Locked in like prisoners . . .

they were forced to read until they could read no more. And why could they read no more? 
Not because they had given up the will to read, but because-

they had come to the end of the book.

Obviously this headline was a clever ploy to grab your attention. However, the facts happen to be true. This last friday at the Staunton library a group of sixth grade girls and their teacher Becky McKenzie allowed themselves to be locked into the library overnight for a read-in. Of my tween novel Coyote Summer.

I couldn't be more proud. In fact, if family matters had not necessitated my going out of state I would have locked myself in with them. 

A read-in. What a great idea. How I would have loved that as a young girl. In fact, I can picture the exact space we could have used in the Morristown TN library. The new one, that is; there wasn't even room for all the books in the old library, And besides, it was kind of creepy.

I had another great encounter with a young reader this month. While I was up north, one of my 10 year old first readers  brought me her edited version of my next book. 

I must admit, I had not expected her mother to print it out in its final mark-up state. Nor had I expected a line by line edit and critique from a 10 year old. I kind of thought she was going to read it as a PDF and tell me if she liked it or not. 

But my cousin's daughter's daughter (I have no idea what that makes her) Natalie doesn't do anything half-way. Not only did she comment, she commented on the comments. My personal favorites were a comment she made to me while we were going over her suggestions, "I don't think that comment is right. You might do it that way if this was a YA book, but not for kids my age," and of course my personal favorite,"I think the way Margo did it was better."

And - she changed the title. 
Thank you, Natalie. I agree with almost all of your suggestions.

Perhaps you can suggest a read-in at your local library when the next book comes out. I'm still thinking about that title.

The holiday season has me in a mood . . . (giveaway inside this blog!)

Actually, several moods. They pretty much change every ten minutes, from appreciative of people's generosity toward the burned-out relative of a neighbor of mine, to irritated at the constant Christmas music blaring from a huge speaker at a house up the block, back to appreciative of people shopping downtown instead of at malls an hour away, back to irritated that everyone feels the need to do so much shopping at all.

Yes, I am in the running for the Scrootch 

+

award this year.

Much like every year.

So I've been thinking hard, (and yes, it hurts) and I believe I might have come up with a way to extend the appreciative and curb the irritation. 

Hmm, that kind of sounds like a 50's song lyric.
But I digress.

So welcome to my Scrootch avoidance plan for 2014.

Either:
1. Buy small, homegrown, or local.

Buy an autographed or personalized copy of  Coyote Summer at www.margosolod.com and I will donate the profit from the sale to our local food pantry. And they could use all the help they can get.

or- B. Give gifts.

Buy 2 copies  of Coyote Summer because everyone has a child/grandchild/niece or nephew. Give one to your local library or local elementary or middle school. Actually, I have no control over this. Do what you will with them. Just remember the blood, sweat and ink that was sacrificed . . . (Oops, I digress again. Pardon.)

Not only will I donate the profits but I will send you, ABSOLUTELY FREE an autographed copy of my memoir with recipes, Cuttyhunk: Life on the Rock. 

This is actually a triple win because now you will have an emergency gift for aunt Hilda when she brings you over an unexpected fruitcake. Or, even better, a gift for your child's school or sunday school teacher. Cookies are so old hat.

You give, I give, you give again, The food pantry gives. (and probably aunt Hilda gives the book away as well. It's the gift that keeps on giving.)

Start the ball rolling. 
(Irritation is so unattractive in a woman my age)

And we thank you.

Look what showed up in my inbox . . .

Dear Ms. Solod,

My name is Sage Cooley and I am 6th grade. You met my mom, Carol Cooley who is also an author, at the VCCA in September. She gave me a book you wrote called Coyote Summer. I just finished reading it and I thought it was really inspiring. It exampled the characters personalities strongly; it almost felt like I knew them myself. I thought Jessie’s discovery was so unique. The fact that she went out of her way to save Lancelot (that's so cute by the way) and the pups to replace a bad memory is heartbreaking. I got so involved in this book I refused to go to sleep.

I used your book for my English report. I matched all the main characters with animals that fit their nature. 

Lara = Deer

Susan = Koala

Jessie = Coyote (of course)

Mrs. Silva = German Sheppard

Susan’s Dad = Bear

Daniel = Rabbit

Amanda = Dolphin

I look forward to your upcoming books and I think you’re really talented. (Thanks for the autograph in the book 😊) 

Thank you so much for the amazing story,

Sage Cooley

and now for something completely different . . .

New Fictional Holidays: Literary Dates to Add to Your Calendar

Daniel Lefferts

May saw geeks and sci-fi-lovers celebrating not one but two fiction-inspired holidays. First, there was May the Fourth and its flood of Star Wars-themed memes and GIFS on Facebook and Tumblr (get it? “May the force…”?). 

Next, there was Towel Day on May 25, on which fans of the late Douglas Adams carry around a towel in honor of the author and, in particular, a characteristically strange passage from his novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the towel is praised as “the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”

We at Bookish love these holidays and think fiction-inspired celebrations are far too rare a feature of the calendar. So, below, we’ve proposed five more literary dates of note, from ‘On the Road’ Day in July to a day in April on which you’re allowed to feel as paranoid about government surveillance as you see fit. I

1.Mrs. Dalloway (Annotated)

Mrs. Dalloway Day: A beautiful Wednesday in June

Virginia Woolf’s classic novel takes place on a Wednesday in June of 1923. Given how beautiful the weather is in the novel, this one can be a TBD—pick whichever Wednesday in the month will be, according to weather forecasts, the loveliest. How to celebrate? By buying flowers (yourself!) and hosting a party, of course. In general, celebrants should, in the interest of preserving their health and sanity, follow Clarissa Dalloway’s lead on this one, and not poor Septimus Smith’s.

2.    

2.The Hunger Games

Reaping Day: A dreary day in winter

The Reaping is the name given to the day on which, in the world ofThe Hunger Games, boys and girls from each district from Panem are chosen to compete in the annual Hunger Games competition. Though emissaries from the Capitol, such as Effie Trinket, try to inflect the occasion with a celebratory spirit, the event effectively means, for 23 of the 24 people chosen, certain death. Hunger Games fans can have fun with this holiday (on whichever day they end up choosing to celebrate it; given the constant dreariness of District 12, perhaps a date in February or March will do). “Winners” of the lottery can buy drinks, go on bagel runs, serve as DDs, give foot massages, etc. I’ll stop there before my suggestions get any weirder.

3.On the Road

'On the Road’ Day: July 15

“In the month of July 1947, having saved about fifty dollars from old veteran benefits, I was ready to go to the West Coast.” So begins Sal Paradise’s multipart peripatetic adventure across America—a trip that will take him to California, Mexico City, Louisiana, and back to New York, all the while showing him (and us) the unsettled and invariably engrossing milieu of mid-century North America. A day in July should be devoted to the commemoration of his journey; it’ll also serve the secondary purpose of inspiring celebrants to set off on their own road trips. So as not to collide with Independence Day weekend fun, we nominate a day at the dead center of the month, July 15.

4.     

4.Seize the Day

Day of Moral Reckoning (or, ‘Seize the Day’ Day): Whenever the mood strikes

A good book causes us to reflect on our own life, with its string of various success and failures, and a good literary-inspired holiday gives a specific time frame in which to complete such heroic acts of contemplation. Though it’s unclear on which day Saul Bellow’s novelSeize the Day takes place, pretty much any day of the year will do. Like the protagonist, Tommy Wilhelm, celebrants can spend the day wrestling with their own demons, character flaws, and ill-considered decisions and, just when all hope seems lost (let’s say around seven p.m.), finally come to accept what Bellow calls the “burden of self.” A few cocktails in the evening should round out the holiday quite nicely.

5.1984

Surveillance Awareness Day: April 4

With the NSA intercepting packages and tracking the phone calls of the entire population of the Bahamas like it ain’t no thang, the gap between the world of George Orwell’s 1984 and ours has become sliver-thin, if it exists at all. April 4, the day on which the novel begins (it’s the “bright cold day in April” when the “clocks were striking thirteen”), should serve as an annual day of heightened awareness of government surveillance and its consequences for privacy, quality of life, and the political health of our country.

Yes, it’s true . . .

 We are way overdue for a recipe blog.

 But until a couple of days ago my recipes had been kidnapped and were being held hostage. And the worst part is the kidnapper wouldn’t even contact me about a ransom.  

And yes, it was irresponsible of me to send my only copy of my recipe file out into the world alone, a print copy at that, so faded and old as to be impossible to scan.  Mea culpa.

But who could know? And anyway, the crisis is over, and they are back safe and sound, with a backup file to boot. And you still aren’t going to get a recipe blog.

 At least not this time.

 Because I promised on Facebook that I’d write a quick book review. Even though Geoff Herbach’s  I’m with Stupid is a YA novel, and if I am going to put book reviews instead of recipes or anything else  on my blog I should be writing reviews about middle readers since my first one (Coyote Summer, remember) comes out this fall. Although I guess this is not really what you’d call a review.  So maybe that’s ok.

I’m reading YA novels lately because I happened upon one (Beautiful Music For Ugly Children) in the library and it stunned me. So I wrote Kirstin Cronn-Mills (the author), and during our brief correspondence she’s given me several other author’s names. And they have all been wonderful and truly amazing.  Amazing in that they speak to such universal truths, to the real problems you face growing up and the even realer problems you encounter trying to deal with them, that I found myself saying yes, yes! (sometimes even aloud) as I read.

Because up until lately, you see, it’s only been Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And now you are really beginning to wonder. Buffy? Where on earth is she going with this?

You know how some comics, like Ellen Degeneres, start out with a topic and seem to wander all over and then suddenly Bam! - there they are back where they started having tied everything up neatly?

Yeah.

 Well, that’s probably not going to happen here. But bear with me.

Buffy. The show that used vampires and demons and witches and odd reptilian creatures to tell great stories that just happened to touch on all of the problems high school kids face, sometimes providing solutions but even when there wasn’t an easy solution you came away from the show feeling ok about being different, or liking girls instead of boys, or not having a parent around, or having scales and a tail because that one made you a natural for the swim team?

Until recently, it seemed to me that with a few notable exceptions, Buffy was it. And when YA literature started to become popular again, it was full of dragons and vampires or it took place in the distant past or future or on another world.

These people, though, this latest crop of writers, the Kirstin Cronn-Mills’s and Geoff Herbachs and A.S. Hyatts and David Levithans, just to name a few, they write these raw, powerful stories with problems like the ones you had growing up, or people you knew had, and the endings aren’t always all happy but there’s usually at least a few answers and a lot of hope because that’s what you need when you are a teenager.  These are the stories I read and my heart tightens and then opens and oh, I wish I’d had these books when I was a teenager because they are my life.

That’s what I’m With Stupid did for me.

Take a kid who was bullied when younger, give him a terrible early memory he hasn't dealt with and a parent who's not really there for him. Throw in the fact that now he's a popular jock and a heck of a football player, partially because he's got this anger inside that he deals with by crushing the competition. How does he cope? Where is his life going? What happens when he decides to use his power for good instead of evil (sort of) ?

What happens is a piece of your life. Somewhere in this book, and others by the writers I've mentioned above, is a piece of your life. Doesn't matter who you are or what you were in high school. You're going to go - ""Wow. Yes." at some point. 

Guaranteed.

So, no. not really a book review. But what I wanted to say. 

And thank you, all of you YA writers out there.

Keep going.

If you write it . . .

I often get asked if I think kids still read adventure stories.  Stories, that is, that take place on this world, in this universe, roughly within the last hundred years or so, and don’t involve werewolves, vampires, or swordplay.  

 My immediate response is either a slightly sarcastic (I know, those of you who know me personally are stunned that I would be even slightly sarcastic), "Well, if they don’t the last, six hundred pages, eight drafts, and ten years of my life have been wasted!", or a wide-eyed “Geez, I sure hope so!”

I have actually wondered about this, though, as I ran my eyes along the new book shelf in the middle grade section of our local library.  It sure seems as if the majority of titles for kids in the age group I’m writing for involve some sort of unworldly creature that must be vanquished.  Which is not to say that that is not in and of itself an adventure, and thus an adventure story. 

 But while I admit to having an extremely vivid imagination, it tends to stay grounded on earth.  And while I did enjoy the occasional fantasy like Madeleine L’Engles’s A Wrinkle in Time, or Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, I tended to prefer My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, the Misty of Chincoteague series by Marguerite Henry . . .

I asked our local librarian if kids still took out the books I loved in my childhood and the ones I continued reading through adolescence and into high school whenever I needed the comfort of the familiar - the Lois Lenski series including Strawberry Girl, Blue Ridge Billy, and Bayou Suzette, Katherine Paterson’s  Bridge to Terabithia, Kin Platt’s The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear. (Okay, I admit I was a bit morbid back then.)

She assured me adventure stories were still popular with both boys and girls.  Gary Paulsen’ Hatchet, The River and others, Ben Mikaelsen’s, Stranded, Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me; books that take you out of yourself and  away, but not so far away that you don’t think, yeah, I could do that.  Or, I wish I’d been able to do that.  Or even, I wish I’d grown up there.  

 So that’s the kind of books I’ve written.  The sort of if-I’d grown-up-there-I-could-have-done-that books that I loved to read.  Now, will kids these days want to read them?

Geez, I hope so.

Just to show you I haven't changed, here's a few shots of my bookshelf now-

Yeah. Like that.