Do You Like My Hat? No.

I forgot what it was like to read to little kids. And then I visited my brother and his family for a few days (See my post “Tips for Surviving the Snow Apocalypse” for other highlights of that fun trip). The first morning when we woke in a cold, powerless house, I heard my two-year-old nephew crying, and feeling virtuous and a little nostalgic about the time flying and the fact that my own once two-year-old was now eighteen and on a college overnight visit, I told my sister-in-law I’d get up and take care of him. After changing his diaper (another skill that immediately came back to me), little nephew and I snuggled up under the blankets of his sister’s bed with a book, Go Dog Go, the classic by P.D.Eastman.

I read it to my nephew fifteen times and probably would’ve read it again except by then everyone was up and my sister-in-law and I were on our mission to find coffee.

It was amazing to me how quickly I remembered that book. And when I say remembered, I mean that I can probably recite it to you now. It was my son’s favorite book too. My husband and I read it to him so many times that eventually we HID the book after my husband said he would lose his mind if he had to look at it again. I’m not sure exactly why it’s such an attractive book to two-year-old boys. Well, maybe I do know. It has dogs. Lots of them. And it has cars. And it has dogs riding in cars. It also has a cool tree with a secret dog party going on up in the branches. That’s a page you and your two-year-old can study for a long time. By which I mean about a minute.

Still don’t remember the book? Let me give you a few highlights:

1. The first memorable line: “Big dog. Little dog.”
2. The clever use of prepositional phrases: “One little dog going IN. Three big dogs going OUT.”
3. And colors: “A red dog on a blue tree. A blue dog on a red tree.”
4. The drama of the potential car accident where a line of cars is about to run over a clueless bird crossing a busy intersection: “Stop dogs. The light is red now. Stop!”

And of course, the recurring subplot of the budding romance between two dogs and the female dog’s persistent attempts to attract the male dog through her increasingly absurd hat choices. The first time we meet this adorable poodle she is wearing an ordinary hat. “Do you like my hat?” she asks, and the male dog says simply, “I do not like it.” Every few pages we see the couple again, the hats growing more and more ridiculous.

My little nephew LOVED these hat interludes, and we quickly developed our own dialogue.

ME: (pointing at weirdo hat) Do you like my hat?

LN: (shouting with glee) NO!

The two of us also shared a hearty laugh every time we came to the page where a miserable dog swelters on top of a house while the big yellow sun beats down on him. Meanwhile there’s a cool-looking dog sipping lemonade under the house. My nephew and I both agreed that, given our freezing cold lack of electricity situation, we would much rather be the dog sweating on the roof.

Not to go off on a whole books vs electronic media tangent, and maybe I’m like one of those troglodyte people at the turn of the century who insisted that horse and buggy transportation would never go out of style, but I just can’t imagine a world where we snuggle under the covers with our kindles. Books are so tactile. And durable. They can get drooled on. And chewed. They even have a recognizable odor. That Go Dog Go book actually smelled like my son’s copy. And the page at the end displaying the dog party was worn and wrinkled just like my son’s was. (You’ll be relieved to know that my husband’s and my moratorium on The Book did not last long. We gave it back to our son a day or two later and only half-reluctantly returned to the familiar saga of the dogs and their cars. And their hats.)

In case you're worried about it, in the end it all works out for our dog couple. The female dog wears a hat so idiotic, complete with flowerpots and spiders hanging off it, and the male dog shocks everyone by saying that he does, in fact, like that hat. Then they drive off together in his car.

My nephew still stuck with his line, "No." Then we turned back to the beginning and started the book again. Because that's what you do with two-year-olds.

Team Trixie

Long before there was Team Edward vs. Team Jacob there was Nancy Drew vs. Trixie Belden

Okay, I totally just made that up. That competition existed only in my mind. When I was growing up every girl I knew (who read) liked Nancy Drew, while I was firmly (alone) in the Trixie Belden camp. Trixie Belden, for those sadly out of the loop, was a mystery series published from the 1940’s into the 1970’s, when I discovered them.

Sure, I tried reading a couple of ND’s but she was too old, too perfect, too….boring. And I didn’t like her boyfriend Ned who reminded me of a Ken doll. Only more bland. And what was with her girl friends, Bess and George?

Trixie, on the other hand, was real. She was thirteen and outspoken and sarcastic. She struggled in Math and whined about chores. She didn’t like her looks, always complaining about her “unruly curls,” and enviously eying her best friend Honey’s shiny, sleek hair. She also sometimes salivated over Honey’s super wealthy lifestyle in the gorgeous mansion up on the hill. But she was smart enough to realize that Honey didn’t have it all, especially the stuff that counted, like cool older brothers and understanding, involved parents.

Yeah, it might be nice to own horses and have servants (sigh) but living on a farm wasn’t that bad. Even if you did have to dust the house and weed the garden and babysit for a bratty little brother.

Trixie Belden was a girl “sleuth” (does anyone actually use that word anymore?) who solved what my childhood self thought were complicated, thrilling mysteries. But what I really liked about the books was the world Trixie lived in. Late at night, curled under my covers, cursed with insomnia and anxiety, I’d open one of those books and disappear. There was loving Mom in the kitchen perpetually canning tomatoes (Trixie called her “Moms." I don’t know why.) And Dad coming home from his job at the bank and stretching out in the living room to read the paper (this was truly the Leave it to Beaver era, I guess, before Mad Men came along and showed us the dark underbelly of three-martini lunches and apartments for mistresses in the city).

I so much wanted Trixie’s friends. Two older brothers who teased her but would always defend her; loyal Honey; ditzy but sweet Di, and most important: Jim, the red-haired, “husky” orphan that Trixie saved in Book One.

Now that I think about it, Jim is probably the model for ideal manhood in my mind. Smart and resourceful and ambitious (he vowed to one day open a camp for underprivileged boys like him). Also strong and handsome and proud (too proud to ever take charity, thank you very much. If Jim wanted something, he was going to earn it, gosh darn it.) One of the highlights of my middle school years was reading (over and over) the passage where Jim gave Trixie his ID bracelet right after they’d solved a particularly complicated mystery.

Jim: You know what this means, don’t you?

Trixie: Tell me

Jim: It means that you’re my special girl, Trixie. As if you didn’t know that already.

Trixie: I do. Oh, Jim!

My eleven-year-old self swooned.

I read every book in the series. Multiple times. For some reason they didn’t carry them at my local library, but luckily I had a generous aunt who would give me a Trixie Belden book or two every few months until I’d collected the whole set. I lost track of the books when I went off to college but one day years later I was in a bookstore in Lexington Kentucky and saw them lined up on a shelf. I am almost embarrassed to say that I burst into tears. I bought them on the spot. They’re lined up numerically, bindings cracked and torn, right now on the bookshelf in my office.

These are not the best-written books on the planet. Not classics like Charlotte’s Web or Anne of Green Gables. But something about them still draws me in. Maybe because Trixie’s world is so tied up in memories of my own childhood. She was a real person to me and the place she lived, Crabapple Farm, nestled in the Hudson River Valley, was real too.

When I pull one of them out and open it up (like I did to find the above passage, marveling that I knew just where to find it: last page of Number Nine Trixie Belden and the Happy Valley Mystery) all of it comes back. The adventures of Trixie and Honey and Jim.

And the anxious and day-dreamy little girl I was who believed that the world of a book was just as real, maybe more so, than the one I lived in.

When Rabbits Lived at the Library

I can’t remember why I won the contest. But since it happened at the library, it probably had something to do with books. A summer reading quest. Or maybe they just pulled my name out of a hat. Whatever it was the prize was something I don’t imagine many kids today would get too jazzed about: you and a friend get to pet a rabbit. Also, you win a pack of bird cards. The six-year-old me was thrilled. And a little anxious. Here, take a look at the pic below. I’m the one holding the rabbit and reaching out for the bird cards while my sweet best friend Kimmy shares in the momentary limelight.

We’re downstairs in the New Britain Connecticut Children’s Library. They do not build buildings like this anymore. I know, I know, our country is broke. But I just poked around online and discovered that the children’s library in NBCT was built in 1931, not exactly a heyday in our country’s economic history. Don’t worry, I won’t go off on a political tangent here.

What I want to talk about is how much I loved that library. I haven’t been there in years so I’ll try to reconstruct from memory. It starts outside with the wall that wrapped halfway around the block.

You can’t see the wall from the picture (and the library shown here is the adult library. The kids’ library is farther down the street. I couldn’t find any photos of it.) But the wall in my imagination was HUGE, great for walking on while carefully holding an adult’s hand, of course. Or maybe that was just the anxious kid I was.

Inside the library, in addition to the stacks and stacks of books, was an enormous fireplace, the perfect place to curl up in front of and read. At the other end of the room were stairs going down to the basement, which housed a museum. This is where they kept the rabbits. I don’t remember what else was down there, (fish? A guinea pig?) and actually they closed the basement up not long after I won my contest. They built a separate museum next door, something with a cool 1970’s artsy/funky look to it. I didn’t like it.

I have to give a shout out to my mother for taking my little brothers and me to the library every week. We walked there (no car) and were allowed to check out as many books as we could carry home. I was on a first name basis with the librarian. She knew exactly what I liked and each week she’d have a stack of books waiting. She’d hold up each one and give me a colorful book talk about it. I always liked her choices. When I was ten or so that librarian told me she was leaving her job. I was devastated. And here’s something that seems strange and sweet to me now. She took me out for lunch as a sort of farewell gift. At a restaurant around the corner we ate sundaes and she talked to me like I wasn’t a ten-year-old but just another fellow book lover.

And about those bird cards, I didn't care much for birds, but for some reason I really liked flipping through those cards. They were like baseball cards but instead of baseball statistics each one had an illustration of a bird and a list of fun facts. I read them over and over, and one of the highlights of my first grade year was when my teacher Mrs. Carlson asked if she could make a bulletin board outside the classroom using my cards.

By the time I was twelve I had read nearly all of the books in the middle grade section of the children’s library and all of the books in the very meager YA section. One day I stopped going into that big room with the fireplace and the closed up museum in the basement, and started picking out books from the adult library next door. By then I had stopped walking on the wall outside. My favorite librarian was long gone. The rabbits, if there were any, lived in the funky museum across the parking lot. I lost track of the bird cards.

Today I went onto the New Britain Public Library website and found that they are having a contest. One of the prizes is a Kindle.

The Book Deal Game

Here’s how you play:

1. Imagine that you have a book deal

2. Role play The Call from your agent/editor

3. Brainstorm the terms of your contract

4. Daydream the inevitable book-signings/school visits/conference presentations

5. Spend the Advance

Today my game piece is presently parked out on Number Five. I’m a tad embarrassed to say that I’ve landed on this square many times over the years. I remember vividly taking a walk with my husband when I was pregnant with child number two. (To give you a hint about how long ago this was, said child is now in high school.) My husband and I were trying to figure out if we could afford to live on one salary after the baby was born. I drew the card for Spend the Advance and read my line: “Well, if I get a book deal….”

The hitch was I hadn’t exactly written a book at that point. In my defense I think I had started one. Didn’t matter. The game box was open. My piece was on the board. The dice were clicking together in my hand. (How long can I keep this inane metaphor going?)

Flash forward through the years:

Should we splurge on a cruise for our anniversary?

Send a child to an expensive summer program?

Buy a new car?

A house?

Etc.

Say it with me: "Well, if I get a book deal…"

Here are some funny things about this game (and by funny, I mean kind of sad):

1. I have spent the pretend book deal $$$ many times over

2. Advances for YA authors are small. (think used car)

The truth is the game, while occasionally fun to play, has absolutely nothing to do with the day-to-day life of being a writer. I know that. You know that.

But still, here I sit this morning fighting the urge to go out with my husband and buy a flat screen TV. Our present one just went kaput. (And here’s a nice little aside: I bought that one many years ago with the money I earned from a short story.) Also, my car needs a tune-up, the microwave is broken, our twenty-year old washer only works on one cycle, my laptop has several band-aids pasted on the knobby protruding busted keys, and the paint is peeling on the side of our house. If I got a book deal, we could….

Daughter from the other room: Don’t forget the toaster!

Yes, my whole family plays the Book Deal Game now.

What Scares Me

I’ve been following this very cool blog by Nova Ren Suma, the author of the gripping and beautifully written novel, Imaginary Girls. Lately Nova’s been inviting other writers to guest blog on particular topics. In October she posted a series called "What Scares You" where writers described their favorite scary books/movies. I wasn’t asked to guest blog by Nova (sigh) but reading all those posts got me thinking about what books have scared me over the years.

You can’t talk about scary books without mentioning Stephen King. The first “adult” book I ever read (back in seventh grade) was The Shining. It scared the crud out of me. I also really likedThe Stand and It. But I think King’s scariest book is Pet Sematary.

When I read it I wasn’t a parent yet but the idea still chilled me to the bones. The premise of the novel is a young doctor and his family move to a small town in Maine. Life is looking swell for them—nice house, sweet little boy, precious little girl, a cat…The only downside is the very busy road in front of the house where monster trucks zoom by. One of those trucks kills the pet cat and the little girl is devastated. The doctor finds out there’s a pet cemetery, the remnants of an old Indian burial ground nearby. Supposedly if you bury a pet there it will come back. It may not come back quite right, warns the elderly neighbor across the street, and it’s probably not a good idea to mess with the dead, but of course the doctor, concerned about his daughter’s grief decides to bury the cat up there anyway. And it does come back. Not quite right—so not quite right that the daughter is horrified by the sight and smell of it. Life goes on for a while and those trucks keep rushing by the house and one day the little boy gets killed. Well, you just know what the father is going to do.

What’s scary about this book, I think, is not the gruesome gotcha stuff but the impulse most of us can relate to: What parent wouldn’t want to bring his dead child back if there was a way?

King has some interesting things to say about what scares people in his book Danse Macabre. Many of the examples are out of date now—stuff from the 1950’s and 60’s that King grew up on—but his ideas are thought-provoking. One, that in a good horror story there is usually something psychologically terrifying behind the obviously scary premise. Take The Exorcist. Pretty darn horrifying novel/film about demon possession, but King says that what’s really at the core of it is every parent’s fear that her teenager will spin out of control. I recently watched the movie What Lies Beneath, a ghost story about a dead girl haunting a woman. It’s a creepy movie with lots of scary moments, but I think what’s truly scary is the woman’s floundering state of mind. Her only child’s gone off to college and she’s not quite sure what to do with her time. When the ghost starts coming around, other people, including her husband, are patronizing, thinking the woman’s just lonely and bored. There’s a common theme in horror that the person being haunted is simply losing her mind. And what is scarier than thinking that you might be going crazy?

Something that interests me as a writer is how horror writers build suspense. King says that the scariest stuff is the unknown. He uses the example of the heroine in a creepy house where everyone knows the Scary Thing is behind a door at the top of the stairs. The entire book/movie is really the suggestion of whatever that Thing is and the plot is the character walking up those stairs and getting closer and closer to that door. Many writers are good at the building up of tension part, but where they usually fail (and King admits it’s where HE fails too) is when the hero has to finally open the door and show the audience what’s inside. There’s nearly always a letdown. It’s a zombie or it’s a vampire or it’s a giant spider, etc.

Whatever it is, it rarely lives up to what we imagined.

So tell me, faithful readers, what scares YOU?

My Nano-Style Blog-a-Day Kickoff

I’m floundering. This pretty much always happens when I’m between projects. For the record I just finished a revision of a novel, something I’m really excited about but trying to push out of my mind while feedback from my awesome first readers trickles in. I also have TWO very cool potential ideas for new novels but don’t feel the timing is quite right to begin either one of them. Thanksgiving and our hosting of an annual (growing) family dinner is just around the corner. And then there’s December. Do I really want to throw myself into a new project? This could be lazy, resistant me talking, but the answer, I fear, is No.

But I know myself well enough to know that I can’t NOT write just because the holidays are coming up. What to do? What to do? Or perhaps more to the point: WWSKD? By which I mean, of course, “What Would Stephen King Do?” I surely know the answer to that one: he would write his 2000 words a day regardless. And here’s another thing that I almost hate to put down in words because it might jinx things: I’ve got a teeny tiny nibble on a manuscript that’s been floating around the NYC publishing world for the past two years. Such a teeny tiny nibble that it could easily drift away or disappear or pop like a bubble in the glaring light of reality.

So I’ve come up with a plan that will (hopefully) keep my mind off Things Outside My Control, give my writing muscles a workout, provide a challenge for my goal-oriented self, and most importantly allow me to retain my sanity as I navigate the busy holiday season. I’m not joking about the sanity part. When I don’t write every day, I quickly become an anxious, (b)itchy mess. Ask anyone.

In the spirit of WWSKD, I have devised the following challenge: Write five blogs a week for the next four weeks, sort of a Nano-esque Blog-a-thon. (For the uninitiated, Nano is short for NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, in which participants pledge to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. I’ve “won” Nano every year for the past four years. Maybe this is another reason I’m floundering at the moment. Because I didn’t sign up for Nano.)

So my dear and faithful readers, please join me in my quest. Sign up to “Follow me” and/or to get email posts (See the handy dandy tab on the left hand side for instructions.) Keep reading and find out if I can sustain this blog’s usual high level of entertaining, humorous, inspirational value you’ve grown to expect. Plus, there will be pictures…

Too Bad There's No Such Thing As Teleportation

I’m not what anyone would ever call a world traveler. The truth is I don’t really like traveling. Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy exploring new places. This seems like a contradiction, I know. What I don’t like about traveling is the actual traveling part. Planning. Packing. All the stuff dealing with airports/flying. For instance, why do you have to put all your little liquid bottles in a plastic baggie? Do plastic baggies somehow thwart terror plots? And why must you go through security with your shampoos and mini toothpastes, etc., in the baggie, but then are free to buy all that junk (at ridiculously inflated prices) in the airport shops? My son pointed out during a recent trip that he wasn’t allowed to pack a razor in a carry-on bag, but he could buy a seven-buck one and carry it on the plane in his pocket. What’s up with that?

But I’m digressing. The point is that traveling itself stresses me out, but once I get to my destination, I nearly always have a great time. Some of the coolest experiences of my life occurred in a place far from home. Singing in a piano bar with my best writer friend in New York City. Sipping sangrias at an outdoor restaurant in Barcelona with my hubby. Floating lazily down a mangrove lined river in Mexico with my two kids. And coming home, although stressful too, what with the potential bed bugs in my suitcase and the loads of laundry to wash, and the mail piled on the counter, there is always a new story to tell about the trip. (See my last blog: Surviving the Snow Apocalypse for just such a story.)

And speaking of traveling stories, I just read a great one, Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard. On the surface it’s your typical hero takes a journey tale. Eighteen year old Bria is traveling to run away—from her grief over the end of a bad relationship, from her ever-arguing, preoccupied parents, from her failed dream of being an artist. The opportunity to travel to Central America seems like a blissful escape from an upsetting past and depressing future. But day one in Guatemala with the tour group of timid, middle aged women is just as depressing. When Bria has the chance to jump off the beaten path with a very cool backpacker brother/sister pair, she takes it. Rowen and Starling seem like everything Bria wishes she could be: spontaneous risk-takers, unafraid to plunge into new experiences.

You know that things aren’t exactly what they seem with those two. And you know that by the end of the book Bria will learn new things about herself and life through traveling, but the book is surprising in the telling it takes to get there. Bria’s voice is fresh and funny. Rowan is complicated and insightful, a boy also running away from his past, but for all his constant traveling, he yearns to settle down. Plus, he’s cute. A bonus in these YA books. Bria starts drawing again and here we get what I think are the author’s own pencil drawings throughout the book, quirky renderings of wildlife and local people and one special one of Rowan after Bria finally realizes she’s fallen for him. By the end of the book, I was almost ready to pack my bags and seal my little baggies and head off to parts unknown.

Almost, I say. I’m still reeling from last trip.