Birthdays, Book and Otherwise

Tomorrow is the day PRETTIEST DOLL goes on sale at bookstores and online.  It’s called a book birthday, which is reminding me of other, different kinds of birthdays.

My son was born on December 28.  I was in labor for at least 36 hours, after being told by a chatty sonogram technician on Christmas morning, “Boy, that kid’s got a big head.”  In those days, it was unusual to know the sex of the baby, so my husband and I were in the dark on that score.  Also in those days, they gave you Demerol.  It was fantastic.

When he was born (9 pounds, 2 ounces, 22 inches long, at 7:20 pm), I became almost instantly ecstatic in a completely new way.  It wasn’t just his birthday that day.  In an instant, I became a different person.

My daughter was born three and a half years later.  The delivery was harder, owing to egregious medical nincompoopery.  She was born on her due date—June 3, 10:20 am—and her gender was also a surprise.   I didn’t experience ecstasy right away (owing to the idiots who delivered her), but two days later, there it was again.  She was 7 pounds, 1 ounce and 21 inches long: a perfect little peanut of a girl.

I love all the books I’ve written, and I’m proud of each of them.  I hope lots of people buy PRETTIEST DOLL, and I hope it resonates with them, makes them laugh, makes them think and feel and wonder.

But when somebody says, Having your book published is like having a baby, my first thought is always, No, it isn’t.

It isn’t anything like that at all.

People Who Don't Like My Book

I love being a writer.  I love for people to read my books and think about them.  I love hearing what they have to say, even if it isn’t always complimentary.  Well, okay, honestly, I’d rather hear compliments.  But good criticism, thoughtfully articulated, is always appreciated.

What I hate, though, are opinions that are colored by bias, poorly backed up, or otherwise incoherent.  And the Barnes & Noble site has posted a couple.

First off, let me say that I’ve received bad reviews as long as I’ve been writing.  My first book (NATALIE SPITZER’S TURTLES, Albert Whitman, 1992) was reviewed by a librarian who objected to the fact that the main character’s best friend was African American.  She took this to mean that I think black people are followers, because the best friend happened to be a follower (who, it should be said, eventually came to a good decision on her own).

As it happened, the decision to make the best friend black was taken by the editors, who commissioned the illustrator.  It was a surprise to me when I received my copies in the mail. And also, since when are all African-American characters in works of fiction supposed to be leaders?  Who ordained that?

But I never said a word, in part because it’s unseemly to seem overly miffed by criticism, and also because back then, to whom was I going to complain?

Of course, that was before blogging, which, conveniently, allows me to bitch if I feel like it.

An unnamed reviewer of PRETTIEST DOLL (Clarion, November 6, 2012), whose review appears on the Barnes & Noble site under the headline “Children’s Literature” says, in part, “I seriously worry, though, about the implications that young teenagers are likely to be perfectly safe and better off if they run away from situations not even close to being as oppressive as they imagine them.”

Does Worried Reviewer worry about Claudia and Jamie Kincaid running away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the classic FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER?  Does she think Harriet shouldn’t have snuck into other people’s dumbwaiters in HARRIET THE SPY because doing so might give readers bad ideas?

Kids read fiction for the same reason that adults do: to lose themselves in a story.  And the best way I know to allow that to happen is to write about real people: kids who do dumb things, over-controlling mothers who might be crazy but still love their daughters.  If writers aren’t ever supposed to write about children who behave poorly or recklessly or impulsively, then we’re going to end up with books that are more like comic books than literature.  Is that what we really want: a main character who always acts heroically and wisely, a bad guy whose temperament is never leavened with even a kernel of mercy or intelligence or gallantry?

Trust me, Worried Reviewer.  The fact that Liv Tatum runs away from home is not going to cause readers to up and head for the nearest bus terminal.  PRETTIEST DOLL is a book, not an instruction manual.  Kids will get that, even if you don’t.

After reading PRETTIEST DOLL, a self-identified “teen reviewer” says, “…In addition, her language seems simple compared to language in other books in the same age category, but there are profanities throughout the novel.”

Does Teen Reviewer know any twelve-year-olds?  Any eight-year-olds?  Does she know what they sound like?  I have raised two kids, and they swore like stevedores from the time they were five years old.  (Actually, my daughter called her beloved brother an “idiot asshole dick” when she was two and a half.)  And that was in my presence.  God knows what they said when I wasn’t around.

 

They’re now highly functional adults who know how to behave at work and in graduate school.  They’re fine.  A few swear words in a book—I think there are no more than five in PRETTIEST DOLL—are not going to turn innocent children to a life of crime.  But a book written for young people with language that is stilted, inauthentic, and artificially purged of realism will simply never be read.

 

Suck on that, Teen Reviewer.

On Twitter and Publicity and Walking the Hills Without a Cane

So I finally broke down and opened a Twitter account.  Just writing this sentence makes me embarrassed.

Publicizing PRETTIEST DOLL is exhausting.  I haven’t had time to write in two weeks, what with trying (in vain) to figure out Twitter and writing to everyone who entered the book giveaway and answering a blogger’s interview questions (http://whimsicallyours.com/2012/10/13/gina-pardo/) and attempting to arrange a book tour.  Meanwhile, I’ve had a nasty cold, the roof rats are chewing on the shingles at night (blissfully unaware that the roofers are arriving tomorrow, thereby putting a definitive end to their shenanigans), my car needs servicing, and my 92-year-old mother who has dementia is ducking her caregivers and going out for unattended walks without a cane.

I’ve decided to let her do this, because it is, after all, her life.  (And also because she yells at me if I try to interfere in any way.)  It makes me very anxious; I’m always waiting for a phone call from a doctor with dire news.  My mother is unsteady on her feet and broke her pelvis in a fall last March, so she is undoubtedly at risk for grave injury.  But she loves to tell me about her walks when I call.  “I did the whole thing,” she says.  It takes her half an hour and is hilly in places, and I know she is proud of herself.

I think that in telling me she’s done it, the whole experience becomes more real to her.  She can believe with more certainty that it actually happened.

I was raised to think that tooting one’s own horn was boorish and uncouth and just a little bit unattractive.   But I’m trying to think about it in a different light.  Maybe publicity is really more than just a way to tell the world that I’ve done something that makes me proud.  Maybe it’s a way to convince myself that I really sat down and wrote a book.  An actual book.

 

Because after all these years, sometimes I still don’t quite believe it.

Enter To Win

I have been receiving lovely notes from lots of adults interested in children’s books—librarians, teachers, readers—who are submitting their names for a chance to win one of ten free autographed copies of my upcoming novel, PRETTIEST DOLL (which will be published by Clarion on November 6, 2012).

Publicity is an amazing thing to a writer.

When you write, you disappear inside your head, and the only people keeping you company are the characters you dream up.  It’s a big party up there, and for a while, it’s fabulous.  But then you finish the book, and the characters go away, and you go back to your real life, where you make soup and watch “The New Normal” with your boyfriend and wait for your adult children to take your calls and visit your 92-year-old mother with dementia who is still mad that you took her car away and get quotes from roofers because you have roof rats and run every day because you are addicted to running even though you think you might have runner’s knee. 

And it’s as if the book and all those characters have evaporated, are just gone.

But now I have a publicist.  And publicists know how to make sure that people know about your book and those characters.  One of the things they tell you to do is to offer to give away some free copies of your book.  A lot of people will write to you if they think they’ll get a free book out of it.  (All in all, my book has received more “hits” than 89% of the other children’s books advertised this year.  Yes, I’m bragging a little. )

That is a pretty extraordinary thing.  With all the stories about the demise of the printed (as opposed to the electronic) word and the corporatization of the publishing industry, you wouldn’t think people would still want to own an actual book.  But they do.

I’ve heard from a teacher on Long Island with the same name as my daughter who thinks my idea (about a beauty-pageant contestant) is great.  And a young college student who writes a blog and wants to be a writer herself.  And a woman who likes the look of my website.  I didn’t recognize the name of her town, so I Googled it.  She lives in Iraq.  IRAQ.  Isn’t that incredible?

It is just the most heartening thing, to see how books are still meaningful to so many people.  It makes me feel happy and hopeful about the future (a fact that will make my closest friends laugh, because I tend toward the melancholic and despairing).

It’s not too late to enter the contest.  Visit my website (www.ginawillnerpardo.com) and drop me a note.

And in your non-reading hours, check out “The New Normal.”  Ellen Barkin is going to win an Emmy.  I just about guarantee it. 

On Doing Things You're Not Very Good At

Years ago, when my son went off to college, I told him, Do at least one thing you never thought you would do.  He went to a dance class and it completely changed his life.  (In truth, I don’t know if he even heard what I said.  He would have gone to the class anyway, because two girls asked him to go.  But I like telling the story this way.)

Recently, I decided to take my own advice.  I am a very verbal person.  I need words to make sense of the world.  But I’ve always wished I were more visual.  So I signed up to take an online photography class in self-portraiture.

This class is really hard for me.  The other students are very beautiful women who can rock short hair and wear orange skirts that look good when they’re twirling in a meadow.  One woman in particular takes the most amazing photographs: her hands in blue paint, her unclothed body demurely rendered in grainy black and white, her smiling face wreathed by daisies in clear glass vases surrounding her head.  She is so creative and clever and artistic and inventive. 

Whereas everything I take looks like an ordinary snapshot.  

Here’s the thing, though.  I think it’s really good for me to be doing something I’m pretty terrible at.  Because, first of all, and most obviously, if I never try something new, then I’ll never learn how to do it better.  

But here’s the other thing, the thing I didn’t expect: it’s really kind of fun to be lousy at something and know that I’m going to keep doing it anyway, voluntarily.   There’s no pressure, no sense of urgency.  It’s like playing, which I’ve kind of forgotten how to do.  But the one thing I remember about playing is that you can’t be good at it, and because you can’t be good at it, you can’t really be bad at it, either.

When my son was about three, he wanted me to play “guns” with him.  (We didn’t have any toy guns; we just used our fingers.)  He kept “shooting” me and making realistic shooting sounds with his mouth.  I made sounds that sounded as though I was drinking out of a trough.  Then I started explaining that I wasn’t very good at pretending to shoot because I’d never done it before, and also that boys were probably better at it than girls and I didn’t know why that was, and even though there was probably a girl somewhere who was good at it, I’d never met her.

My son sighed and said, “Mommy, just stop talking and die.”

Assuming he was speaking metaphorically, I think this is good advice.  

Favorite Books

Writers love talking about their favorite books.  When I talk to kids, it’s usually the second question they ask me.  (The first one is, How much do you get paid?)

It’s hard for me to answer this question if the asker wants me to name just one book.  Different books mean different things to me, and the longer I live and the more I read, the more answers I have.

Here are some of my favorites, and the reasons why they’re my favorites:

--Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh (Harper & Row, 1964).  A little girl wants to be a writer, spies on people, and writes it all down.  I think I was ten the first time I read it.  Reading Harriet the Spy, I was reading about myself.  It was the first time I saw myself in someone else’s words.  I loved that Harriet wanted to be a writer, that she was a writer, and most especially, that she was comfortable in her own writer-ly skin.

--Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White (Harper & Brothers, 1952).  This book was read to me by my father before I could read to myself.  For the first time, I knew (in the way that children do, which is to say, mysteriously, pre-consciously) that prose could be poetry.  I’ve read it dozens of times.  To this day, I cannot read the last page without crying.

--The Forsyte Saga, A Modern Comedy, and End of the Chapter by John Galsworthy.  Each of these is a trilogy, so nine novels in all, written in the early twentieth century about an extended English family and spanning five decades.  I was a precocious reader and began to read these novels when I was twelve and my family got hooked on the British TV series.  The novels gave birth to my deep love for all things English, as well as to the realization that reading was a way to ogle other people’s dysfunctional families.

--Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike (Knopf, 1981).  John Updike wrote in the most beautiful, meticulously crafted prose imaginable about a car salesman who drank too much, cheated on his wife, and tried to understand his place in the world.  This novel, the third of four in the Rabbit series, made me understand what it is to be a certain kind of American man.  It also made me understand that a well-drawn protagonist does not need to be heroic, or even likable, to be compelling.

--Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth (Random House, 1969).  The funniest novel I’ve ever read.  More dysfunctional-family drama.  The beauty and rage and pathos of being a Jewish man in America.  Neither Roth nor Updike has many good things to say about women, but boy, can they write.  (Note: This is not a kid's book.  I don't believe in censoring books, but if you're a kid, you ought to clear this with your parents before taking it on.)

--Anywhere But Here, by Mona Simpson (Vintage, 1992).   Dysfunctional Families R Us.  The story of a complex mother-daughter relationship, told from the daughter’s point of view.  Well, of course I’m going to love it.

--Too Much Happiness, short stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2009).  Munro is Canadian, widely heralded as the greatest living short-story writer in the English language.  The stories in Too Much Happiness are magnificent, but so are all her stories.  Here’s a wonderful line from “Face”: “In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.”   No fancy words, no exploding cars, no pyrotechnics of any kind.  Just words that make you wish you’d written them.  And lots of dysfunctional families.

What are some of your favorite books?  Send me a comment, or tell me on Facebook.  Really, I never get tired of this stuff.

On Book Trailers and Trying to Get Kids to Read

I’ve been working to get everything in order to publicize my new middle-grade novel, PRETTIEST DOLL (Clarion, November 6, 2012).  For the first time, I commissioned a book trailer.  The very talented and amazing Daniel Brown of Wide Eyed Pictures directed.  Here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjXtcakOBY

Isn’t that little girl wonderful?  Her name is Payton Walker, and her parents wrote to tell me that she doesn’t really have much of an accent but practiced on the way to the shoot.  I think she nailed it.  She managed to capture exactly one of the qualities in Olivia Jane that most touched and interested me: that sense of wanting to put her foot down, say no, stop the bus and get off, all while not hurting anyone or making anybody angry. 

Even though PRETTIEST DOLL is about the world of beauty pageants, I hope it will be meaningful to any kid who feels pressured to participate in activities that don’t really interest her.  When I was raising my children, their friends were not involved in beauty pageants.  But I knew a lot of chess players and singers and black belts and Little League pitchers and gymnasts and swimmers and water-polo players and dancers and actors and goalies and divers and one kid who was on a trivia team and knew everything about European music history and one kid who fenced.  I hope they were doing these things because they loved them and not because their parents were living through them.  It’s hard to know for sure.

(The kid who liked trivia won over $59,000 on "Jeopardy" a few years ago. I think he was twenty-three when he did it.  He is one of my son's best friends.  You should have seen me yelling at the television when he won.)

When I first started writing children’s books twenty years ago, I never gave publicity a second thought.  But now, the combined effects of publishing-house mergers and the allure of other, more dazzling media mean that writers have to work hard to make sure their books get noticed.  I won’t lie: writing the narration for the PRETTIEST DOLL book trailer was a total blast, the most fun I’ve had professionally in a long time.  But the whole thing makes me a little sad, too.  Apparently, books all by themselves aren’t interesting to a lot of kids, who are more likely to read them if a good trailer hooks them first.

Isn’t it funny that reading is the one activity that some parents care about intensely until their kids actually learn how to do it?  And that these same parents sort of lose interest in their children being readers when the glories of the soccer field and the uneven parallel bars beckon?   Why don’t parents cheer when their kids want to lie in bed on Sunday morning and lose themselves in a good mystery?  (And by “cheer,” I don’t mean “pay their kids five dollars for every novel they read.”  I mean “cheer.”  Or better yet, “not cheer.”  Just let their kids alone, for once.)  Why don’t they see the value—the beauty—of a childhood spent under the spell of good books?

 

Not everyone likes to read.  That’s really okay.  I’m not suggesting that parents turn their crazed attentions to reading and try to make it into a competitive sport.  And I’m not denigrating athletics and music and theater and all the other wonderful things that teach children the value of hard work and self-discipline and membership in a group.

But maybe if parents let their kids know that reading really matters, it might even the playing field (so to speak) and allow books and kids to find each other.  To do this, parents would have to embrace the radical notion that it’s okay to engage in an activity that will not culminate in a trophy or a ribbon.  No clapping, no belt test, no team, no winning.   Just pleasure, and the joy of losing one’s self in an invented world.

Can we parents do this?  I don’t know, but I hope so.  I hate to think what writers are going to have to do in 2042 to get anyone to notice their books if we don’t.