Friends

One of the best parts of the holiday season is spending time with friends. (I'm lucky––I consider my family members to be friends.) We exchange gifts. We share delicious food. We do our best to light up the long evenings.

I have other friends who have done a great deal to keep the darkness at bay. They've been such an important part of my life. I love them dearly––but sometimes I ignore them for years. They don't mind. They wait patiently on the shelf. Then my daughter needs something to read, and I run to the bookcase, eager to introduce her to one of my literary friends.

 My publisher has a motto.

Feiwel and Friends

Our Books Are Friends for Life.

I love that sentiment. I'm so proud that they considered Zeno & Alya to be that kind of book.

Lately I’ve been thinking about all the books who have given me wonderful companions.

Wilbur the pig.  I know, Charlotte the spider gets that lovely bit of praise at the end. But  Wilbur is the one with enthusiasms. You have to love a pig who tries to spin a web!

Mary Lennox.  She’s so disagreeable, I had to love her. She works so hard to bring the garden back to life.

Jo March. I suppose I identified most strongly with her – but not because she wanted to be a writer. I was every bit as clumsy as she was. And my older sister was as perfect as Meg.

My list could go on and on. But I think I'll go spend some time with dear old friends.

I hope that you all found time this holiday season to spend time with yours – and make new ones.

Just Name It

 

My nephew Alex recently started a job with a company called Catchword. It's a naming agency. Their clients are corporations who are launching new products or rethinking their existence, but I think they could start a whole division to help people like me. 

Writers have to name things all the time. Characters, cities, streets, pets, just to mention a few. In historical fiction, names must be changed to protect the innocent. If you’re writing a book that involves any world building, you’ll have to name all the creatures, the clothing, the food, the transportation, and whatever screen device they watch or watches them. No wonder I stick to my version of realistic fiction. I know I could never come up with all those names!

I haven’t even mentioned the most important thing that needs a name––the book itself . 

I don’t remember having a Eureka moment when I thought of this title. It seems pretty straightforward. Half of it is comprised of the names of the two main characters––Zeno (the African grey parrot) and Alya (the girl). The squiggle of an ampersand that links them promises a closer connection than an ordinary "and."

 I’ve already blogged about how the parrot was named after the Greek philosopher Zeno who was one of the early Stoics. The parrot Zeno is a curmudgeon, so it makes sense that his name ends in “no.” 

The girl's name had to start with the letter A. I liked how "Alya" sounds strong, without being harsh. The syllable at the end is kind of like a cheer or the noise tennis players make when they smash the ball cross-court. “Yah!” Sounds in words are like a little bit of hidden music.

But what about the rest? What about Desperate Adventures? Why not reckless quests? Serious escapades? Overwhelming exploits?   

 

Desperate has despair. Overcoming despair is often what I write about––even though most of my readers are years from being adults. If you want to observe true courage, watch a kid walk down the hall of her middle school. 

Adventure has advent––the start, the beginning, the arrival of something important, like a brand new story.

Aren’t words wonderful? 

Why did I write about an African grey parrot?

Last week I participated in an event called "The Inside Story." It was sponsored by the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and Bank Street Bookstore. 

It's one of the best children's bookstores in New York City.

Eleven middle-grade authors were each given the chance to share a story about their story.  I decided to answer a question that many have wondered about. 

Why did I write a book about an African grey parrot?

The answer is simple. I had to. I was obsessed.

I’m fascinated by how brains work. Several years ago, I read about Dr. Pepperberg’s intelligence studies with her African grey parrot, Alex.

Before she did her research, many people believed that parrots were only good at, well, parroting. Dr. Pepperberg proved that Alex knew what he was saying. He could correctly identify shapes, colors, and quantities. He wasn’t just good at recognition, he also invented words. He called an apple a “banerry” – a banana cherry.

Dr. Pepperberg used Alex’s emotions to keep him on task. If he got bored, she praised her assistant for learning so quickly. Alex always got back to work––he had to be the smartest one in the room.

After reading about Alex, I really wanted my own parrot. I knew that our cat Blackberry would never allow that. Luckily I had another option. If I couldn’t own an African grey, I could write about one.

Obsessions are useful. Writing a novel is a long process. Being passionate about something––anything––can help you keep going. I had a lot of fun imagining what a parrot would do after he lost his owner and flew out into the great wild world of Brooklyn. The first thing he wants is food, of course. That’s why he flies to Alya’s bedroom window. She’s a girl who’s having treatments for leukemia. She’s gotten so weak that she’s lost her sense of self.

When I envisioned the novel, I didn’t expect that the parrot and the girl would have much in common. But I learned that when parrots are bored, they pluck their own feathers. Zeno imprisoned in the pet store loses his identity in much the same way that Alya has. What a triumph for them both at the end when his feathers and her hair grow back.

My obsession with parrots enabled me to explore many of the ideas I wanted to write about. There was another benefit. When I spoke for Zeno and other parrots – I could definitively answer the age-old question. Polly does NOT want a cracker.

 

With Ghouls and Gourds at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

 

These birds reminded me of Zeno.

Last Saturday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had a big party in the Cherry Esplanade. They invited musicians, circus performers, stilt walkers, pumpkin carvers, and a group of word-wizards also known as children’s book writers.

The writers were each given a table, a chair––and a pumpkin.

There was a special place where we read from our books.

But what I really love about these festivals is that I meet so many more kids than can fit inside a classroom or a bookstore. Talking with readers is always fun. (It's even more entertaining when they're super heroes, woodland creatures, Ninja girls and kitty cats.) They passed by my table and looked at my book. They read the jacket flap. They admired the cover.  Amazingly, their adult companions all wanted to buy their kids a book. After they did, from a temporary bookstore, the kids came back to ask, somewhat shyly, Would you sign?  

WOULD I SIGN?  Of course! The kids patiently spelled their names.  They probably wondered why I wrote so slowly, but I’m always a bit nervous that I’ll misspell a name and ruin someone’s book. Then I signed mine with the date.  Unfortunately there’s never enough time for me to write everything that I wish I could to these young readers. So I thought I would put that message here.

Dear Reader,
         Thank you for joining my characters in this journey. I hope they take you someplace you never thought you’d go. I hope you find them to be good company. I hope they brought the kinds of snacks you like!  And thank you for being a reader of books – any books, not just mine. Because readers are wonderful people.

Friend Friday with Kirby Larson

Kirby Larson invited me to do a guest post on her blog. She's the author of many books, including the Newbery Honor winner Hattie Big Sky and Hattie Ever After.  Hattie is an amazing and inspiring character. I encourage you all to get to know her.

I was delighted to have the chance to explain how Zeno got his name. What started as a random choice turned out to be an important theme for the book. 

To visit Kirby Larson's blog

Inspired By Park Slope

 

The Desperate Adventures of Zeno & Alya will be in bookstores in less than two weeks, and hopefully in your hands soon after that. If you look at the cover, you’ll see that Eliza Wheeler drew a Brooklyn brownstone that could be on my street. 

Certain parts of the book are straight from my imagination, but the setting is very specific to Park Slope, my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I thought it would be fun to share some pictures of the places and the birds that inspired me.

Pigeons are pretty much everywhere in New York City. Only a very few people like them. I took it as a tremendous compliment when my editor Liz Szabla told me that she’ll never think of pigeons the same way again after she read about Bunny, the noble pigeon who teaches Zeno the meaning of the word “home.”

Monk parrots are becoming more common too. Flocks have nested in many places all across the country, but mine have chosen to live in Green-Wood Cemetery, which is located about a mile from my apartment.

If you look closely, you can  see two green Monk parrots perched at the top of a pine tree. They were chattering away to their offspring who were safe inside the large nest that surrounds the tallest spire at the grand entrance to the cemetery.

This is where Zeno hoped to reside. He thought it would be fitting for such a “booful, briyant” bird like him.

 And here is where the Monk parrots forced him to take refuge––on top of this statue of an angel. The arrogant Zeno believes it is a “parrot man.”

And here is the most important location of all. This bakery is the source of the banana nut muffins. A muffin is what first lures Zeno to Alya’s window. Over the course of the novel, the muffins become much more than a delicious treat. They are—like all the favorite foods we share with friends—a little piece of home.

BLACKBERRY'S REVIEW OF THE DESPERATE ADVENTURES OF ZENO AND ALYA

 

Dear Two-legged One,

I just finished reading your new novel.

Do you realize that there is not one single cat in the book? In fact, it’s full of birds! Parrots, pigeons, cardinals and even sparrows.  As you know, I love to watch birds from the window. But I never expected to care about what happens to them. They’re birds!

And yet, I was enthralled by the adventures of Zeno the parrot. Would he ever find a banana-nut muffin? Would he really become friends with a pigeon? Would he learn the meaning of "home"? 

Would he teach the girl Alya how to try? Or would she slide into the gray corner?

They both came so close to forgetting who they were. When Zeno suffered in the cage, you described it so well. You must know the pain  of being unable to do what makes you who you are.

So why do you scold me for clawing the furniture? Cats scratch to make our mark. Cats hunt for food—even if the tuna we find is in your sandwich. We must be true to ourselves.

 I think you understand that. You showed such sympathy for the animals––for a human.

Like that other review in Publishers Weekly said, you do know something about cross-species friendship.