Thank you everyone for the very sweet comments and emails about the O’Dell Award! I am still tingling with excitement and hyperventilating.
Christmas is finally over up here on the Tundra. We’ve had Daughter #1 (aka Bookavore) and her boyfriend up here for the final celebration. Author Alert – Bookavore is moving to the Big Apple and will be managing WORD, a super-cool bookstore in Brooklyn, starting next month.
I have finally signed up for Twitter. I think it will be most fun while I’m on tour. My Twitter name is halseanderson. Feel free to follow!
My Friday Five is an assortment of book news I’ve been accumulating for a while.
1. Along with all the other amazing news this week, Isabel in CHAINS garnered a Cuffie Award. Be sure to read through the whole list!
2. The Israeli rights to TWISTED have been sold. Check out this student project about the book.
3. Penguin has posted my poem “Listen” on their website. The poem shares reader reactions to SPEAK. I wrote it for this year’s 10th anniversary of the book. (Follow the link, scroll down, and open the pdf.)
4. Illustrator Matt Faulkner has posted a DAMES video on YouTube.
5. We have a WINTERGIRLS Facebook page now. Another nice review has come in for WINTERGIRLS, but I can’t post it for a few weeks. Stay tuned!
I’m headed into the Writing Cave this weekend, hoping to blast through a plot knot and weave in a subplot. What are you doing?
“Listen” is profoundly touching. Such a wonderful way to reach out to your readers and let them know that their words and stories matter, too. Thanks for sharing it with us.
On the Isreali cover, will the pencil twist in the other direction?
Congrats to Bookavore. Woot!
This weekend, I am chugging through two pages a day nomatterwhut.
So much wonderful news in this post – I can feel your joy from here. I hope Ms. Bookavore likes NYC – I will miss seeing her when I visit Bethlehem, though! (I heart Bethlehem.)
I’m still moving ahead with the second gnomes ms, and revising almost 20 poems for the Jane project. And Jane is creeping back out from wherever it is she hides when the gnomes come stamping in. She’s not here yet, but I can tell she’s coming. And soon, I’ll be pulling out the fountain pen and writing more Jane poems. I hope to finish the down-draft of the gnomes first, however.
heh
All of this is wonderful news.
I’m totally thrilled for your award (and all the other very wonderful things). Congratulations!
What am I doing? Adding TENSION to my WIP–as it was the word-of-the-day at writers’ group. Funny how you could sit there all day and not breath a word about the O’Dell. You could have at least implied that you had a secret. Nope, nothing. So as the self-appointed spokesperson for our writers’ group, we’ll take the bread. And if that means you have to stay up late, or get up really early to bake it, I say tough. You are guilty of withholding vital information (even if it was the moral thing to do),and you must pay. I’ll have the butter waiting.
Yeah, sorry about that, buddy. I didn’t trust my self to even think about it in your presence.
Bread will be forthcoming. Or forthbaking.
“Listen” almost made me cry. That is so, so amazing. It just inspires me so much that people reacted so strongly to your book and that their lives were completely changed like that, since it gave them so much strength. I know mine was, even though for me, it only extends to relating with Melinda as a fellow freshman girl who feels like an outcaster and who, as a quiet person, has also pondered “speaking”. Though I know other people’s lives were changed more dramatically. Art is such an amazing thing. You and your readers just inspired me so much as an artist. I truly do think Art is one of the most amazing things. Thank you so much for sharing your books with us. Thank you for helping you readers like you did. You should be very proud.
Yay, just started following you on Twitter; I’m RaggedyAnndy on there as well. Also, I got Twisted for Christmas, and I tore through that thing in about four days it was so good! I also tore through Chains, the first copy the local library got in (it’s good to have a librarian for a mom), and it was excellent! HOWEVER, I didn’t realize that your next novel, Forge, is a SEQUEL to Chains! I got to the end of the book and was like, wait – what? She’s making me wait how long to find out the end? O_o
Ah, well. I’ve still never read Wintergirls or Prom, so I suppose those will have to hold me over.
I just read “Listen” and i am trying not to cry at work, but its not really working. i just reread SPEAK for class, but i have read it many times before. thank you so much. i was Melinda from age 21 to now and no other book has this sort of impact on me. i even had a Rachel whose name was actually Rachel. Thank you again.
Who is on the cover for Wintergirls? It looks like this photo-blogger I’ve had on my FL for awhile!
Speak
Dear Ms. Anderson,
I just finished the book Speak, and to be honest, this is my first book that I have ever read about rape.
I was raised in China, a place where people don’t talk or write about sex that much. Especially in secondary classroom, teachers would never dare to teach with this kind of book.
Rape is a scary word, and I can imagine how cold and deep it can reach into a girl’s heart. When I was around 12, I watched a movie in which a girl was raped. Though I couldn’t understand what happened, I started being cautious around guys.
A few years ago, my neighbor who was in my age raped a girl, along with his younger brother and few of his friends. His younger brother was caught and had to serve 8 years prison sentence. When I heard that, I was very shocked. We grew up together, and it’s just too hard for me to face them thinking how nasty they are and how mean they are.
I am glad that you brought Melinda to life and made her so strong and so real, and I wish your book will help more “Melinda” to speak for truth and for themselves.