Tag Archive for Craig Walker

5 QUESTIONS with Rachel Vail, author of “Sometimes I Grumblesquinch”

December 18, 2022 / / 5 comments

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We’re back with the fourth installment of “5 Questions 2.0” — the new & improved interview format that invites some of the best folks in children’s literature to answer five — and only five! — questions. 

My guest today is Rachel Vail, a wide-ranging writer with many books to her credit. I think of Rachel as an intentional writer. Rachel knows what she is doing — and exactly why she is doing it — and who she is doing it for — with each and every book. A total pro and a very conscious writer.

 

1. Are you one of those people who knew she wanted to be a writer from a young age?

Absolutely not. I always loved reading, listening to stories, telling stories, and writing. A good sentence has always had the power to make my day. But what I wanted to be was never a writer. I thought all writers were at least old if not dead, neither of which I was at the time, and anyway it didn’t seem like a real job. I always knew exactly what I wanted to be. That thing changed often but I was always certain. (Not knowing seemed terrifying to me, and like proof that I wasn’t “gifted” or “a genius” or “meant” to do the thing, which made me feel like a plodder, a fake.) Also I wanted to do something hard, like be a spy or an actor or a senator. Writing, I naively believed, was easy.

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2. So I’m looking at the Oxford English Dictionary — the annotated, expanded version — and  I’m not seeing the word Grumblesquinch in there anywhere. Then I realized that twenty years ago you published Sometimes I’m Bombaloo. What’s going on? Did you decide, after 20  years, “It’s obviously time for sequel!”

Was that not an obvious move?

Katie Honors, the narrator of Sometimes I’m Bombaloo, has lived in my imagination all these years, and in fact there were two sequels already (Jibberwillies at Night; Flabbersmashed About You).

Ah, my bad. Flabbersmashed? Pretty sure that happened to me last Saturday night. No regrets! I’m sorry, I interrupted. 

Sometimes I’m Bombaloo, in particular, has continued to sell and even be studied by a wide range of childhood specialists, from psychologists to educators and beyond. When my brilliant gang –- editor Liza Baker and agent Amy Berkower –- asked if there were any more Katie Honors books in my mind, I jumped at the chance to listen to her again. The illustrator of Bombaloo, the great Yumi Heo, had unfortunately died, so I’d thought that was the end of Katie’s journey. But Liza and Patti Ann Harris of Scholastic were able to engage Hyewon Yum to illustrate the new book, and oh my gosh her seemingly simple art just absolutely blows me away with its evocative emotions and hidden magic.

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About those WORDS: I am writing about BIG feelings in little kids. Feelings so big they sometimes feel bigger than the kids can contain. It felt to me like feelings that big, and that complex, need new words to describe them. I want to put the parent and the child in the same position: of beginner, intuiting what the word means from the context, becoming fluent together. Also, I wanted to invent feelings-words that sound like what they mean.

3) To me, the heart of Grumblesquinch — what elevated the book — was the mother’s  response. Was that there from the beginning?

It was.

As a grumblesquincher myself, I know intimately the desire to please the people I love, to be a pleasure, to feel in my bones that it’s my job to be easy to be around. It is such a challenge to own the negative feelings, and to share them.

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What I have found, as a recovering good girl, is that the world is often very accepting of us in all our chaotic, contradictory, flawed selves, if we find the courage to share them. It is a balm to discover that. I try to be that kind of mom to my kids –- open to hearing all their feelings and thoughts, even the angry, hostile, frustrated, sad, worried thoughts. There’s such a temptation to push the rough feelings away, as a parent: NO! Don’t be melancholy! Don’t be anxious! Don’t be rageful! When you see a little person for whom you are responsible in pain, you naturally want to just ERASE IT immediately. Your child’s pain is too painful for a parent to bear! So we want to solve it, or deny it, or cajole it away. That comes from love. BUT. I think it feels awful for a kid (or an adult!) to have their negative feelings erased, denied, even solved for.

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Sometimes we just need to be heard. We need to know the people who love us can still love us, and can hear the full thing we are feeling. So it was important to me that, though the parents do have the impulse to keep the day light and happy, they can also eventually really be present and understanding. That there will be room for the whole Katie. I had the idea of Chuck being a frustrating buttery baby in my mind for years, and Katie holding in her feelings about him. It was only when I realized what she was really afraid of (letting down her parents, exposing who she really was and disappointing them with her imperfection) that the story clicked for me.

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Also, my own mom is really, really nice, deeply accepting, and loving. So that is a constant struggle for me, as a writer.

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That’s the genius of this book — and, really, any great picture book. To take something that’s complex and distill it to its essence in a way that conveys a simple, clear, authentic truth. I mean to say: You are spectacular, Rachel Vail.  I also love that you write a range of books. I have a similar affliction. You know, totally confuse any  potential “audience” that might possibly exist. (This does not count as a question! Please ignore.)

It is a problem. We suck. 

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4) I remember a conversation I had with an editor at Scholastic, my old pal Craig Walker. We were  talking about the strengths and weaknesses of different writers. He said to me — this is back in the 90s — “Rachel Vail knows girls. She really, really knows that world.” Yet I think one of the  challenges with getting older (sorry), and then having your own children become adults, is  staying in touch with the world of our readers. Is there anything that you do to help keep that  connection strong?

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Ah, Craig Walker! What a lovely man. Thank you for that!

Yeah, it’s deeply rude of my kids to grow up so quickly. I do like getting their input. (Though it’s not always pleasant, it is useful!)

I continue to talk with kids, and listen to them, more importantly -– friends’ kids, family, at school visits (virtual and now again in person!) and online -– to stay current with what’s going on in their minds, hearts, and language. But I also think that many of the issues facing kids are the same as when we were growing up, when our grandparents were growing up, when their grandparents… we’re trying to figure out who we are in the world and in our souls, how to be a friend, what love costs and is worth, how to choose when neither or both options seem good. The details change (having a way to contact the other person easily at any point wrecks many old plots, from Shakespeare to Tolstoy and beyond, for example) and keep changing, so that’s a lot to stay on top of, and important. I’m finding it nearly impossible to write a truly “contemporary” novel, now. The circumstances of our lives in these past 3-5 years change so quickly that by the time I get something to an editor, it’s already historical fiction. Nothing written with details of, say, May 2020 would be current now. It’s definitely easier to write contemporary fiction for younger kids in that sense –- the big dramas of their lives will continue to be a too-early bedtime or too-big feelings about how annoying their toddler brother is, regardless of whether there is an ongoing global pandemic, or whatever happens with the newest technological or world political upheaval.

And of course, we are all so distractible now, the forms may need to change, too.

5) When I first saw your book, A Is for Elizabeth, I thought: Wow, you’d think a professional writer of Rachel Vail’s caliber wouldn’t make this kind of careless error. Then I thought: Oh, hold  on a sec. Um, seriously. I love (love!) the format of this book. The size, length, content,  everything about it. I don’t think we see enough very young chapter books that contain real stories and characters with depth. Well done. You’ve given me something to aspire to. Tell us  where this book came from and what’s happening with this series.

 

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Ahahahahaha thank you! 

I love love love these books, too. I love Elizabeth, so bold and forthright and trying so very hard. I also find her hilarious. I loved writing her so much I actually spent time scheming: how can I make the publisher need to publish tons of these; all I want to do for the next few years is write from Elizabeth’s perspective! That’s why you’ll notice the alphabetical theme of the first four books… they’d have to let me do 26, I thought!

But so far, no. JUST 4. Time will tell. I haven’t given up hope.

Elizabeth started as the younger sister in my 3 books about Justin Case. Justin is a really terrific third grader with a lot of worries. I wrote them because I wanted a book about a really terrific third grader with a lot of worries to give my son Liam, when he fit that exact description. Justin was in some ways like Liam but also a bit like my older son Zachary, and also of course like me, and also just himself. But his little sister Elizabeth (who was also like all of us but also sui generis just herself) kept stealing the scene, for me. She cracked me up. So I knew I wanted to give her center stage. I loved writing in her voice, which became so clear to me.

My favorite part of the writing process is definitely revision –- when the book is clearly a full story and you just have to cut it, hone it, improve it… and you can feel it getting there. There’s a moment in that stage, usually, where something your main character says is just so perfectly them, so not a thing anybody else would say or has said… and you feel it, you feel that thing where it’s like you’re taking dictation from this person who has until that moment existed only in your imagination but now seems to exist whole, complex and vivid, beside you. Oh, man, that’s the buzz I chase, the magic that makes the whole writing flog worth it.

 

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JAMES PRELLER is the author of many books for young readers, including Bystander, Blood Mountain, Six Innings, A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade, and the popular Jigsaw Jones mystery series. Look for the first book in his strange & mysterious middle-grade series, EXIT 13: The Whispering Pines, available in stores in February, 2023. 
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Category: 5 Questions, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Revisiting THE FIVE CHINESE BROTHERS — A Chinese American Perspective with Phoebe Yeh, VP and Publisher at Crown Books

March 9, 2021 / / 3 comments

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We recently witnessed the kerfuffle regarding Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ decision to no longer publish six titles that it deemed offensive. It brought to mind an experience I had back in the late 1980s when I worked at Scholastic. So I reached out to my old friend, Phoebe Yeh, to ask her about it. Like me, Phoebe was young at the time, an editorial assistant for our beloved friend, Craig Walker. These days Phoebe is kind of a big deal, a widely respected VP/Publisher of Books for Young Readers at Crown, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books.

Honestly, I’m just grateful she answered my email. 

“Jimmy? Jimmy who?”

 

 

Phoebe, thanks for taking some time out for this topic. I know that it’s close to your heart. We met in 1986, back when I was a junior copywriter at Scholastic and you were hired as Craig Walker’s editorial assistant. We were both earning salaries in the (barely) five figures. I remember talking with you about the 1938 book, The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop. It was your mission in life, it seemed, to produce a new, authentic retelling of that ancient Chinese folktale. You were deeply offended by Kurt Weise’s illustrations. Can you remember what your feelings were at the time?

Yes, indeed.  And even though more thirty years have passed, my opinion about The Five Chinese Brothers hasn’t changed. Full disclosure: I grew up reading this book. As a child, I took the illustrations for granted, the slanty eyes, the yellow skin tone.

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Fast forward. I’m basically in my first real job after college. I think I must have had a lot of nerve. I marched myself into my boss’ office even though I knew I was going to complain about a book that sold like crazy for See Saw Book Club (kindergarten/first grade readers).

I shared my reservations with Craig Walker — also sharing that it wasn’t like the author, Claire Bishop, had even come up with the premise. I had read Chinese versions of the story about the brothers with the super powers but Bishop had added whipped cream or some such to her version. And everyone knows, many Chinese people are lactose intolerant so adding this detail made no sense.

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Craig was incredibly supportive and felt that we should bring up the idea of publishing a new version with our editor-in-chief, Jean Feiwel.  The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Jean and Mou-sien Tseng, became my first acquisition as an editorial assistant (still virtually unheard of -– usually you don’t start acquiring until you are, at least, an assistant editor).  And prideful though it sounds, this version is still in print.

What was challenging for me was that I LOVED that book as a kid. It was such a great story. One brother drinking the whole ocean! Another brother with the unbreakable iron neck! I read it over and over again. And I wasn’t the least bit offended by any of it! So talking to you, on one level, I could intellectually understand where you were coming from . . . but I didn’t feel you, if you know what I mean. It was a long time ago, I had a lot to learn (still do!), and I wondered at first if perhaps you might be over-reacting. What was I missing?

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Jimmy, you weren’t missing anything.  How would you know?  How could you know? I didn’t know either, when I was reading the book as a kid.  But by the time I was at my first job, I had read Maxine Hong Kingston and Zora Neale Hurston, other women writers who weren’t “taught” in high school, poetry and novels about the European exploitation in African and Caribbean nations.  I subscribed to a weekly newspaper, Asian Week that enumerated crimes and other discriminatory incidents against Asian Americans.  My second encounter with The Five Chinese Brothers was informed by this context.

I knew that there was a way to retain the humor, the absurdity without ridicule.  And since I don’t have slanty eyes, there should be a way to show the brothers more authentically. To be fair, an educator colleague who was raised in Taiwan, doesn’t have the same issue with The Five Chinese Brothers.  But she also recognizes that Chinese Americans have a problematic history: we are the only immigrant group who had not one but two exclusion acts forbidding entry; the trauma of building the Transcontinental Railroad, etc etc so in the mid 80’s,  I was interpreting the Bishop book from a vastly different lens.

I’m curious. Do you think your version of Seven Brothers could be criticized by today’s standards for going with a white author from New Zealand? In today’s world, would you have worked harder to find an “authentic” retelling by a Chinese American author?

We signed up Margaret Mahy, a non-Chinese American author after a fruitless search to find a Chinese American who was interested in writing a children’s book. I tried everyone — Maxine, Bette Bao Lord, Nien Cheng, etc and I think this was before Amy Tan. I didn’t approach Larry Yep because I erroneously thought he only wrote MG. So I found an author who could do justice to the humor. To her credit, Mahy was worried about authenticity/sensitivity but I knew I could walk her thru it because of my background. I didn’t speak a word of English until I was 3. I took Chinese (language) classes in college and lived in Taiwan for a year after college. And I felt confident that I had context and resources if questions arose. So besides being a gifted writer, Mahy knew what she didn’t know, a key, I believe, to writing about a protagonist who isn’t from your background. The illustrators had enormous context and experience. This also made me feel that we could do justice to this new version.

I remember your great pride and deep satisfaction when you signed up a new, updated retelling. That was a book you fought for. And I can still see the pleasure on your face on the day when the Tsengs’ art came into the office. As a Chinese American, can you express what it meant to you then — and what it means to you today — to make that kind of difference in a children’s book?

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I was thrilled (and relieved) when The Seven Chinese Brothers received critical attention. And that it sold, proving my point that a new version would resonate. I loved seeing it in bookstores. But even better, finding it in libraries and school classrooms.

Fast forward to a midpoint in my publishing career, when I signed up Ellen Oh to write her first children’s book, Prophecy (Ellen  later became a co-founder of WE NEED DIVERSE BOOKS). But guess what book was the first time she saw Asian characters: The Seven Chinese Brothers.

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Recently I had a similar moment with another Asian American who was creating children’s books for MOMA.  Unlike Ellen, who grew up in Brooklyn, this gentleman was raised in New England.  He told me the same thing.  Until The Seven Chinese Brothers, he hadn’t seen a children’s book with Asians depicted without mockery.  Who knew that one book could have this kind of impact?

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Things are so much better now but in the mid-80’s when I started in children’s publishing, there was a dearth.  I’m profoundly grateful to Craig and Jean for giving me a chance, one that has pretty much informed the rest of my children’s book career.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Phoebe — and for the  meaningful, important work you continue to do. Proud of you!

 

FUN FACT: The food at Phoebe’s wedding, somewhere in Chinatown, was amazing. On long winter nights, I still think about that meal thirty years later. But also: Jigsaw Jones has a best friend and a partner named Mila Yeh. So, yeah, that’s where I borrowed that name. A direct lift from Phoebe — because I was seeking something that evoked for me the qualities of tough, smart, loyal, fierce, kind.

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Category: Around the Web, Current Events, Interviews & Appreciations / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My Pecha Kucha: Baseball’s Red Thread

May 5, 2020 / / 6 comments

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I gave a Pecha Kucha presentation a couple of years back at our local Opalka Gallery on the Sage Campus in Albany. The other day I came across the text for it, which comes close to what I actually said that evening (my talk was pretty closely memorized, no notes). I thought I’d share it here, because it brings together two things I love, baseball and my mother, and I happen to be missing both of them these days. The images here are the ones I used for the original talk.

BUT FIRST: WHAT IS PECHA KUCHA?

I grabbed this off the web:

Pecha Kucha is a presentation form of 20 images for 20 seconds. The slides change automatically and the speaker must synchronise their speech with the images. It’s sometimes also called a 20×20 presentation. So the entire presentation always lasts for exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

It started in Tokyo in 2003, designed by architects, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. It was soon adopted by fans of alternative presentation styles. Similar to the short-length focus of an elevator pitch, Pecha Kucha relies upon concision and brevity. By applying a limit on the number of slides, the presenter is forced to streamline their content. It also forces the speaker to prepare and practice, as there is no option to go back or skip ahead. Pecha Kucha is also a very visual presentation style. It is based on single powerful images. Striking visuals enhance any presentation. They captivate the audience in a more immediate way than written words.

 

 

On the outside there are two cowhide coverings stitched together with waxed red thread. There are exactly 108 stitches in the sewing process of a major league ball. I feel like that red thread has been woven through the fabric of my life.

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If you’re a kid, sooner or later you’ve got to unravel one of these things. Inside there’s a rubber-covered cork core and four types of yarn. It’s the yarn I like best, because a yarn is also a long story. My yarn, today, is about baseball. But that’s not entirely true.

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My mother was the big baseball fan in our house. A huge Mets fan. The games were always on when I was growing up. She’d listen on the radio or watch on TV, snapping the games off in despair when the Mets were losing. And they were often losing.

 

 

Speaking of yarn: There were always balls of it my house. Everywhere you turned. My mother did most of her best work while watching the Mets on television. We still wrap ourselves in her blankets. This remains the world’s second best use of yarn.

 

 

My mother married in 1948. Seventy-two years ago. Around that time, she threw away her collection of Brooklyn Dodger baseball cards. My father had no interest in baseball. It was time, she thought, to put aside childish things.

 

 

It was my mother who taught me how to play catch. I was her little southpaw, the youngest of seven. And I’d ask her, “Am I graceful, Mom? Am I graceful?” And she would always answer, “Oh yes, very graceful.”

 

 

Some nights she’d let me stay up to watch the end of the games. My tired head on her lap, her hand in my hair, a cigarette in the other. She liked “little” Buddy Harrelson the best. Mom always seemed to have a crush on little shortstops.

 

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Around this time I invented my own baseball games. I’d write out the lineups for two opposing teams and play imaginary games. I’d roll the dice. A 2 was a HR, a 3 a triple, 4 was a ground out, and so on. Then I’d play again, and again.

 

 

I filled notebooks doing this. Today I’m a professional writer. And I often think that it began back then. There I was, pen in hand, filling pages, fueled by my love of the game.

 

 

In the morning I reached for the newspaper. I loved the boxed scores. Each boxed score reveals a story. I eventually moved beyond the numbers to the articles. Those were the first writers I loved. The game had turned me into a reader.

 

 

The first time I saw a color television set was in my grandparents’ home on 100th Avenue in Queens Village. My grandfather was sitting in a leather chair, smoking a cigar, watching baseball. I stood transfixed. The grass was impossibly green.

 

 

I grew up. Along the way, I lost my friend, Craig Walker, to cancer. This photo was taken on the day we watched Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The ball rolled through Buckner’s legs and we stood and we cheered and we hugged, ecstatic.

 

 

Quick Craig story: My mother was pleased and surprised to see Craig, more than two decades ago, at my second wedding. “Craig! I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I come to ALL of Jimmy’s weddings.”

Funny guy.

 

 

In 2009, I published my first baseball book. Writing it, then finally placing that book on the shelf with my collection of baseball books, I felt like I’d come home. Baseball, of course, is a game about coming home. I dedicated it to my pal, Craig.

 

 

You strike the ball and you journey out like the hero Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. First base, second base, third base . . . and finally to return home again.

Safe. Triumphant.

Into your mother’s arms.

 

 

I began playing hardball again in my late 30s. This is my son, Gavin, who’s now in college. These days I play in two extremely old man’s baseball league, ages 45-up and 55-up. Don’t laugh, for in our hearts we are young.

 

 

Look at these guys. My teammates. We take the field, smack our gloves, and look to the sky from where the high fly falls, drifting back and back, saying, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”

And most of the time, but not always, we make the catch.

 

 

Today my mother is 94 years old. Still a Mets fan. But these past seasons something changed. For the first time, she’s lost track of the Mets. She can’t remember the players, or summon the old passion she once had for the game. It’s all become a great blur in her mind.

 

 

And to me –- my mother losing the Mets — feels like the end of something important. A symbol, a metaphor. A red thread, cut.

 

 

And so hanging by a thread, we return home -– to baseball, to my mother, my sense of well-being. It’s gotten so I can’t think of one without the other. It’s all interconnected. And I now understand that my love for baseball is really just an expression of my love for the other.

Thank you.

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Category: Around the Web, Family, Six Innings / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Poster In the School Lobby . . . and a Quick Memory of Craig Walker

October 10, 2014 / / 3 comments

Here’s a quick snap of a poster in the lobby of our local middle school:

 

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Since the time I wrote Bystander, I’ve been invited into many middle schools. Often the funds for my visits have come out of a school’s “anti-bullying” budget, or some similar cookie jar. After a series of sensational tragedies involving bullied children became public, various government agencies got involved. Legislation was passed, and many schools attempted to address the core issues.

They felt compelled to . . . do something. Or in the most cynical reading possible, administrators at least recognized the need to protect themselves from lawsuits. A kinder and generally more accurate take is that the extra attention, the extra funds, gave the good people in those schools the opportunity to do something meaningful, to make a difference in the lives of these young people. They care. Because I’ll tell you, I’ve met the best of these folks, I’ve spent time with them, and I am awed by the goodness in their hearts — their motivations and intentions. I’m honored to play a small role in their larger mission.

Witness the flowering of hundreds of bully-prevention programs throughout the land.

At the same time, yes, I know there are teachers who roll their eyes, check the clock, and wonder when they can get back to teaching. There’s a curriculum to be covered and, ultimately, tests to be given, results to be measured.

On the whole, not perfect, it’s a multi-faceted issue, and we’re all trying to figure it out. But a good process, I think.

I’ve seen that the more progressive schools have gradually moved on from that narrow (and sometimes too negative) focus to address the larger issues covered under the umbrella of “Character.” I’m glad about that.

Best of all, I am seeing a greater emphasis on kindness.

Wedding, Walker 2My old pal, Craig Walker, used to joke that everything you ever wanted to know about love was on the Supremes “Greatest Hits” LP. And by that he meant, there’s nothing earth-shatteringly new that anybody can possibly say on the topic. There will be no new revelations forthcoming. We’ve heard it all already, and so often that it comes out like a tired cliche. No, you can’t hurry love. And you do keep me hanging on.

220px-Supremes_Greatest_HitsWhen it comes to the bad behavior associated with bullying, we can ask those involved, “How would you like it?” “How would it make you feel?” And maybe we can say something about doing unto others. Or being kind. Or a dozen other fairly obvious things that remind us how to be a good (read: caring, compassionate, thoughtful) person in this world. We can also tell them, in clear language supported by real consequences, that bullying is unacceptable.

I do believe that it’s part of every school’s mission to reinforce these messages, every day, in a thousand small ways. I’m glad that sign is in our lobby. It’s a minor thing, sure, easy to dismiss or ignore, but it’s still a signal amidst the noise. A lighthouse visible from the stormy sea.

All and all, not a terrible question to ask ourselves before we act, speak, or post:

Is it kind?

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Category: Bullying, Bystander / Tags: , , , , ,

Memories: Working at Scholastic, 1986.

February 2, 2012 / / 16 comments

That’s me with the antenna. Wait, no, I’m in the middle.

I started at Scholastic as a Junior Copywriter for $12,500 a year, hired partly because of a writing sample, an opinion piece I wrote about the subway shooter, Bernie Goetz (no lie), and also because I was the first young, heterosexual male to enter the building in the last six years — besides the mail room guys, of course. There were three other copywriters working on the book clubs: Bill Epes, Karen Belov, and Cynthia Larkins. I may have muffed those spellings. My primary responsibility was the K-1 SeeSaw Book Club. I sat in a cubicle and banged away on a typewriter. Computers came in less than a year after I arrived, a transition that caused great upheaval. We threw away our little bottles of liquid white-out, learned how to boot up with an MS-DOS 5 1/4 floppy disk, and so on.

An aside: I just breezed through the brilliant biography, STEVE JOBS, and it so captured the changes of technology through my life. If you are around my age (51 yesterday), or maybe any age, you’ve got read it. The author, Walter Isaacson, also wrote the biography, EINSTEIN, that I raved about previously.

At Scholastic, in the old 730 Broadway location, I worked in-house for almost five years, rising all the way to lower-middle obscurity. Another memory: I remember when they instituted a new policy no longer allowing people to smoke at their desks. Suddenly you had to go down to the 8th floor to the “smoker’s lounge.” Many of us feared that our old-school copyeditor, the chain-smoking Willie Ross, would lose her mind completely. Such a violation of personal liberty, an outrage perpetrated by the PC police, and I was  sure the laughter I heard came from the belly of Big Brother.

I continued on with Scholastic as a consultant and favored freelancer. Launched and ran the Carnival Book Club out of my home in Albany, as both editor and promotion manager. Wrote some books, started doing Jigsaw Jones in 1998, and on and on. I assumed my time at Scholastic would go on forever. But not quite. I used to really, really love that place, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

The man on the left of the photo is my great pal Craig Walker. In life you don’t get to know too many people who become mentors, people you respect and admire and love, and for me Craig heads that very short list. He was one-of-a-kind. There was a long stretch of about 15 years or so when we were really, really good friends. We probably ate lunch together three times a week for four years, usually in the cheapest, no-nonsense dives we could find. Or was that the bars we frequented? The truly remarkable thing about Craig is that so many people felt that way about him. Our relationship was special. Our friendship was unique and powerful. Dozens upon dozens of people could make that same claim — and they’d all be correct. He was just one of those guys that made you think, “I wish I could be more like him.” Craig is gone now, but as I’ve written before, I try to remember everything.

1986, the day we watched Game 6 of the 1986

World Series at Brenda Bowen’s parents’ summer

place. Me and Craig.

Let’s see, yes, that’s art director Scott Hunt next to me. I thought of Scott a few days ago when, reading the book, I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO, the author Ralph Keyes explained the origin of one of Scott’s go-to words, “skosh.” As in, “Let’s move that type down a skosh.” Confusingly, it came from the Korean War, but was adapted from a Japanese word, sukoshi, meaning “a small amount.” Reading about those origins, I wondered if perhaps Scott’s father spent time in Korean conflict, hanging out with Hawkeye, Trapper John, Hot Lips, and the gang. Scott used to complain that his father was a gung-ho outdoors type, always taking the children on camping trips and forced hikes up impossible mountains. Scott would say, “I hated those hikes. I just wanted to stay home and watch movies!”

And to the right, that’s Cynthia Maloney, a Kansas gal. Cynthia used to wear a deerskin vest the like of which you have never seen, in Manhattan, no less. She had the messiest desk on all three floors. I’d ask her about something, an important memo or whatever, or a mechanical board she had to review and sign, and she’d turn to this tilting mountain of paper and, after a considered time, miraculously extract the key document from the perilous pile. Cynthia was older than I was, married with children, but I always had a secret crush on her, the way you do in office life, ten cubicles down, a world away. She might have been the nicest person in the place.

Anyway, we started a preschool book club, called it FIREFLY, and as far as I know it’s still going strong today, 25 years later. I wrote all the promotional copy, including every book description, for several years. At the time, it was a big, risky project. Craig’s editorial meetings were hilarious and legendary. Scholastic of that time was led by a supremely talented trio: Jean Feiwel in editorial, Barbara Marcus (my first real boss) in marketing, and wise old Dick Krinsley, steering the ship. Around then I had the honor of writing their first hardcover catalog — it included a total of four books by, um, Harry Mazer, Anne Mazer, Julian Thompson, and somebody else. Oh, what was it? Something about child safety, I think. A book cover that Craig likened to those Heimlich posters you’d see in restaurant bathrooms. He’d say something along the lines of, “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that every time I look at the book cover, I think of choking victims.”

Jean Feiwel, do you remember that book?

Ah, forgive me, memory lane.

This is an advertisement  I wrote at that time. A full-page ad was a huge extravagance, and you wouldn’t believe how many people fussed over this, and revised it, and changed it again and again. That was my line, “Because Growing Up and Good Books Belong Together.“

POSTSCRIPT:

Jean wrote and gave me the name of that elusive title, CLOSE TO HOME by Oralee Wachter!

Craig had a flare for exaggeration, but the point stands:

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