Alan's worst kept secret

It's been forever since I posted, but it's not for lack of interesting things to report. I haven't told you all about my trip to the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, or the recent Darcy Pattison Novel Revision Workshop I attended. What's been keeping me so preoccupied? Perhaps my worst kept secret:

I sold two more books!

Yep, you read that right. Don't look so surprised--I've most likely already told you. I was holding out on the announcements because I wanted to wait until I had officially signed the contracts, but the cat is well out of the bag and I thought I better come clean.

Both sales are to my new editor Liz at Dial, and I'm eager to start working with her. The first book, Something Rotten, is due out in Spring 2008. It's "Hamlet" rewritten as a contemporary young adult mystery novel set in Denmark, Tennessee. Horatio, a minor character in the original play, becomes my main character: a wry, sarcastic seventeen-year-old in the mold of Phillip Marlowe. It's Raymond Chandler meets William Shakespeare!

As if that weren't enough, Dial also wants me to write a book we developed together. It's an as-yet untitled middle-grade novel that follows an immigrant family's history in America as it relates to all things baseball: score keeping, baseball cards, baseball stadiums, the women's leagues of the Forties, integration, baseball's westward expansion, and more.

So, in addition to trying to finish the first draft of my fasting girl novel I started this summer, I'm researching and storybuilding for the generational baseball story and editing and rewriting Something Rotten. As I keep telling people, it's a good kind of busy . . .

Books: Maisie Dobbs

Skulking about in the mystery shelves of That Bookstore in Blytheville during a recent road trip, I discovered a book that, from the words "National Bestseller" on the cover, a fair amount of other people have already discovered. The book is Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear, and though it's nominally a mystery, it's an odd creature that proves rather difficult to classify.

There is a mystery here, though it's solved in the first and last quarter of the book. The larger interior focuses on Maisie Dobbs herself. Maisie is a young woman of exceptional ability and understanding, trained to be a detective by an enigmatic cross between Sherlock Holmes and the Dalai Lama. Through a series of vignettes, we see Maisie go from poor servant to student to World War I battlefield nurse, explaining how she got to her place and position in society.

Maisie's training encourages a holistic approach to detection--and to life. In my favorite scene, Maisie elicits a confidential memory over a pleasant cup of tea at a restaurant. Then, in keeping with her humanistic approach, she takes the woman shopping for fabric--a particular love of this person--to help fill the hole she has just created in this woman's soul. Similarly, no mystery can be solved by Maisie without it taking some personal toll on her as well. This particular case opens up a giant hole in Maisie, brought on by the events we see in the middle of the book, and thus it becomes not so much important that the mystery be solved, but that all the emotional pieces are all put back into place at the end.

Maisie Dobbs proved a slow, immersive read, but a worthwhile one.

A good review from School Library Journal

I found another good review of Samurai Shortstop, this one courtesy of Amazon.com. School Library Journal had a quickie blurb about Samurai in a spring article featuring all baseball books, but this is a full-on review from them:

It is 1890, and 16-year-old Toyo Shimada is uniquely poised to witness the clash of old and new ways in his native Tokyo. Emperor Meiji has instituted a series of radical reforms; one of them requires that all samurai hang up their swords. In the hypnotic opening scene, Toyo and his father assist as his Uncle Koji commits ritual suicide or seppuku. Toyo's father, Sotaro, is a scholarly samurai whose weapon has always been his ink brush, but he too has decided that he cannot live in this new Japan. He tells Toyo that once he has taught him the ways of bushido, or the warrior's code, he, too, will take his own life. Meanwhile, Toyo begins his studies at an elite high school where the hazing by the senior students makes the first-year students miserable.
Eventually, the teen and his friends are able to stand up for themselves, and Toyo wins a place on the school's besuboro or baseball team. His lessons in bushido include meditation, balance, and swordplay, and Toyo finds in baseball a way to make the connection between both modern and ancient, mental and physical. Gratz's concluding notes offer more on the period as well as sources for more information. This well-written tale offers plenty of fascinating detail, a fast paced story, and a fresh perspective on America's pastime. It should delight baseball fans and win a wide audience. – Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA

Domo arigato, Marilyn!

A New Review from 108

Just found out about a Samurai Shortstop review over at the online home of 108, a new baseball magazine. Here's a snippet:

A great "baseball novel" is about more than hits and outs, winners and losers. It is about choices made - whether good or bad - and the resulting impact on the novel's characters. In other words, it's about life. Using that criterion, Samurai Shortstop is an outstanding story.

Hollywood Greg Bunch puts you to shame - again

Agent Lizardo, who now makes his home in Ventura, California, has now punched his Face Front member card from sea to shining sea - first in New York State, and now the left coast. He's even got pictoral evidence:

See, you can tell it's a California B&N because it has a Southwestern color scheme.

We've had another field report from Team Banzai - the first from the Sundance Kid, Paul Harrill. He and VSO (Very Significant Other) Ashley found Samurai Shortstop in a Virginia bookshop, and claim to have video evidence. Our crack technicians are working day and night to extract this footage from Paul's video phone, but don't hold your breath.

Another Starred Review for Samurai

I got home from my six-day journey to the high country of North Carolina to learn that Samurai has received two more raves--one from my hometown alt.weekly MetroPulse, and the other a starred review from the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books. It's my favorite review yet!

Toyo begins his secondary schooling in 1890 at the elite boarding school Ichiko shortly after the Japanese emperor has decreed all countrymen to be commoners, doing away with the samurai class. His uncle has been permitted to commit seppuku after a failed uprising, and his father, a conservative journalist, wishes to do the same. While Toyo struggles with adapting to the new school and brutal upperclass hazing, his father trains him daily in the samurai code of bushido so that Toyo can eventually assist in his ritual suicide. What the young man draws from these lessons, though, is an appreciation of the same balance between warrior's heart and scholar's mind that Ichiko holds to be the path for Japan's future in a rapidly modernizing world. Toyo applies his insights to besuboru-baseball-instructing his team members in the rigors of bushido physical training and demonstrating the advantages of team coordination over individual skill. When the baseball team commits a faux pas that turns into a diplomatic incident involving the American consulate, Toyo suggests that the breach might be healed through a baseball game-Americans vs. the Ichiko nine. But the question of whether it is more noble to throw the game in deference to the affronted Americans or to play their best against a worthy rival challenges the team to think beyond sport and sportsmanship to the broader implications of their decision. Debut novelist Gratz adroitly balances a provocative exploration of honor with the excitement of a full count, bases loaded baseball book. Ritualized school brutality and even the graphic opening depiction of seppuku are clearly portrayed as harsh but valued components of a culture that places a high premium on social cohesion. Fast moving, culturally respectful, and flat-out engrossing, this should lead off the next booktalk on sports or historical fiction.

Thanks to the reviewer for such a sterling review! A former librarian/current children's writer friend of mine tells me that the BCCB is on par with the Horn Book in terms of influence, and that a starred review from them is big news. I'm honored! (And flattered!)

The review from MetroPulse was great, too. It's too long to quote in its entirety, but here's a good bit:

A distinct pleasure of Samurai Shortstop is the clarity of its prose and the accuracy of its setting. Gratz has done his homework, capturing the political and social concerns of the times, depicting Japanese samurai warrior conduct (bushido), and describing the harsh realities of Japanese boarding school life of the period. Moreover, Gratz incorporates occasional historical events and figures into the narrative, thereby lending the story further verisimilitude.

I was especially pleased to have someone note the prose style, which I've worked a long time to develop. It's a writer thing.

You can read the entire MetroPulse review here. Sorry--the BCCB review is a sub service, so no link. You'll just have to take my word for it. (You're so distrustful.)

Mirror, Mirror

Wendi and I are working on an article on optics for a kids' magazine called Odyssey. We're MacGuyvering a homemade kaleidoscope out of a Pringles can, silver poster board, and transparency sheets, but we're also stacking mirrors at angles to demonstrate the optical principles we're using. When the time came to choose a toy to put in the center of our mirrors, I knew just the one . . .

Comics fans recognize this masked man immediately. He's Sam Scudder/Evan McCulloch, aka the Mirror Master!

I get a kick every time I look at these. Seeing Mirror Master reflected over and over again makes my fanboy heart feel warm and fuzzy!

Samurai in Seattle

I awoke this morning to find a new Google alert in my inbox. Samurai Shortstop got a brief recommendation in the Seattle Times, and was in good company with books by Kate DiCamillo, Linda Sue Park, Cynthia Kadohata, and Mike Lupica. Also included was Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge, which I keep hearing good things about and will have to add to the acquisition list.

Here's the intro to the article:

Going for a hike in the Methow Valley? How about a night or two of camping in the Olympic National Park? Maybe you and your young ones are planning to catch a ferry to the San Juan Islands. Summer is often made of long drives, long waits and long hours in the sun. So it's a good idea to have a stack of books handy — something for everyone.

Tried and true children's classics are always satisfying. Books with staying power include: "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls, "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster, "Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George, "The Incredible Journey" by Sheila Burnford, "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred D. Taylor, "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame, "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry and "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh. And there are plenty of brand new offerings — check out the titles listed below.

And here then is the blurb about Samurai:

"Samurai Shortstop," by Alan Gratz (Dial, 280 pp., $17.99), describes a fascinating period in Japan's history: the 1890s. Toyo, the son of a samurai, finds himself wanting to understand both the way of the samurai and besuboro (baseball). Yet the samurai class has been abolished by the Emperor Meiji; Toyo is encouraged to forget it altogether. Still, he has made it into Ichiko, the First Higher School of Tokyo, and this elite environment continues to make him aware of his family's status. As he struggles with the antics of the upperclassmen (first-year students have to endure some pretty harsh unofficial rituals), his love for baseball motivates him to go after a spot on the school team. Meanwhile, his father has decided to teach him bushido (the samurai code), so that Toyo can assist with his seppuku, or ritual suicide.

Good stuff. Thanks to Kari Wergeland, author of the article, for including me in her summer picks!