How to Write a Book

This morning I had a Facebook notification that a friend had tagged me on a post of a friend of hers, which read in part, "Has anyone written a book before?! I need to know where to start. I have like 7-8pg." I realized my advice would be rather lengthy for a Facebook post, then I thought hey, I could do this as a blogpost. Pretty good topic.

First of all, the friend-of-a-friend appears to be an adult. I say that only because I'm often asked the exact same question by children, and my answers to children would be somewhat different. I'm against children seeking publication--they have no idea how hard it can be and they're up against adult professionals, both of which are also true of adults new to writing, but they're also still kids. They shouldn't be making something fun into work, not yet, and they're often being pushed to make "real books" by the adults in their lives. You don't expect Little Leaguers to play for the Braves. Quit expecting the equivalent from young writers.

Now. Said FOF is an adult woman, knows very little about publishing. Is inspired to write. GREAT. She's got everything she needs: a story and the ability to learn. Because publishing is a business. It helps very much if you think of it like performing onstage: those actors in Hamilton are making bank, because that show is amazing, they're incredibly talented, and they've worked very, very hard for a very long time. You, too, could work that hard. Whether you're that talented is your own business--but--I'm loving this analogy here--there are lots of parts of writing, like performing onstage, that can be learned. Some people are total naturals, complete freaks of nature. Most, even the very successful ones, aren't. I'll say it here: Lin Manuel Miranda's natural voice, while good, isn't on par with most Broadway musical stars. But he's learned enough and worked enough and is good enough at other things that it all works out pretty well.

But just as there's Broadway, so too is there off-Broadway. Regional theaters. Local amateur productions. You don't have to streak straight to the top of the bestseller lists, and, in fact, you aren't likely to. That's fine.

Back to writing. Let's start with a few questions. One: who is your story for? Children? If so, which children? Toddlers being read to? First graders starting to read on their own? Sixteen-year-olds? Those are all very different. If it's for adults, that's not a monolithic audience either. Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Memoir? Different rules. (I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not writing for an academic audience--that's another branch entirely.) Then think about genre: historical fiction, romance, mystery, fantasy, etc. If you're not sure, that's okay, just start thinking about it.

Here's another primary question. What is your ultimate aim? There's a wide difference between wanting to write up some family stories to pass down to the next generation and wanting to become the next Stephen King. Publishing right now can be divided into two types: traditional and self-published. When you write for a traditional publisher, as I do, you submit a manuscript to the publisher. They decide whether or not they want to publish it. (I'm simplifying here a bit.) They assign you an editor, and you and the editor revise the manuscript until everyone is happy with the result. (If you're happy and they aren't, tough noogies. Back to work.) Then they have in-house staff design the layout, cover, trim size. They put your book into their marketing plan, their salespeople pitch it to bookstores and distributors, standard reviewing journals (Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, etc.) review it, and it gets sold in bookstores nationwide without the author having to do very much. The author is paid an advance on royalties and then a certain percentage of the price of all the books sold. You never have to pay back the advance even if your book tanks, but an advance for beginning writers will be in the low thousands of dollars, not necessarily a lot--but if your book sells well, you'll get more.

When you self-publish, you, the author, bear the cost of producing the book. You will likely pay for an editor to review your work and suggest edits, but if you don't want to do the edits that's up to you. You'll either pay someone else or you yourself will supervise the design and select the cover. You'll direct the marketing. You'll pay upfront for your book to be physically produced. You'll be responsible for trying to get it into bookstores, and this will likely be difficult to do. You can pay some journals to review your book, but not all of them, and you do have to pay them. On the other hand, you get complete control of your product, and you get a higher percentage of the book's price as profit. You might pay $3 per copy to create your book but sell it for $15--$12 profit per copy, instead of the $1.50 per copy profit you'll make traditionally publishing. On the other hand, better distribution means you're much more likely to sell lots of copies through traditional publishing. With self-publishing you take the risk. It's worth understanding that most people who self-publish do not sell enough copies of their book to make any profit at all. Most are out money. On the other hand, I have personal friends who have done very well for themselves through self-publishing: they understand their market and are very good at that end of the business, as well as being good writers.

Here's the other thing: self-publishing is akin to amateur theatrics, in that anyone can do it. Some people are going to be very talented, and work very hard, but a lot of people are just dabbling. That's fine. There's plenty of room for dabblers. But it you want to be traditionally published, you're going to have to think of that more as Broadway--there are a lot of people trying to get onstage, and they don't reserve spots for newbies. You'll have to audition and prove yourself.

(This is also why the person who suggested you write to publishers and ask for advice is off base: because it's the equivalent of asking Lin Manuel Miranda how to get started in theatre. It's not that he doesn't know or isn't a nice guy, he just doesn't have time to send you an answer.)

So. This is a lot of words, and I still haven't given you any advice. So here it is: take some time and do your research. You don't have to stop writing while you do that. Write whatever you like, enjoy yourself, and at the same time, start learning. Read a lot of books in your genre. Develop a feel for the structure, characters, general rules. At the same time, start learning about the business side. Go to the library and get the current Writer's Market. There's one published every year, and most libraries have them. (There's a separate one for writing for children.) Read it. Read Stephen King's book On Writing. Practice. Learn to revise. Think about your craft. Take yourself seriously, while still having fun. If you're writing for kids, there's an organization called the Society of Chidren's Book Writers and Illustrators that runs conferences and has lots of good information online. There are organizations for writers for adults, too, though I don't know them by name.

Join a writer's group, if you can. Learn to have your work critiqued, and to offer critiques. Practice. Finish a story, even if halfway through you think it's crap (and it probably is.). You'll learn things by writing a story all the way to the end that you can't learn otherwise. 

Understand that there are very, very few overnight successes in this world. There are a few, and some of them are even nice people, but most of us have to work at our craft for a long time. It took me nine years of writing for horse magazines and doing random bits of journalism and working my way up to remote editing and writing work-for-hire before my first novel was published. It took me 9 drafts to get my penultimate book right--and that was my 17th (traditionally) published book. It's a lot of work no matter how talented you are.

Also? It's worth it. Start now.

Fourteen lovely minutes

So the last two days, though mostly fine, have been marred by a few pieces of genuine bad news. One isn't mine enough to share publicly. Another is that T, the horse I rented for nine months until last spring, died a few days ago. He was living happily and well at the farm he went to after mine, and he died of one of those stupid things that sometimes affect horses and can't be made right quickly enough to save them. 

I miss T's sweet spirit. I miss his sense of genuine good. I'm grateful for the time we had together.

I hadn't been planning on riding today. I've got an appliance repairment whose arrival was originally scheduled as "between 8 and 5" and my husband's partners and their spouses are coming for dinner tonight. Thankfully, the broken appliance is not required to cook the dinner, and all the guests are bringing a dish. I spent some time this morning ironing my good napkins, very grateful that, unlike last year, I had a reason to use them this year--which is probably the only time I've ever been grateful to be ironing--and then the appliance people texted that they were narrowing their arrival time to "between 4:41 and 6:11" or, in other words, "perfectly arranged to screw up your dinner, but hey, now you can leave the house."

So I did. I went to ALI World Headquarters to fill one last order that came in before the schools shut for break, and then I grabbed lunch with my husband, and then, while we were in the middle of eating, the other bad news showed up and put a damper on everything. So after lunch I scoffed at my housework and went to the barn.

I'd have to go to the barn anyhow, of course, to feed things. The cats milled around, frantic, having not eaten since they scammed an extra meal yesterday. The horses looked peeved. Yesterday, when I went to feed, I found their water trough entirely empty, and it was clear from the reproachful way that they guzzled once I'd filled it that they blamed me entirely. Which was outrageous, since one of them--and Sarah, I think we all know it was you--had knocked the halfway full trough off the blocks it sits on precisely so that Sarah can't dump it over, dumped it over, flung the water heater halfway down the field, then stomped about in the mud puddle they'd created. In short, not at all my fault.

I put them in, then zipped my riding boots over the yoga pants I was wearing--close enough to breeches if you're not doing much. Fetched Rosie from her stall. Rosie's the little mare I bought last July. We went out to my small sand arena, and Rosie, I was pleased to see, let out a little sigh of happiness. The small arena is for flatwork, dressage; historically, neither me nor any horse I ride has enjoyed dressage. But Rosie and I are starting to get the hang of it. Rosie loves it when I ride well and hates it when I ride poorly. She doesn't buck or kick or doing anything awful, but she puts back her ears, gnashes her teeth, and stiffens her whole body whenever I do something wrong. Sometimes I'm not sure what I've done wrong, but with Rosie's immediate feedback I know I've screwed up something. For awhile I was dropping my inside shoulder on upward canter transitions. Lately I've fixed that, but been putting my outside leg too far back at the trot while using my inside leg to make her round. She starts to transition to canter, realizes I'm not actually asking her to, just flailing incoherently, and goes back to the trot pissed off about it. Rosie has a smart forward walk--unless I tighten my seat, in which case she slows and stiffens and glares at me. You see how it goes.

As a result our flatwork sessions have become amazingly zen. I need to be fluid and balanced and precise with my body; I need to be focused yet relaxed, clear but soft in my aids. And Rosie rounds herself into my hands, and we dance--sometimes for as many as six or seven strides before I tighten somewhere and screw us up again. And then we take a deep breath, and try again.

I time my rides on the exercise app on my watch. Today Rosie and I were right more than we were wrong. We found harmony. She practically purred.

At times like that it's tempting to just keep going, to push yourself and your horse and see what else you can achieve. Lateral work? Perfect downward transitions?

Not today. I needed some good news, and Rosie gave it to me. I patted her and called it quits, and when I dismounted saw that I'd been riding for exactly fourteen minutes.

Sometimes that's long enough.

How It's Going With the Books

 No, not the ones I write. They're going fine, fine-ish, anyhow, after a somewhat difficult quarantine year. (All the writers I know had some degree of a difficult quarantine year.) I have a completed draft of a novel sitting in my editor's hands: she was supposed to get back to me about it three weeks ago, and hasn't, and now it's December 1. Publishing absolutely entirely shuts down for two weeks leading up to the New Year--they lock the offices, everyone goes home--of course, this year they might already be home--but in truth they mostly shut down as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around. I won't likely hear anything until January. Years ago this used to frustrate me, but now I just embrace the holiday spirit. Why not? I can't change it so I might as well enjoy.

I am working on the start of a new book, but it's too new to talk about yet.

Today I'm going to talk about the books from Appalachian Literacy Initiative. Phew. We're nearly halfway into our fourth year of operation. (We follow the school calendar.) We've grown so much and we're doing so well, and there's so much more to be done. I know I've talked in this space quite a lot about how important it is that kids have access to books. Today I'm going to talk nuts and bolts.

This year we were graciously granted permanent office space in a building owned by another local nonprofit. It's a largish room, and we've filled it with industrial book shelves (bought cheap at Sam's Club, they hold several hundred pounds per shelf, which is good because we need them to). When you walk in the door, there's a shelf immediately to your left, where until yesterday UPS put unopened boxes of books that we'd ordered. (We had a stack of boxes obscured the door, so we've changed plans.) After that, running clockwise around the outside of the room, two desks crammed beneath the one window. One desk has some office supplies on top, the other holds our laptop and printer. The office supply desk is used for all sorts of things. The printer desk is the order and shipping hub.

Now we're on the wall across from the door. Four sets of bookshelves. The first set is office supplies--paper, stickers, tape, folders--some boxes of books we've set aside for various reasons, including ones that arrive damaged, and, on the top shelves, some YA books we were donated that we haven't yet found homes for. 

The next three sets of shelves are the third-grade choices for this school year. Twenty-four books, and each gets half a shelf. We put stickers inside all of the books we give away: they say Appalachian Literacy Initiative and have a space for the child to put their name. That way, when 14 kids in the same class get the same title, they can tell the books apart. We also have stickers for some of the organizations that have sponsored entire schools: "A Gift from Ballad Health." "A Gift from the Bill Gatton Foundation."

Now. The number of copies of each book that can fit in the designated space depends entirely upon the size of the books. All books are different. Alien Ocean Animals is probably our smallest, space-wise; Magnus Chase, in hardcover, is the largest. We don't put any books on the grade shelves until they're properly stickered. Sometimes we store extra boxes of stickered books on the tip-top shelves. 

Turn the corner, and the next wall is fourth grade. Turn it again, and the shelves for the fifth grade books fit neatly along the wall with the door. 

In the center of the room, three more sets of bookshelves, crammed together, and two more work tables for packing books. The shelves are full--crammed full--of extra books, ones that aren't part of the lists for the three grades we're doing this year. Sometimes that's because we couldn't get enough copies or a title even if we wanted to. Sometimes these books are donations direct from writers or publishers. When we order through Scholastic's nonprofit arm, Scholastic Literacy Partnerships, they send us boxes of random free books, and we put those on these shelves as well. If the local teachers enrolled in our program come to pick their books up, instead of having us mail them, we let them pick out a couple of extra books for their classrooms. We also give them out to different community organizations--a hundred earlier this fall for a local after-school group in a federal housing project, a couple hundred to Girls Inc, a couple hundred soon to be sent to a school system's holiday gift program.

In all the corners of the room we've stuffed flattened cardboard boxes. Books come out of the boxes, we save the boxes, we put books back into the boxes and we ship them out.

This year Tuesdays are our big ship-out days. We welcome any and all volunteers any and all Tuesday afternoons. If you'd like to come by, please do: at the very least there are always books to sticker. 

We ship our teachers sets of six titles four times a year.  We sent the second teacher sets a few weeks ago--six books each to 185 teachers. It was a helluva day. They first teacher sets we shipped out over several weeks, because we got some last-minute funding that allowed us to add several additional schools. That was fabulous but has also created chaos, as it meant we no longer had enough books for the year. 

We get our books cheaply through First Book, Scholastic Literacy Partners, and publisher donations (big shouts out to Thorndike and Penguin Random House). This means that the money people donate goes a lot farther than it otherwise would, but it also means we have to stay on top of our game. A title available last week might not be available again for six months, or ever.  Last summer I'd figured we needed at least 200 copies of any one title to have it in our program, but that was a serious underestimation. We ended up enrolling 1200 students per grade. Each student picks one book from every set of six. That would suggest that 200 copies might be just enough--except that the teachers get classroom sets. We need 60 to 65 copies of each title, depending on the grade, just for the classroom sets. Also we are very firm about kids getting to choose whichever books they want--and we can't always predict which titles will be popular. We're realizing that 275 is the absolute minimum for any title this year--we'll need 350 or more for many. That's fun math to be doing in December--and I mean that absolutely. We are DELIGHTED to be in this position. We are loving giving away this many books. It's the best damn thing in the world.

So yesterday: I showed up at what I love to call World Headquarters early, because the local news channel wanted to interview me. (The resulting spot turned out ghastly, with the anchor mangling ALI's name and it all going downhill from there--what possessed me to wear that shirt?--so no link, thank you.) UPS delivered some books shortly afterward: "Hi, Ma'am, just add them to the pile?" It was a huge pile, causing problems. Happily we've just been given a bit more space in the back of the building, and when a couple of college kids showed up (we give out official volunteer hours!) the first thing I had them do was move all the unopened boxes of books out of the main room. Then they stickered some of the free Scholastic books, since we'll be giving those away next week. I sat down at the computer and started printing out student orders from our teachers. The other board members grabbed the order sheets, and started packing boxes.

We had at least a dozen orders. Some were for one class, some for an entire school. Here's a sample, from one of our largest enrolled schools:

Fifth grade: Best Friends 12; The Crossover 3; The Girl Who Drank the Moon 1; The Player King 4; 100 Things to Be 11; Be Prepared 42; Black Panther 34; Flora & Ulyssess 4; From the Desk of Zoe Washington 16; The War I Finally Won 5. 

You'll notice that it's more than six titles. That's because students are always allowed to order from previous lists.

What I noticed: Be Prepared 42. Shoot.

Be Prepared is a graphic novel. It's funny, and quirky, and I love it. I scored 200 hardcover copies last summer at an unbelievable discount, something like $1 for a $23 book. A few weeks ago I managed to get another 40 copies, in paperback, through First Book, but that was all they had. I bought them out. They'll get more eventually, probably, but it could take months.

I didn't think this would be a problem. Be Prepared really is quirky. It's not nearly as well known as some of the other graphic novels on our list. 

I was wrong. We started filling orders, and it was clear that Be Prepared was in high demand. I started the day with 175 copies and ended the day with 20, and we hadn't filled all the orders that had come in, and there are still a bunch more orders to come.

Anyhow, I want to tell you about the process: it's this. We take the printed order, take the books off the shelves, find a box or boxes to put them in. We tape the box, weigh it, print postage, copy the postage label onto a copy of the order form, so we know we've filled it, put the postage on the box, stack the boxes in the lobby of the building for the postman. Check off the schools/grades on our master list. Subtract the copies from our inventory.

We did that all afternoon. This morning I sat at my home computer with the inventory list and spent a moment being very very grateful for donations we've recently received. Then I went on First Book. First I looked for Be Prepared. I'd looked for it the day before, as soon as I saw we didn't have enough, and it wasn't in stock, but sometimes restocking miracles happen. Nope. Then I scanned the rest of the graphic novels for sale. It's a tough time of year, they're out of everything. Got 14 copies of Pea, Bee, & Jay when I'd have happily bought 150. ($3.50 for a $7.99 retail price). Went on to get 100 copies of Ghose ($3.75 each), 75 of Animal Smackdown--a real victory, that, as we've given out 363 copies so far this year. The price has gone up, from $4.95 a copy to $5.85, but this is a glossy full-color book with a retail price of $14.99. I got one lonely copy of The One and Only Ivan, 18 of Power Forward, 96 of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer ($3.25/copy). I looked at the Book Bank, where the huge bargains are--it's there I got the hardcover Be Prepareds, back last summer. Bought one carton of Percy Jackson's Demigod Collection, 12 books for a total of $8.40. It might be brilliant but it might be too bulky to ship, hard to tell so we'll try a few first. Ghetto Cowboy, another favorite 120 copies. One copy of Hello Universe. I look in vain for Front Desk, which I've been trying to get more of for months, along with Guinness Animal Records, How to Steal a Dog, and Love That Dog. Love That Dog is particularly worrisome--we're running out. Oooh--the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #16! Three hundred copies. That, along with the 200 copies we have on hand of #15, should get us through the school year. 

I log into Scholastic Literary Partnerships, and am overjoyed to find both Narwhal and Jelly ($3.96, rp $8.99) and Love That Dog ($4.53, rp $7.99). I buy 100 copies of each. They've got Captain Underpants ($3.41, rp $5.99) back in stock, so I grab 100 of that and 100 of I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic. ($1.50, rp $4.95) This order qualifies us for 160 additional free books--I can't chose the titles, but I choose the age ranges. It'll be enough to ensure we have plenty for the school Christmas program. 

This does not solve my Be Prepared problem. We have new orders in and we can't fill them. We can buy the book through an independent bookstore, which will give us a hefty discount (though not as good as FB or SLP), but shipping comes direct from the publisher and will take a few weeks. I don't have an in with the publisher, First Second--I've been known to beg unashamedly from publishers where I do. 

Sighing, I go on Amazon. I can get the paperback of Be Prepared (rp $14.99) for $10.49, which is steep, but I'm desperate. 

Amazon will only let me buy 30 copies. I don't know why, they've got quotas now of most titles. I once bought 80 copies of How to Steal a Dog from them, and now I can't buy anymore ever. I buy 30 copies, then call one of the other board members and have her buy 30 copies from her home computer too. It's not enough, but it'll buy us a bit of time.

This. This is why we do it. Just look at her. She's holding the first book she ordered. This child attends the school that ordered 42 copies of Be Prepared. We intend to see that they get them.

We've got a fundraiser going on Facebook right now, which I'm going to link to this exceptionally long post. You can also donate to us via our website, or by mail to PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625. xoxox

 

Beverly, Kelly Yang, and the Sullivan County Board of Education

This morning I thought I would write an amusing story about Beverly, my schnoodle, who through no fault of her own currently looks like a long-legged naked mole rat attached to a Schnauzer head. But I went to sleep thinking about a tweet from an internet friend, fellow author Kelly Yang, and I woke to an article on the same general topic in my local newspaper, and so I'm going to write about those instead of my dog. But I'll post a photo of said dog, for interest:

 

See? It's unfortunate, but not nearly as ridiculous as the crap being doled out to Kelly Yang and a Sullivan Central High School teacher named Matthew Hawn. Let's take them individually.

Kelly Yang is an author I've never personally met but one whose work I admire. This year Appalachian Literacy Initiative selected her novel Front Desk as one of the choices for 4th grade. Front Desk is about a10-year-old Chinese immigrant, Mia Tang, who's helping her parents run a motel in California. It got universally terrific reviews--it's well-written and funny. It's also a great example of a kid in a tough circumstance making good. Most of the students ALI sends books to are low-income, so we like to have books that mirror that and end hopefully. (Not all of them: Dog Man is a perpetual favorite, and so is Animal Smackdown. But it's a point in a book's favor when it comes to our list.)

Two days ago Kelly tweeted that the New York Times had quoted an organization who had put Front Desk on a list of books that teach Critical Race Theory and "demean our nation and its heroes." It's been awhile since I read Front Desk. I've been searching my mind, and I can't think of anything about it that demeans anything. There's an antagonist--but he, like the Tangs, is of Chinese descent. There are different people of different backgrounds. There's a discussion that it's harder in America if you're poor than if you're not--which is pretty hard to argue with. The whole reason ALI sends books to low-income students is that their lack of access to books means they're 250% less likely to read at proficient level than their higher-income classmates. 

I looked up the other books on the list. Most are nonfiction. One is a YA novel by Meg Medina called Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. I have no idea why that book is supposed to have anything to do with Critical Race Theory, but it's on the very short list of books I wish I'd written myself. My admiration for Yaqui Delgado is unbounded.

It seems to me that lots of people are talking about Critical Race Theory without having any idea what it means. I found a definition online:

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

The fear seems to be that schools are trying to get students to hate white people. 

We don't teach hate by teaching the truth. We teach empathy, perhaps. Justice. Critical thinking. Adolf Hitler calls himself a Christian in his book Mein Kampf--but we don't claim that speaking against Hitler demeans Christianity. Teaching the entire truth of our past and present might make students hate what certain white people have done in the past--but it's not going to make them hate every white person. Nothing is all white people any more than it's all Black people or all Asians or all Presbyterians. But also, no one is actually teaching the nuances of Critical Race Theory in elementary school. Letting kids know that sometimes other kids have a hard time for reasons they can't control--that teaches some kids to be more compassionate and others that they aren't alone. It's love and it's hope. It's a responsibility that I as a writer for children take very seriously.

Ok, Matthew Hawn. I never met him and never heard of him until this morning, when I read about him on page 3 of my local paper. Matthew Hawn, who taught at Sullivan Central High School for 16 years, is coming before the Sullivan County Board of Education  on December 14 to appeal his termination last spring for not offering varying points of view in his contemporary issues class. According to the paper, Hawn assigned a reading of a Ta-Nehisi Coates book "The First White President" and also played a four-minute video of someone reading Kayla Jenee Lacey's poem "White Privilege."

I've read some of Ta-Nehisi Coates's books and am familiar with most of them, but hadn't heard of one called "The First White President." I just Googled it. Now I understand why the Sullivan County Board of Education is so upset. I live in Sullivan County and know the local brand of prejudice pretty well. "The First White President" is actually an article published in the magazine The Atlantic, in October, 2017, and it links the presidency of Donald Trump with racism. I encourage you to read it. If you're pro-Trump your knee-jerk reaction might be negative,. I encourage you to really examine the facts Coates presents as well as the words he uses to present them. Now imagine this article being picked apart and discussed in a high school class. Pretty instructive--which was of course the point.

As for the poem "White Privilege." Wow. I didn't know Kyla Jenee Lacey until just now. There's an interesting article online, from Slate magazine, where she's interviewed specifically about this poem and Matthew Hawn's firing. Here's a salient bit:

One thing that the school board mentioned in their decision to dismiss Hawn was the “inappropriate” language in your poem. What was your reaction upon hearing that? Did that strike you as being the real reason why?

I know it’s not the real reason why. I have their required reading list. And in the books that they are required to read, there’s sexual assault, murder, a lot of cursing. So I know that it was just a terrible excuse for their discomfort. And this is coming from somebody who was 16 years old having to, who grew up in a mostly white neighborhood, in my latter childhood, reading Mark Twain and reading the word “n***er” over 200 times in a book.

I went to look up what was on the Sullivan County high school reading list, but couldn't find it online. Sullivan Central High School closed last spring when the new consolidated county high school, West Ridge, was built. Contemporary Issues is still a class at West Ridge: This course acquaints the student with topics of national and international interest and equips students with the analytic skills needed to assume leadership roles as a citizen. 

I want to wrap this all up in a tidy conclusion, but I haven't got one, just a sense of heartsick frustration. Our children are capable of understanding nuance and truth, empathy and love. They deserve books like Front Desk and teachers like Matthew Hawn. 

Matthew Hawn's hearing will take place on Tuesday, December 14th, at 4:30 pm at the school board meeting room, 154 Blountville Bypass, Blountville, TN.

The Best Days Ever

 Yesterday was a very good day.

It was day we shipped out the second set of teacher books to the 185 classrooms enrolled this school year in Appalachian Literacy Initiative.

I'll back up a moment, and explain. Appalachian Literacy Initiative, ALI, is the non-profit my friend Tracy Griffith and I started four years ago to increase low-income Appalachian students' access to books. It began when I stumbled upon the horrifying statistic that, among fourth graders enrolled in public schools in the United States, those whose parents can afford to pay for school lunch (roughly $2/day) are two and a half times more likely to read at proficient level than those who get free school lunch.

In Bristol, Virginia, over 90% of the kids get free lunch.

Tracy was equally horrified. We started educating ourselves, and learned that the biggest barrier to reading success in low-income kids was simply access to books. So we started giving kids books. We enroll public school classrooms in Appalachia that have more than 50% of their students getting free lunch. Four times per year we mail the teachers sets of six books; the teachers keep those books and show them to their students. The students decide which of the books they'd like a copy of, the teachers send us the orders, and we send the students books. The end.

The student orders come in over a period of several weeks, so that while we're shipping books every week, the only time we have to do massive ship-outs, like yesterday, is when we're shipping the teacher sets. And this year, since we added schools into the program until just a few weeks ago, we staggered the first shipment of teacher sets. And our program has grown massively even since last year. All of that meant that yesterday was a Big Day. Tracy, Kathy, Shannon, and Caroline started working at 10 am. Another nonprofit, Bristol Faith in Action, has donated the use of the room we like to call ALI World Headquarters, but yesterday we took over the big conference room too. I had an appointment and got there late; when I did I started printing mailing labels and moving boxes into the lobby for the postman. We got everything finished around 3:30, and then Tracy and I hung around tidying up loose bits and discussing how our new organizational system worked. (Very well. Tracy's a genius at this stuff.) And then, just as we were about to leave, we got an email from Parents magazine.

Last June they came and filmed us for a segment for their website. We hadn't heard anything back from the producers until yesterday, when they sent us this: 

We sat and watched it together.

There have been other times when Tracy and I have stopped to consider what, with the help of so many others, we've managed to accomplish so far. The year we got to do book fairs for all the Bristol Virginia students--we'd be staggering out to the car at the end of the day, carrying the few remaining boxes of books, and we'd look at each other, and smile. We'd say, "Hey. We did good."

Yesterday was like that. Yesterday reminded me of the time I recall at the very end of the video, when I gave a kid some books, that he chose, and heard him say to a friend, as he walked out of the room, "This is the best. Day. Ever."

Light in the Darkness

 This morning I woke up at my usual-early time, 6:15. (My usual-late time is 7:30.) Thanks to Sunday's time change it was already light outside, and I felt a bit annoyed, because we can't actually change the amount of  daylight we receive, we can only shift it around, and I'd rather mine be at night. I grew up in northern Indiana when we didn't change clocks, not at all. All through elementary, middle and high school I went to school in the dark this time of year. I saw it as a regular thing, and, as such, I've never minded getting up in the dark. I don't even mind it in the middle of summer, because usually I'm only up in the dark because it's a horse show morning, and those are the best mornings. The sunrise over the stables and the horses murmuring for their breakfasts and chewing their hay--lovely.

Having it be dark by the time I'm doing evening chores--not.

Happily, it's pretty light and cheerful inside my house. My wonderful husband loves to decorate for Christmas. He's very good at it. He'll make plans and buy ornaments all year around. Up until now, however, I've made it a firm rule that no actual decorating takes place before Thanksgiving. I really enjoy Thanksgiving and I like to let it have a place all its own. All the years of our marriage we've started decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. Forget Black Friday--in our house it's red and green.

This year my daughter is studying in England, where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Happily--joyfully--how amazing to travel again--we're taking Thanksgiving to her. We, including my son, will be in England the entire week of Thanksgiving, including both weekends.

Nearly a month ago my husband came up to me. "We need to talk." (I know him well. This is not as ominous as it sounds.) He said, "It's October 11th." (It was.) He said, "I'll never be able to get all my decorating finished in time if I don't start soon."

We could quibble over the precise meaning of "in time," but why? Why not enjoy some extra lovely? Particularly when I will not in fact be able to see a Christmas tree when I sit down to eat my Thanksgiving turkey. (No one can tell me if I'll be able to get a turkey in England. If not, it'll be Thanksgiving goose. I've never cooked a goose before, and it's about time.)

So this morning I schlepped down the stairs grousing that it was already light, and lo, there was the kitchen Christmas tree lit up in its red, white, and green glory. There was the living room tree, shining red and gold. There were the little trees, and the banister swag, all bright and cheerful. (The family room tree will be a live tree, so it really will go up after Thanksgiving.) 

It was a pretty glorious start to the day. 

I can already see what's going to happen next year.

Tossing the Office

 Lately I've been trying to do one thing every single day that's been on my List of Things Undone. It's a long list, which gives me a lot of options. Yesterday, for example, I stripped and re-bedded the stalls in the barn. Our horses live out nearly all the time: they spend the night of the Fourth of July indoors (fireworks) and stay in any time it's below fifteen degrees for an extended period of time, or below forty degrees and raining. Obviously I'd cleaned the stalls after July 4th, but since then I'd just scooped up any poop they happened to leave during the hour or so they're in to eat and so I can ride. Over time this mean we were down to very little sawdust and lots of just plain dust, along with some scorned bits of hay. So now we're ready for winter again. Yay, me.

Monday I got my car's oil changed, first time since before the pandemic.

Today I tossed my office.

My fellow knitters will probably be familiar with the term "tossing the stash." This is the periodic pulling out, looking over, and sorting all the yarn you've bought and stashed. I'm all for a good stash toss--usually enjoyable--but today called for much more than that. 

My office is an original part of the house we designed ourselves, and to say that I love it would be an understatement. It's shaped like an L, with a decent bit of floor space in the short end of the L, nearly entirely taken up by my floor loom. The loom blocks access to the built-in bookshelves, so eventually I plan to move it upstairs, but I've got a monstrously long warp on it right now and I'm not moving it until I finish weaving that. I haven't been weaving because books surrounded the loom and filled the bench I sit on when I weave, and--yeah. 

The long end of the L has counters lining both sides, with a space for my sewing machine, and culminates in a built in desk across the corner. I have windows on both sides that let it lots of light but that I can't see out of when I'm working, so I don't get quite so distracted. I have cabinets on both sides, too.

The countertop space gives me lots of room for books sorted into piles, and also papers, and also manuscripts in progress, or research notes, or miscellaneous things I put there that never leave on their own. The sewing machine and the counter beside it were heaped with works in progress and also mending and also a few bags I'd forgotten about, and then there were work bags full of yarn and--yeah.

I can work just fine in chaos for a surprisingly long time, but even I have limits and I'd reached them. 

So, today. Books first, starting with the ones around the loom. Now there are still piles. But they are properly sorted piles--research books I've read, research books I haven't, books I've read and plan to keep forever, books I've read and need to rehome. Books I'd borrowed from ALI and need to return. Books I've already purchased as holiday gifts. Books I wrote--ok, those go in a spot in the cabinet. Books I need to read soon, sorted into piles: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and things that require me to sit down and take notes. 

The countertop with papers wasn't too hard. I knew what everything was and more or less where it should go. But then, oh, reader, I delved into the pile of yarn and projects and stuff. And then I got a wild hare and pulled out all the miscellaneous project bags from beneath the sewing machine and I dumped their contents out too. The dogs ran and hid. I started sorting.

It was amazing what all I found. A multitude of socks, one each of some very complicated patterns. I was in a Sock Club, lo these eight years ago. Every month we'd get a lovely yarn and a beautiful pattern, and I'd have just about enough time to knit one sock before the next month rolled around. 

No, that's not true. I actually was in the sock club for several years, and I knit many, many pairs of socks. The single socks were the ones where I didn't enjoy the first sock enough to knit the second. Once I'd faced that I understood that I needed to do something else with both the socks and the basket. 

I also found a pair of socks that were entirely knit except Kitchner stitching one toe. Kitchner stitching the toe takes about five minutes, but every single time I have to look up the directions, because every time I think I remember I do it backwards and have to rip it out. 

I found an entire sweater, finished, that I made for myself, probably at least 15 years ago as I distinctly remember working on it during one of my son's little league games. (His coach once grinned at me from the field and yelled, "Hey! There's no knitting in baseball!") Now that I'm a much better knitter I understand why I never wore it. 

I found three pairs of scissors, including my good ones. I found some projects I had to stare at for a good long time to remember what the item was. I frogged back quite a few small things on the grounds that it would take me longer to remember what I was doing than to just get that far with something new.

I filled a paper bag with perfectly nice yarn to give away. I filled another with trash, including many nice pieces of yarn that I forced myself to discard. Apparently any string greater than six inches long can count as a nice piece of yarn, one I might save for future use. I was uncharacteristically ruthless today.

I found a hot glue gun. No explanation there.

I found several quarters, which didn't make sense, and several dollar bills, which did. (Dollar bills are exactly 6" long, which makes them handy makeshift rulers, especially for socks.) (I supposed twenty-dollar bills are also 6" long, but I didn't tuck any of those into my project bags.)

I sorted and re-stashed and I'm pretty stunned by the result. Honestly, I could see myself doing this again, in another five or six years.

Good-bye, Jerry Pinkney

 Famed Black children's book illustrator Jerry Pinkney died yesterday of a heart attack, at age 81. He was prolific and precise and his illustrations, primarily in watercolor, were magical. Though he's probably best known for his wordless Caldecott-winning masterpiece The Lion and the Mouse, my favorites of his books were less well known.

Many years ago--I'm trying to remember--probably fifteen? around there--my children would have been eleven and eight?--anyway, Jerry Pinkney was the visiting author/illustrator at my children's small Catholic grade school. St. Anne's had a visiting author or illustrator come every year, and any child who'd read a certain number of books on the Virginia state book award list was invited to breakfast with the author/illustrator before school began. I'm assuming one or both of my kids was at the breakfast with Jerry; I know for sure I was. 

I remember his quiet dignity. I remember how he spoke directly to the children. I remember him saying, "There's something you might be interested to see," and pulling a sheaf of white paper out of his briefcase. The children clustered around. It was his preliminary sketches for the book Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. A mouse floated up to the sky on a leaf turned into a boat. Even in rough pencil sketches the art came alive.

Later that day, in one of his presentations, he showed a slide from the book Black Cowboy, Wild Horses, written by Julius Lester. The illustrations, as you might imagine, were absolutely packed with herds of horses, all caught in the middle of fluid motion. People who don't understand horses well often have trouble drawing them, but Jerry's illustrations were absolute perfection. Their realism and vivacity stunned me so much that I raised my hand. "How did you get those horses so right?" I asked him.

He told me that he watched videos of old Westerns, stopping the film frame after frame. "For each horse," he said, "I had to know where every hoof came from and where it would go next." That was of course the secret--to know how the motion began and ended, even while you were only capturing it in the middle. But it would have been so much work. Jerry shuddered. "I'll never draw horses again."

Jerry Pinkney was honored with the American Library Association's lifetime achievement award, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, in 2016, the year I won a Newbery Honor for The War That Saved My Life. The award dinner and speeches for the Newbery, Caldecott, and Legacy Awards finished around 10:30 at night; the honorees then stood in a receiving line for 3 hours. It was brilliant and fabulous and entirely overwhelming. Afterwards--one thirty in the morning--we all gathered for what has become one of my favorite photographs ever. Writers and illustrators are often terrible introverts but by that point we were all so exhausted that we were completely relaxed, laughing and leaning on each other.

I sat in the front row on a chair beside Jerry. His wife, author Gloria Jean Pinkney, who was wearing the most fabulous hat, came over to him. "Button your coat," she said. He waved her off. 

"Button your coat," she said. He waved her off again.

"Jerry," she said, "your belly's pooching out. Button that coat!" He buttoned it.

My friend author Carole Boston Weatherford phrased it best: rest in pictures, Jerry.

You Can't Learn to Ride a Bike Without a Bicycle

 Hey, everybody.

I can't say for sure that the blog is back--check with me in a few weeks, we'll all see if I've written again. There was a pandemic, and my daughter came home for an 18-month-long spring break, and a couple of big writing projects took up a lot of time but will never been seen by the world (it's not just a long story, it's a couple of long stories--let's just say that the stories weren't only mine, so I couldn't completely control the outcomes), and then I was researching the Holocaust, which wasn't exactly smooth sailing during the pandemic--and also I'm thinking a bit differently about what I want to write about here. I really want to be aware of whose story I'm telling, and make sure it's truly mine. And I don't want to be up on my soapbox too often. I'm glad I care about injustice but I can also write about other things.

However.

You saw that coming, didn't you?

Last night I had the sublime pleasure of my first in-person writerly event since NCTE in November of 2019. I spoke in conversation with Katherine Paterson, right here in Bristol, as part of King University's annual series on Faith and Culture. It was a lovely evening, not least because I absolutely love being with Katherine Paterson. She's won every literary award there is, many more than once, and the Library of Congress has named her a "Living Legend." But also she approaches writing the same way I do--I'd say she's one of the very few writers whose entire process seems the same as mine. She's funny, warm, genuine, curious. She's turn 89 on Halloween, and honestly, I want to grow up to be like her.

Martin Dotterweich, the King professor who runs the series, who's also a longtime friend of mine, moderated the discussion, and kindly gave me a chance to talk a little about Appalachian Literacy Initiative, the nonprofit I co-founded to give low-income Appalachian students new books of their choice. I'm ridiculously proud of ALI, especially of the growth we've achieved in the middle of the freaking pandemic. This year we've gotten grants from Ballad Health Care and Walmart along with a strong flow of private donations, and it means we've been able to expand into 3rd grade AND add more schools. We're serving 3600 students this school year. Bristol Faith in Action has very generously loaned us a large room I now call ALI World Headquarters. It's stuffed full of books and every week we mailed out a couple hundred pounds of them. It's so good.

Yesterday, when I was talking off the cuff, I came up with the perfect analogy for why book access is so crucial. You can't learn to ride a bike without a bicycle.

Think about it. Remember, if you can, the days when you were first learning to ride a bike. It was impossible. Wobbly. Scary. You probably fell. You wanted your parent or whoever to hold onto the back, to steady you while you pedaled. And then with enough practice you learned until you were probably quite competent. And you never forgot. Years later, if you got on a bike, you'd still know how to ride it. 

But if you never had a bike--no matter how athletic you were, no matter how much you would have loved to ride--you couldn't have learned. To learn you needed to practice, and to practice you needed a bike.

So you've got kids with no books--lots of kids. At school they've got books they're learning from. But they don't have books at home, they can't get to libraries, their school library doesn't allow checkouts (it happens, and shouldn't) or doesn't have a librarian to match kids with the books that suit them (happens all the time, and shouldn't). Kids go home for holidays and summer break and while they're gone, they're not reading, because they have nothing to read, whereas the kids whose houses are filled with books--they're like the kids who have shiny bicycles of their very own, that they can ride around the block all the time. Those kids are going to be much more proficient at bike riding reading.

So we're giving kids bicycles books. And it works. They learn to ride read.

Yet More Ish I Should Have Known

 I had a hard time falling asleep last night: my mind was disturbed. When I did sleep, I dreamed of the Tacky Postcard Contest my dear friend Sarah and embarked upon in college. Wherever either of us went we sought out the tackiest possible postcard and sent it to the other. It went on for a few years, with some remarkably tacky cards, until Sarah went to Florence and mailed me a postcard that was a closeup of the genitalia from Michaelangelo's masterpiece sculpture David, with "I came, I saw, I conquered!" written in Latin across it. We acclaimed this the winner, and the contest ended.

When I woke up I thought immediately of the thing that had made it so hard for me to fall asleep.

Lynching postcards.

I'm in an online writer's group with four Black women. We're diverse in age, experiences, and geography. I fully believe that it is not their responsibility to teach me about being Black in America, and yet, nearly every meeting, they do.

Last night one of the others was telling the group about her involved, beautiful idea for a novel that blended Ghanian folklore, American history, and magical realism. As she was talking, she mentioned 'lynching postcards' in passing. It was clear the other three understood what this meant. I did not. I said, "I'm really sorry--what is a lynching postcard?"

They told me, but in the interests of clarity and full detail I will quote this from Wikipedia, which I read this morning:

Spectators sold one another souvenirs including postcards.^[7] Often the photographer was one of the killers.^[8]

In a typical lynching postcard, the victim is displayed prominently at the center of the shot, while smiling spectators, often including children,^[7] crowd the margins of the frame, posing for the camera to prove their presence. Facial expressions suggesting remorse, guilt, shame, or regret are rare.^[8]

Some purchasers used lynching postcards as ordinary postcards, communicating unrelated events to friends and relatives. Others resold lynching postcards at a profit.^[6] Still others collected them as historical objects or racist paraphernalia: their manufacture and continued distribution was part of white supremacist culture, and has been likened to "bigot pornography".^[9]

Whatever their use, the cultural message embodied in most lynching postcards was one of racial superiority. Historian Amy Louise Wood argues:

Within specific localities, viewers did not disconnect the photographs from the actual lynchings they represented. Through that particularity, the images served as visual proof for the uncontested 'truth' of white civilized morality over and against supposed black bestiality and savagery. ^[9]

Viewed from an outsider's perspective, bereft of local context, the postcards symbolized white power more generally. White citizens were depicted as victorious over powerless dead black victims, and the pictures became part of secular iconography.

Richard Lacayo, writing for Time magazine, noted in 2000:

Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, but lynching scenes became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers had become so repugnant, that the U.S. Postmaster General banned the cards from the mails.^[10]

As late as the 21st century, James Allen was able to acquire a collection of lynching postcards from dealers who offered them in whispered tones and clandestine marketplaces.

Obviously this is repugnant almost beyond belief. But here is what bothers me most, what kept me up at night: I didn't know.

I'm 53 years old, smart, very well educated, and over the past 15 years have tried to read and educate myself about race, particularly in America. When you're writing historical fiction, as I do, the biggest dangers are what you don't know you don't know--the things you never think to question, that you therefore don't bother to research, that therefore leave holes in your story.

I will never write a story about a lynching. But still, I should have known. Somewhere in my history lessons, while I was told about Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, and that Black and white people couldn't use the same drinking fountains, someone should have taught me that the Civil Rights movement was about more than that. Someone should have explained redlining, told me that the reason having Black people moving into a neighborhood would decrease property values (a fact I vaguely remember hearing from my childhood) wasn't because Black people were intrinsically less valuable, but because white people had rigged the housing market to make it so. Someone should have explained about penal servitude. Someone should have told me about the Tulsa race massacre. These should have been facts presented in my history, not just Dr. King's dream and subsequent assasination.

It is my teacher's fault and it is my fault. 

Now I know better. By reading this, so do you.

Beverly

 My husband and son and I were having dinner in California. We were uptight and anxious, because several thousand miles away my daughter's horse had developed a full-blown medical emergency that could well prove fatal; my daughter, and especially our friends Caroline and Bruce--especially you, Bruce, we won't forget it--were loading him into the trailer for a midnight haul to the veterinary school two hours away. (My daughter drives our truck and trailer well--after her horse recovered she picked him up by herself--but that late drive with the horse's life in danger was emotionally beyond her. Our friends stepped up large and got her through it when the rest of us were 3000 miles away.)

Anyhow, we were sitting outdoors, under a heat lamp, trying to have a lovely time at a real restaurant while our stomachs tied themselves in knots. I checked my phone, hoping for news from my daughter. "Oh, no!" I said. "Beverly Cleary died!"

"Oh, no," my husband said, softly. "I'm so sorry."

"What did she die of?" my son asked. 

I scanned the news item. "It doesn't say."

"How old was she?"

"A hundred and four."

Husband and son looked at me. Son began to grin. And okay, it wasn't a tragedy. One hundred and four--very nearly one hundred and five. And yet. For the next few days my internet feeds were filled with universal mourning. From Judy Blume to Victoria Jamieson to me, at least two generations of children's book authors were influenced by her work, and who knows how many children. Millions. My mom read Ramona The Pest to me when I was myself in kindergarten--I identified with every aspect of Ramona's perilous walk to school. Her pulling up that flowering beet--I loved her. 

The next day (the horse was better, survived the night without surgery, happier spirits all around. We love this horse, he's young and vibrant and quirky and smart, we can't bear the thought of losing him) I went with my husband and son while they played an old, beautiful, California golf course. One of the houses on the course had a Little Free Library near one of the teeboxes, so of course I went to have a look--and there, among the other books, was a copy of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, my favorite of all Beverly Cleary's books. 

I just looked it up. It was originally published in 1965. The edition in the LFL had been published in 2016. I read the first few pages--they're still good--and replaced the book for a child to find.

We all knew she wouldn't live forever, but there were many of us who loved knowing that Beverly Cleary was still in our world. We loved her for her quiet groundbreaking subversive ordinary characters. We loved her for her truth.

For awhile now my husband and I have been thinking of getting a second dog. Our young cavoodle, Cava, loves the company of other dogs. She sometimes finds my husband and I dull, well-loved but slightly insufficient as playmates. When she's around other dogs she lights up with joy.

And so this Saturday we acquired a schnoodle pup. Just as we hoped, Cava reacted with joy, and patience, and deep satisfaction. The puppy is all things puppy, affectionate and sweet.

My husband named her. He names most of our animals. He's very good at names.

I present to you: Beverly Cleary Bradley.

Only Racists See Race? Discussing Dr. Seuss

 Boy-howdee. 

I am trying to figure out what has so many white people so upset. There's all this talk of "cancel culture," but, as far as I can tell, everyone seems up in arms about the demise of  things already dead. Yesterday my internet feeds were blowing up because Dr. Seuss was being labelled racist. His books were being called racist! And some people were very upset.

I can't quite figure out why, except that of course many of them didn't know the facts of the matter, they'd simply seen clickbait titles like, "Dr. Seuss Banned!"

So let's start with the facts. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization which owns the copyrights to the author's material, decided to cease publication of six books due to their racially insensitive words or illustrations.  Those books are: McElligot's Pool (published 1947), If I Ran The Zoo (1950), Scrambled Eggs Super (1953), On Beyond Zebra (1955), And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1964), and The Cat's Quizzer (1976.) 

I'm 53 years old, and only one of those books was first published in my lifetime. Also, I'm really well-versed in the field of children's literature, and I've never even heard of four of the titles. Also, do you all imagine books stay in print forever? Very few do. I have published 18 books, the first in 1998. Nine of them are still in print--two of those as electronic versions only. This is likely slightly better than average. Dr. Seuss's books have had phenomenal runs. 

No one is suggesting that these books be banned, removed from libraries, or burnt in the public square. They're just not printing new copies.

Are those six books racist? Yep. They are.

You don't have to like it. You can excuse Theodor Giesel as being a man of his time. You can say that you've not noticed racism in your favorite Dr. Seuss books--but you can't look at the specific books in question and say they don't propagate harmful racial stereotypes. They do.

And. This is important: you don't get to decide what offends someone else.

Take, for example, the swastika. You might see it as an ancient Sanskrit symbol of well-being. But if you wear it as a tattoo people will consider you a neo-Nazi. You can call the Confederate flag a symbol of states' rights all you want--but you need to recognize that many people see it as a badge of white supremacy. When the only pictures of Black people in a book show them barefoot wearing grass skirts--well, that's equating Blackness with ignorance and savagery.  Maybe you don't see it this way, but many people do. When they say they're offended, you don't get to tell them they aren't.

This is also important: there is no good reason to continue to offend people here. McElligot's Pool is not a hill to die on. 

I get that many people have happy childhood memories of Dr. Seuss books. I do. The Sleep Book was my favorite, in part because it was so long, and in part because of one particular illustration I loved so much I could probably draw it for you even now,. The kids I babysit used to made me read Fox In Socks every time because they thought it was hilarious how the tongue twisters tripped me up. No one is "cancelling" this. No one takes those memories away--nor is anyone ceasing publication of Fox In Socks or Green Eggs And Ham.

Dr. Seuss may or may not have been racist himself. I have no idea. Most likely, neither do you. It's irrelevant to the conversation. The man has been dead for thirty years. My grandmother, who's been dead more than twenty years, was absolutely racist for at least most of her life. I loved her dearly, and have many fond memories of her. I also remember how, in her very last years, some of her opinions about Black people changed--she became less racist, in part because she had more genuine interactions with Black people. None of that matters, any more than Dr. Seuss's real beliefs matter. All we're doing now is no longer producing new copies of some racist books Seuss wrote.

I'd like everyone who's got their knickers in a twist to answer these questions honestly:

--when was the last time you read a Dr. Seuss book?

--when was the last time you read any of the six books going out of print?

--how many of those six books have you read?

--if you have read them, what's your honest opinion of them? How do they compare with other children's books you've recently read? If you were going to buy three books for any child of your acquaintance, out of all the books in the bookstore, would any of these make the cut?

Look, it's not much of a stretch to say that today's children are better served by books written less than sixty years ago. We're in a glorious golden age of children's literature right now. There are amazing books being written, and our kids deserve to enjoy them. Take a look next time you go to a bookstore. Browse through the children's section. Open up some of those picture books. You'll see.

As for the title of this blog post: it's something someone wrote yesterday on a thread about the Seuss news. Only racists see race. Which is, honestly, one of the stupidest things I've ever read. If you don't see my identity, including my race, you don't see me. It's nothing to do with prejudice. It's simple truth.