Via Rick Walton:
If you are the highest bidder, Shannon Hale will rave about you on her blog, describing in great detail how you saved her life several times.
All money goes to buy books for kids who need them.
To bid and to have Shannon put in writing that she is forever in your debt, go to Writing for Charity.
Or you can be murdered by Dan Wells. In his book of course.
Online bidding ends Friday night.
I have a friend whose 11-year-old daughter likes scary books. She asks:
Hoping maybe you can help. My daughter who will be 11 in a few months enjoys reading scary books, for example All The Lovely Bad Ones. Do you have any good ones in mind that I could send her way?
I have a lot of suggestions for good middle grade with suspenseful action, but not as many for truly scary horror/ghost story kinds of books. If she’s already outgrown R.L. Stine’s books but isn’t ready for the plethora of paranormal and horror published for teens, I’m sure there are still plenty of scary books for her, but I’m coming up blank. I have a few suggestions, but hopefully the comments will yield more.
(In fact, that’s the only one I could think of today–I’ll look at my shelves at home again tonight; hopefully others will come to mind.) I’ve also included suggestions from Child_Lit subscribers, with quotes about their read annotated if it would make a difference in choosing the book.*
Edited to add:
I’ll add more to the list as suggestions come in.
* Some comments have been edited for brevity.
ETA 11/6/12: As with all my book lists, I’m putting this on Pinterest so I can more easily keep this list up-to-date. For a more recent version—including the books mentioned below and books published since 2010—see my Clean Reads for Teens board.
I have a friend who is the leader of a church group for girls 12-18, and she asks:
I want to set up a little library for our YW. [Young Women] These are multi-cultural girls, low income, some from illegal families. I would love to get your suggestions as to good books to put in the library. Since the library will be at the church, they do need to be on the “clean” side, but the girls range from age 13-17 and I think can handle some more complicated themes.
I have a start of a list here, but would love your additions to the list. “Clean” should include nothing stronger than “darn” or the occasional “crap” or “hell,” and on-screen violence should be kept to a minimum; no sex/sexual conduct beyond kissing/holding hands (at least, not in-scene), though romance is great. That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t handle tough subjects, though. The Maze Runner, for example, is dystopian, but still a clean read overall. Even a book that tackled rape and its aftermath, or something similarly violent, could be appropriate for a list like this depending on how it’s written.
In general, I’m an advocate for good literature over judging a book by what isn’t in it, and my friend is that kind of reader, too. But given that this is a church-associated library, the suggestions do need to be “appropriate,” if you know what I mean. Feel free to suggest titles that might not be shelved in a church library ONLY if they’re borderline (i.e., something my friend my suggest the girls look up on an individual basis if she feels they’re ready for them).
For example, The Hunger Games may not be for everyone. I love it, and would hand it to any teen I knew who didn’t have a problem with a little violence. But some teens are more sensitive than others, so it might be important in a church context to gauge just how well the reader might welcome the visuals they’d get from that book, especially when it might as easily be picked up by a 12-year-old as a 15-year-old. (Then again, given that we live in a dystopia and modern teens know it, perhaps they’d be just fine with it.) Public library, no problem. But it’s the kind of thing that a conservative church library might not be the best place for.
This is NOT a fantasy-only list. Feel free to add YA-appropriate “clean reads,” particularly but not limited to multicultural books, from any genre. I’m just biased for SFF, that’s all. 🙂 It is a tough list to assemble, though, because I hate to recommend something as “clean” when I haven’t had a chance to read it myself.
There are so many books I want to recommend but can’t, because in this case a book with even the occasional s-word wouldn’t be something we’d want to put in a booklist handed out at church or in a church library. That leaves out excellent titles such as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, but hopefully the girl who is the right reader for that book will find it anyway.
So, that gives us a starting point. What other books might be suggested for this list? I’m low on historical fiction, contemporary realism, and non-fiction, mostly because I’ve just listed a few good books off my own shelves and pulled a few titles from the multicultural SFF post. There are SO many titles about civil rights and slavery—feel free to suggest some, as I only have one on this list—but there are so many other time periods and issues that books tackle, too. So, light and heavy, as long as its clean. Go!
* Technically, this is a middle grade series, but the books are loved by older girls too and I think would be a fun recommendation for girls who like fairy tales.
** Starred titles may have a little bit more violence than you might want in the library; you might want to read it first to be sure.
*** Can someone remind me, as it’s been a while, whether the language in these books goes beyond made-up cursing and slang? Or if, in the case of Impossible, the rape scene is too graphic for a conservative audience?
ETA 5/22/12: I’m keeping this book list up to date on Pinterest nowadays, linking each book to its Goodreads entry. It’s much easier to just pin a book than to keep this list up to date. For the running lists (broken down by age group and genre) and more, go here (sorry, the link was broken for a while there):
ETA: I’ve finally gotten the ability to edit the post back, so I’ve put as many of the suggested books into the list now as I can. Suggestions always still welcome. This is a continuous project.
I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions to add to the list, but my website seems to still be broken, and my own computer has a dead motherboard (well, it did when I started writing this last week—thankfully, it’s now fixed). I’m still figuring out why WordPress won’t let me edit any of my old content.
So, in the interest of having one place that people can use as a resource, I’m going to copy everything into this entry. Rather than divide the list by what I’ve read and what I haven’t, which was just more a personal exercise last year in wondering whether my own reading habits had reached past my own culture, I’ll divide the list by age group and genre (fantasy/SF). What that means is that I am not making a comment on how good I think a book is or recommending it/not recommending it—there are several books on this list I haven’t had a chance to read yet. It’s simply a list compiling what’s out there. I’ve also added books that I’ve discovered over the last year or that have been suggested to me in the comments. Go to the previous booklist post for comments on some of the books in this list.
Middle Grade Fantasy
Middle Grade Science Fiction
Young Adult Fantasy
Young Adult Science Fiction
Unsure of whether these books are MG or YA (have not read yet, pulled titles from Shweta Narayan and The Happy Nappy Bookseller‘s lists. Can someone give me a head’s-up what categories they fit in?
Please feel free to continue to leave other suggestions in the comments.
This was posted on the old Tu Publishing blog back before I moved to New York and joined Lee & Low. You may have seen it there, or you might not have. It wasn’t ported over to the new website with some of the other content (the blog has been folded into the main Lee & Low blog, where you can get all sorts of great commentary and information on multicultural topics). An LJ reader asked about word counts in response to my last post, and I think that this kind of thing can be helpful to writers as a general guideline. Note that nothing I declare here is hard and fast. There are some writers who write very short YAs, for example—but those people generally are also not debut writers, and this kind of info is often most helpful to those getting started on their careers.
So, without further ado, the post—edited slightly to reflect that we’re now six months later than when the original post was put up in January:
We try to be specific in our submission guidelines, but there are some things that might not be clear to a new writer. For the most essential of essentials of children’s literature, please make sure to research the genre on Harold Underdown’s The Purple Crayon (and we highly recommend his Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books, as well, for great basic information).
But some things are more specific, and preferences can vary from publisher to publisher and imprint to imprint. Word count, for example, is something we don’t see too many guidelines on because so much can depend on what a publisher’s goals are. So let’s talk about what Tu Books would like to see in word counts.
First of all, when we say we are not looking for chapter books, we are specifically referring to the “intermediate reader” or “transitional reader” chapter books like Magic Treehouse. They’re shorter books for kids who have just become fluent enough readers for their own independent books, with real chapters. They are not to be confused with “early reader” books, which have fewer words and are targeted to a slightly younger reader than a chapter book. While we love chapter books, we want to focus more on older readers. There is no such thing as a “YA chapter book.”
Middle grade novels are generally for ages 8–12, or about 3rd grade to 6th or 7th grade. Readers tend to be pretty fluid through publishing categories—a third grader might still be reading picture books for older kids and chapter books while devouring middle grade books, all at the same time. But middle grade novels are a specific section of the bookstore and have specific requirements. It’s a marketing category. That section might be called “Independent Readers” or “Middle Grade” or “Children’s Novels,” depending on the store.
Generally, middle grade novels are no less than 30–35,000 words at the minimum, and usually a whole lot more words than that. They can range anywhere from 30,000 words to 70,000 words or longer, especially in fantasy. If your “novel” is only 17,000 words, it’s too short. A 90,000 word manuscript might be a touch too long for a middle grade audience unless you’re J.K. Rowling and have already hooked tens of millions of readers with three or four books. Especially given the current economic climate—in which paper and shipping and everything else involved in printing a book is costing more—it’s best to keep a middle grade novel under the 50,000–60,000 word range, because then the design of the book can still be beautiful while keeping the page count relatively low, which ensures that even reluctant readers won’t find the printed book too daunting.
YA novels are for the 12–18 age group—the teen section of the bookstore—and word count might range from 45,000 words on the low end to 100,000 words on the high end. To tell a complex enough story for a sophisticated YA readership, though, 45,000 might be a bit low. However, plenty of really awesome YA writers have done it in that many words, so I wouldn’t rule it out. But again, if your YA book is 17,000 words, it’s either a short story or not finished. And remember the economy: too long can be hard to work with, as well. Consider whether your 100,000 word opus might really be two novels in a series or if perhaps some of the subplots might be simplified or saved for another book. If not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but it’s something to be aware of.
These are all just guidelines, of course—like the Pirate Code, they’re not laws. But if you’ve got a 250,000 word “YA novel,” you’ve actually likely got three to five different books masquerading as one (or just one honking adult novel, depending on the subject matter). If your story is for older readers yet is only 10,000 words long, you’ve got an extremely long short story that will require a different publishing venue, or you haven’t fleshed out the story nearly enough. What’s missing?
Last week, as I was going through a pile of submissions, I was thinking about the kinds of submissions I’ve been seeing. Many of them work really well, and it’s made it hard to choose, in some ways. I’m working with a few authors on manuscripts in various stages—though as you know we don’t have anything to announce just yet—but what about the rest? What are the things that make me say no right away? What kinds of things am I not seeing? So here’s a random list for you. Some of them are pretty obvious, but sometimes lists can be useful.
What I’m seeing in the submissions pile:
The takeaway: I’d really like a few more awesome middle grade books to consider (that fit my submission guidelines, of course). And that there are lots of cultures/people I’m not seeing enough of in the submissions pile. I’d love to see more Latino, Middle Eastern, and Native American/Aboriginal/First Nations characters.
I’d love to see a Native American or Middle Eastern character (from a specific background; I’m being general here to include the many different cultures this could mean) in a futuristic/dystopian/SF novel, by the way. One that extrapolates how things are today and creates a new world with new problems. Something akin to Setsuna‘s world in Gundam 00 (does the future include peace in the Middle East? Has the balance of world power changed ala China’s influence in Serenity? (minus the no-Chinese-main-characters thing)), or something more culturally specific and less of the same generic New Age-y “Native American” discussed above than Chacotay. How might the world look to someone of a specific ethnicity in 200, 300, 400 years? Different from the mainstream because of their cultural background? Sublimated into the larger culture? Gone underground? Lost, even? In 400 years, will American culture be colorblind/accepting of all/dead/something else completely, and the issues people face be completely foreign to someone from our time? What about that same scenario, but in Iraq? And how would all that play out amidst changed technology?
Oh, the possibilities! Where is the Native American The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm?
* I wish I could find the link or at least the place I saw a link to guidelines the Australian government put out about writing using Aboriginal content, because it would probably raise some really great issues whether you’re dealing with that culture or another. If anyone knows what I’m talking about and has access to that link, can you share it?
I missed most of last night’s #yalitchat on Twitter, but I caught just a few pithy remarks from editors and writers that I wanted to share with you all. It pins down what I’ve been trying to articulate to myself as an editor, and I think it will help writers to understand where editors are coming from.
The topic seemed to be mistakes we’ve made, either as writers or publishing people (I didn’t look at the schedule and haven’t gone back to the beginning of the posts, so someone in the know, please correct me if I’m wrong). Here’s the relevant part for us today:
Elana Roth (agent) said,
I’ve passed on things that needed SO MUCH work even though the concepts were great. Sometimes I wonder about those…
And in reply, Elizabeth Law (editor) said,
Me too. Learned years ago that if someone has great idea but can’t write it, I can’t rewrite the book for them.
Then she went on to quote Moss Hart:
Moss Hart said “In my life I’ve had many successes and many failures. Each success came for a different reason, but each failure came because I said ‘yes’ when I wanted to say ‘no.'”
One of the things I’ve grown a lot in, as an editor, over the last few months as I have gone back to reading the slush pile is refining the point at which I say no. It’s so easy for me to latch onto a good idea and want to develop it with the writer. And sometimes it’s worth it and will grow into a really great book that I can acquire, but there are two factors that I have to consider before I can ever get that far:
1) Am I really excited about it, or just think I should be because it’s a great concept? That is, does the voice hold up? Or do I continue to read because there’s so much wrong with it that I just can’t help myself wanting to “fix” it?
2) If like it, but have mixed feelings, often those mixed feelings are a sign that I should say no.
There has been the rare occasion where I’ve come across something so brilliant yet flawed that I agonize over whether it’s worth it to ask for a full or to work on it with the author. Often, that’s when the voice is gorgeous but some other aspect of the book needs work—something that I can help with, such as plot structure, characterization, or worldbuilding.
The ones that I have learned to turn down earlier and earlier are the ones in which the ideas—maybe even the worldbuilding—are great, but the voice is the problem. I can’t teach a writer through the editorial process how to be a better writer, how to reach the voice of their character more fully. I can’t spend my time on that when there are so many writers who have perfected their craft enough that the voice is perfect—exquisite, even—despite a few flaws in areas that can be discussed in an editorial letter.
Much as I’d like to help with voice, it’s really almost impossible for me to make editorial letter suggestions at the acquisitions level. I used to work with authors at earlier stages when I was freelancing, which is where suggestions for improvement can help voice eventually, if the writer is willing to do the work. But at the acquisitions stage, voice should mostly be decided. Oh, there might be a tweak suggestion here or there in line editing, or even suggestions for differentiating one character more from another, but the author needs to have perfected his or her craft of the overall narrative voice as much as possible. (Among all the other things you’re supposed to be perfect at!)
Going back to the Twitter discussions, that’s what I’d point out as my “mistake,” one that I’m constantly working to improve as I go through submissions: Refining my ability to say “no” earlier in the process for as many books as need it, so as to free up my time for concentrating more deeply on the possible yeses. I think I’m getting better at it. As Elizabeth said later, “I’m just learning to trust my gut, That’s all I’m saying.”
Yup. Even experienced editors are constantly learning how to be better at what they do.
Another writer question, the answer for which I think will help more than just one writer. If any of you have questions about what we’re looking for or anything to do with the submission process, please let me know, and I’ll be glad to answer here on the blog (anonymizing your question so it can be generalized).
i was really glad to see Lee and Low’s new imprint. I’m a long time fantasy/sci-fi fan distressed by the cultural sameness of the genre. I have a middle-grade novel that I am currently doing some final revisions for before submission. Because I realize time is valuable commodity for editors, I wanted to get a sense how expansive your fantasy/sci-fi terms were, before I submitted.
My novel is fantasy the way Harlan Ellison’s, short fiction, or Octavia Butler’s Kindred is fantasy. It is a slight conceit used to push the character forward. I do not engage in a discussion of big ideas like Xenogenesis, Foundation etc., nor provide a full-fledged alternative universe like Cordwainer Smith, William Gibson or Anne McCaffery.
So my question is, is that enough? Obviously, you cannot decide on the individual merits of piece without seeing it, but I wanted to be sure I was targeting the appropriate house. Also, Lee and Low’s main imprint requires a chapter by chapter synopsis, but you only suggest a synopsis. May I assume you want a simple one page synopsis (plus first three chapters)?
First, addressing the question of what kind of fantasy we’re looking for:
Fantasy in children’s and YA books is pretty wide open. It can be anything from changing one little thing in the real world (people can fly or be telepathic, etc., or there’s a secret magical cult of ninja vampires, or the Knights Templar secretly fight the undead, unknown to the wider world, or, I don’t know, a girl like Matilda finds out she can teleport things, but maybe nothing bigger than a pencil), to changing a whole world in the future or alternate history (dystopian SF like The Hunger Games or steampunk like Leviathan), to alternate world high fantasy, either through portals (like Harry Potter) or just starting out in that world (like fairy tale retellings).
I’m not sure what you mean by a slight conceit to push the character forward. If you mean something akin to just one little thing changing—such as the ability to time travel, but not control it, as happens for the main character of Kindred—sure! That works, definitely. There are a LOT of middle grade and chapter books based on just such an idea, a small tweak of reality as opposed to huge sweeping differences in worldbuilding.
But I just want to be sure that you’re also familiar with what’s out there right now for children and teens, and not just what was published in the 70s and 80s by some of the best authors on the adult side. If you haven’t already, I suggest going to your local bookstore (or library, but the bookstore is better for seeing more current books all in one place) and looking at the middle grade and YA shelves to get a good idea of how broad the definition of SF/fantasy is in that section. While Octavia Butler’s work is classic and everyone should read them, they’re not what teens are reading right now (at least, not exclusively—of course they’re still reading her, or she wouldn’t be a classic).
Same goes for middle grade readers. Some books will always be classics, but when thinking about writing for a middle grade audience, you want to start from the idea that modern kids will be reading this, so you don’t want to use titles written for adults 30 years ago as your comparison point. As I look at my shelves filled with Shannon Hale’s Goose Girl and Princess Academy, Pseudonymous Bosch’s This Book Is Not Good for You, Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, and Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday, I see a pretty broad range of fantastic and speculative worldbuilding in these titles for middle grade readers and think you’ll probably be okay. David Lubar’s My Rotten Life changes only one thing about the world: a science experiment gone wrong turns Nathan Abercrombie into an accidental zombie. One little tweak in the possibilities of science leads to hilarious adventure.
So: if you’re familiar with what’s out there right now for this audience, you’ll probably get a sense of whether or not your story works for this market. If it also features diversity in its characters and setting, then it works for submitting to Tu. In particular, I want to emphasize that we’d like the main character to be a person of color.
To answer the synopsis question: Yes, a page or two (perhaps four at most for a big, epic tale) is the kind of synopsis I’m asking for with sample chapters. It’s the kind of synopsis that would answer my big-picture plot questions if I liked the first three chapters, to see if you can plot a novel and carry through from a great start. Of course, whether that held up in the full manuscript would then remain to be seen, but it gives me a better idea of whether I’d want to request the full manuscript.
Thanks for all the comments on my last post discussing writing African American characters (Is my character “black enough”?). The perspectives in the comments are great—just the kinds of things that people writing cross-culturally need to hear as they think about their characters. If you haven’t read the comments (and there are a few more on my LJ mirror and on Facebook), make sure to do so.
No news is still good news. I’m reading away on some really awesome submissions, going through revisions that I asked for from some writers, presenting some books to my acquisitions committee, and all that kind of stuff. We come closer and closer every day to having books to share with you! We just still don’t have much to talk about specifically… yet! But we hope to soon.
In the meantime, here are some links that I’ve already shared on Twitter and Facebook, but if you haven’t seen them there, check them out:
Two friends of mine who just sold their debut novels in the YA market talk on Writing Excuses about breaking in: http://bit.ly/aEWrcJ.
Congratulations to Howard & Sandra Tayler for ten years of Schlock Mercenary: http://bit.ly/9w7WsZ
On the main Lee & Low blog, they’re running a poll about picture books with same-sex parents.
Speaking of the Lee & Low blog, always check in on them on Fridays for a roundup of diversity related links in the feature This Week in Diversity.
And if you somehow missed Elizabeth Bluemle’s post about The Elephant in the Room (complete with hilarious/cute illustrations from a number of children’s illustrators), you need to read it, and all the comments.
Oh, and random star sighting: I saw Liam Neeson on Friday night in the movie theater. No, I didn’t go to see The A-Team (that’ll be next week)—he walked past me. You could tell where he went from all the rubber-necking moviegoers. But no mob as there was for Will Smith IN THE VERY SAME THEATER that I watched Karate Kid in, apparently. I didn’t see him, but the mob waiting outside told me he was in there. There’s of course always the chance that the rumor that Liam Neeson was in the building somehow morphed to Will Smith via opening-weekend movies? (That is, Will Smith directed KK. Liam Neeson starred in A-T. Both opened last weekend. Telephone ensues.)
I recently got this question from a writer, who agreed that answering it on the blog would be useful:
My hero is a fifteen-year-old African American boy [in a science fiction story]. A few of my alpha readers (not all) have said that he doesn’t sound “black enough.” I purposely made him an Air Force brat who has lived in several different countries to avoid having to use cliche hood-terminology. I want him to be universal.
Do you have thoughts on this either way?
Is there a possibility that my potential readers could really be offended that a) I am “a white girl writing a book about black people” and b) that my character doesn’t sound black enough? I’ve looked through your blog and website and haven’t found anything specific to my needs on this particular question. Perhaps I missed it?
…should I use Ebonics or not use Ebonics?
First of all, black people—just as white people or Latino people—are a very diverse group of people. There are people who speak in Ebonics [ETA: which I believe would be more accurately referred to as BVE–Black Vernacular English] and people who speak plain old suburban English, people who speak with any of a variety of Southern accents and people who have Chicago accents, people who speak with French or Spanish accents (or who speak French or Spanish or an African language). So the question of whether a particular character in a particular situation sounds “black enough” is a complicated question, one that even the African American community can’t necessarily agree on. Within the community (and I say this because I asked a coworker who is African American, who can speak with more authority on the subject than I can) it’s often a question that draws on complicated factors, such as money, privilege, “selling out,” skin tone (relative darkness or lightness—literally, being “black enough”), and hair texture, which all relate to how much a part of which community a person might be.
The question, then, is fraught with loaded meaning not only to do with stereotypes, but also socioeconomic meanings. [And, edited to add, because it might not be clear enough: The question can also tend to be offensive because of that diversity and the loaded meaning the question carries.]
Which leads me to the question of your alpha readers. What are their demographics? Is it a diverse group? What is their experience with the military? Is more than one of them African American? When writing cross-culturally, you’ll want to be sure that your beta readers include sufficient numbers of the member of the group you’re writing about. Every individual experience will be different—one person’s opinion on whether a character reads as African American will probably differ from another person’s, especially if their socioeconomic background and regional experiences are different. An African American from the St. Louis suburbs will have a different life experience than someone who grew up on a farm in Louisiana, whose experiences will probably be different from a kid who grew up in Harlem or someone else who grew up in Seattle.
If your local writing group isn’t very diverse, you might need to branch out for beta readers who you can rely on to comment on that particular element of your story—perhaps through an online writing group, perhaps through the SCBWI. You might even approach a local high school and ask if any of their students who come from a similar background to your character might be willing to give you feedback on your manuscript. Do you have connections with a local Air Force base? Perhaps you might network with people you know in the military to find someone who can give you feedback on that aspect of the character building.
To answer your other questions: it’s always possible that someone will be offended by a white person writing about a person of color, but generally, most readers I’ve talked to who care about diversity in fantasy and science fiction want that diversity to come from everyone, not just writers of color. This is why I emphasized alpha readers—it’s important to make sure that if you’re not from that background, you do your research (which it sounds like you have) and then run it past someone other than yourself who understands that culture or background (in this case, you’ve got two cultures going on: African American and military, particularly Air Force, which has a completely different culture than Army).
A few someones is even better, to ensure that you get different points of view and can mesh that feedback into something that works for your particular character, who will be an individual in his own right and not a representative of a group that plays into a stereotype.
Which leads into your next question: should you use Ebonics? And the answer to that is: I don’t know. Do African Americans in the military use Ebonics? Do only some of them, and does it depend on their family history/region of origin? Do their kids speak to each other in Ebonics? Or do they have their own way of speaking that’s particular to the Air Force community? (My uncle was in the Air Force and I have a couple cousins who might read this who may be able to answer that question; they’ve never spoken anything but “Midwestern” to me, but they might have spoken differently to their friends who were also Air Force brats.)
And that’s important too: people often have different vocabularies when talking to different groups of people. When my roommates from Georgia talked to their family, their accents became stronger. When I talk to my rural family, the word “crik” has been known to creep back into my lexicon. So ask yourself, “what’s the context my character is in?” as well.
And of course, that’s just me spouting off from the point of view of an editor. Readers, feel free to chime in and help out writers who write cross-culturally: what other issues should they be aware of when writing African American characters?