Thanks to the 5th graders at Tomie Barfield Elementary…
…for one of the best questions I’ve been asked in an author visit: “If you had to describe being an author in one word, what word would you pick?”
(Phew, these 5th graders don’t believe in easy questions.)
The word that popped into my head was “liberating.”
Being an author means that all the thoughts and dreams and characters and ideas that congregate in my head are free to come out, be shared, find connections and communion with readers. It means that I’m free to imagine, create, dream, wonder, and share. It means that I’m free to sit around in jeans and t-shirt with bare feet to do my work. All of that is wonderfully liberating, and I’m grateful for it–and for the question that made me realize it more fully!
Read MoreWild Things
I was sitting on the couch last night in tears after learning that Maurice Sendak, at 83, had finally left us. My sister-in-law was giving me sympathetic but slightly funny looks, and I explained that it felt like one of the pillars of children’s lit had crumbled. He changed the way we all felt about something as basic and vital as words and pictures and stories. You have to think of someone bigger than life, I said, someone iconic–like, say, Hemmingway. But imagine a Hemmingway whose personal life was not an alcoholic, cat-infested disaster; Mr. Sendak was by all accounts something of a curmudgeon, but a perfectly functional curmudgeon. And then you have to imagine a Hemmingway who stayed creatively productive and disciplined enough to produce strong, original work into his eighth decade. That’s who we have lost.
So it seems appropriate on a blog about monsters to say farewell to the man who let the monsters of children’s books out. And who also let them in to our deepest selves.
That’s the thing about Where the Wild Things Are. It shook up the world of children’s lit by its stark honesty about children’s emotions. Many people have pointed out, over the years, how it was one of the first books to acknowledge that children get angry–furiously angry, angry enough to shout “I’ll eat you up!” and mean it–at their parents. Last night it occurred to me that the book also acknowledges the rage that a parent feels toward a child who has gotten on her (it’s Max’s mother in the book) last nerve. “Go to your room!” really means “Get out of my sight before I lose it!”
And it’s true. It’s shocking how quickly impatience and frustration can tip over into anger, over something as small as bucking a child into a car seat or getting a sock on a foot. And no one has ever been mad enough to scream at me at the top of her lungs–except my girl. Because I said she needed to eat her jelly beans upstairs and not downstairs.
But it was not only anger that this book opened up–it was also escape. The intense desire that every child has to get away from even a loving, caring, nurturing family. Max wants to leave so badly that the walls of his room dissolve and he sails away “through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year” (in one of the loveliest lines ever written) to live with (and eventually control) the monsters of his rage.
(It’s the same desire that, on a much lower level of poetry, J.K. Rowling tapped into with Harry Potter. Many people have commented that Harry Potter is, at heart, a boarding school story, just like those written by Enid Blyton for another generation. Few people have noted that one of the reasons the boarding school story, in all its formulaic glory, is such a hit with kids is that it provides an escape. As intensely as kids want to be loved and cuddled and kept safe, they also want to flee. It’s not a comfortable truth for the adults who write and illustrate and edit and publish and buy the children’s books, but it’s still true. The boarding school motif just provides a convenient cover.)
Sometimes we would rather be with the monsters than when the parents who love us so dearly. That’s such an honest and frightening truth that it puts any vampire story to shame.
But then we come home and we find supper waiting for us and it is still hot. That’s true too.
Thank you, Mr. Sendak. And rest well.
Read MoreMERCY Tattoos for Supernatural Readers
Visit the site of my fabulously cool publicist, Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, to find out more about a promotion going on this week. Free tattoos of Mercy’s burning heart!
Kirsten says: “The author of MERCY: THE LAST NEW ENGLAND VAMPIRE (VOYA’s Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers) is giving away temporary tattoos of Mercy’s burning heart on my site this week. Tattoo wearers will then have a chance to win free signed copies of the book.”
“Why the burning heart?”
“It is a bit grim as it is a TRUE story of a vampire eradication in 1890’s New England. No vampire romance here…”
For the details: http://curiouscitydpw.com/2012/04/11/mercy-tattooed-on-my-heart/
Read MoreMaranacook High School
They also had matching chef’s hat for my daughter and me!
A shout-out to Bunkie Wilson, librarian extraordinaire, and the book club of the Maranacook High School, who gave me one of the best author visits I’ve had. Enthusiastic prep, intelligent questions, and one of the loveliest gifts a visiting author ever got–a recipe box (they discovered from my online bio that I like to cook) covered with favorite quotes from my novels. (Mercy, of course, plus The Manny, The Secret of the Rose, and The Dragon’s Son.) It was so touching to discover, in such detail, exactly what had captured the attention of my readers. Some were my favorites too–some I had completely forgotten writing! But all were great to read. It will have an honored place in my kitchen.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews