Archive for July 31, 2020

Sisters Love Their Big Brothers: Where Ideas Come From

Authors who visit schools get asked it a lot: 

Where do ideas come from

We get asked it so often, in fact, that most of us come up with pat little answers, neat and tidy, that allow us to move on to another question. Any other question, please. 

It’s not that we’re jerks.

The problem with the question is that, well, yeah, there are a lot of problems. To truly answer would take all day and would likely entail far more excruciating detail than any listener would care to endure. You’d lose everybody in the room. When I think of young readers and delve into what they really want to know when they ask that question, I conclude in a few different ways: 1) They don’t super care, it’s just an easy question to ask; 2) They somehow believe there’s one magical idea — a eureka moment! — rather than a slow accumulation of thoughts, impressions, insights, moments; or 3) The inquirers suspect that maybe there’s a secret they don’t know about: they look at their own lives, they look at the amazing books they love, and they just don’t see how one thing could possibly add up to the other. How does the fabric of my ordinary life become something quite as marvelous as a published book? And if that’s the puzzle, I’m not sure I can conjure a decent answer.

Where do ideas come from, anyway

Well, I’m currently proofreading the “first pass” of the typeset version of my next book, a prequel/sequel to Bystander, titled Upstander. To be clear, I’m looking at the words as they will appear in the final, printed book. It’s pretty much my last, best chance to make corrections and changes that won’t represent a giant hassle or extra expense to the publisher. In other words, if I change “swigged” to “gulped” nobody will get mad at me. 

So I’m reading the book again. Very carefully. It is about Mary, a middle school girl who played a small but crucial role in Bystander. Everyone has a story and I kept wondering about Mary’s. So I made something up. Her older brother suffers from a substance use problem. It’s about the challenges Mary faces in her crumbling home and at school with her friends and fellow students (the beginning of her friendship with Griffin, what really went on with bullying Chantel, and of course Eric, etc). But where’d that core idea come from? For starters, there’s the opioid crisis that’s been going on all around us, destroying lives and ruining families, sometimes devastating entire communities. For the moment, we’ve been preoccupied with more immediate horrors, but that doesn’t mean other problems have gone away. Ideas are all around us, as my pat answer goes. Not only that, but I think I have something to contribute to this particular conversation. The thing that every writer needs, something to say.

But I also have a specific experience in mind. I am driving my teenage daughter and two of her female friends somewhere. I listen to them talk (for some reason, they aren’t glued to their phones in this memory; lo, there’s an actual conversation!). It turns out that each of these three young woman, all fierce athletes, have something in common. They each have an older brother close in age. And without realizing it, they take turns swapping stories about these brothers — how one is on the spectrum, how another plays guitar and sings, how another is just super fun and a great friend. They laugh about the stupid things these brothers do. During that drive, one simple observation beamed into my skull: These girls absolutely and profoundly loved their older brothers. 

They looked up to them, too — with admiration, affection, pride, even a kind of awe. Maybe that’s youth, maybe that’s just the way some girls are, maybe life will get in the way over time. No matter. Because at that moment, I came away with something certain in my heart. Brothers are important and beloved.

Years passed. In a completely unrelated manner, I began to think about, for the first time, writing a sequel to Bystander, a notion I’d rejected for almost a decade. Suddenly, the time felt right. The idea was there.

I’d focus on Mary and her brother.

At least a shard of it can be traced back to that day in the car, zipping along, listening to three girls chatter about how freaking much they loved their brothers. Then I added some elements that would make that love more difficult, more painful, almost impossible.

So that’s where that idea came from. You don’t always have to travel to exotic places to find ’em.

 

 

NOTE: I have recently very much enjoyed doing book-specific Zoom visits with a Q & A format. Could be Jigsaw Jones, All Welcome Here, Blood Mountain, The Courage Test, Scary Tales, The Fall, Bystander, whatever feels right for your classroom. Contact me at jamespreller@aol.com and we can discuss it.

 

PW Features ALL WELCOME HERE In Its Back-to-School Roundup

Well, gee, readers: Has there ever been a better time to come out with a back-to-school book?

Well, yeah, yeah, there has been a better time. Pretty much all other times would have been better.

Oh well!

Anyway, an aside: I thought this was funny in a funny-very-not-funny way.

 

The image was posted by a blogger, Christine Stevens, who teaches theater in a middle school. Click here for the full post that accompanies it. Or just stay for the headline: “Note from the Principal: This Fall Your Classroom Will be Equipped with a Lion.”

Ha, ha, oh crap.

The Lion is a Metaphor, Folks!

Good luck, my friends, and please take every precaution to keep yourself and your students safe. I’m worried about you.

Moving on to the real reason I invited you here . . . 

BACK TO SCHOOL BOOKS

That’s right! Regardless of how schools open, or not; regardless of how we teach and learn, online or in person; there are time-honored themes that feel especially appropriate for any school year — and, yes, maybe even especially for 2020.

Emma Kantor, writing for Publishers Weekly, put together a list of titles that she felt were particularly right for this time of year. I was happy to see All Welcome Here at the top of the (alphabetical) list:

While it remains uncertain if schools across the country will reopen for students this fall, we’ve gathered a selection of noteworthy books to get young readers back in the spirit of learning and connecting with teachers and classmates—in-person or at a distance.

Picture Books

All Welcome Here

James Preller, illus. by Mary GrandPré. Feiwel and Friends, June 16 $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-250-15588-7. Ages 4–7.

The creator of the Jigsaw Jones series switches creative tacks with this sequence of haiku that propels classmates through a busy opening day of school, highlighting their activities, personalities, and emotions. Caldecott Honoree GrandPré captures the day’s shifting moods in pictures of absorbed, interacting kids of various skin tones and abilities.

Here’s the full link, just stomp on it. Emma includes many books that look pretty great from where I’m sitting. Check ’em out.

Thank you very much, Emma, both Mary and I appreciate the support!

 

 

 

Joanna Cole (1944-2020), Remembered: How the Magic School Bus Got Started

I was sorry to read that Joanna Cole has passed away at age 75. I have memories of her, met her a number of times over the years. Always a gracious, friendly, kind person. To me, at least!

Joanna was what I think of as a children’s book person. The genuine article. She worked for years, wrote many books, before “getting lucky” and hitting it out of the park with Bruce Degen and the Magic School Bus series.

I interviewed Joanna for The Big Book of Picture-Book Authors & Illustrators, published back in 2001. My intro paragraph:

What’s Joanna Cole interested in? Well, just about everything! And when Joanna Cole is interested in something, she usually writes a book about it. She’s written about fleas, cockroaches, dinosaurs, chicks, fish, saber-toothed tigers, frogs, horses, snakes, cars, puppies, insects, and (whew!) babies.

THE BACKSTORY TO THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS

Fresh out of college (and after a year of waitering at Beefsteak Charlie’s), I got a job as a junior copywriter at Scholastic for $11,500. I stayed on there in the second-half of the 1980s — the money was so good! — then moved upstate, and continued in various freelance capacities for years after that. There was a time when those folks at Scholastic were my publishing family. My very best pal from those days was an editor, Craig Walker, working under the direction of Jean Feiwel. Craig was hilarious and brilliant and we ate lunch together several times a week for many years. We loved eating chicken and rice at the deli next door. Delicious, inexpensive, and a little seedy, we way we liked it. Ah, those were happy times. Anyway, it was Craig, assisted by Phoebe Yeh, who came up with the idea for the Magic School Bus series.

The standard science books for children at the time were usually dull, dry affairs. Just deadly. Straightforward facts accompanied by black-and-white photographs. Craig had the idea of trying something bold and new, bringing humor and full-color, cartoon-styled art into the science curriculum. The first writer he called with Joanna Cole.

At the time, Joanna was respected for her well-researched nonfiction books. She was smart and accurate. In 1984, she had published a well-reviewed book, How You Were Born. But what really caught Craig’s attention was that Joanna had another side to her work; she also wrote silly, funny, playful books for young readers. Most notably, she created the “Clown-Arounds” (a precursor to Dav Pilkey’s “Dumb Bunnies” and in the same vein as James Marshall’s “The Stupids”). And that was the genius of Craig’s idea: he brought together the two sides of Joanna Cole into one book series. The science and the silly. It was as if Joanna had a split personality and Craig helped make her whole again.

As a fun fact, Bruce Degen was not the first illustrator that Craig called with the series offer. No, he phoned Marc Brown first. But at the time, Marc was busy with the Arthur books and felt he couldn’t sign up for another project. So Craig, a fan of Jamberry and the Commander Toad books, flipped through his Rolodex and found Bruce’s number. That call worked out pretty well for all concerned, including Marc Brown.

What I remember and most respect about Joanna is that she was simply an old-school children’s book writer. Making books, and more books, and more books. Plying the craft, fighting to earn a decent living. All for the love of children’s literature.

Then, yeah, one day she got a phone call from Craig.

A treasured snap of Craig and I from 1986, the year the Magic School Bus was first published.

A lucky break? Sure was! But Joanna got that call because of all the work she had accomplished before that point. She had earned her good fortune by very quietly putting in years and years of hard work. The foundation was already built. When opportunity came knocking, she had all the skills to take a loose idea and turn it into a groundbreaking series.

ALL WELCOME HERE Among 3 Titles Featured in This Back-to-School Roundup

“James Preller pays tribute

to all the big feelings

that bubble to the surface when

a new school year begins.”

 

I was delighted to come across this article in The Virginian-Pilot. My thanks to Caroline Luzzatto for the kind words and excellent recommendations. I’m looking forward to reading the other two books mentioned, especially The Word for Friend by Aidan Cassie. Esperanto, anyone? Good luck with your books, Selina and Aidan!

 

As a strange school year comes to a strange end, it’s easy to see the long summer ahead as a welcome break from worksheet packets or Zoom class meetings. But it’s a bittersweet feeling for so many students — including my own, who said, as we met for the last time, that they missed school and were looking forward to returning to class in a way they never had before. June seems like an odd time to page through a stack of back-to-school books — but they are landing in bookstores this month, in anticipation of a summer filled with longing and a fall that children and parents alike hope is full of promise.

“All Welcome Here” by James Preller, illustrated by Mary GrandPre.(Ages 4 to 7. Feiwel & Friends. $18.99.) In haiku form, James Preller pays tribute to all the big feelings that bubble to the surface when a new school year begins, from “all the bright new things” in the backpack to the end of the day, when “One question remains: ‘May we/ come back tomorrow?’ ” Mary GrandPre’s exuberant mixed-media illustrations show a diverse group of students at desks, rugs and library bookshelves, in a school that welcomes them as they ponder lunch, recess, name tags, and belonging: “At every desk,/A chair with tennis-ball feet,/A place just for you.”

“One Golden Rule at School: A Counting Book” by Selina Alko. (Ages 2 to 6. Henry Holt and Co. $17.99.) Selina Alko’s dynamic mixed-media illustrations give young readers so much to look at in this warm and welcoming book that offers not just a chance to count but also a message of community. The book counts up through the beginning of the day, then back down as the school day ends, offering a reassuring look at “ONE great day at school,” complete with “ONE golden rule” that encourages students to treat others as they wish to be treated.

“The Word for Friend” by Aidan Cassie. (Ages 4 to 8. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $18.99.) Kemala is a high-spirited, talkative newcomer (and, incidentally, an adorable pangolin) ready to find her way when she comes to a new country with her mother. She gazes out the window: “Somewhere in her new town was her new school. It was filled with new friends.” And perhaps it is — but Kemala, unable to speak her classmates’ language, doesn’t know how to connect with them. Mortified by her future friends’ reaction to her own language, she curls into an armored ball (as pangolins do). But Kemala is too bold and energetic to be discouraged for long — and using the universal language of play, she finds one friend, and then many. Cassie’s tale is encouraging and warm, offering a peek inside the mind of a language-learner who doesn’t yet have the words to express herself. (An extra bonus for language fans: To make the experience universal, rather than particular to any country, the new language Kemala is learning is Esperanto, which is discussed in an endnote.)

 

True Support, and a Beautiful Idea

Two friends in TN sent me this shot. They are huge book people who make it a point to support the arts: they buy books. Recently they purchased a copy of my book All Welcome Here and placed it in a nearby Little Free Library. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Thanks, Lance and Jeannette!