Though most writers hope their books will stand the test of time, we are smart enough to understand that they can’t endure the elements for more than a moment. While their souls –if books have souls — might be eternal, their bones are fragile things. An April shower? A light snow? Forget about it. Pulp fiction, baby.

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 half way round the world, exposed to hardships and dangers unimaginable to most of us. Yet, here they were smiling, helping someone whose childhood could not have been more different from their own, to spell.

It was a beautiful day.

Lately, I find myself increasingly leery of metaphors. Odd, for a writer I know. But places of employment are not families, institutions of higher education are not corporations. After all, I’ve never asked a boss for the keys to her car. Nor as a teacher have I ever been paid on a scale even roughly commensurate with a person of equal education and experience working in the corporate world. (Oh well.)

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.

Just back from a two-day school visit in Defiance, Ohio. Sponsored by The Friends of the Defiance Public Library, this event allowed me to see every, or almost every third-grade kid in the county. The two days of presentations were held on the campus of The Defiance College, a small liberal arts institution from which, as one friend quipped, I should have received an honorary degree.

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.

Yesterday, I spent the day at the elementary school in my town, Warner, NH. A K-5 school with fewer than two hundred students. Warner is not a wealthy community, certainly not as tony as Hopkinton, our rich neighbor to the south, and several tax bumps down from New London, to the north. And yet, thanks to a dedicated administration and skilled, responsive teachers, these kids are getting as good an education as you can get in the state. Maybe even better. This was proved by my receipt of some impromptu, unedited writing the fifth graders did after an initial Q and A. Their work was imaginitive, yes, but it was also nearly flawless at the sentence level. They handled the consternating punctuation of dialogue better than many college students. Commas after introductory elements? No problem. One child even used a semicolon correctly. (It separates two independent clauses, in case you were wondering.) It was very heartening to see children in such effortless (or so it seemed) control of their language. Perhaps it’s not the Fall of Rome after all. At least in Warner.

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.

Yes, I’m a grown man. And yes, I DID write a book called Wuv Bunnies from Outers Pace. And to prove it, here are a bunch of kids in Bangkok reading it.

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.

Last Saturday morning, I had the honor of sharing the stage with the inimitable Anita Silvey, children’s author Lenore Look, and Terri Schmitz, owner of The Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, MA. The four of us had been invited to participate in a program of The Foundation for Children’s Books. Our audience was made up of school librarians, teachers, college professors and graduate students, anyone, in fact, interested in kids and what they read.

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.

This little guy is our neighborhood mascot. Barbara and I saw him in the snow this morning, just outside our kitchen window. He stood for a minute or two, looked at us looking at him, then loped into a small stand of maples. In less than fifteen seconds he re-emerged, a dove (I think) in his mouth. I have a lot of affection for this fox, more, certainly, than my neighbors do. He raids their henhouse. I’ve been thinking of writing a picture book in his honor, but haven’t come up with anything worthy of him. Not yet, anyway. But stories sometimes surprise us, appearing all at once and out of nowhere. Or so it seems. Just like a fox.
Scroll down, by the way, for a poem written by the foxy first graders at the William Rowe School in Yarmouth, Maine.

My friend Joanne complained that there were no pictures of my bearded collie, Psyche, on the site.  The next day, Psyche complained that there were no pictures of Joanne on the site. Go figure. In the interest of keeping everybody happy . . .

Another poem from the first-grade poets at the William Rowe School in Yarmouth, ME. We started by reading my picture book, In the Wild. Next, we chose an animal to write about. Then, we made a list of all the words that made us think of foxes.  We talked about rhyming, rhythm, and descriptive words.  Finally, we wrote this poem together.  Thanks to their wonderful teachers : Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Roux, and Mrs. Rafford:

The Fox

Red as fire

quick as a spark

the fox creeps slowly

in the hungry dark.

The bold rooster, the chicks,  the hens,

all grow quiet, frightened in their pens.

Take a look at the poem the morning  kindergarden  kids and I wrote together at The William Rowe School in Yarmouth, Maine.  Pretty amazing, huh? Thanks to their wonderful teachers Mrs Bean and Mrs. Warren.

I’ll be posting the poems from the other classes in the next couple of days.

Here’s to the Snakes!

Here’s to the snakes!

The slither people snakes!

Here’s to the biting ones,

The in-the-woodpile-hiding ones.

And here’s to the slimy ones

The  in-this-poem-they’re-rhymy ones.

Oh! I love the snakes!