My Favorite Children’s Books of 2017: Rx for Courage!

          1.n. quality of being brave: the ability to face danger, 
                  difficulty, uncertainty or pain without being
                  overcome by fear or being deflected.

Children’s books do Important Work. They help readers make sense of their world.
These past 338 days, though?  They’ve been working overtime.
L. Frank Baum’s Cowardly Lion is not alone.
The Good News is:  children’s books are gloriously succeeding.

My four favorite children’s books of 2017 are proof.  Each en-couraged me – both as a reader and a writer - to not only take heart, which is the root of the word “encourage,” but to bounce back and keep on keepin’ on so I could tell my stories and help others do the same.

Caldecott medalist Dan Santat’s picture book AFTER THE FALL
(Roaring Brook Press) should be required reading for every human being, no matter his or her age.  We all need to know how Humpty Dumpty (who was “sort of famous” for falling) got back up again, and even better, reached new heights.
As important, Dan Santat’s interview on ALL THE WONDERS should be required listening for storytellers. I laud his honesty in sharing this picture book’s personal inspiration – i.e. his story and his wife’s as well.  It reaffirmed Marian Dane Bauer’s advice that we need to put – our – story into the story we’re telling if our story is to resound in our readers’ hearts.

Erin Entrada Kelly’s middle grade novel HELLO, UNIVERSE (Greenwillow/HarperCollins) gifted me with 4 unforgettable “misfits” – Virgil Salinas, Valencia Somerset and Kaori Tanaka + the bully Chet Bullens – who found each other and themselves.  Each showed me the need to be open to the world’s surprises and thus say “hello” when we want to say “good riddance.”
Click here to see how a fan of this book was prompted to create the hashtag #you will be found.
I’ve been a fan of this author and her beautifully-crafted stories since reading  BLACKBIRD FLY and THE LAND OF FORGOTTEN GIRLS.
The structure of her latest novel was downright bold and had me revisiting storytelling rules: 4 intertwining viewpoints, 3 told in third person, 1 in first person.  Who says we can’t go forth and break rules to tell a good story well?

Hurrah for Tony Abbott for bravely bringing to middle grade literature the
unfortunate but true reality of child sexual abuse in the quietly powerful, beautifully-written friendship story THE SUMMER OF OWEN TODD (Farrar Straus and Giroux).  If 11-year-old Owen reveals what his best friend Sean secretly tells him, he’ll surely lose Sean's friendship. But if he doesn’t, something worse will happen to his friend.
Click here to read Abbott’s Nerdy Book Club post on why he wrote this important book.
His Author’s Note also shares how once he’d heard the true facts of this story, he couldn’t let it be. The story had to be told.  Abbott references the resources of RAINN – Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network – with its phone number, (800) 656-HOPE.

Prinz medalist John Green’s TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN (Dutton) is
certain to save lives, too – first by telling the story of 16-year-old Aza who’s trying non-stop to be what family and friends and she want, while struggling with the non-stop spiraling thoughts caused by her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Green does a masterful job of allowing the reader to live inside Aza, to know her pain, to know her heart.
Green is also certain to save lives by sharing his own OCD story while promoting the book.
Click here to listen to him talk about what OCD means to him.
Click here to read his brutally-honest interview with the New York Times.

I sincerely thank the authors of the above four titles – Dan Santat, Erin Entrada Kelly, Tony Abbott and John Green.  Their characters’ brave hearts and their heartful story-telling have given me the courage to keep keepin’ on.
May they do the same for all of our TeachingAuthors readers!

Onward – bravely - in the coming New Year!

Esther Hershenhorn

You Are Not Alone

Photo by Visual Hunt

Mary Ann’s heartfelt journey about rekindling the flame:  “I’ve written my whole life. That’s a long, long time…to stay in love with a career that often doesn’t love you back.”

JoAnn talked about carrying on anyway, and about the power of letting go of the clutter in our lives. 

Carmela offers insights into improving your writing, about the evils of perfectionism, and how perfection murders the joy of writing. 

Carla offers tips to start – or restart – your writing career by highlighting a few things she wishes she had known when she started.

A writer’s life is an oxymoron. 

We need to live a solitary existence. Most of us are introverts. We live inside our heads, giving birth to fictional beings and struggling to give them meaning. We deconstruct an experience to its heartbreaking core. To do so, we send our characters into battle, into outer space, move them forward and backward in time. We kill off their favorite pet, or their best friends, and sometimes their mothers. Even as they cry, we cry.

It’s hard work, and it’s exhausting.

But even as we exist in a self-imposed solitary confinement, we also have to run a business. We have to leave our cabin in the woods and venture into the real world of flesh and bone. This means, we have to navigate a life external to our comfort zone and the writing process but one that is not separate. We have to persuade editors and agents that our characters matter. We have to toot our horns. We have to explain why and how our work matters in the broader world of literacy even as we address why and how it fits into the corporate business plan. We have to navigate techno-babble, like tweeting and snapchatting and instagramming, and become proficient in cross-platforming. We have to earn money to live, often finding second and third jobs to make sure our bills are paid. We have to buy health insurance and pay our taxes.

We have to deal with rejection, again and again and again. We're told it’s not personal, but it certainly feels personal. Friends offer empathy, asking when are we going to write real books, like those for adults. Then these killjoys offer that they plan to write a children's book, once they retire from their real jobs, because there just aren't any good books out there.How hard can it be, they say most affectionately.

Is it a wonder, then, that sometimes we just can’t go on. We’ve had enough. We can’t say another word, or write another chapter.

Our wells and wills of inspiration dry up, and our joy ebbs.

Christopher Vogler once suggested (A Writer’s Journey) that a writer’s journey is like a hero’s journey. The self-doubts and perfection-seeking, the writer’s block and procrastination are the shadows of our inner darkside. They are the annoying voices in our head confirming every  self-doubt we assume about ourselves. They threaten to destroy the process, and often succeed.  Bad reviews, computer break-downs, never-ending revisions, deadlines and all the other life’s demands become the ordeals we have to overcome. Editors and publishers and marketing directors stand at the threshold, shouting in a booming Gandolf baritone, “You shall not pass!”

Take heart. You got this.

It takes courage to write. And you have it inside you to fight this fight, as James Bell once said. (The Art of War for Writers).

Sentence by sentence. Day by day. Chapter by chapter. Week by week.

One step at a time. One scene at a time. You write, then you think about what to write, then you write some more.

Until it’s done.

You are the hero of this story. So be the hero.

And just remember, you are not alone.

Bobbi Miller


And, don’t forget to enter to win a copy of Cheryl Klein’s THE MAGIC WORDS (W.W. Norton). The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only and ends September 26.

There are three ways you can enter. Visit Esther’s review of THE MAGIC WORDS here to enter the giveaway!