Hot Links for July 9th 2013 - A Fork in the Road

BY KRIS KAHRS

Having just come off a four-day binge-fest also known as the Fourth of July, I couldn't help but notice how many kids books were about food.  It's no surprise that kids love food as much as grownups do.  Here are some of my favorites, memorialized in hot fudge:

1) In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. Published 1971.  In this Caldecott winner, Mickey is awoken by a racket in the night.  A rather surreal story with delightful Sendak illustrations.  A narrated version can be found on Youtube.

2) Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  Published 1960.  From Android app to Audible audiobook to a Chinese language version, there are endless ways that Dr. Seuss serves up this perennial fav.

3) Strega Nonna by Tomie dePaola. Published 1975.  Although a popular misconception thinks that Strega Nonna is a classic Italian folktale, here's a link that explains how the actual character came to be.  An interesting genesis as explained by Tomie dePaola.

4) The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Published 1969.  Eric Carle has some terrific coloring pages on his website.  One of them is of a voracious caterpillar and all of the many foods that he eats on his way to transformation.  There's also a newsletter, downloads and some games for your wee reader.

 

5) Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.  Published 1978.  This 'tale within a tale' book has a Grandfather telling his grandkids about the town of Chewandswallow where food falls from the sky.  This book was later made into a successful film and sequel that bear little resemblance to the original but were popular nevertheless.

What are your favorite kidlit books you read with your little foodie?
Please share your comments below.

Dispatch #9: How is Wedding Planning Like Writing a Manuscript?

The Happy Couple

by Lupe Fernandez

Wedding planning and manuscript writing have items in common? Is this another excuse to post vacation images?

Yes.
No.

First there is the engagement, a proposal of commitment to start something with a goal in mind.

Kauai, North Shore

Then find a venue, a location. Where will all the characters meet? Who will be invited? What roles will the participants play?

Once the venue is found, how will it be decorated? The place needs a color scheme, a lighting design and furniture.

Will characters, participants be able to move around? How will they get to the venue? Will they come earlier or later in the event?

Bubba's Burgers

What will everyone eat? What kind of food to the characters like? Not everyone will be satisfied.

Everyone loves music. Live or recorded. What genre? What emotions will the music evoke?

There's a rehearsal dinner for the characters to practice. If something doesn't go right, then a change, a revision of action is required.

Rugged Adventure Garb

What will the main characters- the bride, the groom, maid of honor, best man - wear?

The actual wedding starts with the ceremony, the matrimonial inciting incident.

Other details like cake, invitations or flowers will come up as the planning/writing progresses. Will these items be the cause of "Oh My God How Will We Pay for This?" or "This detail needs to be included in the story."

Once the event occurs, the vows done and edits done, when the couple become newlyweds and the manuscript transforms into a book, will it last?

How many anniversaries will they celebrate? We all hope many years of productive and profitable years.

We'd like congratulate for Foreign Correspondent for his recent engagement and forth coming marriage. This in no way excuses him from writing posts for this blog.

Sincerely,

The Management

When It's Not Okay To Share

by Susan J. Berger

I’ve belonged to several critique groups and I have learned and grown in each of them. I’ve  been present at the birth of wonderful stories and seen them bloom.

 

Susan, Kris, Hilde and Lupe sharing Hilde's COOKIES!

Since 2009 I have been with Pen and Ink and I LOVE my critique partners’ work. I love it so much that I wanted to share their brilliance with my friends.  In 2010 Lupe was revising Medicine Boy and the writing was so great that I shared it with a member of Lupe’s target audience .

My thirteen year old friend, Donovan, thought the opening chapter was great and wanted to read more. I jubilantly reported that fact to Lupe.

Lupe’s response was “Who is Donovan?”

I chilled when I read that because I suddenly realized I’d stepped over a boundary. I’d shared his work without his permission.

In the same case, I wouldn’t have minded a bit, but not everyone is like me. Big surprise.  Most writers prefer to choose what they share.  Perhaps some of you are like me and didn’t realize that sharing your delight in another writer’s unpublished work and or ideas is not a good thing to do.

So here is a revised Critique Group Manners list.

 

What happens in Critique Group stays in Critique Group.

Don’t share your fellow writer or illustrator’s ideas with your friends, or, on any internet forum.  This doesn’t mean you can’t share your own work, if you are so minded.

Giving a critique:

Kindness and Honesty are the key words.  The ability to say things in a constructive, positive manner is as important as honest feedback to improve a story.

• Use the Critique Sandwich

•  Tell the author what he has done really well.  Be concrete and specific.   Comments such as “This is a nice story ”  don’t help an author revise. Give the author an idea of what is really working for you as a reader. If there are lines you specially love, mention or highlight  them in the text.
• Follow that up with suggestions on where you think the story might be improved.  Again - Be as specific as possible. It’s good to give an overall critique of a story, but marking areas within the body of the text that are confusing to you or that you feel may benefit from revision, allows the author to hone in on weak passages. (Especially if two people mark the same thing.)
• End on a good note.  Reiterate what you loved. Encourage and support your fellow author.

Receiving a critique.

• Listen!
•  Sort through the comments, think deeply, and make decisions on how to revise your story.  You do not have to, nor is it wise, to take every piece of advice.  It’s your privilege to pick and choose from the suggestions offered.
• You will probably want to explain why you did what you did, when receiving feedback.  Try to keep that behavior to a minimum. You will not get to explain to readers or reviewers why you wrote a particular sentence. The members of your group are your first reader/reviewers.

I welcome any suggestions to add to this manners list. I am sure there are things I haven't thought of. I mean, I am the one who didn't know it wasn't okay to share.

 

Happy Writing.

Today's Hot Links: Fictional Maps

by Kris Kahrs

     Are you ready to take a fantasy vacation?  The kind you can only get from a good book?  Good, because we here at The Pen and Ink Blog have your map.  

   

  Feel like fighting some crime with the likes of Batman, then a trip to Gotham city might be right up your alley.  

 Or get your geek on and visit the LOTR project for an interactive experience with a map of Middle Earth.  It has a timeline and statistics of Middle Earth and a continuously updating genealogy.

A trip back in time will get you to Sherlock Holmes London and his rooms at 221B Baker St.  Bigthink.com has a delightful recreation of the layout of Sherlock Holmes' rooms, but if you want to go further and travel in his footsteps, then check out mapchannels.com which uses Google maps to map out the London locations mentioned in Conan Doyle's novels.





For your trip to Oz, Hungry Tiger Press has a wonderful map of Oz wallpaper for your computer desktop.  As the website says, "this map of the marvelous land of Oz was drawn by Professor H.M. Wogglebug, T.E. back in 1914. The most curious aspect of this map is the little known fact that East and West are reversed in Oz."



We hope our links have given you some ideas for your summer vacation as well as a good tip for your manuscript. If you're having trouble with the timeline in your story, it can sometimes help to map it out. Try it. It works.

Keep on writing!

Dispatch #8 Why Ray HarryhausenMatters to Me

by Lupe Fernandez

"From the Land Beyond, Beyond/From the World pass Hope and Fear..." thus are the secret words to summon the genie of the lamp in the 1958 film 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

When I was in the fifth grade, my brothers introduced me to a book called Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen, courtesy of the Hayward Public Library.

Mr. Harryhausen was "stop-motion animator." He brought to life a giant gorilla (no not King Kong, that was Harryhausen's mentor Willis O'Brien), a Rhedosaurus, a giant octopus, flying saucers, the Ymir from Venus, a one-eyed cyclops, a sword-wielding skeleton, a giant crab, a bronze giant, a pteranodon, a tyrannosaurus rex, a statue of Kali, a saber-tooth tiger and the Kraken.

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers 1956

I couldn't stop looking at the photos of movies I'd never seen, but dreamed out. In the good old days, there was no internet, no video stores. I had to wait until his films appearing on UHF Channels 44 or 36, until Saturday's Creature Features with host Bob Wilkins.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 1958

But it was the orange, one-eyed cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad that sealed the deal for me. This table-top model creature of foam latex and metal armature burst out of a cave with an angry growl and hooves stomping and claws clutching at hapless sailors, accompanied to the thunderous strains of film composer Bernard Hermann's music.

I bought magazines and books celebrating Mr. Harryhausen's work.

But don't take my word for it.

Mysterious Island 1961

“Without Ray Harryhausen’s influence, Lord of the Rings would never have been made, not by me at least.” – Peter Jackson

“Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS” - George Lucas.

"If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are." - James Cameron

Patrick Wayne (Sinbad & Eye of the Tiger 1977)
is about as Arabic as I am.

If I sing his praises to highly, I am aware that some of his films often lacked brilliant acting, that his plots were derivative, that his mattes lines bled, that his last animated film suffered from poor background plates, that no Mexicans appeared in any of his films.

And yet without Harryhausen's films, I wouldn't have the imagination to write Children's Literature.

King Kong 1933
Harryhausen's Inspiration

RH 

RIP

1920-2013