We have the gracious Sarah Rees Brennan here today! Sarah, Congratulations on joining the truly amazing and talented group of writers that have debuted in 2009! Your first novel, The Demon’s Lexicon, was published  this past June.

Thank you for the congratulations!

 

Where did the title come from? You or your publisher? Is there a story behind that name?

When I wrote it I was living near London with my sardonic and wonderful friend Penelope, who smokes like a chimney and despairs of me on a daily basis. I showed her my List of Possible Titles, and she said ‘Oh, the Demon’s Lexicon, definitely.’ ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why do you like that one best?’ She took a long, worldweary drag of her cigarette and said ‘Because Sarah… all the other titles are terrible.’Publishers often do change titles, but I am very happy they let me keep mine. Sometimes people think it should’ve been called something else – sometimes people just wonder what the heck ‘Lexicon’ means – but I like the title because it works on a lot of levels, and one way only makes sense once you’ve read the book. I love mysteries, even if they’re also titles.

 

Did you get to help choose the cover?

My publishers mostly chose, but they very kindly listened to me as well: my US publishers originally chose a blondish guy I christened Nancy Sue for my cover and they switched him out for a darker, tougher specimen because I asked. And my UK publishers performed some pretty major cosmetic surgery on the guy on their cover – which worked out great, as I think he is pretty foxy now!

 

Can you tell us a little about your writing process?

I am totally useless without a cup of tea. My very favourite way of writing is sitting at a table with writer friends, occasionally able to look up and say ‘Oh my god, quickly somebody tell me about the south of England’ and ‘Sooo… thirty makeout scenes are excessive, yes?’ But a good second is sitting on my red sofa in my red-wall-papered living room with Cup of Tea Number Thirteen and playing country music extremely loud.

 

Can you name one book you have read in the past year that you would recommend?

Oh gosh, just one? I thought Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margi Stohl was awesome – magic in the deep South, plus a boy narrator. It’s nice to have boy narrators to keep mine company...

 

What is one random thing about you?

I have different-coloured eyes, one blue and one green. Sometimes I wear mismatching socks to match them.

 

What is the most important aspect of your book about which you would want potential readers to know?

This is a hard one to choose, but perhaps – that this is an attempt to get into the mind of someone dark, disturbed, definitely dangerous and possibly unsympathetic: that this is a hero I always feared that nobody but myself would like (to shamelessly crib from Jane Austen) and hoped to be proved wrong.

 

What is your favorite thing about The Demon’s Lexicon?

Oh gosh, tough question. I like a lot of things about it, honestly – have to, or I wouldn’t have written it! I like thinking about what words really mean – important words like love and family – and I like setting up characters to be stereotypical, and then subverting them so they’re their own people, and seem real.

 

This is the first book in a trilogy. How firm are you on keeping it at three books (disregarding possible new books set in same world)? And what, if anything, can you tell us about The Demon’s Covenant, the second book of the trilogy due out next May?  Can you give a hint, vague and oblique as you like, of what is in store for your characters?

I like a trilogy, myself – I always want to spend more time with characters than one book, but I don’t want to spin off into madness and write seventeen zillion books and never tie things up for my readers. So I do think it’ll just be a trilogy focusing on these main characters… if we disregard possible new books set in the same world!Two of the four main characters in The Demon’s Covenant fall in love, not necessarily with each other. And Nick fights a duel with a person as a prize. And – well, if Lexicon was all about words, about family, love, true names and what they mean, Covenant in the same way is about bargains: the bargains Nick and Alan have made in the past and how they catch up with them, the bargains all the characters make during the book and how they turn out. In the end, family, friendship and romance are all about bargains – they’re a bargain that people will take care of one another. That they will keep loving each other.

The sequel is about words, too, in the end: it’s about what happens when you break your word.

 

Do you have the whole story all plotted out?

I do! I admit it took me, uh, years to work out one part of the end game, but I’m currently writing the third book and I know exactly what will happen in it! Of course, I admit that ‘what will happen’ may change in the rewrites. Possibly again and again…

 

*One thing that really stood out for me was the relationship between Nick and Allan. I loved it. I found it both vastly refreshing and a bit intriguing that you chose to illustrate Nick’s capacity for love in a non-romantic fashion. It is not Mae or some other romantic interest that informs and shapes Nick’s choices, but rather his connection to his brother, whose welfare and happiness are the determining factors in Nick’s life. Can you explain a bit about why you chose to take that path or that all came to be? And what can we expect from those two? Do they ever grow to understand one another? Or would that be giving too much away?

Well, thank you very much! I like romances a lot – one of my favourite books is Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover, a very romantic YA fantasy – but I did think it would be fun and a little different to have a book that, while it had romance, focused on a familial relationship. Because family is a huge part of your life, especially when you’re a teenager and you live with your parents and siblings: family is the first way most people learn about love. Of course, since the book was published in the Year of Supernatural Romance and the Twilight Movie, this may have been the wrong decision…

My first idea for the book was knowing what had happened to the characters in the past – how Alan has practically brought Nick up, all the secrets in their background, how they lived as children on the run and learning to be dangerous. Danger can make romances more intense, and friendships – as in war movies – so I thought it would be interesting to see how important brothers could become to each other – or a brother and a sister, in the case of the other two main characters.

I do not want to give too much away, but Nick and Alan’s relationship is definitely a lot more fraught in the second book. Lies endangered it, but the truth may be even worse. They do learn to understand each other a little better, but there’s also a lot of pain involved: there are things nobody wants to discover.

Ahem… the second book’s also… going to be funny? I hope! Sometimes.

Hope these answers work for you, and thank you for the great questions!

 

Thank You! Wishing you all the best in all your endeavors, especially the literary ones!

 

Book Summary from Simon and Schuster: Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and the demons who give them power. The magicians are hunting the Ryves family for a charm that Nick’s mother stole — a charm that keeps her alive — and they want it badly enough to kill again.

Danger draws even closer when a brother and sister come to the Ryves family for help. The boy wears a demon’s mark, a sign of death that almost nothing can erase…and when Alan also gets marked by a demon, Nick is desperate to save him. The only way to do that is to kill one of the magicians they have been hiding from for so long.

Ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Nick starts to suspect that his brother is telling him lie after lie about their past. As the magicians’ Circle closes in on their family, Nick uncovers the secret that could destroy them all.

Published: June 2009

Page Count: 336

ISBN-10: 1416963790

Cost: $17.99 hardcover

First Chapter

Buy @ Amazon.com

Sarah’s Website (Be sure to check out her essays and stories!)

Sarah’s Blog ~ Sarah Tells Tales

 

This is just a quick list of some upcoming books:

R. L. LaFevers:

Nathaniel Fludd: Beastologist Series

• Flight of the Phoenix ~ September 16, 2009
• The Basilisk’s Lair ~ June 2010
• The Wyvern’s Treasure ~ ?
• Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus (3) ~ April 12, 2010
• Theodosia and the Last Pharoh (4) ~ ?

Eoin Colfer is working on Artemis Fowl 7 – saw that news at the back of the newly released paperbacks – love the new covers.  Huge *squee* for another Artemis because we desperately need one. Desperately.

Update: AF7 is tentatively titled Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex and is due out 2010. Title and release subject to change. Eoin revealed that the next book would explain about a link between Holly and Artemis’ birth. He has also let slip that he plans to have Artemis end up in fairy prison with Opal Koboi.

Sarah Prineas has the third Magic Thief book, Found, coming out May 25th, 2010, as well as a fourth written if her publisher will take it, and is working on a new book centered around a female protagonist for the middle-grade market, filled with faeries and magic and it sounds tremendously exciting.  From her blog:

The new book is called The Crow Queen’s Daughter, although my editor says the title will change. I’m at that unfortunate stage of writing the book where I’m completely obsessed with it (hence the no blogging right now, because I’d just be boring). I hope you’re not sorry you asked!

After writing the MT books, which are first person from a boy’s pov, I really wanted to write a story with a girl protagonist, and I wanted to write a fairy book that never mentions the word fairy and is not urban fantasy, but rural, in which the landscape is important and also very real. My main character, Fer, is fierce and wild and chafes against her witchy grandmother’s teachings about herbal lore and magical healing spells, so when Fer has an encounter with a tricksy puck, saving him from a pack of wolves, and then meets her mother for the first time, she says yes when asked if she wants to come visit her mother’s home, which is through a ‘way.’ In this other place she finds that her mother is a sort-of warrior queen and the puck is her servant, but that things are wrong, out of balance. Fer has lots of questions about what happened to her (human) father, but she’s distracted from uncovering the truth by the fact that she loves the lessons in riding and tracking and shooting the bow and arrow she’s getting from her mother. She’s about to discover the source of the wrongness in the ‘other land’, and that’s the point I’ve written up to. The rest of the book will be Fer finding out what really happened in the past that has unbalanced the present, both in her world and the other one, and then setting it right. Haven’t written that yet, so I don’t know how, exactly, that’s going to happen.

Jessica Day George is hard at work. She just finished a draft of Princess of Glass, a sequel to her Princess of the Midnight Ball, with numerous other stories in the works!

Julia Golding has Swallow, sequel to her Dragonfly, Wolf Cry (beginning of a new series), a new Companions series projected for 2011, as well as working on Cat Royal 7.

Anne Osterlund has projects in hand. No details until after December…

Sarah Rees Brennan is working on her Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, with The Demon’s Covenant due out May 18th, 2010. The third book is due out in 2011.

R. J. Anderson is working on her trilogy (entitled Faery Rebels in the US), with the second book Wayfarer due out April 14th, 2010. It is entitled Rebel in UK.

Scott Westerfield’s next book in his highly creative and enjoyable Leviathan series, Behemoth, is due out October 2010.

Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series began this year with Soulless, out October 1, 2009, continuing with Changeless out April 2010, with Blameless following.

Check out this fun interview with her at Goodreads!

Rick Riordan’s new series, The Kane Chronicles, starts with The Red Pyramid, coming out May 4th, 2010. Check out this interview at Publisher’s Weekly to learn more! He also plans to have another Camp Half-Blood series eventually.

Shannon Hale has a sequel for Rapunzel’s Revenge, Calamity Jack due out January 2010, as well as yet untitled YA novel which will hopefully be out in 2011.

E.D. Baker says:  I finally finished the story I’ve been working on and sent it to my editor. She and I both think it’s my best book so far. I had a wonderful time writing it, even though it took me longer than most to get started. It was a new story unrelated to any other book I’ve written so far, and I had to get the feeling of the story right in my head before I could get it on paper (or in my computer.) I rewrote the first chapter four times before I really liked it. (I kept telling the story, not showing it.)  This story is a fantasy set in the same world as tales of the Frog Princess, although they aren’t related. It’s about a girl who… ah, but that would be telling. The book is due to come out in the summer of 2010.

I’m doing the pre-writing for my next book which will be the eighth in the tales of the Frog Princess. It’s going to be about Millie, Audun and Millie’s family. After that I’m going to write the sequel to Wings. I’m already thinking about the plot for that. (I had one outline written for it, but neither my editor nor I were crazy about it; I’m starting from scratch with a new outline.) I’m trying to write two books a year, so I’m sorry that I don’t blog or get much of my other writing done as often as I’d like.

There is a host of new books forthcoming, but I am going to stop before this list gets any longer. I’ll post more later.

It is a bit late…

I am excited for: Voices of Dragons by Carrie Vaughn

Goodreads says: On one side of the border lies the modern world: the internet, homecoming dances, cell phones. On the other side dwell the ancient monsters who spark humanity’s deepest fears: dragons.

Seventeen-year-old Kay Wyatt knows she’s breaking the law by rock climbing near the border, but she’d rather have an adventure than follow the rules. When the dragon Artegal unexpectedly saves her life, a secret friendship grows between them—even though the fragile truce that has maintained peace between their two species is unraveling around them. As tensions mount and battles begin, Kay and Artegal are caught in the middle. Can their friendship change the course of a war?

In her young adult debut, New York Times bestselling author Carrie Vaughn presents a modern tale of myths and machines and an alliance that crosses a seemingly unbridgeable divide.

Available: March 1st 2010

Publisher: HarperTeen

ISBN: 0061798940

Length: 320 pages

Format: Hardcover

Cost: $16.99

What else Carrie has cooking:

I have a couple of other novels that I wrote after Midnight Hour and Kitty Goes to Washington, while I waited to find out if I was going to be writing more Kitty books.  These are a superhero novel and a near-future end of the world with Greek mythology chucked in novel, and I’m hoping they’ll see the light of day at some point.  I’m also working on the second YA novel, which has time travel and pirates.  I’m cooking a fantasy novel, but I don’t know if anything will come of it.  Right now, after the pirate book and the next couple of Kitty books, I have no idea what I’ll be working on.  But something will come up.  Something always does.

Source: Carrie’s Blog

One book that I looking forward to reading is The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler, a retelling of the Grimm’s The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Her take on the story looks like it it will be quite different from the retellings I have already read. Mostly because of the addition of a thirteenth princess. The story already suffers from a surfeit of royal females, so what is she thinking with throwing another one into the mix? Well, the king is pretty disgusted too by yet another girl, so in his displeasure, this thirteenth princess is banished to the kitchens, remenescent of Cinderella. So, it will be fun to see where it goes. It is her first YA book. The book actually came to my attention because of the small controversy surrounding the change in covers.

From this to that pictured above. Which do you like better?

My favorite  reinterpretations of the classic fairytale, in no particular order, are:

Jessica Day George’s Princess of the Midnight Ball

Juliet Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing

and Regina Doman’s The Midnight Dancers

And be sure to check out the SurLaLune’s page on the original fairytale and find the wealth of other information to be found, including its history, other culture’s versions of the story, more modern interpretations and much, much more!

This month the Cybils nominations opened up, though the winners will not be announced until February 2010. Or thereabouts. But then again there are a lot of nominations to read through. Looking over the nominations, I was pleased to see some of my favorite reads of 2009 there, as well as quite a few of my to-reads.

In the Sci-fi/ Fantasy category, covering both MG and YA, were the following that I have read, my favorites in bold, well liked are starred:

• Darkwood by M. E. Breen
• Dragon Spear by Jessica Day George (Third and final in her Dragon series)
• Dragon of Trelian by Michelle Knudsen
• Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter / Knife by R. J. Anderson (2009 Debutante)
• Immortal Fire (Cronus Chronicles)  by Anne Ursu (3 of 3)
• The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan (5 of 5)
• Mousekeeper by Alex Milway
• Roar by Emma Clayton
• Sent (Book 2 of The Missing) by Margaret Peterson Haddix
• Magic Thief: Lost by Sarah Prineas
• Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle by Susannah Appelbaum
• Sisters Grimm: The Ever After War (7th) by Michael Buckley
• Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris by R. L. LaFevers

• Academy 7 by Anne Osterlund
• Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry (Debutante)*
• Catching Fire (Hunger Games, book 2 of 3?) by Suzanne Collins*
• City of Glass by Cassandra Clare ( 3 of 4 in The Mortal Instruments Series)
• Daughter of Flame by Zoe Marriott
• Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev (Act I of III in the Theatre Illuminata Series) (Debutante)*
• Fade by Lisa McMann (Wake, Book 2)
• Forest Born (Books of Bayern, 4) by Shannon Hale
• Hunger (Gone,Book 2) by Michael Grant
• My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison
• Once A Princess (1 of 2, Sasharia En Garde) by Sherwood Smith*
• Princess of the Midnight Ball (A Retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses) by Jessica Day George*
• Silver Phoenix (1 of ?) by Cindy Pon
• The Singing (4 of 4 for Pellinor)  by Allison Croggon
• The Sorceress (The Immortal Secrets of Nicholas Flamel, 3 of 6) by Michael Scott*
• Soulstice (Book 2 of The Devouring) by Simon Holt*
• Tiger Moon by Antonia Micahaelis
• The Thirteenth Child (Frontier Magic, Book One) by Patricia C. Wrede
• Wings (1 of 4?) by Aprilynne Pike
• Wondrous Strange (book 1 of 3) by Lesley Livingston*

To-read from the nominations list:

• Damsel by Susan E. Connolly
• Flight of the Phoenix by R. L. LaFevers (Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, Book One)
• Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass by Erica Kirov
• The Shifter (The Healing Wars, Book One) by Janice Hardy
• Tentacles by Roland Smith
• Arch Enemy (The Looking Glass Wars, Book Three) by Frank Beddor
• Another Faust by Daniel and Dira Nayeri
• As You Wish by Jackson Pearce
• Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater
• Betraying Season (2 of 3 of The Leland Sisters) by Marissa Doyle
• Demon Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble
• Girl in the Arena Lise Haines
• Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe
• The Hollow by Jessica Verday (1 of 3?)
• Ice by Sarah Beth Durst (Retelling of East o’ the Sun, West o’ the Moon)
• Immortal by Gillian Shields
• Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn (Rerelling of Sleeping Beauty)
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• Meridian by Amber Kizer
• My Soul To Take by Rachel Vincent
• Past world by Ian Beck
• Radiant Darkness by Emily Whitman (About Persephone)
• Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

And two that were not nominated, but which deserved to be:

• Time Quake by Linda Buckley-Archer (3 of 3 in the Gideon Trilogy)
• The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner (2 of 2 in The French Revolution series)

Put The Big Red Button on your site

“Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,

Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fullness of joy…” Swinburne

“The sea is the consolation of this our day, as it has been the consolation of the centuries.
The sea is the matrix of creation, and we have the memory of it in our blood.
But far more than this is there in the sea.
It presents, upon the greatest scale we mortals can bear, those not mortal powers which brought us into being. It is not only the symbol or the mirror, but especially it is the messenger of the Divine.”

“… All that which concerns the sea is profound and final.”

Hilaire Belloc

The sea hath no king but God alone.  ~Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The White Ship

The free
Mighty, music-haunted sea.
- Anna Katharine Green

On the Sea John Keats

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often `tis in such gentle temper found
That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell

When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude
Or fed too much with cloying melody -
Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

Roadways by John Masefield

Leads me, lures me, calls me
To salt green tossing sea;
A road without earth’s road-dust
Is the right road for me.

A wet road heaving, shining,
And wild with seagull’s cries,
A mad salt sea-wind blowing
The salt spray in my eyes.

My road calls me, lures me
West, east, south, and north;
Most roads lead men homewards,
My road leads me forth.

To add more miles to the tally
Of grey miles left behind,
In quest of that one beauty
God put me here to find.

The Edge of the Sea

The scent from the bay
carries something like memories
from the edge of the sea
where the sun goes
at the end of the day.

I inhale the breeze
As I watch the sun retreat
into the edge of the sea, 

and I wonder what’s there,
and why the scents
from the edge of the sea
seem to carry memories,

and whether the ships
moored along the harbor
ever get there.  

—Cristina Montes

The Sea

BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious;

Mild, majestic, foaming, free, —

Over time itself victorious,

Image of eternity!

Sun and moon and stars shine o’er thee,

See thy surface ebb and flow,

Yet attempt not to explore thee

In thy soundless depths below.

Whether morning’s splendors steep thee

With the rainbow’s glowing grace,

Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee,

‘Tis but for a moment’s space.

Earth, — her valleys and her mountains,

Mortal man’s behests obey;

The unfathomable fountains

Scoff his search and scorn his sway.

Such art thou, stupdendous ocean!

But, if overwhelmed by thee,

Can we think, without emotion,

What must thy Creator be?

Bernard Barton

Sea Voices

O’ER the wintry sea,

Mingled with its tone

Comes a voice to me,

That’s not the sea’s own.

Low and soft it is,

Near and far away –

Sad as winds that kiss

The sea beyond the bay.

Soulless, restless, swell,

O what radiant guest,

Sad, invisible,

Hovers o’er thy breast?

Gray rocks and gray sea,

Stretch of barren shore,

Grief and memory

Claim me evermore.

William Stanley Braithwaite

The Sea Limits

CONSIDER the sea’s listless chime:

Time’s self it is, made audible,–

The murmur of the earth’s own shell.

Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass

No furlong further. Since time was,

This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death’s,–it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,

Enduring always at dull strife.

As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,

Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands,

Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;

Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee:

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again,–

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh

The same desire and mystery,

The echo of the whole sea’s speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not anything but what thou art:

And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

By the North Sea by A. C. Swinburne

Beautiful piece!

Alike pervaded by His eye, all parts of His dominion lie;

This world of ours, and worlds unseen, and thin the boundary between.

~ Josiah Conder

Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light. ~Leonard S. Marcus

[I write fantasy] Because, paradoxically, fantasy is a good way to show the world as it is. Fantasy can show us the truth about human relationships and moral dilemmas because it works on our emotions on a deeper symbolic level than realistic fiction. ( it has great emotional power.) So I think that fantasy does show us the truth of our own lives. ~ Lloyd Alexander

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are:

Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

–Jane Yolen (in the collection Touch Magic)

So, children’s literature has an odd reputation. Somehow it is seen as less worthy and meaningful and artistic than adult literature. Which is laughable, to be sure. But why? If anything, children’s literature is far superior. I read children’s books all the time, picking them at random from bookstores and libraries. However, I never browse through the adult section. I would not pick up an adult book unless I had previously had truly amazing recommendations and reviews from trusted friends. And I have noticed three main differences between the two that explains my preference.

First, children’s books are all about the story. In a sense, they are usually closer to the very essence and purpose of stories, the idea that stories are important because they show us how to live and why. Adult books so rarely have that sense about them. They tend to try and cobble together a bunch of vague, ill defined “themes” and call it a story.

Second, length and effectual use of space and words. Children’s’ literature requires that you get to the freaking point already. Adult literature likes to mozy, take a few u-turns and chase a few tangents and then remembers it was supposed to be telling a story and goes back, only to lose it again. No wonder so few adults read. I won’t put up with such sloppy writing and since kids books are supposed to be off-limits as childish and immature, no one is going to bother reading. I can’t blame them.  But in the best kids books,  there really is an efficiency of storytelling that is  amazing. The depth of characterization, the world building, the emotion are all packed into a very limited space, but with so much more power and efficacy simply because of the increased brevity. Sort of like the difference between a rich raspberry tart and a bag of artificial processed raspberry pastries. One is fresh, with fewer ingredients and less of it, but it tastes so much more delicious. Far more satisfying than the considerably bulkier pastries, with their long list of ingredients and additives. Sounds like you are getting more in that food? More fat, more unneccessary ingredients that ultimately detract from a superior taste experience.

Thirdly, what I’ll call the ick factor. Yes, plenty of YA crosses the line on this, but in general, an adult book is going to have way more immorality and depressing depictions of depravity and horror. Graphic depictions of violence and intercourse. And YA certainly does have its share of violence and wars, coups and revolutions, as well as people in romantic relationships, but by and large, I think it handles it a great deal better.

So, anyway, here are some tidbits from a discussion on writing for children on Sarah Prineas’ blog:

The best children’s books also teach you about being a good person and living in a good world, without ever being preachy–reinforcing things you already know in your heart. fabulousfrock

I think children’s books haven’t yet lost that sense of wonder, of everything being big and beautiful and new, and somehow more there than how adults tend to see it.

I love the idea of the joy of discovery, of embracing the sense of wonder. This really isn’t a tool for a toolbox; it’s not a writing approach; it’s a whole life philosophy. Which is kind of awesome. sp

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept almost without questions, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly.” E. B. White

Madeleine L’Engle: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

But the younger the audience, the stronger their bullshit detector, and at the same time the more willing they are to believe, to be transported, to be swept away, to be moved, to be touched. They also have the gift of years ahead and possibilities; the future is so darn shiny when you’re young. Lisa Mantchev

I do think kid readers are more willing to BELIEVE. It’s a true act of the imagination. It makes the books as much the readers’ book as it is the writer’s. Sarah Prineas

I’m going to throw in my two cents as an editor as well as a reader. Clarity. Conciseness. I believe kids will close a book much faster than adults on too much background information, too many internal thoughts (unless they’re in a really fantastic voice), and too much just plain old narrative. I think the best writing for kids and adults has a spareness to it, has that quality of using just the “right” phrase or word, but I think the requirement for this to be in a kids’ book is stronger. beckylevine

I see a sort of layering of sophistication in good kid’s books, so that it reads well at multiple ages or reading levels. orbitalmechanic

SOURCE

Every person’s Life is a Fairytale written by God’s fingers ~ Hans Christian Anderson 1805-1875

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do ~ Ben Franklin

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity ~ Richard Feynman

“You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.” Dave Barry

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.” Dickens in Bleak House

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere ~ G.K. Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people ~ G.K. C.

Si tollis hostem, tollis et pugnam
Si tollis pugnam, tollis et coronam
Si tollis libertatem, tollis et dignitatem

“Without an adversary, there is no conflict;
Without a conflict, there is no crown;
Without freedom, no honor.
Saint Columban

How can there be evil if God exists?
How can there be good if He exists not?
Boethius

“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”
Dickens “The Pickwick Papers”

In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.
“Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Not all who wander are lost ~ Tolkien

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wildflower;
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice

A set o’ dull, conceited hastes (dunderheads)
Confuse their brains in college-classes,
They gang in stirks (go in young bulls)
And come out asses, plain truth to speak.
Robert Burns

“The society of girls is a very delightful thing.”
Dickens in David Copperfield

“Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.”
Benjamin Franklin

In principio mulier est hominis confusio.
Medieval Latin Proverb

True happiness demands courage and a spirit of sacrifice, refusing every compromise with evil and having the disposition to pay personally, even with death, to be faithful to God and His commandments.  J.P. II July 2003

Today Christ asks the baptized: “Are you my witnesses?” And each one is invited to question himself sincerely: “Do I live a strong, serene and joyful faith, or do I portray the image of a Christian life that is falgging, marred by compromises and easy conformity?” J.P. II

Sometimes I think about time. That the star that I am looking at is that star as it looked a hundred or four hundred years ago. That when I stand here, in this time, and look at that star, I am not just looking at space. I am looking at time-at another time. That fascinates me. ~ Madeline L’Engle

One has a high form of meditation when the mind, lively by nature and richly gifted, penetrates deeply into the truths of faith, pondering them from all sides, as in a dialogue with oneself, developing their rational consequences and discovering their intimate connections.  Sister Theresa Benedicta/ St. Edith Stein. See her Woman, Prayer of the Church, Life and Letters, and  Mystery of Christmas

All earthly things age, decay and die and thus any attachment to a beautiful thing must inevitably cause sorrow because one will sooner or later be separated from it by the ravages of time. Even a child can intuit the basic cause of sorrow in this world, the passing of beautiful things. Think Tolkien, Lewis-this is a theme well rehearsed in literature. There is this sense of mournful sweetness or wistfulness for that which was or will pass away forever in this time but which perhaps may be reclaimed in eternity.

“The key is beauty. If the world is merely a complex and efficient machine, beauty is not required. Beauty is in fact superfluous. Therefore beauty is a gift to us. If we were soulless machines of meat, the survival instinct would be all we needed to motivate us. The pleasures of the senses-such as taste and smell- are superfluous to machines in a godless world. Therefore, they are a gift to us, and evidence of divine grace. The older I’ve gotten, the more beauty, wonder, and mystery I see in the world…”

“Catholicism permits a view of life that sees mystery and wonder in all things… I feel about Catholicism as G. K. Chesterton did-that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life. I think my conversion was a natural growth. Even in the darkest hours of my childhood, I was an irrepressible optimist, always able to find something to fill me with amazement, wonder and delight. When I came to the Catholic faith, it explained to me why I always had – and always should have – felt exuberant and full of love.” Dean Koontz