquet table of kiddie lit**, the structure of the novel---which alternates the father’s and the son’s story (with a dog acting as the idée fixé )---is well done. The characters inhabit the story and propel the story along; the story reveals the characters more fully: we come to empathize with both Charlie’s dog-refusal and Henry’s dog-yearning; and we rejoice in the end as both Charlie and Henry change and are changing, as both protagonists indeed in a spiritual sense give up everything for a dog.

But huh? No interior illustrations? Everything has two very appealing and beautiful dog characters in Sunny and Bone. Readers of a certain age want to turn the page and see them race around until they fall over in big, golden heaps of doggie smiles. So c’mon, MacMillan. Ann Martin’s one of your brand-name writers---she deserves a couple of well-drawn dogs. Don’t be so stingy next time, okay?***

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*I’m-gonna-stand-here-until-you-clean-your-plate-because-it’s-good-for-you-you’ll-thank me-when-you’re-older.

**The Olympian older brother dies, leaving the deeply flawed younger brother alive! A dog dies, shot by an evil hunter! (As a resident of a state where the white-tail deer outnumber the human population two to one, I’d like to point out that not all hunters are the cowardly gits so beloved of kiddie-lit writers these days.) A dog runs afoul of an animal trap! (Gosh, my second dog in-a-trap story this week alone! I'm a lucky reader!) The secondary characters include: The perceptive old farmer! The witch-in-the-scary-house-next-door-who-turns-out-to-have-a-kind-heart old neighbor! The overwhelmed yupper-dom couple with a new baby who give away their rambunctious dog! And (my personal favorite) the librarian mom, a character who lets the write wedge in any number of childhood book classics (Treasure Island! Hardy Boys! All-of-a-Kind Family!) with impunity!

***I hereby certify that where ere she may go, and what ere she may do, my dog character will not tangle with a trap. Come to think of it, both dogs afflicted with trapitis were males, so I will insert the observation that my dog is a girl, thank goodness, and hence smart enough to know the difference between a trap and a hole in the ground. But I do it in a footnote, so it offends the mere handful of folks who actually read footnotes. Do you think MacMillan reads footnotes? Because I’ve got my writerly heart set interior illustrations for my boy-and-his-dog book, baby!

Another Day, Another Dog Book

Juxtaposed against all the Flawed dog fights and duüglitz tufts is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, by Jeff Kinney, wherein our hero Greg shuts the door, closes the curtains and plays video games in the dark all summer long. Boy, talk about your cutting-edge realism, your man vs. self thematic elements, your pretty cool interior illustrations, huh? Long-time Wimpy fan here because of Kinney’s spritely wit and drawings. But worst luck if, lured by the title (Dog Days!) I didn’t manage to pull off the shelf what is probably the weakest link in the series.

Seriously, there is a gentle ebb and flow of story in Greg’s summer days: water parks and lawn-mowing and so forth. There’s even a dog in the mix (while the dog doesn’t suffer, he’s also not the best thing that’s ever happened to Greg, har de har)---but c’mon---do you buy a seventh-grade guy who convinces his mom to rent a double stroller at the water park so he can ride shotgun with his little brother Manny? A middle-schooler who calls himself an “an ordinary Joe” or a twelve-year-old who’s all “burned up with Rowley for bailing out on our lawn care business”? I don’t know. This sure isn’t the kind of stuff which makes me think yeah boy, isn’t Greg a scream? Now here’s a character who’s both changing and being changed by his actions.

It’s more like: Huh? Did I miss something? Is our loveably finicky middle-schooler morphing into somebody’s elderly Grandpa Jim? Good Lord. I do hope the character isn’t turning his back on the narrative arc, playing for easy laughs rather than terrible truths. That would be a shame especially now, what with the movie! Coming out 19 March!

Frankly, I’m suspicious. And if Greg calls Roderick a nancy pants or some other wheezer from the 'fifties in the next book then this reader will be disengaging from the story as well.

But ooo! Interior illustrations! And witty ones, to boot!

An Aristotelian Writer Reads the First Dog Book

I’ve attained many of life’s most pressing goals (quit smoking, raise the kids, ferret out the meaning of life) and usually feel sort of okay about everything, but there is one darned pesky goal that has eluded my yearning heart so far: a book published with interior illustrations.

Yes, cover art is wonderful and very fulfilling meaning-of-life wise, but when it comes to decorated chapter pages, calligraphed capitals or the odd illustrated half-page in a children’s book, I swoon. And with the rare occasion of color interior illustrations, I’m a veritable pushover. So you can imagine I snatched Flawed Dogs; The Shocking Raid on Westminster (Berkley Breathed) out of the library stacks, barely suppressing a joyous squeal.

If you’re a personna of a certain age (and I am! O, I am!) you may well remember reading Bloom County (Opus! Bill the Cat! Yeow!) in that kinder, simpler pre-cell phone life of big hair and hangin’ at the mall and wishing Oliver North would take himself off somewhere---covertly, overtly; we wouldn’t be picky, honest. So I was all ready to be bowled over by Breathed---a funny writer who can draw, man. But sigh. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

The writer in me sighs.

Because I always heave a deep, soulful sigh at books which read like a pitch to Disney movies. What an unfortunate sub-trend in the big wide world of kiddie lit today: books covertly written to directly adapt with the least amount of fuss into a big screen thingamabob starring Dakota Fanning (as Heidy!). A book written with the screenwriter’s filmed-minute-per-page stopwatch a-ticking in the background; a book stuffed with pratfalls, non-stop action and The Big Thematic Moment.*

Non-stop action resonates in my writerly soul because I am an Aristotelian rather than Platonic writer and I just adore all that story stuff revealing who the character is and what the character is becoming. Flawed’s action dwells so much on the superficially/cartoonishly brutal at the expense of the revelatory however, that I’m not sure I exactly dig this book either as a reader or a writer. Dogs are shot, maimed, starved, beaten—and gee, the humans don’t do much better. Eventually the dogs stop getting their asses whupped just in time for the Big Thematic Moment (stop me if you’ve heard this before, but one must be-lieve in oneself, not forgetting of course the power of friendship whilst reaching for one’s dream) but we’re left dangling until page 214…of a 216 page book.

Still! Interior illustrations! And many of them in color! Ooo.

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*My perceptive daughter once summed up a Disney movie as: 93 minutes of be-lieve in yourself. The power of friendship. Reach for your dreams. She also used the word moronic. Twice.

A Boy and His Dog

I'm writing a boy-and-his-dog book.

Sure, children's literature probably doesn't need another ripping yarn about the boy/dog thing. Were a lack of good reading material the only criteria though, then odds are children’s literature could soldier on without one more vampire natter---and yet don’t we just find ourselves up to our wee ears in nosferatus these days?

Another potential problem is that not only does the dog not die in my story, the dog is not harmed in any way. The dog is loved and well-cared for: fed, watered, played with and taken for walkies at regular intervals. No no---it’s the boy who misses meals, the boy who does the dangerous exploits and saves the day. The dog is just a slap-happy companion who…well, okay maybe not just.

Even worse there’s not a breath of the fantastical; no zombies, werewolves or the Fey which is terribly embarrassing because I know I’m shooting myself in the foot already what with this dog who will not die*. But if I’m going to be truthful about this story for these characters then I’m gonna be truthful: the dog doesn’t die. Nor does the dog fall into a vat of radioactive creosote and come out just oozing canine super powers. Sorry, sorry sorry.

I don’t read other folks’ books while I’m writing because it’s hard enough to listen to the characters, much less find the time to write their story (besides I’m a very slow writer, easily distracted by the ridiculousness of my life), but inevitably comes the moment when I have written the story completely through. It’s a nice moment, very satisfying. The story is told, the characters in place and all I need to do is go back and revise like fury, convince my agent that it’s a worthy investment of her time and energy and then get down on my knees and pray that some where in the great big world of publishing there’s an editor who really gets dogs and boys and funny bits; an editor who won’t miss the vampires.

And since my story is written through as the first complete draft, I can go back to reading, reading, alla time reading. Though not as a reader. Until the moment I send my book off to the agent I read as a writer, and a mongo-analytical anything-you-can-write-I-can-deconstruct-to-pieces write at that For instance this week I’ve read three recent boy-and-his dog books. (Well—two boy-and-his dog, one girl-and-her-dog, but you get the picture.**) Wanna hear about them?

Good.

Next up: A writerly analysis of Flawed Dogs (Breathed), Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (Kinney), and Everything for a Dog (Martin)

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*It’s a shame that I can’t figure out how to turn my dog (who will not die) into a dog-who-will-not-die---you know, a zombie dog? Boy, what a difference those couple of hyphens would make. The difference between the six-figure-auction zombie-dog book and the turned-down-flat regular-dog book, I assure you. O brave new world/ That has such marketing departments in’t.

**And the picture ain't pretty---that even boy-and-his-dog books are being invaded by the spunky girl protagonist. Grim.