What's it like to be part of a military family?

I didn't know there was video! And there's a nice write-up on the TATAL (Teens at the Arlington Library) blog.

By the way, did you know April is the Month of the Military Child? And that this week, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden launched the Joining Forces initiative to support military families?



For a list of resources to help military students, please check out this post, Connecting with Students From Military Families.

Military Families Need Libraries

Liz, I'm a bit late to your Librarian Love challenge, but here it is!

Librarian Sondy Eklund has sent an open letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, asking that they restore funding to our libraries, reversing the deep cuts that have hit the system over the last two years.

I don't always comment on such posts, but I did today, on behalf of military families. Here's what I said:

I’m a Fairfax County resident, but I’m also part of a military family. We’ve moved many, many times as part of my husband’s service, but the library is one of the first places we go when we arrive in a new community. We scan the bulletin boards for jobs and classes and summer camps, we talk to librarians about what’s unique in the local area, we take our kids—who know no one yet— to story hours and library activities, we check out books that comfort and inform and sustain us. The truth is that every move involves stress and disruption and uncertainty. We might be in temporary housing. We might be facing an immediate deployment. But the library is, and always has been, part of how a new place, ever so slowly, comes to feel like “home.”

I challenge the Board of Supervisors to imagine that THEY are new to this area of Virginia, and to go to the smallest local branch of the library nearest them for one afternoon. What will they find? Who will welcome them? Will the library even be open?

I can’t think of any defensible reason why libraries—which are wildly successful at carrying out their mission—should not be saluted and honored and yes, financially supported, for the outstanding service they give to the people of Fairfax County. They’ve always been there for us.

Please, if you have something to add, Sondy's open letter and blog post are here. And Liz, thanks for the Librarian Love challenge---it isn't over! 

Improvising at the Arlington Library's Teen Blog

Miss me? I'm over at the Arlington Library's teen blog, talking improv and all things drama. While you're there, check out their posts for drama week, including a great one on how to score cheap theater tickets as a student. They have a Facebook fan page, too!

Thank you, librarian of awesomeness, Nico Piro, for hosting me!

Poetry Friday: In the Library

In honor of the library-loving blog challenge going on this week at writerjenn's and countless other blogs, I'm posting this lovely poem by Charles Simic:


In the Library

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

The rest is here.


Poetry Friday is hosted by poet Julie Larios at The Drift Record.

And don't forget to visit the blogs participating in the library-loving challenge. All you have to do is comment; the bloggers are the ones donating! Angels are plentiful...

Books Bought for Flying Horse Farms Library

Here's what I bought with the money from the I Love Libraries comment challenge:

• Horses and Ponies (Kingfisher Riding Club) - Sandy Ransford $18.95 - Quantity: 1

• First Riding Lessons (RIDING CLUB) - Sandy Ransford $11.06 - Quantity: 1

• Archery (Backyard Games) - Steve Boga $9.31 - Quantity: 1

• Horse Handling & Grooming: A Step-By-Step Photographic Guide to Mastering over 100 Horsekeeping Skills (Horsekeeping Skills Library) - Cherry Hill $13.57 - Quantity: 1

• Cherry Hill's Horse Care for Kids: Grooming, Feeding, Behavior, Stable & Pasture, Health Care, Handling & Safety, Enjoying - Cherry Hill $11.53 - Quantity: 1

• Nature's Art Box: From t-shirts to twig baskets, 65 cool projects for crafty kids to make with natural materials you can find anywhere - Laura C. Martin $11.53 - Quantity: 1

Thank you all so much for supporting me and Flying Horse Farms!

Here's a picture of Emily and her dad looking at plans for the groundbreaking ceremony on June 13. You can follow along at the new FHF Camp Journal blog.

Dear Commenters and Campers

To my 78 (!!!!) commenters on the Library-Loving Challenge,

Thank you so much. It only took a moment to comment, but your words will last much longer than that. The money raised ( $78!) is enough for me to purchase several books from the Flying Horse Farms Wishlist.  I will lovingly tuck a copy of all of your comments between the covers, and your words will trot off to find new friends.

Gratefully yours,

Sara

Here is a sampling of the words that will greet the future campers and readers at the Flying Horse Farms Library:

Dear Campers,

Here's to books and horses and kids (young and old) who love both!

Because of YOU, I see horses everywhere I go, and every horse book I see, I want to buy and send your way. 
Keep smiling!

There's no such thing as too many horses, too many books, or too many books about horses.

May your love of reading and riding inspire you to create a story all your own! Happy Trails.

A book is a buddy you can take in the house when the horse stays in the barn! 

Ride on! Read away!

Giddyup libraries!

I read Black Beauty when I was very young and it broke my heart. I wanted to save every horse in the world. There is something about horses and books - or horse stories in books. You have Beauty and My Friend Flicka and National Velvet and The Black Stallion and Misty of Chincoteague and on and on. You could have a library just of horse stories! (Not that you have to, but you could.... :)

Campers, enjoy the horses and the books. Just not at the same time, no reading while riding.

When I was a teenager, my brother rode horses pretty seriously but I didn't. Sometimes I'd go along with him just to kill time - pet the horses noses and curl up on the hay with a book. Occasionally, I could ride and he'd teach me some basics. And it was fun. But one day, I got to gallop - to really let the horse loose on a big stretch of field. Wow! It was absolutely amazing being part of that speed and energy. I hope you find some of that excitement at camp and can take it home with you to remember for a long time.

May you find joy, laughter and the freedom of being yourselves at this wonderful camp. Hurray for horses and great books!

Campers, may the book you're meant to read find you! Enjoy the horses, the outdoors, and the world of the imagination.

Enjoy every moment! Ride like the wind. :~)

Jennifer Hubbard will have a round-up of the results of all the Library-Loving Challenges, so watch for that. Some challenges are still open through April 1, so click over and support more libraries!

Library Loving Challenge: Reading and Riding Rock!

This post is dedicated to Melodye, who suggested that I join writerjenn's Library Loving Challenge to benefit the Flying Horse Farms library. 

The challenge is simple: you comment, I donate. For every comment I receive on this post between now and midnight (EST) on March 28th, I'll donate $1 toward buying books from this Wishlist for Flying Horse Farms, a camp for kids with serious illnesses.*  And the really fun part?

Direct your comments not to me, but to THE KIDS who will enjoy the library at camp.  Leave them a message:  "Have fun!"  "You're great!" "Reading and Riding Rock!"  Anything.   I'll pass the comments on to the future campers at Flying Horse Farms. (This was also Melodye's idea. Isn't she brilliant?)

For more about my quest to build the library, see my post here.  (You're also welcome to buy a book directly off the Wishlist. Or spread the word far and wide. Thank you!)  

Ready, set . . .   COMMENT!

*Challenge donations are per unique commenter. ($1 for each person who comments)

Off and galloping!

The Flying Horse Farms library is off and galloping! I've updated the original post, but I also wanted to share some pictures of Emily and roundup all the links (so far) to posts from around the Kidlitosphere.



Thank you so much to those who've blogged about it:

Little Willow

What Adrienne Thinks About That

7-Impossible Things Before Breakfast: 7 Reasons to Go Buy or Blog about a Horse Book Today

Write For a Reader

Jen Robinson

Jama at Alphabet Soup

Loree Griffin Burns: On Books and Horses (and the cutest picture!)

Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge: The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby

The Miss Rumphius Effect: When Buying a Book Means Making a Difference

Running After My Hat: Celebrity Horse Moments (Bogus Edition)

Semicolon: Horsey Books

The Old Coot: Books For a Good Cause

Kane/Miller Books

The Reading Tub

Bean Bag Chairs Are Still In

How would you re-design the teen space in your public library?

The Washington Post home section took on the challenge for branches in Bethesda, Quince Orchard, and Chevy Chase.

There was no teen section of my library when I was fighting my way through adolescence. The kids' area was downstairs---it had one of those modern sunken reading areas; everything else was upstairs. (Including the Anne of Green Gables books and all the SF I wanted to read.) When allowed up there, I remember making a bee-line for Seventeen magazine.

Would I have hung out in a designated YA section? Maybe. For the whole cliched teen thing, I preferred buying a cherry Icee at the Family Pantry and standing there giggling over Teen Beat without buying it. The library was an alone kind of place for me. I liked being free to slink up and down the aisles and find books without the social judgment that so pervades the teen years. If I had to carry my selections to a designated shag rug and bean bag chair, I might have thought twice about what I picked out.

But libraries now are more social than ever. It's about studying together, and book clubs, and "meeting people" as one teen in the article said. As long as teens still get to be alone with a book at some point, I'm okay with that. One body to a bean bag, please!

P.S. Awesome it is. Check out the Jabba the Hutt bean bag chair. And other rejected Star Wars merchandise at Geekologie.

Digital Bookmobile

I had no idea such a thing existed.

The press release:

DIGITAL BOOKMOBILE COMING TO CENTREVILLE

A digital bookmobile will be in the parking lot of the Centreville
Library from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13 (rain or shine).
The bookmobile provides a great opportunity for people to learn more
about downloading audiobooks, eBooks and more. There will be
instructional videos and interactive computer stations so readers of all
ages can experience new ways to enjoy digital books and more from the
library. For more information visit the library's Web site at
www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library. Centreville Regional Library is located
at 14200 St. Germain Dr., Centreville, VA 20121.

P.S. I've only lived one place that was served by a bookmobile, and that was the military family housing area on Fort Adams, in Rhode Island. I loooooved that thing. There was something about all those books squeezed into one tiny, but orderly, space that made them feel even more like the treasures they were.

Poetry Friday: Patron Handbooks

Grace

Grace given on any point

at any time

does not imply

that it is a change of policy

or that grace will

necessarily be extended

another time.

General Behavior

Behavior

should be such as is common

to other libraries.

Security

In the event of a fire
on the lower levels,
exiting
by one of the side exits
is probably best,

as the possibility of fire
shooting up the open central stairwell
could be a risk.

(However, behavior should be such
as is common to other libraries.)

(Grace will NOT necessarily be extended another time.)

---From the WCIU Library Patron Handbook, manipulated and arranged by me.

Found poetry feels slightly lazy, and yet it's perfect summer play for my brain. Plus, I think all the revision I've been doing has made me want to rearrange words wherever I see them!

Poetry Friday is hosted by Jennie, at BiblioFile

Art in the Pages

Holy Giant Books, Batman!

My county started installing people-sized statues of books at local libraries and schools. The public art sculpture series is called Art in the Pages and features local artists, each of whom submitted a design like the one below:


Artist: Stacy Mehlberg
Title: Read. Grow.






Here are some of the finished sculptures. You can get a better idea of the large scale of these from the photos at the Fairfax Library Foundation blog.

More design sketches here.

I challenge you to see how many children's/YA references you can spot! So far, I've seen Peter Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland, Pooh, Harry Potter, Madeleine, Seuss...but my favorite literary reference has to be the sculpture titled Book Worms, which includes How to Eat Fried Worms along with The Good Earth and Notes From Underground.

What would you do with a blank stack of books?

The Early, The Late, and The Overdue

When your first book is coming out, early mentions of it are surprising. Last year, my editor emailed me my first review of Letters From Rapunzel (here, in Publishers Weekly) long before I was expecting anything. I hadn't even begun to worry about such a thing, so I got to skip straight to the thrill of it.

But surprise late reactions are fun, too, like this one titled "The Girl in the Tower," which I discovered in the NY Review of Books. My book is mentioned in a scholarly article (ahem) in a venerable publication (double ahem.) Pardon me while I give a very self-impressed and perhaps inappropriate w00t!

I also received a lovely email this week from another writer who I hadn't heard from in about three years. She was living overseas, and had ordered my book, and when it arrived, she wrote:

I was the one to check the mail and find your book waiting for me. A half an hour and many pages later, I realized I was still sitting in the post office parking lot and was about to be late picking my kids up from school!

I love that she read my book (which features a post office) at the post office! She also said that reading it "nudged me back to my own writing" which makes me w00t again.

Anyhow, both of these things made me realize that despite some gloomy "blink of an eye" talk, the life cycle of a book is longer than we think. Sure, Letters From Rapunzel is not front and center on book displays anymore (if it ever was) but it's made its way to Australia. (May I w00t for that also, please? Thank you, WorldCat, for letting me know.)

And it appears that a reader in Australia has it on loan and that it is overdue. I hope that's because the reader is devouring it for the second time, or has perhaps loaned it to her best friend, or is hoarding it for an upcoming book talk---and not because she's lost it under her bed.

I don't like late dinner, late tax refunds, or late trains. But you can take as long as you want to get around to my book. Call me in the nursing home. I'll be reading some old book myself.

Library Geek Misses Her Big Chance (Reports from the NY SCBWI conference)

The first in a series of mini-reports on my trip to the New York SCBWI Winter conference:

I did something geeky last Friday. I went to the Central Children's Room at the Donnell branch of the New York Public Library and asked to see a copy of my book. I was just going to peek at it on the shelves and marvel that my book (MY book!) was in the same building as the original stuffed animals from Winnie the Pooh, Wyeth paintings, and a Newbery medal.

But my surreptitious plan didn't work. The librarian on duty insisted upon doing her job and helping me. It turns out that Letters From Rapunzel at this particular branch was non-circulating, and The Most Helpful Librarian in the World jumped right up and went to the back stacks to pull it for me.

Really, I didn't mean to make her leave her desk and go fetch my own book! It's not like I haven't seen it before. But I hadn't seen it in a library in New York before, and I really did want to. Maybe because I went to kindergarten in NY. Maybe because I went to the library often in NY. (Although not the Donnell branch, sadly, according to my mom and dad. More likely the local Queens branch.) Or maybe because I'm a total library geek.

Anyhow, I held it, stroked its shiny library cover, and fantasized about filling the white space on the title page with a pithy literary comment, my non-trembling signature, and the date: Feb. 8, 2008. Then, I reluctantly gave it back to the Most Helpful Librarian. Turns out that I screwed THAT up.

Because later that night, at the KidLit Drinks get-together, I talked with Betsy Bird, librarian at the same famous Donnell Children's Room, and blogger as Fuse 8 (read her detailed post about Donnell here,) and she said: Oh, did you sign your book?

WHAT? I could've written in a library book? Really? *sigh*

On the other hand, I did do some things right on my visit to Donnell. I inspected Eeyore's tail and marveled at Tigger's realistic stripes. I signed Pooh's guest book. I eavesdropped on a play being rehearsed in a back room. I said a little prayer before the plain, matter-of-fact sign reading: In Memoriam: Madeleine L'Engle and Lloyd Alexander (among others.) I peered through the window of an office at a model of the Little Cabin in the Woods, and longed to move the figures around in a dance to a fiddle tune. I oohed over the Mary Poppins books and umbrella.

Most of all, I left feeling grateful for the chance to stand in a place where I could picture myself as a child, rushing in the door, running over to the new books, getting lost in all the choices, visiting old favorites on the shelves, and leaving with an armful of the best of the best. I wouldn't have noticed if an author had been standing there, holding her own book. Except of course, if it was a book I wanted to read. And then I would've thought: HEY! WEIRDO! Are you done with that?

P.S. The building that holds the Donnell branch has been sold. Betsy Bird has been gathering memories of the Children's Reading Room. If you have a good story, please get it to her here.

Classify This

While looking for Children's Book Week posts, I stumbled across 025.431: The Dewey Blog. They had a Book Week post last year, in which the blog editors named their favorite childhood books. (Also posts on such things as the Classification Club and Fibs.) No post this year.

But...look what I found:

From this post about a cat named Dewey Readmore Books, a link to the Library Cats Map, which tracks felines who reside in or pussyfoot around libraries.

One of my favorite map entries is Magnificat, who was in residence at the Graduate Theological Union Library in Berkeley in the 1980s. (Their library catalog is named "Grace," by the way.) And in France, a cat named Starsky lives at the Médiathèque Monnaie Romans sur Isère Novels.

If your library had a cat (or any pet) what would you name it? Right now, I'm going with Rhyme and Reason, a pair of kittens. Or a blue lizard named Lang.

Pie, Art, and Books

I read Southern Living for the recipes. Here's a killer one for banana pudding pie. And one of my best holiday memories is the time it took all four of us in the kitchen (hubbie, me, and two kids) to make their "Down-Home Supper" which featured Chicken-Fried Steak with Milk Gravy and Creamy Mashed Potatoes. (A task easily handled by one grandmother, I might add.)

But other than the recipes, I ignore the rest. I can't grow a plant to save my life, and design tips seem worthless when you move as often as we do. But I do have a "When we finally settle and I get to hire a designer because my books have made me fabulously wealthy" file. And most of it is filled with ideas for book rooms.

I recently tore from the September issue an article called "Great Looks with Lots of Books" which showcases a room with a book gallery. Uh-huh, the walls are covered with bookshelves, which are fronted with a wide step and a railing that runs around the perimeter, making your collection look like an exclusive library. And this room has works of art mounted---floating really---over the bookshelves. I could just die in that room. Especially if I were allowed to eat Banana Pudding Pie first.

*Interesting note: In the Southern Living piece, the art work is by Matisse. On the designer's site, the art is a giant skull and crossbones. Hmmm.

*And in MY fantasy room, the shelves run all the way around the room, broken only by space for a built-in daybed and a few wide windowsills with cushion seats. And the books are shabby, well-read, and not shelved for design effect, but by content. The art rotates, on loan from the R. Michelson Gallery. Oh, and a dumbwaiter brings up pie from the kitchen.

The Future is Better Than You Ever Imagined

Robin Brande just had a big book launch, and she wondered, as it approached, why she was feeling a bit numb. I assured her (with the infinite wisdom of my vast publishing experience) that she would have many moments, not just The One on The Day.

One of those "many moments" for me was discovering that the Library of Congress had a copy of my book. Well, of course it does; they're required to own copies of every copyrighted piece of material in the U.S. But the fun thing is that because of where I live, if you put my zip code and the title of my book into WorldCat's search box, the Library of Congress shows up first!

And guess what else is cool? The Library of Congress has a blog. Well, maybe they're required to do that, too, but I doubt it. And look at what their college interns got to do over the summer---rummage around in the archives. The English majors---gotta love 'em!--- dug into the manuscript collection, and found:

"a 1902 copyright deposit manuscript for a musical titled 'An Extra Session: A Chimerical Satire on the Feasible Possibilities Which Woman May Attain a Hundred Years Hence.' Written by William D. Hall, the musical is set in the White House in the year 2002, with a woman president and her all-female cabinet."

Haven't read it. Can't review it. I just might, though, go see a performance of it if Emma Thompson were playing the Secretary of Defense.

By the way, how does a "chimerical" satire differ from a regular kick-ass one? Is that anything like how a celebrity book* is not, and never will be, the same species as a real one**?

*disclaimer: link does not, in fact, take you to Madonna's book (not in a hundred billion years)

**link will, in fact, take you to Robin's future best-seller: Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature

Back to school shopping

J. Crew, you've gone literary on us! (Will She Who Will Get Me My Book be pleased?)

The new "library print" fabric

as a skirt...

as a scarf...

as a dress...
(wouldn't this be great
for those celebrity visits to your library?)

and finally,
as a demure cardigan...

Why are there NO SHOES????

You are now connected

Blogging from the road has been better and worse than I expected. I blogged when I didn't think I'd be able to, and didn't blog even when I had access. Right now, I'm sitting in a car outside a public library, using their wireless network. Yeah, libraries!

Anyhow, this spottiness will continue all week, while I travel. In the meantime, in honor of the library that is supporting me right now, I want to call your attention to this eloquent plea from Anne Marie Pace for the library at Chincoteague. (Yes, it's the same town where MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE began. ) As Anne Marie says: "I have more children's books in my house than they have in their library." Go and see if there's one tiny thing you can do to join Anne Marie in offering more books to the kids who live there. UPDATE: Now you can buy music by Chincoteague musicians to support the library!

I'll sign off here shortly, but the wireless network inside the library will continue to broadcast. I think that's a mini-miracle, a great and wonderful invention, but it's nothing compared to the intimate, quiet pulse of a library book that finds me, alone and in need of sustenance, and steadily breathes life back into my pale form:

(The Guardian's review of: The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean)

She Who Will Get Me My Book

I'm going to the library today to pick up a book. It's the graphic novel, The Plain Janes, by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. I first heard about it through the Summer Blog Blast Tour in interviews with the author like this one. I later read intriguing reviews of it on other blogs like this one.

When I went to the library last week, (which, BTW, was packed with people) I searched for it in the library's computer catalog. The catalog said it was on the new JFIC shelves, but I couldn't find it anywhere. A live (no other description needed here) librarian helped me search for it. She eventually put in a hold request for me, and assured me that when it showed up, I would be emailed. She checked my email address and corrected an error in it. Today, the email arrived, and I'm off to pick up my book.

This is quite different from when I was a kid. Then, I would troll the shelves for interesting reads, find as many books as would fit in a stack between my cupped hands and my chin, and take them to the librarian at the checkout desk. She didn't have a bun, but she was old and rather tiny, and I adored her. I'm trying to remember why I adored her, and I can't even recall her name. I guess it was because I saw her as: SHE WHO WILL GET ME MY BOOKS.

The more modern librarian the other day also GOT ME MY BOOK.

I will discretely stare at your tattoo if you have one. I will give you bonus points if you have cute little artsy glasses. I may check out your shoes. But if you can't GET ME MY BOOK, then you don't fit my stereotype of a librarian.

See the post from kidsilkhaze (Biblio File) over at The Geek Buffet.