It was a terrific visit. The kids were eager and smart and fun, thanks to Susan’s good work.The walls were covered with evidence of how beautifully prepared the students were, including a poster-sized, student-generated list of what they thought might be the next in the series of poetry books I’m doing with the inimitable Holly Meade.(On the Farm, In the Wild,In the Sea). One of those smart kids actually guessed the title of the next in the series: In the Past. (Dinosaurs!) I also love the group of kids pictured above who apparently have been subjected to the the unspeakable tortures of the dreaded Carrotron!

Here are a couple of first-draft poems the kids and I wrote together.

The Panther

Deep in the rainforest
The panther sleeps.
But the jungle awakens
When the panther creeps.

The Kangaroo

The kangaroo’s a nervous one,
So jumpy, jumpy, jumpy.
I wonder how her joey feels
When the ride’s so bumpy.

I love this snapshot, the way the girl is leaning into the big yellow chair, her finger lightly touching the word, almost as if she means to pin it down as she moves through the line. In the note accompanying the photo, her grandmother tells me she has just learned to read. She is six years old.

Here’s the poem.

The Octopus

You appear out of the blue
an eight-armed apparition.
Then vanish in a cloud of ink–
No ghost, but a magician.

The girl hasn’t yet arrived at that fancy four-syllable word at the end of the second line, apparition. Will she falter? It doesn’t matter because sitting there in the cheerful room with her are at least two adults, adults to whom, we can imagine, she is reading. If she needs help, one of them will roust himself out of his own comfortable chair to help her sound out the word. Ap-pa-ri-tion, we can hear her saying, the word forming itself on her lips for the first time. Apparition. What does it mean? The next time, or maybe the time after that, she’ll have it down.

Apparition. I might have found a simpler word. Or I could have abandoned the central image of the poem altogether and had some fun with the confusion surrounding those tentacles unfurling so mysteriously across the page. In fact, one early draft did just that: The octopus/is not without its charms./ Still, she confuses me./Are those legs or are those arms?/ But why deprive the girl the beauty, the spooky thrill of the longer, more evocative word? Apparition. With it’s soft vowels, its voiceless double p, its sibilance and its final n, it unfurls every bit as mysteriously as those tentacles.

Control over the nuance and power of their language is one of the greatest gifts we can pass along to our children. On those rare days when I wonder why I do it, why I write for kids, I’ll think of this picture and get back to work.

How lucky I was, then, to have And Here’s to You! selected as part of the StoryWalk Project in Portland, ME. The book is illustrated by Randy Cecil, and published by Candlewick Press.

StoryWalk was rounded up by the fierce and fabulous Kirsten Cappy of Curious City and sponsored The City of Portland, Health and Human Services Dept, the Portland Public Library, and the Portland Housing Authority. (The StoryWalk™ Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition and the Kellogg Hubbard Library.)

Each page of the book was laminated and then mounted on a four-foot mahogany stake. Now, the children and parents of Riverton Park, most of whom are refugees can take a walk and read a book all at once. I was especially happy to know that my book was in a setting where many children might not have access to books in their homes.

The dedication, attended by Mayor Nicholas Mavodones, Jr. and other city officials, was held November 3rd. In addition to the unveiling, we gave away over a hundred books that day. As I signed each book, the children spelled their names. A-b-d-u-l-l-h-a-k-e-e-m. F-a-t-u-m-a. M-a-a-n-d-e-e-q. D-a-w-o-o-d. Dawood? Uh . . . that’s David, in English.

Many of these kids were born to parents who could neither read nor write in their own language. They began their lives in refugee camps, exposed to hardships and dangers unimaginable to most of us. Yet, here they were helping a stranger whose childhood could not have been more different from their own spell their names.

It was a beautiful day.

Another of these suspicious metaphors, and one that I often have been guilty of using, is that books are the author’s children, an easy turn of phrase which, now that I think about it, serves to elevate the writer’s work while denigrating his children. (Oh well.)

But there are ways in which a book is like a child (though the stakes cannot be anywhere close to the same in spite of our pretensions otherwise.) One of these is that when a grown-up child goes out into the world, shielded at last from the ever-open eyes of his parents, surprising things can happen. This is also true of a book.

I had one of these surprises last week — a nice surprise this time — when I learned that in June, my picture book, Finn Throws a Fit!, originally published in 2008 by Candlewick Press and illustrated by the irrepressible Timothy Basil Ering, will be released in Germany this September. Finn tobt! Finn rages! Here’s a link to the German publisher, Klett if you’re interested.

This is not the first time one of my books has been translated. (My copy of the Braille edition of Evangeline Mudd and the Golden-haired Apes of the Ikkinasti Jungle, is a prized possession. It’s a beautiful thing. Great white pages fit to hang in a museum of contemporary art.) But it’s no less thrilling. I love to think of parents and their toddlers settling down together in Aachen or Bremen or Cologne to read a book inspired by a toddler right here in Warner, New Hampshire. In it’s own small way, it’s confirmation that the human experience is not as easily defined by language or political boundaries as certain politicians would have us think.

So rage on, Finn! Bring down das Haus!

Soon, I”ll be posting about another surprising and happy development, a little closer to home this time, in Portland, Maine.

The kids from this bluecollar and farm community, very much like the one I grew up in, were fresh-faced and eager, their questions the ones authors are usually asked: How many books have you written? How long does it take to write a book? Where do ideas come from? But in the largest session — one hundred-and-thirty-eight kids — one boy, smaller than many of his peers, was literally sitting on the edge of his seat as he raised his hand. His question was one that I won’t soon forget. His name was Evan. “Do you ever write from the heart?” he asked.

At first, I was sure I had misunderstood him. He was, after all, nine years old. “Do you ever write from the heart?” When I asked him what he meant by this, he explained further. “You know,” he said, and he put his hands on his temples. “Not from the mind, but from the heart.” Clearly, he knew exactly what he was asking.

For a moment, I stalled, struggling to control an unexpected swell of memories from my own childhood. And when I did answer, my response was, in many ways, unsatisfactory. “I hope that all my books are written from the heart,” I said. I think I might have mumbled something about needing the mind, too.

Later, I learned that Evan was often in trouble. Not surprising. A boy who asked such a question –do you write from the heart? – must be a boy who lived from the heart, a courageous, even dangerous path, especially for a boy, in an increasingly heartless world.

I tried to get the opportunity to spend a few minutes with Evan after the session ended, but before I knew it, the kids were being marshalled out and onto their busses. Still, I’ll remember him for a long time, and especially as I begin my next book, which, I hope, will be written from the heart. And if it is, if I can manage to be that brave, I’ll dedicate to Evan, a nine-year-old boy living in Defiance.

The event was part of the annual Literacy Project, organized and funded in part by Main Street Warner, Inc, the Warner Fall Foliage Festival, and the Simonds PTO. Through this program, every child receives at least one free book. As I heard someone say yesterday, by the end of the fifth grade every child will have the start of her own library. For some of these kids, these may be the only books they own.

Here’s a poem the kindergarten, first grade and I wrote together after a responsive reading of And Here’s to You!

Here’s to the worms!
The Jiggly People worms.
Here’s to the squiggly ones,
the wishy-washy wiggly ones.
And here’s to the slimy ones,
the in-this-poem-they’re rhymy ones.
Oh, I love the worms!

Picture credit goes to Kimberly Brown Edelmann.

Wuv Bunnies is completely silly. The bad bunny has a lisp and wears braces. The good bunnies smooch the protagonist and anyone else they can get their paws on. And why not? They are Wuv Bunnies, after all. What did you expect?

Though many adults have forgotten it, silliness has its place in the world. Not everything children read has to teach them something, does it? Not everything has to be laden with a life lesson? How about laughter for laughter’s sake? Isn’t that enough.

But here’s the funny thing about books. Just like our children, once they’re out in the world, they develop a life of their own. And just like our children, they surprise us. Wuv Bunnies in Bangkok? Who knew? Even better, sometimes the surprise goes beyond the geographical. A year or so ago, I received an email from a woman who worked with an autistic boy, a boy who, like many kids on the spectrum, didn’t like to be touched. But he read Wuv Bunnies and all that changed. Now, he smooches his caretaker on the nose and allows her to do the same to him. Once again, who knew?

This story makes me happy for many reasons. For the boy and his caretaker of course. But it also reinforces my commitment to the subversive idea that in spite of our protestations otherwise, we know little about the workings of the human heart. It gladdens me to know that a book so silly as Wuv Bunnies from Outers Pace can sometimes do more than years of therapy, and that reason and logic are sometimes edged out by humor. I’m encouraged, too, to know that life is still so completely, so fabulously unpredicatable.

Yes, I’m a grown man. And yes I DID write a book called Wuv Bunnies from Outers Pace.

In addition to providing support for those responsible for putting books into kids’ hands, the Foundation has another mission. From its website: The FCB, in collaboration with school districts, arranges author and illustrator visits to under-served elementary and middle schools.

Underserved. In other words, schools in poor neighborhoods. Currently, there are over fourteen million poor children living in America. Yes. Fourteen million! Right under our noses. The FCB makes sure that at least some of those kids get the same enrichment as their peers living in more affluent neighbodhoods. That’s no small thing. In doing so, who knows? They could be fostering the spirit of the next great American novelist. Or scientist. Or politician.

But not everybody need grow up to be a hero. Maybe it’s enough that organizations like the FCB let poor children know that someone is paying attention, that they matter, too.