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1/27/2009 - School Librarian to a class of 4th graders: "Why do you read fiction?"

Some of their responses:
“Reading fiction lets you let out your imagination.” – Ian R.

“To me, half the human brain is fiction and the other half is non-fiction. In real life, your non-fiction side is always on. When you read fiction, it gives your non-fiction side a break.” – Hannah D.

“...You can go away from the world, but still be in it.” – Elizabeth E.

Why All the Drama? A Plea for Funny Books for Older Girls (and Boys, too!)
by Roxyanne Young

I have one of the best day-jobs in the world. I get to work every day as a children's librarian in my daughter's elementary school. I love my job. I open the library every morning at 8am - school starts at 8:15 - and I'm greeted day after day by kids turning their books in and checking new books out. Many of them ask for recommendations. This morning Mikeylah, a fifth grader, asked me for a funny book. "Funny?" I asked.

"Yes, funny."

My brain started running through our collection. I immediately thought about the Clementine books by Sara Pennypacker since I just read the first three this week (and read chapter one of book one aloud to my second-graders on Friday, who snapped them up for checkout), but they're skewed a bit young and Mikeylah's a good reader, so she needs something on the fifth - seventh grade level, and funny. She enjoyed So Totally Emily Ebers by Lisa Yee a couple of weeks ago (the last time she asked me for a funny book). Why, oh why don't we have a copy of Millicent Min, Girl Genius? Jerry Spinelli's books are funny, I thought, but mostly about boys, and generally a bit younger. Sachar, too, but she read There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom about a month ago and it didn't charm her.  Still, I headed for the S's. "Funny about a girl or funny about a boy, or does it matter?" I asked.

"Funny about a girl." Drat.

I thought of Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. "How about a princess and her dragons?" I asked.

"Dragons?" She sort of wrinkled her nose. Okay, no dragons.

I pulled out The Secret Language of Girls by Frances O'Rourke Dowell. Well, it's got some funny parts. Then I pulled out Ida B. by Katherine Hannigan and The Wish by Gail Carson Levine. Mikeylah picked up Fairest while we were looking at the Levine books. She liked the cover art. (I, too, am a sucker for good cover art, but I warned her that that one's not as funny as Ella Enchanted, which she's read, too. "It's a bit more on the dramatic side," I told her. "Lots of self-esteem issues addressed there. Not so much 'funny.'")

I suggested she take a few minutes and read the first pages and see which books interested her. She chose Fairest. Go figure.

"So when you said 'funny,' you really meant 'good'?" She smiled and nodded, handing me the book to run through circulation for her. I asked her what made her choose that one. "The first lines grabbed me," she said. Props to Levine. If Mikeylah likes this princess, I'll introduce her to Wrede's Cimerene next, dragons or no. There's a lot of funny in those books.

Her visit left me wishing I could hand her a really funny book written for older kids, though. An older girl, especially. And maybe even an older African American girl, like Mikeylah.

Maybe it's the limited collection here in our small elementary school library, and my limited number of brain cells these days, but for the life of me, I could not think of a funny book for older kids that isn't really more of a dramatic book with some comic relief. It left me wondering, why all the drama?

Help me out, people. Please email me some titles of Purely Funny Books for Older Kids. I'll start a list. Title and author, please, and a brief one-to-two line description. The books should be available for purchase at major booksellers, too, please. (And if they have a little drama, that's okay, but they should be primarily funny.)

And to my writer friends, anyone up for writing Clementine for the middle school set?

Send your suggestions to editor at smartwriters dot com.

Thank you!

Our very first Grand Prize W.I.N.NER, Jay Asher, is having a really, really good year. His 13 Reasons Why, which was chosen as the YA pick by Chris Crutcher, and then by Kelly Milner Halls and myself as the Grand Prize W.I.N.NER in our first Write It Now! Competition in 2004, has sold over 100,000 copies and was on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Way to go, Jay!

2005 W.I.N. Shorts W.I.N.NER David Macinnis Gill expanded his winning YA short story into a novel called Soul Enchilada and sold it to Virginia Duncan at HarperCollins/Greenwillow! Woohooo! Rosemary Stimola made a two-book, six-figure deal on that one, too. For those of you keeping track, that's our SECOND six-figure W.I.N.NER! Yeah, baby! Scooch over, Jay Asher, and make room for David.

And the W.I.N.NERS just keep on winning! Nina Nelson, whose Bringing the Boy Home placed third in the 2004 W.I.N. Competition and went on to win the Ursula Nordstrom contest, is being published this year by HarperCollins. Nina and other writers whose first books are coming out in 2008 have shared the new Class of 2K8 blog with me: http://classof2k8.com

2004 W.I.N.NER Tami Sauer's latest success comes as the January 2008 covergirl for Edmond Outlook , a regional magazine covering Edmond, Oklahoma. The cover features art from her W.I.N.NING entry, Cowboy Camp! Yeehaw!


Author Terry Pierce interviewed me for her blog. Thanks, Terry!

Quotes to share:

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." 
                  -  George Orwell

"Real Writers get rejected."  - Terry Miller Shannon

"You have to want it more than sleep."  - Marlene Perez, on writing for kids and pushing through a big, big writing year (her new agent sold four books in a month!)

"If I do not quit, I cannot fail."  - I'm not sure who originally said this, but I read it on a weight loss board for NBC's The Biggest Loser, and it applies to children's writing, too, so I'm sharing it here.

"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny."
                                                          - Thomas Jefferson

"If your pocket aces don't improve, it's just a pair." - Poker Ace Phil Ivey - this one's a stretch to relate to writing, but I like it and it says a lot about the influence of luck in winning the big pot