This crisis reached a climax as I worked on my dissertation on Henry James. I used to wallow in James’s prose; I would allow his page-long sentences to wash over me, accepting whichever particles of meaning happened to stick but understanding that the majority would flow right past. However, in grad school, I was forced to attack the text with a microscope and fine-toothed comb, stripping away the layers to uncover the “true” meaning, as if The Wings of the Dove was actually a cover for James’s own communist manifesto or an encrypted treatise on space exploration. I began to dread working on my dissertation because everything I wrote felt wrong, clumsy, and sometimes even irreverent.

Three days after I turned in my dissertation, I found myself back at Scholastic for my second summer at AALB. Before the end of my first week, I began to remember why I have always been so passionate about reading. Arthur, Cheryl, Rachel, and Emily work tirelessly to publish books that are elegantly written, provocative, and intelligent but that are still a joy to read. I started to remember that metonymy and metaphor are more than potential essay topics; they’re tools to make a text more pleasurable, to emphasize the richness of language and the imagination. AALB publishes books that use the literary devices I once obsessed over, yet they become the means to a greater, more worthy end; they transport readers to foreign lands, conjure images of beauty, and evoke a range of complex emotions.

Last summer, Rachel asked me to read a manuscript she was considering, an adventure story with a young boy as the protagonist. I loved the imaginative plot but had trouble connecting with the main character; although he was both nuanced and likable, I didn’t find myself empathizing with him on the level I would have liked. I realized that the manuscript’s third person narration was creating a gulf between the hero and the reader. Without direct access to the main character’s thoughts and feelings, I felt as if I were watching from behind a screen rather than accompanying him on his adventure. I wondered whether first person narration might help this problem and I suggested we present that option to the author, to give the reader the chance to participate in the hero’s emotional journey. I likely would have had the same reaction to the manuscript regardless of my background in literary criticism, but my training provided me with the vocabulary to articulate my feelings about the text, transforming a vague impression into a potentially useful tool for revision. I now appreciate my ability to recognize the mechanics of a text; it allows me to pinpoint a problem, like a faulty rhyme scheme, and articulate concerns about perspective and character development. However, I value these tools for their ability to enhance the reading experience. I’m no longer the mechanic who strips cars for the sole purpose of looking at theirs engine; I’m the test driver with the first chance to see them perform on the road. I examine their power to take me to new, wonderful places. While I enjoyed graduate school, I want to use the knowledge I gained to pinpoint for authors the reason I had a particular reaction to a text. I want to help make their books even more enjoyable, to analyze a metaphor with the aim of making it more powerful or evocative for the reader. I’m thrilled to be back at AALB and look forward to another summer learning from a group of such knowledgeable, talented, and enthusiastic editors.

Plastic Flowers and Channelled Raisins, Saturday, January 14,2006

Hello and thank you all very much for having me to this beautiful warm setting. What a nice way to escape the cold and talk about books and writing – two of my favorite things.

Having agreed to come, though, I then went through my usual crisis of confidence about what to say; especially knowing that the dynamic Bruce Coville would be giving the keynote – he’s a tough act to follow! And I know that you’ve had many smart and gifted editors down here to talk to your group already. What can I say that all these predecessors haven’t already told you?

And as I was pondering the question it occurred to me—isn’t this the exact question a writer asks himself when sitting down to write? What do I have to say that is original, that contributes, that hasn’t already been done, said, written a thousand times before.

Of course when I’m in the editor’s chair I have an answer for this. I tell the concerned author that it isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it that makes an important, a worthwhile story. After all, books are like people—there are only so many positive qualities going around: intelligence, sensitivity, humor, physical attractiveness. As a person you can’t realistically think you can reinvent these categories in order to make an impact—to get people to like and notice you. It’s the particular combination of those qualities that makes you an individual, that draws people to you or repels them. In other words, if a TV mom were here to dismiss my trepidation she’d be saying to me, “Darling, just be yourself.”

So that’s what I’m going to do. It’s also what I’m going to tell YOU to do. End of story? Fortunately, I’ve prepared about 40 minutes of qualifications to that statement and a lot of talk about plastic flowers and channeled raisins.

“Plastic flowers?” you say! “Channeled Raisins?” What could he mean? What is this man ON?

Well, to begin with, people often ask me how I stay responsive to wonderful new manuscripts when I read so many every week, every day. The good news and the bad news is that the really special ones stand out as distinctly as real flowers in a shop full of plastic imitations. And it’s just like that really. The actual, living flower, has a smell. It isn’t perfect, it’s colors can be off a bit. But it’s REAL and you know it.

On the other hand, those plastic flowers represent a syndrome that results in nine out ten of the rejections I write every week: let’s call it channeling.

Channeling is a common problem to writers of any sort of piece be it poetry, fiction, or journalism, but it’s a particular hazard of the various literary forms that make up the broad category of children’s books: picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, “Young Adult” novels and nonfiction of all levels.

In most cases, I believe channeling is not done intentionally. A writer simply sits down at his or her computer and sets out to write, let’s say, a picture book story. Suddenly, that person is possessed by the spirit of Dr. Seuss. Everything comes out in rhymed, metered verse, with a plethora of made-up words to help make the lines work.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against rhymed verse – Dr. Seuss did it very well, as did Robert Frost. The problem is, when writers channel Dr. Seuss, he never comes through without a whole lot of static. There’s something phony about it. It’s as if his lines are being spoken by an android. They have the sound of imitation.

I would say the second favorite writer for people to channel when writing for children is Lewis Carroll. It’s ol’ Lewis who is responsible for the myriad of holes and doors-in-closets (well, maybe that’s C.S. Lewis, especially these days) through which children fall or step into journeys where they meet a host of unusual characters and use Victorian British diction in their speech. “Oh my’s!” abound.

Again, it’s not that I have anything against imaginative journeys, but they have to be AUTHENTIC imaginative journeys. When writers channel, only a small part of what is uniquely them comes through, and the reader feels as if they are getting something second hand. And such a feeling is anathema to the experience of reading, which is an intimate, one on one activity. When you’re sitting with a book it’s like sitting across a candle-lit table with a lover, or curling up on a couch with your best friend. You don’t want to feel as if they’re giving you a canned speach, you want to feel as if they are being truly themselves, and they’re telling you the truth in a way they wouldn’t tell anyone else.

When Czelaw Milosz won the Nobel prize for literature he said, “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”

For publishers, and for readers, the vast amount of channeled writing that comes through amounts to a conspiracy of silence. The real writers’ voices and stories aren’t coming through. And your task as writers is to break that silence with work that is so honest and so idiosyncratically you that it can’t be ignored, and it couldn’t have been written by anyone else.

Why is this so important? In BIRD BY BIRD, Anne Lamott says, “the very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that GOOD WRITING IS ABOUT TELLING THE TRUTH. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. SHEEP LICE do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little.”

Personally, I think what I want most out of the experience of reading a book is a sense of recognition. We human beings live our lives, walking around in these great big hulking, sloshing bags of emotions we call bodies, awash in thoughts and feelings: philosophies, ambitions, jealousies, painful crushes, cravings for chocolate and chicken McNuggets, itches, anxieties, incomplete song lyrics, aspirations, memories of October, 1982, ninth grade geometry, fits of anger, prayer. What the heck does it all mean? We’re constantly trying to make sense of it.

Readers try to make sense of it by looking for a moment of clarity between the covers of a book. If a writer can only serve up one distinct spoonful of the emotional oatmeal we call life, then they’ve given us something that’s remarkably sustaining. They’ve dipped into the bowl and brought out something we recognize: hey – that’s a RAISIN! I get it!

Basically, what I’m saying is that in order for you to capture that raisin in all its sweet, wrinkly glory, you have to really know what a raisin is. You have to look at it. More carefully than you ever thought you’d look at a raisin. It has to be YOUR raisin and no one else’s raisin.

OK, is anyone saying to themselves, “Jeez, this guy is supposed to be an editor and all he can talk about is dried fruit? I wanna know about WRITING.”

To that person I say bear with me. If we want to avoid the pitfalls of channeling, we have to start the effort at the beginning. And the beginning is you.

Let’s take the question of what to write about. This is the first and the biggest of the big questions every writer faces. How many of you have heard the advice to “write about what you know.” Is that a meaningful phrase? I think it is. But if I were to edit that phrase, I might cut out two of the words. “What” and “know.” So “Write about what you know” would become write about you.”

Who are you?

A seemingly simple question, but a truthful, careful answer may just lead a writer to the deepest source of their imagination. For many writers the first answer to that question is linked to ethnicity. I am an Italian-Jewish American. I am Black. I am a daughter of Chinese immigrants.

Perhaps writing about YOU means writing about ethnicity for these writers because it is the thing that sets them apart from the culture of the majority, and hence it is how the majority culture defines THEM.

The Latina writer, Pat Mora once said, “I remember a teacher at the Texas Association of Bilingual Education who expressed his frustration that there were more books about dogs at the bookstore near him than about Latinos.”

I think writers like Pat and Gary Soto have harnessed this frustration as a motivation to look more closely at their own experience for the stories they tell. For instance, in TOO MANY TAMALES, Gary gave a new freshness to a very “I Love Lucy” style plot – a story about a girl who thinks she’s baked her mother’s ring into the tamales that are supposed to be served for Xmas dinner. And Gary did it by using characters and details that he could recall and imagine with exactitude and comic fondness.

But ethnicity can also be a crutch for a writer striving to know his or herself – as rich a source for cardboard characters and stock situation as any other. I’ll take myself to task as an example. The very first children’s story I ever wrote became a book called PEARL MOSCOWITZ’S LAST STAND. It was based partly on an incident wherein my mother foiled the efforts of the local electric company to cut down a tree on our block. It’s a terrific story, really, and I very much wanted to write it down as a tribute to my tough, kind, brave little mom.

The problem was – and is – that whenever I try to capture the cadence of my mother’s speech I wind up writing with a Yiddish accent that my mother, a woman of Italian-Jewish descent does not have. Don’t get me wrong – a Yiddish accent is a good thing. It can be very funny. But authentically my mother it’s not. How could I not observe my own life well enough to remember how my mother talks. To remember that although she was born in Brooklyn, she had even her New York accent educated out of her as part of her teacher-training. Only at the end of a long evening does “C-o-f-f-e-e” become “KAWfee”. I know this. I knew this, but I didn’t know it well enough for it to come through in my writing.

The result, I think, is that although PEARL MOSCOWITZ’S LAST STAND is a very good effort, and the PLOT of the story comes through pretty well, the main character is a bit of … well, a stereotype, a plastic flower. A channeled kosher raisin. And it’s not as good a book as it would have been, if I’d been able to see my own experience – HEAR my own experience, with a more refined and discerning ear.

Now. Before my mother comes RUSHING up on stage to defend me, let’s move on from ethnicity, because I don’t at all want to give the impression that this is the only place that a writer can look to when writing about “themselves.”

For instance, on of my very favorite picture books in the world is Barbara Berger’s GRANDFATHER TWILIGHT. Have you seen it? It’s somewhat difficult to describe this book without showing the pictures, since they are so intimately connected with the words, and that’s part of it’s strength. But suffice it to say that Berger’s evocation of this particular time of day is so filled with the light and music of twilight that it’s as if the reader is drawing the cloak of nighttime around them as they listen. I find, too, that my experience of the book is actually more than sensual. My mood shifts as I listen to the words and luxuriate in the deepening colors of the pages. I feel calmer. More peaceful.

Could that possibly have happened if this were just a really pretty book? I don’t think so. I think (and I’m cheating here a little, because I’ve visited Barbara at her home) that this author and illustrated infused her love-letter to twilight with the affection she feels for the woods, the light, the colors of Bainbridge Island, where she lives.

When Barbara Berger writes about herself, she writes about the natural world that surrounds and is her home and studio. I think it’s interesting to take a short step sideways and talk about why another book set beautifully in the natural world, is so successful. The book I’m referring to is the Caldecott medal winning book OWL MOON, one of the most oft-channeled of picture book texts in the past two decades. Like GRANDFATHER TWILIGHT, OWL MOON is an exacting, spare text that evokes a season, a time of day, a temperature, a mood.

But what’s lovely about the text is not just the poetic, clear-eyed descriptions of the snow and the quiet and the cold. I also think it’s one of the best things Jane Yolen has written because of the emotion that’s between the lines and the relationship of the girl to her father, and to her brothers off-stage. It’s the sense not only of the awesome longevity of the landscape – the sense that the owls and the snow and the trees have stood quiet for centuries before this day we’re living – but also because the day seems momentous for the child. Somehow this is NOT the picture book equivalent of a landscape painting, it’s a transformative moment in a person’s life. This is a picture of intimacy as much as it is a sketch of the woods. And I think we, the reader, get this from the author. Whether or not it’s literally about Jane Yolen, it’s about her. The imitators capture only the pleasant scenery and not the people in it.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that writing about oneself can only result in a somber, serious book. I think it’s just as possible – and important – to apply this approach to humor, if that’s who you are.

Another Caldecott Winner, Peggy Rathmann, is very up front about the fact that her main sources of inspiration are the most humiliating experiences of her life. And I don’t mean to say that these experiences, literally, are the plots of her picture books. But her understanding of them, and of her role in them, most certainly gives life to the characters in her books.

Some of you may have heard Peggy tell stories about the family dog, and how clever and human she was. You may have heard her talk about the process she and I went through as she settled on the character of OFFICER BUCKLE in her book OFFICER BUCKLE AND GLORIA, changing him daily, from a white guy to a black guy to an Asian guy; from a young guy to an old guy and back again. One day she called me up and said, “Arthur, I’ve GOT it. OFFICER BUCKLE IS a WOMAN.” And I said, “No, he most certainly is NOT.”

You hear all these stories and you’re tempted to think of OFFICER BUCKLE as a very by-the-numbers book. Take one childhood memory, mix with appropriate adult stand in of the most politically expedient description and come out with one very successful picture book. But any of you who have read the book know it’s got way more soul than that.

Why? Because I think OFFICER BUCKLE AND GLORIA is about Peggy Rathmann on a very deep level – so deep that we ALL can relate to it. I think OFFICER BUCKLE is about someone who wants to perform, to take center stage, to be LOVED but who is also not sure how to do that without screwing things up. Don’t let anyone tell you this is a picture book about safety tips.

I hope that by now it’s becoming clear that when I said you should use who you are to decide what you write about, that I did not mean you need to directly transcribe one of your life experiences as the plot of your book. If you’re a writer, knowing yourself means knowing and understanding the curves life throws you. It means giving yourself credit for your loyalty and your ingenuity – like Gloria. And also owning up to some less admirable impulses too – like Gloria. Sometimes the connection to one’s life may be way below the surface. When Emily McCully first discussed with me the idea of MIRETTE ON THE HIGHWIRE I didn’t know her at all. I knew she had illustrated the first children’s book to win the National Book Award. I knew she was a respected author and illustrator. And I knew some of her books, but I didn’t know her.

It was dumb luck for me that at that point in her career when she was ready to make a clean break, to start fresh with a new publisher, to try something different, that it was me she came to. She had sent me a list of book ideas she was interested in doing, and asked me to tell her which ones I was most excited about.

Maybe it was the fact I was about to start a new job too. I was certainly nervous, and I was afraid of failing. Maybe it was those things that made me point to the sentence about the girl who learns to walk on a highwire and say to Emily, “Hey, that sounds good.” That was the one she most wanted to do too (though she was afraid it might be too “quiet.”)

We had a few conversations about the book, including a lunch where I innocently suggested that she might want to drop her line and use a more painterly style of illustrations for this book. The next thing I knew, there was a book dummy on my desk with one of the most profound bits of wisdom I’ve ever heard expressed in a picture book (or otherwise): “Think only of the wire and of crossing to the end.” What better advice can there be fore starting any scary endeavor? What truer motto for navigating the dangers of life?

Soon after Emily’s first sample painting came in – the heart-stopping moment when Mirette runs into Bellini’s room to confront him, to say (and I’m paraphrasing) “how could you have such a talent in you and not tell me?”

The connection to Emily’s life and what she was going through were way over my head. I didn’t understand what a risk she was taking, and how important that risk was for her until after she’d won the Caldecott and began to reflect and talk about it.

I would venture to say, however, that again, this wasn’t a conscious transliteration of a life experience that Emily rendered as a picture book. But I think what enabled Emily to produce such an exceptional book was her willingness to follow her instinct and tell a story that was about feelings that were closer to her heart than any she’d written about before.

When that’s true, it can’t help but come through.

Two more examples before I move on, the first from THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Philip Pullman. I think it’s safe to say that most people, when they think of fantasy, think of a kind of writing that is pure imagination; as separate from a scrubbed-down, undisguised understanding of our psyches as any genre could be: an amalgam of other worlds, alternative realities, kings and queens, swords and sorcery. Of the genres, this one too, is particularly prone to channeling – Tolkein in particular. And THE GOLDEN COMPASS has many of those elements. Most of the reviews have talked about the masterful plotting and the furious pace, the crackling tension of the narrative and the audacity of Pullman’s stated intention to be retelling PARADISE LOST. Yes, it’s all true, I don’t have any argument with any of that. But if you asked me (and nine out of ten other Pullman fans for that matter) what their favorite thing about the entire HIS DARK MATERIALS TRILOGY is, I would say it is the concept of the daemon.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, a daemon is something that every human being has on the world of THE GOLDEN COMPASS. You might call it an animal familiar. You might call it a metaphor for the soul. But on this world what it amounts to is that every person is born with a perfect best-friend-pet-companion attached to them by an unseverable bond. Your daemon can never be more than a few feet away from you. He or she understands your thoughts perfectly. If one of you dies, so does the other. Who hasn’t longed for such a thing in this lonely vale of tears?

Pullman’s genius is that he created this amazing construction, and then he puts it in danger. He lets us know what it would be like to never be alone – to always have someone to talk to. And then, chillingly, to have that severed.

Apart from and around the idea of daemons – seemingly just one detail – Pullman builds a novel that is all about the dance of intimacy and separation: a girl from her father, two parents from each other, an immortal from a human, even a universe from it’s not so distant parallel.

Whatever other exceptional qualities inform THE GOLDEN COMPASS and its sequels, I believe that it’s these particular insights that will make it stand the test of time. Not armored bears, flying witches, dastardly villains and noble friends – though the novel is chock-o-block full of all this and more. Other fantasies have those things. Other books by Philip Pullman have those things. What THE GOLDEN COMPASS has is a thrilling insight into the human condition. Courtesy of an author who knows himself, who knows some important things about friendship and love, and was willing to put them on the line, literally and figuratively.

I think Brian Jacques’s REDWALL books are another beloved group of fantasy novels that would not have been nearly as successful if the author had merely channeled WATERSHIP DOWN or cast the Arthurian legends using animal characters. You don’t need Patti Gauch, the editor of the books to tell you that there’s so much of Brian in them – his past as a bouncer, as a sailor, his love of food. That roughness, that saltiness, that character is everywhere in Redwall – forcing you to stop and pay attention to what’s going on in the pages, which you wouldn’t do if the books seemed written from a distance.

And of course, I couldn’t get through this entire talk without any reference to J.K. Rowling, a writer who will surely be channeled by writers for many, many years to come. I remember that when I read HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE I definitely thought of other great writers I’d loved -- particularly Roald Dahl and P.L. Travers, but that definitely didn’t explain the extraordinary draw of the book.

As you all know, undoubtedly, the book concerns an eleven-year old boy who is given into the care of his hideously awful aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, when his parents are killed in mysterious circumstances. He grows up lonely and vulnerable, the object of scorn and neglect…until finally one day he receives a letter from the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, to which he hadn’t even applied. And his destiny begins to become manifest.

Like the GOLDEN COMPASS and REDWALL, HARRY POTTER has a fantastic plot, full of imaginative detail – the wonderful realization of everyone’s fantasy of what boring, awful, school could be in one’s dreams. But again, what makes it more than a good, forgettable genre novel, is its honesty and insight into it’s characters. This is a book about the loss and recovery of one’s parents. It’s a book about friendship. It’s a book about surviving the dark closets of one’s family, and the torments of childhood – surviving and triumphing. There’s an awful lot of J.K. Rowling in this book – and hence readers feel there’s an awful lot of them in it too.

Now, the lives of the authors I’ve talked about aren’t all that similar. They vary in age, gender, religion, sexuality, nationality, whether they’re married or not, what they care about. What I think they have in common – aside from talent – is a willingness to examine their lives, to understand themselves and what makes them tick, and to share that knowledge with their characters. This is obviously something one can use not only in deciding what to write about, but in improving that which you’ve already chosen.

Use your knowledge of yourself to uproot the plastic flowers of clichéd writing. Use it to get beyond descriptive passages that have flown directly from your memory bank of stock images into your fingers without first being examined with a ruthless eye.

Let me read you a quote from a wonderful book by Alain de Botton, HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE:

We may ask why Proust objected to phrases that had been used too often. After all, doesn’t the moon shine discreetly? Don’t sunsets look as if they were on fire? Aren’t clichés just good ideas that have proved rightly popular?

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Cliches are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we first experience it.

Cliches are, to me, the surest sign of channeling. In fact, it’s about as channeled as you can get. It’s someone else’s way of saying something. As a reader, even if I don’t notice the specific clichés, I find that they cause me to stop paying as close attention to what I’m reading. It’s as if instead of listening to a story about a particular friend I know and care about, the story has shifted to be about someone I don’t know as well . . . maybe even a stranger . . . maybe not a real person at all but a statistical person who lives far away from me. As the distance of the writer’s observations grows, so does my distance from the text.

Think about this the next time you’re writing a query letter to a publisher, trying to describe the depths of your novel in a few sentences. If you find yourself wanting to import words from the character summary of a tv script: “Jessica is Maureen’s younger sister, smart, but jealous of Maureen’s relationship with Todd.” peel them back and see what’s underneath. Write about this situation as if you were right in the middle of it yourself. Use all the information you’d have at your disposal if you were writing about YOU.

Let’s stop for a moment and try a brief exercise. Think about how you would describe ME, my talk to a friend tomorrow on the phone. Don’t tell me! Just think to yourself for a minute.

You could say, “He was fine. He had a beard. He wore shoes.” But it will be more interesting if, in that description to your friend, you tell her how you felt, how you reacted: “Gosh, I just HATED that guy, he sounded like my brother Sam, with his endless nagging and anecdotes – and his neurotic obsession with raisins!” Tell her about YOU as much as you tell her about me.

Now I think it’s only fair to take a minute to talk about how to find this YOU that’s going to help you write about things that are important to you, and that’s going to give you access to all those insights about humanity that will make your characters live.

Therapy’s nice.

But it’s not the only way to get what I’m talking about. I’d like to suggest your own bookshelves as a very good place to start to think about all of this – or to continue to think about it. What are the books that have meant the most to you over the years? They can be books from you childhood – of they can be books that you gave all your friends as gifts last holiday season.

What was it that made you love that book so much? What part of you did it touch? Why did you think ELLEN FOSTER was so great? Did it touch you to read about a girl who is so strong in some ways and so awfully vulnerable in others? If so, maybe that shines a flashlight down a path you ought to walk. Maybe you want to explore those things yourself. Maybe you want to think about strength and vulnerability. Maybe you want to write about that.

The good news for book lovers is that there are any number of ways a good stroll down the aisles of a bookstore, or a library or your very own bookshelves can be of help. Are you wondering what kind of books you ought to be writing?

I say, what books are attractive to you? Do you find yourself making a bee-line for the murder-mystery section? Do you lurk in literary fiction? What is your ambition as a writer?

Whatever the answer is, that’s the direction you need to head before and during and after you’ve sat down in front of that unflinching mirror-like THING we call a computer. Cause hey, it only gives back what you give it.

Practically, knowing who you are can save you a lot of grief as an author. It can tell you how much time you need/how much time you can stand to devote to the endeavor of writing. How much privacy do you need? How much space? How do you deal with uncertainty? With waiting? Do you like to negotiate? How do you deal with conflict?

All of these things come up if writing is an important part of your life. And it’s that much easier to answer questions like, Do I need an agent? if you truly know where you stand on these issues.

But far be it for me to end on a practical note. Though you can’t have a career without a raft of basic, practical skills supporting your writing habit … it’s not the practical stuff – the hints, the short-cuts, the INFO – that gets a good book written.

That comes from a deeper place. And may I say that the very same is true for the process of finding great things to publish. We Editors spend years – a lifetime, if we’re lucky – refining our taste – looking for that moment of recognition – a writer speaking the truth! – as far afield as we can find it. Editors who are good at what they do, know what they like – they go with their hearts. And so should you. (See – there’s a cliché right at the end, when I thought I was safe!)

I’d like to close by acknowledging a little bit of legitimate channeling and share a saying we have in the Jewish tradition: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Thank you.

Click Lit: Arthur A. Levine Books Editor Cheryl Klein Discusses The Legend of the Wandering King

Every reader knows the click. It’s that moment in a book when you give yourself up to it, when you say “yes” and surrender to the world and the characters. It’s when you shut the door, turn off the e-mail, and take the phone off the hook; it’s going through the wardrobe, down the rabbit hole, into the secret garden, on the Hogwarts Express. It is, in short, the moment you fall in love with a book, and of all of reading’s many pleasures, it’s perhaps the most thrilling and addictive.

Every editor knows the click too. For me it happens when I recognize a gesture or a feeling in a book, something real from the range of human experience (often, though not always, my own experience): when I encounter something true. And of all the wonderful things I get to do as an editor, I have to say the click moment is perhaps the most exciting part of my job, because not only do I fall in love with a book, I know I’ll get to share it with other readers as well.

In the spring of 2002, my boss Arthur Levine brought back a brilliant new novel from the Bologna Book Fair, about an Arabian prince who longs to be a poet and an fabulous, deadly, enchanted carpet. Because the book was written in Spanish, Arthur asked Macarena Salas, an editor with Scholastic en Español, to read the book for us. She adored it. He asked Dan Bellm, an award-winning poet and translator, to translate three chapters for us. Dan gladly obliged. And when we received the pages, they included these lines describing the power of poetry:

"Everyone who was present that day could sense that words had a mysterious magical power, that they could reach the heart and make the oldest things new again, over and over, if only one used them with feeling and passion. And once the audience understood this, they never forgot it."

A truth expressed in a way we’d never imagined it before. And just like that: click.

The book was The Legend of the Wandering King by Laura Gallego García, and Arthur A. Levine Books is proud to be publishing the complete novel this coming August. Legend tells the story of Prince Walid of Kinda, a handsome, courteous, charming young man who longs to attend the great poetry competition at Ukaz. But his kingdom boasts one greater poet than he-a poor carpet-weaver named Hammad-and out of jealousy, Walid curses him to create an impossible work of art: a carpet showing the history of the entire human race. Hammad dies weaving it. Men go mad seeing it. And when it is stolen, Walid discovers his life’s quest: to recover the carpet and earn forgiveness for his mistakes.

The book has a marvelous background in historical fact: Walid’s story was inspired by the life of Imru’l Qays, a real prince of Kinda in the late fifth century C.E. Laura mentions Qays in her author's note, and I had a wonderful time fact-checking his biography: Qays was twice kicked out of his father's court for writing erotic poetry; he went on a mad and successful quest for revenge against his father's murderers, a tribe called the Banu Asad; he did indeed win the poetry competition at Ukaz; and legend has it that Emperor Justinian I sent him a poisoned cloak -- which killed him -- for winning the love of the Emperor's daughter. Stories like this, almost better than fiction, are exactly what make me love history (emphasis on the "story"); and I loved The Legend of the Wandering King all the more for introducing me to him.

And I loved the resolution Laura brings to her story as well, where Walid finally sees the pattern of his life unfolding like the pattern in that magical, entrancing carpet. The Legend of the Wandering King is about pride, about fate, about the choices we make that determine the direction of the rest of our lives, and about our ability to reverse those choices by making other ones: about the freedom we have to decide our lives every moment we live them. I moved to New York from the Midwest in 2000 basically on a dare from Dave Eggers: I read a piece in Harper's Magazine where he was asked by a college-age fan how he (I quote) "kept his shit real," and he responded that there was no real shit or unreal shit -- there was only saying "yes" to opportunities whenever they came. I had an opportunity; I made my choice; and it's resulted in my life as it is now, unpredictable and wonderful. And the opportunities continue: I could meet my future husband on the way to lunch; I could break my leg falling down the Scholastic staircase on the way back from lunch; I could get the next Harry Potter in the mail this afternoon. Legend not only reminded me of those first heady weeks in New York in 2000, it reminds me that that time, those chances and possibilities, happen every day of my life.

And, I’m delighted to say, it’s absolutely crammed with click moments. I hope it might click with you too.