The #1 Best Thing About Teaching

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Howdy Campers and Happy Poetry Friday! (links to PF, to my poem, and to my autographed Passover book are below)

Shhh!  Come sneak into the TeachingAuthors' Teacher's Lounge and eavesdrop as we consider what we like most about being teachers.

Carmela started us out with Two Things I Love About Teaching Writing, Esther continues our theme with the many ways she connects with her students and the resources she connects her students to, and today I'm up to bat.
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First, may I say that this is a somber (and an important) time to think about teachers. And students. And about how much we as a people value them. I had originally planned to post a funny poem about revision and how scary it can be, but the images were inappropriate at this time in our country.

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Okay. Here's what I like about teaching:.

I like to perform.

But I particularly like when I am most authentic, when I forget myself, when my light reaches theirs.

drawing © 2018 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

JUST FOR ME
by April Halprin Wayland

At the end of class she says,

"Write something you want,

something about yourself you want to change,

or something you worry about."


Heads down, pens flying, we write.

I use my purple ink pen.

Then we all look up at her,

expectantly.


"Now," she says,

standing by the windows in shiny black heels,

"rip it into a thousand pieces and throw it away."

Someone gasps.


"Don't share

what you wrote

with anyone."

Our eyes widen.


"That's right: this idea is yours.

To think about. To live.

Not to post on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.

Not to tell a soul."


We ceremonially

rip 

our revelations

to bits.


We file

out of class

in silence;

in shock.


I can't tell you what I wrote. I won't.

But I can say that it's

written in purple ink


inside me.
poem © 2018 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Here's what I wrote to fellow TeachingAuthor Esther Hershenhorn one night:

Just home from teaching. I was really dreading tonight's class... Revision is a hard topic to get through--how much work it takes to revise and rewrite. But it turned out to be a gloriously wonderful class... So I guess I'm a teacher after all.
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It may have been the best class I've taught in years.  Funny how that happens.

And that's what I like about teaching: the intangible, gloriously wonderful, unpredictableness of it all.

Thank you for hosting PF today, Liz at http://elizabethsteinglass.com/blog/

And one more thing...Passover is March 30-April 7th this year, so...

...if you're looking for AUTOGRAPHED copies of my picture book, More Than Enough ~ A Passover Story (Reviewed in the New York Times!) call the fabulous folks at my local independent bookstore, {pages} a bookstore, 310-318-0900 to pre-pay (+tax & shipping) and specify who it’s for. Gift wrapping available on request.

Or buy at it your local independent book store!

(If there are no indies near you, that’s another story. Then by all means buy it here.)

posted with hope for teachers and students everywhere by April Halprin Wayland with help from Dropsy, a particularly contemplative goldfish in our pond.

My Favorite Indie

My ideal independent bookstore carries only children's books. A bell above the door tinkles musically each time a customer enters. Strategically placed twinkle lights lend a dreamy, wonderland quality to the bright, colorful interior. The staff is warm and welcoming and brilliant at pairing you with exactly the book you need. Cubby bookcases line the walls. Inside, new releases mingle with classics, and all are placed face out, of course. Displays throughout the store are artistic and irresistible. I can picture it so clearly . . . because it's The Shop Around the Corner from the movie, You've Got Mail.

If that store existed nearby, I'd work there for free. Oh, I'd earn a paycheck; the money just wouldn't make it home.

I don't have an indie in my hometown, but I wish I had one like Des Moines' Beaverdale Books. My DM author friends hold their book launches there, and owner Alice is a gem who's pretty much game for anything. I was able to attend Sharelle Byars Moranville's launch for The Hop last spring. Sharelle's friends brought in cheese and crackers, grapes, chocolates, a sweets tray, wine for the adults and, for the kids in attendance (since The Hop has gardening/environmental elements), cups of gummy worms in Oreo "dirt." Dozens of people showed up to share Sharelle's moment and hear her read from her adorable book. The joint was jumping!

My town has a Barnes & Noble and a (new) Books a Million. Luckily for area authors, those stores have friendly staffs, especially Barnes & Noble, where Asst. Mgr. Paul Ziebarth makes this B&N feel more like an indie than a big box store. Paul bends over backwards to make book signings successful. He knocks himself out for our SCBWI-Iowa conference booksales, too, always with a smile and cheerful attitude that makes us feel like there's nowhere he'd rather be. Thanks, Paul, for making authors feel wanted and welcome! I know it isn't that way everywhere.

There's still time to enter our blogiversary contest to win one of four gift certificates to Anderson's Bookstore!

Happy Mother's Day!

Jill Esbaum

Lemuria, My Wonderland

     I grew up in a world devoid of bookstores. That's pretty amazing considering a good chunk of my childhood was spent in suburban Chicago. "Buying books meant" the offerings of the Scholastic  and Weekly Reader Book Clubs. I still own those now-crumbling, 35 cent paperbacks and yellowing, cheesy board-bound books. A bookstore was something I saw only in the Loop...the book department of Marshall Field's and the Doubleday bookstore. My mother managed to convince me that the bookstores were like museums...you could look, but you couldn't buy.

    We moved when I was ten. Bye-bye, Marshall Field's, bye-bye Doubleday. There were no bookstores at all in Jackson, Mississippi, unless you count a few that catered to a particular political bent. Certainly nothing for children.

    In high school I found a second-hand paperback store near my house, which specialized in other kids' discarded Scholastic Paperbacks, and Grace Livingston Hill romances.  I never left empty handed. Still, I imagined that somewhere, people must be buying real books.  New books. Books that didn't smell like other people's houses, with the occasional  gum wrapper bookmark.

    Then, while home on a college break, my dad told me that there was an actual bookstore in town. Not a glorified newsstand, like the so-called "mall bookstore" but a real, live bookstore with hard covers and paperbacks...all new.  So off we went to this new place with the odd name of Lemuria, located in a converted apartment in an office complex on the Pearl River. A flight of stairs and voila... an ordinary two bedroom apartment..awash in books. Books in the bathroom. Books stacked on the floor and on the kitchen countertops. It didn't matter that it was hard finding some order in this chaos...it was books!  I came back every chance I got.

     Nirvana.  I learned that Lemuria's name came from a lost continent, home to an advanced civilization. The Lemurians developed a system of writing and recorded their thoughts. Most appropriate, I thought. An hour or so spent at Lemuria was an hour in another, better world. A temple of books, and I devoted worshipper.

   Before long, the store moved out of the apartment and into splendid quarters in a boutique-y shopping center closer to my house. Decorative leaded glass, autographed pictures by authors, both famous and notso-famous on the walls.  Deep leather chairs. Paneled walls and check out desks.  It was what I imagined a bookstore in San Francisco might look like. (I had never  been to a bookstore in San Francisco.)

   Ten years later, Lemuria moved to larger and even more elegant digs in the Banner Hall building, across the highway from it's former home.  The autographed pictures multiplied. A separate children's bookstore, rare books room and separate building for the online store were added. There seemed to be a new expansions every time I came home and checked in.

   It is said that if you sit long enough at a Paris cafe, you will see everyone you know. Lemuria is like that.  Whenever I visited,  I'd grab a stack of books and sit in one of those deep leather club chairs, grazing on books and grooving with whatever funky music was on the store system.  Sometimes I would see hometown authors Eudora Welty or Willie Morris in neighboring club chairs. No one bothered them. Unless there was a book signing, authors were customers like everyone else and no one bothered them.

    When my first book, Yankee Girl, was published in 2004, I achieved my own lifetime fantasy of having a book signing at Lemuria. This entitled me to place my own autographed picture on their wall of fame. (Last time I checked, it was next to the sales desk in Oz, the children's store.) And like the Parisian cafe, it seemed that everyone I ever knew turned out for the occasion. High school friends. My childhood Sunday School teachers. Former students.  SCBWI buddies. Even though I was an unknown first-time author, the staff at Lemuria treated me as if I were John Grisham (who always has the first book signing of his latest book at Lemuria.)

    Lemuria rambles, with rooms added here and there, as extra space in the building became available. No matter how many bookcases they add (and they go up a good fifteen feet in the air), there are still books stacked on the floor, the window ledges, and yes...the bathroom. The staff consider themselves "booksellers" and not mere clerks, keeping track of where the stock is located. They are all bibliophiles of the first order and always have something to say about your own book selection. A typical remark is
"So you are getting this book. It's really good. Have you read (the author's) first book?  Same characters."

    I have always thought that bookstores are like churches....if you have a problem, and sit there long enough, you will either find a solution, or at least feel peaceful. The air is infused with something special.  I defy you to find that same aura in a  Big Box Chain Book Store (and yes, Jackson does have one.)

     It's not too late to sign up for our Fourth Blogiversary. See this post for details.  See this post for details.

    As for me, I am ready to drop everything for a seven hour road trip to Lemuria!


     Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Wednesday Writing Workout!

Hello, all!

First things first:  If you haven't yet entered to win in our 4 x 4 Blogiversary Celebration, go! Do! Who wouldn't love selecting a few FREE books from one of our favorite indies?

Secondly, wasn't yesterday's Progressive Poem a blast? Thanks, April! A tough act to follow, for sure, but it's Wednesday, and that means it's time for a workout.

This week I've tapped one of my favorite teaching authors, novelist Sharelle (pronounced like Cheryl) Byars Moranville. Sharelle holds a Ph.D. in English and has taught as an adjunct professor at various colleges and universities. She's also a regular workshop leader at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Workshop. Here she is, prepared for warmer temperatures:

Sharelle's beautifully-crafted novels include the award-winning Over the River, The Purple Ribbon, A Higher Geometry, The Snows, and her latest, The Hop (Kirkus:  "an enchanting adventure.") I'm a great admirer of Sharelle's writing, which is filled with powerful sensory details and layers of emotion that go straight to a reader's heart. 

Here's a backstory exercise Sharelle uses with her writing students – and for her own stories, as well.

• Diagram the important places in the story. For example, the main character's house. Show the layout, the directional orientation (for the cast of light, breeze through the house, etc.) Think about the view from each window.
• Furnish the house. Think about the furnishings and what those reveal about backstory, character, and conflict.
• Pick a particular item in the house – a keychain, a coffee mug, a knick-knack, a lamp, a toothbrush – and use it as a prompt for exploring backstory, character, and conflict. Use it to create a scene between two characters.
• Pick an item in the house that will become a motif in the story – i.e., invested with an emotional content, like the backpack in Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky or the pearls in Kimberly Willis Holt's When Zachary Beaver Came to Town.

Be sure to check out Sharelle's website:  www.sharellebyarsmoranville.com

Happy writing!

Jill Esbaum

Pat Wroclawski: A Bookseller Extraordinaire to the 4th Power!

What better way to continue celebrating our 4 x 4 Blogiversary Celebration by introducing our readers to the incomparable Pat Wroclawski, Bookseller Extraordinaire to the 4^th Power.

Sadly, Pat left the world way too soon in March of 2005 but her Spirit lives on in the countless individuals she touched – readers, writers, parents, teachers, me.

So many times I finish a novel, or page through a picture book, or wonder at a biography and think, “Oh, how Pat would have loved this book!”

I knew of Pat long before I – boldly – introduced myself to her. She’d managed the Chestnut Court Book Shop in Winnetka for 15 years, then headed the Children’s Department at Kroch’s and Brentano’s flagship store in Chicago before returning to the renamed Bookstall at Chestnut Court as a consultant.  (FYI: Kroch’s and Brentano’s was the largest bookstore in Chicago and at one time the largest privately-owned bookstore chain in the U.S.  It closed in 1995.)

Everything I’d heard about Pat proved true and then some.

Her never-ending knowledge of children’s literature.
Her impeccable taste in books.
Her love of reading.
Her respect for and interest in writers and illustrators.

Pat’s passion for All Things Children's Book glowed from within.

The Bookstall’s Children’s Book Section became an invaluable resource for me as I traveled my Writer’s Plotline.  The best of the best lined the section’s shelves.

Of course Pat herself proved the best resource of all.

She cheered me on as I made my way, introducing me to esteemed authors and illustrators, to books I should know, to opportunities that helped me grow as a writer, and to the Association of Booksellers for Children, which Pat helped found, now a part of ABA re-named the ABC Children’s Group and a most vital piece of the Children’s Book World.
I shall always remain grateful for how warmly Pat welcomed and embraced my fellow SCBWI-Illinois members.

Pat oversaw my very first Book Signing for my very first book, There Goes Lowell’s Party!

She personally decorated the store’s windows and greeted each and every guest.
And she was there in the audience of Northern Illinois University’s March 1999 Children’s Literature Conference keeping me strong in my first-time-ever speaking presentation to 500 educators and librarians (!)
Seeing Pat’s smile undid my buckling knees.

Bookseller, yes.

As well as mentor, teacher, advocate, friend.

Pat somehow made time too to help found in 1989 yet another important children’s book organization, Winnetka’s and Northfield’s Alliance for Early Childhood -  “a community collaboration that promotes the healthy growth and development of children from birth to age eight by providing resources, programs, and support for the parents and professionals who teach and care for them.”

For years Pat wrote the organization’s monthly column “At Home with Books.” In the Fall, 2005 issue, her daughter Margaret Wroclawski Griffen shared with readers what her mother taught her about children’s books. 

Titled “Everything I Know About Children’s Books I Learned From My Mother,” this beautiful tribute keeps Pat’s Spirit alive.
The Margaret Wroclawski Memorial Collection now holds some 100 titles at the Winnetka/Northfield Public Library.

Like the books they hand their readers, booksellers change lives too.
Especially extraordinary ones, like my Pat Wroclawski.

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.

Don’t forget to celebrate our 4^th Blogiversary by entering our 4 x4 give-away!  You can win one of 4 $25 gift certificates to Anderson’s Bookshop!  All you need do is share the name of your favorite independent bookstore, and maybe even bookseller.
Click HERE for details.

What's YOUR fav Indie Bookstore? And Happy Poetry Friday!

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Howdy, Campers!

We're jumping up and down and popping balloons, celebrating our Fourth Blogiversary...and you're invited to join in the fun by entering to win one of four gift certificates to a fab independent bookstore.  Details?  Read all about it here!
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And it's Friday, so happy Poetry-Friday-in-the-midst-of-Poetry-Month! Thank you, Laura Purdie Salas, for hosting PF today!

And now...on with the show:

In keeping with our blogiversary celebration, we're talking about indie bookstores.  Here's my riff:

I was a long-time active member of the Southern California Children's Booksellers Association (SCCBA), a feisty organization of indies who generously shared knowledge on how to run a bookstore among themselves and with those thinking about starting a children's bookstore. These newbies could have seen as their competitors, but instead they were embraced as colleagues and became friends. 

SCCBA was a leader among children's independent bookseller associations and in 1984 SCCBA was the midwife in the birthing of the national organization, American Booksellers for Children (ABC) (which has since merged with the American Booksellers Association.)

SCCBA itself folded into the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association just a few years ago. All this merging was hard for many of us, and sad, so sad...but SCIBA has proven itself to be a lively, engaged and strong non-profit trade association.

So which are my fav indies?  Must I choose just one?  A longtime favorite, just up the freeway from me, is Children's Bookworld, founded in 1986 by Sharon Hearne, and still going strong.

I am still mourning Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore, which closed in 2008.

BUT there's great news: indies are making a comeback and I'm lucky to have not one but two fabulous indies just a few miles from my home, both opened within the last few years:

 The marvelous Mysterious Galaxy 

and the absolutely wonderful {pages}!

Here's my rough draft of a book poem in honor of indies today:

HOOKED ON A BOOK (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore By Benjamin Hale)

rough draft poem by April Halprin Wayland

I’m reading the autobiography
of a classically educated, erudite
chimpanzee.

I stay up too late reading it.
Rather than listen to NPR’s Morning Edition,
I prop the book against the fish bowl as I brush my teeth.

His story
sticks to the souls of my hiking shoes
as I clamber up a steep slope in Arizona.

While buying half a head of Napa cabbage at the farmers market,
I wonder what will happen to his owner, Lydia
and why he’s writing the book from a jail cell.

Through a dinner of grape tomatoes, Napa cabbage,
juicy chicken and roasted potatoes, baby turnips and carrots,
it haunts me

like cookie dough ice cream
haunts me
from the freezer.

poem © 2013 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Hats off to Indies that offer us so much! Please DO NOT wander around an indie and then go home to order online.  Here's why (under two minutes and worth watching...):

And remember to enter our indie bookstore gift certificate giveaway!

I'm trying to remember to put my name at the end of these posts...this is important because those who subscribe don't see the byline which automatically posts our names for us. So...

tah-tah from April Halprin Wayland!

4th Blogiversary Gift Card Giveaway--Celebrating Independent Booksellers!

Today, I'm thrilled to announce an extra-special giveaway in honor of our FOURTH BLOGIVERSARY. To show our appreciation to our blog readers AND to one of our favorite independent booksellers, we'll be giving away FOUR $25 gift certificates to Anderson's Bookshops! And, as a bonus, Anderson's is generously offering our winners a 20% discount, which will help defray the shipping costs if you're unable to redeem your gift certificate in person.

In case you're not familiar with this family-owned company, in 2010, Anderson's celebrated their 135th year in business, with six generations of the family now working in their stores. Among their many accolades, in 2011, Anderson's was named Publisher's Weekly Bookstore of the Year. Anderson's has a long history of supporting teachers by providing educator resources like mock Newbery contests, arranging author visits, and sponsoring special events such as their upcoming Teacher Open House, where educators can learn about the best new releases for classroom use. And educators always receive a 20% discount off the list price of books to be used in the classroom or library.

Anderson's also has a reputation for hosting wonderful (and numerous!) author signings, and for championing local authors. After many years of attending Anderson's marvelous author events, I was honored to have my first signing at the Naperville store when my novel, Rosa, Sola, came out. That day, the Anderson's staff made me feel like a real star! I couldn't help getting a little teary-eyed as I addressed the crowd of family, friends, and fellow writers, telling them what a thrill it was to have my signing in the bookstore that felt like my second home.

If you're ever in the Chicago area, I encourage you to visit one of Anderson's stores. But even if a physical trip isn't possible, you can visit them virtually via their website, where you can order print and ebooks online. As you'll see below, the winners of our giveaway will have the option of using their gift certificates that way.  

The TeachingAuthors are fans not only of Anderson's, but of independent bookstores everywhere. For the next few weeks, we'll be sharing stories of our appreciation for independent booksellers. Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised by the encouraging news the Salon article "Books Aren't Dead" had about both print books and independent bookstores: 

 ". . .  the Christian Science Monitor recently reported [you can read that article here], there are now many indications that a once-beleaguered portion of the bookselling landscape, independent bookstores, are enjoying a “quiet resurgence.” Sales are up this year; established stores, such as Brooklyn’s WORD, are doing well enough to expand and new stores are opening. Indies have been helped by the closure of the Borders chain and a campaign to remind their customers that if they want local bookstores to survive, they have to patronize them, even if that means paying a dollar or two more than they would on Amazon."

I confess, I'm one of those book buyers willing to pay "a dollar or two more" to support my local independent. I want to help ensure they'll still be around when I finally have another book signing. :-)

In addition to celebrating independent booksellers, we decided our blogiversary was a good time for a little spring cleaning here on the TeachingAuthors website. I've created two new pages, which you can find links to under our logo at the top of the page: Links and Writing Workouts. The Links page now contains all the links that used to be in the sidebar, grouped under the following headings:

• Websites of Note
• Children's/YA Lit Reading Lists
• Graduate Programs in Writing for Children and Young Adults
• General Children's/YA Lit Blogs
• Agent Blogs
• Author/Illustrator Blogs.

The Writing Workouts page explains the history and evolution of our Writing Workouts, and allows you to access all of them from one place. I've also shortened the names of our resources pages to simply "For Teachers," "For Young Writers," and "Visits." And I've updated our bios on the About Us page. I hope you'll take time to explore these revised pages and give us feedback on what you think of the changes.

You may also notice a new button in the sidebar labeled "Follow this blog with bloglovin'." I recently learned that Google will be retiring Google Reader on July 1, 2013, and I wanted to provide other options for those who currently read our posts via Reader. Bloglovin' allows you to easily import all the blogs you currently follow with Google Reader. I've also seen positive reviews of the RSS service Feedly (see, for example, this recommendation in Jane Friedman's newsletter, Electric Speed), so I've included a Feedly link in the sidebar, too. You can read a quick comparison of Bloglovin' vs. Feedly here.

If you don't already follow our blog, I'll hope you'll sign up to do so today via email, Bloglovin', Feedly, or one of the other options in our sidebar. (Hint--our blog subscribers automatically qualify for FOUR entries in our blogiversary giveaway. See below for details.)

Before I explain how to enter the giveaway, I want to share a poem the AMAZING April Halprin Wayland wrote in honor of our blogiversary, which actually falls on Monday, Earth Day.

            A Blooming Blogiversary

     Sheaves of paper, leaves of prose
     Typing wobbly rocky rows

     Planting tender inkling seeds
     Sowing words on glowing screens

     Underground the spark is struck
     Growing with some care and luck

     First a shoot, then a sprout
     Weeding all the adverbs out

     Seedlings reaching toward the sun
     Readers, writers we are one

     Blooming in the blogisphere
     Post by post, year by year
poem © 2013 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved
 

A special "thank you" to all the readers who have stuck with us here at TeachingAuthors "post by post, year by year."

Now, for our Blogiversary Giveaway details:

As I said at the beginning of this post, in honor of our Fourth Blogiversary, and to celebrate independent booksellers, we're giving away FOUR $25 gift certificates to Anderson's Bookshops!  
Note: if you're unable to redeem your prize in person at one of Anderson's stores, you will be able to do so online. AND, you'll receive a 20% discount on your purchase!

Please bear with us as we try something new for this giveaway--we're using Rafflecopter for the first time. If you've never entered a Rafflecopter giveaway, you may want to read their info on how to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway and/or the difference between signing in with Facebook vs. with an email address.

Once you've logged into Rafflecopter below (via either Facebook or an email address) you'll see that we've provided four different options for entering the giveaway--you can pick one or up to all four. The more options you choose, the greater your chances of winning. While we haven't made it a requirement, we hope that everyone will choose to subscribe to the TeachingAuthors blog.

If you're already a TeachingAuthors subscriber, you need only click on the first option and tell us how you follow our blog to receive FOUR entries in the giveaway.

As it says in the "Terms and Conditions," this giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. You must be 18 or older to enter. And please note: email addresses will only be used to contact winners. The giveaway will run from now through the end of Children's Book Week, on May 19. Winners will be notified May 20, 2013. 

I hope that covers everything. But if you have any questions about the giveaway, feel free to email us at teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com.

Good luck to everyone! And don't forget--it's Poetry Friday. When you're done entering our giveaway, check out the Poetry Friday round-up over at Live Your Poem. 

Happy writing!
Carmela


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