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Friday con't...
11am This was the first "professional connections" session. I chose to go to Leslea Newman's (author of Heather Has Two Mommies) session called: "The Gender Dance: Books That Challenge Stereotypes." It was okay. Mostly she had a list of books on challenging gender stereotypes and alternative families. And these were largely books I knew, although Pugdog by Andrea U'Ren is great, especially the illustrations. I had her sign a copy of The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, because, how could I not? ;)
1pm - Lynne Rae Perkins with Virginia Duncan After lunch, we got to witness the waltz of author and editor. Lynne Rae and Virginia held a joint session talking about the way they work on books together. It is clear they hold each other in very high regard, and rarely butt heads, rather working together to actually create. I suspect not all author-editor collaborations are so rosy. Virginia will say to Lynne Rae, "I think this might be brilliant, but what are you talking about here?"
2pm - Natalie Babbitt She is a sweet woman. She talked about fantasy, and why she writes for children and about young characters (she wants main characters who are not "blown off course by hormones"). Early in the session, she played a recording of someone playing "Dancing in The Dark" on piano (though she had trouble with her tape recorder, and made some good cracks about her age and technology) and discussed the lyrics. Towards the end, she admitted that she was the one playing on the recording. She said (tongue-in-cheek we all hope) that she didn't think she had stories left to write, and she wants to switch careers to play the piano at Nordstrom's! I had her sign a copy of The Search For Delicious which I actually have not read yet. She was relieved to sign something other than Tuck Everlasting. I told her about my pilfered copy of Knee-Knock Rise in my father's basement (I sort of appropriated it from school in 3rd grade). She was amused. I wish I had thought to bring that to be signed. Ah well.
3pm - Walden Media and Narnia This was a fantastic choice for the second "professional connections" session. The rep from Walden Media was one of their staff teachers. We learned all about the philosophy of the company when they adapt books into movies trying to make faithful adaptations (not literal necessarily). They are the company behind "Holes" and "Because of Winn-Dixie". They try to work with authors as much as possible (in the case of the upcoming movie, they worked with the CS Lewis estate), and have many educators on staff (meaning they would never make a travesty like "The Cat In The Hat"). Every movie they make has an educational piece to it. For the current one, it is how a book gets adapted into a movie. I feel the educator's materials themselves are poorly written, which is unfortunate, because the teacher was so passionate, and the ideas behind each of the activities were so good. We heard quite a bit about the upcoming movie. He pointed out that there is an almost throw-away line in the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe about the kids being sent away because of the war. But that is really a key line, because the book was published in 1950, and it would be a akin to a similar book being published today with a throw-away line about 9/11. To people who lived through the the Blitz, that line is all that is needed to establish what is going on in the book (and therefore make the escapist fantasy so much the richer for being grounded in a very harsh reality). So, the movie will take the first 12 minutes to ground the viewer in the London of that era, making that london as realistic as possible. I think that is a great way to handle the movie. We saw the trailer (which I had already seen), and then three teaching pods about the sets, the direction, and the costumes. All very neat (I now know about cellulose paper snow), and I hope those videos become available for use, because I would love to use them.
Calling![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_strangest: Take a look at the next author's work, trust me
4pm - Helen Frost She blew my mind! She is an incredibly talented poet. She showed us how all of her verse novels are put together, and I have no idea how she is able to do all of that. Her book Keesha's House has all of the teenagers speak in sestinas , while the adults speak in sonnets. She took us through how a sestina works, and it is a sort of circle dance in 39 lines. The first six lines end in different words:
a
b
c
d
e
f
Then, the next stanza loops all the words back on each other, so that the end words of the lines look like this:
f
a
e
b
d
c
This format goes like this for 36 lines, or six stanzas, and then the final stanza is 3 lines and looks like this:
a,d
b,e
c,f
It seems like it would be really difficult to write one sestina, let alone creating a whole narrative book out of them! Her book Spinning Through the Universe is very different. She creates a classroom of children who each write in a different poem style. She has used this book with kids to help them generate their own poetry. But, what is really impressive is her new forthcoming book The Braid. She created a whole new form of poetry for this book, and I am completely blown away by it! It involves two Irish sisters who are separated, and their letters to one another during that time. She studied Celtic knots to come up with this poetry form. Each letter is 43 lines long, and each line has the number of syllables equivalent to the girl's age at the time (starting with 14 syllables). The last word on each line of the first poem becomes the first word on each line of the next poem, and so one braided throughout the book. In between each letter, there is what she calls a "praise poem" which talks about some image from the last letter in 8 lines with 8 syllables on each line. In these, the last line becomes the first line of the next praise poem. That is a hell of a structure to write a novel. Like I said, she blows my mind.
7pm - Cornelia Funke Her talk was on the transformations that an author's work can go through with tranlations, audio book, movies, theatre etc. I have only read her novel Inkheart, and I loved the concept, liked the story, and found the prose a little flat. What is interesting is that she addressed that issue, and now I don't know what to think. She is German, and write her novels in German. She finds English to be a more "singing" language (I wonder if she means singing or lyrical?) and prefers it. As such, she loves to read the English translations of her books, and goes over her translations word by word to make sure that they say what she wants them to say. (She says that there are usually about 20% of the words that she has never seen before.) So, now I don't know what to think about that issue. She thinks that stories are meant to be read out loud, so she thinks that audiobooks are as important as the the written novel. She had a great time with Brendan Frasier (who she almost brought with her as a surprise, but he had to cancel at the last minute) working in the audio of Inkheart. She says that he would sit down with her and run through a ton of voices for each major character until they found one that they both liked. In the Q&A period, I asked her if she could have a character read out of one of her favorite books (read Inkheart if you don't understand) who would it be. She said she would want a dragon, and then Merlin from The Once and Future King. I think my cat Merlin would approve. I had her sign a book for me at the reception, and she drew a picture as well! :)
As I have been writing for over an hour, I will end here and write about Saturday at a later date.
11am This was the first "professional connections" session. I chose to go to Leslea Newman's (author of Heather Has Two Mommies) session called: "The Gender Dance: Books That Challenge Stereotypes." It was okay. Mostly she had a list of books on challenging gender stereotypes and alternative families. And these were largely books I knew, although Pugdog by Andrea U'Ren is great, especially the illustrations. I had her sign a copy of The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, because, how could I not? ;)
1pm - Lynne Rae Perkins with Virginia Duncan After lunch, we got to witness the waltz of author and editor. Lynne Rae and Virginia held a joint session talking about the way they work on books together. It is clear they hold each other in very high regard, and rarely butt heads, rather working together to actually create. I suspect not all author-editor collaborations are so rosy. Virginia will say to Lynne Rae, "I think this might be brilliant, but what are you talking about here?"
2pm - Natalie Babbitt She is a sweet woman. She talked about fantasy, and why she writes for children and about young characters (she wants main characters who are not "blown off course by hormones"). Early in the session, she played a recording of someone playing "Dancing in The Dark" on piano (though she had trouble with her tape recorder, and made some good cracks about her age and technology) and discussed the lyrics. Towards the end, she admitted that she was the one playing on the recording. She said (tongue-in-cheek we all hope) that she didn't think she had stories left to write, and she wants to switch careers to play the piano at Nordstrom's! I had her sign a copy of The Search For Delicious which I actually have not read yet. She was relieved to sign something other than Tuck Everlasting. I told her about my pilfered copy of Knee-Knock Rise in my father's basement (I sort of appropriated it from school in 3rd grade). She was amused. I wish I had thought to bring that to be signed. Ah well.
3pm - Walden Media and Narnia This was a fantastic choice for the second "professional connections" session. The rep from Walden Media was one of their staff teachers. We learned all about the philosophy of the company when they adapt books into movies trying to make faithful adaptations (not literal necessarily). They are the company behind "Holes" and "Because of Winn-Dixie". They try to work with authors as much as possible (in the case of the upcoming movie, they worked with the CS Lewis estate), and have many educators on staff (meaning they would never make a travesty like "The Cat In The Hat"). Every movie they make has an educational piece to it. For the current one, it is how a book gets adapted into a movie. I feel the educator's materials themselves are poorly written, which is unfortunate, because the teacher was so passionate, and the ideas behind each of the activities were so good. We heard quite a bit about the upcoming movie. He pointed out that there is an almost throw-away line in the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe about the kids being sent away because of the war. But that is really a key line, because the book was published in 1950, and it would be a akin to a similar book being published today with a throw-away line about 9/11. To people who lived through the the Blitz, that line is all that is needed to establish what is going on in the book (and therefore make the escapist fantasy so much the richer for being grounded in a very harsh reality). So, the movie will take the first 12 minutes to ground the viewer in the London of that era, making that london as realistic as possible. I think that is a great way to handle the movie. We saw the trailer (which I had already seen), and then three teaching pods about the sets, the direction, and the costumes. All very neat (I now know about cellulose paper snow), and I hope those videos become available for use, because I would love to use them.
Calling
the_strangest: Take a look at the next author's work, trust me4pm - Helen Frost She blew my mind! She is an incredibly talented poet. She showed us how all of her verse novels are put together, and I have no idea how she is able to do all of that. Her book Keesha's House has all of the teenagers speak in sestinas , while the adults speak in sonnets. She took us through how a sestina works, and it is a sort of circle dance in 39 lines. The first six lines end in different words:
a
b
c
d
e
f
Then, the next stanza loops all the words back on each other, so that the end words of the lines look like this:
f
a
e
b
d
c
This format goes like this for 36 lines, or six stanzas, and then the final stanza is 3 lines and looks like this:
a,d
b,e
c,f
It seems like it would be really difficult to write one sestina, let alone creating a whole narrative book out of them! Her book Spinning Through the Universe is very different. She creates a classroom of children who each write in a different poem style. She has used this book with kids to help them generate their own poetry. But, what is really impressive is her new forthcoming book The Braid. She created a whole new form of poetry for this book, and I am completely blown away by it! It involves two Irish sisters who are separated, and their letters to one another during that time. She studied Celtic knots to come up with this poetry form. Each letter is 43 lines long, and each line has the number of syllables equivalent to the girl's age at the time (starting with 14 syllables). The last word on each line of the first poem becomes the first word on each line of the next poem, and so one braided throughout the book. In between each letter, there is what she calls a "praise poem" which talks about some image from the last letter in 8 lines with 8 syllables on each line. In these, the last line becomes the first line of the next praise poem. That is a hell of a structure to write a novel. Like I said, she blows my mind.
7pm - Cornelia Funke Her talk was on the transformations that an author's work can go through with tranlations, audio book, movies, theatre etc. I have only read her novel Inkheart, and I loved the concept, liked the story, and found the prose a little flat. What is interesting is that she addressed that issue, and now I don't know what to think. She is German, and write her novels in German. She finds English to be a more "singing" language (I wonder if she means singing or lyrical?) and prefers it. As such, she loves to read the English translations of her books, and goes over her translations word by word to make sure that they say what she wants them to say. (She says that there are usually about 20% of the words that she has never seen before.) So, now I don't know what to think about that issue. She thinks that stories are meant to be read out loud, so she thinks that audiobooks are as important as the the written novel. She had a great time with Brendan Frasier (who she almost brought with her as a surprise, but he had to cancel at the last minute) working in the audio of Inkheart. She says that he would sit down with her and run through a ton of voices for each major character until they found one that they both liked. In the Q&A period, I asked her if she could have a character read out of one of her favorite books (read Inkheart if you don't understand) who would it be. She said she would want a dragon, and then Merlin from The Once and Future King. I think my cat Merlin would approve. I had her sign a book for me at the reception, and she drew a picture as well! :)
As I have been writing for over an hour, I will end here and write about Saturday at a later date.
