If you’re anything like me, you don’t need much of a nudge to choose books as holiday gifts. I’ll admit it…I am officially “the book aunt.” My nieces and nephews never have trouble guessing their presents, even when I’ve disguised the books by wrapping them in a lumpy package with candy or a nice fleece blanket.

All through the holiday season, I’ll be making book recommendations for like-minded friends, but I get to start of f the season with a bang this year, thanks to Chronicle Books. Chronicle, which publishes my picture books OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW, SEA MONSTER’S FIRST DAY, and SEA MONSTER AND THE BOSSY FISH, just launched its 2013 #GiveBooks campaign, encouraging all of us to become book aunts and uncles, as well as book spouses, book friends, book sisters, and…well..you get the idea. Give books!

The great logo for this project is by Gemma Correll. Click on it, and you can sign Chronicle’s #GiveBooks pledge. For every #GiveBooks tweet, pin, or online signature, Chronicle Books will donate a book to children in need through First Book. The goal is 10,000 books!

The Chronicle folks asked me a fun question: Which ten items from their list would I most like to share as holiday gifts? My list is below…and the best news of all is that you can enter a drawing to win the same amazing stack of books.  Read on to find out how – and click on any book cover to read more about it.

For the Dog Lover in Your Life:

With titles like “DOORBELL!” and “I Lose My Mind When You Leave the House,” I COULD CHEW ON THIS AND OTHER POEMS BY DOGS is the perfect stocking stuffer, a charming and funny collection of poems in the voices of our canine friends. And don’t feel left out, cat lovers…there’s I COULD PEE ON THIS for you.

For Your Favorite Chef:

SIMPLY ORGANIC, A COOKBOOK FOR SUSTAINABLE, SEASONAL, AND LOCAL INGREDIENTS is one of those cookbooks that’s almost too beautiful to use in the kitchen. You’d hate to spill olive oil on it, but then again, Chard and Feta Pie is too delicious to be left between the pages.

For the Word-Nerd:

I am so smitten with A COMPENDIUM OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS (from an Armory of Aardvarks to a Zeal of Zebras) that I’m going to be hard pressed to actually wrap this one up and let it go. It’s rich with fascinating etymologies as well as lovely, lively, illustrations depicting everything from a prettying of doves, to a whoop of gorillas, to an opera of canaries. So. Much. Fun.

For the Tech-Geek on your List:

THE STARTUP PLAYBOOK: SECRETS OF THE FASTEST-GROWING STARTUPS FROM THEIR FOUNDING ENTREPRENEURS is a book that just oozes cool, from its sleek yellow-black-white design to the technology gurus profiled inside. This is a great how’d-they-do-that book that looks behind the scenes at some of the biggest start-up success stories through the eyes of their founders. Kind of like going out for drinks with Chris Anderson of TED and Wired, Caterina Fake of Flickr, Charles Best of DonorsChoose, and all their smartest friends.

I fell in love with the title of THE TOASTER PROJECT: OR A HEROIC ATTEMPT TO BUILD A SIMPLE ELECTRIC APPLIANCE FROM SCRATCH because I have some experience in this area. When the power went out years ago, my son built us a rudimentary toaster out of some batteries and nichrome wire from an old hair dryer. (It was neat but left the bread tasting kind of metallic.) This is a more complicated story because author Thomas Thwaites set out to build a real toaster…really, truly from scratch. That involves things like smelting one’s own metal and more. Fascinating, funny, and so eye opening for those of us who don’t always think too much about our toast.

For the Creative Kids in Your Life:

HOW TO BUILD A HOVERCRAFT: AMAZING DIY SCIENCE PROJECTS is an absolute treasure for kids who are always experimenting. You know…the ones who use up all of your kitchen staples making secret potions while you’re in the other room? They’re going to love this collection of awesome, messy experiments. The projects are fascinating and challenging, the directions are clear and detailed, and the science is explained in a way that shows real respect for young readers.

DOODLES: A REALLY GIANT COLORING AND DOODLING BOOK is just what it sounds like, an oversized invitation to imagine. The doodling challenges in this book go beyond the usual “finish this picture” sketch-starters to get young artists thinking about story and action. This spread, for example, says the two elephants have a problem. What is it? That’s up to the young artist to draw!

Pair DOODLES with a nice set of colored pencils, and you’ve got a winner of a gift.

THE STAR WARS COOKBOOK – ICE SABERS: 30 CHILLED TREATS USING THE FORCE OF YOUR FREEZER is entirely too much fun. I’m not that much of a Star Wars fan, but I still can’t resist the idea of sword fighting with a homemade juice pop.

For Kids Who Love Nature:

I’m a big, big fan of both author Lola Schaefer (writer friend and super nice person) and illustrator Christopher Silas Neal (awesome guy who illustrated my picture book OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW) so I was expecting great things from LIFETIME: THE AMAZING NUMBERS IN ANIMAL LIVES, and I wasn’t disappointed. How many pairs of antlers will a caribou grow and shed in a lifetime? How many flowers will a giant swallowtail visit? These are things I need to know, even if I didn’t realize it until I picked up this gorgeous book.

UNUSUAL CREATURES: A MOSTLY ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF SOME OF EARTH’S STRANGEST ANIMALS is a Messner family favorite. From the Fairy Armadillo to the Yeti Crab, the animal profiles in this book are accessible and truly fascinating. My daughter was particularly enchanted with the hagfish, which produces its own slime as a defense mechanism.

Want to win all these books? We’re going to give away this whole huge pile in a random drawing.

To enter, leave a comment on this blog post with your name and email before midnight EST on November 30th. I’ll contact the winner, and Chronicle will send you a box of bookish awesomeness shortly thereafter, in time for holiday giving, should you decide to share the loot.

Whether or not you win the drawing, Chronicle Books is offering 30% off your entire order (excluding personalized products) and free shipping with a special #GiveBooks promo code. The offer is good through December 31st. Just enter the promo code GIVEBOOKS when you check out. And if your order includes one of my Chronicle picture books, I’d be happy to mail you a signed book plate! Just send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Kate Messner at P.O. Box 1857 – Plattsburgh, NY 12901.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I’m a card-carrying revision geek. My  book for teachers, REAL REVISION: AUTHORS’ STRATEGIES TO SHARE WITH STUDENT WRITERS, features interviews with more than forty authors about how they revise. From time to time, I also like to feature blog interviews on the topic of real revision…the nitty gritty, make-the-book-better strategies that some of my favorite authors use when they’re revising a project.

Today, Ammi-Joan Paquette is here to talk picture book revision with a focus on her brand new book. PETEY AND PRU AND THE HULLABALOO!

Kate: First of all, congratulations on the new book! Tell us a little about PETEY AND PRU – where the idea started and how the text has changed from its first draft to the published book as you revised.

Ammi-Joan: Thanks, Kate! The original inspiration for PETEY AND PRU AND THE HULLABALOO was drawn from my lifelong love of words. I’ve always been the type of person who keeps an “awesome words” page in my notebook/file on my computer. Then one day, a listserv I belong to started swapping and sharing their favorite words—so many of these were ones I loved, too. And seeing them stream by one after the other got me thinking, “What if I could put together these words that are so fabulous to say aloud, so they could form a story?” The idea grew from there.

My original manuscript consisted of just those words I had chosen, strung together in story order, but with the bulk of the work being carried by my italicized art notes in the margin. My editor loved the book idea, but wasn’t sure the words-only approach was the best. With his encouragement, I built an actual narrative story around the words, which I am now so much happier with.

Kate: So what was your biggest challenge in revising this book?

Ammi-Joan: This book was a challenge in that its whole concept was to build a story around words for which kids don’t know the meanings. Put like that, it does seem a bit counterintuitive! But what I tried to do, first in the writing and later in the revising, was to make the story context self-evident enough that the words could be learned just from the story reading. (And, of course, once the story was illustrated by the luminous Joy Ang, the pictures carry a huge part of that load as well.) There is, of course, a glossary in the book—but I really believe that the best way to learn new words is by seeing them in action. And that’s what I tried to do here.

Kate: I think picture books can be tough to revise because they’re so concise. Like me, you write for a wide range of ages. How do you find revising a picture book is different from revising a novel?

Ammi-Joan: With a novel, I think the hardest part of revision is often harnessing the willpower. It’s making yourself sit down and put those words on paper. It’s all about sheer hard work and time and effort. With picture books, the process is more delicate. There is so little space, and so much that has to be taken into account—story arc, character growth, subtext, rhythm, wordfeel, and more. With picture books, the bulk of the work is done in the pre-writing, so I find I need long stretches of just letting the ideas simmer, trying on different solutions, brainstorming, sticking with it. It’s more of a mental than physical process, of putting yourself in the place where lightning will strike and that perfect idea will float right down on your page, the one that will bring your story together just right.

Kate: Will you share a favorite revision strategy when it comes to picture books?

Ammi-Joan: Free-writing and brainstorming is a strategy I find really helpful when I’m stuck on a PB revision. I’ll open a document and start talking to myself about what I need to do in this new draft. I’ll make lists whenever I can, write out the problem in different ways, try out crazy ideas that I don’t even think will work. Because it’s a mental/creative/imagination block often, more than a physical one, anything I can do to stir up my ideas and get the juices flowing helps toward the end result.

Kate: Thanks for joining us to talk revision today! 

I support independent bookstores. If PETEY AND PRU AND THE HULLABALOO is on your must-read or holiday shopping list (and it really should be!) please consider asking for it at your local indie, or check out IndieBound to find a store near you.

It’s been so much fun interacting with classes reading MARTY MCGUIRE for this year’s Global Read Aloud. Students brainstormed some great questions for this week’s Q and A session!

Here’s the brainstorming chart I talked about in this week’s video. Note that “Stuff I like/find interesting” also includes things that scare me, which can be great material for writing. And Place I love/want to visit also includes places that I think would be interesting as settings, even if they’re not places I really love to spend time (like the doctor’s office!).

 

Once I’ve made my lists, I start mixing and matching. What if I wanted to write a story about snakes? I could set that story in a desert…and maybe someone lost in the desert could be bitten by a venomous snake, making it a survival story. Or what if the snake story were set in an airport? What if snakes were being transported from one zoo to another…and what if they escaped in the terminal? That could be a funny story OR a scary story, depending on the approach. The possibilities are really endless, and I’ve found that this is a fun way to come up with ideas that are fresh and unexpected. Give it a try and see what you come up with!

I’ll be back with our final MARTY MCGUIRE Global Read Aloud Video Q and A session next week. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 11/6 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

Classrooms all over the world have been reading MARTY MCGUIRE as part of the Global Read Aloud this moth, and kids are coming up with some terrific questions for our Video Q and A sessions!

Here are a couple links that may be of interest to classes who want to know more about the real people whose names came up in this week’s video.

Mahatma Gandhi

Jane Goodall

And you should also look for this book in your library – it’s one of my favorites!

I’ll post another MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session next Friday. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 10/30 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

This week’s MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session for the Global Read Aloud is up a little early, since I’m traveling starting tomorrow. I’ll be visiting Nashoba Brooks School in Concord, MA for writing workshops on Friday and then heading to Providence to speak & sign books at the Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors. If you live near there, I’d love it if you’d come by the festival to say hello in person!

For now, though… here are your answers to this week’s questions!

One more thing for those who asked about Marty’s teacher. Mrs. Aloi is actually named after a real person, my terrific sister-in-law, Linda Aloi, who teaches in the Rochester, NY area.  Here we are together the week I visited her school last year!

If you’d like to submit a question for next week’s video Q and A session, please leave a comment on this post (not one of the earlier ones…because I won’t find it) by WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23RD.  Later questions may be answered in comments but won’t make the video because I need time to edit & upload. Thanks!!

You’ve all had such terrific questions, and I wish I could do just fly around the world and visit every single one of your classes to talk about Marty some more. But if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to finish the new books I’m working on this fall. Next week, we’ll have another Video Q and A session, though. And teachers…if you’d like your class to have the opportunity to order personalized, signed books after your Global Read Aloud experience, please drop me a note via my contact form, and I’ll send you an order form for my local independent bookstore – I sign there often, and they offer free shipping for orders over $50.

And finally, for the class that wanted to know more about the scene where Marty’s mom uses a noose tool to catch Sparky when he’s escaped in the house…

http://nwco.net/0530-StepThreeNonlethalToolsAndTechniques/5-1-DirectCapture.asp

I’ll post another MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session next Friday. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 10/16 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

It has been a most exciting autumn for Marty McGuire and me. Marty’s first chapter book adventure, MARTY MCGUIRE, was selected as the 2013 Global Read Aloud title for Grades 1-3, which means that classrooms all over the world are sharing her story. This makes my author-heart very, very happy indeed. It also makes my author-email-in-box a very busy place. I’ve been enjoying all the conversations I’m having with classes reading the book, the back-and-forth discussions on Twitter, and the Skype visits.

At this point, my free Skype visit schedule for this fall is mostly full, though, so I wanted to offer something else for classes with whom I may not be able to connect via Skype.

Marty McGuire Video Q and A

Starting today – on this very blog post – classes reading MARTY MCGUIRE as part of the Global Read Aloud can submit questions in the comments section of this blog, and I’ll choose a whole bunch of them to answer in a video that I’ll share the following Friday. We’ll do this until the Global Read Aloud wraps up in mid-November. Sound like fun? I think so!

Note: This post is closed to comments now. To ask a question for Video Q and A, please go to www.katemessner.com/blog and leave your question on the latest Q and A post!

If you’d like to submit a question to be considered for next week’s video, please leave a comment on this post that includes these things:

1. The name of the school & teacher’s name

2. City/State/Country where your school is located

3. Your question!

 

Note: If your comment doesn’t appear right away, don’t worry – and please don’t post it again! I moderate comments, and it takes me a little while to do that when I’m writing. But don’t worry. I’ll find it!

 I won’t be able to answer every question via video, but I’ll sneak in as many as I can and try to answer the rest in blog comment replies, okay? Our first Video Q and A session will be posted on my blog (www.katemessner.com/blog)  on Friday, October 11th!

In the mean time, if your class is enjoying MARTY MCGUIRE, you’ll want to check out Marty’s second adventure, MARTY MCGUIRE DIGS WORMS (available now!) and the forthcoming MARTY MCGUIRE HAS TOO MANY PETS, which comes out this winter from Scholastic.

I’m getting a lot of MARTY MCGUIRE mail these days, since it’s the Grades 1-3 selection for this year’s Global Read Aloud, and I thought it would be fun to share a little news about Marty’s upcoming adventure!

MARTY MCGUIRE HAS TOO MANY PETS!

After visiting a sanctuary for retired lab chimpanzees, Marty wants to follow in the footsteps of her idol Jane Goodall and help with their care. But “adopting a chimp” is expensive, so Marty and her third-grade pals hatch a plan to raise money by holding a talent show at school and opening a pet-sitting business in Marty’s basement. It turns out that each pet has a personality of its own, and wrangling them is much harder than Marty expected. How will Marty keep her latest great idea from going to the dogs?

Kids with an eye for detail will be able to gather some more clues from the cover, especially when it comes to guessing which animals Marty will have as house guests. I only have personal experience pet sitting one of the cover critters…

This is Hermione, the hedgehog my friend Marjorie used to have as a pet. Hermione was indeed a guest at our house while her own family was on vacation a few years ago. She was adorable but prickly in both body and personality, though I think the latter was just a result of missing her usual people.

MARTY MCGUIRE HAS TOO MANY PETS comes out from Scholastic in February. If you know it’s on your books-to-buy list, I’d love it if you’d pre-order through your local independent bookstore.

On a stormy Friday last February, I flew to Ohio for a school visit and the amazing Dublin Literacy Conference. The school visit…well…was one of the quieter ones I’ve had (school was closed for a snow day, so we had to connect via Skype later on) but the conference itself was a whirlwind of bookish enthusiasm. One of the other speakers was Jarrett J. Krosoczka of LUNCH LADY fame, and during one of our breaks, he interviewed me about CAPTURE THE FLAG for his Sirius XM Live Show “The Book Report.”

That show is available online now, along with Jarrett’s interviews with Tomie dePaola, Norton Juster, Grace Lin, Amy Ignatow, and Dav Pilkey. (Fun fact for Dav’s fans… My Scholastic editor for the MARTY MCGUIRE series also edits CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. So they’re like…literary second cousins or something.)

Anyway, you’ll want to check out Jarrett’s Book Report archives, especially if you’re a teacher or librarian. The interviews average around ten minutes each and are great for author studies or just to share along with a read-aloud.