Just Because I Can.

Sally was not allowed to go out at night.
"It's dark. You'll step in dog poo," said Dad.
"The meanies will get you!" said Momma.
"Shhhh," said Grandma. "Wait till later."
When it was dark, and Sally was supposed to be in bed, Grandma took her walking stick from the umbrella stand. She took her old woolly cardigan with the patched elbows that had belonged to Grandpa Gene.
"You put on your jacket and lace up your shoes now, and we'll go."
And they did.
"Hello," they said to a young man with a spray can. He took off running.
They peeked in the window at the baker. He wasn't up yet. He was at home writing a novel almost as bad as this story. "Don't give up your night job." his friends would say.
"Oh look, a flying sofa!" said Gramma, and there it was, with a spotted chicken on it.

Rules, rules, rules.

I'm thinking about two things today: one is, the derth of SWISS children's literature.
I was looking for a copy of The Swiss Family Robinson. This was written by a Bernese man, Johann David Wyss, in German, so the logical thing would be to read the original. A quick look on Amazon revealed that though there are countless editions of The Swiss Family Robinson available, both in and out of print, Der schweizerische Robinson is out of print, and expensive to get second hand.
I guess this is no real surprise. America and the English speaking world in general are just so huge. They do things on massive scales simply out of Switzerland's league. But all the same it makes me sad. Swiss publishers just can't keep such a huge back-catalogue, I guess, and keep all those books in print. But even the current stuff. How big of a children's book industry is there really, in Switzerland? Does the Nord-Süd Verlag have as much of a monopoly on picture books in German-speaking Switzerland as it seems? Does one have to play by there rules to get a picture book published in Switzerland? And write something as trite and didactic as Marcus Pfister's Regenbogenfisch? If the only hope of German-speaking Swiss authors is to either do that or submit in Germany or learn another language and submit in another market, this is sad...

Now, the other thing that bugs me is the current moratorium against anthropomorphism. There is a magazine, not just of children's stories, but of children's stories, written by kids no older than 13. Stone Soup has sample issues available online, so of course, I was curious. The first two stories both feature animals- in the first story, Flynn by Hugh Cole, the animal, a dog, can talk. Now most of these stories are by children around age 10-13. And I just can't help but wonder; is it really the kids who don't like anthropomorphised characters? Or is this just another rule imposed by some powerful cynics in the big leather chairs at the top of the kidlit pyramid? Diary of a Worm, Click Clack Moo, and the Olivia series along with a gazillion others prove that kids do like these stories. If I thought that anyone was actually reading this blog I would get you a list of kidlit houses and imprints that specifically say "no animal characters, please" and look up references in all my books saying "publishers hate anthropomorphic characters." Complain in the comments if you care. Otherwise, I'll just ignore yet another arbitrary rule and write what I need to write. Man am I grumpy today... Sorry.

New Doors? Also, a bit of a yes....

So, what's new.
I think I'm getting spoiled. I keep reading books and sometimes afterwards I sit up and say, 'well, that was fun.' Or 'that was disappointing.' 'Cute.' 'Not quite there, should have done another rewrite,' is another common one.
I am thinking about how long it's been since I read a book and sat up and said, 'Yes. Yes yes yes!' And I'm wondering if I've just been reading all the wrong books, or if there really is a dearth at the moment.
I just read Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and then The Graveyard. I think that's as close as I've come in a long time. I like it that Gaiman's not afraid to be creepy- the button eyes in Coraline certainly qualify. And I like his characters. They had of course much more chance to develop in The Graveyard, and there were many more of them. I thought the owner of the pawn shop where Bod tried to sell the brooch was really creepy. I liked Scarlet- and yes, I spotted Mr. Frost, but I loved him anyway, well, as a character. Wouldn't want to eat dinner with him.
I don't think Gaiman made it clear enough what the Jacks were up to; I can't see that what they were defending was worth all the effort- actually, I'm having trouble figuring out what they were defending at all. Or some how even what they were. I don't mean we need an explanation for everything, but these holy wars are apparently being fought on a large scale, and over thousands of years, if there are that many Jacks around (or were.)
Is it just the five (now four) 'good guys' that are fighting? Silas, Miss Lupescue (probably spelled that wrong) the Mummy and whatsit? Did there used to be more? Against how many Jacks? How did the Jacks get started? Perhaps it will click when I re-read. In the meantime, I give Coraline and The Graveyard both a slightly qualified 'yes.'

And the rest of the world? I am attempting to join a new critique group. I know that a good critique group can be helpful. I know this because in my last group, there were some people who really had insights and made my work better (and beat me over the head with sticks until I stopped resisting :o)
I'm a little bit concerned now, because even though I told the woman who set up the group that I would like to exchange manuscripts *and* critiques before we started, we only sort of did that half way, and I think it may have been a mistake. There is a person in the group who critiques by telling other people how to write their stuff. I tried to point this out (in my usual extremely tactful fashion, ha ha.) and she got pretty angry. She says otherwise the critiques are wishy washy, vague, useless... I explained how "I think you should have your character pour a bucket of paint on the cat" is not the same as "Your character needs to do something much naughtier in order for the parents to punish her like that, otherwise the parents seem cruel and draconian." And why I thought the latter would be much more productive, and also how wrong I would feel about using an idea that isn't mine anyway, but I didn't get a lot of response from anyone.
We'll see how this group continues. The other two women seem cool. I just have the feeling that the critter from hell, let's call her, has some other agenda, and keeps trying to pull the group in a direction that suits her (like subbing every week, or this arbitrary 4 day turn around time.. don't remember discussing that. must have been in the fine print...) but don't necessarily suit anyone else in the group.

So. Now, after three years in my local scbwi chapter we are actually about to have our first meeting. Another person in the group has expressed interest in forming a critique group. I'm not sure how many writers there are- I have the impression that most are illustrators, but we'll see what comes of it. If there are enough writers to form a critique group in theory, it will still be a question of whether or not we are suited as to level of experience and development, level of, well, dare I say it, intelligence, style, and not least, temperament.

Wish me luck, Bloglanders.

Gender and Race in Kidlit

I've been thinking about gender and race in kidlit. I was reading another blog about the lack of diverse race in some genres (notably sci fi, apparently) and thinking about my own writing. Another blogger posted about race in writing, and about having the courage, if you are "white," to write about other races and possibly screw it up, but do it anyway.
I was thinking about my own writing and how I may be (inadvertantly) contributing to the problem. What I'm saying is that none of my major human characters is anything but white. This does not stem from a desire to have a "white" world, at all. This stems from my deep fear that if I tried to put minority characters in my stories, that they would wind up "white" with dark skin. And that I will be blamed for getting it wrong. Is this enough excuse? Should I do it anyway? I am not interested in writing books about race. But even if the book is about pffffffff..... say, eggbeaters, why can't some of the characters be other races besides white? Well, they are, but only minor characters. I'm still thinking about this.

To be honest, part of the problem that the majority of characters being "white" seems to be the distribution of authors. No one complains that Toni Morrison and Alice Walker write almost entirely using African American characters. And duh, why should they? It seem to me, the world needs more writers that aren't white. Yes, yes, the rest of us should also try to reflect the races of the world more accurately, but some of us are chicken. I feel like the pressure to do that perfectly if I do it at all is more than I can cope with.

But what about gender in picture books? Is male still the 'unmarked' gender? I realise that my default setting for anthropomorphic characters is male. So male equals neuter? Something like that. But this won't change unless we allow some of our characters to be marked for a while, until there is enough of a mix for long enough that it becomes normal.

Hmmmm... This post has come out a bit jumbled. I am going to have to think about this a bit more...