January 11, 2010 @ 7:35 am | Filed under: Books

“Well, if you like your warnings ahead of time, then I’d say watch out for weasels and the Banshee—the Lost Soul of the Lost and Found—and a lot of other Cursed Creatures. Hmmm, and let’s see…the mice come in waves. And if you hear hooves coming behind you, crouch down. It’s the Pooka, and it won’t be a good ride if he grabs you.”

—The Prince of Fenway Park

In the early 90s, Julianna Baggott and I were classmates in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, along with David Scott (whom Julianna would later marry) and a number of other fine poets and fiction writers. (To name a few: Rowan Jacobsen, author of that bee book I raved about; his future wife, the poet and illustrator Mary Elder; poet Elizabeth Leigh Hadaway; novelist Quinn Dalton; Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson; and acclaimed speculative fiction writer Kelly Link. We all got to study with the great Fred Chappell, making us some of the luckiest people on the planet.)

I’m always excited to hear that one of my friends has a new book out—especially when it’s Julianna. She is a writer of tremendous talent: a poet whose keen-edged phrases can make my breath catch in my throat, a spinner of magical children’s tales, a novelist who writes with an intense and lyrical candor. She has a gift for drawing her characters with a terrible honesty suffused with tenderness and a kind of raw humor. Her people are real people, aching and vulnerable and brave.

It’s no surprise, then, that Julianna’s 2009 middle-grade novel, The Prince of Fenway Park, made this year’s Cybils shortlist for Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her latest novel, The Ever Breath, has just come out and I am champing at the bit for a copy. As N. E. Bode, she wrote the deliciously original The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Slippery Map. Her novels for adults include Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam, and (as Bridget Asher) The Pretend Wife and My Husband’s Sweethearts. She has published three collections of poetry: This Country of Mothers, Lizzie Borden in Love, and Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees. Julianna and Dave and their four children live in Florida, where Julianna is an associate professor in FSU’s creative writing program.

Because talking about writing with other writers is one of my favorite things to do, I asked Julianna if I could bombard her with questions for an interview here at Bonny Glen. She said yes, and here it is.

I am always wildly curious to know how other writers work. What’s your writing life like—the rhythm of your days and weeks, with writing and mothering and working and researching and all the rest of it?

I stay up late at night. My husband wakes up early in the morning. He’s a stay at home dad—the hardworking kind who’s really taken over all of it (grocery shopping, cooking, carpooling). So he does the morning rush, getting the oldest three off to school. I sleep in with the 2 year old. We have sitters who come and stay a couple of morning hours so Dave and I can both focus. We wrestle the calendar and the business side of writing and the creative side, too. When I’m stuck, I ramble to Dave and he blathers and eventually he blathers something that helps. I sometimes have teaching days—I teach in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State—or departmental meetings with professorial types—of which I guess I am one—and I try to come up for air around 3:30 when the kids come home. Sometimes I head back to work at night. And on my bedside table there’s always a stack of reading—books to blurb or grad student novels, etc… And then the day begins again—another version of the same.

We are like Civil War reenactors—except without the woolly pants and cannons.

I collect notes for various projects that are coming up in metal bins on my VERY messy desk. When that project pops up, I map on big sheets of art books—big wild outlines that I accept as THE plotline although it ALWAYS changes many, many times. Sometimes I juggle more than one book. If one fights me, I jump to another. I also will work in small essays and op-eds from time to time. I’ve been in Real Simple, The New York Times, Boston Globe…I also will shove a poem in from time to time—poems come in waves—

Like the mice under Fenway Park?

Yes. Like the mice. In waves, followed by dry spells—more emotional than logical for me. I adore revision—more and more the older I get. More freedom in a way. I write on scraps of paper that float around the house and get lost. I write all over certain books—a real marginalia freak. Some books are fairly smooth in writing the first drafts. Others are like wrestling gators. The problem is that you don’t know which is which until you’re in too deep. I can’t think in terms of drafts as I move throughout the novel as I write it—back and forth and all around. My first reader is Dave though there are certain novels he doesn’t read until they’re published, and I don’t read to him necessarily in order. I might start reading to him in the spot where I’m stuck—say page 64. I summarize and tell him my problem and read. It’s great because I’m all caught up in the details accumulated over the past 64 pages, but he isn’t. He can see the book as some platonic future version of itself and his suggestions can be really broad and drastic, often what I need to hear.

See, this is one of the things I love so much about you and Dave, because it’s one of the things I love so much about Scott and me: the collaborativeness of the creative process. Nothing I write feels alive to me until he reads it.

When asked if I have hobbies, I answer: I like to sing along to the radio in the car, loudly. Does that count? Hardly. But I do get up from novels a lot. I get up and pick seeds from the Cosmos. I cut apples. I get in the car and sing loudly. I have to walk away and then come back—away and back. I love stupid TV. I hate swimming. I make myself pay for peeking at my Amazon ranks/reviews by doing push ups.

I try not to fully shake the other world. I like the blending—how one world helps me with the other.

I used to read aloud to my kids as I wrote, but it got too confusing. I kept changing things on them. And now, strangest of all, they don’t read my work. I’d have never seen that coming. But it’s as if too much of me as an author filters down into our daily lives. They want me as mother. And so we don’t blur mother as writer. They love the authors they love as authors. But I’m their mother and that relationship is something we all have decided to keep oddly pure. Does this make any sense? It’s not something we planned. But when we read a novel as a group, it’s never mine.

I’d written three literary novels in three years—pubbed with Simon & Schuster. It was too fast a pace. I started competing with myself for review space. So we decided on writing under a pen name. My agent wanted me to do crime novels—I get terrified playing the board game CLUE —but I was reading again to my kids the books I first loved.

So I decided on that. N.E. Bode followed.

Then my kid book editor wanted me to come out as Julianna Baggott and the timing felt right. My two recent novels The Prince of Fenway Park and The Ever Breath are Baggott novels.

As for Bridget Asher, I wanted to be able to build an audience in one kind of novel—smart, contemporary work for women—but still have the freedom to write my own odd stuff as Baggott and not lose the readership I’d built.
So Asher seemed like a good way to do that.

Let’s talk about The Prince of Fenway Park. A question I always have about every book is “what’s the story behind the story”—what sparked the idea, etc. And then I’m always curious about the research. Did you get to tour Fenway Park?

Funny story. The Prince of Fenway Park came out of complete frustration. I was having a conversation with Dave. I had finished a laborious collection of poetry in historic women’s voices (Lizzie Borden in Love). It entailed huge doses of research. I said to Dave, “Can’t I write a book that I already know something about? Or you? What do you already know?”

He said, “I know the Red Sox.”

I didn’t want to write baseball book. I write magical novels—not realism and certainly not sports realism. But then I said, “Wait, there was a curse on the Red Sox. It was reversed. This could be the story of the boy who did it!” It came to me all at once. Dave and I sat there for a while, saying, “There was a curse. It was reversed and this is the boy who did it.”

The irony? Well, the book entailed tons of research. Dave knew Fenway Park, but the exact mix of grass in the outfield? Did he know the history of Pumpsie Green? Bill Buckner’s childhood?

Dave, of course, volunteered to do a lot of the research. In fact, he was the one who toured Fenway stem to stern. He considered it a gift. He went behind the Green Monster and stood on the pitcher’s mound—took notes, snapped pictures. For a while, everything in our house revolved around the Red Sox, and the dining-room table was littered with baseballs, taken apart to see what exactly was inside.

I’m not a rereader. I’m not a rewatcher. It pains me to watch a film—even one I love—twice. I do it from time to time. But it’s hard. I’m reading Vonnegut and Leslie Epstein now—both on World War II—when I’m not socked in by student work, which I am. Atwood visits in spring so I’ll be on her latest book soon. Haven’t yet read the new Lorrie Moore. Must. We have done a lot of family read alouds, but not recently.Our age range is difficult right now for consensus— high school, middle school, elementary and toddler. I was a big Ramona and Beatrice fan, and Fudge, of course, and Dahl and I loved Sherlock Holmes and saw tons of plays as a kid—I loved Mamet way too young.

Back to your writing. Tell me about The Ever Breath.

There was once just one world—this one. And it was home to all the magical and un-magical creatures. (This was way back. This world itself was still pretty new …) But then there was an Exodus. Two worlds were formed—the Fixed World of un-magical creatures, this world we know, and the Breath World, where all of the magical creatures were sent off to. And there are these two kids—brother and sister, Truman and Camille—who find themselves on an adventure that takes them through the passage and into the Breath World where they must find the EVER BREATH—an amber orb with a breathing breath within it. They have to save not just one world but both worlds …

I’m at work on the sequel, The Ever Cure, right now.

Excellent. I can’t wait. Thanks so much, Julianna, for dropping by the Bonny Glen!

Related links:

The Ever Breath blog
Prince of Fenway Park website
JuliannaBaggott.com
Bridget Asher’s blog

Photos by David G. W. Scott

Tags: author interviews, Cybils, Julianna Baggott, kidlitosphere

February 16, 2009 @ 11:21 am | Filed under: Books, Cybils

The winners of the 2009 Cybil Awards have been announced at the Cybils blog. Congratulations to all the winners!

As a member of the first-round judging panel for Fiction Picture Books, I was happy to see that my favorite title from our shortlist, How to Heal a Broken Wing, won in that category.

And I’m tickled to see that the winner of the Nonfiction Middle Grade/Young Adult category is a book by a friend of mine: The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby and John Busby. Cylin and I were lowly editorial assistants together at Random House many years ago. I’m so proud of her. (Good thing I wasn’t a panelist for that category—I’d have had to recuse myself.)  I’ve been dying to read her book: I finally have a copy on the way, so more on that later.

While you’re over at the Cybils blog checking out the winners, don’t miss Easy Reader winner Mo Willems’s illustrated thank-you note!

Tags: Cybils

November 11, 2008 @ 8:41 am | Filed under: Books, Cybils, Picture Book Spotlight

Jumpy Jack and Googily by Meg Rosoff and Sophie Blackall. Henry Holt & Co.

What a charmer this picture book is. Scores very high on the giggle-meter with my gang. Jumpy Jack is a snail of the most nervous sort. As lovably neurotic anthropo-morphizations go, Jack’s right up there with Piglet, friend of Pooh. Fortunately, Jumpy Jack has his best friend Googily to put his mind to rest when the monster-worries creep in. Jack fears monsters are lurking at every turn—monsters with big round eyes and sharp teeth and lolling tongues and possibly even creepy bowler hats. Googily—he’s the amiable fellow in blue you see there—is a little puzzled by Jack’s boogieman complex, but he’s always happy to help soothe his pal’s fears by taking a peek into the corners Jack’s sure are hiding fearsome monsters.

In the end, we find that Googily has a fear of his own—and apparently with better reason than Jumpy Jack! The surprise ending elicited belly laughs from my seven- and two-year-olds.

I really love this sweet and simple picture book. It’s fresh and funny, and the art is enchanting, and the text holds up well to numerous re-readings, which is a quality I very much watch for in a young picture book. If I’m going to have to read it aloud five times a day, it’s got to be readable.

But beyond that, I appreciate the way the plot plays with the idea that people can create monsters in their minds, terrifying specters composed of stereotypes, while being oblivious to the fact that the generalizations they are throwing around so carelessly might very well include real people they know and love.

Tags: Cybils, kidlitosphere, Picture Book Spotlight, picture books

November 7, 2008 @ 7:38 am | Filed under: Family, Snippets

We have two ripe strawberries on our potted strawberry plant. It’s November. San Diego is a strange place to live after you’ve put in a couple of decades on the East Coast.

Wonderboy had an OT evaluation at the Children’s Hospital last month. I finally got the written report yesterday. It’s full of errors! I’ll have to write a list of corrections and ask for an updated report, because I don’t want inaccuracies in his file. Highly annoying.

But his IEP meeting earlier this week went wonderfully well. I think the school district finally has a read on who we are, this family of mine (especially the obnoxious, mouthy mama), and they’re meeting us where we are, now. Hooray. And oh how I love Wonderboy’s speech therapist. She really is a gem. And I’m not just saying that because yesterday she raved about the progress we’d made at home during the week and told me I should be a speech pathologist myself.

My second-favorite moment from the meeting: when, after listening to rest of the IEP team group-wrangle their statements into educationese for the Official Paperwork, I was asked to contribute the “parent goals” and I figured I’d save time by just uttering it in the IEP jargon to begin with. Moment of silence around the table, then they all burst out laughing. Me, grinning: “Did I nail it?” School district lady in charge of entering everything into the computer: “Say it again, just like that, so I can type it in.” Heh.

Favorite moment from the meeting: leaving, with my little boy’s hand in mine, and his eager voice saying, “We go home now? Go play with my tisters?”

Oh how I love that child.

On Monday, I sat down with a giant pile of picture books to read for the Cybils. Rose and Bean joined me, and we wound up sitting there for hours, reading book after book after book. Passing them around: Ooh, you’re going to love this one! (They know me well: they were right every time.) I’m going to have to write posts about some of them because there are some must-share gems in the stack. Next time you make a library run, look for Chester’s Back! by Melanie Watt. Even if you don’t have little kids. We were crying laughing, even the thirteen-year-old. Especially the thirteen-year-old. The Lucky Star and One Hen just plain made me cry. And Dinosaur vs. Bedtime? Rilla’s new Favorite Book Ever. Bet I read it six times yesterday alone. Roar!

Tags: Cybils, IEP

November 4, 2008 @ 8:06 am | Filed under: Books, Cybils, Picture Book Spotlight

Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Hyperion.

We pulled this from our Cybils to-be-read stack yesterday because of the title, and I wish I’d read it a little sooner so I could have shared it with you in time for you to hit the library before Election Day. Grace for President is an appealing story about young Grace’s presidential race—in which votes are counted Electoral College-style. The book offers a simple and easy-to-understand look at the Electoral College in action.

The race begins when Grace learns, to her astonishment, that there has never been a “girl president.” Her classmates snicker when she declares that she shall be the first, but her teacher takes her seriously and suggests a campaign for class president. Two classes, actually: her opponent is a charismatic boy from the room next door.

Their campaign is lively and, paralleling real life, somewhat all-consuming for a time. As voting day approaches, it becomes clear that the boys have an edge on the electoral map, and Grace’s rival, Thomas, seems assured of victory…but could it be that the young man representing Wyoming is a swing state?

All three of my big girls enjoyed the book—Jane and Rose for its look at how the Electoral College works, Beanie for the fun story and the charming art, especially the surprise addition to Mount Rushmore at the end.

Tags: Cybils, kidlitosphere, Picture Book Spotlight, picture books

November 3, 2008 @ 7:35 am | Filed under: Cybils, Family

…you start getting worried letters from kindhearted readers who want to make sure you aren’t back in the hospital or something. No worries; we are all well; I’ve just not been feeling very talky. Am spending a lot of time working in the yard—our mini-butterfly garden is really coming along, particularly the hundred billion weed seeds which were apparently lying dormant in that dry, dry soil until we oblingly began to water them. Now Beanie and Rose and I are out there every day, ruthlessly yanking up wee baby weedlings by the dozen. Ah, the blissful peace of gardening…

And I’ve had lots of Wonderboy stuff to occupy me: preparing for his IEP meeting tomorrow (yes, on Election Day, because I am a glutton for punishment, I guess), working some new PT exercises into his daily routine, reading Mother Goose on demand a hundred times a day…have I mentioned that he is awfully fond of the two Rosemary Wells/Iona Opie Mother Goose collections? As in, he wants them read and/or sung cover to cover approximately once every hour? Rilla, of course, approves wholeheartedly—except she wants it known that they are HER Mudda Doose books, and hers alone, contradictory evidence in the form of inside-front-cover inscriptions to Jane and Rose notwithstanding.

Speaking of reading, I’ve been kept quite busy, of course, with my ever-growing stack of Cybils picture book nominees. I think we have about 35 of them checked out from the library right now, and at least 20 more have arrived via post as review copies from publishers. I don’t know where I’m going to put them all. We are plumb out of shelf space. But reading them is fun, for sure. Ask Beanie. She’s way ahead of me. I’ve read about a dozen nominees so far, and I think she is upwards of thirty.

I am posting mini-reviews at Twitter, by the way, if you’d like a peek. More like mini-summaries, I guess I should say: these are my plot notes to help me keep the 175 nominees straight. I am finding I quite enjoy the challenge of boiling a summary down to 140 characters. You know brevity really IS a challenge for me, ahem.

Speaking of Twitter, you can always look for me there if you’re worried because of bloggity silence…the link above goes to bonnyglencybils, but my main Twitter profile is just plain bonnyglen. I often post short (duh, it’s Twitter) notes during the day about what’s going on around the house. I really love being able to look back, later, at these microglimpses of our days. They are like candid snapshots, the kind no one knows are being taken, the kind you linger over in the photo album because they are so filled with rich detail of what was really happening. Not that my tweets are necessarily “filled with rich detail,” detail being exactly what is hard to squeeze into a 140-character box, but I’m just going to assume you know what I mean. And sometimes a tweet does capture a detail you wouldn’t have been likely to record in any other medium.

Tags: Cybils, Twitter

October 23, 2008 @ 1:22 pm | Filed under: Cybils

UPDATED: Make that 186 books. That’s the final tally, after a number of titles were shifted over from Nonfiction Picture Books to our category.

That’s how many titles were nominated in the Cybils Fiction Picture Book category, and how many I need to read in the next six weeks or so.

Two. That’s how many I’ve read so far. Neither one was a standout.

I am keeping my Library Elf hopping these days. Slowly I’m making my way through the Cybils database, clicking back and forth to my library catalog to see which nominees are in our local system, reserving all I can find.

It’s fun to observe which books catch the kids’ attention. Reading and discussing the nominees is something of a family affair, as most things are around here. Beanie has read more of the nominees than I have, so far. Guess I’d better get back to my databasing, so I can catch up.

Tags: Cybils

October 7, 2008 @ 6:45 am | Filed under: Cybils

Oh my gosh, I’m getting excited. As you know, I’m a first-round judge for the Fiction Picture Book category in the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards. The nominations are pouring in, and I’ve been perusing the ever-growing list with happy anticipation. My fellow panelists and I will be responsible for reading every book nominated and putting the very best among them on a shortlist for the finals. Then I will go off and have a baby (or so the plan is), and the finals judges will choose winners to announce in February.

So now you know how I plan to spend my third trimester: parked in a comfy spot, reading lovely picture books to my younguns. Beanie in particular is going to enjoy this particular ‘assignment’ of Mom’s. Wonderboy and Rilla too, no doubt. Nominations are open through October 15th, so get on over there and enter your favorite books from 2008 (one nomination per person per category, I believe—oh, and I’ve heard the Easy Reader category is especially in need of suggestions). Beanie is counting on you.

Tags: book awards, Cybils, kidlitosphere

October 1, 2008 @ 5:06 am | Filed under: Cybils

The ball is rolling for the 3rd annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards. Between now and October 15th, you are encouraged to nominate the best children’s and YA books of 2008 for consideration by the Cybils panelists.

There are many categories of books awaiting your nominations:

• Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Fiction Picture Books (that’s the panel I’m on)
• Graphic Novels
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Non-fiction: Middle Grade and Young Adult
• Non-fiction Picture Books
• Poetry
• Young Adult Fiction
• Easy Readers

Each of those links should take you to the appropriate page for entering your suggestions in the comments. (Just please double-check the category, in case I botched any of the links!)

Thanks for helping us find this year’s very best books!

Tags: book awards, children's books, Cybils, kidlitosphere

September 17, 2008 @ 10:30 am | Filed under: Books

What are the Cybils, you ask?

The Children’s & Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards!

The call for nominations for the best children’s and YA books published in 2008—nine categories of books, from easy readers to poetry to nonfiction to novels—will begin on October 1st. The tireless Cybils organizers have worked hard to assemble panels of judges for each category. Each category has a team of round I panelists—people to read all the nominated books and compile a shortlist in each category—and round II judges, who will choose the winning titles from those shortlists. For more details, and to see lists of Cybils winners from 2006 and 2007, visit the Cybils website.

I’m a Round 1 panelist for the Fiction Picture Books category this year, and I am really looking forward to reading (and sharing with my children) all the nominated books. So start thinking about what picture books bowled you over this year (published in English between January 1st and October 15th, 2008) and watch for the call for nominations at the Cybils site.

My fellow team members in the Fiction Picture books category:

Category Organizer

Pamela Coughlan, Mother Reader

Panelists (Round I):

Cheryl Rainfield, Cheryl Rainfield

Stephanie Ford, The Children’s Literature Book Club

Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes

(and me!)

Round II Judges:

Erica Perle, Pajamazon

Emily Beeson, Whimsy and Deliciously Clean Reads

Maureen Kearney, Confessions of a Bibliovore

Anne-Marie Nichols, My Readable Feast

Stefan Shepherd, Zooglobble

To see the judging teams in the other categories, visit the Cybils site.

Tags: book awards, children's books, Cybils, kidlitosphere