Inaugural speaker for Pat Scales lecture series at University of Montevallo

On 4/19/18, I had the honor of being the inaugural speaker for a lecture series at the University of Montevallo. It's outside Birmingham, Alabama, a city I'd visited for the first time only a month before, for (elementary) school visits. The university used to be all-female; males began to attend through the G.I. Bill (apparently all-male and coed campuses did not have enough slots to accommodate the number of men returning from WWII).

The lecture was part of a larger event called the Forte Festival of Creativity. Its theme was "Heroes and Heroines."

In a case of near-perfect timing, the day of the lecture was 80 years and a day after Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 (April 18, 1938). A lovely group of educators, students, and other community members attended.

I've not met Pat Scales but I hope to. She attended Montevallo and went on to become an advocate for intellectual freedom and a crusader against censorship. I delivered the lecture in a room in the library newly created to house Pat's generous donation of papers and children's books.

The room was bedecked with fantastic vintage Book Week posters. I wanted every one of them.

I was further heartened to learn that Montevallo attracts students who did not feel they could be themselves out loud in high school in the South, such as those who identify as LGBTQ. The campus was clearly open-minded and artistic.

And not-so-clearly haunted. 

Around 9 p.m. the night before my lecture, I was taken to where I'd spend the night: the King House.

Note: This is not what it looks like at night.

Built in 1823, it was one of the first houses in Alabama with glass windows. It sits in the middle of campus where it has developed a reputation for being a hotbed of paranormal activity. One of those ghost-hunting shows filmed there…and picked up readings.

The woman who showed me around the house did not bring this up on her own, but when I asked, she was more than happy to share stories…even though I was about to stay there by myself. Again, I brought it upon myself!

She said grown men have refused to step foot in the house. One guest saw a black faceless humanoid form hovering over the very bed I would sleep in. A notable author called campus police at 1 a.m. and asked to be taken to a hotel (the nearest of which was, I believe, about 30 miles away). Some have reported seeing Mr. King himself walking his former property with a lantern, perhaps looking for the gold he'd allegedly buried centuries ago.

I was told I may see Mr. King (the gentleman behind me) later that night…and not in a painting.

Even though I am interested in ghosts and have written about ghosts and have long wanted to experience something ghostly, I was a bit spooked staying alone in that house. I admit I left on the downstairs hall light and the bathroom light on the second floor, adjacent to the room in which I would sleep. Scaredy-cat and Mr. King.

Around midnight, when I was still up, I heard one unusual bang downstairs, as if someone had dropped something heavy or slammed a book against a wall. I did not go investigate. 

Morning came without other additional incident—at least any I was aware of. In the light of day, I did a walk-through and did not see anything on the ground that could have fallen and made the sound I heard.

This was both fortunate and unfortunate.

One of the students who heard me present saw my social media post and reacted in charming disbelief.

King House is not the only campus location with ghost sightings. In 1908, a student named Condie Cunningham caught on fire in her dorm room and ran down the hallway in panic, later dying from her injury. Some have reported that she is still around—and that her face "burned" into the door of what was her room. The door has been removed and is now stored in the campus archives.

Wondering about the possible implications of taking a photo of it, I hesitated at first. Then I figured that because I survived King House, maybe I'm not an unwelcome presence among the unexplained of Montevallo.

Thank you again to Anna Mary Williford for inviting me to Montevallo. Your introduction humbled and tickled me; thank you for allowing me to quote part of it (lightly edited):

I have been at the University of Montevallo for just over a year now. Prior to that, I was a librarian at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg in Pennsylvania where I had the pleasure of coordinating their annual children's literature conference, which is where I met Marc. About a year before the conference, I received the first of what would be many emails with subject lines like, "Batman at Pitt Greensburg in 2015?" or "Batman, you know. Superman, you know. Nobleman, you will know." And I would think to myself, "Who is this guy who will not stop emailing me?!" I booked him as one of our keynote speakers for May 2015, a decision that I've never regretted!

But I will admit that at the time, I assumed his persistence was simply because he was doing his job, part of which was promoting the books he'd written. After hearing Marc speak, though, I realized that presenting his work was so much more than "part of the job" to him. Sharing his research with a wider audience was an essential part of his quest for the truth about Batman to finally be acknowledged. For a lot of authors, simply publishing Bill the Boy Wonder might have been enough—the book was out there now, people could read it and learn about what happened for themselves. But that wasn't enough for Marc, who wants to personally deliver his message to as many people as possible. I'm pretty sure that he set out to turn every student, teacher, librarian, or conference attendee who crossed his path into a soldier in his army for justice for the legacy of Batman, and I think that's exactly what he's accomplished over the past few years.

So when I watched Batman & Bill, I had to laugh at the fact that the first word Marc's wife uses to describe him is "persistent," as he is definitely one of the most persistent people I've ever met, but in a good way! That persistence is why he's here with us today, in more ways than one.

That's the passion Marc has for his work, and it will come across when you hear him speak in just a minute. On the subject of passionate folks, Pat Scales unfortunately couldn't join us this afternoon. However, she is familiar with—and a fan of!—Marc's work, and I am certain she'd be pleased with the fact that the inaugural speaker in the lecture series named for her is someone who shares many of the same values she's championed throughout her career: the desire to see the truth prevail; the importance of literacy and education; a calling to correct injustice, whether that injustice comes in the form of a banned or challenged book or a buried legacy just waiting to be uncovered and brought to light.

And thank you again to the plethora of Montevallo staff and students for extending me such a warm welcome.

If I come back, I want another shot at the King House…

On advocating for diversity at kidlit conferences

(If you have time to read only one sentence, skip to the bolded action plan below.)

On 3/19/18, authors and other children's publishing professionals had a conversation on Twitter and Facebook about the first annual Asbury University Children's Literature Conference in Kentucky (a collaboration with the Mazza Museum of picture book art in Ohio) on 3/24/18.

The event scheduled four author speakers. All were white. All were male. One was me. (The others were Marc Brown, Peter Catalanotto, and Aaron Reynolds.)

The online conversation called out the dearth of diversity, and rightfully so. Though this is a conversation we need to have year-round, the timing was especially apt: March is Women's History Month and now also #Kidlitwomen Month.

After hearing me speak at Mazza the summer of 2017, one of the Asbury organizers invited me to speak at their 2019 conference and I accepted; I did not think to ask who else was presenting. A few weeks before the 2018 conference, one of the four authors backed out. (I later learned that the author was female.) My contact asked me if I would be able to switch to this year. Finding a comparable replacement for a conference speaker on such short notice is a challenge. I was able to rearrange my schedule so I said yes. Again, I did not think to ask or check who else was presenting. 

When the all-white, all-male lineup was announced, public reaction within our kidlit community ranged from disappointment to outrage. 

I take heart that creators of books for young readers have long embraced equality and tolerance on the page and are now empowered to identify mistreatment or lapses in judgment in real life. 

In this case, however, I was troubled by the approach that some people took in voicing disapproval. As one example, this anonymous comment:

I stand with all who are working to eliminate inequity in children's publishing (and I feel the other three gentlemen authors at the conference also do), but I do not condone doing so by casting aspersions on people you do not know. This can alienate those who already agree with you and who already speak up for others (five links). 

The goal at hand is fairness. The path to achieving it should exemplify fairness.

Unless proven otherwise, we must presume authors, illustrators, and conference chairs are human allies capable of exhibiting an oversight—and willing to fix it. We are all perpetually learning.

We must give the benefit of the doubt.

We must follow the Golden Rule.

We must Choose Kind.

Like many of our peers, I will now accept invitations only from events committed to gender and racial diversity.

In addressing the organizers and participants of events that do not represent diversity, I propose a simple course of action:

Rather than start with public shaming or snark, instead contact the event organizer and participants directly and privately to express the concern civilly. 

Takes the same amount of time as calling out on social media but is more in the spirit of our industry—and of the movement itself. This good-hearted approach gives people the chance to course-correct because they want to do right, not because they were guilted. Stick to the mission: conveying the importance of maintaining a unified front on diversity at literary events. And stick to non-inflammatory language. 

I'm not saying we can't be angry. Anger fuels change. But it is most effective when it is controlled.

Nixing the negative while remaining positive is the way forward.

Case in point:

Two days after the lack of diversity was (directly, privately, civilly) called to Asbury's attention and three days before the event, the conference was able to add a female keynote, illustrator Erin Barker. (Remember that name. She's going places.)

And I have on good authority that if there is a second annual, it will be more diverse.

Thank you again to Asbury for inviting me, for listening to feedback, and for making a last-minute change. And thank you to those who discussed this issue constructively.

As we continue to insist on diversity, we must also insist on civility.

Side note of equal importance: 

I learned only after I presented that Asbury is a Christian university that has been accused of being anti-gay. As someone who has withdrawn from delivering a keynote in a state that had legislated LGBTQ intolerance, I was at first conflicted about this. 

But my perspective has shifted and now I would have ultimately participated anyway because of this. 

A story I commonly tell involves a gay man whom I mention during every talk for grades 3 and up (which the person who invited me to speak at Asbury knew firsthand). I do it even when I'm (sigh) asked in advance not to. Therefore, this would be a chance to speak about the issue plainly, as the non-controversial fact of life that it is (or should be). Marc Brown also touchingly discussed this by mentioning both his transgender son and a gay marriage in one of his upcoming stories.

We gave this community the benefit of the doubt and they did not let us down.

The way to promote tolerance is not to stay away from possible intolerance but rather to destigmatize it from within.

Charlotte S. Huck Children's Literary Festival 2018

In 2015, I was one of the author speakers at the Charlotte S. Huck Literary Festival in Redlands, CA.

My books sold out quickly so I was quickly invited back for this year (actually last year, but I had a scheduling conflict). This year, however, after I spoke, my books again sold out quickly, leaving some attendees disappointed and the bookstore stunned. They said they'd never seen books sell out that fast and asked me "What did you say?"

I love the structure of this event. Each featured author gets to hear every author speak to the entire attendance. (Often at book events, authors are scheduled against each other throughout.)

I had the added privilege of speaking with a group of 4th and 5th graders whose parents drove them to campus. They had done some impressive prep work…

Inspired by Bill Finger, the kids made gimmick books:

Inspired by Bill Finger, I used "bill," "finger," and "bat" puns throughout Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, and the kids discussed this (and alliteration):

They even made a timeline of notable events in comics history, which listed multiple Bill Finger events...including Bill the Boy Wonder and Batman & Bill! Granted they kindly did that because I would be there, but it was still cool to see.

Coolest of all: their nametags indicated their names twice…once correctly, once backwards. As for why, see Bill the Boy Wonder…

Thank you again to Marjorie Arnett, my author "angel" Andy Mitchell, and all the committee members/volunteers who made the festival (and my participation in it) possible. It was an honor to meet James and Lesa Cline-Ransome, whose joint presentation was disarming, modest, and impressive. It was a similar honor to meet Kathi Appelt (and her husband) in person years after I "met" her as both a participant in the "kidlit authors read bad reviews" videos and a keynoter at a particularly dramatic SCBWI conference.

Side note: I started my California week in Los Angeles, where I had the pleasure of having lunch with Scott Valentine, the actor who played Nick, Mallory Keaton's boyfriend on Family Ties. He did not participate in my Family Ties oral history but shared some startling stories over Thai food...

Humboldt County Children's Author Festival 2017

This is a new one.

Not new in general. New to me.

I've done other festivals where a squad of authors speaks to a fleet of children over several days. They fall into two categories: 

1. an event where the authors stay in one spot (often on a college campus), kids are bused in, and the authors speak to rotating groups
2. an event where volunteers drive the authors to various schools in the region (one author per school at one time, but typically authors speak to multiple schools over two or more days)

The Humboldt County Children's Author Festival is the latter kind—so that's not what makes it stand out. Humboldt County is about a five-hour drive north of San Francisco and two hours south of the Oregon border. It's a picturesque, vast, and largely depressed area; once a lumber and fishing mecca, it's now particularly known for its marijuana production. The historic downtown is charming, though marked with a surprisingly significant population of people down on their luck. 

The schools are spread out (some authors were driven two hours to theirs) and often small. My two schools, Blue Lake Elementary School in Blue Lake and Loleta School in Loleta (each only a 20-minute drive from the historic/haunted Eureka Inn where we stayed) had at most two classes per grade, so small by my suburban East Coast standards—but not the smallest. I spoke with one educator whose public school has only 14 kids—from kindergarten to 8th grade.

The committee and community rallies and hustles to give these kids the chance to meet authors in person—and the result is not only moving but also impressive. It's an event with a staggering amount of moving parts and it's run very smoothly. 

This festival has been running every other year since the 1970s and lasts three days. The first two days are the school visits, the third day is a four-hour group book signing at the public library. The first night (Wednesday) was a cocktail mixer, the second night was a potluck dinner where a group of students from a performing arts high school acted out a book from three of the authors (including, to my great honor, The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra; the main one was Kirby Larson's Hattie Big Sky), and the final night was a ticketed banquet where all 25 authors spoke—three minutes apiece, (semi-)strongly enforced. I was impressed with how polished most of the semi-extemporaneous mini-speeches were—lots of these folks have slick comic timing. 

I arrived in Eureka Tuesday afternoon because this area is one of the foggiest in the nation and apparently flights are often delayed because of this. 

I'm geographically oblivious so it was pure happy fluke that I saw a map Tuesday night and noticed that I was a mere two-hour, fifteen-minute drive from Brookings, OR—setting of my upcoming picture book Thirty Minutes Over Oregon.

So though I planned to spend Wednesday exploring the redwood forests, I changed course to include a drive up the rugged coastline to Brookings, where I'd never been. I was at the rental car place when they opened at 7:30 am and enjoyed the drive north, which was punctuated by a number of things I'd never seen before—including redwoods. I managed to fit it all in and still get back to Eureka with time to spare before the 5:30 pm mixer.

Glimpses of it all (sadly, none with author friends including Deb Heiligman, Kirby Larson, Barbara Kerley, Dan Gemeinhart, Kelly Milner Halls, Bruce Hale, Barry Deutsch, and beyond *):

 First of four signs I posed in front of.

 The town closest to where Japanese pilot Nobuo Fujita's

bombs hit in his 1942 WWII raid on the U.S. mainland.

 This is the library in Brookings, which remotely helped me

with research numerous times.

 The 450-year-old heirloom samurai sword that
Fujita gifted to the town in 1962 as an apology,

on display at the library.

 Bummer.

 One of the hundreds of articles about the bombing and aftermath

archived at the library.

 On the way back.

 The route.

 Combative elk. Dozens more elk were in the vicinity, 

undisturbed by the cars driving through their territory.

 He's right behind me, isn't he?

 Redwood.

 McCreepy is a good fit in ways, but also McLovely.

 Mysterious standalone fireplace along the road. 

One theory: the wooden house that it was once part of

burned in one of the fires that have swept through the area.

 The students and staff at Blue Lake gave me

chupacabra hot sauce, goat cheese 

(inside joke if you've read the book), 

and an adorable card/drawing.

 The first graders at Loleta wrote their

own sequel to The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra!

 Stained glass in the (also haunted) Carson Mansion, 
one of the most (if not the most) notable Victorian houses 
in the United States; custom-made for under $300 in 1885, 

its four figures represent 

music, art, literature, and science.

The house is now a private club.

Clearly.

Thank you again to JoAnn Bauer for inviting me, my driver volunteers Jean and Ruth, ultra-patient travel agent Bev, and the rest of the committee for your enormous efforts to make this festival happen. I was honored to be a part of it.

* I did get a photo (in front of a bookstore, no less) with author Jay Asher, whom I bumped into in the San Francisco airport en route home.

April Is for Authors 2017

On 4/29/17, after speaking at four schools over the previous four days, I had the pleasure of making my second consecutive appearance at the daylong annual event April Is for Authors in Palm Beach Gardens, FL.

Twenty-six authors spoke and did panels for the public. I knew only one (Erica Perl) personally beforehand but left with a gaggle of friends.

 Aaron Hartzler, Crystal Allen, me, Cory Putman Oakes, 

S.J. Kinkaid, Jackson Pearce

view from the stage: Aaron, S.J., Lynda Mullaly Hunt (peeking out from back), 

Jackson, Aisha Saeed (with microphone), Erica Perl (patterned dress),

Paul Griffin

S.J., Claire Salmon, Jackson, Elizabeth Zdrodowski (librarian),

Jason Reynolds, Aaron, me, Andrea Parisi (librarian) 

I also had the honor of emceeing the closing event, which brought attendees together in an auditorium to try their hand at trivia questions related to each of the participating authors' books. Each author asked one question; the first audience member to (be called on and then) answer correctly won a signed book by that author. One of the most challenging questions involved the record-setting price a certain Picasso (I believe) painting sold for at auction. Suddenly I was Bob Barker but I failed to recall the rules of The Price of Right.

It turns out four of the authors fondly share an editor, Nancy Paulsen at Penguin Random House. Here I am with Ellen Airgood, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Aisha Saeed.