Boy Proof by Cecil Castelluci is one of my favorite books of the year, and if you're in San Francisco, you should completely go see her read:

Cecil Castelluci
Tuesday, April 26th, 6:30 p.m.
Books Inc.
3515 California Street (between Laurel and Spruce in Laurel Heights - Pacific Heights)
San Francisco, CA

A reader I'm calling CR sent in this list -- which is very amusing and has a thought-provoking message at the end! Thanks, CR!

--E

CR's BOYFRIEND LIST

Riley...when i was little i had a crush on him. and people asked me if i liked him. i said yes and said "ya he's my boyfriend." then i told him.
he didn't know about it tho.

Steven...he was my crush when i found out he liked me..then he moved like everywhere. his dad was in the army.

Shawn...Well he was my guyfriend (friend that's a guy) from 1st grade..till...3rd grade.
it seemed like he was my boyfriend.

Brett...he liked me. i liked him. he was my boyfriend until he liked this other girl Cassie.

Mo...he asked me out twice. first time i liked him but i had a boyfriend...rules u can't cheat!!
2nd he liked me, said i was Hott. but i couldn't -- still had a boyfriend and i couldn't do that to nicole. she went out with him b4 and still liked him.

NotyaP...i liked him. he liked me. couldn't do that to becca.

Jake…liked him for a while. he loves me now.he's really strange and weird now.

Josh..my official boyfriend. so sweet still nice. the reason i couldn't go out with other guys. 6 months went out.
dumped him ....
next day i went out with him again.
now we get into stupid fights alot.i might break-up with him again...
i like not having a boyfriend!!

Herky/Skid.(imaginary boyfriend)...he's such a dream guy but we get into fights. ok even tho he's not real. well it could happen (ha ha ).ok i don't know, i made him up he's the perfect guy!!.sometimes

no name just a sign(imaginary boyfriend). i share a imaginary boyfriend with my friend becca. he's the dreamiest one!!:D

boyfriends are not that cool!!
only the imaginary ones are!!

Cynthia Leitich Smith's boyfriend list is here, plus a lot of interesting and flattering analysis of my book. If you don't know her blog yet, you surely should -- it's an extremely comprehensive survey of the children's book world. And she's the author of Rain is Not My Indian Name.

From Literaticat, whose middle-grade quiz I flatter myself I would have passed with flying colors if other smarty-pants types hadn't gotten there before me with the answers, I hereby present

The First Lines of The Book meme

1. Choose five of your all-time favorite books.
2. Take the first sentence of the first chapter and make a list in your journal.
3. Don’t reveal the author or the title of the book.
4. Now everyone try to guess.

(if you're on LJ, go to my actual blog & make the comments there because it will work better that way)

1) Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage.

2) "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing."

3) I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice -- not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.

4) Selden paused in surprise.

5) My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

I know #4 is rawther hard. But here's a hint:
all these books are of a feather -- long, Victorian-style novels (meaning not modernist) that are funny and satirical and heartbreaking.

If you're round about New York University on April 20th just after lunch, come see me read with poet Emily Fragos and novelist Sophie Powell.
(they ask for NYU ID at the door, but the event is open to the public, so you can tell them that and show a driver's license instead).

THE GALLATIN WRITING PROGRAM
WRITING TEACHERS READING
(from their recently published books)

Wednesday, 4/20, 12:30-1:45
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
53 Washington Square South

SOPHIE POWELL will read from her debut novel, THE MUSHROOM MAN.
"Charlotte and Beth are sisters whose lives have turned out very differently. Charlotte lives in London with her successful husband and six-year-old daughter Lily, who naturally gets the best of everything. Beth is a young widow, living on her late husband's farm in Wales with a teenaged son, eleven-year-old triplet daughters, a vegetable patch and a henhouse. For years, Charlotte refused to visit this place, where there was practically guaranteed to be dirt. This summer she has relented--and all of their lives are about to be turned upside-down."

EMILY FRAGOS will read from her first collection of poems, LITTLE SAVAGE.
"Emily Fragos delivers a magnificent collection in the American tradition of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. With clean, strongly wrought lines she builds poems that are elegant and powerful. Marie Ponsot calls the collection "remarkable." What separates Fragos from her contemporaries is her amazing ability to empathize with the characters she creates - the misfits, the artists, the children kept in a fifteenth-century school, the composer going mad."

E. LOCKHART will read from THE BOYFRIEND LIST.



Here's an interview with Alex Flinn, author of Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point and the brand new Fade To Black.

An interview with Bras & Broomsticks author Sarah Mlynowski. Though why she'd want anything but the gorgeous curly hair she's got is beyond me.

A time-waster I totally enjoyed, narcissist that I am:
The Portrait Illustration Maker, which lets you make pictures of yourself, your literary characters, your crush, your granddad, whatever.
So of course, I made ME. And it looks quite a lot like me, too.

Found through YA novelist Maggie L. Wood, author of The Princess Pawn.

The Author's Guild dinner was SO FANCY. My H&M wrap dress just barely got over. All the men were in tuxes. All the women from my publishing house, including me, wore fishnet stockings. I had champagne and met Gordon Korman, who was very dashingly dressed and whose book Son of the Mob I liked tremendously. Then Melissa Kantor arrived (her book, at left -- so, so funny) and she was holding a copy of The Boyfriend List, although she didn't even know I'd be there! She said, "I was bummed that the subway got to my stop, because I'm just at the part where Kim tells Roo she's going out with Jackson!"
So then my evening was made.
There was a very moving presentation about and award given to First Book, which is an organization that takes all those unsold children's books in publishers warehouses and gets them donated to children in low-income families, many of whom have absolutely no age-appropriate books in their homes.

Tonight (Monday) I am going to this Author's Guild dinner thing and will supposedly sit at a table with Gordon Korman (Son of the Mob) and Melissa Kantor (Confessions of a Not It Girl). So excited. I will wear a wrap dress and try not to be too gushy. Will report back.