Boston Book Festival: Steampunk

The first session Anna and I went to was Steampunk!  Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title.  It was with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, editors of the Steampunk! anthology, Holly Black and Allison DeBlasio, who is Mrs. Grymm of Dr. Grymm Laboratories.  It was moderated by Maya Escobar, Teen Librarian at the Cambridge Public Library.  I was particular interested in this session because I was curious as to what the editors of the anthology had to say about steampunk.  The anthology was so all over the place, I wanted to know if there had been any criteria for the writers.

Kelly explained that they wanted to throw the term "steampunk" out to the authors and see who they would interpret it.  So that explains that.  They chose what authors they wanted to write for them and they said, "write a steampunk short story."  It was totally up to the writer to define steampunk.  Kelly said that, "no one is sure how to define steampunk," and that it was still a question without a defined answer.  She said characteristics of it were strongly character driven narratives, and that they provoke a sense of wonder.  They can be romance, mystery, horror, anything at all.

BBF - Second and third panel

That time of year is upon us, when Boston devotes itself to a day celebrating books. You might remember that Arianna, Jamie and I went last year and saw some pretty decent panels. There was a larger group of us that met up at random points during the day, Arianna and I went to all the same panels. I am hoping that Alana will post something about Mo Willems as she said he was amazing. Ari, will post about our first panel we went to and I'm going to chat about the young adult panel and the graphic novel panel we went to.

YA Fiction: On the Edge
I would first like to state that my main motivator for going to the young adult panel, as I hadn't heard of any of the panelists, was the fact that Amy Pattee was hosting it. Amy was my professor of two of my courses while in library school. I love her. Not quite a creepy love, but bordering. Anyway, the topic of the panel was what made young adult fiction edgy which I think they meant as potentially controversial.

Ellen Levine spoke first, poor lady was sick with laryngitis and had a croaky voice. Her new book In Trouble is a companion to Catch a Tiger by the Toe, it deals with family and friends and is pre-Roe v. Wade in which the character of Jamie has an abortion. It has been labelled a 'political' book, and she had to shop it around to more than a dozen publisher before someone took a chance on it. She realized that she had stumbled upon self-imposed censorship in publication. In media right now it doesn't matter if a girl is raped, brutalized, or it's consensual the fetus must be seen carried to term. Currently one in three women will have an abortion, and yet this statistic isn't reflected in any medium - young adult or adult. She also talked about the label of being political and how that assumes that the writer has an agenda and labeling them as political silences the them. She feels that if a writer is truly passionate about writing then the plot is organic and what develops is absolutely necessary. She ended with a fantastic quote by Philip Pullman:
No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That’s all I have to say on that subject.

Daniel Nayeri is an editor at Houghton Mifflin, writer, extremely fast talker, and hilarious! He has a new book of four short stories called Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow! It developed out of his own childhood experience of moving here when he was eight and teaching himself to read. He feels that more reluctant readers would be enthusiastic about reading if they could find the right genre for them. His book samples from different genres: Western, science fiction, detective mystery, and romantic comedy. I think what was supposed to make this 'edgy' was the fact the book makes the assumption that boys aren't reluctant readers, they just haven't found the right book for them. I wish I could tell you more because he was so funny and riveting but he talked to freaking fast!

Danica Novgorodoff has just finished a graphic novel called Refresh, Refresh. It's about three seventeen year old boys from Portland. Their fathers are Marines currently serving in Iraq, the boys are forced to grow up too fast as they try to fill the shoes that their fathers left them. They want to please their fathers even after they've abandoned them. The graphic novel is based off of a screenplay which was developed off of short story by Ben Percy. This looks like a powerful story, the artwork wasn't my favorite but it fits. She brought up an interesting point that it wasn't the violence of her book that made it edgy but rather the words. Crazy huh?

Amy then asked a couple of awesome questions, which all of the panelists responded to.

Where does edginess develop from?
They all agreed that it wasn't in the writing stage but rather marketing.

What issues make a book 'controversial'?
-Abortions
-Language
-Native Americans (If the book isn't written by a Native American)
-Violence (though I would argue that visual violence like in graphic novels makes it worse)

Generally experiences that we don't want young adults to have. We don't want children to have real experiences and we like to assume that they aren't behaving badly. It's hard to write about an issue that is controversial at the time, and the publishers because they're so close to the education of kids look for role-models not controversy. Thank God for bake sales.

Boston Book Festival: Part One Second

I would like to begin with the fact that BBF starts EARLY! Anyways, Arianna and I went to Cartooning: You can do it too! which was really the perfect way to start the day off. Because it started at 10am, there weren't many people there which was nice (little did we know that this was all going to change during the later forums). Of course I also started the morning by sticking my foot in it, as we wanted to attend a panel that started at 10:30am I let Arianna know that I hoped the panel would start on time. To which a smiling gentleman replied, "Me too!." Wouldn't you know it, the dude was Jarrett Krosoczka? At least I didn't tell him we were friends before we were properly introduced.

Side note: Jarret's daughter is ridiculously adorable. Everyone's little daughter should be forced to have pig-tails that stick straight out of their heads.

Anyways, the panel had Jarrett Krosoczka, Aaron Renier, Jef Czekaj, and Alexis Frederick-Frost. Robin Brenner was hosting the panel. After the four artists all got over the giggles that seemed to overcome them, they introduced themselves and did a quick sketch of their well-known characters, except Jeff but he totally made up for it which we'll get into in a little bit. Generally each of them told a little background about themselves and their illustrations and then they were going to collaboratively create a comic. Jarrett talked about how he went back to his old school and realized he still believes that his lunch lady lives at the school and doesn't leave. Aaron made me giggle as he drew Turnip the Elephant and muttered, "This is turning out really good." Jef didn't draw, instead he rapped! It was CRAZY AMAZING! Everyone should read Hip and Hop Don't Stop with his music in the background. Alexis got me to try and copy his illustrations (which I have to admit turned out moderately well), so well done Alexis.

Boston Book Festival: The second part first

So Anna and I ended up going to all the same things, so she's going to write about the morning and I'm writing about the afternoon. So after some delightful lunch, the wind blew us back to the Back Bay Convention Center were we attended "From Page to Screen" with Dennis Lehane and Tom Perrotta with host Ty Burr. A.M. Homes was supposed to be there as well, but alas, she was sick. Ty Burr was a good host, he asked leading question and then sat back and let them talk. No interrupting. It started out with playing clips from movies that had been made from Dennis Lehane and Tom Perrotta's work. I am sorry to say I have not seen any of them accept for Election. They look really good though and it made me want to. Has anyone seen Little Children? It came out in 2006 and I don't remember it at all. It looks hysterical.

The first question Ty Burr asked was, "Can a novelist get respect in Hollywood?" Dennis Lehane felt that the writer doesn't have very much power. You only have the power to sell it to whom you want to, so you need to trust them. Tom Perrotta said you have power when you write the book, and that's about it. This of course led into a question of how do you get the people who bought it to respect the work. They both agreed that you have to work all that out before you decide to sell. Choose carefully, and walk away when you need to.