If you are passionate about literacy

Check out Share a Story-Shape a Future, an event that starts today. Librarians, parents, teachers and other interested parties will blog about different ways we can include books and reading in the daily lives of the young people in our lives.

Today, topic is on raising readers, hosted by Terry Doherty @ Scrub-a-Dub-Tub

host: Terry Doherty @ Scrub-a-Dub-Tub

Share a Story-Shape a Future: It all Starts with Raising Readers - Terry Doherty

Finding Time at Home - Tricia Stohr-Hunt @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

Making Time in the Classroom for Read Alouds - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone

Look for the Clues - Tips and Tricks to Uncover and Help a Remedial Reader - Sandra Stiles guest post on Scrub-a-Dub-Tub

It's Bigger than the Book: Building Strong Readers at any Age with a Daily Dose of Read Aloud, an Interview with Cathy Miller, The Literacy Ambassador®

Minding the Gap: Engaging Gifted Readers - Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Book Giveaways - Check out our slideshow with the covers of books our hosts are giving away this week.

Check back everyday this week for more thoughts and tips.

Reward? Bribes? Motivation?

Not that long ago, I was a staunch idealist when it came to work and rewards. I believed that work worth doing, is worth doing on its own. I practice piano, exercise, treat people kindly because each of these is a worthwhile goal in itself. Putting a carrot at the end somehow cheapens both the task and the person.

Predictably, piano students, including one highly successful psychology professor, would complain that I didn't offer tangible rewards for their practicing. Why couldn't I do like other piano teachers and gave gold stars and stickers?

I've mellowed in the last few years. It's an non-ideal world. It's okay to offer rewards at times, even to ourselves.

And boy, am I glad I've made that profession of slackened belief in the rewards system, because I'm salivating over a new bribe, I mean reward system, for myself.

I've had such a great time learning about children's poetry lately from my participation in the Poetry Friday Roundup, I have complied a list of all the poetry collections written or recommended by my Poetry Friday friends that I want to purchase.

So this is what I'll do: for every big task--say finish revising my first novel, or writing X number of scenes for my WIP--I will buy one of these books. Kinda like people who want to establish a workout schedule promising themselves spa treatments and cute running tops if they do a certain amount of exercise (hmmmm, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea...)

Help out the publishing industry, revive the economy, support my Poetry Friday friends, AND get some writing done: not bad, eh?

Poetry Friday

I read a quote this week that exhorts me to seek delight. (Thanks, Kelly!)

Even the sound of the word makes you think of joy and all things wonderful. And I dare you to say the word without feeling your facial muscles lift into a smile. It's a word whose sound and meaning are perfectly combined.

As I paid more attention to my daily comings and goings, I found I am blessed with many delights. I'm delighted to sit in my son's bed and stroke his back before he sleeps. I'm delighted to watch my daughter execute a powerful yet graceful Tae Kwon Do move. I'm delighted by the words I read.

[5 365 Afternoon Delight by spud. Flickr, Creative Commons.]

Another thing that delights me: children's poetry.

The Poetry Friday Roundup has been instrumental in exposing and teaching me about poetry, not to mention allowing me to "meet" real poets in this new world of blogosphere.

Naomi Shihab Nye is one of the first poets I discovered in the PF Roundup. Her book, Come WIth Me: Poems for A Journey (illustrated by Dan Yaccarino), is a collection of deceptively simple poems that create a longing for the things she describes. I don't know about you, but I want experience the quiet minute between two noisy ones, tucked under the wing of the day. (from her poem Come With Me) I wonder why I never thought about whether I would turn or pause at a street corner (When You Come To A Corner). And I most certainly want to be as tall as a riddle and as full as a shadow (Somebody's Story).


Douglas Florian, on the other hand, is someone whose work I knew before PF. I love the whimsy in his art and his words. We have lizards, frogs, and polliwogs and mammalabilia on our shelf at home.

Pick a page, any page, and you'll find something that tickles and delights: the ex-ibex, the gila monster and the glass frog disappearing into their environment (a tree and a composition book), a lynx who thinks it stynx that people wear fur. I have a special fondness of the bear who slumbears. When my daughter was an infant, I got to name her teddy bears. Their names are Patti Le Bear, Eleanor RigBear, and Beary Manilow.

Julie Larios is a regular on Poetry Friday Roundup. Her Imaginary Menagerie: A Book of Curious Creatures (illustrated by Julie Paschkis) has been honored many times, most recently by being a finalist in the Cybils Awards . Each poem deals with a mythical creature found in folklore of different cultures, from Russia to Egypt to the Mekong River. With very few words, she captures the essential myth of each being, and manages to push us to rethink our understanding of these imaginary creatures. The mighty Sphinx who once asked impossible riddles is now silent, Gargoyle who flies when the bells ring. And what would you do if a sea serpeant, ship swallower, calls you friend and invites you to swim with it?

Go enjoy more poem to your hearts' delight at Anastasia Suen's Picture Book of the Day.

Those Creative types: album cover designers

Typical size of a Vinyl LP jacket: 12 x 12 inches
Typical size of a CD jewel case: 5.5 x 5.5 inches
Typical size of an thumbnail on the pages of iTune: 2 x 2 mm, if that

LP jackets offered artists a decent size canvas for their artwork. That, together with the close connection between art and music, and it's no wonder even famous artists have been drawn to designing for album covers: Andy Warhol, for example. Cover album art, in fact, took on a life of its own and you can even find coffee table books on the worst/best/most famous album covers over the years.

But can you imagine the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band shrunk to the size of a CD jewel box?



All the details are lost. We're not even talking about an icon on the iTunes page.

What is a cover album artist to do? Lament? Tear out hair? Start a movement to change the music medium back to Vinyls? Throw his hands up and say he'll get his artistic fix by posting his album cover ideas on a blog?

I am sure some do. But those who need work and can keep an open mind adapt. If you look at the new designs, most of them take on the style of a logo so that they mae a statement as boldly as they can in their diminutive sizes.

E-books, self-publishing, people shifting online in their reading habits: what is a writer to do? Keep abreast of developments in the industry, confusing and chaotic though they may be. Stay open to new possibilities instead of mourning the death of something we know and understand and love. Adapt and survive.

And write, I guess.

Those creative types: Disney Imagineers and The Haunted Mansion

The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorite attractions at Disney World. Its goofy spookiness is pure Disney and pure fun.

When you first step into the ride, you feel as if you're in an old-fashioned foyer. An ominous voice speaks and fun things happen and you can't quite believe your eyes or what your body is feeling. One of those things is that the room appears to stretch on top. It's a memorable event, but one that would not have existed had it not been for some space limitations.

Because of the way the original Disneyland had been set up, with train tracks surrounding the theme park area, new attractions could not expand outward easily. The only way the Imagineers (engineers everywhere else but if you work at Disney you get this cool title) could make Haunted Mansion work, was to take people underground via an elevator to an area outside of the one marked by the railway tracks. This has to be written into the experience, thus the seemingly stretching ceiling when it's actually the elevator lowering.

The effect that resulted from this limitation became such a hit that it was replicated in other Disney Parks that didn't have the same space limitation.

I've done my share of complaining about certain limitations placed on writers, but I also know that when I am given complete free reign: draw a picture of anything I wish, I freeze. Structure, rules: these are good things, because they focus our minds and force us to use our creativity within prescribed boundaries. Who knows, unexpected but excellent work can result.

Those creative types: Bourdain arranging flowers, Ikebana style

This week, I turn my attention to the thoughts and endeavors of creative people in the arts; composers, theme-park engineers, album cover designers sharing their thoughts about the creative process.

The idea came when I caught a snippet of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation on TV a few weeks ago. You may know Bourdain to be the macho, chain-smoking chef who travels around the world sampling foods and pontificating. (The man gets to cook, eat, and write for a living? How jealous am I?)

Anyway, in this episode, he is in Japan, (Kyoto, I think) and he is given a chance to try his hand at arranging flowers and plants, Ikebana style, a style that emphasizes not so much the prettiness of the flowers, but the organic forms and lines of all parts of the plants: stems and twigs as well as flowers; how each element interact with the others; and being mindful of the spaces created between the lines.


It tickled me to see this world-weary, no-nonsense guy stare at the stems placed in front of him, trying to figure out what to do. He is always so sure of his opinions and to see him hesitate in front of some humble cut plants is refreshing. His guide, an expert in Ikebana, encourages him to just pick things up and find out where each plant is "happy." Soon, we see Bourdain muttering about is it happy here? I think I'll put this here, and cut this, and is it happy?

I am not the mystic-prone type writer, I don't sit at the computer waiting for my characters to talk through me and show me what they're going to do each day. But I think there is also an element about a creative process that is outside our control. It may not be a bad idea, at times, to step back from our work, and figure out if it is "happy." This advice is an especially good one for control freaks like me.

I wish you: happy manuscripts.

[CherryBlossomFestival_Japantown_Ikebana_04142008_951by javier.blazquez
CherryBlossomFestival_Japantown_Ikebana_04142008_993by javier.blazquez
Both pictures found on Flickr, Creative Commons.]

Poetry Friday on Pep Talk Week: Optimism

Tenacity, optimism, persistence, hope, resilience: aren't these the best words for when you feel drained of anything that can propel you on the path that you thought you wanted to take?

Optimism
by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree:

Here is the rest of the poem.

Poetry Friday Roundup is at Mommy's Favorite Children's Books this week.

Pep Talk Week: Resilience

Every once in a while, I'd get drawn to the promises of a self-help book and imagine my life improved after following its recommendations. More often than not, I can't even finish reading it. The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte, however, is an exception. This is one that I've read and come back to several times.

When we face seemingly unending and insurmountable obstacles--oh, I don't know, such as trying to get published when the likelihood of that happening is shrinking daily--there is a temptation to give in to hopelessness. Resilience is the trait that prevents that.

Excerpt:

[Resilient people] seem to soar in spite of the hardship and trauma they face. In fact, the most resilient people seek out new and challenging experiences because they've learned that it's only through struggle, through pushing themselves to their limits, that they will expand their horizons.

It's a good thing we don't have to seek out challenges.

...they don't wither when confronted with risky or dangerous situations...have found a system to galvanizing themselves and tackling problems thoughtfully, thoroughly, and energetically.

The authors are cognitive psychologists, so they advocate changing our lives by changing our thinking. They offer resilience tests, examples of thinking traps, and of course, ways to increase our RQ, (you've got it: resilience quotient!)

A couple of ideas that I find most relevant to me as a writer have to do with numbers 5 and 6 of the seven essential skills:

• Putting it in perspective
  
• calming and focusing

Yes, the book is written in the format of standard self-help books, with punchy titles and handy lists. But if you can get pass these distractions, I think the ideas may offer us dreamers and wordmules some tools for banishing negative thoughts that keep us from doing what we do.