Posts on blogs

The fall issue of SCBWI Illinois' Prairie Wind is online, with the fourth installment of author Carmela Martino's series on naming characters, "What's in a Name?"

I'm all aglow because she cites a couple of my blog posts from a few months back about character-naming issues—and, amazingly, I don't sound like a complete idiot. Yes, sounding like a complete idiot is one of my big fears. For as often as I sound like a complete idiot, I'm still not quite used to it.

But read the article because, truly, it's not just about me. It's about how names' sound and connotation (etymological or personal) affect characterization. Carmela points out that depending on connotation can be an iffy thing because names may evoke different meanings for different readers. (Thinking of naming a character Rudolf? Are your readers going to think "red-nosed reindeer" or "Nazi war criminal"?)

While reading, I thought of the four March sisters in Little Women. Perhaps it's just because they are so familiar to me, but could the girls' names be more perfect? Meg, starting with that warm "mmm" like "mommy." Meg reminds me of nutmeg, the warm, sweet smells of baking, very domestic—and Meg, of course, often must act as mother to her sisters. Then there's Jo, an abrupt name, gender-ambiguous, evoking the brash, tomboyish character. Beth, a name that no matter how loudly you say it ends with a sigh, a whisper; sure enough, sweet, gentle Beth fades away. Finally, Amy, a stalwart, no-nonsense name with a bit of a whine from the long "a"; again, it suits Amy, spoiled baby of the family, to a tee.

I never could get over the name Laurie for the boy next door, though. That's a nickname that hasn't withstood the test of time.

Thanks to Carmela's article, I've also got a new blog to read now: author Darcy Pattison's Revision Notes. She posts frequently with ideas about how to approach different children's book genres, plus tips and information about the children's book industry—for example, What Kids Think Is Funny and 12 Picture Book Topics to Avoid. Looks like meaty reading!

(Regarding the post title: it's literal, of course, but tonight I also began watching the BBC's Brideshead Revisited. I'm enjoying it so far but am afraid it will all end in tears. No, I have not read the book. No spoilers, please!)

Abby (the) Librarian is celebrating the 10,000 hit mark for her blog with a book giveaway! Leave a comment on the entry to be entered in the raffle.

Abby is a Chicago-area children's librarian and posts terrific book reviews and ideas for storytime, craft, and other children's programs. Particularly if you are a teacher or librarian, I recommend adding her blog to your roll for everyday reading!

I want to highlight a few blogs I've been enjoying lately. These blogs don't appear in this site's blogroll (which desperately needs to be updated again...sigh) because they aren't children's/YA book-related, but they're fun/interesting sites that might interest you, the reader, just the same!

• The Big Picture - This photo blog by The Boston Globe is a treasure. Three days a week, they post about 10-20ish high-res (for the web) photos on a given timely theme. One of my favorite entries was last week's Beating the Heat, 22 photos of people around the world cooling off this summer, from the claustrophobic throng in a Chinese swimming pool to Palestinian women bathing fully dressed to children playing in an Oklahoma water park. Some topics are sobering, others celebrate life, but all of them are a window to life around the world.
• Library Praxis - My associate (for lack of a better term) Emily and some of her cohorts write this blog on the politics and theory of librarianship. They're usually talking about academic libraries, but many of the principles apply to public and school libraries as well. I enjoy the discussions there.
• Ray the Singing Cab Driver - Ray is something of a fixture in Chicago. He's a singer-songwriter who literally takes his show on the road. He also has a stage band, for which my husband is the drummer. Ray is an eccentric character; his life philosophy is to lead the kind of life he'd like to read a book or see a movie about. He's had a boatload of interesting experiences and is also a damn fine storyteller. I greatly enjoyed his recent story about the one and only time he's been arrested.

My blog reading has improved about a hundred fold since I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. Why did I never know how much better Google Reader is before? Posts don't vanish after I read them. I can "star" posts I want to read or return to later, making it SO much easier to track posts on which I've commented! I can search the contents of one, some, or all of the blogs I read, making it SO much easier to find that post that talked about X but I can't remember when or where I read it! Yay, Google Reader!

In fact, I'm going to use Google Reader's "starred item" feature RIGHT NOW and pull up the link to July's Carnival of Children's Literature, hosted by Read-Imagine-Talk. There are a lot of fun and interesting kidlit-related posts up there, and it's always fun to see what blogs I've been missing all this time.

Did I mention that Google Reader makes it easier to add a new feed than Bloglines does? It's true!

On a completely different note: for all I pick on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (I'm on Team None-of-the-Above / Get-a-Life-Bella), I've placed my reserve at the library on Breaking Dawn. Like the Elephant's Child, I have insatiable curiosity. I shudder to think how many hundreds of people may be ahead of me.

After ten days back in the States, I'm still playing catch-up. I read a couple of really fun books this weekend that I'm planning to post about, but in the meantime, here are some links worth following!

The May Carnival of Children's Literature is online, thanks to Melissa Wiley of Here in the Boggy Glen. Enjoy highlights from the Kidlitosphere's past month of posting. Add some new blogs to your blogroll while you're at it!

This weekend saw the launch of Guys Lit Wire, a new blogging effort spearheaded by Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray. Colleen and a couple dozen other kidlit bloggers will be posting daily with book reviews and other news of particular interest to boy readers and those who work with them.

Finally, the Summer 2008 issue of the Prairie Wind, the SCBWI-Illinois newsletter, is up with my article about Print Library Resources for Authors. It's a follow-up to my Spring article about Digital Resources and focuses on public library resources that should particularly interest, but are not necessarily familiar to, children's book authors.