Adventures at Wilder Farm

Lita visited Northwest Elementary School (NES) in Manchester, NH last November. I remember she was so impressed with the school and the teachers and the kids after that visit. NES created a Lita Judge page on their school website with some notes from the visit. And the NES kids have been working on their own writing and illustrating - they just sent us their first issue of The Eagle’s Nest.

The cover artwork is by Monique Staples.

We were so impressed with the writing and illustrating in The Eagle’s Nest. Everyone at NES has done a great job!

NES added a dedication to Lita:

The inspiration goes both ways. Thanks NES, and keep up the good work!

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One of the envelopes used in the collage on the back cover of One Thousand Tracings was this one:

Nothing in the book mentions that the story takes place in Michigan. But it does. Lita’s grandparents lived in Pinckney Michigan during the time they organized the relief effort. They didn’t move to Plainfield Wisconsin until1949. Michigan readers found the subtle clue and the Library of Michigan contacted Lita last summer stating that One Thousand Tracings was nominated for the 2008 Michigan Notable Book selections. Hyperion sent off a pile of books to the committee. We didn’t expect to hear back—about 300 books were nominated—but in January it was selected as one of twenty Michigan Notable Books! Only two of the selections were children’s books—the other was Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.

So Lita’s excited for two upcoming trips to Michigan this spring. On March 15-18 she’ll be doing two presentations at the Michigan Reading Association Conference in Detroit, and then she’s visiting 5 different elementary schools, including one in Pinckney Michigan. On April 26 she’ll be at the “Night for Notables” which starts at the governor’s mansion and then moves to the Library of Michigan. Then she’s doing library visits and events in the Detroit area through April 29. I’ll stay home and feed the cats.

(Click here - PDF of Michigan Notable Book Poster - if you want to download the full sized pdf which is about 1MB.)

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Web sites can be expensive if you don’t design and maintain them yourself. One of our local arts organizations just went through the process of hiring a graphic designer and a web designer. They put up a simple but nicely designed site. There are about 6 static pages and one group page where artist members can post a thumbnail which then links to an artist page with 6 images and a bio, artist statement, etc. The cost for this type of site—designed, hosted and maintained by a local company—is in the range of $3000 to $5000. Then there are yearly hosting and maintenance costs.

I decided to do it myself for Lita’s web site. I built Lita’s main web site—litajudge.com—a few years ago with Adobe GoLive CS2.

Adobe later acquired Dreamweaver (DW) and all indications are that this is the software they’ll continue to invest in. When we wanted a second website, specifically devoted to the book One Thousand Tracings, I used DW. I was psyched when Chris Barton mentioned the Tracings site as one he admires. I actually noticed a spike in visitors at that time.

DW is more widely used and thus easier to search/google for solutions to common problems. I’ve tried to convert the first site from GoLive to DW but a few things have not looked maintainable (the underlying HTML looks confusing) so I still maintain litajudge.com in the CS2 version of GoLive. I have great intentions of correctly doing the conversion some weekend.

The main difference in the two sites is that I learned about style sheets (CSS) for the Tracings website. Maybe everyone else already knew about style sheets, but I just discovered them last year. This site is much easier to maintain and the look is more consistent. I worked with Lita on the structure of both websites - she drew pictures of all the pages on paper and then I tried to make the thing somewhat similar to the plan. Lita usually does all the final layout tweaking, most of the image selection, and most of the writing.

The third site—this blog—uses WordPress.

I wanted a self hosted blog so I went with WordPress. But I like LiveJournal and the whole friend/community thing so I set up an account there also. I use a WordPress plug-in that automatically cross-posts to LiveJournal. A lot of people are just using blog software like WordPress to do their whole web site and I think this is not a bad idea.

So that’s where I am now with the web site development. Any questions?

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Jeannine Atkins wrote a lovely review of One Thousand Tracings for Nonfiction Monday. We’re looking forward to meeting her at the Cambridge Science Festival in May. Lita’s planning to talk about dinosaurs at the festival.

In early January Lita visited New Boston Central School (in New Hampshire). This week she received a package of wonderful Thank You notes from Ms Chase’s class. I picked out a couple of nice dinosaur pictures. This first one is from Tucker who wrote, “I like dinosaurs too, you know”.

And from Maura, who drew a slightly dragon-like dinosaur, and “used to want to be an archaeologist, but now would like to be either a vet or an author”:

I wish I could include all the pictures and letters. Thanks to everyone in Ms Chase’s class who sent letters, and thanks to New Boston Central School!

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Lita will soon begin working on Yellowstone Moran. I’m getting a little nervous, because I am Yellowstone Moran! And I’m also the sleeping guy on the right, and I’m also the gunslinger on the left (but I couldn’t find that photo).

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The next book out for Lita is Mogo, The Third Warthog, written by Donna Jo Napoli. This is Lita’s second project with Donna Jo. Here’s an image of the book jacket for Mogo:

And a closeup of Mogo—he’s a likable looking warthog, isn’t he?

The scheduled on sale date is July 1st.

Lita’s first book book with Donna Jo—Ugly—is coming out in paperback at about the same time. The cover for Ugly has been redesigned. It used to look like this:

But now will look something like this:

This last image is just a mock-up. I’ll miss the ducklings in the lower left, but I like the blue sky and the new title font!

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I saw a couple of nice on-line reviews of One Thousand Tracings yesterday. One at the Cybils site and another at The Well Read Child. Also, there’s a great podcast review at Just One More Book, done earlier in January. I’ve visited Just One More Book a few times and I really like the site - there’s another good podcast with two of the Cybil panelists for Non-Fiction Picture Books here.

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I’m continuing to work on editing one story in California (I head home tomorrow!) while Lita works on two different stories in New Hampshire. All three (picture books) are accepted—at three different publishers. Two books are in the post-acceptance-editing phase, and one is in the final-drawing phase. The balancing act for a writer-illustrator with all the shifting left/right brain activity is formidable! I’ll talk about the different book phases at some point—as soon as I learn what they all are…

But to continue with the editing checklist, here are some of the things to consider when looking at the micro view (from The Artful Edit):

1. Language: fresh, precise and concise, active, real (true)
2. Repetition - valid for leitmotiv, but otherwise should be de-emphasized
3. Redundancy - we usually focus hard on this one, it creeps in easily
4. Clarity - one idea per sentence
5. Authenticity - especially for dialogue - does it ring true?
6. Continuity - keeping the details straight and consistent.
7. Show and Tell - avoid summarizing, explaining. Use action and dialog.
8. Beginnings, Endings, Transitions - Sentences, paragraphs, sections (spreads), whole book. Have grace, tension, purpose.

I have my favorites.

As a reader, I tend to like clarity, continuity, and beginnings. I think this bias is appropriate for the types of books Lita is working on—historical based, or science based picture books. As an editor I try to be a good reader. The difficulty (for me) is then to communicate effectively, and constructively, back to the writer.

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I’m in California this week and Lita’s back in New Hampshire. I brought a manuscript that Lita’s been working on, to see if I can read it carefully and identify any problems. I’ve been reading this particular ms so often that it feels like I’m self-editing. And self-editing is no easy task.

I’ve also been reading The Artful Edit by Susan Bell on this trip and it has some good advice about two different views of editing: macro editing and micro editing. My basic process is to read through the manuscript while concentrating on just one of the aspects on the following macro editing list:

1. Intention - why do you want this piece of writing to live?
2. Character - are they palpable (real, true) and credible (reliable, believable). Each character should have a motive that is clear in your mind. It’s not always necessary to outwardly reveal that motive in the writing, but it should be consistently hinted at.
3. Structure - rhythm, tension, arc - are there gaps, lags, did you kill the tension too soon.
4. Foreshadowing - page turn quality
5. Theme - what are the symbols (leitmotiv) that bring the reader back to your central theme or intentions. Are these appropriate? Are they patterned into the story?
6. Continuity of Tone - Are the tone, atmosphere and characters coherent?

I’m naturally more of a micro editor. I’ll talk about the micro view next time.

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I try to do a decent amount of research before inflicting technology onto Lita. She’s been using an iMac since early 2006 and we both love it, but she has an older Dell laptop that she uses for travel and presentations and we’re looking to replace it with a MacBook Pro. The dilemma is that Apple is probably about to introduce updated models soon and I’d like to wait until that happens. The other problem is that they are expensive!

The Dell isn’t that bad - but it’s probably about 3-4 years old and it’s starting to feel very slow. It seems like it takes 5 minutes when booting up to actually get some program - like word or email - to start up. The other issue is that Lita’s gotten used to everything on the iMac so whenever she switches to the laptop, everything is different, and sometimes things go wrong at inopportune times, like in front of class of 5 year old kids.

I guess I should also admit, it’s really me that wants the MacBook Pro. And that new wireless time capsule thing looks nice too…

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