Image from BarelyFitz's Flickr Creative Commons

So, it was Father’s Day last Sunday. Per usual, I’m approximately 4 days behind the rest of the world’s calendar. That’s not to say I didn’t give my dad a hug on Sunday (we had him over for a cookout), but I didn’t exactly get his gift to him that day. I delivered it last night.

What do you give a dad who has everything? Who is retired and financially comfortable enough that he has the time and money to get and do whatever he’d like, when he’d like it*? Well, I’ve been giving him booklists. A few years ago, desperate for a gift, I gave him a bookmark with a list of books that sounded “like him.” He carried it around for a year and when he’d come in to volunteer at my school library (yes, he’s that great of a dad), he’d often have one of the books on the list under his arm. He wondered out loud to me once how I had compiled a list of so many great books that tickled his interest.

Ha! Finding books for readers is kinda what I do for a living, Dad. Probably my favorite part.

So, this year, it was time for a new list. And here it is: The Super-Long Father’s Day List of Books. It IS long, in no particular order, a strange mix of nonfiction, mystery, and science fiction/fantasy, and it includes some series halfway through because that’s where my dad is in them. I don’t know why I’m posting it here, except it’s books and it’s a list and I’m a librarian, so pass it on I must in the hopes that someone else somewhere might find their “just right” book.

Enjoy! (And please, I’m always looking for suggestions for next year’s list. Send them my way!)

* Not that he necessarily does. He’s pretty frugal, my dad. Which only makes gift-giving harder because if you give something too extravagant, it might be construed as, well…extravagant.

* I’ve already waxed on about my dad and reading here.

Related posts:

1. The Great Summer Reading Challenge
2. Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
3. Favorite Reads of 2009

Related posts:

1. The Super-Long Father’s Day List of Books
2. Every Reader Tells a Story

So you’d think these would be my favorites of 2009, right? Um, kind of. While I do still really like all of these books, when I consider my favorite-favorites, I always think about how much the book stuck with me. How much I remember it later. How much I’ve thought about it since I finished it. To me, those are the Truly Best Stories. And those are here:

And just in case you can’t read the covers, that’d be…

All the World

The Mistress of the Art of Death

One World, One Day

The Frog Scientist

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

When the Whistle Blows

Beka Cooper

The Dunderheads

Heart of a Shepherd

Ain’t Nothing But a Man

Ways to Live Forever

Home of the Brave

Related posts:

1. Author Talk: Pamela Turner and The Frog Scientist
2. Nonfiction Monday
3. Every Reader Tells a Story

I’m officially on vacation for the next 12 days!

The first grade teachers won a grant at our school to get Playaways for their classroom listening stations. Have you seen a Playaway? They’re like iPods for books. Very cool–and very popular with our students. I smile because I helped a little with the grant writing.

We’re supposed to get more snow. Christmas snow. As a kid, I always wished for Christmas snow–you know how the Frosty the Snowman cartoon proclaims that Christmas snow is magic? Looks like we’ll have plenty this year in my part of the world. I think the boys, their cousins, and I will have to do something with that.

Highlights wants a story of mine. Even though I have some nonfiction books out, this is my first fiction sale. So I smile.

Today, at the end of our last school day before break, we had an all-school sing in the gym. Just 400 kids and their teachers sitting criss-cross on the floor and belting out “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (complete with the echoes!) and other favorites. The lyrics for all the songs were projected on a giant screen. Suddenly, the screen went dark. As everyone mumbled through the second verse of “Deck the Halls,” I waded through the crowd to see what was wrong. I arrived at the projector and peered down. There, staring up at me with huge Cindy Lou Who eyes, was a kindergartener with a quivering finger over the now-dark switch on the power strip. “Did you push the button?” I asked. She sat on her hand. And I smiled. “Well, push it again!”

At this same sing along, I got to see and hear the results of weeks of listening to the fifth graders (my own Mr. E included) practice “The Carol of the Bells” on xylophones (ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo…). Well, watching them perform together with such pride and skill was amazing and made the earworm totally worth it. (ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo…)

and finally,

I’m officially on vacation for the next 12 days!

(ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo; ding, doo dee doo…)

Related posts:

1. Friday Five
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So, it only stands to reason that when the Campaign for Wisconsin Libraries was looking for a way to promote the variety and wealth of resources, services, programs, and activities that libraries offer, they came up with Wisconsin Libraries Say Cheese! Day. And guess what? It’s today. Click over to their page, or flick through the Wisconsin Libraries Say Cheese! Flickr account to see all the great things Wisconsin libraries are up to.

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1. Every Reader Tells a Story
2. Create Your Own Comics…in the Library
3. Warbling About Wordle

Oh, my.

Who is this Dr. Kate?, you are probably wondering. Well, she was one of the only doctors in northern Wisconsin in the first half of the 20th century. She visited her patients by snowshoe, by canoe, and by snomobile. She knew to stop by a home if a red rag was tied to a bush along the road. She took her payments in firewood and vension steaks. She delivered over 2,000 babies and never lost a mother or child. She was so beloved by her community, the high schoolers held a penny drive to raise $10,000 to build her a hospital. They were successful beyond anyone’s dreams–collecting over $130,000 from all over the world. Because of their efforts, Dr. Kate ended up on the TV show This is Your Life and having a best-selling book written about her.

A original signed copy of which is now in my home and in my hands.

Why me? Well, 50 years after all this occurred, I found Dr. Kate’s story and I turned it into a book for the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

So, yes, Diane Welch Kazlauskas of the University of North Florida, I am delighted to give your book a home. It is a treasure to me.

• Dr. Kate’s 1956 obituary in Time magazine
• The Dr. Kate Museum in Woodruff, Wisconsin

Related posts:

1. Wisconsin Libraries Say Cheese!
2. Friday Five
3. Book Look: Cracker!: the Best Dog in Vietnam

2. I got new running shoes. They’re the exact model and brand of my last two pair. But they only come in black now. I’m not totally sold on the color–I’ve never in my life had black running shoes. It seems wrong. What do you think?

3.  THIS should not be happening here on October 23. I want my sunny autumn days!

4. I picked up Donuthead by Sue Stauffacher Wednesday to read while staying home with Mr. E. It’s hilarious. And I can’t help but imagine how horrified Franklin Delano Donuthead would be with all the sniffles and hacks I’ve dodged this week at work.

5. Tonight we’re off to visit Aunt Ruby and the Ghost Trolley in Minneapolis! (Doesn’t Aunt Ruby and the Ghost Trolley sound like a good middle grade novel title?)

Related posts:

1. Favorite Reads of 2009
2. Serendipity through the Mail
3. Black Bears in the News (and in Aisle 5)

In celebration of finishing, I will indulge in a list. Behold. Here are some things that kept me writing even when the story made no sense at all:

• The Coffee Grounds. Especially their back corner table and their tendancy to not bother you and let you stay for hours. And their scones. I only make it about once a week, but it’s my best, most productive writing time.
• Giving up on writing every day. It was a perpetual guilt trip. Instead, I’ve declared an hour before work on Mondays and Thursdays and Saturday mornings as my protected, not-to-be-interrupted-unless-there’s-blood-or-fire-or-someone’s-unconscious writing time. This works for me.
• Pandora. Especially my Nick Lowe channel.
• The document map feature on Word. I was introduced to this on the Blueboards. How did I live without this?
• Writing scenes out of order. I’ve never tried this before, but when I got stuck near the end of MALCOLM, I jotted down all the scene that I knew were going to happen sometime in the story on Post-it notes. Then I turned them over and picked one at random. It was so wonderfully freeing–I felt silly for not trying this earlier. But I guess I’m just a linear person.
• Post-it notes. See above. Also used for notes to myself of things to do, people to call, and anything else that pops up in my brain as an attempt to draw me away from writing. I Post-it and keep writing.
• The SCBWI WIP grant. And a wonderful critique from Deborah Lynn Jacobs. Both of these came just at the right time. This past year I’ve turned down some other book offers–a professional library one and more school/library nonfiction books–as well as some articles. It felt really wrong and scary to say no to some sure things. But one thing I learned from writing the Follow the Food Chain series is that I only have time for one writing project at a time. And if I want to write middle grade fiction, then I have to say no to the rest. So getting a little encouragement with the fiction really helped quell my panic attacks.
• Visuals. I picked up a stuffed rat at IKEA this summer. It’s Malcolm. It just is. And I also have a picture of  “McKenna School” as the desktop of my computer. I would like to think these things don’t matter, but the truth is, they both get me ready to write.

So, what helps you to keep going?

Related posts:

1. The Big Ol’ Revision Post
2. The Super-Long Father’s Day List of Books
3. Working Hard or Hardly Working?

I first came to reading at midnight—with a newspaper and a bowl of cherries.

I was very young, still wearing diapers at night, when I first became a reader. No, I wasn’t a child prodigy. I am simply the oldest child in my family, so when I was little, my dad was still in medical school. He’d come home at night, way late, exhausted from his rounds at the hospital. And every night, my mom would have dinner—and me—waiting for him.

My dad would eat, then he’d retreat to the scratchy olive green plaid couch in the living room. And I’d scramble up next to him. We’d wedge a bowl of cherries between us, and then, with a waft of ink and a slight breeze on my face, my dad would flick open the newspaper. That simple twitch of his wrist would seal us off from the rest of the world, in a place where just the two of us existed, snuggling and snacking on those red-black cherries.

I don’t remember my dad reading to me as he looked at the paper. Most likely he didn’t. After all, it’s hard to read aloud when you’re spitting out cherry pits. All I remember is knowing that if I kept quiet enough and kept looking like I was reading, too, I’d get to stay up later. And snuggle longer. And eat more cherries. Already, I knew that reading was something so significant, so special and so…juicy, it broke all the normal rules.

Eventually, our late nights had an affect on me. Besides needing a good, long nap each day at most other people’s dinner time, I knew something else about reading and me. I had sat there long enough, watching my dad and staring at the black and white columns of the newspaper, that I felt like I was reading, too—just as much as my dad was.

And that’s how, years before I actually learned to read a word, I became a reader. Because knowing you are a reader counts much more in a person’s “reading story” than word decoding skills, comprehension scores, or lexile levels. I knew that reading was important. And I knew that reading was something I did. And with that, my little preschooler brain was primed for future reading adventures.

My reading story. A bowl of fruit, current events, and my reader dad—way, way past any kid’s normal bedtime.

What’s yours?

(cherries picture thanks to IH on Flickr Creative Commons)

Related posts:

1. Favorite Reads of 2009
2. Friday Five
3. How to Create a Reader?