Reading Life

Just finished Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser. The story is compelling. It's a challenge to write about violence in the schools, especially gun violence, especially after so many instances of school shootings. Even the way it's told (short snippets of either written or oral interviews from various perspectives) wasn't a distraction. As a matter of fact, I think this sort of distancing from the main characters (in this case, the "shooters") helps tell the hard story. My concern is that the story is weakened by the obvious anti-gun sentiment as expressed in the footnotes. Sure, the studies have shown all this stuff that is quoted in articles and books, but it seems skewed to me. That a shooter trained for a summer with the Boy Scouts how to shoot targets then ends up pointing that weapon at humans later is factual, but where are the countless other stories untold of the many more thousands of Boy Scouts who go through the same training, have access to guns, and don't kill with them? It is not in the access and ownership where the problem lies, nor in the production and importing of said weapons, but in the person. True, no amount of training will help a kid not point it at another human with ill will when he's aiming to anyway. Same as with sex ed: no matter how much we tell kids about unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and how to prevent them, girls still get pregnant, boys get girls pregnant, and STDs are passed from one to another. I'm not saying there aren't things we can do to keep school shootings from happening, but there has to be more than saying guns are bad.

Valentine's Day Book Sale

The Friends of the Library in Lubbock have done it again, they've sponsored another successful book sale. This one on Saturday, Feb. 14. Doors opened at 9AM. My wife and youngest boy were there at 8:30 and Lukas and I went to church to pray with some of the men. Then I dropped Lukas off at around 10:10, and a friend and I went to dump an upright piano we'd found for free at a garage sale. It was fun to see the huge front loader take it up and drop it, mostly in pieces now, into the oversized bin. Then I set out to meet the family at the book sale at Mahon. Here's a list of what I got (I'm not even going to try to list even a quarter of what my wife and boys got):

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman (pbk)
Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser (pbk)
Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales, edited by Deborah Noyes (hdbk)
The Truth or Something by Jeanne Willis (hdbk)
American Eyes: New Asian-American Short Stories for Young Adults, edited by Lori M. Carlson (hdbk)
Sky by Roderick Townley (hdbk)
Claws by Will Weaver (hdbk)
Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Humble ISD's Teen Lit Fest '09: Expression!

Okay, as if it wasn't just about the coolest hanging out with Terry Trueman, Sonya Sones, Gail Giles, Neal Shusterman, Deb Caletti, Judson Roberts, and Cortnee Howard, throw in some very cool and hip middle and high school librarians (from Texas! Whooeee!), an auditorium full of young adult readers, and you've got yourself a party. And cooler yet: each author was assigned one of the district's school mascots (I walked alongside a colt and a mustang), then we did a panel Q&A session first thing: a modified Inside the Actor's Studio, where we were asked various questions and each of us gave our answers: questions were student-supplied. Then we went our separate ways to our break out sessions. Like I've done before, my breakout session was sitting side by side with Terry Trueman, entertaining student questions. He's the funny man, to my straightman bit. And he is hilarious! At least this time he didn't spill his bottle of water on me. Three sessions like that, then a signing, and a great dinner. Great conversation on top of that later that evening, and getting to read Sonya Sones' Stop Pretending on my flight home: not a bad way to end an already fantastic weekend! (An aside: next time you see Sonya, ask her to tell the story about her pen; what a find!)

Be There or Be Square!

Texas Tech University's Fifth Annual College of Education Literature Festival is quickly approaching: Feb. 29. Some very awesome authors are coming to visit with our students: Monica Brown, Amjed Qamar, and Dana Reinhardt. For more details: http://www.educ.ttu.edu/edll/fifthliteraturefestival/

Jingle Bells, Ha ha ha!

I'm loving Christmas season this year because Lukas and Mikah (especially) have taken to singing Christmas songs: I'll see if after the holidays I can figure out how to upload voice recordings, or I'll put it all together with pictures in a photo story bit. It's awesome!

To you and yours: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 2009!

NCTE/ALAN 2008

This year's NCTE convention's taking place this week and weekend in San Antonio TX, and it's going to be quite a show. I'm looking forward to meeting up with Linda Sue Park (Keeping Score & Tap Dancing on the Roof), Terry Trueman (Hurricane), Matt de la Peña (Mexican WhiteBoy), Lyn Miller-Lachman (get you an ARC of her up-coming Gringolandia), the Byrds of Cinco Puntos Press, the many folks at Arte Público, Adrienne W. and Tracy L. at Random House, Catharine S. at S&S, Diana Lopez (who's there with Little, Brown pushing her up-coming YA novel, Confetti Girl (due out in June of 2009--if there are copies of the ARC available, snag one, it's a great book)), Don Gallo and C.J. Bott (C.J. and I are talking about how to promote more widely her monthly chatroom author talks (open to teachers, librarian, students, and anyone else willing to read a book, meet in the chatroom the week prior to chatting with the author, to sort of do a pre-talk), my wonderful and most bestest of the best editor, Wendy Lamb, and a slue of other folks. I can't wait. The members of NCTE's Standing Committee Against Censorship, too, will be there.

As for my schedule, if you want to come hang out at a couple of presentations and panels, here it is:

Friday, November 21: 11AM-12.15PM (213A/HBG Convention Center, Concourse Level): Against the Ropes: a conversation with latino authors about books for reluctant adolescent readers (with Diane Bertrand and Ray Villarreal)

Saturday, November 22: 8AM-9.15AM (006D/HBG Convention Center, River Level): The Right to Write: authors on writing outside their culture (with Linda Sue Park, Lyn Miller-Lachman, and Terry Trueman)

Saturday, November 22: 1PM-2PM (Random House Children's, Booth #313): I'll be signing copies of my books, specifically the very recent paperback release of my third title, The Whole Sky Full of Stars)

Monday, November 24: 9.10AM-9.45AM (Marriot Rivercenter/Salon E/3rd Floor, 101 Bowie St): ALAN Workshop Panel: Family and Culture in Young Adult Literature (with Sheila Moses and Padma Venkatraman, Holly Atkins to moderate)

Come enjoy.

Writing: My Next Work

Hey, here's an image of the cover-in-progress of my next book (The Case of the Pen Gone Missing: A Mickey Rangel Mystery), being published in the spring of 2009 by Arte Público/Piñata Books, the first of three in my chapterbook-length detective/mystery series. It's an awesome cover now, I can only imagine what it'll look like when Giovanni Mora, the artist, finishes with the coloring. Something else cool about the book, AP/PB is having it translated into Spanish; what's cooler is that they'll release it as a two-books-in-one, like Bertrand's Upsidedown and Backwards, in which you get the English version from page one to the middle of the book, and if you turn it, literally, upsidedown and backwards, you get the Spanish from pagina una to the middle, where English and Spanish meet. Cool concept.

NOTE: you'll have to trust me that the cover is awesome! I just got a reject trying to upload the thing: either a corrupt file or in an unrecognizable format.