NEW BOOK OUT!

I forgot yesterday that I had a new book out until someone came into the store and asked me when it was coming out. I said "I think maybe next week or so." Then I looked it up and said "No, it's today." Oops. THEN I was ringing up a line of people all buying the same country CD. And then they all began taking pictures of eachother and a woman who proudly held up the CD. Yes, it was her CD! She was so happy about it! She was on tour. I didn't ask where she was from but I wrote her name down so I just looked her up. She's no small potatoes. I didn't think she was after speaking with her. She was super nice but there was something about her that made me think that this wasn't her first time around the block.



I asked her if she was sick of touring and she said no, she never gets sick of it. She just seemed so happy to have her new CD out and be in B&N and about the whole thing. I found it really inspiring.

Then the guy she was with said "She has a new book out today too!" I said "Congratulations! I have a new book out today too, only I almost forgot." They seemed surprised that I would have forgotten. I'm not sure if it's because I work in a book store so it doesn't seem to matter for that reason or because I still don't think I can make a living doing this or what the exact thing is but I'm just not taking photos with my new book at the check-out counter. I wish I were. I wish I could be more like Chely Wright.

Below is a starred review from SLJ for POP:


“This picture-book biography of the inventor of bubblegum is equal parts informative and entertaining. With appropriately simple but engaging prose, McCarthy relates how accountant Walter Diemer began “playing with different mixtures” in the late 1920s at the candy factory where he worked and eventually discovered a gum that bubbled. Judicious use of the inventor’s own words helps to convey his enthusiastic personality. Along with Diemer’s story, the author also covers a bit of gum history, the trial-and-error of invention, and the excitement that comes with a successful final product, all with just the right level of detail. Appealing acrylic cartoon illustrations fill this snippet of history with a sense of fun. The prominent curves of smiling faces and circular eyes and heads stand out against heavy lines and angles to fill each scene with playfulness that matches the subject. Rich colors capture the lighthearted joy of bubble blowers, both old and young, while contrasting darker tones reflect the drama of the inventor’s lab work. A closing spread offers further information about Diemer’s life, more fun facts about gum, and a full list of sources. Although the man will be unfamiliar to young readers, they know his invention well, and will appreciate his unexpected but well-earned success. McCarthy’s on-target presentation makes this a strong choice for elementary biography assignments, booktalking, or just plain nonfiction fun.”

Buy it and chew some gum (preferably sugarless) and please don't find my lack of excitement about my book's due date get you down about your own potential book's due date (if that's your thing). Think of Chely and her photography at the check-out line and go take some photographs.

meghan

Please come!

Come celebrate Ling & Ting's book birthday! My very first early reader will be available on June 19th and I'm having a party for it!

As usual, I will be reading and signing and giving away cupcake + more loot-filled goodie bags!

And the fun game this time? It's a costume party! Ling and Ting are twins so...

Come with a friend (or relative) in a MATCHING OUTFIT and get a special-while-they-last-handmade prize!!

What is it? Come to the party and see:

WHERE: Porter Square Bookstore
25 White St. Cambridge, MA
617-491-2220

WHEN: Saturday, June 19th 3pm

Feel free to invite others and spread the word! The more the merrier! If you can, please RSVP (to the evite HERE or send me an e-mail at gracelin.manager@gmail.com) so I have an idea of how many goodie bags I should make--but you can always show up last minute, I'll make extras!

Hope to see you!!

Greta jacket painting finished

Last week's painting for the jacket of A Photo for Greta is all done and mailed off to the publisher. Here is how it finished up:

The mysterious Q...

I've been working on a "Beyond the Book" post for today but got waylaid--it will have to wait till next week. But in the meantime, I wanted to direct you all to this beautiful blog post by author Matthew Quick (aka "Q") over at the blog Debutante Ball (also where I wrote this guest post last December). It will brighten your day, I promise! I'll be posting a Beyond the Book about his debut young adult novel Sorta Like a Rock Star later this month (it wasn't the post I've been working on, though), but in the meantime, his post introduces the book. All I'll say right now is READ IT.

Also check out the new blog Quest for Kindness by Matthew and his wife, author Alecia Bessette. I look forward to reading it!

Sorta Like a Rock Star officially pubbed this past Saturday. Happy Book Birthday!

A Favorite Poem Project Video: The Sloth by Theodore Roethke

In a previuos post, Brian Age Seven--A Poem by Mark Doty, I wrote about being a participant in the first annual Summer Poetry Institute for Teachers at Boston University in 2001. Here is one of the Favorite Poem videos we watched while at the institute. In the video, Katherine Mechling--who was then a fifth grader--recites Theodore Roethke's poem The Sloth.

The Sloth (Favorite Poem Project)



At Wild Rose Reader, I have a post titled Apostrophe: Poems of Address. It includes some of my original poems of address, links to other poems, and a poetry book recommendation.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Great Kids Books.

nostalgia

My school visit whirlwind is continuing. Before heading to Albany for the weekend, I did a quick talk with superstar author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka at my alma mater RISD. I admit, going back to the ol'Illustration Studies Buildings made me feel...
OLD!

And while the imparting of any of my knowledge to future illustrators was questionable, what was quite certain was how much the school has changed. Not only did the students seem to already know the business basics which took me years to figure out after graduating, the campus itself was transformed. When I went to the ISB, the view looked like this:
(not real photo of the landscape, but accurate in its ambiance! Providence was doing major construction for the whole 4 years of my attendance).

But now, the landscape looks like this:
Jarrett, I think we were gypped!

Regardless, I think we were both glad we went and came back. We look happy, don't we?

A Photo For Greta jacket painting in progress

I've been busy working on the paintings for A Photo for Greta, here is the jacket painting in progress:










The rest next week! Stay tuned!

Where the Naked Ladies Dance

There's a song with a tune I'm pretty sure you'd all recognize; but the words would be different. Every generation of children I've known has had their own version-- and I was quite astonished the other day to hear my mother sing the version from her childhood (the song had come up in the conversation):

"Oh they don't wear pants
in the Southern part of France.
They just wear grass
to cover up their ass."

It was the first (and I'm sure the last) time I will ever hear her use the word "ass."

What did they sing when you were a child? Maddeningly, I can't remember what we sang; I just remember the tune. I keep meaning to ask the kids I babysit for what they sing and forgetting.
If anyone knows that, too, would you post it?

In the seventies, kids sang:

"There's a place in France
where the naked ladies dance.
There's a hole in the wall
Where the men can see them all."

It would be sad if all the scheduled activities kids (much less time spent just playing, unsupervised, with other kids) and computer games and such made kids stop passing on these kinds of things to each other. If I could draw, I'd do a picture book about all the rhymes and games and things I've seen kids teach each other.It's fascinating to see how they change over the years; at least, to me. I guess that's why I write for children, not adults.

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets. I really enjoy reading his poems that have touches of wry humor in them and yet still speak to serious subjects. Since April is National Poetry Month, I selected one of Collins’s poems on the subject of poetry. I hope you like this poem as much as I do. It’s entitled The Trouble with Poetry. Here’s how the poem begins:

From The Trouble with Poetry
by Billy Collins

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along the beach one night—
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky—

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.


You can read the rest of the poem here: http://shiningpixel.com/edutopia_pdf/muse_collins2.pdf

Here’s a video of Collins reading his poem:

********************

At Wild Rose Reader, I have another extensive mask poem post with some original poems--including Sole Song--and links to resources for those interested in writing their own point-of-view poems or for teachers who’d like to do a lesson on writing mask poems in their classrooms.

At Political Verses, I have an original poem entitled A Chicken for a Checkup: A Poem about Sue Lowden.

Anastasia Suen has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Picture Book of the Day.

Save the date!

Yes, that's right, I'm having another book birthday party. I wasn't going to as it is getting close to the summer, but I am just SO excited about my new book. Ling and Ting is my very first early reader and not only did it get an amazing review from the famous fuse#8, it was chosen for the Junior Library Guild and got a starred review from Booklist! That deserves some celebration! I haven't worked out all the fun (though there will be a polka-dot theme) but mark your calendars and please come!

Saturday, June 19th at 3 pm
Porter Square Books
Porter Square Shopping Center
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140 (directions)

I'm hoping to have lots of fun contests & prizes like last time so you don't want to miss it! More info to come!!

E-mail me your e-mail address at: gracelin.manager@gmail.com if you want to be on the official evite invitation list (aka the goody bag list)! But, of course, even if you are not on the evite you are still more than welcome to come (the list is just to help me make sure I have enough goodies for everyone, but I always make extras).

wowee!

Hey look, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is on the shortlist of the EB White Read Aloud Awards! I'm especially excited about this because I think the sticker is especially awesome. Inspired by perhaps the #1 children's novel of all time, Charlotte's Web it is a thrill to think this sticker could decorate my book...though I won't get my hopes up too high. The other authors promise pretty stuff competition, including the the lovely and talented Kate Messner who coincidentally just blogged about my book today!

TLA Express

I had a quick visit in San Antonio last week at the Texas Library Association Conference. And I mean quick. I arrived just in time to have a delicious dinner hosted by Little, Brown & Co (publisher of my novels):
The amazing food (there was sticky toffee pudding!) put me right to sleep and when I woke up it was time for me to give a small talk on a panel with authors RL Lafevers and Suzanne Selfors before signing and then quickly catching that plane back home! I think I was in TX for just 24 hours, and most of that was at the airport!



I was a little sad not to stay longer, I missed most of the exhibits, as well as catching up with a lot of friends. I have a lot of nice memories of San Antonio, as I did many school visits there last year and it was even the first place that I launched Where the Mountain Meets the Moon!

But I was glad that I did get to see some familiar friendly librarians:


And Suzanne and I ran into famous author/bloggers Cynthia Leitich Smith & Greg Leitich Smith as we were dashing off to the airport. We didn't have much time to say more than hello and snap the picture.


TLA was fun, but fast. The whole thing was quite a rush! I guess that is why all the photos are so blurry!

Happy Earth Week!

Like Meghan, I often completely forget to take pictures when I do school visits, so I don't have much to show from my adventures on Boston's North Shore last week. But I did recently receive an awesome package from a school where I did a Skype visit. They did an author study and had each student write a project just like the reuse activities in What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe?. To celebrate Earth Week I'll posting some of my favorites all week on my blog.

This one I love for a number of reasons. Most importantly what a great idea! When the sleeves fall off my next sweater I will definitely stick them on my cat. Also I find the author bio quite charming.

What are you reading right now?

I'm in Montreal on vacation right now, so no new post, but thought I'd ask a few questions:

What are you reading right now? Have you read any "must read" books so far in 2010?

Okay, now go and discuss amongst yourselves!

And to answer my own question, what I'm reading right now are all of my Spring 2011 novels at various stages. They're due to go into copyediting at the end of this month. Eeek! Juggling juggling juggling...

some cool projects from Orrington Elementary

The librarian sent me some photos from my day at their school (I managed not to take any photos, which I'm annoyed by since I took not one but two cameras! I guess I was just too distracted or something...). Anyway, all the kids drew self portraits of themselves but with BIG eyes, just like I do my characters, and they put them on their lockers. How cute is that? They also made ones for all the teachers! There was also an "alien room" where a bunch of kids drew aliens and their drawings hung from the ceiling. Another fun project was to demystify the puzzling Mona Lisa (based on Steal Back the Mona Lisa!) by drawing new clothes on her.









It's just so cool to see these things. I have to keep reminding myself that these things are based on MY books! I'd love to go back in time and tell my teachers in school that this would happen. They'd never believe it. I don't think I would have either!

back from Evanston, IL

I just got back from Evanston, which is near Chicago. It was a short trip and I almost missed the plane to get there! I got stuck in traffic on the way there, couldn't figure out where to park the car and kept driving around in circles, then waited in the wrong line to get my ticket (couldn't print it out because my printer was out of ink) and I waited and waited for soooo long because the two customers at the desk were all-demanding. One was arguing about some odd looking thing that she wanted to take on the plane and the other was a foreigner who was all involved in some discussion about currency or some such... so I got all huffy and started pacing and then when I FINALLY got to the counter she said "You're at the wrong counter. This is Jet Blue. You want South West." "Oh my god," I said. "Oh my god..." And no wonder I didn't go to the right seat--there was no counter! There was so zig-zag maze to a guy at a desk who said "Can I help you?" and I said "Yes, I need a boarding pass..." and he said "Can you give me some space please? Please back up and let me deal with this customer," and he pointed at a hippie looking woman bent over, digging through a dozen looking bags and odd packages. Why the heck did he say "Can I help you?" then??? I only stepped forward for that reason! Anyway, the guy spent forever with her because none of her packages met regulation and they all had to be duct taped and so forth. So by the time he said "next," and I said "I'm going to Chicago," he said "Good luck, you've got 7 minutes." I RAN to security and threw off my clothing and belt, etc. I managed to get through with not one but two pocket knives! Lovely. I also did that on the way back. I didn't do that on purpose, mind you, I just forgot to take them off my keychain.

anyway, when I got to the plane the guy said "Are you Meghan McCarhthy?" I huffed, "Yes." He said "You're one lucky lady." As soon as I sat down the plane took off. I"m not kidding.



So I got to Chicago and the car drove for an hour before I got to the hotel. The water went on and on forever. At first I thought--oh my god, the ocean! How nice! Uh, stupid, It's Illinois. There is no ocean. Yeah, lake Michigan. It was almost 90 degrees on the day I left and I'd come with a winter jacket that I had to lug around. It was really pretty-- there were runners and cyclists going along the water and there were people sitting on the beach. And the city sat behind. There were ferries and I even spotted a ferris wheel.

When I got to the hotel I took a walk to the water.



I noticed that I was in a college town--Northwestern University. There were a lot of pretty buildings.




The day arrived after a restless night of not getting any sleep. I got up at the crack of dawn. I gave my first speech in the auditorium to the little kids and then we did our first rotation of activities. The librarian had come up with a real cool bunch of activities for the kids. In the first room kids made rockets out of tubes and paper and cardboard pieces. This was based on my book Astronaut Handbook and on my webpage where I show how to make your own rocket. In the second room kids did exercises based on Strong Man and the back page that shows how to do exercises. In the third room kids got to make bubble gum based on my book Pop! which is coming out in a month. I heard it was a big mess, but how cool is that? I tried a piece--it tasted like sour lemonade.







I slept until noon today. It was short and fun but exhausting. These things always are!

Brian Age Seven--A Poem by Mark Doty

In the summer of 2001, I had the great honor of being one of fifty educators selected to participate in the first annual Summer Poetry Institute for Teachers at Boston University. The institute, a collaboration between the university’s School of Education and Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, was one of the best experiences of my life. We educators spent nearly a week developing poetry lessons and projects, viewing Favorite Poem videos, attending poetry readings, and discussing poetry with each other and with some of America’s greatest poets—Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Louise Gluck, David Ferry, and Mark Doty. I loved Mark Doty and I loved one of the poems he read to us—Brian Age Seven.


Here’s an excerpt from the poem:

Brian Age Seven
by Mark Doty

Grateful for their tour
of the pharmacy,
the first-grade class
has drawn these pictures,
each self-portrait taped
to the window-glass,
faces wide to the street,
round and available,
with parallel lines for hair.

I like this one best: Brian,
whose attenuated name
fills a quarter of the frame,
stretched beside impossible
legs descending from the ball
of his torso, two long arms
springing from that same
central sphere.


Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Here’s a video of Mark Doty reading the poem:


At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original list poem titled Things to Do If You Are the Moon.

Jules has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Seven Impossible Things.

school visit fun, this time with music!

This past month has been rather busy for me with school visits, but luckily all of the schools have been so wonderful that each one has been a treat.

Once school was decorated with an Asian-inspired theme (to go with my books), including this really neat dragon balloon (which I got to take home!):
They even got a goldfish in honor of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. The goldfish's name? Grace FIN! ha ha!:

Another school did a very in-depth author study of me and discovered my love of cupcakes!And gave me an enormous one to celebrate the Newbery Honor!(It's so big that Squatchie and I are still eating it, but it's sooo yummy!):

And another school, after learning in The Year of the Dog that I did not have a Red Egg party, decided to throw me one:With musical entertainment!! The Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat lyrics were written by the students:

The Year of the Dog brings new friendships and growing
Pacy is looking to fi-ind herse-elf
Melody moves in and becomes her best friend
I don't think their friendship could e-ver end

The Year of the Rat mean that life will be changing
Pacy would like it to all be amazing
Soon she founds out things are not what they were
Change can be so hard, I know that for sure...

Isn't that great! Many thanks to all you wonderful, hard-working and welcoming schools!!