What I’m saying is, instead of feeling guilty about not blogging I’m just going to hang this up for a while. I see no need to delete any of the existing content, but I expect to be extremely rare in these parts. You can follow my regular writer website (kurtisscaletta.com) for news on my books and events. If you want to keep up with Byron, send me a message via the “about me” page.

OK, I lied. I do have one apology, which I owe to Chris Rylander, C.A. London, and other authors I really wanted to interview and never did. These are great guys with great books; they would have had much to contribute to my ongoing discussion of books and boys.

My parting advice for writers is, remember that pearls are born of irritation. Your frustration, disappointment, discouragement and annoyance are all part of the process. Without those things, the great books you will write wouldn’t be possible.

WONDER by R. J. Palacio is about a kid with a facial disfigurement who has led a sheltered life and has to brave public school for the first time when he enters middle school. It’s a unique, special book with a very unusual and memorable hero named Auggie Pullman. I expect Auggie will win many hearts, perhaps even melting a few on awards committees.

NEVERSINK is a brilliant fable about battles among birds which seemed (to me, at least) to be a classic from long ago instead of a new novel. Definitely works on many levels… a Swiftian satire set in the Arctic.

THE FOURTH STALL PART II by my NoDak homey Chris Rylander is, I think, a bit faster paced and enjoyable than the first one, which was plenty fast paced and enjoyable, featuring the grade school equivalent of Tony Soprano, at least professionally. He’s more Sam Spade, for his virtues and his voice. I like the “message” of this one, if Chris will forgive me for implying the caper has one.

WE DINE WITH CANNIBALS by C.A. London is the second installment in this Indiana Jones meets the Baudelaire children series, THE ACCIDENTAL ADVENTURES. London does a good job blending action/adventure with deep knowledge of the places he writes about. Having been to the Amazon (the most amazing place I’ve been on many travels) I was eager for the characters to get there — and was amused that the kids found it “dull, dull, dull,” though London proceeds to give a lovely description before the adventure picks up again.

You can get all four of these plus a holiday card with Byron wearing hats. All you have to do is leave a comment by the stroke of midnight, January 1.

A handful of stories in the fall of 1877 concern a sea monster in the Mississippi River. The monster is described as being 65 feet long, with the body of a snake, the head of a dog, and a ten-foot tusk-like bill. It has six legs and the mane of a horse. You can find the stories here, and they’re all quite enjoyable for their descriptions, style, and quality of evidence. I particularly like the one where the reporter avers the certainty of the monster’s existence because it was witnessed by a Methodist minister.

What the monster needs is a name. What would you call this pelican-billed dogsnakehorsefish?

And so, after thirty-odd years, was I reunited with the Moonster space traveler, Matthew Looney. The books are much as I remember them, with breezy and fast-moving prose and whimsical illustrations by Gahan Wilson (Does anybody do the pencil sketch/cartoon style of illustration anymore? I’ve always liked it.) Today I read the first two. Both involve voyages to earth as the Moonsters try to find life on Earth. The world is cleverly imagined and, written in the 1960s, they are representative of an era where interest in the moon was high.

What I liked best in these books is a serious respect for science while making scientific discussion fun and novel. Even though some of the actual scenario is a stretch (a people who have mastered space travel but are mystified by water, and the pert explanation that people of the Moon simply can understand every language in the universe for no reason), it’s a great way to get kids thinking critically about things — what life would be like on the moon, how a person from the moon would see things — and I particularly like the message that science isn’t about knowledge, but inquiry. Matthew is the hero of the first book not because he learns anything, but because he asks the right questions. In the second book we see the exhausting stubbornness of scientists who insist on making facts fit their paradigm, but they do eventually face the facts. So Jerome Beatty must have had a background in science, enough to be both respectful of the tenants but able to lampoon (warmly, I think) the culture.

Why haven’t these books stood the test of time? Why are they out of print? I see few books as nicely imagined and as accessible as these.  They are quick reads but have great discussion fodder. I just don’t see many kids books like these any more, that are both scientific and whimsical. It’s true the books have a 1950s mentality about family life and women (the mothers cook and complain, the men have all the fun). It’s also true that having mastered the moon (which happened mid-series and is the subject of the third book), perhaps readers lost fanciful interest in the subject.

But for a few hours, I was a kid again. I miss books like these. I wish I could write them.

* My chapter book series for Topps is now visible in various places on the web. Writing a series vs. stand-alone books and writing for younger readers was a real learning experience, but I discovered I like both and I can’t wait to see these books in their final form, with great illustrations by Eric Wight and collectible cards in each book.

* My robot book is waiting in the wings for my attention, and I’m excited to get back to it. I’ve discovered that robots are suddenly a minor trend in middle grade, with lots of new or forthcoming books involving robots, even robots made by kids. I insist upon verisimilitude in all my books– I won’t just have the robots do anything because I say so; I need to believe they could be made by bright children with the tools and materials at their disposable. I hope that makes my robot book stand out.

* I learned a lot about middle grade fiction by teaching it. It made me think through what makes children’s novels memorable or important to me, and more planful about what I’m doing as I write. I learned a lot from my students, too — they brought a lot of creativity and savvy to our class discussions. I’m flattered that such a talented group felt they could learn from me, and hope they did.

* I’ve been reading more picture books because of Byron. I toyed with the idea of  writing them, but realized after trying and failing that this is really an alien genre for me. I don’t know why picture books are lumped in casually with books for older kids. Thinking I could write picture books as a branch off of middle grade is like a professional baseball player thinking he can take up golf at the same level. Yes, they both involve swinging at little white balls with sticks, but they have nothing else in common. What I’ve learned about a well-done picture book — Phyllis Root has become our favorite PB author, and I love one I saw Stephen Shaskan read yesterday, A Dog is a Dog — is that they are less about the “story” and more about the reading experience between the reader and the listener. They seem to have more to do with theater or music than the kinds of books I’ve studied and written. They’re meant to be a performance. The book is a script. I have zero ideas for that kind of thing. When I’ve tried picture books I find myself trying to write a novel in a few hundred words. But I admire Root and Shaskan and other picture book authors for their vision for how a book will bring a parent and a child together in this great experience of reading a book aloud.

* I’ve been listening to Game of Thrones on my daily drive. It’s been fun, and I think there are good writerly takeaways from George R.R. Martin. Every character wants something, like some conventional wisdom dictates. A sense of injustice courses through the book, motivating the reader to keep turning the pages, hoping justice will come to those believably bad characters who deserve comeuppance (perhaps it never will). I think this sense of justice drives a lot of children’s books, too. Children like to see stories affirm the basic values of fairness and see evil-doers get what’s coming to them. Yet, I’ve never really had a “bad guy,” in a book, as my characters face other challenges. Perhaps one day I shall.

* Perhaps the most important realization this hurricane season is that I can’t write in the evenings, and shouldn’t. I need to enjoy my little hurricane while I can. I’ve become a morning writer, up around five and putting in a hundred words or so before I go to work. Maybe that’s why coffee is a major plot element in one of my chapter books.

As an author, it’s a kick in my stomach every time I see numbers that are measurable by man. Nothing but “Sorry, that book is selling so well we can’t process it…” would satisfy me. The truth can be… er, grounding, to say the least.

I wonder how any author can survive the magnitude of information available to us. Amazon and GoodReads reviews allow us to hover around actual readers while they read — many post updates as they plow through it. If they’re reading your book on a Kindle and highlighting, you can find out what they highlighted. The distance between author and reader isn’t just getting smaller, it’s disappearing. In a seemingly disconnected trend, authors invite readers to send pictures of new books “in the wild”, as they appear on bookshelves. So we can see our books before they’re bought, and we can monitor the readers afterwards…. I guess using Google Earth we could even follow the reader home from the bookstore…  OK, not really. But I’ll bet if we could, we would.

WHY ARE YOU STOPPING FOR COFFEE?? OK, FINE BUT… NO! DON’T PICK UP THE ONION! YOU HAVE A BOOK RIGHT THERE YOU CAN READ WHILE YOU’RE WAITING! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?

Some of my writer friends say they don’t check sales data or read the customer reviews, but I can’t stop myself. I want to know how the book is doing. I wrote the books so people would buy and read them, after all. But I understand that you have to let go of the book, like a child heading off to college. There’s nothing more  I can do, I have to tell myself. If I raised that book right, it’ll make its way and be all right. I’m struggling with that, and my publisher doesn’t want to help by setting up a web-cam in the college dorm of my books’ success. NOTE: They mean well.

On the flip side, you don’t need to worry about Byron. He’ll head off to college in the battered hand-me-down jet car, unpack by himself, and tell his new roomie: My dad? Nah, he didn’t come to help. He couldn’t tear himself away from that new app that lets him watch the readers’ eyes while they read his ebook.

I’m sure it has developmental significance, this love for head wear, the constant donning and doffing of hats, the repetition of the word.

I wonder what the next thing will be that he pulls out of his hat.

The rest of you will need to buy it, download it, or head to the library. Believe me, it’s worth it.