Blog – Page 190 – Laurie Halse Anderson

February 21, 2007

TWISTED Book Tour!

Fire up the engines, honey, it’s time to take this book on the road!

In about a month, I am the very lucky author who gets to visit 20 cities in 12 days, and (fingers crossed, toes crossed, jumping up and down) meet hundreds and hundreds of you guys in the process.

I am not sure exactly how the cities were chosen, except that I do know that an effort was made to get me to a couple of places I had not visited before.

There are three kinds of events on this tour. Because I write for teenagers, my smart publishers went to a lot of trouble to get me in front of them. I will be visiting 7 high schools in the course of this visit. (It was supposed to be 8, but administrators at one school apparently got spooked because of the nature of my books.) These SCHOOL EVENTS are not open to the public. Sorry. I wish they were.

A STOCK SIGNING is kind of a drive-by signing. It is not a formal book signing, but booksellers don’t seem to mind if people show up. Generally, the author sprints from the car to the store, signs a lot of books, gets to hang out with the booksellers (who tend to be very interesting people), then sprints back to the car.

A PUBLIC EVENT, is, well, open to the public. That means you and everybody you know are invited to hang out. Bring the dog, too. I like dogs.

If you see a gap of a couple of hours between events, I am sad to report it does not mean I can get together with you for coffee. Every minute of this tour is spoken for between traveling, speaking, lunches and dinners with librarians and booksellers, and – occasionally – sleep.

Enough babbling, let’s get to it!

TWISTED TOUR, Mar. 20 – April 1, 2007

Tuesday, March 20 – fly half-way across the country. Try not to bore people sitting next to me with details of the new book. However, if stuck on tarmac for more than an hour, volunteer to hold plane spellbound by reading the first 15 chapters out loud.

Wednesday, March 21 – Arkansas & Mississippi

8am – SCHOOL EVENT – Blytheville, AK
Sponsored by: That Bookstore

11am – STOCK SIGNING: That Bookstore
316 W. Main
Blytheville, AR 72315
870-763-3333

7:00pm – PUBLIC EVENT!: Books-A-Million
135 Towne Square Boulevard
Southaven, MS 38671 (suburb of Memphis, TN)
662-536-1888

Thursday, March 22 – Mississippi

10:30 am – SCHOOL EVENT, kinda sorta
Young Authors Fair – Oxford Conference for the Book
Gertrude Castellow Ford Center for the Performing Arts
100 University Ave.
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS 38677-1848
Phone: 662-915-2787

Midday – super-special treat for me which I will be raving about endlessly, I swear. Man, oh, man. It is going to be faulking amazing. (Yes, that was a hint, duh.)

3:30 pm – PUBLIC EVENT: Square Books, Jr.
160 Courthouse Square
Oxford, MS 38655
662-236-2207

Friday, March 23 – Florida

12:30 pm – SCHOOL EVENT – Miami, FL
Sponsored by: Barnes & Noble West Kendall
Kendall Village West
12405 N Kendall Drive
Miami, FL 33186
305-598-7727

7:00 pm – AMAZING PUBLIC EVENT, including a Battle of the Bands as well as a booksigning! 20% of the money from my book sales that evening will be donated to The Children’s Home Society of Florida Please bring a new or gently used book to donate to the Society. If you do, you’ll get a raffle ticket. The store is going to raffle off some Miami Heat tickets, a gift certificate to American Apparel, and other stuff. (Isn’t this great?)

Where will this awesome thing happen?
Books & Books
265 Aragon Ave.
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Ph: 305-442-4408

Saturday, March 24 – Kentucky & Ohio

12:00pm PUBLIC EVENT: Blue Marble Bookstore
1356 S. Ft. Thomas Avenue
Ft. Thomas, KY 41075
859-781-0602

3:00pm PUBLIC EVENT: Joseph-Beth Booksellers
2692 Madison Rd.
Cincinnati, OH 45208
513-731-7770

5:30 pm STOCK SIGNING: Blue Manatee Children’s Bookstore
3054 Madison Rd
Cincinnati, OH 45209
513-731-2665

Sunday, March 25 – Ohio

2:00 pm PUBLIC EVENT Books & Co.
The Greene Town Center
4453 Walnut Street
Dayton, Ohio 45440
937-429-2169

6:00 pm PUBLIC EVENT: Signing at Upper Arlington High School (open to public)
(event location) 1650 Ridgeview Rd.
Upper Arlington, OH 43221

This will be sponsored by: Cover to Cover
3560 North High Street
Columbus, OH 43214-4041
614-263-1624

Monday, March 26 – Michigan

12:00pm – SCHOOL EVENT – Lapeer, MI
Sponsored by: Halfway Down the Stairs
114 E. 4th St.
Rochester, MI 48307
248-652-6066

7:00pm – PUBLIC EVENT! Signing at Southfield Public Library
26300 Evergreen Rd.
Southfield, MI 48076
248-796-4240

Sponsored by: The Book Beat
26010 Greenfield
Oak Park, MI 48237
248-968-1190

Tuesday, March 27 – Michigan

3:30 pm – PUBLIC EVENT: Borders/Birmingham
34300 Woodward
Birmingham, MI 48009
Phone: 248.203.0005

7:00 pm – PUBLIC EVENT: Nicola’s Books
Westgate Shopping Center
2513 Jackson Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
734-662-0600

Wednesday, March 28 – Illinois & Missouri

4:30pm PUBLIC EVENT: Piece of Mind Books
1530 Troy Rd.
Edwardsville, IL 62025
618-656-7277

7:00 pm PUBLIC EVENT: Signing at St. Louis Public Library – Buder Branch
4401 Hampton Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63109
314-539-0380

Sponsored by: Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid
St. Louis, MO 63108
314-367-6731

Thursday, March 29 – TEXAS!

10:30am – SCHOOL EVENT – Houston, TX

Sponsored by: Blue Willow Bookshop
14532 Memorial Dr.
Houston, TX 77079
281-497-8675

1:30pm – ANOTHER SCHOOL EVENT – Houston, TX

Booktour hints

I am on a dead run today, so this will be quick. Here are the states I’ll be visiting on booktour in March!

(In chronological order)
Arkansas
Mississippi
Florida
Ohio
Michigan
Illinois
Missouri
Texas
California
New York

Several states have multiple signings. Details tomorrow – I promise!!!! I ‘ll give cities, stores, times, everything. I am SO EXCITED about this!!!

(TWISTED goes on sale in exactly one month. Be still my beating heart.)

I am also excited about the following photographs:

The roof cleaners are here!

That is the Daddy Roof, forty feet up. See why I didn’t want to go up it?

February 19, 2007

Make them wear pants!

I was not going to comment on this. Really. I was shoveling away, happy as a lark, thinking about my own books and minding my own business. But people keep blogging about IT. And emailing me about IT.

You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Scrotum.

Quick background. One the first page of the most recent Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky, a rather unfortunate dog is bit by a rattlesnake in a rather unfortunate place. That’s right. Fido (actually, the dog is named Roy) gets nailed in the ballsack. But the reader does not see the incident. Instead, the book’s main character, Lucky, overhears a conversation about it.

You can read an excerpt on amazon.

Lucky then ponders this strange word, scrotum, thinking it “sounded medical and secret.” (I must agree with her about that. It took me decades to figure out precisely what that word meant.)

And then the book continues.

First, a disclaimer: I have not read the book. Therefore my comments have nothing to do with the quality of it, or any of Patron’s other choices. But I do have a couple of opinions about the controversy this has stirred up. This has been argued about in the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, various listservs and probably every writer’s group in America. The book has been banned countless places. AS IF has devoted a lot of space to it. As usual, David Lubar has a wonderful comment. Teacher Monica Edinger has some good thoughts, too.

Susan Patron, herself a librarian, has written a response to her critics. So I might as well add my two cents. I can solve the problem instantly.

I call on the President to require all male dogs to wear pants or face immediate castration. Because that’s how we solve problems, right? Cover it up, chop it off, or make it go away.

No?

OK, option #2. Thank Susan Patron for giving us the chance to talk about this. Because clearly, people have vastly different opinions about it. I think it is very, very silly to get worked up about the proper medical name of a dog’s anatomy. I also think, based on the excerpt I read, Patron used the word in context perfectly. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what it was called. I was mystified by a lot of things as a kid. That’s why I read books, to learn.

It bums me out to see the name-calling that this controversy is degenerating into. In one corner we have the radical liberals foaming with their sexuality agendas, in the other corner we have Puritanical Victorian ostriches who want to deprive children of information. Everyone is allowed an opinion, but when you start calling people names, we all lose.

The larger issue that needs to be aired out is that of “banning.” Some librarians are making the choice not to put Lucky in their collection. (Some of the quotes I read indicated it was because of the scrotum reference (should that be scrotal?), others because they didn’t think it was a great book.) Librarians face this choice every single day: lots of books to buy, very little money to buy them with.

So they makes choices. Is that banning? What do you think?

I still think we should make dogs wear pants.

February 18, 2007

Mad Woman on the roof

Happy Chinese New Year!

No fireworks or barbecue here, just the ongoing saga of the Great Snow of ’07. And the increasing weight on the rafters. We have had no luck getting qualified, insured people here to clean the roof off. (They are in short supply, for obvious reasons.)

The paper quoted Scott Steiger, a prof at SUNY Oswego, as saying a foot of snow puts .6 pounds of pressure per square inch of roof. Which means a foot of snow puts nearly 8,500 pounds of pressure on a 100-square foot roof.

We have had more than 10 feet of snow.

So yesterday was the day when I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, picked up a shovel and ascended to the roof in the bucket of the bobcat.

Like a lot of houses, ours has a couple different rooflines. Number One Son and I spent the afternoon on the roof that is closest to the ground (only one-story up), the Baby Roof, getting it more or less cleaned off. Today we have one more Baby Roof and the Momma Roof (two stories up) to take care of. The Daddy Roof, which is three stories up, we are leaving to the professionals, who claim they are arriving Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday.

We shoveled and BH ran the bobcat, clearing away the mountain of snow we dumped. He is not allowed on the roof because of the recent knee surgery. This does not please him. But if I were put in charge of the bobcat, I would probably drive it through the house, so things really are safer this way.

Me, feeling victorious over my fear of heights, which was conquered by my fear of collapsing roofs.

Boy with camera, author with shovel.

Enjoying a tall, cold (very cold) glass of water. We really worked up a sweat moving that stuff.

I will admit it wiped me out. I was asleep by 8pm, dreaming sweet dreams of victory.

It snowed last night and there is more on the way today, though it will be measured in inches, not feet. There will also be more roof cleaning today. When my back is sore and my legs tired, I’ll come in to begin preparation for the writer’s conference this weekend.

February 17, 2007

Huzzah.

It is not snowing.