Poem in your Pocket Day

Who knew?
It turns out that this week, which is National Library Week, is also Young Person's Poetry Week.

And today, Thursday the 17th, is National Poem in Your Pocket Day.

So remember to print or write something out and put it in your pocket so you can pull it out and read it to everyone you meet today.
Just becuz!

-wendieO

Writing under a Pen Name

Many writers write multiple books under pen names.
They have various reasons for doing this.

Some reasons:
-- 1) They write several books a year and their publisher doesn't want the books competing with each other.
-- 2) They write very different types of books under separate names -- such as nonfiction under one name, Adult Mysteries under another, and Children's books under a third.
-- 3) They have writing partners and decided to combine their names. There's an adult writing team that took the first names of each writer. (It might be Fern Michael, I can't remember.) And then there is me.

Some years ago, two writer friends and I wrote several books together. We did it for fun -- but when we were done, we liked them so much that we sent them out to publishers. Rejections, and rejections, and finally they were accepted. When it came time to decide on the author's name, we tried several things.

Putting all three names on the cover and spine just wouldn't work -- no room.
Mary Bowman-Kruhm
Wendie Old
Claudine Wirths
-- I don't think so.

So we tried mooshing our names together. Mary W. Wirths? No good, I said, knowing from my librarian experience that the books at the end of the alphabet were not checked out as often as the books in the A's and B's.

Publish it under one of our names?
Not fair to the others.

We combined the names.
Claudine's first initial.
My first initial.
And shortened Mary's Last name. Really, really short.
Introducing -- C. W. Bowie

Great idea -- this puts the books right between the Berenstain Bears and Marc Brown's Arthur books!

Do you have a pen name?
How did you create it?
-wendieO

Poetry Monday

Yes, another Nonfiction Monday featuring poetry.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a pop-up book, Illustrated by John Stadler. S&S Little Simon
(Found in the Picture Book section of our library -- your results may vary.)

Surely everyone has, at one time or another, sung that wonderful baseball song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Written by two guys who had never been to a baseball game, it has become the theme song of the event.

Welcome to Howler Stadium. Open the double page flips and you find yourself up in the peanut gallery watching a baseball game. (words to the song on the right -- chorus illustrated in the following pages.)

The ball players and the cheering crowd are portrayed as various enthusiastic animals. As you read, you are smack-dab in the middle of the action. ("One, two, three strikes you're OUT" The batter turns right before your eyes.)

Great blurbs on the back cover:
Beary Bonds says, "A honey of a home run, this is THE book to break hibernation for!"

Just in time for baseball season, a perennial favorite.
(Links to more Nonfiction Monday blogs can be found here.)
-wendieO

Sunday the Thirteenth

Friday the 13th came on a Sunday this month.
And with it came a drastic change of temperature.

This past week, each day got warmer and warmer -- almost reaching 80 degrees on Friday. Still nice, in the 70s on Saturday. So why then would a cold front come through and crash the daily high to 52 degrees on Sunday? brrrrr.

It's not fair.
It's not fair to tease us with the hint of warm weather and then....

For years I've been a weather junkie -- always trying to predict tomorrow's weather; always checking the weather at the place I'm planning to travel to. Always reminding my kids to dress for Today's weather; not for the weather they remembered from yesterday.

I even wrote a picture book story about this very thing -- called Yesterday's Weather -- where a child constantly charges outside and discovers s/he is not prepared for today's weather because they dressed for yesterday's weather. poor kid. I made the story circle around the child's attempt to play a team game with friends, but is always stymied by the weather. (However, a soccer mom informed me that that wouldn't fly -- teams play in ALL weathers. hmmmm. Perhaps that's why the story never sold.)

You know, I finally did sell the story -- when I transformed it into a nonfiction book about Groundhog Day. (The animal who predicts the weather.)

Maybe someday I'll hit upon another way to revise Yesterday's Weather (the original story) that will make it salable.

-wendieO (the weather nut)

Not-so intelligent machines

Intelligent machines? hmmmmm.

For example, those clocks that will automatically change when Daylight Savings time changes. However, they never got the word that we changed the DATE to do this. They still are automatically changing on the old date. (This MAC, on the other hand, gets its messages from someplace else, because it changed it's time stamp at the new, correct date.)

We finally had to throw out our daughter's alarm clock, because it refused to let us adjust to the correct time. For several weeks it showed the wrong time -- and then suddenly changed. Pretty useless when you are using the clock to help the child learn how to tell time and when to get up in the morning/ go to sleep at night.

This past Monday, (April 7th) I glanced at the clock in the children's room of the library, noticed that it was 12 noon, felt hungry, so I left the Information Desk and went back to my office to eat lunch. When I finished, I happened to look at the clock on my computer and -- yikes -- it was only 11:35 am.

I was convinced that some of the teens had pulled a late April Fool's joke on me. Until the head of circulation pointed out that several other clocks were an hour off.

When Daylight Savings day came, we had put all of the library clocks ahead, not knowing that some of the newer clocks were semi-intelligent. These newer clocks had simply jumped another hour forward on Monday -- the day they had been programed to do it.

Well, at least these clocks allow us to do our own time changing on the correct days. And now we know to watch out for things to happen to these clocks on the old Daylight Savings time days. (cue music from Twilight Zone)

-wendieO

Online Magazine

Kelly Herold, who blogs at Big A litte a, is also the editor of the online magazine, The Edge of the Forest.

She says:
The March/April 2008 issue of The Edge of the Forest is now available -- here.

It contains many exciting features for for fans of children's books as well as interviews, reviews, and much, much more. In short, here's what's in store:

An interview with Peter Cameron, by Barbara Shoup
Spring Book Recommendations from the Editorial Board.
Fairytale in the Forest: A Friendship, by Candice Ransom.
A YA Review Bonus Section.
Barrie Summy is this month's Blogging Writer, interviewed by Becky Levine
Sounds from the Forest is back.
Reviews in all categories—from Picture book to Young Adult

If you're interested in submitting an article or review, please check out the About Us page for details.

The next issue of the Edge of the Forest will be out the first week of May.

p.s. And after you read the magazine, whip right over to Big A little a to enjoy an interview with Scaredy Squirrel and his creator, Mélanie Watt who are touring various blogs this week.

Enjoy
-wendieO

New Beverly Cleary

Interesting article about the new Ramona book from Beverly Cleary can be found here.
Quite a change for the kid who failed Kindergarten.

And here's another article -- from Fuse #8 about J.K Rowling's eighth Harry Potter book to come out in 2010.

-wendieO