Upcoming Book Launches

BOOK LAUNCHES TO CELEBRATE

Come help me CELEBRATE the release of my debut novel for middle-grade readers, CHASING AT THE SURFACE, out on October 4, from WestWinds Press. After her mother unexpectedly leaves home, twelve-year old Marisa struggles with her feelings of loss and abandonment just as a pod of nineteen orca whales―mothers with their new calves following a run of chum salmon―become trapped in the enclosed inlet near her Northwest home. Marisa’s journey to help the whales find their way home brings her to a new understanding of the assaults humans have had on nature, and the complicated meaning of family and home. 

Sharon Mentyka is a children’s writer, designer and educator, with an MFA in Writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts (NILA) Whidbey Writers Workshop. Her stories and essays, for both children and adults, have appeared in numerous literary magazines including ColumbiaKids, Cricket and Soundings Review. B IN THE WORLD, an illustrated children’s chapter book about a gender non-conforming child was published in 2014. CHASING AT THE SURFACE, a middle grade novel inspired by a 30-day visit of orca whales to an enclosed inlet in the Pacific Northwest.

When: October 13, 4:00 pm 

Where:Village Books, Bellingham, WA

                        

When:  October 20 and 21, 5:00 pm 

Where: Griffin Bay Books, Friday Harbor, WA

When:  October 25, 7:00 pm 

Where: University Bookstore, Seattle, WA

Dan Richards teams up with celebrated artist, Jeff Newman, to share a funny and vibrant picture book about how powerful a child's imagination can be with a little encouragement. Evan asks a simple question, Can one balloon make an elephant fly? At first, his mother is too busy to answer. But when she takes the time to play the game with her son, magic happens.

When: Saturday, October 8, 6:30-9pm

Where: Third Place Books

              17171 Bothell Way NE, #A101

               Lake Forest Park WA 98155

Would love to see you there!

Dan Richards

www.danrichardsbooks.com

www.facebook.com/DanRichardsPage

When Paxton C. Heymeyer’s babysitter tells him to say the magic word, she could never have imagined that what would happen next would be a walrus running after her, an elephant in the living room playing cards, and a full water park and moat in the front yard. And that’s just the beginning…

From the brilliant mind of Mac Barnett and illustrated by rising star Elise Parlsey, comes this wildly clever cautionary tale of what the magic word really is.

Come join us for an evening with one of the most versatile, prolific, and awarded people currently working in kid lit today. See his book list below and marvel at the diversity and scope!

When: Thursday, October 13, 7:00pm

Where: Secret Garden Books

              2214 NW Market St

              Seattle, WA 98107

Riots over the medical use of cadavers. Public access to institutions for the insane. And full-blown surgeries without the aid of anesthetics or painkillers. Welcome to the middle ages of American medicine. Bleed, Blister, Puke, and Purge exposes the extraordinary practices and major players of American medical history, from the colonial era to the late 1800s. It's hard to believe that today's cutting-edge medicine originated from such crude beginnings, but this book reminds us to be grateful for today's medical care, while also raising the question: what current medical techniques will be the horrors of tomorrow?

When: Tuesday October 25, 7:00 pm

Where: Third Place Books

              17171 Bothell Way NE, #A101

              Lake Forest Park WA 98155

CONFERENCE 2013: Mac Barnett- Very Practical Lessons from Very Good PBs

Mac Barnett spoke to an over-flowing room of conference attendees on taking very practical lessons from very good picture books. Mac read several picture books and then went through why they worked and what we can learn from them.

He made it very clear that picture books are a form and not a genre. They are a visual way of telling a story. 

Part of his job as a writer (and our jobs as storytellers) is to read. To be aware of current stories, while also learning from classics and those books we grew up with as children.

Here's a snippet of one of the lessons learned from a very good PB:

THE THREE ROBBERS by Tommy Ungerer

Building in PAGE TURNS (one of the most important things). It's the way you get movement, suspense, move time, reverse, set up expectation, can totally reverse course of story, everything can change, can set up a joke in text (follow with illustration as punch line).

Other PB books we discussed:

IT'S USEFUL TO HAVE A DUCK by Isol (Groundwood Books)

HENRY'S AWFUL MISTAKE by Robert Quackenbush

THE BRAVEST KNIGHT by Mercer Mayer

Questions to ask yourself as you read, write and create:

Always be thinking- How these books get made and how do they get used?

What's the relationship between text and image? (This is the most important thing about picture books and why they work).

Always have to be thinking about the form.

art by Dana Sullivan

CONFERENCE 2013: Keynote Speaker Mac Barnett

An Evening with Mac Barnett & Van Halen* (Lineup Not Final)

Author Mac Barnett was the first keynote speaker at the 22nd Annual SCBWI WWA Conference. He started off by stating that technically it was morning, and that Van Halen was unavailable. But Mac Barnett didn't need Van Halen. His humor, stories, and passion for creating wonder for kids made him the rock star this morning.

Mac shared his passion for picture books, tales from his camp counselor days, messages left for whales, and about 826 (a SUPER cool place to check out...we have one in Seattle!). You can find out more information about Mac Barnett on his website (I'm a total fan now!).

A few thoughts to take ponder:
Kids are ideal fiction readers because they get into that place of wonder.

It's our job as storytellers to get to create that place of wonder.

As a writer/illustrator-You need to deliver on your promise/bargains of creating a place of wonder for your readers. If you don’t deliver it disappoints them as readers.

Break the 4th wall. Find ways to make the fictional world break out into the real world.

Conference Sneak Peek: Mac Barnett

Mac Barnett

Click on writer Mac Barnett's Wikipedia page, and you're literally inundated with a list of pubications that will make your eyes cross. This is one prolific guy! The Oakland, California resident is the proud recipient of the 2013 Caldecott Honor for his picture book, Extra Yarn (with illustrations by John Klassen), a book which also received the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Picture Books. If that isn't impressive enough already, Mac has penned the Brixton Brothers series, and is anticipating the publication of his latest picture book, Count the Monkeys (with illustrations by Kevin Cornell). For more information on Mac's numerous other publications, check out his website. In a 2010 interview with School Library Journal's blog, Mac shows his zany side, as well as his love of creating books for kids. Oh, and he reveals his multiple connections to The Stinky Cheese Man and––get this!––that he was a children's book cover model!

SCBWI LA conference faculty interview: Mac Barnett!

Here's the first in a series of posts designed to make you want to go to the SCBWI conference in L.A., where you'll meet and mingle with lots of industry stars. One of my favorites is Mac Barnett—and not just because he knows how to rock a five o'clock shadow better than that guy from Wham.

It's been said (just now, by me) that Mac is a picture book psychic, anticipating Twitter and its "fail whale" with his debut, BILLY TWITTERS AND HIS BLUE WHALE PROBLEM.

*** Spoiler alert ***

The problem is NOT that Billy Twitters has no business model. Nor is it that he didn't invest in a large enough server farm. Also, it's not the inexplicable popularity of Justin Bieber.  Actually, maybe it is.

*** End spoiler alert ***

In GUESS AGAIN, Mac realized that my own children have a Grandpa Ned and needed to give him a really good present for his birthday. It's un-freaking-canny.

Finally, there's there's OH NO! I say this every day! (Learn more about the book from illustrator Dan Santat's blog.)

But Mac is not only a picture book author/psychic. He's also written the first books in the middle grade Brixton Brothers mystery series, and he's just released the bizarre and entertaining THE CLOCK WITHOUT A FACE, in which real gems have been hidden in mysterious locations around the country for readers much smarter than I to find them. (I read the book and it made me hungry for frosted pink donuts, which I did manage to track down. Hooray!)

Finally, Mac is a professional foot model. Or he has a pulchritizing fungus. Watch:



I was lucky enough to interview Mac, and I even embedded the clues to the location of a priceless gem in my questions. Will Mac figure it out? Read on!

Mac, I’ve hidden a priceless gem somewhere in this interview. 

Oh, one of these treasure-hunt gimmicks. I hear everyone is doing one of those.

Your website says you’re a writer and strongman for hire. How much can you lift and what are your rates?

Back in high school I owned a weight bench but I never really used it. I can tell you from recent experience that I can lift an almost-new weight bench to the curb for a bulky trash pickup. That was for free, but only because my mom has been hounding me for years about coming and getting the thing out from behind her house. Normally my rates are outrageous.

You were No. 2 on the Time Magazine list for best children’s books in 2009. Do you have anything to say to Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the author of the book that beat yours? Oddly, Jon Scieszka and ROBOT ZOT didn't even make the list. Does that make you feel sort of guilty?

Just a couple weeks ago Jon picked up the Irma Black Award for ROBOT ZOT. BILLY TWITTERS AND HIS BLUE WHALE PROBLEM was an Irma Black Honor. So he flashes around his gold certificate whenever we hang out, and I can tell he feels just fine. As for TIME Magazine, well, second place can be all right: The other night I won second place in a beauty contest, and I collected ten dollars! This concludes the "Monopoly Joke" segment of this interview.

Wow! $10! And they say there's no money in children's books. You founded a store called Echo Park Time Travel Mart. What is your refund policy?

Refunds are made up 90 days before the date of purchase.

So, uh, Adam Rex. Do you guys have slumber parties or what?

I had a slumber party with Adam Rex a few days ago at a Double Tree in New Jersey! We were touring together and we were booked in a two-room suite, except one room just had a microwave and tiny couch, and the other room had both beds, which I don't think was really the intention. But we popped some popcorn and rented Grease and both of us stayed way past our bedtimes!

OK, where did I hide the priceless gem?

Martha, you're a priceless gem for interviewing me on this blog! That "you're" was supposed to be italicized for extra mawkishness but my email program hasn't been italicizing anything lately.

Nope! GUESS AGAIN! Thanks for playing. Sorry about your italics, and see you in L.A! (You can register here for the conference.)