last of the month

I didn't post here yesterday, but Friday's Instagram topic was Soft.

So I took this picture of one of our horses. Horse lips. They are very soft.

Today's topic on Instagram was Friend. So I posted this picture of my friend Amy, author A.S. King, who is a terrific person, a top-notch ninja of kindness, and a freaking amazing writer.

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on the shelf

I am going to come back to that topic of The Why Chromosome and how it relates to a bigger concept of language and our interpretations of reality very soon.

But now I am getting back into post-ALA work mode. Long conference days with lots of meetings, appearances, and obligations have an effect on work like iron shavings in a gearbox.

Yesterday, I was happy to accept audiobook offers on my three most-recent works: Stick, Passenger, and Winger.

This should be very interesting. Stick is about a kid who hears things differently, so the words are spaced out and sometimes crammed against one another. I never thought about making an audio version of the book and how that would translate.

Winger (May, 2013) has cartoons, charts, play scripts, notes on index cards, graphs, and other drawings right in the middle of the text. That should prove interesting in an audio translation as well.

I am very happy to see Passenger (October 2, 2012) coming to audio because the company producing the work is the same one that produced The Marbury Lens, which was named one of the Top Ten Audiobooks for 2011. So I am really hoping we get to use the same actor, Mark Boyett, who did such an amazing job handling a very difficult narration.

And although I didn't post on my blog yesterday, I did take a picture for Instagram. Yesterday's topic was Bathroom.

Um.

So, a couple months ago I was in a public men's room, and I saw that somebody had left a small cup of urine on top of one of the urinals.

Who the hell does shit like that?

Also, it's kind of creepy taking a picture inside a public urinal. I mean, what if somebody walked in, and, I'm, like, Oh, don't mind me, I'm just taking a picture of a small cup of piss someone left on top of this urinal...

Anyway, this is the picture:

Today's topic on Instagram was On The Shelf.

I have lots of shelves in my house, and lots of things on them. Here are a few things on my shelf:

This is a Chacmool (which was used by the Mayans for human sacrifices), Ganesha, a horse, Buddha, and a small elephant carved from a Tiger's Eye stone.

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again - the why chromosome

So, Let me put this a little in context.

Last Friday, a group of us guy authors spoke at ALA about guys and writing and guys and reading.

It was fun.

Here's one thing that struck me: Jon Scieszka showed a graph that was about ten years old or so that illustrated the achievement gap in reading at various grade levels between boys and girls. I do not have the graph, but in my artist's memory, I can recreate the essence to look something like this:

Graphs are fine, and data can tell you pretty much whatever you set out to prove, but what I've always been interested in (and this is the essence of the clever titles of these posts) is WHY.

Why does this happen?

Modern research (since 2010) into neuro/physiological development of the brain in girls and boys shows that although girls' brains develop language processing abilities a little sooner than boys, by grade six there is no longer any difference.

What happens, then, is more message driven, sociological, and cultural.

So I asked if people in the audience remembered this:

The infamous talking Barbie doll.

The message we were giving girls, expressed in all forms and manners but highlighted by Mattel's postmodern icon was that girls were SUPPOSED to be good at certain things (like having freakish physical dimensions) and SUPPOSED to be terrible at others (like academics, sports, and so on).

Once we got rid of those prevailing assumptions, girls began to catch up in a broad range of fields in which they had been lagging behind.

Now, since the 1990s, for whatever reasons, we've been TELLING boys that they can't read and that they shouldn't enjoy reading or writing because they suck at it.

One academic study from 2011 suggests a commercial motive behind this more than 20-year-old campaign.

We tell boys this:

First off, as I pointed out on Friday, let me say this: Whereas Barbie made an awful lot of girls feel that there was something WRONG with them, every boy who EVER played with a Ken doll KNEW there was something dreadfully, miserably wrong with Ken.

Poor, poor Ken!

The bottom line is this: It's a buy-in. Every time people present studies showing a gender gap in reading achievement, the erroneous assumption is that the gap exists due to some innate flaw among boys as a homogeneous population, as opposed to a cultural campaign to convince boys that reading is not masculine, and something to be avoided.

This is the inescapable truth: that we can't make an assumption about literacy and language based on entire populations of gender because in the communities and cultures and schools where reading is fundamentally valued, ALL kids read.

Where reading is NOT valued, fewer kids read -- more of them girls than boys because boys have more accessible outlets for their diversions.

Okay.

I'll continue this, as I always do, later.

Today's Instagram topic was Where I Shop.

Duh.

I do most of it right here.

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grasshopper jungle

Let me tell you: I was so wiped out when I came home last night.

The very last thing I had to do at ALA yesterday was to meet the people at Penguin and my editor there, Julie Strauss-Gabel.

First off, the Penguin people. That sounds funny, doesn't it?

Well, they were all incredibly receptive and enthusiastic about my book, Grasshopper Jungle. Apparently, Julie Strauss-Gabel does not share things around the house until the book is completely finished.

I really like that.

But, the people at Penguin told me they'd never heard Julie say the kinds of things she'd said about Grasshopper Jungle about any book before. Actually, her first words about the book were these:

"Holy shit."

And she also used the phrase, "ridiculously good."

So, naturally, all the Penguin people kind of surrounded me and, in chorus, said:

Tell us what this book is about.

I looked at Julie. I looked at Michael, my agent.

That is the hardest question in the world to answer.

There is a line in the book that says this:

All good books are about everything, abbreviated.

So, with that, Grasshopper Jungle is about genetically modified corn, paleolithic cave paintings, praying mantises the size of grizzly bears, medieval Catholic saints, the Great Depression, war, sex, pizza, cigarettes, American society, Polish immigration, sexual confusion, book banning, love, volcanoes, Iowa, serial murderers, inflatable whales, crystal meth, the Rolling Stones, gay bars, Daniel Boone, lemurs, Gunsmoke, bowling, prescription drugs, and three friends who are the only people in the universe who know it is the end of the world -- and it all started because of a stupid act of bullying in an alleyway called Grasshopper Jungle, behind a dilapidated strip mall in a little recession-emptied Midwestern town.

That's what it's about.

And it's funny. My agent, Michael Bourret, said he felt guilty laughing about the things the book makes you laugh about.

Don't feel guilty.

Laugh.

It's the end of the fucking world.

Grasshopper Jungle will be my seventh published book, and I have honestly never been so excited about getting a book out. Every book that gets published is a thrill, but this one that so flagrantly defies pigeonholing, is really something else altogether.

So I spent some time talking to Julie about the book and how we were going to work on it. Of course, I was a little nervous. I had met Julie several years ago, but it was purely a fanboy moment of starstruck awe on my part.

Now I get to work with her, and that is an amazing, amazing thing.

Today's Instagram topic was Something Cute.

Um.

I do not classify things in that way.

I usually avoid the following words: Cute, Adorable, and, especially the loathsome Squee!

But, I have to do my job. So I took the picture below. It is very cute.

Grasshopper Jungle will drop on your brains in October of 2013.

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on my mind

So yesterday my Bloggers' Party experience nearly turned into a Donner Party experience.

I got trapped in an elevator between floors.

It was like something from my wife's worst, most unimaginable nightmares. The elevator dropped a few feet, there was a THUNK!, and then the thing just sat there, dead.

But I was not alone.

Charles was with me.

I did not know Charles before our time together in the elevator, but I feel like we are soulmates now. Charles is claustrophobic.

It was not a good thing.

Charles, come back, I need you.

Today's Instagram topic was On My Mind. There are lots of things on my mid today: I get to go home, we are having an eighteenth birthday party for my son, and this afternoon I am going to be meeting with my agent, Michael Bourret, and my Dutton/Penguin publisher-editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, about my forthcoming book Grasshopper Jungle.

Which is about this:

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whose shoes is who

So, here I am at ALA, making a ridiculously late post on my blog.

Last night, I was very fortunate to participate in a panel discussion with the funniest, coolest guys who write these days: Daniels Kraus, Jon Scieszka, Michael Grant, and Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket).

And I took pictures.

Here are the five of us, shown from an alternate perspective.

Can you guess whose shoes is who?

Okay. The winner gets a prize.

Today's Instagram topic was Motion. I took the photo below during our discussion, as Jon Scieszka drinks some water, Daniel Kraus folds his arms, and Michael Grant holds the microphone seductively during his speech.

Endless thrills of ALA!

It was a fun night, and I was sitting with Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), who is a very funny man.

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the high and the lucky

Well, I am leaving right now for ALA.

I sure hope I find it!

Looks like there will be lots of people playing ALA BINGO, which pleases me. I am most looking forward to speaking at Booklist's Youth Forum this evening. I have actually prepared a speech, as opposed to just "winging it," which is what I usually do.

This is not to say that I will stick to my plan by any means.

It's been a long time since I've seen Jean Feiwel and Liz Szabla [chime!], both of whom I am supposed to be going to dinner with this evening, so I am very excited about that, too.

And, as I have promised [ugh!] I am going to take pictures this weekend, even though I feel really awkward when I take pictures. But I will do it. I promised Kelly I would.

Today's Instagram topic was From a High Angle. I stood up over my bathtub and took the picture below. This monster has been living in my bathtub for the past week. He is now officially big enough to comply with my request to pass the soap.

I am naming him Lucky.

This guarantees he will be dead by the time I return home.

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