The thing with feathers

Let's start off with some news that makes my life happy

1. Ingfrin Michaelson is playing at GWU on Friday. If you're in DC and want to go, drop me a line-- I have an extra ticket.
2. My new Sisters Grimm book, Tales from the Hood shipped and will be in my greedy, greedy hands tomorrow.
3. Wolf Totem: A Novel by Jiang Rong is apparently the most-read book in China since the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (aka, the Little Red Book) is now available in the State. AND, my library has it. Wahoo!
5. Along the same lines, Howard Goldblatt, my all-time favorite translator of Chinese (sorry Cyril Birch) has a new series that's coming out of bilingual short story collections--so, the original Chinese AND his English translatation. AND! The first one out is Mo Yan. Be still my geeky, geeky heart.
6. Because everyone else was doing it:

You Are An Exclamation Point

You are a bundle of... well, something. You're often a bundle of joy, passion, or drama. You're loud, brash, and outgoing. If you think it, you say it. Definitely not the quiet type, you really don't keep a lot to yourself. You're lively and inspiring. People love to be around your energy. (But they do secretly worry that you'll spill their secrets without even realizing it.) You excel in: Public speaking You get along best with: the Dash

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Which, I'm sure, is a SHOCK to everyone who knows me. :)

And now onto other things:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
--Emily Dickinson

In Jacqueline Woodson's Feathers, Frannie spends a lot of time thinking about Dickinson's words, and hope in general. There are a few things going on in Frannie's life-- her mother is pregnant again, which Frannie is wary of, after a long string of miscarriages. Her best friend is more than a little obsessed with Jesus, and there's a new white boy in her class that everyone's calling Jesus Boy.

Filled with short chapters, some jive talk, some straight up love for Michael Jackson, and a whole lotta snow, Frannie spends the winter learning about hope and what's right.

Not preachy. Kinda quiet, and immensely powerful, Feathers is the type of book that reminds you why Jacqueline Woodson is one of the coolest and best writers out there. Damn. I think most authors wish they could write like this. Or, they should be.

Musings

Ok, I have some book reviews all written up but they're on hold for now because I want to talk about the YREAD conference I went to at Carroll County Community College on Saturday.

Basically, a YA lit conference featuring none other than the very wonderful Jacqueline Woodson.

So, first off was her talk where she talked about her books and the writing process and her life and now I need to read everything she's ever written. The best part was when she was talking about censorship of From The Notebooks Of Melanin Sun. She said she would get class sets of letters where everyone in a 6th grade class had been assinged to write a complaint... full of typos! The first set or two she corrected the spelling and grammar and mailed them back. As Ms. Woodson says "At least teach them to spell before you teach them to censor."

Then came the book discussion bit. I had signed up to discuss historical fiction and needed to read the following:

Day of Tears by Julius Lester
Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper
Eyes of the Emperor Graham Salisbury
The Book Thief Markus Zusak

So, I have to say, initially I was a little irked that apparently historical fiction can only be about slavery or WWII, but all the books were good (well, I didn't get to Copper Sun but everyone else liked it). I just need to say that The Book Thief was astounding. WONDERFUL.

Discussion was good. It was especially nice because it wasn't just librarians and teachers there were real, live teenages there! (GASP! I KNOW!) But... when it comes to literature about icky parts of history, there is something that bugs me. So many people can't get beyond "slavery was so horrible!" to get to the actual book. Yes. Slavery was horrible, but can we please discuss how the author gets that point across? Or how he makes his story memorable in a dearth of books on the topic? For instance, Lester doesn't get into the physical violence of slavery in Day of Tears and focuses solely on the emotional torture. Brilliant. Physical violence would have made the book over the top and made the reader disengage in order to tolerate reading... but he twists the knife just enough that you can't help but feel deeply for these characters. But yes, slavery was horrible and let's just harp on that.

Not that everyone in the discussion did that. I just needed to vent about personal pet peeves.

I picked up a copy of If You Come Softly and Show Way.

I also got the free give-aways of What Happened to Cass McBride? and Haters. And y'all know how I loves me some free books.

All in all, very very good. It was fun time and I did learn a lot. Plus, the sandwiches were tasty at lunch.