Ice Dogs ARC Winner

Christina Farley is the lucky winner of an ICE DOGS ARC by Terry Lynn Johnson. Congrats Christina. And, thanks to all who participated.

The 90-Second Newbery

Hey parents, teachers, librarians, and actual middle grade aged readers of this blog (a.k.a kids)--have I got a great project for you!

Ever heard of the Newbery award? I thought so. It's when everybody interested in books for kids blows horns, bangs drums, and jumps on the bed to show their love for the very best kids' books of the year. This year the great big winner was THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, which is gorilly great!

2013 Newbery Award winner, The One and Only Ivan

Well, once the winners and the honor books are announced, there's something sweet and special and awesomely creative you can do. Grab your friends and a video camera and condense your all-time favorite Newbery book (winner or honor) into ninety seconds. Sound like a challenge? You betcha.

Now, I wish I'd been the originator of this great idea, but I wasn't. That honor goes to the zany James Kennedy, the author of THE ORDER OF ODD-FISH, which Cory Doctorow has called "an extraordinary and delightfully weird romp that’s one part China Mieville, one part Lemony Snicket, with trace amounts of Madeline L’Engle and Roald Dahl." (Since pretty much all of those mentioned are my favorite authors, it goes without saying that I am currently speeding my way to Powell's bookstore to snap up a copy.)

But I digress. Here are the rules for the 90-second Newbery, from the pen of Mr. Kennedy himself.

1. Your video should be 90 seconds or less. (Okay, okay: if it’s two minutes long but absolute genius, we’ll bend the rules for you. But let’s try to keep them short.)

2. Your video has to be about a Newbery award-winning (or Newbery honor-winning) book. Here’s a list of all the winners.

3. Just to be clear: we’re not looking for book trailers. We’re looking for full-on dramatizations, with mostly child actors, that manage to tell the entire story of a book in an ridiculously short amount of time.

4. Upload your videos to YouTube or Vimeo or whatever and send me the link at kennedyjames [at] gmail [dot] com. Make the subject line be “90 SECOND NEWBERY” and please tell me your name, age, where you’re from, and whatever other comments you’d like to include, including whether you’d like me to link to your personal site. You can give an alias if you want; I understand privacy concerns.

5. Sending the link to me grants me (James Kennedy) the right to post it on my blog and to other websites where I sometimes post content (like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and to share at public readings, school visits—and hopefully the “90-Second Newbery” Film Festival screenings!

6. The deadline for the second annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is December 10, 2013 

The winners are shown in Chicago, New York, Portland and Tacoma. The Portland showing is on Sunday February 24th, 2013. If you want to meet me, I'll be there, as my son and his friends entered the festival with their version of THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER, which you can view on my Middle Grade Mafioso blog if you're curious and have time on your hands.

And here's a guide on how to plan and film your entry: 

Curriculum for Creating a 90-Second 

Newbery Film.

I'll leave you with one of the videos featured on James Kennedy's blog, the Aurora Public Library Eola Road Branch, entry for 90 Second Newbery film festival. A silent film adaptation of Crispin: Cross of Lead by Avi.

Ice Dogs ARC Giveaway

I feel really fortunate to be able to show off the cover of Ice Dogs, a gripping character driven middle grade adventure/survival story. And, to top it off, I'm giving away an arc of this page-turner!!

I think this cover does a great job of capturing the mystique and allure of travelling though the backcountry in Alaska, which is where the story is set.

A little cover copy: 

Victoria Secord, a fourteen-year-old Alaskan dogsled racer, loses her way on a routine outing with her dogs. With food gone and temperatures dropping, her survival and that of her dogs and the mysterious boy she meets in the woods is entirely up to her.

The author, Terry Lynn Johnson is a musher herself and her crackling writing puts readers at the reins as Victoria and Chris experience setbacks, mistakes, and small triumphs in their wilderness adventure.

Although I've never met Terry in person, we've been trading manuscripts for a few years and man, this one rocks!!! It's due out in November from Houghton Mifflin.

Terry with a couple of her dogs.

For the ARC contest, leave a comment, and an email contact in it, anytime before midnight Saturday February 16th. One winner will be chosen at random. Good luck!!!

And, if you want one more chance to receive an ARC you can try your luck here.

Thanks for stopping by!!

The 1st Draft Of Your 1st Novel

As you embark on the first draft of your novel, please watch out for that hole up ahead, the deep dark hole many aspiring authors have fallen into.  Go ahead.  Peer over the edge.  Do you see them all down there, piled on top of each other in the dark? 

Sadly enough, many writers plunge into this abyss before ever completing a single chapter.  The hole is called ‘PLACING TOO MUCH PRESSURE ON YOURSELF’.  Pressure, pressure.  What if my novel isn’t good enough?  What if my main character is boring?  What if the plot meanders?  What if I can’t find a plot?  What if my husband hates my writing?  What if I spend all that time working on it and it never gets published? 

These questions are the instruments of paralysis. 

When you begin a first draft, it is imperative that you place no pressure on yourself.  Lofty expectations do not belong here, not at this stage in the process.  All you should be concerned about with a first draft is getting black on white, ink on paper.  When you lower your expectations and reduce the pressure, you will soon realize what a beautiful place the world is, and how fun it is to write, how intoxicating it is to play with language.  Freed from all those ridiculous gnawing fears, you will be more open to discovery, which is the true blessing of a first draft.  Maybe your main character should be a woman, not a man.  Maybe your book should take place in Canada, not Argentina.  These are the discoveries, the golden doors that can only be opened by an imagination unencumbered by lofty expectations.

Writing Exercise

Set aside a two week period during which you will not judge your writing whatsoever.  Not one bit.  Not one line of writing gets evaluated.  All you’re concerned about is getting black on white, ink on paper.  Let it rip.  Let it gush out of you.  Write a billion words in fourteen days.  If you find that it’s hard not to judge, then imagine that there’s a portal in your kitchen, in between the microwave and the toaster oven.  When you step through it, you enter a parallel universe where judging of any kind is against the law.  Give this world a name.  Your imaginary passport allows you to stay there for two weeks.  You will find it to be one of the loveliest and most productive places you’ve ever been!

Middle Grade First Lines

This image doesn't necessarily have that much to do with Middle Grade First Lines (it's a photo of a letter Gandhi wrote), but with so many copyright concerns with web images of late, it seems best to use only images that are in the public domain.

Anyway, today I want to share some first lines. As writers, first lines are something I think we all think about a lot. We certainly have to write them (at least one for each book). And whether they come easily to you, or whether you rewrite them hundreds of times, it can be interesting to think what they mean to readers, and whether they have more or less impact than we expect.

So, I went and grabbed 5 Middle Grade novels from my daughter's room. I read plenty of Middle Grade myself, of course, but she has a much nicer bookshelf than I do, so we keep them in there. At any rate, without further ado, I will share the opening lines from these five mystery books, and say a few things about each one:

• A mango, thought Peter. The perfect weapon.

Okay, okay. Yes, this is technically two sentences, but I would argue that they are so inextricably linked, they ought to be separated by a semi-colon, not a period. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is: isn't this a great line? It give us character, voice, humor, setting, and a taste of conflict, all in six brief but luscious words. Well done, author, well done.

• Goldie Roth hated the punishment chains.

Maybe I should have done opening paragraphs? Just kidding. Obviously this one line doesn't give us as much as the last pair of sentences, but it still ain't half bad. We've got the feeling of something sinister here, and we can at least infer a bit about setting - a school perhaps, or an orphanage? The key with this one, I think, is specificity. There are all kind of chains, after all, but punishment chains sound like a very specific type of chain, if you ask me.

• Eva Nine was dying.

I'm not sure how much I like this one. It's succinct, sure, and it's rather shocking, too, but it doesn't feel earned, you know what I mean? It's all a matter of taste, of course, and I actually do happen to love this book and this author, but as first lines go, I guess I'm partial to lines that ground me in a scene, and clue me into multiple story aspects at once.

• It all started with Aldwyn's whiskers beginning to tingle--the way they always did when he got hungry.

I'll admit, I'm somewhat partial to the old em-dash, and I love it in creative writing. I'm not sure it's used to full effect here, but it doesn't hurt, either. This opening line is all about character, and it pulls it off pretty well. Animal characters always have a little easier time with characterization, I think, because as readers we all already have some assumptions about certain types of animals.

• Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

I suppose this one is probably pretty famous by now. I still haven't read this book, but my kids both love it. Anyway, this isn't the strongest of these five openings, but it isn't bad either. Half-blood is obviously an interesting detail, even if we don't know what it means at first, and in the long run it's probably the most important part of this sentence, but I would argue it's the "look," that really makes this opening line work, for me. It's the touch of irreverence to the voice of this narrator that would make me read on, but then maybe I just like angry kids.

Well that's it. What do you all think? Do you recognize any of these books (don't give it away if you do)? Which of these opening lines is your favorite?