Children's Books: From Goodnight Moon to Graveyard Ghosts

I'm writing this post in response to a good friend of mine who recently got a bookstore promotion to the children's book section. I can't think of a better person to have this job - one day I'm sure he'll be super famous a la Neil Gaiman or Hunter S. Thompson. In the meantime, however, knowing that he's going to be suggesting books to young minds warms the cockles of my cynical little heart. So when he asked his friends about their favorite kids' books, I knew that a mere Facebook comment was never going to be enough to hold all of my favorites. 


This post won't be enough to hold all of them either, so consider this Part I.

FOR LITTLE ONES

Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon - A Bedtime Classic!

My mom taught me to read when I was just about two. Fittingly, my first favorite book was Goodnight Moon published by Margaret Wise Brown. A bunny mommy puts her baby bunny to bed with the refrain "Goodnight Moon." If you're reading this post, I'm sure someone once sing-songed you to sleep with the lines "goodnight room/goodnight moon/goodnight cow jumping over the moon." The best part about this timeless classic is the simplicity as baby bunny chants good night to everything in the nursery, from mittens to kittens, socks to clocks, to (my favorite part) noises everywhere. (Adults with a dark sense of humor should also check out "Goodnight Bush," a political parody.)

"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines...."

Madeline

You can never go wrong with a feisty heroine and Madeline is one - forgive the joke - for the books. Written by Ludwig Bemelmans in 1939, the Madeline books follow the titular redhaired French Catholic school student through a series of adventures: Madeline has her appendix out (Madeline), falls into the Seine and is rescued by Genevieve the dog (Madeline's Rescue - winner of the 1954 Caldecott Medal for illustration), stands up to bully Pepito (Madeline and the Bat Hat), explores London and runs away to live with gypsies with Pepito (Madeline in London; Madeline and the Gypsies) and celebrates Christmas (you guessed it - Madeline's Christmas). 

LGBT Families

NYT Bestselling Author Melody Beattie (Codependent No More): "It will help any child of any age
go to bed and wake up feeling like they're loved."

Goodnight Just the Same: 

I swear I don't just love this adorable rhyming book because my good friend April Claxton wrote it and I edited it. I love it because there aren't enough well-written books about alternative families. New York Times Bestselling author and household name Melody Beattie (Codependent No More; The Language of Letting Go) said about it "It will help any child of any age go to bed and wake up feeling like they're loved." GJtS is like Goodnight Moon meets Heather Has Two Mommies. Every family - regardless of if kids are being raised by parents who are gay, straight, or lesbian, or being raised by step-parents or grandparents - says goodnight just the same. The illustrations by Diane Koziol Krueger are charming and colorful.

  

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Oh, so very creepy.

Wait til Helen Comes

A very, very spooky ghost story by Mary Downing Hahn. Molly notices that her younger sister Heather is abnormally drawn to the graveyard that borders the back of their new house. Molly soon finds out that Heather's made a chilling friend in Helen, a child ghost who died a century before and wants to lead Heather to her doom. 

This book scared the almighty bejezus out of me when I was nine, so much so that I couldn't sleep with it in my bedroom. I'd wake up, tiptoe across the hall, and leave it on my parents' dresser. If my nerve failed me and I couldn't get up the courage to walk across the dark hallway, I'd often just shoot it across the wooden floor over the threshold of my mom and dad's bedroom, listening to the whoosh sound that the paperback made on the floor, endlessly relived that it was out of my room for the night. (Of course, I never quite shot it right and one or both of my parents would accidentally trip over it in the morning. Before long, I wasn't allowed to have horror novels in my possession.) Mary Downing Hahn has a number of equally scary ghost stories available. Preteen to teen. 

Love in unexpected places for outcast Maggie

Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy:  Twelve year old Maggie is a lonely misfit who had been kicked out of numerous boarding schools before finally coming to live with her two great aunts and her uncle Morris. One day she starts hearing mysterious voices and traces them to the attic where she finds two 19th century dolls - a man doll and a woman doll. This is another ghost story, but it's not as scary as the Downing Hahn novels. Cassedy's book focuses on Maggie's unusual relationship with the dolls and how she blossoms for the first time in her life under their care. Behind the Attic Wall is tender yet strange - as if The Secret Garden's moody Mary Lennox has found her way into an early Neil Gaiman novel. Although largely out of print and only available online, it's worth a read. Preteen to young teen.  

Woo them away from Twilight with The Changeover

The Changeover by Margaret Mahy: New Zealand teen Laura Chant notices a haunting face in the mirror and learns she must protect her younger brother from supernatural forces  by "changing over" to a witch with the help of the mysterious and attractive Sorenson "Sorry" Carlisle. This one's great for Twilight lovers. Published in 1984, The 

Changeover won the Carnegie Medal that same year. Teens.

Teen psychic taps into the Titanic in Ghosts I Have Been

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck:  I flat out would not have survived my 5th grade year had it not been for this book staring Blossom Culp, the thirteen year old psychic living by her wits in turn-of-the-century Bluff City. Her easily terrified best friend Alexander Armsworth was the hero of the award-winning The Ghost Belonged to Me , but I always preferred Blossom's no-nonsense Huck Finn approach to the supernatural over Alexander's easily freaked out self. In Ghosts I Have Been, Blossom lies about being a psychic in order to get the best of a snotty group of rich girls, only to discover that her mother's "gypsy gift" of the second sight is hers after all. In one of the most chilling scenes, Blossom makes contact with a child ghost who perished on the ill-fated Titanic two years before. The tone of these books is pure nostalgia mixed with good, rip-roaring horror.

The complete adventures of Blossom and Alexander are 

• The Ghost Belonged to Me
 -  In 1913, wealthy Alexander discovers he can communicate with the ghost of a young woman and turns to his friend Blossom, her psychic mother, and a world traveler for help. 

• Ghosts I Have Been
 - see above. The second book in the quartet, but works fine as a stand alone, or as the first in the Blossom books.

• The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp
  - Blossom Culp falls forward through time, to the 1980s and befriends a lonely boy. But can she make it back to 1914?

•  Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death
  - Blossom and Alexander help the restless and angry spirit of an ancient Egyptian princess who seeks revenge on her graverobbers.

Writing: Creating Your Life

In a few days, I'll join forces with April Claxton and Deb Nutitle, my Co-Inspirers for our Secret Behind the Secret event in Weston, Florida. For more daily tips, join Happy Ganesh on Facebook.

I'll be talking about the wonders of writing. How to do it. How to use it. More importantly, how to trust your heart.

Writing is an act of faith.

 It is all about trust. When you put pen to paper, you're saying to the universe that you matter, that your ideas can change your life, and that your thoughts  can become clear action.

Here are some writing-to-creation tips, to get us ready for Sunday.

1) Get excited. Creation is fun! Kids know this. Ever see a sad five year old? Sure you do, but you also see thrilled-to-be-alive five year olds with finger paint dripping from their hands (and your walls). The best thing about children is their ability to CREATE WITHOUT APOLOGY.

2) Stay in the present tense. Experiment with writing down what you're grateful for right now! Not what you feel you SHOULD be grateful for, but what you really are grateful for. Start with how you feel.

3) Write half a paragraph all about what it is you desire. But.....write about it as IF IT'S ALREADY HERE. Because it is. You have to get into the energy of what you want before it can come. Your joy is the parking space for that thing you want, be it a relationship, a car, more money, more peace, whatever. So speak and write as if you have this "thing" you want because the "thing" is not seperate from us. It never was. Anything is possible. Period.


Happy Writing!

xoxo
Marissa

Writing FearBusters!

To get rid of writing fear, you have to walk the path

Little Red Riding Hood got scared when she walked through the woods. That makes sense - the woods are a scary place to be. But in order to overcoming writing fear, you have to walk through the scary woods. You have to look fear square in the eye and say, "I don't care about you, fear. Writer's block is a myth. My own fears are a myth. I am here." And, so you go.

 I help clients of all kinds with all levels of writing. The biggest issue that all of those clients have is the same one that a lot of professional writers have. Fear. (If you don't think Stephen King occasionally shivers a little when he looks at a blank piece of paper, you've got another think coming.)

Fear can do a lot of things. It can stop you from putting your pen to paper. It can stop you from writing your very first word of a story. It can stop you from speaking up. It can keep you stranded in one part of the woods, so that you never reach grandmother's house.

The most effective visual for the danger of fear? Look at your favorite pile of books. Go on. Collect them from all the corners of your house and arrange them into a neat little pile on the floor.

Fluffy the cat or Spot the dog may sniff at it, warily eyeing it, or they may knock into it. Don't worry about it. Just focus on that beloved stack of books. (If you're not a reader - but if you want to be a writer, you really should be - then do this exercise with a pile of favorite movies.)

Look at them. Remember all the words, the characters, the plotlines that dragged you from your life and into the world of Book (or of Movie).

Now, imagine them gone, just quietly disappearing like Marty McFly in the photo of his family from Back to the Future. Poof. The book spines are becoming less visible. They're gone now.

If all of your favorite writers had succumbed to fear, that's what would have happened. Nothing to read because the writers became afraid.

Doesn't that sound sad?

To get rid of fear, please:

* Write a little bit every day. Writing is very good for the soul.
* If you're the type who worries about grammar, then don't. Stop. Don't worry about commas until I tell you to.
* Keep going until you are done. Write at least 100 words a day. Everyone can do 100 words. I don't care where you start, but you must start. The longer you wait to start, the more your future book incubates.
* Worry about grammar or punctuation when you are done. Not before. Why? Because it's easy to get so obsessed with fear about grammar or how we're wording something that we forget to really let go. I promise you, J. K. Rowling was not worrying about where to put a comma when she wrote the sentence, "Harry knew, he was certain, that there was hardly any time left in which to beat Voldemort to his goal, or else to attempt to thwart him" (HP and the Deathly Hallows, p.92, hardback). I'm speaking for the world's most popular children's book author just a tiny bit here, but I'm willing to bet that she wasn't worrying about punctuation when she wrote that line. I'm also willing to bet that you weren't thinking about commas when you read it. No, she focused on commas after.
* Let yourself go. It's escape time. Let yourself create and write it down. Be vibrant. Be thoughtful. Be you. Then, your readers can dream with you.

Bill Bryson, Is There Nothing You Can't Fix?

I apologize for the long hiatus from the book and writing blog, but two things happened

• a lot of work, about which I am deliriously happy. I'll be writing for Match.com this year! Stay tuned for details!

• the discovery of a host of This Old House-style issues in my old house, including but not limited to major fire hazards, major flood hazards, and in short, many, many things that made my contractor yell across the house, "Hey, have you seen this?" (He was a seasoned man with over forty years in the industry, and I seriously doubt he was prepared for what we found.) So, I'd walk in the kitchen to be greeted with, say, a water line that my father had plugged with screws in approximately 1988, the combustion of which would have sent my entire house underwater by feet, or a tear in the main A/C line the size of Sydney, Australia. 
• We also discovered that there have been a host of birds, merrily living in my return A/C vent. We're talking an entire family of pigeons, complete with nests. In the last three weeks, I have been on the first name basis with everyone from animal control (hello, Hanson!) to the window people (shout out to Samson!), to the A/C guys (be joyous, John!). 

In short, I've missed my blog. I've missed everyone who reads this little blogspot, and I've missed having the time to give to it.

I've spent the last few days being jet-propelled from wellness to sicksville.

The best known cure for being grouchy, sick, and generally physically exhausted can be found inside almost any Bill Bryson book. Currently, I'm in the middle of In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's hilarious travelogue about Australia. In general, there's nothing Bryson can't make a little bit better or funnier, even when you have just excavated small animals within an inch of your home's 40-year-old life, or when you have not been able to leave the downstairs sofa for more than a nanosecond before camping out yet again in the bathroom.

Yep, when weeks like these come calling, there's really nothing better to take your mind off things then the wit, hilarity, and informative brilliance of Bill Bryson: Bryson in Europe (Neither Here Nor There:  "The Romans park their cars the way I would if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap."), Bryson in England (Notes from a Small Island: Bryson, who lived in England for two decades before returning with his British wife and kids to America, has a blast with the names of small English towns - one, I swear, is Codswallop and another is Pinhead) or, of course, the middle-aged Bryson trying to hike the Appalachian Trail with his woefully overweight friend Katz (A Walk in the Woods: "I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, 'Yeah, I've sh*t in the woods.' ").

Oh Bill, thank you.

Here's a short video promoting his latest book At Home:

Green Blogs

Check out some of my other work at The Desoto!

In addition to my posts here at The Writing Wonderland, I'm also a very active blog/web writer.

If you're curious about some of my work elsewhere on the web, one of the places you can direct your web browser to is  The Desoto Inn (www.thedesoto.com) - "Green and Alternative Travel Blog" 

I write 4 weekly articles for Hollywood's "secret gem" of an inn. The topics are about green and alternative travel, ranging from ecologically-friendly how-tos, green travel tips, green book reviews, and much, much more.

Previously, some of the most recent blog posts have been:

The Halloween Creature's Guide to Green Living  - written for Halloween of 2011 to show that just because you're undead doesn't mean you have to ignore eco-friendly principles


LGBT Hero Alison Bechdel - one of a few pieces written for the Desoto to commemorate LGBT History Month. This one focuses on lesbian comic book author Alison Bechdel, whose latest book topped Time Magazine's "Best Of" list in 2006.

Green Travel Safety - How to stay aware and alert, while still staying eco-friendly on the road.

The Green Travel Attitude Checklist - Travel of any kind takes a certain lightheartedness and optimism. Do you have what it takes?

Barbara Grier - The Death of a Visionary

Barbara Grier Dies at 78

Barbara Grier, the visionary founder of Naiad Press, died tonight at the age of 78. Naiad Press (sold to Bella Books in recent years) was according to the AP Wire, "the world's largest publishing house of literature about gays and lesbians."

My heart is full over this one and I'm not sure what to write, exactly. For once, this one, although removed, touches me personally in a six-degrees-of-separation way. Before publishing this piece, I spent some time on the phone with a close friend of mine who had a good point about Grier - he said that in a world where it sometimes seems that society is defined by the Kim Kardashians and legions of people that we don't want to resemble, it's nice to find people that we are similar to - and that we want to emulate. I think a part of me wants to be Barbara Grier when I grow up.

I discovered Naiad Press long after it had been sold to Bella Books. I first stumbled upon a fantasy story published through Bella when I was barely eighteen. A decade or so later, I was lucky enough to do some freelance work for Bella.

Barbara Grier gave shape to shadows and brought the light of imagination to the darkness of the closet. The one-time writer for the 1950s periodical The Ladder grew to become the grandmommy of lesbian literature (technically, one of four; she made up 1/4 of the original Naiad founders).  True to her dream, Naiad changed the lives of millions of women.

In the 70s, long before Glee or the It-Gets-Better project, long before the fight for LGBT equality became the civil rights fight of my generation, Grier championed a literature that was uniquely for women-oriented women. She gave lesbians the right and the space to develop their own romances, their own worth. And where worth is found, life will grow. Naiad Press saw the publication of Katherine Forrest's Curious Wine, brought back out of print "pulps" such as Ann Bannon's Beebo Brinker novels, and even (according to Wiki), "acquired rights and brought back into print poems by Gertrude Stein and Renee Vivien."

Not to sound like a gushing schoolgirl, but Gertrude Stein is a really, really, really big deal. A rose is a rose - and a book is book, indeed.

While Grier's lifelong work was for lesbian literature, her advocacy and her passion for knowledge (and for, frankly, damn, damn good books) is universal. Regardless of our orientations, who among us does not yearn to be seen for who we are or to encourage our imaginations to soar? Who does not dream of creating a world of acceptance, where all voices matter enough to be heard, and where every single story matters?

Grier changed her own life - by creating a publishing house that would publish books that she wanted to read - and in doing so, changed history and brought fame to several generations of women who, otherwise, may never have held their published work in their hands. She helped to construct a larger world view.

Thank you, Barbara Grier.

You helped some of us dream when we didn't know there were dreams to be had, and tales to sing when we didn't know we had music to make. Thank you for hearing "yes" when others told you "no," thank you for understanding the power of the written word, and thank you, thank you, thank you for creating a space in the world for women to find their voices.

Image: Wikipedia "Naiad Press"

Goodbye Borders and the End of Summer

It's been a rough road (read: end-of-times) for Borders. We've been watching them slowly collapse (to quote Eddie Izzard) like "a flan in a cupboard" for months and this weekend sounded the final death knell of the once-megagiant bookstore.

Borders, you will be missed. I'm not sure what I'll miss more. The quirky selections? The know-it-all employees? The roomy cafe? Above all, I think I'll miss having the freedom to choose. Now there are no longer two games in town: Borders and Barnes and Noble. We're down to only one - and this is not Highlander ("There can be only one") when there should be many more.

However, what's sort of heartening is the fact that the Borders employees are having their say, damnit. Ok, some might call it flat out, unleashed sarcasm, but the hardworking staff has earned every mouthful of their bookstore ire. I for one find it fantastic that they are refusing to hide behind the corporate veil. Vent away, former Borders employees! If one of you writes a tell-all, I will be first in line to buy it.

I used to work in retail so I can relate to many lines on their list. My favorite? "If you don't know the author, the title, or the genre of the book, but you do know the color of the cover, we don't either. How it is our fault if we couldn't find it, we'll never understand."

Yes, Borders employees. Yes. Word. Thank you for your unflinching honesty.

 Back in the day, I worked at a music store with many other wacky, wonderful Clerks-esque employees. We had ripped jeans and Tori Amos maxi singles (remember those?) and loved The X Files. We were cool. We were sarcastic and rad. We thought we knew much more than everyone on the planet, because when it came to music, we did. I cannot tell you how many times I had a total stranger walk up to me and say "I'm looking for this one song. I don't know who it's by or what it's called, but a woman sings it and it sounds like this," and then I'd have to listen for an agonized and slightly embarrassed twenty seconds as the other person kicked into an off-key serenade of whatever Top Ten hit she'd heard on the radio that morning. Why did I listen? Because I was nineteen and getting paid $8.75 an hour, which in those days was a lot of money, and because it was my job to listen to middle-aged patrons singing Madonna until someone who worked in the store could play "Name that Song" correctly. Now, the middle-aged patrons are a lot closer to my own age then they once were, so I can sympathize a little bit more, but now we have Google and can look up song lyrics. No one need listen to this generation's off key serenades anymore. Our music humiliation no longer has to be public. Score one for technology.

So, I'm always up for a good retail rant. Borders, I always loved you.

As we say goodbye to Borders, the end of summer has also just arrived, at least in world of poetry lists. At least, I got an email  confirming this today from Huck Gutman 's wonderful poetry listserve. He quoted from Emily Dickinson's "As Imperceptibly as Grief":
                                      "As imperceptibly as Grief

                                The Summer lapsed away—

                                 [...] Our Summer made her light escape

                                 Into the Beautiful."

Borders is gone. We loved you while you were here. We loved the choice you presented, we loved the quirky books. I loved that after a Saturday morning meeting, I could stop there on the way home and soak it all in. Bookstores on Saturdays are magical places: moms and kids, couples, the smell of coffee, the stacks of new releases. The feeling of a new start when one opens the front cover. Journeys beginning. Stories ending. All the good stuff in between.

Thanks, Borders, for being the good stuff for so long. You'll be missed.