authors – Page 5 – Laurie Halse Anderson

October 14, 2009

When great things happen to great writers who are also my friends

HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!

The National Book Award Finalists have been announced. The finalists in the Young People’s Literature category are:

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
(Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

I am super, super excited about this list for a bunch of reasons.

First, Deb Heiligman is one of my oldest and dearest friends and I am so happy about the attention CHARLES AND EMMA has received I am in tears, when I am not dancing. YAY DEB!!!!!!!!!!!

Second, it’s about time Rita Williams-Garcia got some more attention for her work!

Third, I think it is wonderful to have three non-fiction books on this list!

I do have a question. Was David Small’s book (which I bought and LOVE) published as children’s literature or was it published as an adult title by Norton? Why do I care? Because if it was David’s intent to have this book seen as an adult title (which I certainly think it qualifies as) I wonder if this award might narrow the market, or make booksellers and librarians think it should only be shelved in the children’s section.

Personally, I think it is an excellent example of a cross-over title. Do you think it matters if it is an adult book crossing into the children’s market or a children’s book crossing into the adult section?

What do you think of this list?

18 comments

September 21, 2009

Secret journeys

I’ve been AWOL from blogging for a week, but it has been for the best of all possible reasons.

Last weekend I was at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Saw all kinds of kidlit people like,

Mo Willems and

Chris Myers.

A couple of my blog readers showed up armed with life-sustaining popcorn for me, like Rebecca from Austin and these girls,

, who just totally made my whole day.

As promised, I signed their shoes.

While waiting for my panel to start with Gayle Forman and Greg Neri, I tweeted and twittered. I tried not to twerp.

Later I enjoyed watching Bookavore (on the far right) moderate a panel that included the ever-fun Libba Bray (second from right).

The next day Bookavore and I played tourist.

We crossed the Williamsburg Bridge to the

Lower East Side where we checked out the Tenement Museum (really, you should go) and ate astonishingly good pizza.

Other highlights of the weekend including running into someone who knew me when I was in elementary school, someone who knew me in junior high, and hanging out with Jerry, who went to high school with me. Small world moments constantly.

And then…. and then…

BH and I snuck off to Montreal for a loooooooooooooooooooong overdue rest. But I’ve already posted too many pics today. ~~Look for Montreal tomorrow!~~

I think instead of Montreal tomorrow, I need to post about a couple of absurd and dangerous attempts to ban my books in high schools. Stay tuned.

2 comments

May 21, 2009

A long weekend’s worth of links & deviled egg inquiry

I am slowly transitioning from insane farmer woman back to being a writer who gardens a little. By the end of the weekend, the new vegetable plots should be finished, seedlings in, and seeds sown. And it’s a good thing because I am itching to get back to writing. All the travel and work stress is almost gone, and being in balance again is now appearing possible.

The glass is now installed in the Magic Window, the walls and most of the ceiling are up, and the cool chimney pot we found at the salvage yard is in place on the roof.

Our friend Steve, a natural born Tinkerer, has been up here helping out. He’s our lead elf for alternative energy issues. (The goal is to keep the cottage completely off the electrical grid.) The small wind turbine came last week. At first they mounted it on the garage roof, but that was a bad idea. Then they put it on a 10-foot pole in the back meadow. Better. Now it’s on a 20-foot pole in the back meadow – MUCH better. They are still experimenting with the exact location to take the best advantage of the winds. The other piece of the electric system will be a solar panel that should arrive next week.

Just writing all of this down makes me tired.

Aside from gardening and hanging with friends this weekend, I am going to try and make yogurt in my crockpot, thanks to a tip from Bookavore.

Don’t know what you’re going to do this weekend? I have a few suggestions:

Change a life. Buy a book for a boy in prison (thanks to all at Guys Lit Wire!)

Read Jezebel’s review of Wintergirls.

Read this jaw-dropping interview with A. S. Byatt in which she discusses her new book, The Children’s Book, a novel set in Edwardian England that examines the destructive side of creativity. (For the record, I usually like her books a lot and am looking forward to this one.) In the interview she says some rather stunning things, such as, “Yes, because I noticed that there’s a high rate of suicide among the children of children’s book writers.”

And “I think that most of the children’s writers live in the world that they’ve created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children’s writers are the children.”

In the first comment, I believe she is speaking only within the context of children’s writers from the Edwardian era, but the second comment seems more general. Any thoughts on this, gentle readers? (The book is available in the UK and Australia now, comes out in the States in October.) (And thanks to Judith in Australia for the info about this!)

That ought to hold you for a couple days.

ONE LAST THING!!! Do you have any secret ingredients you put in deviled eggs? If yes, please tell me what they are!

PS – GoogleLitTrips has a very nice feature on FEVER 1793. Check it out, teachers!

51 comments

May 6, 2009