Follow on a Friday: Donna Gephart

I first met author Donna Gephart at a Random House "It's a First" reception in Philadelphia. Both of us had debut novels coming out that spring, and our publisher had hosted a lovely party during the ALA convention to introduce several of us new authors to each other, agents, staff, etc.

It was definitely an opportunity for pretention: but Donna is one of those refreshingly real, down-to-earth women you like right off the bat. Her novels reflect her genuine kindness and humor, and based on their runaway success, it's pretty clear that kids love them!

OLIVIA BEAN, TRIVIA QUEEN is her latest middle grade novel, and just launched this week. Her other books include AS IF BEING 12-3/4 ISN'T BAD ENOUGH, MY MOTHER IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!, which won the Sid Fleischman Humor Award and a Florida State Book Award, and HOW TO SURVIVE MIDDLE SCHOOL, which received starred reviews from both Kirkus and School Library Journal.

I checked in with Donna this week (launch week!) and she graciously answered a few of my questions about OLIVIA:

How did the idea for OLIVIA BEAN, TRIVIA QUEEN come about, and are you by any chance a JEOPARDY! fan?

My dad, 84, is a huge Jeopardy! fan. It's so much fun to watch the show with him because he yells the answers at the TV. I wrote Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen as part of the National Novel Writing Month initiative, and finished the book in 29 days. It took months, however, to revise it. The title came to me and the rest flowed from there.

Your middle grade books are laugh-out-loud funny. Did you intentionally pursue writing humor for children, or did it just ... happen?

Thank you. That's just naturally how I write, how I talk, etc. Life has so many bumps, I figure we should get in all the laughs we can when we can.

Are you working on anything new you can tell us about?

I am working on a new funny middle grade novel that I'm super excited about, but I can't share details this early in the process. Again, it began with the title and mushroomed from there. I love when that happens!

I'll confess, I'm so impressed that Ken Jennings of JEOPARDY! fame "blurbed" the back of your book! How did that happen and, more importantly, have you met him?

I sent him a copy of my book, autographed to him. The character in my book is a huge fan of his (page 123). Ken Jennings has been so generous to not only blurb my book, but to endorse it on his blog. I haven't met him . . . yet. But when I do, he can expect a great big THANK YOU from me (and Olivia)!

Donna Gephart's new book, Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen, came into the world Tuesday with a starred Kirkus review and an endorsement from Jeopardy! champ, Ken Jennings. To learn more, visit Donna at http://www.donnagephart.com/

Poem for a Monday

I love poetry. Love love love it. Volumes of poems teeter dangerously on my bedside table. I purchase mini-books of poems to carry in my shoulder bag so I'll have a few to read whenever I'm waiting on line somewhere. Old poems, contemp poems, laugh-out-loud poems and devastatingly dark poems (think: Robert Frost's "The Draft Horse." Yeah, even that one.) I can't get enough.

So I guess it's one of the tragedies of my writing life that I'm an AWFUL poet. Really, no false modesty here: my poems are abysmal. Unless you count limericks (which I don't, even though I can spin out any number of limericks on demand; a strange but useless gift) I am poetically-challenged.

Combine my enthusiasm with my lack of talent and you have: Poems for a Monday. Something new I plan for my blog. Every Monday (hopefully every Monday) I'll post a poem here with a little something about the extremely talented person who wrote it.

So here it is, the inaugural Poem for a Monday: Kristen Lindquist's "Transportation," from her collection of the same title, published by Megunticook Press, cover art by Eric Hopkins.

Transportation

Everyone in O'Hare is happy today.
Sun shines benevolently
onto glorious packaged snack foods
and racks of Bulls t-shirts.
My plane was twenty minutes early.
Even before I descend into the trippy light show
of the walkway between terminals,
I am ecstatic. I can't stop smiling.
On my flight we saw Niagara Falls
and Middle America green and gold below.
Passengers thanked the pilot for his smooth landing
with such gratitude that I too
thanked him, with sudden and wholehearted sincerity.
A group of schoolchildren passes on the escalator,
and I want to ask where they're going.
Tell me your story, I want to say.
This is life in motion.
A young couple embraces tearfully at a gate;
she's leaving, he's not.
How can I bring this new self back to you, intact?
He yells to her departing back,
"Hey, I like the way you move!"
Any kind of love seems possible.
We walk through this light together.
So what if it's an airport?
So what if it won't last?




Kristen Lindquist lives with her husband Paul in her hometown of Camden, Maine, where she works as development director for Coastal Mountains Land Trust. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. Her poetry and other writings have appeared in Down East Magazine, the Maine Times, and the Bangor Daily News, as well as various literary journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Invocation to the Birds was published in 2001 by Oyster River Press. An avid birder, she writes a monthly natural history column for the Herald Gazette.

Never Done

Last week I received fabulous news: my editor is happy with my latest revisions to the manuscript-in-progress, considers it “accepted” and is sending it off to copyediting, which means another pair of editorial eyes will look it over for grammar/typos/inconsistencies, etc. So while it’s not completely finished, it’s mostly finished. Thoughts have turned to covers, acknowledgements, book jacket copy … all the parts that spell: Done.

Prosecco was poured, cheers ensued, dancing about the office happened (which was very confusing to the dog) and this morning … I’m channeling Anne Bradstreet.

Here’s the thing: it’s never really done. Even when I spy one of my books on the shelves in a bookstore, I’m tempted to leaf through it with a pencil in hand and change a word or two. Or cross out an entire chapter. Or add an entire chapter.

And this latest book, in particular, unsettles me. I’m so not sure I’ve got it “right,” and when I pass it off to a reader I’m more anxious than usual. It’s as if I’ve sent my child out into a winter storm dressed only in her pajamas. I took some risks in this book. It scares me. I suspect it will never be ready.

Which is where the poet, Anne Bradstreet, comes in. Amazingly, this woman born in Northampton, England in 1612, who sailed with her husband and other Puritans on the Arabella in the 1630s and lived out the rest of her life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, tapped me on the shoulder this morning and said, “I know, right?”

Mother of eight, survivor of smallpox, a “Pilgrim,” to boot, she was also a writer, and one of her friends got hold of her poems and bundled them off to England, where, unbeknownst to her, they were published. She wasn’t … pleased. She felt they weren’t ready. They needed more work. And she wrote this poem about the experience of seeing her unreadied child exposed:

The Author to Her Book

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

I know, right?

Getting to Whoa

A dear friend just accomplished a remarkable thing. She finished writing her dissertation, an original, hundreds-of-pages long scholarly paper. It’s a work that’s taken more than two decades to complete, and an effort that spanned multiple jobs, the births of three children, the care of aged and ailing family members, and all the rest life throws at you.

When she was finally done and typed that last word (at least, I imagine her typing some last words … I need to ask her, did she actually write “The End”?) she posted on Facebook: Whoa.

Yes. That’s it. That’s the feeling and that’s the moment. Whoa.

It’s completely personal and solitary and surprising and exhilarating. The whoa, when you’ve given your last bit of effort to some creative endeavor, and finally seen it through to completion. It’s done, it represents the best you can do, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s published or well reviewed or applauded by anyone. It is a perfect thing in that moment, like reaching the top of K2 or holding a newborn. You stare down from a dizzying height and feel: whoa.

Getting to whoa is so hard. It’s not just the hours and the actual work you have to put in. It’s the distractions, all the Life that keep popping up and keeping you away from the desk or the studio. It’s the self doubt (“Who am I kidding? I can’t write/paint/sing/dance!") and it’s the mortgage (“I need a real job; screw the novel I’m going to law school.”) and it’s the nagging Why? that kills the whoa.

Why am I bothering to do this? Especially on days when the work doesn’t go well and I have nothing to show for it, wouldn’t I have been better off vacuuming the car? Tangible results and all that?

It takes a lot of courage to get to whoa, and to my friend I say: Yay for you! You are amazing.

But she’s not the only one.

I have a father who, at age 75, has finally given himself leave to pick up a paintbrush and create. He’s always loved art and he’s always had a gift, but he always had a million distractions and other responsibilities. Still, he never let go of his dream to paint, and these days, not for profit or praise but for himself, because he loves it, he creates wonderful landscapes. The painting at the beginning of this post is one of his.

I look at it and think: whoa.

Dear Bully

I remember bullies.

One in particular. Chris O. A tough little Irish kid from a big family. He came to school wrinkled and unprepared. He was always getting in trouble. The teachers couldn’t reprimand him enough.

And he tortured Gloria Z.

When I say that picking on Gloria was akin to kicking Bambi, I’m not exaggerating. Gloria was shy to the point of mute. She wore thick, coke-bottle-bottom glasses, and always walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped, as if she were trying to make herself invisible. In eighth grade, when most of us were sporting platform shoes and shag haircuts (sorry, it was the 70’s) Gloria showed up in knee socks and little-girl plaid skirts, only in large girl sizes.

Her grandmother dressed her. That’s because Gloria’s mother had died … none of us knew how, or why .. and Gloria and her brother had come to live with their grandparents. Who hadn’t gotten the memo about mod.

Gloria wasn’t my friend. She was just some quiet kid in the class and I was very busy with my own circle of friends and didn’t pay attention to her.

But you couldn’t not notice her when Chris O moved in.

With his spectacular homing device for detecting vulnerability, he focused every bit of mean he had on Gloria. He’d sit behind her and make kissy noises, and croon, “Gloooooria, won’t you be my girlfriend?” prompting laughter from all the boys around him. When she got up from her desk, he’d stick his foot out and trip her. Sometimes, during class, he’d whisper to her. Things that made her face turn bright red. Nothing for an audience that time, but designed solely for her pain and his delight.

Gloria was his goat, and the game was contagious. Other boys took up the cry. And even some girls (who years later would become doting mothers posting precious little Facebook details about their own cute daughters) would mock her, making fun of her clothes and her childish, whispery way of speaking.

To my credit, I never piled on Gloria. But to my shame, I don't recall ever rising to her defense, either. I was a shocked, silent, fearful bystander, horrified by what Chris O was doing ... but afraid of taking steps that might direct his aim at me.

I like to think I made a point of being kind to Gloria. But I didn’t invite her to my sleepovers. I didn’t sit with her at lunch. I can’t recall if she had friends. I think she didn’t.

The woman I am today considers that silent, former teenage self equally to blame for whatever emotional ruin Chris O might have caused Gloria. I can’t help it: I think bystanders suck. To witness bullying, or unkindness, and say nothing, is to tacitly condone it. I would do anything to go back in time for just ten minutes of that eighth grade English class, and get it right. But it doesn't work that way. The experienced middle-aged woman can't return to the eighth grade body and fight Chris O. I can't time travel back to the 70s and invite Gloria to anything.

Dear Bully, edited by the amazing Carrie Jones (love her YA books!) and Megan Kelley Hall, is a collection of essays written by authors, all sharing their stories about bullying. It’s a book about victims and perpetrators. Heroes and bystanders. Every role that one could play in the ongoing drama of bullying, all contained within this wonderful volume.

I haven’t finished all the essays yet, but more than one has moved me to tears. If you’re a teacher or librarian, I urge you to add this book to your class/library collection.

Epilogue to my bully saga: Chris O had an illustrious career as a perpetual troublemaker and bully, picking on smart girls (our future class valedictorian, who went on to become a mission doctor in Africa) and targeting Jews with particular venom (our future class salutatorian, who went on to become a famous medical researcher.) Administrators banned him from attending our high school class graduation trip, but he showed up anyway with cases of beer, got drunk with his friends, and trashed the hotel where we were all staying. I heard he later went on to become an inmate at some correctional facility, but I can't confirm that.

Gloria graduated from our high school, but I don’t know what became of her following graduation.

I went on to become a writer of teen novels, still processing all the things I learned … and didn’t learn … back then. Creating characters who are braver than I was, which, unfortunately, isn't saying much.

A portion of all proceeds from Dear Bully will be donated to Stomp Out Bullying.

The Biggest Boob

I was supposed to be blogging about Banned Books Week today (which I am, if you’ll just bear with me) but first: a word about boobs.

Actually, “boobies.”

Don’t you just love ‘em? I do. I love mine. When I was in my early thirties, they fed my children. They linked us in a way which was more profound and emotional and visceral than I could have anticipated. They imprinted me as “mother” in a way that even pregnancy and childbirth did not, and stripped me of all the various credentials I had worked so hard to amass up to that point, reducing me to one, all-important thing: caregiver.

Which is the greatest thing anyone can be, whether one is a parent or a loving friend; a breast feeder or a formula feeder; man or woman; biological parent or adoptive. For me, it took those boobies to firmly establish what’s important in life, and I am so grateful for them.

I’m also grateful, every year, when I take those boobies off to the scanner and receive the diagnosis: healthy. I’m so grateful mammography exists, so grateful that because of the strides made in research and technology, a diagnosis of “breast cancer” is no longer the death sentence it was back in my mother’s day.

That is, if you catch it early. Which is why raising awareness about breast health and early detection is just as important as hurling millions of dollars toward lab research. Which is why what’s going on at Medomak High School in Waldoboro, Maine is so upsetting.

You know those rubbery Live Strong bracelets? Well, there’s a bracelet being sold to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, and it is stamped with the words “I (heart) Boobies.” Attention getting, don’t you think?

At Medomak High School, Principal Harold Wilson has been suspending kids who wear the bracelets to school and refuse to take them off. He says the bracelets are “disruptive to the education process” and violate the school’s guidelines against wearing sexually provocative attire.

Dude, in the eye of the beholder. Just because you can’t see breast cancer awareness bracelets without thinking of sex, doesn’t mean your student body isn’t more enlightened.

Yes, kids, you’re right: some adults are idiots. Please, don’t grow up to be like them. Please keep reading and informing yourselves, so that, unlike Harold Wilson, you’ll know that a Federal judge in Pennsylvania has already ruled that students are within their rights to wear these quiet little rubber bracelets, and forcing them to take them off violates their constitutional right to free speech.

Harold, do you really want to spend the taxpayers’ money in Bangor defending your policy when the Maine Civil Liberties Union challenges it in court? Because you know that’s gonna happen.

Which leads me (yes, I’m finally getting around to Banned Books Week) to all this squeamishness about breasts and body parts. And I was reminded of one of my favorite and most recently “challenged” books, The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister, by my friend, Charlotte Agell.

This delightful middle-grade book has been challenged by school districts around the country for a variety of reasons, one of which includes issues surrounding the discussion of breast cancer. The protagonist, India, has a mom who, in addition to being an artist, is a breast cancer survivor. She has had a mastectomy. But before her surgery, she made a plaster cast of her breast … not unlike the plaster casts some women make of their hugely rounded bellies in the final stage of pregnancy … which now adorns the living room wall in India’s house.

India remarks that this is a bit of a curiosity to her friends who visit, but she shrugs it off as just another body part. What if her mom had made a plaster cast of her nose? Odd, perhaps. But no biggie.

The pre-pubescent India approaches breasts with innocence. Free of all the sexual connotations they summon in the adult world (think Harold Wilson) they are mere facts of life, something all mammals share. She breezes past the plaster cast in her living room without a thought, without an agenda, but acknowledging that her beloved mother dodged a bullet when she had her breast removed.

India is not unlike those brave teens in Waldoboro who are refusing to remove their bracelets and willing to face suspension. They don’t have some twisted, prurient preoccupation with breasts. They’re not wearing the bracelets to be difficult: they have friends and relatives who have either died from or are dealing with breast cancer. They bought the bracelets as an act of solidarity with them.

The sexualized, lewd and vulgar view of breasts seems to be the realm of the adults. Who fear words. Like “boobies.” Yes, indeed, a molotov cocktail thrown into the order of an unruffled day at Medomak High. Which, ironically, is in an uproar at this point, because the principal felt compelled to make such a stink about it. Talk about “disruptive to the education process.”

Which makes you wonder if Principal Harold Wilson might not be the biggest boob of all.

Note: several days following this post, the Superintendent of Schools in Waldoboro ruled that students at Medomak High School could wear the "I (heart) Boobies" bracelets. All those who had been suspended would have their suspensions removed from their records. This ruling was in no part related to this blog post, but was most likely related to the power of common sense.

September 24th – October 1, 2011 is national Banned Books Week.

The Bangor Book Festival will be held just as Banned Books Week concludes: September 30th – October 1st. I’ll be participating in a panel on banned and challenged books with authors Charlotte Agell, Carrie Jones and Kelly McClymer at 9:00 a.m. in the Bangor Public Library Story Room, at 145 Harlow Street, Bangor, Maine.

Adonis versus Herb

Like many of my friends, I have a high school senior living in my house … which I guess tells you a lot about the year I’m in for. Exciting, bittersweet, stressful. Fraught.

I know this stage is no picnic for the kids, either. Especially when the adults circle, with their inevitable questions about Life After High School.

At a gathering of families recently, we honed in on one particularly vulnerable member of the youth pack. She’s applying to college and has fixated on a single school. Despite our chorus of dire warnings about the need to have a list of “safeties,” she was adamant.

“What’s wrong with falling in love?” she demanded. “I mean, do people have safety husbands? Do they say, ‘I really love this guy, but if he doesn’t work out, these other three dudes would be fine.’” That caught us up short.

“Don’t think of applying to college like choosing a spouse,” offered one sage adult. “It’s more like … choosing a prom date. Marriage is forever but the prom is just one night.”

“Oooh, prom,” crooned one mother in the group to another. “Does your son know who he’s taking?”

“Prom is in May,” I commented, even though she wasn’t speaking to me. She shrugged.

“Never too early to lock up that date. Girls start shopping for their dresses in January.”

It was the first moment in my life when I actually thought I might drop to my knees and begin pounding the earth with my fists, wailing, “No no no! Don’t make me think about this! Not now, not ever, but especially not in September!”

I remember my own proms. For most of high school, I had the same boyfriend, so finding a date was a non-issue. Until my senior year, when the boyfriend went off to college and we broke up and I was untethered and prom-dateless.

That’s when I focused on … we’ll call him “Adonis” … for prom. He was sort of a friend but mostly a crush, and I really really really hoped he would ask me. He was the slim drummer in the band, a tan, varsity tennis player, and very cute. As the season for asking drew near (in the spring, by the way, none of this 10-months-ahead-of-time nonsense) I remember the phone ringing one afternoon, and a nervous male voice on the other end.

It was Herb. A guy I was friendly with, but didn’t know very well. A generally acknowledged “nice” guy who didn’t cause heads to turn when he entered a room. Herb was a solid citizen; he even stood low to ground. He exuded a sense of gravity.

He politely asked me to accompany him to the prom.

Reader, I tell you and I know this does not reflect well upon me: I turned him down. Not only that. Surprise pried frankness from my lips. I told him there was this other guy (I did not mention Adonis’s name) I really wanted to go with and he hadn’t asked me yet, so …

Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck and fie on the teenage me. As the mother of a teenage son I now loathe and detest all girls who reject perfectly nice boys for prom. I loathe my teenage self who didn’t have the sense to not tell poor Herb she was holding out for someone else. But as it turns out, I got what was coming to me …

Adonis asked me. Wonder of wonders, right? I was beside myself with excitement, and planned a pre-prom party at my house. Meanwhile, Herb went on a juggernaut of asking. Somehow, it got out that girls were turning him down left and right (I learned I was #3 on the list) and people started taking bets. Not only on who would be next in line, but how many he’d ultimately ask and who would finally say yes.

To his credit … to his great credit, actually … Herb got into the spirit of the thing, and when #9, Alison, accepted his offer, he made sure everyone knew. On the day during lunch when he strode to the ticket table to buy his prom “bid,” every student in the cafeteria rose and gave him a standing ovation. Herb bowed and waved.

Herb and Alison came to my pre-prom party and at prom sat at the same table as me and Adonis. Who, incidentally, spent most of the evening at another table, talking to a few of his tennis buddies. Who bought me flowers that clashed with my dress. Who barely spoke with me, let alone dance. For some reason, Adonis had had a change of heart about attending prom with me, and made no effort to conceal it. I had a miserable time.

Meanwhile, Herb was the man. Alison had the most beautiful wrist corsage in the room, and she and Herb danced every dance. I watched as he pulled her chair out for her, brought her punch from the drinks table, told her that she looked great. Let me tell you, #3 was feeling pretty jealous of #9 that night.

I guess this is all a long and tortured way of saying … I don’t know … what we think we want may not necessarily be the best thing for us? In life, go with substance, not flash? Don’t overlook those Safety Husbands, because they are true gold?

Maybe it’s just this: be open. Be open to all possibilities, and people. Because life surprises you.