Category: children’s literature

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

- Stacy

It’s days like this that I miss living in Chicago, where they dye the river green in celebration. (Also, notice the white clock tower on the far left in the background? That’s one tower of the Wrigley Building, which I used to work in. It’s like stepping back in time in that building.

But last night my roommate and I watched Waking Ned Devine (me for the first time, she for the umpteenth time) and it was definitely a good substitute. Hilarious. I think all my favorite movies have quirky old men in them–for example, Return to Me is a favorite probably because of those funny old men.

So, let’s talk about quirky characters in storytelling, especially in books for children and young adults. How can a quirky character, perhaps an older person like in the two movies I just linked, bring life to a story while still being a story about the child character?

I can think of two main examples which show what I’m trying to talk about–Holes and A Long Way from Chicago. Let’s start with A Long Way from Chicago, by Richard Peck. This is actually one of my favorite books, and I’ll tell you it has nothing to do with the narrator. A Long Way from Chicago is one of the best examples I can think of where the character you most connect to isn’t a child. While the narrator Joey is a child, and the story is seen through his eyes (and in the sequel A Year Down Yonder, his sister Mary Alice’s), Grandma Dowdel is the most interesting person and she’s the cause of all their adventures.

In Holes, the story of Kissin’ Kate, while not about an elderly person, is a story set in another time-
–and a story that is also integral to Stanley’s journey, though we don’t know how until much later in the story.

Waking Ned Divine doesn’t really fit in this category of older people helping drive the story of the younger—Jackie is the instigator and main character all along—but it did make me think of how often in children’s literature we focus on the child to the exclusion of older adults. It’s important to get the kids away from the parents, for example, to help them have autonomy enough to do whatever the story requires. Don’t get me wrong—I love this plot device, and I know that kids love it. But I do think that there’s a place for amazing stories that include older people and people of previous generations, and that those two books are perfect examples of how that can be done while preserving a narrator that the child reader will identify with.

You have to admit: Grandma Dowdle rocks. That’s one hilarious story, and not just because she reminds me of both my grandmas and my great-grandma, with a shotgun thrown in.

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Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature

- Stacy

Oh, and while I was rambling I completely forgot I also wanted to mention that I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande. I read from the ARC some, then listened to most of it on CD way back last month, but was finally able to finish it today, and I have to say–hurrah! Great job. Brande does a really great job at explaining the point of view of the many, many people of faith who also believe that science is learning things that perhaps God had a hand in, but also that science and especially the teaching of science in public schools don’t make a claim as to exactly how that fits into a particular belief system.

I loved going to BYU, actually, because it supported my belief in both. My geology class at BYU was an amazing experience, even if it was the only class I’ve ever flunked. Okay, that was more because it was an 8am class and oh, you DO NOT turn out the lights and show slides for an 8 AM class! I never knew half what was going on, and more’s the pity because what I did hear was amazing, and for that very reason I wanted to believe that I could stay awake and didn’t drop it. And what I did learn (among other things, I promise) was how geology fit into the personal worldview of my teacher as a practicing Mormon–something you can have a conversation about at a private religious college, of course. It was fascinating, and what I got most out of it is that there’s still a lot of the miraculous in science, and if we believe (meaning all people of faith who believe in A god) that God created the world, then perhaps the things we learn about in evolution can teach us about the possible means by which he (or if you so believe, she) did it.

Anyway, if that even made sense at this hour, there’s an excellent interview at the end that Robin Brande does with … a scientist much like the teacher character she creates in the book, whose name has escaped me, and it’s really pithy stuff. He was the author of Finding Darwin’s God, a book that explored Darwin’s belief system, and now that’s on my want-to-read pile.

Highly recommend Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature. Realism, teen girl angsty, but bringing religion in as a way of bringing the character’s inner life to life. And it’s just dang funny. I really liked how it portrayed this girl’s religious life positively, even while exploring the cattiness of a high school clique, without condemning the clique for being religious (rather, for being hypocritical and… the word escapes me. I got nothin’. I give up for the night).

Good night. Next time I recommend a book, I promise to do it while fully awake. I just didn’t want to forget about this!

FAQ: Take Joy, a review (sort of)

- Stacy

I think it appropriate that the book I will review today will be Jane  Yolen’s Take Joy, due to all the joy I’ve been taking in my new camera over the weekend. I’ve been finding the joy again in my photography that I’ve been delaying for so long because film has become such an encumbrance that I end up saving rolls of film for months–my latest batch included shots from San Diego Comic-Con last July, a trip I took last August, several rolls from my Christmas travels, as well as a variety of smaller events in the last six months–and by the time I get to see them again, the pictures have little meaning. I didn’t play with pictures as much as I used to when in photography classes because I don’t have the time to play in the darkroom making the exposure perfect (though how tempting it has been over the years to find a place I can build a darkroom, especially this last year because my uncle offered me his enlarger….).

Getting the digital camera, even in the first few days of use, has given me back that joy. I’m starting to remember the way I used to play with angles and ligh
ting and the strange subjects I used to seek out. I have done a little of that playing with my camera phone, but that’s more of a toy than a passion–when you’re dealing with a 2 MP camera, there’s only so much art you can create.

(I have a point, really I do.)

This is an important process to me, because I occasionally do a freelance article here and there, a wedding here and there, that kind of thing. I’m taking some pictures for our kickboxing teacher in a couple weeks to help him promote his new dojo. But I’d been feeling lately that I was losinig my chops. All my pictures ended up coming out the same–lots of flash burn, standard compositions, nothing out of the ordinary that gives you that wow factor. Competent, but not excellent. Even the pictures I posted in the last few days reflect those ways of seeing, though I love the salt shaker post because it’s something different, something new I tried after learning a few things about indoor lighting (the bane of my photographic existence).

So, what does this have to do with writing and with Jane Yolen’s book in particular?

The whole book is about that discovery process, giving writers permission to find that joy that I have been rediscovering in my photography. In the first chapter Yolen quotes Gene Fowler, “‘Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead'” and immediately refutes him: “I suggest you learn to write not with blood and fear, but with joy.” She says to forget about publishing, because it’s out of your hands, and to focus on the joy of your craft–of writing a story well, of really digging in and living in the story.

A very good premise. I mean, after all, why write if you don’t find joy in it? I write. I think I’ve said it before here. I have a story, a retelling of a Scottish fairy tale, that I’ve been working on since my last year at BYU, in 2001. It’s gone through many renditions, and the most I’ve ever finished was a novellette for a folklore class in grad school. Then I threw out the entire setting and decided to change it all around, and have gotten all of 10,000 words written since then in the new setting.

Why haven’t I finished it? Because while it brings me joy to live in that story, it doesn’t bring me enough joy to make it worth my time to write every night after doing a very similar activity at work every day. I fully admit I may never be a published fiction writer (I am a published non-fiction freelance writer over and over, but that’s a different market), and that’s enough for me to find the little joys in the little bits of writing I do from time to time because publication isn’t important to me–what’s important to me is the story in my imagination.

And mostly because I find that same kind of joy in being an editor to far better books than I could probably write right now.

For those who don’t have that push-pull of using up that creative energy before you can set pen to paper (metaphorically speaking), Yolen’s book will have much fodder for the imagination.

Though I must say that the whole numinous “the mystery of fiction,” “the mystery of the writing process,” bleh. Don’t make it all mysterious, as if someone with a little talent and a lot of effort can’t figure it out. There’s nothing mysterious about the combination of putting in the time to do something you love so that you can develop the inborn talent you have into something better. It’s work, but if you find joy in it, it’s time well spent, in my opinion.

But that may just be my practical Midwestern upbringing coming into play. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t mystery in the art, and if that motivates you to seek joy in creating art, whatever your art is, more power to you.

Back to Take Joy–as you have probably already guessed, this isn’t so much a review as a disjointed essay borne from a few ideas I’ve plucked from its pages–Yolen says
that “These stories grace our actual lives with their fictional realities. Like angels they lift us above the hurrying world.” I really like that idea. I don’t know if I can recapture what it is that caught me about that particular passage, but I’ll try.

As I was driving home the other night a program on NPR caught my attention. It was a Romanian professor by the name of Kodrescu (spelling? who knows?) who was speaking about the power of memories, how we create memories that didn’t actually happen and turn them to pedagogical uses, how we change memory to fantasy because sometimes fantasy feels more real than the reality it is trying to reflect.

How to express this? That talk really said something to me the other night, but now it’s slipping from my mind, and I can barely even remember who the speaker was at this point.

At any rate, I think what I’m trying to say is that sometimes in fiction we find more truth than we do in the reality we’re seeking to interpret. I’ve said this before about fantasy, about its wonderful metaphorical magic. We can talk about struggles, the epic battle between good and evil, the shades of gray, the variety of human existence, in so many ways in fantasy that we can’t do as well in realism sometimes because of the power the metaphor gives us–the power that the fictional, the fantasy (meaning the numinous, the fantastic, as well as simply the fantasy of making up a story), give us to assign multiple meanings and to interpret and reinterpret.

That the stories can “grace our actual lives with their fictional realities” can mean so many things, and I’m losing the ability to express what I’m trying to say.

At any rate, the book is a good read, and I think nonwriters as well as writers can benefit from the idea of taking joy in the art you pursue–remembering why you do what you do.

Of course, writers will get even more out of it, because she’s got some solid advice for writers in there about taking rejection well, the elements of a good story (beyond a simple anecdote to a fully drawn drama), finding your voice, even a whole section dedicated to specific practical advice. I love the little interludes, the little bits of wisdom between chapters. One such, before chapter 5, is especially apropos for anyone who writes historical fiction, fantasy, or other genres that require lots of research:

For a writer, nothing is lost. Research once done can be used again and again, a kind of marvel of recycling. As writers we need to be shameless about thieving from ourselves.

For example, I did two books on the Shakers–a nonfiction book called Simple Gifts and a novel, %3
Cem>The Gift of Sarah Barker. And it is no coincidence that the round barn I discovered in my historical research, I then used as a piece of setting in the Sarah Barker book. It later found its way into my young adult science fiction novel, Dragon’s Blood.

Good research swims upstream where it can spawn. (p. 41)

So there you have it, as one of hopefully a lot of writing book recommendations here at Stacy Whitman’s Grimoire, couched in an essay on finding my photography chops again. Check out the book–you might find some gems that help you find joy in your own writing.

How to become a book editor

- Stacy

Cheryl Klein from Scholastic just posted some really good advice on how to become a book editor.

The only thing I’d add to the internship advice is that if you need to work your way through school, as I did, colleges often have student editorial jobs. At BYU, where I went to school, I was the editorial assistant for the Humanities Publication Center. I also did an unpaid editorial internship, worked at the library, and worked at the University Press, as well as an off-campus job editing phone books and a job typesetting college textbooks at a prepress firm (that last was in Champaign, Illinois, while I was attending University of Illinois, so it goes to show those opportunities weren’t just available at the one school). If you can’t afford to take an unpaid internship, look for paid positions. They’re harder to find at the college level, but well worth it, and I was able to graduate with a little experience on my resume. This led directly to getting my first editorial job out of college.

Getting started as an editor

- Stacy

Ala alg’s post about getting a job in publishing.

When I tell people that I edit children’s books, their first answer is, “Oooh, how fun!” My answer is usually something like, “Yes, but it was also a lot of hard work to get here. And I’m still working.” But having a lot of fun while I do it!

Getting my dream job was not a straight path, unlike many in trade book publishing. The stereotypical path of a children’s book editor is to start out as an editorial assistant in a New York house and work your way up. You use certain skills as you do that, though, that I also used in my much-longer path to figuring out just what I wanted to do and how to do it.

Behind the cuts below, I’ve talked about each phase of my path to becoming a children’s and YA fantasy editor, but to sum up, I worked my way through college in publishing jobs, being willing to take any job or internship that presented itself as long as it was giving me more experience in the field. I was willing to work for cheap, if anything—while scrounging to make a living because I had no family money. As I worked at it, eventually I got jobs that led me closer and closer to my goal. After graduation, I still didn’t get my dream job, though, and needed to go to grad school to get that extra edge in the children’s lit field. While in grad school, I got some more experience, working for an educational publisher. And then, in a stroke of good networking at a part-time bookselling job, I got a tip that led me to the job opening for my current job. Long road, but using the same elements that everyone else did: who you know and what you know. Network and build your skills. And then move to where the jobs are.

It starts way back when I was an animal science-prevet major at the University of Illinois. I decided I hated chemistry. So I picked the best-sounding major that would keep me within the College of Agriculture, so I could keep my scholarship. Thus, I became a human development and family science major. Worked in a few preschools.

At the time I had a friend who worked at a local prepress. My friend copyedited college textbooks, and it occurred to me that it would be a lot more fun to do that than to chase toddlers and two-year-olds around for $5 an hour at a daycare with no benefits. I love kids, but teaching wasn’t fitting me, especially teaching an age group that was mainly potty-training.

I got hired there as a typesetter, programming books in Unix in the early 90s, about the time that Quark was first being introduced. Another team was figuring out Quark, but I worked on math and physics textbooks, and the equations came out looking better when done in Unix.

Later, taking some time off school, I went home and worked at the local newspaper for a few months. I then moved to Utah, where I got a job editing phone books for Phone Directories Co., where I was considered the expert at catching errors in the White Pages. Talk about repetitive and detail-oriented. While working at PDC, I was also working on finishing my bachelor’s degree at BYU. I ended up quitting PDC so I could go back to school full-time.

I got a job on campus at the library in the Special Collections department, where I got to see ancient texts, Victorian books, and all sorts of amazing things about the history of publishing. During summers, I juggled that job and a job at the University Press, where I used my photography skills (one of my many majors in those years) to make slides of artwork for professors to use in class. While working at the press, though, I also got to help out in the press itself whenever they needed an extra hand.

During this time, I took a children’s literature class as an elective in my major (back to human development and family studies, with an emphasis on children’s literature, so I could graduate quicker, even though I was toying with the idea of becoming an editor after graduation). It was like lightning struck–wow! I could combine these interests! I could do good things for children, and I could work with books! It was an epiphany—one I can’t believe I had earlier.

So I took an editing class in the English department. Completely out of my major, but I thought I needed to hone my skills a little. In that class, I met , who announced that Leading Edge magazine was looking for students to join its staff as slush readers. My time reading slush at that magazine directly led to getting my first job out of college. Plus, I’m still good friends with many of the people I met there.

Also in that class, I heard that the director of the Humanities Publication Center was hiring an editorial assistant for the next semester. Not only did I take an unpaid internship with him the next semester, I got the EA job, so I did a lot of copyediting of campus journals like the Journal of Microfinance and the Journal of Comparative Religion.

After college graduation, I couldn’t find a good full-time job in Utah (big surprise), so I moved home to western Illinois to figure out where to go next. I had no money to just up and move to New York, so I knew I needed to find something a little more local, even if it wasn’t my end goal of children’s literature.

No real opportunities presented themselves near home, but I did know some people in Chicago, and called them up to see if I could stay with them for a few days while I interviewed for a job. These friends suggested that I cold-call all the publishers in the Chicago area from the phone book, just to see if they were hiring. So I went down the list alphabetically, and Barks Publications was hiring. When I sent in my resume, I didn’t even know what they published, but I was hungry for a job, and they’d just had their publisher’s assistant quit. I took the job.

Turns out they published a trade magazine in the electromechanical aftermarket (industrial electric motors, and everything related to them). My grandpa was an electrician and I grew up on a farm, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for me to learn all I could about motors so I could be advanced through the company and become an editor. I started out answering phones
at the front desk as publisher’s assistant, and a year later, I was associate editor, in my own office writing articles, editing columns, and copyediting the whole final magazine.

But I still wanted to do something with children’s literature, so I read all I could, joined the local SCBWI chapter, and even tried to take a night class in writing. But that class was filled with literary snobs who looked down upon children’s lit, genre fiction, and generally anything commercial, so I dropped it within a week and started looking for other options.

Eventually in my search, I found children’s literature master’s programs. There was the writing for children master’s at Vermont College, or there were children’s lit programs at Illinois State in Bloomington and at Simmons College in Boston. At that time, I attended an SCBWI presentation by Anita Silvey, who once edited the Horn Book magazine and had just recently retired from being editor in chief/publisher at Houghton Mifflin children’s trade. She taught at both Vermont College and Simmons College, so I asked her advice when she signed my book. Her answer–“If you want to be an editor, Simmons College, no question.” No other school had the contacts and the depth of education in the literature itself, she said.

Simmons it was. I never really planned on being in a master’s program–it took me nine years to get my bachelor’s, and that tends to discourage one from going on to higher degrees–but I thought that even if I never finished the program, I’d be better off for having experience in the children’s field.

Grad school, especially in Boston at a private college, is expensive. So I started looking for ways to make it less expensive. One part of that was getting a job: temping at Houghton Mifflin in the School division. When they offered me a full-time editorial assistant position, I took it and went on sabbatical to raise a little money for school. Soon they’d promoted me to associate editor when they discovered my experience. I made a lot of good friends at Houghton, and editing social studies textbooks for 5th and 6th graders really taught me a lot–both about editing/the publishing business and about history, geography, and culture.

But I still wanted to work in trade children’s books, so I went back to school after about a year. Took Anita Silvey’s publishing class, took a really great folklore class, and a lot of other classes that really delved deep into the literature. Got an internship at the Horn Book that fall, sorting books and doing other clerical jobs for both the Magazine and the Guide. Had a great time being a “intern fly on the wall,” as Roger Sutton once put it, getting to sit in on meetings about how they chose the starred books each month.

The next semester I got a part time job at the local Barnes and Noble, because that was the last place in the book business I’d had a job and because I needed the cash. What a blessing that I did! I got to know a few coworkers, and in talking with , found that she was as into fantasy and science fiction as I was.

While in grad school, I’d also started networking as much as possible with editors from publishers in Boston and New York. Whenever there was a conference in town–WorldCon came to Boston in 2004, where I met Anna Chan from Tor, and ALA Midwinter was in Boston in 2005, where I met a few other editors at various houses, who all said to let them know when I graduate and they’d help me find where the openings were.

About a month after I started at B&N, comes into work and says, “Hey, did you see that Wizards of the Coast is hiring a children’s book editor?” I hadn’t, because all those editors I’d been talking with said to wait till after graduation to start looking for a job–preferably after I’d moved to New York.

I figured I’d apply anyway, even though graduation was still a good two months away, figuring that if the interview process took time, it’d be close to graduation, so what did I have to lose?

Happily, I got a first interview, by phone. Then a second interview, by phone. Both went really well, and I felt like I’d work really well with the senior editor in charge of Mirrorstone Books, and that the company would be a good fit–great benefits, great city. So when I got the offer, even though New York was certainly closer, it was a bird in the hand thing. I could move to New York (with barely any money) and gamble that I’d get a job in children’s lit that would let me work on fantasy, or I could move to Seattle and start on children’s fantasy from Day 1.

Right when I got out here, I found out from a writer friend that her editor at Bloomsbury was hiring an associate editor. Part of me kicked myself for not having patience, but the other part of me says that who knows? Maybe eventually I’ll find myself at Bloomsbury, or maybe I’ll just start publishing books like the ones I love so much from Bloomsbury.

I picked the bird in the hand, and it’s really worked out for me. The series I edit are doing well, and I have a new series coming out next year that I’ve helped develop from the beginning. We’re even starting to take manuscripts for standalone books. I’ve really grown as an editor, while getting to watch the imprint grow, too.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’re not bored by the details. Like I said at the beginning, it’s always a combination of improving your skills as an editor–both as a generalist and within your chosen field–and networking so that you know people who know where the job openings are. Then, you move to where the job openings are. For most, that means New York. I was lucky to find a job in a city with a little lower standard of living, but it took me a long time to get here. Good luck in your own search.