James Preller’s Blog

Stories Behind the Story: The Case of the Marshmallow Monster

I turn your attention to Jigsaw Jones #11: The Case of the Marshmallow Monster (still in stock!).

The idea for this one can be traced to Rockville Centre, New York, home of my third-favorite brother, Al. (Just kidding, bro.) He mentioned that the neighborhood men enjoyed an annual father-son camping trip. I immediately recognized the story potential, a convenient device to get Jigsaw out of his school environment. Remember, writing a series presents its own set of difficulties, boredom (the “been there/done that” syndrome) being one of them. I’d found that to keep the work fresh and self sane it was best to break out of the perceived formula whenever possible. I modified the idea by including girls on the trip. After all, where would a camping trip be without Mila Yeh? It would be like forgetting the s’mores.

* In the folklore tradition, no matter how outrageous the tale, there’s usually a pedestrian message behind each story. The story might involve, say, banshees and ghosts, but the message amounts to: don’t go to bed without first doing the dishes. For the campfire story in this book, the adult intention was to encourage the campers to stay inside their tents at night. However, it spurred a much different result. I needed one of the fathers to tell a scary story, thought of this guy . . .

. . . and invented Shirley Hitchcock’s dad. You may notice the resemblance, as illustrated by Jamie Smith, below.

Mr. Hitchcock stirred the fire with a long stick. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. We sat gathered around the warm flames, waiting. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he muttered, scolding himself. “I don’t want to scare you kids.”

A chorus of voices rose up.

“It’s okay.”

“We won’t be scared.”

“Besides, we like getting scared.”

Later on, Mr. Jordan calls the storyteller by his first name, and the winking tribute was complete: “I’d say that’s enough for tonight, Alfred. It’s time these kids were ready for bed.” Do any young readers get this reference? Doubtful. I do it for my own amusement, and for any parents and teachers who might be reading the books aloud.

* I borrowed the handclap rhyme from some neighborhood kids, David and Emily. When I heard it, I knew I could use it in a book someday — and with their permission, did.

Chicka-chicka, boom-boom.

I can do karate!

Chicka-chicka, boom-boom.

I can move my body!

Chicka-chicka, boom-boom.

I won’t tell my mommy!

Chicka-chicka, boom-boom.

Oops, I’m sorry!

* Due to the benign culture of the stories — it’s a safe world where everybody’s nice, basically — I struggled to invent scenes where Jigsaw could encounter real danger. Only infrequently was I able to give the young reader an edge-of-the-seat, trembly feeling. I think I managed it in this one, however. I get a kick out of writing in that tradition, where the doorknob slowly, slowly turns.

* I still like the opening to Chapter Two — reminds me of my father — though I wonder if it’s already dated in these days of the GPS:

We got to the campground right on time. That is, if your idea of “right on time” includes a flat tire and getting lost in the middle of nowhere. That’s the place right after my dad says, “I know a little shortcut.”

It’s a few mile past, “I don’t need a map.”

* Lastly, the book features another sly tribute — this time to Bogart and Bacall and the classic film, “To Have and Have Not,” based on the Hemingway novel, screenplay by Jules Furthman and William Falkner (who could write a little bit).

I shook my head. “Too dangerous. It’s something I have to do alone.”

Danika took off her necklace. She handed it to me. I saw that it was a leather string with a whistle attached. “You might need this,” she said. “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and . . . blow.”

Baseball, Gavin, Six Innings, Championship Games, etc.

I don’t like to brag, but.

Look at this kid, will ya.

That’s Gavin, right around his 11th birthday, back in June/July. We endured a heartbreaking All-Star experience and I had to let time pass before revisiting it.

This year, along with my friend Andy, I coached a team of ten-year-olds in the District 13 All-Star Tournament. We played five games and found ourselves in the Championship Game — a scenario not much different than what I wrote about in the book, Six Innings (now in paperback).

As it turns out, that was the problem. Six innings. Would it were five.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Gavin really shined in this tournament, played the best baseball of his life. Pitched a shutout, fielded great, hit a ton. He was focused and he cared and somehow it all came together for him.

As a parent, you love ‘em whether they strike out or hit a double. And let me tell you — it’s easier when they hit the double.

So there he was on the mound to start the Championship Game against our talented arch-rivals. It was a tense game, all the boys felt it, and nerves got the best of many of them. Both sides made errors. By the top of the 6th, we were on top, 10-6. Gavin had pitched with poise and determination, but after throwing five full innings and 75 pitches, the Little League maximum for boys his age, it was time to turn the ball over to someone else.

We had a four run lead. We needed three more outs.

Never happened. Our rivals exploded for 11 runs (!) in the 6th — it was the longest, most brutal inning of my coaching career — and we fell, 17-10, with an ignoble thud. Gavin was seriously bummed. For my part, I slept less than two hours that night. Just tossed and turned and replayed it all in my head, over and over. It was a week before I could walk without a limp.

When you write a book, you can get that last out, the boy can kiss the girl, you can pick any ending you want. Real life, that’s a tougher thing.

So let’s look at that scene from Six Innings one more time . . .

Max takes the sign, nods, understands. He wants me to climb the ladder.

One last time, Max Young is alone in his daydreams, throwing against an imaginary hitter in a game of his own invention. He is the author and the instrument, the pitcher and the ball, the beginning and the end.

Max rocks back into his windup, he drives forward, the ball leaves his fingertips, comes in high and hard and true.

Angel Tatis hits nothing but air. Swing and a miss.

That’s it. Game over.

Max drops to his knees, flings his glove high into the sky. All the boys rush the mound, shouting, screaming, piling on . . . .

Sigh.

This Week’s Greatest Thing Ever: Kanye’s Tweets + New Yorker Cartoons

I remember immediately liking Kanye West when his first CD arrived. The single “Jesus Walks” sounded new and inventive, breathing fresh life into a surprisingly resilient musical genre that bordered dangerously close to growing stale and repetitive.

Over time, it was gradually revealed that Kanye was kind of a jerk, in the self-centered egomaniacal mold.

Talented, but yuck. That is: Perfect for the Twitterverse.

Since we’re in the Age of the Mash-up — for example, I recently praised the randomized pairing of Neitzsche quotes with Bill Keane’s Family Circus comics, called “The Nietzsche Family Circus” — it seemed almost predictable that some creative body would combine Kanye’s tweets with actual New Yorker cartoons.

Enjoy the postmodern meta-meta absurdity. Here’s a few to get you started . . .

The people who deserve all the credit can be found at #KanyeNewYorkerTweets (sorry, having trouble with the link).

Overheard: “One time I touched Grandma’s hair and it was hard. It was HARD!”

I don’t have a whole lot to add to that story, actually.

The line was recently spoken by my daughter, Maggie Ann, about my mother, Ann.

The Point of Diving Into a Lake: To Be in the Lake

A while back I saw and enjoyed the film, “Bright Star,” written and directed by Jane Campion, based on the life of poet John Keats.

During the early stages of Keats’s relationship with Fanny Brawne, she lamented that she still didn’t know how to “work out” a poem.

And his response was so wise, so wonderful, that I’ll give it to you here — largely because I think of it often, and because I cheered silently when the lines were first uttered, because they perfectly expressed my own beliefs about poetry:

“A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is a experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.”

Beautiful, right? I learned that perspective on poetry a long, long time ago from a very good teacher at Oneonta named Patrick Meanor. Like any great teacher, he opened up many doors of perception and pushed us through. Thanks to him, I’m still walking down many of those same long, winding hallways.

Even while I strove, as a reader, for greater understanding and comprehension, I also learned to accept the untameable nature of poetry. Like nature itself, poetry wasn’t there to be mastered, some wild beast to be conquered with whip, chair, and cage.

If poetry was a howling wilderness, I refused to be its Cotton Mather.

You had to experience the poem, like a Mark Rothko painting on a wall, be attentive in its presence. Somehow by demanding meaning, or ownership — but what does the red mean? — we entirely miss the mystery of great art.

I really believe that. And I know that’s a romantic view of poetry and art. Which is why a part of me has never trusted the advanced writing workshops and masters degrees at various top universities (degrees which, I acknowledge, have benefited many writers far more talented than yours truly).

You can’t pick over poetry like a cadaver on a metal table. To that end, I’ll quote another classic, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” by Walt Whitman.

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Poetry soothes & emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.

The Soft Pretzel Bacon Burger . . . Just Seems Wrong

No one goes to Friendly’s anymore. Honestly, I don’t know how they stay in business.

No. One. Goes. There.

But still, you see the restaurants all over the place, parking lots empty except for a few battered Fords and some wind-blown litter, slatternly waitresses hanging out by the back door smoking cigarettes, a few families ducking in for their Fribble fix.

So they tinker with the menu, in the hope of finding some magical new combination that will bring the franchise back to relevancy.

Witness: The Soft Pretzel Bacon Burger. That’s right, they’ve done away with the bun and replaced it with . . . a very soft, pillowy even, pretzel.

Bon appetite!

As it turns out, I immortalized Friendly’s in Bystander. Go ahead, turn to page 44. Eric is out with his mother and younger brother, Rudy.

They are eating lunch at Friendly’s.

“How come the pictures on the menu look so much better than the real food?” Rudy wondered.

“It’s called advertising,” Eric told his little brother. “They try to trick you into buying the frozen clams casino. You’d be better off sucking on the menu.”

——-

Of course, I wrote that scene before the innovation of the new Soft Pretzel Bacon Burger. Or else it would have been an entirely different book. Sort of like, I don’t know, imagine The Phantom Tollbooth in the age of cell phones. Different, right?

Literate Lives Reviews “Justin Fisher Declares War!”

My friend Bill Prosser over at the outstanding Literate Lives blog just read and reviewed my new book, Justin Fisher Declares War!

You can read that review in full by clicking here. My favorite part of the review:

“It’s short!”

Ha! Actually, Bill created a photo mosaic inspired by the book and I thought it was a very clever, creative response to a book with some real pedagogic potential. In the comments section, Bill explained how he did it, so I thought I’d share that with my Nation of Readers (see below).

Yes, that sums up my book quite nicely. War and Peace it is not. According to Bill:

“I use Flickr to collect the pictures and use BigHugeLabs to create the mosaic. It’s really very simple and fun. I haven’t tried it with my students because I’m still looking for good picture collections that are accessible to my students.”

Bill is an old school guy, meaning that he’s hopelessly stuck on books, but by dint of effort he’s forced himself, admirably, to keep apace of technology. While I personally remain averse to Twitter (Bill just took the plunge into the Twitterverse — Ashton Kutcher, watch your back!), I do think he hit on something with this mosaic concept. Bill’s been happily making a few based on some of his favorite books (Savvy, Make Way for Ducklings, and more). Check out this post, “Some Tech Stuff for the Summer,” for the glorious details, cool images, and happy links.

Building Character

There are a million ways to create a well-rounded character, and all of them crystallize with concrete details. Today I’d like to share one small example.

I was reading an interview with a young actress, Elisabeth Moss, and a couple of times she described things as “super-[fill in the blank]!”

You know: “I was super, super, super-happy” and “she’s still super-young.”

That appealed to me as a writer, for a number of reasons. It’s a youthful, energetic, and distinctive way of speaking. I immediately imagined a female character who uses that phrasing in her dialogue. Since I’m currently revising a book, I’ll look at giving that vocabulary to a character (and only one character). I may discover that it works,  or find that it’s unnecessary or even excessive. We never wish to gild the lily. In which case I’ll file it away — read: hope to remember it — for another day.

The point is, I do seek out particular phrases or speech patterns for different characters. Charlie Brown says, “Good grief.” Jigsaw Jones says, “Oh brother,” “Go figure,” and “Yeesh.” Another character might say “like” a lot or utter something like, “Am I right or am I wrong?” As a writer, you try to find those singular ways of speaking, anything to help individualize a character. Then you look at clothes, or mannerisms — the way Mila Yeh pulls on her long black hair, or another character scratches behind his knees — and those specific details build character.

So thank you, Elisabeth Moss. You were super-helpful!

Guest Blogger at Mackids

I contributed to the cyber-clutter by posting over at the Mackids blog. Kathryn Hurley had asked me to write something about A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade. I mulled that over for a week or so, and came up with this, below.

Funny, in clipping it and pasting it here, I decided to ditch the first paragraph. That happens a lot with writing. You scribble and scribble, then realize that the story starts why down in the fourth paragraph. It would have been faster to start there in the first place, but I suppose you’ve got to go through the process of getting there . . .

I have vivid memories of playing alone as a little boy, the youngest of seven children. Inspired by “Batman” and “The Wild, Wild West,” I used to create epic battles in my living room. I’d fight imaginary villains, hurl myself headlong into the cushions, throw wild left hooks into the air, crash the bad guys’ heads together like coconuts. Likewise, I’d often go outside to pitch a rubber baseball against the shed behind my house. I’d imagine myself as a big league pitcher going up against the great hitters of my time: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and more.

And here’s the thing: There was always an internal narrative going on in my head.  “Two outs, bases loaded . . .” I’d mumble to myself, setting the scene. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was telling myself stories, inhabiting an imaginary world, learning how to write. This made me, of course, no different from any other kid I’ve ever met. These days, I’ll look out the window and see my son out by the pool, waving his arms, lips moving, telling himself some kind of story. It seems like it’s a fundamental aspect of being a kid, living in that imaginary world of our own making. Maybe that’s why we dream, I don’t know. Maybe it’s necessary.

So when it came to writing A PIRATE’S GUIDE TO FIRST GRADE, I think I was drawing on those memories of being a boy, a head full of imaginings. The boy in the book thinks about pirates. They are alive to him, and as he goes through the day they remain vital in his mind. The narrative itself isn’t much, a fairly uneventful first day at school –- with story hour and lunch and recess and a trip to the library. But I like the creative core of this book, the hard truth of a boy’s imaginings, the story in his head.

For an author, it’s a magical experience when an illustrator breathes new life into the manuscript, adds color to that black-and-white page. I’m blessed that Greg Ruth did such an amazing job with this story. But then again, Greg was a kid once, and somehow he still has that map that allows him to return to that creative place of the mind, a boy making things up. Maybe that’s the treasure to this job after all, where X marks the spot and we find ourselves alone in a room, lips moving.

Another Starred Review for “A Pirate’s Guide”

This makes me happy. A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade earned a second starred review, this time from Publishers Weekly . . .

“This rambunctious first day tale is fit for any young buccaneer. Leading an imaginary crew who are drawn in pale pencil, the red-haired protagonist shines his “snappers” (brushes his teeth), breakfasts on grub and grog, and boards the “great, grand jolly boat” (also known as the school bus), journeying to meet his teacher: “Silver was her name, and a fine old salt was she!” The pirates are ever-present companions, sharing in the ups and downs of the day (“We counted and spelled ’till we nearly dropped, brain-addled and weary”). Preller’s buoyant pirate-inflected storytelling and Ruth’s illustrations, which have a decidedly vintage flair, form an exuberant tribute to imagination and a spirit of adventure.”