Archive for Along Came Spider

Fan Mail Wednesday #10

August 19, 2008 / / No comments

Wow, these Wednesdays sure do creep up on a guy? Here I am, literally minding my own business, when — DANG — up comes another Fan Mail Wednesday banging me upside the head. Whap, whap, whap.

Amazingly, fan mail-wise, I had a few choices this week. But still, nothing much from kids. I guess they are all at camp or something. Anyway, I’m not getting many questions to answer. So I apologize. We’ll just have to slog on in the wilderness until I receive some mail from actual young readers.

That said: Part of my thinking with this blog was to take it one day at a time, and try to reflect the day-to-day life of a “real, live” writer: what feeds it, what flows out, what comes back, what happens. You know, the grim reality of my sad existence on this scorched and bitter Earth. So, here’s an email I just received. It’s a kind note from the most important adult reviewing population out there, that’s right, a letter from the front lines — from an actual classroom teacher!

Dear Mr. James Preller,

Hello. I am a fifth grade teacher in New York City. I just finished reading your book “Along Came Spider.” I really enjoyed the book and am looking forward tousing it for a read aloud in the upcoming school year. I am always on the look out for new and interesting books and yours is both. I greatly appreciate that you went into classrooms and observed. It makes the characters and the setting much more genuine. The fact that the children keep writers notebooks and conference with the teacher makes the experience authentic for the reader and I know that my students will be able to relate. The character of Trey is very well crafted, you definitely researched behavior associated with Aspergers and Autism and it is reflected in the intelligent and observant nature of Trey. I want to compliment you on finding a way to familiarize students with the behaviors without making it something completely strange and odd. It is important that the developing generation be as familiar with the behaviors as educators have come to be. Ava is also a truly enjoyable and straight forward character. I always look for who the author has chosen to be the conscience or voice of reason in a book. It is rarely the main character otherwise there would be no drama or conflict. In the best written books, it is the voice that comes from the side. The one you almost ignore until they say what needs to be said. I thought the part where she told spider she thought he was Trey’s friend… her mistake, Trey is his friend was that small smart moment that teaches the reader what the author wants to say.

Congratulations on a well-written book that I am sure will be enjoyed by many readers in the years to come. Thank you.

Robyn

I wrote back:

Robyn, please send me a mailing address, because you are this week’s lucky winner! I have a garage full of Ultra SilverSteel Kenmore Freestanding Gas Ranges — with 12,000 BTU power burners, an extra large window, and easy-to-clean cooktop features — and I’m going to ship one to your house just as soon as I can locate my cousin Earl, buy him a fresh case of Rolling Rock, and gas-up his pickup truck!

Congratulations. And look for Earl’s pickup truck in your driveway sometime during the next two weeks.

JP

Okay, for real, that’s not what I wrote to Robyn. What I replied was personal and none of your business. But I just love the idea of sending my blog readers free home appliances. Imagine Earl’s battered, mustard-colored pickup truck pulling up to the house: “Robyn, honey? You better get on out here double-quick. There’s a delivery man here named Earl and he’s got some papers for you to sign.” Sigh, it’s my great longing. I want to be the only children’s author who gives away Kenmore Gas Ranges. Is that too much to ask? A fella can dream, can’t he? Otherwise, I mean, why write? Why be in this business at all?

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Kirkus Reviews Spider

August 13, 2008 / / One comment

Here’s what Kirkus Reviews had to say about Along Came Spider:

Spider Stevens and Trey Cooper have lived next door to each other their entire lives and have been best friends throughout their years at Spiro Agnew Elementary School. Trey has a type of autism that seems to accentuate the worst traits of ADHD and OCD. He has poor self-control, peculiar habits and awkward social skills. In fifth grade, Trey’s obvious eccentricities, once acceptable and even endearing, are now a liability, and Trey’s peers now regard him as weird and an outcast. This puts Spider in the difficult position of having to choose whether to remain loyal to his oldest friend or to abandon him to join the ranks of the popular kids. Preller adeptly portrays the psychological and social dynamics of this age group, and Trey is realistic and sympathetic as a misfit, if not as memorable as Jack Gantos’s Joey Pigza or Jerry Spinelli’s David Zinkoff. The pressures Spider feels from his peers to belong and conform will resonate with middle-grade readers

I don’t know, reviews are so weird. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with this review, though naturally is doesn’t inspire me to do the Dance of Joy. The Spinelli/Zinkoff reference is from the book, Loser, btw, which several people told me to read when I first discussed Spider with them. The problem is, though I hugely respect Spinelli — first book, age 41! — I find it’s distinctly unhelpful to read another author’s take on a similar topic. It’s paralyzing. There are many times when I use books as sources of inspiration, but when I’m deep into writing, I stay far away from any material that might be close to what I’m doing.

One other thing about that word, autism. Trey Cooper is never diagnosed in the book. I never said that he is autistic, intentionally. I did that for several reasons, primarily because I don’t think that kids relate to each other that way. If somebody makes another child angry or annoyed, a typical eleven-year-old isn’t going to think, “Oh, his mother is an alcoholic,” or, “That’s cool, he’s got OCD.” The response is more direct and immediate. The second reason is that I’m not qualified to put a medical label on Trey, though I gave him many traits common with the vast array of characteristics that fall under Spectrum Disorders. Lastly, one aspect of the book is getting away from labels (jock, geek, brainiac, weirdo, whatever), and of trying to see the individual underneath, i.e., walking a mile in someone else’s sneakers.

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Finding the Story: Writing Spider

August 12, 2008 / / No comments

I plan on writing a series of “behind-the-scenes” blog entries about my experience writing the book, Along Came Spider. My writing process, if you will. Sigh. I have to confess that the thought of it makes me want to hurl, since it borders on self-obsession and pretentiousness. I really don’t want to this be about me, per say, but that’s all I’ve got, my story. Here’s how I came to write a single book.

—————-

A few years ago, two editors at Scholastic, Craig Walker and Shannon Penney, came to me with an idea. They wondered if I’d like to try writing for readers who were slightly older than my Jigsaw Jones audience (ages 6-9, approximately). They also hoped that I could make it a school-based story, probably for grades 4-5. I agreed to give it a shot.

But . . . what next?

I didn’t have a grasp on 4th- and 5th-grade classrooms, so that became the first order of business. I couldn’t begin writing until I could speak with author/ity on that world. While writing Jigsaw, I sat in on many, many 2/3 classes; I enjoyed it, learned from it, was inspired by those sessions of silent watching. The ideas came organically, growing from the specificity of that soil. I contacted a local fifth-grade teacher, Chris Porter at Glenmont Elementary, because I’d known her for years, admired her enthusiasm for literature and her commitment to teaching. With openness and warmth, Chris invited me into her classroom, where I was free to visit any time throughout the school year. Over a period of six months, I came and went as I wished, sitting in the back, silently observing. If something particularly cool was going on, Chris might send me a note. Like, oh, “For our Canada unit, we’re making an eight-foot long paper mache moose. It’s a mess, and it’s crazy, and we don’t really have any time to do it, but it’s so much fun! You’ve got to come and see it.”

I didn’t have a story in mind. I didn’t know what I was looking for. My goal was to sit and absorb the goings-on of a lively, creative classroom, and see what comes of it. I saw the flow of the school day, the way things worked. I filled a composition book with random notes, quick character sketches, hair-brained ideas. No story yet, but I was getting a handle on that world. I soon realized that sitting in a well-structured classroom was not nearly enough. I needed to see the students “in the wild,” meaning: recess, the lunch room, gym, on the bus. That is, all the time they were away from Chris’s watchful eye, when they had more freedom to interact, to be themselves, to mess up.

Eventually the themes in this story — which was to become Along Came Spider — began to take hold. I began deeply interested in exclusion and inclusion, in how some kids didn’t quite fit with the larger group. At the younger grades, eccentric behavior was more easily absorbed. But after a few years — second grade, third, fourth — the students become more familiar with each other. I could see how some of them were in danger of becoming increasingly isolated. I could imagine that Middle School could easily become a problem; they were at risk of becoming lost in the crowd, alienated, separate and alone. I didn’t see students who were picked on or bullied. They were just . . . accepted, tolerated, ignored.

When responding to an email query, Chris wrote to me:

“I know as a fifth-grade teacher, I always hope that the ‘troubled’ student who doesn’t fit in the mainstream group is able to find just one friend. I truly believe you can get through anything knowing that you have someone who likes you and see you for just you — as well as someone who will include you in the most difficult times of the day — recess/lunch!”

I taped those words to the wall beside my computer. And I was on my way. I still didn’t have the story, exactly, but I had the stirrings of what I wanted to write about. Now I needed to do a new kind of research. It was time to hit the books . . .

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Spider in Stock!

August 6, 2008 / / No comments

One of the salient features of Amazon.com is that it lists the sales rank of every item. So a hypothetical author could — hypothetically speaking — click on his or her book to get a sense of sales. While Amazon represents a small sample of total sales, I’ve always found it generally indicative of the big picture: a semi-unreliable barometer. My editors have warned me against looking, since it becomes a nervous tick, like picking at a scab: “Don’t do that, leave it alone, it’s disgusting.” But . . . we all do it. Because authors at their core are scared witless that nobody cares, and amazed (relieved, gratified, stunned) when anyone does.

I learned today that Along Came Spider — that hotly-awaited tome about the trials and tribulations of fifth grade — is now in stock. The current sales rank is #1,209,311. In English, folks: One million, two-hundred and nine thousand, three hundred and eleven. Ouch. Okay, it’s early yet, maybe the rest of the world hasn’t caught on. (Or, er, maybe it has?!) Isn’t that what every author fears the most? You write the book, somehow manage to get it published, and the world collectively yawns.

We shall see. In the meantime, I’ll do my part. Give me an oar and I’ll put my back into it. To that end, I’ll blog about the book every now and then, provide some inside story into the making of this legendary book. More to come, soon. Until then, come on, friends, let’s get that number under one million — I’ve got two cats and a goldfish to feed!

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Spider on the Blogs!

July 14, 2008 / / One comment

A fresh copy of my upcoming book, Along Came Spider (Scholastic, August), arrived in the mail last week. That’s a righteous moment for any author/illustrator: the first book off the presses! And always it’s the same story. Your editor tells you how she could only get one copy, purloined off somebody in marketing, but there’s surely more somewhere in the warehouse, and pretty soon (maybe) they’ll find them.

And nothing happens for a few weeks, while you cling to your sole copy of the book, holding it out to friends for a brief sniff and greedily pulling it back, like Gollum and his precious ring.

On the cyberfront, Spider has gotten a couple of reviews from blogs. So far, so good. I think the reviewers are right in that it’s a simply-written story about complex feelings. I guess it’s noteworthy in the sense that these kinds of stories — basically: friendship under duress — are more commonly written about girls, as if boys suffered none of these emotional/ethical conflicts, as if, in fact, boys had no interior lives at all. (We just like trucks, right? And noises that go BOOM.)

They are also correct in that I didn’t do anything flashy with the writing. It’s funny, I feel like my entire post-college writing career has been a long process of learning how to get out of the way. Or, that is, un-learning much what they taught me in college! I’ve come to increasingly admire restraint, simplicity and austerity, sentences like, oh, “A minute later he was snoring” (Steig, Doctor De Soto). Unadorned, absent of any look-at-how-clever-I-am writing. I suppose I’m sensitive to this aspect of writing because, as a particular brand of male ego, I’m so vulnerable to it. When I’m at my worst, I gild the lily. So I’ve come to perceive that trait as the Enemy Within, the danger I need to purge against: overwriting, AKA, showing off. That’s where revision comes in, pulling the purple prose off the bone, like picking cotton candy off the cardboard cylinder.

Anyway, here’s some links and money quotes from the reviews:

* * * * *

From Ignacio Guerra at Alan Online:

James Preller delves into the hostile and confusing world of adolescence and illuminates how yearning for acceptance and popularity can sometimes strain a friendship. This exposé on the complicated social dynamics of school is a fascinating joy to read with excellent readability and flow!

* * * * *

From Nan Hoekstra at Anokaberry:

Preller tells an everyday story with eloquence and empathetic grace. These ordinary (amazing) kids are growing up — daily making their own way, raised by parents, guided by teachers and events. Often in groups, always alone, trying to figure themselves and others out. No under or overstated angst here, the author just tells us about it, and lets the characters speak . . . Thanks James Preller, for (another) outstanding contribution to literature for precious children.

* * * * *

By the way, I’m amazed by book reviewers. How do they read so much?! You look at Nan’s site, or so many others, and it’s like, “Do they just read all the time? When do they eat?” I am genuinely grateful, and somewhat awed.

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