If you live in the Princeton, NJ area come see me this Saturday: I will have a Little Blog on the Prairie table at the Princeton Public Library’s book fair 11am-4pm.
Where I’ll teach any and all how to make butter.
And where I will not wear a bonnet.
(I’m not kidding about either of those things.)
For more info on the festival, go to: www.princeton.lib.nj.us/children/festival/index.html
In graduate school, I was trained (sort of) to write short stories. I didn’t read short stories, except in the New Yorker because it’s always lying around the house, and I was always confused by the idea of writing in this form––just as you get to know a character, the story is over. But occasionally, a story will come into my brain whole. It’s best when it’s an idea that’s like a truffle, intense, awesome but something you can’t imagine having a lot of. (Maybe the truffle comparison breaks down here. I can eat a lot of truffles.)
Anyway, I have a story idea in my mind right now, and as I’m waiting a few days to hear back from an editor on an idea I want to turn into my next book, I think I might just take a crack at it. Here’s what I’m thinking will be the opening line:
Ally, Jennifer, Kate and I were the only mothers in Classroom K-203 who took the subway into work after drop off. We started the kindergarten year bumping into one another on the platform, then waiting up when we’d see the other on the sidewalk outside school. Pretty soon we’d become a group. Except for Thursdays when Ally’s husband dropped off so she could get in early for a staff meeting, we’d meet up in the hall outside the classroom, walk together the two blocks to the F train, and talk the whole way into the city, hanging onto poles and straps as the F train labored from stop to stop, hestitating and jerking its way up ramps, into tunnels and faster and faster toward midtown where we all, the four of us, and sometimes we felt like we were the only ones––had jobs.
We talked and listened. This was before any of us had had coffee, but still, these conversations were wild, as if our lives depended on it.
….
Okay! Here I go…
This apostle plant blooms in my window at this time of year––my wedding anniversary, my daughter’s birth, Valentine’s Day.
This plant is a descendant––a cutting of a cutting of a cutting––of one that belonged to my great grandmother. Between second and sixth grades, my mother, sister and I lived in a tiny, crumbling half-a-house in downtown Princeton. It had no shower, only a claw foot tub in the tiny bathroom. My mom filled a shelf at the faucet end of the tub with a row of these plants and the stiff leaves used to rub my feet when I ducked under to rinse my hair. Terrifying. Never noticed seeing a single one bloom. But as an adult, here they are, with these gorgeous and fleeting flowers. I photograph them every time they bloom as if it’s possible to hold on.
I started a book club of 5th and 6th graders at the school my children go to last week. We read Suzanne’s Collins’ Gregor the Overlander. It was so fun to sit around a table eating bagels talking about the parts of the story we loved or that made us mad, our favorite characters and when we cried. Next month we’re reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains which I read last summer and couldn’t put down.
I put out copies of Slipping and Little Blog to show kids who were getting to know me why I’m interested in leading the club––because I want to spend time thinking about how they read. A girl, who didn’t connect the copy of Slipping with me yet, pulled the book to her chest possessively and said, “This was the BEST book.” I tried to act too cool to be thrilled, but I was THRILLED. So often the feedback comes from people I know. For a stranger to have pulled it off the shelf and then LOVED it. Nothing is better.
It’s been a tricky fall for writing, figuring out what will come next in my life, and this blog is beginning to feel somewhat fake. What purpose does it serve? I get comments every day in my inbox–all from bizarre robots trying to trick me into thinking they’ve read your posts––thanking me for the “article” and saying they will “use this information for sure in growing my business.” What business could possibly make use of my stories of learning to read as a child? No wonder our economy is going down hill!
But hearing that student’s comment gave me a boost in confidence. Slipping is a good book. I’m glad I wrote it. I’m thrilled its out in the world. Little Blog too. They are both extremely personal and I feel like I want this blog space to be that way as well.
Cheers, Cathleen
Isn’t this awesome???
I was thrilled to hear this week that Little Blog was selected for the Texas Lone Star reading list. This is great news and I felt appropriate with the frontier connection to Texas. The list goes out to middle school librarians all across the state, which means that kids in Texas are likely to get exposed to the book. Hooray.
It was just simply wonderful to feel this validation all week, whenever I put my head up for air––I’ve been organizing a pie sale at school. We were planning for 20-30 pies and ended up selling 74 and having to find people to bake all of them!
Here’s a link to the list.
http://www.txla.org/groups/lone-star
The other authors and books are:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Cathleen Davitt Bell, Little Blog on the Prairie
Robin Brande, Fat Cat
Ally Carter, Heist Society
Tera Lynn Childs, Forgive My Fins
Ally Condie, Matched
Carl Deuker, Payback Time
Erin Dionne, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet
Brian Falkner, Brain Jack
Catherine Fisher, Incarceron
Donna Gephart, How to Survive Middle School
Julia Golding, Dragonfly
Jason Henderson, Vampire Rising
David Klass, Stuck on Earth
Polly Shulman, The Grimm Legacy
Neal Shusterman, Bruiser
Jordan Sonnenblick, After Ever After
Francisco X Stork, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors
Deborah Wiles, Countdown
Richard Yancey, The Monstrumologist
Last spring, my editor Melanie handed me a shopping bag filled with the 1890s clothes Bloomsbury bought for the LITTLE BLOG cover shoot. She thought I should wear them to readings.
I felt so red and prickly at the very idea of dressing up in the clothes (to paraphrase David Sedaris’ observations of people dressed up on the street in costumes handing out flyers to sell thing: “I just hope I never get what he has.) I had the idea of challenging readers to put the bonnet on. Go ahead, I said. You too can understand how horrible it was for Gen to get forced to wear this by her mom.
I took hundreds of photos. Then, with the help of my lawyer husband I realized I had to get WAIVERS to put kids’ images online. So here’s a legal sampling. Enjoy!
Just read about farm camping via a link my sister in law sent me from Redbook Mag:
http://www.redbookmag.com/kids-family/advice/unplugged-vacation?click=main_sr
I saw something about this kind of farm vacation last year in the Times. http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/dining/26farms.html
You go on vacation to someone’s farm. Just like in the book.
Okay, some people out there are reading Little Blog on the Prairie. I have got a few more letters from readers, and my editor just informed me that she’s ordered a second printing. Hooray!
In other exciting news, a really cool film producer is interested in trying to put together a movie package based on the story.
Meanwhile, a friend tells me her children are engaged in games where they are Gen and Gavin. I think this is possibly my favorite bit of news in awhile.
Okay, I never get fan mail, so I just have to post this note I just got from a reader:
Hello,
I am K–– and i am 14 years old, im in 8th grade and I really enjoyed Little Blog on The Prairie , its the best book i have ever read! it like really pulled me in! I think I am going to read this book again. And i am not a book reader! I want to read slipping to. I asked my mom to buy both books for me! well keep writing i think your doing awesome!!!
How nice is that.