Greg Ruth is a remarkable illustrator and, from what I can gather, an all-around good guy. He’s currently finishing up the illustrations for our upcoming book, scheduled for sometime in 2010, A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade (Feiwel & Friends). What you are looking at is an early ROUGH SKETCH that Greg produced for it. Yes, that’s loosey-goosey Greg, getting all jiggy with it; I can’t wait to see the finishes.
But that’s not why I’m writing. I’d like to belatedly announce Greg’s latest experiment, THE 52 WEEKS PROJECT. Each Monday for a full year Greg promises to offer a new drawing of the same size and proportion, but wildly varying subject matter, posted on the STOREFRONT section of his way cool website (just click on the bag of bananas to find the storefront). Greg has worked for years on comic books, graphic novels, book covers, and other stuff; Pirates is his first (but certainly not last) picture book. Click around and enjoy — and thank Feiwel & Friends for bringing this incredible talent into the world of picture books.
(By the way, you can click on Greg’s artwork above for a larger image, revealing more detail. But you knew that already, didn’t you?)
During the revision process for Six Innings, I cut more than 10,000 words. It was a very difficult time for me, filled with doubt and uncertainty. But I trusted my wise & experienced editors, Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel, and understood their concerns. We all wanted the same thing — for this book to be as good as it could be. So I semi-sadly started hacking away.
My original concept for the book was to use a single game as the structural skeleton, on which I’d hang riffs and character studies, the stories that would add flesh to the book. Well in the first draft, that technique got a little confusing at times, and the through-line of the game itself got muddled, so in revision we cut out a bunch of off-the-field moments to achieve, we hoped, better balance. Some sections I simply lopped away like Van Gogh’s ear, some made it through unscathed, while still others survived in severely truncated form. That was the case with the selection below, which was reduced to a couple of brief paragraphs on pp. 53-54. I always liked it; hey, we all did. This was a classic case of removing something that was, in isolation, good (or so I thought), but that in our view did not do enough to serve the narrative arc. This happens with movies all the time. To preserve the narrative flow, the forward march of things, some decent material winds up on the cutting room floor. (And, I guess, eventually winds up on a blog somewhere.)
Here’s a 38-second example of a deleted scene that never made it into the final cut of a popular movie:
Back to Six Innings. This is how one section appeared in an early unedited draft, before I stopped by with a machete:
* * * * *
TYLER WEINBERG
“Ty-Ty Smash”
Naked except for a drooping diaper, two-and-a-half year-old Tyler Weinberg swaggered around in his backyard. As usual, he held a large stick in his hand. Tyler spied a squirrel and moved toward it, mischief blazing in his eyes.
“Ty-Ty smash,” he announced to the birds in the bush. Whap! He smacked the stick on the lawn. Hee-hee. The sound made him laugh. Whap, whap!
“Ty-Ty smash,” he repeated happily.
Whoosh, thwack. He whipped the stick against the hammock, still damp from last night’s rain. The squirrel watched transfixed, alarmed, yet curious. Its tail flicked nervously. The creature sized up the approaching pink-bellied menace and decided: Trouble. A final twitch of the tail and the gray creature scurried a few feet up the trunk of an oak tree, just beyond, it thought, harm’s reach.
Tyler Weinberg pushed against the tree with both hands. He tried knocking it down. Again he swung the stick, leaping to reach the squirrel. Thud, thwap, crack; thud, thwap, crack. Again and again.
The squirrel complained bitterly: Tcccccckkkkkssss.
Thud, thwap, oomphff.
A glorious peel of laughter erupted in the backyard. A whoop of triumph.
Whap, whap, whappp!
The back door flew open, banged closed. “WHAT’S GOING ON OUT HERE?” Tyler’s mother, Amy Weinberg, screamed. “TYLER! TYLER, GET AWAY FROM THAT SQUIRREL! PUT DOWN THAT STICK THIS INSTANT!” Her voice was rising, shrilly climbing toward hysteria. She barreled forward incautiously and twisted an ankle on a battered toy truck.
Tyler turned to his mother and grinned, triumphant.
“Ty-Ty smash,” he explained proudly.
He was holding a dead squirrel by the tail.
And so a slugger was born.
Tyler — or “Red Bull,” as he came to be called by his coaches — was simply one of those boys suffused with an excess of energy. Super-charged. He could not sit still. In truth, he could barely sit at all. Knees popping up and down, toes tapping, fingers fidgeting, brain a blur, arms akimbo. Bouncing was better. Jumping, running, leaping, pouncing, flouncing, crawling, cavorting, gamboling — all good. But best of all, the single act that calmed Tyler, that focused his scattered energies and made his heart soar?
Smashing things.
The world was his piñata. And there he stood, dizzy and daffy and blindfolded, a big stick in his grip, eager to swing and swing again. To batter, bash, smash, and shatter. The boy liked to clobber things. He became a one-boy wrecking crew. And the bigger he grew, the harder they fell: Crash, bash, boom. Broken lamps, cracked windows, whatever was in his path. Especially, and most happily, baseballs.
This is genius. Maybe you’ve already seen it, because as usual I’m a little late to the party, but to me here’s this week’s “Greatest Thing Ever!”
As the website, created by Dan Walsh, explains: “Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.”
I strongly urge you to check it out — a comic that would cause Jean Paul Sartre to cachinnate. And for the record, I’ve never, ever liked Garfield. This web sensation has gotten a lot of much-deserved press recently, here and here and here, plus there’s also going to be a book (and I totally want it)!
A few friendly readers commented that they enjoyed discovering Mary Gauthier through this blog. So I thought I’d send some love to Solomon Burke, one of our neglected national treasures, an amazing soul singer from the 60’s whose career never quite lifted off (and if you watch the video below, where he appears with the Rolling Stones, you may see why “lift off” was unlikely). A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Burke was born in 1940 and began his recording career at age 18. The Stones covered his song, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” back in 1964. Another Burke-penned tune, “Cry To Me,” was featured in the film Dirty Dancing.
I own two of his later CDs, and both are great. In 2002, Burke — the proclaimed “King of Rock and Soul” — made a comeback into public consciousness with the Grammy Award-winning, “Don’t Give Up on Me.” It got my attention because many of my favorite artists, including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson, and Tom Waits, helped co-write the songs. It was produced by another personal favorite, Joe Henry, who favors a clean, clear, natural sound. In 2006, Burke came out with “Nashville,” featuring guest vocals from more of my favorites: Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Emmylou Harris. You can’t go wrong with either disk.
The clip below is great fun, but not truly representative of his current, more subdued, introspective, soul-searching sound. He’s been called the last great blues singer of his generation, and I can’t argue with that. Oh, and by the way, reportedly Solomon Burke has 14 children, 90 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren — and counting.
We discovered your Jigsaw Jones series at the beginning of summer as part of a Scholastic mystery books collection. At first we were reading 2-3 chapters a day, but it didn’t take long for us to be reading a book a day. My boys, Jonathan (6) and Andrew (5), drop everything they are doing and sit still for the entire time it takes to read one of your books. There aren’t a lot of mystery books for this age group, so we were delighted to find you! I also appreciate finding books that are about boys specifically, although Mila seems like a really great best friend. Thanks to you I have spent some quality time with two little guys who rarely stop moving!
Jonathan has this to say:
I like your Jigsaw books a lot. My favorite character is Jigsaw. I wonder how you know the secret codes. I wonder if you make them up or if you were a spy or something.
Andrew says:
“He needs to keep on writing Jigsaw Jones cause it’s a nice book. I like to read it. My favorite part is when Jigsaw Jones finds out the case.
Sincerely,
Esther
Under advisement, I decided not to mess with Texas, so I replied:
Dear Jonathan and Andrew:
Thanks for writing to me, you guys, and thanks especially to MOM for typing the email. I’m so glad to hear when young readers like my books, because I really do believe that reading is important. If you want to get smart, crack open a book!
Jonathan, I usually get ideas for secret codes by reading books about, um, secret codes. I have a bunch of them on my bookshelf. Sometimes I’ll make up my own codes. I was never a detective when I was a kid, but as the youngest of seven children — four brothers and two sisters — I did do a lot of spying on them, especially when my brother, Billy, had a girlfriend over! Good old Janice Snellbaker! I think I loved her! I even had a “spy scope” that let me see around corners. It may have been the greatest thing ever.
Andrew, I have good news and you are the first person I’m going to tell: I’m writing a new “Jigsaw Jones” book right now. I mean, I should be writing it . . . except I’m writing to you, instead. I got a phone call the other day from a young, talented editor at Scholastic — the company that makes the books — and he asked if I wanted to write a new Jigsaw Jones mystery. I asked, “When?” He answered, “Now!” So I looked into my empty wallet and cried, “Let’s do it!”
Thanks so much for writing all the way from The Lone Star State! I visited the Alamo once, and as a boy your age I thought Jim Bowie was the coolest cowboy ever. He sure did own a big, big knife, sometimes called “The Arkansas Toothpick.”
