Because Texas in July seems like a good idea

On traveling this month for the love of literature

It’s July. It’s hot. We all want to go to the lake, right? So let’s get into it.

1. Some updates

Earlier this week I participated in a virtual panel through Catholic Literary Arts on getting to know the children’s publishing industry, and it was a blast! In just an hour, we got through a lot of material and answered some great audience-generated questions. Exciting things are happening in the Catholic children’s literary world. Here’s hoping this event will lead to even more good news.

The class I’m teaching, “Picture Books: Craft and Critique,” launches this month. There’s limited seating (I think only one spot left), so if you’re interested, please sign up soon! If you’re intrigued but not available those dates, I’d love for you to send a note to the organizers to let them know there’s interest for another series of dates.

I’ll be traveling to Houston shortly for a ten-day residency with the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. I’m so looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones. I’m not thrilled the lowest expected high is 97 degrees, but will attempt to pack accordingly.

2. What I’m reading

Part of the reading in advance of the residency is essays, largely derived from speeches, by Katherine Paterson on writing for children. The book from which they were taken is now out of print, but I scored a used copy online. I often read better from a book than from a printout, and I figured I was going to want to read the whole thing, cover to cover. I was right. If you’re here for the kidlit, I highly recommend finding a copy and resting in her words for a while. (This is where I got the quote for this month, below!)

3. What my kids are reading

My ten-year-old is still working his way through Redwall. My daughter is reading a giant Jenny L. Cote book, but will soon move on to a couple of books she won as prizes at our library’s summer reading program. A teen volunteer helped her select one of the books, and the interaction was so sweet. I love rewarding reading with more reading!

My two-year-old recently got his own book out of the library. The cover says it’s called Scat, Cat! but after his sister read it to him, he started calling it, Kitty Cat, Go Away! Right Now! which was maybe the working title, before an editor got to it.

4. Something I love

Last summer, I created a reward system for my kids to maintain a level of order and responsibility in the summer months. It needed some tweaks, and version 2.0 is now in full effect. On Thursdays, the kids can get one step closer to an end-of-summer trip to a semi-local amusement park by reciting poetry.

I got a copy of Poems Every Child Should Know, and created mini-lists of suggestions for each kid. There was some groaning at first; they wanted to stick with the Jack Prelutsky poems they committed to memory last year. But once they got into this one, they found poems they enjoyed! They even taught the little guy “Hot Cross Buns”!

For next week, my two oldest are alternating stanzas of a poem by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman. What a crazy, wonderful joy it was to hear them practicing together yesterday. I love when the kids take something like this and run with it.

4. What I’m creating (knitting, lettering, embroidery, etc.)

Finally a picture in this section!

I recently returned to an embroidery sampler I started earlier this year. The satin stitch section was challenging, and I put the whole thing down for a while. When I picked it back up, I found that something had clicked in the meantime. Now this stitch didn’t seem so hard, and I started to like the result I was getting.

Sometimes we need to step away from things for a bit and come back with a fresh point of view. I’ve seen this this summer with this project and with other things with my kids (reading, potty training). Knowing our limits and being willing to push past perceived obstacles when the time is right are both so necessary to growth in creativity, as much as anything else.

6. Where my work is

A book I read via Well-Read Mom inspired a piece published at Word on Fire: Seeing Ourselves in The Remains of the Day.

7. What I’m working on

After the residency, I’m planning to take more of a break before my next class starts near the end of August. There are a couple of projects I’d like to explore further, but I think I’ll spend a good chunk of those weeks reading for the sake of reading.

8. A quote to sit and sip with

   As I’ve said before, success might have come sooner if I’d had a room of my own and fewer children, but I doubt it. For as I look at my writing, it seems to me that they very persons who took away my time and space are the ones who have given me something to say.

   —Katherine Paterson, Introduction to The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children

What are you reading this summer? Where you do you get your most helpful recommendations?