Talking Critter Books and Me

    Books where the main characters are animals are among my favorite.  Charlotte's Web is forever and always the one book I would take to a desert island.  I love the work of picture book authors Kevin Henkes, Carolyn Crimi and Lisa Wheeler, who often place their stories in the animal world.  (If there is a Hall of Fame for picture book authors, those three should definitely be included.)

     I love what I call "talking critter" books, in which the animals are anthropomorphic.  I just can't write them.

    To me, anthropomorphic books are a form of fantasy.  Animals don't talk or go to kindergarden or wear sneakers. Fantasy.  I don't write fantasy. I can't write fantasy.  My creative mind just doesn't work that way. My stories are mostly rooted in the real world of children. I'm a literal sort of person.

    I have published two "talking critter" books.
Surprise Soup was written about little boys. Something about that manuscript inspired the art department and the illustrator to make the little boys into little bears. Changing the species of the character made it a much funnier book...but I can't take any credit for writing an anthropomorphic book.  The illustrator did it for me. (Thank G. Brian Karas!)

     The other book, Camp K-9, was inspired by my dog, Nilla. She was a cocker-spitz mix, with floppy ears, a thick white coat, and a joyful personality.  In fact, Nilla was far more popular with the neighbors than the Downing family.  She was actually invited to parties that we weren't! Nilla was so human-like, it wasn't hard for me to imagine her as a teen-age girl.  My husband and I would invent adventures for her. Nilla as a Laker Girl.  Running up a phone bill.  Hanging out at the mall with her (also imaginary) BFF, Stacy.

     When we traveled, we boarded our "child" at a kennel called Camp K-9, which had a cute logo of a dog toting a sleeping bag and a tennis racquet. That got my imagination going.  What would dogs do at camp? I used my own experiences as a camper and a counselor to put together a day as a "doggy camper." I used a lot of dog puns and references to add humor.  The other "campers" were based on the dogs in my neighborhood.  That was pretty easy.

    After that, I had to find some tension, a problem, that my girl dog might experience with her bunkmates. That was the hard part. I fiddled and fiddled with the story for four or five years. Finally, after many many critiques by my friends and writing group, I felt Camp K-9 was as good as it was going to get. (Fortunately, my publisher liked it.)

     Will I write another "talking critter" book?  I don't know.  I had been inventing "Nilla adventures" in my head for ten years before I tried to write one down, and it was the most difficult thing I've ever written.  Cute one-liners and puns are one thing; shaping them into a coherent story, with a beginning, middle and end. Who knows?  Right now I am "inventing adventures" for my extremely ill-behaved cat, Rosie.  (She's giving me the evil eye right now.) Maybe...

     Don't forget to enter our latest book giveaway for Stephanie Lyons' new book, Dating Down.  The deadline is midnight, May 15 2015, so don't miss out.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

With a moo moo here and a moo moo there

     I might have mentioned this before, but in a former life, I was a drama major. Perhaps this is why I think of picture books as "performance pieces." After all, picture books are meant to be read aloud. Jill started off this topic with her discussion of rhythm and rhyming picture books. Jill is a far braver soul than I. I have published six picture books (with another on the way) and none of them rhyme. My brain doesn't work that way.

    This is not to say that my stories don't have rhythm. They do. Jill covered this pretty well in her last post so I won't belabor the point here. I'll just say that if you aren't sure if your story has that "swing," read it out loud.  Better still, have a non-judgemental friend read it to you. If you find yourself stumbling over your own words, or if your friend's voice hits a word that sounds like an out-of-tune piano key, go back to Jill's post. 

     So if I don't rhyme, how do I (hopefully) hold my listener's interest?

     Repetition, for one thing.  There's nothing like a little group participation, whether you are reading to one child or seventy. If you want a good example of that, check out my First Grade Stinks. The title is also the main character's catch phrase whenever she is frustrated by yet another unfamiliar aspect of a new grade and teacher.  After awhile, the listener will chime in as well. (Loudly.)

    I love to play around with words. I'm a big believer in alliteration. In Camp K-9, Roxie goes to camp with a Pooch Pouch and makes friends with Pearl the Pug. A word of caution. Be spare with the mirroring consonants. When my daughter was small, there was one particular picture book (no titles mentioned here) that her father and I tried to hide at storytime.  Why?  Seemingly every word in this book began with the letter "p." It was not a short book either.  Two pages into it and my husband and I were sputtering and stuttering like Porky and Petunia Pig. Sometimes, we got so flusterated that certain expletives (not written by the author) slipped into the narrative. Not good.  Not good at all.

     My favorite writing technique (in novels as well as picture books), is the use of sounds.  (There is a polysyllabic word for this that I can't spell, and I am using a computer that doesn't have autocorrect.)  The stories I remember from my own childhood were actually songs, like "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" and "The Wheels on the Bus."  When I began writing my own stories, without really thinking about it, a "moo moo" here and a "cluck cluck" there showed up on my pages. Sounds are fun to write, fun to read, and give the listener another opportunity to "read along." (The only one who doesn't enjoy my "sound technique" is the copy editor who sends me notes questioning the correct spelling of "va-va-varoom.")

    If you want to see me go crazy with the sound effects, check out Surprise Soup.  In fact, when I was writing it, I began by listing all the kitchen sounds I could thing of.  Here is a partial list: chippity-chop (a knife), ka-rickety-ritch (a manual can opener), splishety-sploosh, slippety-slop, shakety-shake (ingredients going into the soup pot.) Once I had a list of thirty-something sounds, the story wrote itself. 

    A successful picture book is one that a child wants to hear over and over (and that the reader can read over and over without wanting to rip out his/her hair.) I think playful language is the grace note that adds zip and zing to "Jill's swing," and a little fun for the adult reader as well.

   Don't forget that the deadline for our latest book giveaway Forget Me Not by Carolee Dean is this Thursday, Oct. 11.  Good luck!


Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

The 29 Minute Picture Book

     Remember when rock and roll songs had to be under three minutes to fit AM radio format? (when AM radio had actual music) I don't know why this was, but those 45's were all two minutes plus. I will wait while you look for your old Herman's Hermits collection. There was endless PR (mostly untrue) that such and such a song had been written in 15 minutes. My father, who is pretty open-minded about all kinds of music, said he doubted it took more than a half hour to write Meet the Beatles, the entire album.


     Some people have the same attitude toward picture books. (None of you, of course.) Not a week goes by when someone doesn't ask why I've written "only six "baby" books in ten years. (I also wrote two novels, but somehow people zero in on the picture books.)  I mean how long can it take to write 700 words or less? Or if you happen to be Maurice Sendak and wrote what is arguably the classic picture book, Where the Wild things Are in 160--something words.

    It takes me three to four times longer to write a picture book than one of my novels. Why? For one thing, I never ever intended to become a picture book writer. I was very comfortable in my 45,000 word count zone.  I was intimidated by people who could craft these little jewels of less than a thousand words (This was years ago when a picture book could be a thousand words.)

My first picture book, My Best Friend, sold in 2000, was 990 words. Today, adults often tell me they like the book "but it's so long."  Less is more...a lot less. Editors lust after the 600 words and under book. The best I've been able to do is 690 (Camp K-9, May 2011, Peachtree.) I'm still trying for that magic 600.

 Each word has to carry its own weight. The words have to be lively but easy to read aloud. My husband still turns purple at the memory of one of my daughter's favorite books in which nearly every word began with the letter "p." One page, and he was sputtering like Porky Pig.

If all this weren't enough, you need actions that the illustrator can draw. "To be" "think" and "felt" are not words illustrators (or editors) want to see in a picture book.

     I have talked about novels simmering on the back burner of my brain for a year or two before I begin to write. By then, I know my characters, and the story arc.  Not so the picture book. They are on super slow simmer. I'm amazed they don't scorch, simmering so long.

     My Best Friend was a miracle. I wrote it in two hours. Two furious hours, because someone had been mean to my four-year-old and I wrote it to make her feel better. I failed; she didn't feel one bit better that I had given her real life problem a fictional happy ending. However, the nice people at Viking appreciated it and bought it. I have never again written a picture book in less than three years (which only goes to show what can happen when someone picks on your kid, and you are M-A-D!)

    Here's what usually happens. I get an idea. I write a first draft and put it away for a couple of months.
I take it out again, and discover that not only is the first draft way too long, the story is lame.
Write another draft. another couple of months. Another draft.  Around year two, I start sending the book around, even though I know it's not  quite right, but hey, maybe the editor won't notice. They notice, but they don't tell you how to fix it. Then I put the story back in the file, because you don't want to use up all your available editors.   Unless an editor says these words "This is almost right. Please revise and resubmit," do not revise and resubmit.  Being rejected by a publisher is a bridge burnt, And there are few enough publishers who will even read un-agented writers, like  me. But that's another blog.

At this point I used to pester my picture book writing friends for their input. I have since learned to ask for their critiques before I start wasting postage and editors' patience. At this point big things start changing. Like the entire concept. I can write and write and still not know what the story is about. For instance, Surprise Soup started off as a story of two brothers, stuck in the house on a rainy day, so their father teaches them to make an old family recipe,  And it was 300 words too long. When the book finally came out (seven years after I got the original idea), the only thing that remained from the original story was the word "soup." Even my human characters had morphed into bears (the wise idea of my illustrator G. Brian Karas) Not to give away the whole story (and lose a possible book sale!) what really changed was the focus....from bored boys making soup to family dynamics. And 300 words less.

At this moment, I have at least five picture books (plus my current novel) running on little gerbil wheels in the back of my head.  They have gone through all of the above agony, so it is time (when I find the time) to do what finally got Surprise Soup off the launch pad.

Writer's Workout

 1. See if you can sum up your story in one sentence of seven words or less. Not the plot, the theme.

If you can't do that, you're not "almost" there yet. Give it another couple of months.

2.  Sometimes you can ignore step one. All I knew about Surprise Soup was that I had two brothers arguing over soup-making. This is kind of ironic since my idea of soupmaking involves a can opener and a microwave. Soooo....

3. I made lists (I may have mentioned this in another post) of sounds you might hear. I didn't limit myself to actual words like rattle or clatter or clink. I made up words. I love making up words (although sometimes my copyeditors don't. Yes, I know it's not a real word. I made it up!) The list looked something like this--splooshety-sploosh, slippity-slop, plippity-plop, woosh, swoosh, whirrdiddy. Allowing myself to get silly with sound words encouraged me into the next part; sibling bickering.

4. Some of you could probably write volumes of taunts and name calling and the accompanying body movements. I am an only child who has an only child. However I grew up in a neighborhood with huge families, who could stage some colorful throwdowns. I remembered what they said, plus some choice pieces of snittering (I know it's not a word, but it's what you do when your entire fight takes place in whiney or all-knowing voices.) That list really doesn't need to be repeated although I can't resist saying

"you doodoo head...in  French accent" was on that list (but not the book)

5. One of my current lists (for a story I've been fiddling with for four years) looks like this; sand-itch, spliddle, spladdle, whooshswish, flippity-flap-flap,drippity-drip, bingety-bang, sproing, tickety-tackety.  Just writing this down makes my original concept do a 180.

6. Stay with tis list making for part of your writing time for a week (I do not spend four hours a day just making lists)  You may have an a-ha moment. You may finish that sucker up in 24 hours. Most likely, it will get you some new directions which....you know what I'm going to say...you should put it back in the file for a couple of months. By then, I'll bet you will not only know what your story is about, but that you can finish it as well.

Have  a happy writing week...and work in a few lists.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Writing Is Like a Box of Chocolates

       My favorite book is Charlotte's Web.  I loved it as a third grader, and I love it today. I cannot think of another book that makes laugh, cry and think . . .  sometimes in one paragraph.   Any book that can do all that for me, over a period of . . . well, a lot of years . . . is my definition of a masterpiece.
       E.B. White's seamless writing is a delight to read . . . and hard to pull apart for examination.  One thing that struck me as a child, was his use of lists as description.  He does it in several places, particularly in describing the contents of Wilbur's slops.  My favorite "list"is this one, after Charlotte's first web message.

           The Zukerman's driveway was full of  cars and trucks from morning till night--Fords and Chevvies and Buick roadmasters and GMC pickups and Plymouths and Studebakers and Packards and DeSotos with gyromatic transmissions and Oldsmobiles with rocket engines and Jeep station wagons and Pontiacs. ---pg. 83-84.

      White could have ended the sentence at the word "night", and still had a perfectly serviceable sentence. But, no, he wanted to show the reader how many different kinds of people, through their various vehicles, came to see the wonder of the web.
      I am sure E.B. White never gave a thought as to whether he was writing a "timeless" story to be read sixty years later in a world without Studebakers, Packards and DeSotos. Even reading it for the first time in the early 1960's. those cars were as dead as the dodo for me. That small detail never bothered me. What struck me was White specificity in using those brand names.  Without knowing what it was called, I was introduced to the concept of specific writing.          
       While revising, I spend hours and hours picking over my word selection. Rather like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, ("you never know what you'll get") I never know how a specific noun, verb, adjective and occasionally, an adverb is going to feel in a sentence. I insert the word, and read the sentence out loud.  Often, a word that sounded just fine in my head, tastes like a lemon cream center when spoken.
         I hate lemon cream chocolates.
         Unlike, Forrest, who was perfectly content to let life surprise him, I punch holes in my words, looking for the one with the maple fudge center.
         I love maple fudge chocolates.
         The perfect word, that specific detail, will melt slowly and sweetly on my tongue, like my favorite candy. Looking for that one word--the one that can describe that moment, that emotion, that person--is the reason I write so slowly. I can select, "chew" and reject words for hours on end. As Mark Twain said "The difference between the right words and the wrong word, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
        When I have bitten into my nineteenth lemon cream, sometimes I use the listing method, writing down all the possibilities I can think of. Sometimes, I end up using the entire list, as White did.  More often, listing frees my mind to produce that one word.  For instance, in my picture book, Surprise Soup, I stalled out in the scene in which Kevie actually makes soup. I don't cook. Period. I couldn't list cooking techniques or tools. I could, however, list the sounds of cooking, since that is as close as I get to a kitchen.  Listing sounds -- splishety splash, chippety chop, scrubbety scrub-- got me back on track.
        In writing, finding that maple fudge chocolate is everything.

Writing Workout

       In her book Paper Lightning, Darcy Pattison uses the phrase "billions-and-billons to one-and-only-one" to explain specific writing to students. For example, "I caught a fish" is a dull sentence because there are billions-and-billions of fish. Pick a specific fish, maybe sharks. Still, there are lots and lots of species of shark (360, to be specific!). OK, how about a bull shark?  Having narrowed it down to a specific kind of shark, what is different about this particular shark? Maybe he had an evil look in his eye.So our new sentence would be "I caught a bull shark with an evil look in his eye."
      To get to that specificity, you can do a "list drill". Pick non-specific nouns that are common to your student's writing such as bike, dance, video game. Pick one, and give the students one minute to quickly write down all the possible specific types of bikes, dances or video games. (I always tell my students not to "think too hard....just write!") After each one minute drill, I encourage (never demand) that students share their descriptors. This can be done with nouns, verbs and adjectives (adverbs are a whole other topic!).  This trains the student to quickly think of alternatives in the revision process.

P.S. I apologize for the lateness of this post---today is the first day of school here in Atlanta. Utter mayhem!

---posted by Mary Ann Rodman
 

Food and Fiction

      I hate to cook. Period. I have mageirocophobia,the cook's equivalent of stage fright. Just knowing that someone else is going to consume and judge what I am cooking turns me into a quivering pile of Knox gelatin. Then why do I own shelf after shelf of cookbooks?
    To me, cookbooks are literature. My favorites are the organizational fundraisers, each contributor adding a little history. ("My mama always made this milk punch for Christmas brunch" or "Uncle George used to stir up this stew on hunting trips.") Family tales aside, each recipe really is a potential story.  The ingredients form a cast of characters waiting for the right circumstances...a specific way of combining, a certain degree of heat...to become something delicious and memorable. Thank goodness my husband does cook.
     For someone who doesn't cook, food and recipes are an integral part of most of my books.  I have my mother to thank.
     I fear cooking. Mom hated it. I remember finishing lunch at the kitchen table, while Mom went into meltdown mode over supper, five hours away.  With her head inside the ice-encrusted maw of our non-self-defrosting refrigerator freezer,  Mom shuffled through frozen bricks of meat and vegetables, muttering "What can I make for supper?" Finally, she would extract a couple of frost-covered, foil-wrapped bricks and with an exhausted sigh, toss them on the countertop to defrost. Mom had sentenced herself to making yet another meal.
    Eventually I learned the source of Mom's distaste. During the Depression, my mother's mother (known as Maga to her grandchildren) ran a boarding house as a way of keeping food on the table for her family of eight.  (If this sounds like a certain fictional character from the American Girl series...well, sorry. It's the truth!) My teen-aged mom served as Maga's sou chef, in cooking vast quantities of food, not only for her own family, but for a dozen or so boarders. That meant a hot breakfast, a hot supper, and a packed lunch for everybody. No wonder Mom hated cooking.
    This also explained why all of Mom's recipes read"Yield 24".
    "Frances, are you cooking for the Fifth Army?" Dad would ask, peering into an enormous vat or skillet or roaster pan. "You can reduce the recipes."
     "Too much trouble," Mom would shrug.
     I understood.  Cooking was bad enough without adding a math exercise to the mix. Even though Mom was only cooking for three people, the food didn't go to waste. If we had hash on Monday (a good meat-stretching Depression era meal), we also had it Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. When I moved out on my own, Mom didn't offer me a file of heirloom recipes, and I didn't ask. I never wanted to eat Fried Salmon Patties or Scrapple again.

     In fact, I didn't even think of those old boarding house recipes until I was writing Jimmy's Stars. It suddenly dawned on my that Maga was running a boarding house through the World War II rationing. Sure, her boarders ration stamps helped out, but sometimes it didn't matter if you had the money and the stamps. The food just wasn't available.   It was being sent to "the fighting boys overseas."
     Aha!  This explained Maga's "meat" loaf where the main ingredient was a soy "meat extender." And Wacky Cake, made without eggs, flour of sugar.  Even my all-least-favorite-dish-ever, stewed tomatoes.
     I dug deeper into a world where sugar, butter and meat were scarce. Recipes emphasized "natural sweeteners" (like prune juice), "sweetbreads" (which are neither sweet nor bread) and "the lesser organ meats." I wondered what the average American kid thought of finding a "tongue" sandwich in his lunchbag.  I decided that in matters of school lunches, the kids' tastes haven't changed that much over time. The difference would come in that the kid of 1943 had come to realize that patriotism and sacrifice took precedence over personal preference.
    Food became integral to Jimmy's Stars because finding and preparing food was such a large part of WWII homefront life. "Use it up, wear it out or make do" inspired "Rookie Cookies" (butterless, rock-like lumps that could withstand the trip from homefront to battlefront) and "Tomato Aspic."  I had so much fun researching additional recipes, never thinking that bloggers and teachers would ask for them, and actually make them! Check out the results at Mawbooks.

     My latest picture book, Surprise Soup, came from my husband and I swapping childhood food memories, both involving our fathers. Considered too young to "sit still" in church, Craig and his father stayed home Sunday mornings, making pancakes for the return of the rest of the family.
    My dad was (and still is!) an excellent chef. He pitched in with mealmaking when he could, but as an FBI agent, he didn't have a lot of time to indulge his inner Emeril.
My favorite memories are of weekends when we would make Dad's vegetable beef soup, a process that could consume an entire Saturday.
    I sliced and diced these two memories, chopped them together, added and subtracted ingredients and fiddled with the heat. After several years of simmering on the back burner of my mind...voila! Surprise Soup!
    True, I can't really make soup or aspic or even the allegedly goof-proof Wacky Cake without scorching or botching something. But in my mental kitchen, there is always a pot of soup bubbling on the stove, a batch of cookies in the oven, and a loaf of home-made bread, rising under a clean dish towel. And sometimes, when I am lucky, my husband who is a good cook, brings my food fantasies to fruition.

Writing Workout


   Try this with your young writers.
   Write down your favorite food, whatever it might be.
    Now describe this food, without telling how it looks.
   Here are some questions to consider:  How does it taste?
Is it sweet, salty, sour, a combination? Can you taste individual ingredients?
How does it feel in your mouth? Crisp, crunchy, smooth, slippery, hot, cold?
    What does it smell like? Does one ingredient dominate the aroma?
    Do you have any specific memories of this food? Where did you eat it first? Does it remind you of any place or time or person?
  
    The last time I used this exercise, my entire group of middle schoolers, except one, all described the same dish...macaroni and cheese! Yet, no two descriptions were alike, because everyone had their own personal vision....from mac-in-a-box to Grandma's-from-scratch!

Reading Recommendations


    Usually I don't recommend books per se. I just tell you what I am reading. But what I am reading now fits in so well with our current topic, I just had to tell you a little about it. It is The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal by Mark Kurlansky. The WPA Writer's Project was compiling an encyclopedia of American food when World War II essentially ended the work. Kurlansky has compiled some of the never-published essays into this fascinating book. Some of the contributors' names are familiar...Zora Neale Hurston, Nelson Algren, Eudora Welty...and some are not. All transport us back to a time when local food meant just that. Happy reading and Bon Appetit!

Mary Ann