Audience Research: Peril, Action, Plot and Parasites

This one’s for you, middle-grade/YA writers. Straight from the horse’s mouth – well, actually, straight from my 13-year old triplet grandnephews’ mouths between bites of pizza.

All three are avid readers. I decided to pick their brains during a dinner at Eviva’s Pizza in Edmonds: What books have they enjoyed most lately? And – helpful to us writers – why? Admittedly this is a small survey sample, but I think you’ll find the results interesting.

The oldest by two minutes said the kid version of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is his favorite book of late. He liked learning about World War II and “really rooted for the guy to get through camp.”

All three boys play many sports and are avid sportsfans. (Last year their Christmas gift exchange had a Seahawks theme.) The oldest says that explains why he likes the Mike Lupica books. “They are easy to relate to.”

Next up is the youngest.

His top title of late is The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer, “the Artemis Fowl guy.” He likes the action and adventure and the compelling push of this story that pits four kids against a parasite in order to save the world.

John Green’s Papertowns is another of his favorites, which he found “funny and intriguing.” Papertowns is a mystery with a boy/girl relationship at the center.

The middle of the three recommends Unbroken and The Supernaturalist. He, too, likes action in his reading. He gobbles books at a rate about two a week and noted the Supernaturalist is the kind of story that keeps him up late reading. It’s hard to put down. He likes a good plot – so mysteries have big appeal, especially mysteries with kid detectives.

This middle brother also likes serieses, i.e. Harry Potter (of course). And he put in a word for the Stick Dog series, “even though it’s for younger kids,” and comic books, with their action appeal.

Also anything by Brian Selznik (The Invention of Hugo Cabret and The Marvels are his favorites) and “all the sports books by Tim Green.”

Nancy Pearl, the only librarian I know who has an action figure, says that she thinks readers can be divided into those who read for character and those who read for plot. My grand-nephews definitely come down on the plot side. Most of the titles they mentioned have lots of suspense and action, as well as kid protagonists they can relate to. I guess it makes sense that these active boys would want action in their books.

Thanks guys for sharing your favorite books. And happy writing to the rest of you.

p.s. Eviva’s Woodfired Pizza was voted Seattle’s best pizza, even though it is located ten miles north in Edmonds. Worth the drive. (Note added 11//2017: Now there’s a Eviva’s on Queen Anne Blvd. in Seattle, too. Same wonderful pizza!)

Wordless Letters, part two

Last week Margaret wrote about our wordless correspondence while she lived in London. This week I am posting some of the letters that she sent to me.

When we hatched our plan we decided that we would each send a wordless letter every Friday. We stuck with that deadline although Friday sometimes became Saturday. Having a deadline made us actually follow through on our intentions.

I loved getting something in the mail every week and I never knew what it would be.

This one comforted me when our dog Lily died.

Some explored new tools such as a pen nib.

Here is the other side of the teapot conversation –

and the squiggle

Some were three dimensional, or collaged from scraps of labels, or made of fabric.

I enjoyed the exchange as it happened. But yesterday when I gathered everything  to photograph, the accumulation of letters and images amazed and moved me. Our small idea grew into something bigger – a record and testament of our friendship and of time passing. Giving and getting were both gifts.

Wordless Letters

This post is about my correspondence with Julie Paschkis while I was in London. Apparently, February is International Correspondence Writing Month (InCoWriMo), so this will be especially appropriate.

After I had gotten myself settled in and had recovered from the initial shock of moving to another country, I still felt a bit untethered. Printmaking, my artistic comfort zone, had begun to feel tedious and boring, so I intentionally left my printmaking presses behind in Seattle. Now I had a new environment to explore and no reason not to experiment and be inspired.

But sometimes, having so many options becomes overwhelming. Where to start?

I told Julie how I was feeling. She said that when she isn’t sure where to start creatively, she finds it helpful to make something with someone particular in mind, as if she is making a gift for them. I liked that idea. Julie suggested we both send each other a “wordless letter” every week.

This turned out to be a wonderful solution, in so many ways. I found the challenge of describing what I was doing and expressing what I was feeling, without words, to be a very productive means to mine my experiences.

Julie and I have been friends for nearly thirty years. She knows my art. She knows my insecurities and foibles. She is my dear friend. I knew that whatever I sent her would be received openly and without judgement. That was important to me at a time when I was trying new things that I wasn’t necessarily good at. Some weeks I felt more inspired than others. Some weeks I had less time than others. It was all okay.

The practice kept me being creative, even when distractions and excuses not to stay in my workspace were everywhere, and it disciplined me to do so on a regular basis. During the week, I would keep my eyes open for bits and bobs of ephemera to use in my next missive. Often, what I would make for Julie would lead me to create other pieces in a similar vein.

It also kept me in touch with Julie in a different way than texts or FaceTime or even written letters would have done. It was like a conversation of imagery.

All that, and the joy of receiving something in kind every week. A letter is a gift. We don’t get or give them often enough.

These letters are some of my most treasured relics from my two years in London. All in all, I have nearly fifty wordless letters from Julie. The envelopes were also works of art. I have picked some of my favorites to show you here.

Julie sent me this after I told her about a missing teapot from my parents’ home.

Arrows were a common theme for me. Julie responded in kind.

Julie and I exchanged squiggles at one point, and then colored them in and sent them back.

Some of the letters were 3-D.

Others had movable parts!

Rose colored glasses to induce optimism.

This was a Thank You note from Julie after she and her husband Joe visited us and we took a trip to Amsterdam.

Julie sent me this after I met her in New York for a visit.

A letter for a new year.

And this was one of the last letters Julie sent me. It is me, returning to Seattle (the handle on the suitcase goes up and down and the flaps open).

Next week, Julie will share her side of our exchange.

Concept book, concept book. What do you see?

Some of the simplest picture books are concept books. Books about sound, color, shapes, seasons… ways that we categorize the world that will be new to a toddler. Concept books might often seem like just random lists, but the good ones have an underlying structure that takes more planning than it seems.

A lot has to do with the order in which information is presented. It can be an order is natural to the concept itself such as the passage of seasons or the sequence of the colors in a rainbow, but often the author has to work to impose order. A lot of the pleasure of a concept book is to see how an author and illustrator do this.

A great example is the picture book Buzz by Janet Wong, illustrated by my blog-mate Margaret Chodos-Irving. It’s a book I’ve used in my writing classes long before I knew Janet or Margaret, because what could be a simpler idea than different things that buzz? But it’s far from a random collection of buzzes.

In this case, author and illustrator explore the different buzzing sounds a boy hears as his household wakes up.

It starts with the single word: “Buzz.” as a boy sleepily looks out his window. Then a page turn.

“Outside my window a bee eats breakfast in a big red flower.”

It then moves through the boy’s morning. The buzz of the alarm clock in his parent’s room. Dad shaving. The sound of the gardener mowing across the street. There’s one “buzz” sound per page. And they are relatively peaceful, everyday buzzes. The language is mostly simple declarative sentences.

Then comes breakfast and something interesting happens. The activity level picks up and the language gets more complex:

Mommy grinds coffee Buzzzzzzzzzzz while I fly my airplane Buzzzzzzzzz over the oatmeal Buzzzzzzz and past the apple juice Buzzzzzzz—OH NO!

All this activity happens on one page quickening the pace of the story.

On the next page, there are no buzz sounds—just mild chaos. Airplane lands in juice, cup spills, mom runs to catch cup, toast pops up, clothes are tumbling in dryer and then the BUZZZZ of the dryer gets buzzing back into the story, but now with more urgency. Mom is on the move getting ready to go to work. Buzz goes her hairdryer. Grandma buzzes the doorbell to come baby-sit. Boy kisses Mom goodbye…

“so she can fly BUZZ outside”

(page turn and we see Mom hurrying off to work)

“like a busy bee.”

There’s plenty of structure here. The sequence of the buzzes matches the natural order of a morning’s activities. The pace and urgency of the story gradually escalate into mild chaos in the kitchen and Mom suddenly needs to rush to get out the door—this is the top of the story arc. Then the pace slows somewhat—not as leisurely as the beginning, but down off the peak and gradually we come in for a landing, with the closing image of the bee that perfectly rounds out the story at the same place we came in.

A consistent pattern or rhyming scheme is another way to add structure to a simple book. I wrote a  concept book Tickly Prickly, illustrated by Shari Halpern (now out of print) about how things feel to the touch. It begins with:

Did you ever have a ladybug crawl across your finger?

How did it feel?

Tickly, prickly. Fly away quickly.

Every stanza that follows asks a question about how it feels to touch a familiar animal and answers that question within a consistent rhyming scheme.

Did you ever have a fish wriggle in your hands?

How did it feel?

Slippery, slickery. Turny and twistery.

Ending with:

Did you ever have a puppy cuddle in your arms?

How did it feel?

Velvety snug. A hugful of love.

Like Wong, I had to find an narrow focus for my book. I picked the feel of  animals—not the feel of a bedtime blanket or a snowball. And I picked familiar animals—bunnies, chicks, a cat’s paw—not a hippo hide or the beak of a stork. But I could have gone in those other directions. The main thing is to have a direction, a reason for the choices.

(By the way, the symbols at the top of this illustration are from an iTunes app that’s available for this book.)

There’s almost no build to the march of animals in Tickly Prickly, but the middle does feature perhaps the more interesting animals that might be in an average child’s world—a horse, a lake fish, a toad. And, it very deliberately ends with the coziest emotion, snuggling with a dog.

Ending with the coziest emotions is my favorite go-to for most concept books, but there are other ways to make sure you end in a satisfying place, including the ending of a day (a built-in cozy moment with a goodnight tuck-in or hug), the reward or result of that activity (the baked cake) or going full circle.

Taro Gomi’s, Spring Is Here is a perfect example of the circular ending.

Spring Is Here is so deceptively simple. The prose couldn’t be more straightforward. It begins:

Spring is here.

The snow melts.

The earth is fresh.

The grass sprouts.

Each line is a new, two-page spread.

But not only is there a lovely trick he plays with the illustrations (you’re going to have to get this one to see what he does. It’s worth it.) he, too, creates a build as we move from flowers blooming and grass growing to a little drama in the middle:

The wind blows.

The storms rage.

And then back down into the quiet harvest, falling snow and a hushed world. Before returning to:

For more concept books to check out, I like this list compiled by the Contra Costa County Library (plus it’s fun to say all those C-words.)

http://guides.ccclib.org/c.php?g=43934&p=1046403

The Seattle Public Library also has this list:

https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/list/show/73413760__seattle_kids_librarians/85218609_seattle_picks_-_concept_books

And here’s this from Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/concept-books