I don’t usually blog about my kids, but this one is book related…sort of.
A great friend recently handed down to us her Thomas the Tank Engine train table.

Lucky, lucky us!

Early the other morning I set it up, all nice and inviting down in the basement. When my just-turned-three year old woke up I couldn’t wait to deliver the surprise.

Me: Guess what! Remember how we always go to Barnes and Noble so you can play with the train table? Well now we don’t have to! We have one downstairs!

Son: We have a Barnes and Noble in the basement?

Well, I went on my first artist date, had a lot of fun, and realized I know nothing about how to take a great picture. Still, I will share the best of the lot with you, keeping in mind these are very, very amateur.

It was interesting because when I first arrived I noticed many, many people with seriously fancy camera equipment and I began to tell myself that I’d never be able to take good pictures. Then I reminded myself that I was there to be creative and have fun. So I did.

Sarah Miller posted this fun game on her blog, and I decided I want to play. Please try it too, if you are so inclined.

According to The Big Read (an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture)the average adult has only read 6 of the 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.

(uh, I can’t figure out how to underline, so I’m just gonna *)

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen *
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling*
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible (for a class in college)
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. 1984 – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger *
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen* (named my daughter Emma)
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen* (my favorite Jane)
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden*
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery*
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (I’ve tried several times, but still haven’t)
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

46!!!

Okay, clearly being an English major helped here. Though how did I manage to read only one Dickens novel? And I did that for pleasure after I graduated.

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Brenda Ferber for the fun meme that’s been going around lately. (A little while ago, but better late than never, right?)

1. What were you doing ten years ago?
I was probably sitting in a lecture hall at Northwestern University getting my Master’s in Education. At my feet there would have been a baby blanket covered with toys and a baby quietly playing while I took notes. My professors were unfailingly understanding when babysitting fell through.

2. What are five things you need to do today?
-call bookstores to set up readings for this fall
-finish writing the teacher’s guide for THIRD GRADE BABY
-book campsite for our first family camping trip
-return 5000 phone calls (may be a slight exaggeration)
-spend an hour writing new book

3. What are some snacks you enjoy?
-anything with almonds
-chips and guacamole
-chocolate

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
-set up a foundation to help fund the good works of others
-fund the education of everyone in my family and close friends
-fix up my house

5. What are three bad habits?
-I interupt people when they are talking.
-I often leave the dinner dishes until morning.
-I procrastinate.

6. Name five places you have lived.
-Riverwoods, IL
-Deerfield, IL
-Evanston, IL
-Ann Arbor, MI
-West Bloomfield, MI

7. What are five jobs you’ve had?
-kindergarten teacher
-freelance writer
-hostess at a restaurant
-library aide
-children’s book author

I hereby tag anyone who wants to play!

So I know almost nothing about dance, but I started watching this show because I went to Hebrew school with the host, Elizabeth Berkley, when we were kids, and hey, it’s kind of cool to watch the career of an I-knew-her-when.

Plus, I’m a huge Project Runway fan, so I figured that was reason enough to give another Bravo reality TV show a shot.

Big surprise, but there’s something that resonates so strongly in me when I watch these kinds of artist competitions. (Because, that’s basically what they are, right?) The casts of these shows just love their medium (be it dance, fashion design, singing, modeling etc) with such a passion, and they want to make it so badly. That belly fire desire is palpable, and (is this embarrassing?) it’s how I feel about writing.

I think that’s why I love reading other writers’ blogs too. We just all get it–that feeling of wanting to create something amazing, and that understanding of how hard, hard, hard it is to do.

Hmmm. I guess I’m feeling philosophical because I just sent off another revision of my YA manuscript to my editor, and my desire to make it great almost undid me.
But now, for the time-being at least, I have to let it go, and that means more time for blogging.

Stay-tuned for later this week when I unveil my special summer project for unleashing creativity!

Yesterday I spent the evening at Columbus East School as the guest author at their second annual Author’s Fair. I was thrilled to be a part of it, the students had such great questions for me, but, even better, read such beautiful poetry! Most of which they’d written themselves. I have no doubt the gym last night held authors I’ll be hearing from again.

The only bummer is I forgot my camera and cannot show you the amazing display tables of student work. I particularly enjoyed a story about a school bus that got sucked into a vortex! Now that’s some drama.

On my way home I was driving very carefully (it was raining) but couldn’t help notice one billboard out of the corner of my eye. It was for Moonvertizing–shine your ad by high-intensity laserbeam onto the surface of the moon! I couldn’t help feeling that I’d driven into a dystopian science fiction novel. Are the Moonvertizing people allowed to do that? Seriously? Who does the moon belong to anyway?! What if I don’t want my view of the night sky to be marred by a beer commercial?

Then I got smart and googled it.
Just a hoax, people! We are safe…for now.
But sheesh, am I gullible!

But here’s something that is absolutely true. The release date for THIRD GRADE BABY is now exactly four months away! I’m celebrating with this nifty countdown clock.

Myspace Countdown Clock You’ll also see it if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page!

And if you can’t wait for months, other exciting things are also afoot. I’ll be appearing on a panel of first-time children’s book authors at the Printer’s Row Book Fair in Chicago on June 7. More details to come!

Has it really been three months?
I’ve been so busy it feels more like I just blinked three times.

For the past two weeks I’ve been teaching a class on how to structure a novel at the Off-Campus Writer’s Workshop in Winnetka, IL. It’s been so fantastic meeting other writers, hearing about their great works-in-progress and working together at improving our writing. I truly believe that anyone who wants to be a writer must consider herself a lifelong student of the craft. So even though I’m standing behind the podium, I’m excited by how much I am learning too.

There’s one more session left if anyone out there is interested in joining us. The topic will be how to manage your subplots. Thursday morning, May 1, from 9:30-12:00 at the Winnetka Community House.

And now, even though this post is short, that’s all I have time to write. Because in addition to teaching, I’m still revising. (Or I should say revising again.) But this time with such energy, and a strong feeling that I’m improving my novel, as opposed to just muddling things up, which I kind of felt last time. So…yay!