Tag: KidLitCon

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Friday Five: What I’m Doing During My MG Break

Posted on by beckylevine

So October is my step-away-from-the-MG month. I’m taking four weeks between finishing the first draft and starting to revise. Why? Well, mostly, because everybody (right?) says it’s a good thing to do. And you can probably add to that that I’m a bit nervous about this revision, just because it’s been a while and my head is telling me all sorts of things that could go wrong. Which will totally be cured by waiting a month to start (right?).

What am I doing with that month, though? Oh, several things!

  1. I drafted a new picture book and sent it off to my critique group. It was a new idea mostly because when I looked back at my past PiBoIdMo ideas, nothing shouted “This one! This one!” I’m going to look through again this weekend and actually, you know, think about some of them.
  2. Looking forward to PiBoIdMo 2014 and thinking about how I might want to do it differently. Like maybe I want to write down 30 titles. Because titles are so much easier than ideas. Ha. And buying this awesome 2014 PiBoIdMo notebook from CafePress.
  3. Watching summer turn into fall and thinking about how this will be the first year in many that I’ll be driving to and from work in the dark, thinking about ways to stay alert and productive once I’m home, at least a few nights a week, instead of just heading right for the pajamas and cat snuggles. Tips and suggestions welcome!
  4. Making some trips. Next weekend I’m going to KidLitCon in Sacramento. So excited to meet people who are part of a world I love and to hear more discussion on diversity in books and what bloggers can do about it. Then my husband and I will make a quick run up and back to see my son in his first college concert.  His latin jazz combo will be playing here. How gorgeous is that? And the acoustics are amazing.
  5. Reading, reading, reading. Right now I seem to be on a mystery kick–just finished and really enjoyed Annette Dashofy’s second Zoe Chambers novel, Lost Legacy, and moved on with a Yay! Finally! to Deborah Crombie’s newest, To Dwell in Darkness. Then, happy dance, I found two more books by favorite authors at the bookmobile today: Elly Griffiths’ The Outcast Dead (If you haven’t read Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series, start now) and Jill Paton Walsh’s The Late Scholar, a new one in her “Based on the characters of Dorothy L. Sayers” series (and, Sayers’ fans, Walsh’s books are a very, very good continuation of Sayer’s own books). So, you know. I’m set for at least a few days!

Happy October, everyone!

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Saturday Six: KidLitCon

Posted on by beckylevine

So I just signed up for the Saturday session of KidLitCon, which is going to be held in Sacramento this October. Yay! I can manage on just one hotel night and some caffeine for the late night drive home. I’ve been wanting to go to this for years, and I was waiting for it to come to our neighborhood. Thanks so much to Jen Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page and Tanita Davis and Sarah Stevenson of Finding Wonderland for pulling this all together.

I thought, for a Saturday Six, I’d do six reasons that I want to attend this year.

1. You may have noticed I don’t appear at my blog all that often these days, although I’ve been trying to shift back lately. I’m feeling like I need a new burst of blog energy, and where better to get that at a conference for kidlit bloggers?

2. I am a huge fan of Jen Robinson’s Book Page and, even more, of Jen’s commitment to literacy and reading and all things kids books. Anything she’s a part of is going to be good.

3. Mitali Perkins will be Saturday’s keynote speaker. Since I got started with blogs, Mitali has been challenging us to think outside our auto-perspectives, to stretch our writing and reading, and I want to hear what she has to say. It’s going to be important.

4. I’m feeling like I want my blog to be facing out a bit more for a while, less directed–as they say–at my own navel. The theme for this year’s conference is “Blogging Diversity in Young Adult and Children’s Lit: What’s Next? I posted about #weneeddiversebooks early on in the movement, and I’ve definitely been reading more diverse books, but if I’m doing it just for me, then–really–I’m doing it too quietly. Maybe this is the “out” I want to face.

5. Kind of a corollary to #3 is that I talk a lot about writing at my blog and, often, about writing for kids. But, you know, I wouldn’t be a writer if it weren’t for the kids’ book that made me fall in deep, deep love with the whole reading thing when I was little and that keep me reading in that genre years after I’ve given up jumping rope, trying to keep a hula hoop above my ankles, and writing angsty 12-year-old thoughts into my diary. Kid Lit gives me air to breathe and passion to create. I’m pretty sure that, at the conference, I won’t be the only one who feels that way.

6. This program. And this list of attendees.