National Book Festival

Welcome to DC! Home of the Library of Congress's National Book Festival!

I had some issues getting out of bed, so Dan tried to drive me into town, but a lot of it was shut down. So, he dropped me off and I trotted off, catching some of the sights along the way.

Finally! The Festival!

With the Capital!

Mrs. Frizzle was there, along with her Magic School Bus.

I wanted to go inside, but the line was looooooooooooooong.

Arthur was there, along with The Berenstain Bears and other PBS characters.

And of course, I got to hang out with the fantastic Sara Lewis Holmes, author of Letters from Rapunzel

Gail Carson Levine read from her new book Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand. It's obvious she's used to talking to school groups and it was crowded event.

Then I ran over to see Nancy Pearl.


Funny lady!

Holly Black gave a fascinating talk about urban fantasy and urban legends and folklore. Even though she read from Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale (sequel to Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale) most of the questions were about The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Gene Yuen Lang (of the most awesome American Born Chinese gave a great talk about comics and why you shouldn't get into them. (He had 3 reasons why, but I can only remember 2-- you'll slowly starve to death and it's not sexy. I think the third was the fact they take forever to draw and write.) His kids are super-cute and his talk was great.

Patricia McCormick talked about her research for and the writing process involved in her book Sold which I haven't read yet, but now I absolutely must.

Then, to wrap of the day, M. T. Andersen gave a great talk about the American Revolution, inspiration (including some great stories about what his experiences working at McDonalds that went into Burger Wuss), and getting into the eighteenth century voice. (Oh, and because I was wondering, I asked, and the next Octavian Nothing comes out NEXT fall.

All in all a great day! Also, if you've made it this far with me, Cybils nominations are open, so get over there already! And the song of the day is Polaris and Waiting For October...

Towers and Spells, Homework Clubs and Depression

Well, here it is, late on a Sunday night. I've spent all weekend trying to pull this project together (well, my bits and bobs of the project at any rate). There was a power outage, a trip to the grocery store, and a trip to the garden center. I went to school to work on my project and Dan made the backyard look awesome. We have lilies and 3 peony bushes. I'm mildly obsessed with peonies. There will be a peony related books post soon...

Letters from Rapunzel by Sara Lewis Holmes

Despite the title, this is not a fairy tale. Rapunzel is not trapped in a tower by a witch. Rapunzel is just a girl going by a name she thinks fits. She is trapped in after school homework club, as her father is once again under an evil spell. Her mother calls it C. D. (short of clinical depression), but Rapunzel recognizes what it really is.

Shortly after her father is rehospitalized for his depression, Rapunzel finds part of a letter stuffed into a chair, to a post office box. She doesn't know who it is for, but she knows her dad thought the recipient was the secret to his success as a writer a poet and a human being. She doesn't want the friendship to end just because her father is in the hospital, not talking. So she writes the post office box faithfully every day, waiting for an answer, hoping for a way to help her father...

In addition to missing her father and trying to survive homework club, Rapunzel has to navigate the normal school stuff, and the not so normal. Her teachers are pushing her to the gifted and talented class, and they don't appreciate her take on their stupid assignments.

Rapunzel's a great character, creative, smart, and bright, but still sounding like a kid. I really wish I had this book to read when I was in late elementary school. She reminds me a bit of Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik, but with a better sense of humor and the bizarre. In addition to the letters, she sends the box answers to her homework, her poems, and pieces of stories she's writing.

You have to love a book with subtle allusions to The Little Prince:

From what I hear, they keep a student's IQ score locked up like it was KFC's secret recipe. But I opened the letter that they sent home with me last week before Mom got home from work. There was a graph that looked like a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. The elephant bulge was where most people's scores are. Me, I was either the elephant's trunk or his tail, depending on which end of the elephant you supposed the boa constrictor swallowed first. Anyway, I'm what they call "three standard deviations above the norm." (Sounds sinister, doesn't it?)...

"The GT program was made for big thinkers like you."

Right. Like I even WANT to go to a special classroom with a bunch of snobby elephant trunks. (They'd never think of themselves as tails!)

I thought I had this book figured out fairly early on, and I was delighted to find that when the end came, I was totally wrong.

This is a great book that deals with big issues realistically, without going into the deep end of angst and melodrama.

Full disclosure: I met Sara at Mitali's book launch party and then we chilled out at kidslit drink night. I was afraid I wouldn't like the book, because I really like Sara. I was blown away by this book, at times I was unable to put it down, except to mull over an exceptionally fine passage or idea.