The talented Roxyanne Young took these photos of my talk on Middle-Grade and Chapter Books at SCBWI-San Diego last weekend and kindly gave me permission to use them. My school visit/speaker page needs a massive updating and I’m so grateful to have some recent images to include.
Apparently I talk with my hands a lot? What’s funniest to me is that this Boston Bay slide was onscreen for barely a minute. That’s an awful lot of glasses-waving going on there.
The rest of my slides were all about other people’s books—my favorite things to talk about, as you know. Here’s a taste:
(Just a sampling from the Chapter Books part of the talk.)
October 13, 2014 @ 6:08 pm | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils If you, like me, missed Kidlitcon this past weekend, Leila has a delicious recap & link roundup for you at Bookshelves of Doom. I haven’t been since 2010, the Minneapolis gathering, and I had many a pang of longing as the tweets and FB updates came rolling in. But it was delightful to see so many of my blog-pals having what was clearly a Very Good Time.
One reason I couldn’t be there is because I was engaged to speak at SCBWI-San Diego on Saturday. (The other reason is because I have a hundred children and am therefore Always Broke. You know how it is.) I’m happy to say my SCBWI talk seemed to go over very well. The topic was Middle-Grade and Chapter Books, two categories of children’s publishing I can speak about with considerable enthusiasm. What’s more fun than speaking to a full house about your very favorite books? The crowd was wonderful, with really smart questions afterward. The only thing that could have made it more fun would have been having the Kidlitcon crowd there. 🙂
Sunday felt amazingly luxurious: nothing was required of me but to read. This was convenient, as the nominee tally in my CYBILs category is currently 100 novels, with more contenders coming in every day. Only two more days, guys, until the public nomination period closes. People are starting to compile lists of worthy books that haven’t yet been nominated; you can find links to those posts here.
Speaking of piles of books, the younger set and I finished The Boxcar Children over the weekend (it’s a mighty quick read) and today it fell upon to me choose the next readaloud. Sometimes I know EXACTLY what book I want to reach for next, and other times I have option paralysis. Today was the latter sort of occasion. I got Rose to go around the house with me, pulling likely candidates off shelves, and when we had a comfortable stack, I decided on a Jane-Rose-Beanie favorite, Rowan of Rin. Chapter one was well received. I’ve never read this one aloud before, and there’s always a risk—some great books just don’t make great readalouds. But so far, so good. So gripping!
Don’t forget to cast your vote in this year’s SCBWI Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards! Voting ends March 15.
Here are the finalists for the California/Hawaii division:
• Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Ivan ( HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Tina Nichols Coury, Hanging Off Jefferson’s Nose: Growing Up On Mount Rushmore (Dial Books For Young Readers, Penguin Young Readers Group)
• Katherine Longshore, Gilt (Viking Children’s Books, Penguin Young Readers Group)
• Ginger Wadsworth, First Girl Scout, the Life of Juliette Gordon Low (Clarion)
• Melissa Wiley, The Prairie Thief (Margaret K. McElderry Books, Simon & Schuster)
You can see the other division finalists here. One Crystal Kite winner will be chosen for each division.
From the SCBWI website:
To cast a vote, go to your Member Home page, click on “See what’s going on in your region,” then on the Crystal Kites tab. The list of the finalists listed below will be there and all you have to do to vote is click the button next to the desired title for your region. [Note: To get to the voting buttons, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the finalist list.]
Please remember there is no campaigning of any kind for individual titles but you are encouraged to promote the awards in general using all social media! This includes but is not limited to blogging, tweeting or social networking of any kind.
Anyone participating in an individual voting campaign (promoting a specific title) will be disqualified. This is to ensure the votes are based purely on personal opinion.
