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Showing posts with label publishing perils. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing perils. Show all posts

Sunday, December 14, 2025

All non-Christian authors are evil

In September 2023, on day 9 of 10 of a trip to speak at 10 schools in San Antonio, TX, a parent complained that in my assemblies for grades 3 and up, I said someone in my story was gay. This parent did not hear my talk, read my book, see my film, or meet me.

The school district's response to me: leave out the word going forward or we're canceling the 10th and last school visit.


This month, I heard from a school librarian who had been working in San Antonio when that happened, though I didn't visit her school. She now lives in a blue state. Her message meant a lot:

I remember hearing other librarians speak highly about your presentation and they spoke highly about you. We all hated seeing the fallout from the last cancelled day. I can say this, very unofficially, no one on our end wanted your visit cancelled. I am not in the position to bring an author on my campus [I have no budget and admin isn't interested]. So, I am just dropping in to say THANKS for fighting the good fight.

Add this person to the list of San Antonio school librarians who reached out to me while people in their district—and beyond—were publicly calling me a groomer, pervert, and villain, and that makes a grand total of...two.

But I didn't expect them to do so, nor did I need them to. It's not about me. I'm confident that most if not all of the district's librarians agree that all people deserve respect and equity. I understand why they stayed silent. These are fearful times to show empathy. Jobs and reputations, if not safety, are on the line. 

However...meaningful change rarely occurs from within our comfort zone.

We are rapidly approach a breaking point, meaning if more people within the system do not start speaking up, adults in such communities will continue to manipulate kids into elevating white, straight, often Christian people over everyone else.

This comment by a Tennessee librarian who wanted to book me but ultimately couldn't will bring the wounded state of American public school education into even more dire focus:

The school board and others [in the community] do not see you in layers. They see all authors [except Christian authors] as evil. No subtlety.

And such people say we're indoctrinating...
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Sunday, August 22, 2021

A year mistake in “Thirty Minutes Over Oregon”

I found a minor goof midway through my book Thirty Minutes Over Oregon: A Japanese Pilot’s World War II Story (I wish they’d add back page numbers to picture books!).



A sentence reads as follows: “And the residents of Brookings largely forgot about their close call—until 1962.”

It should be 1961. (Nobuo visited in 1962, but the town hatched the idea and sent the invite letter in 1961.)

This will be corrected in future printings.
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Monday, September 28, 2015

Tennessee Association of School Librarians Conference 2015

Generally speaking, southerners are welcoming. Librarians are warm. So southern librarians are the human equivalent of apple pie.

I was reminded of this in full force on 9/26/15, when I delivered a keynote and breakout sessions at the Tennessee Association of School Librarians Conference.

This conference marked several firsts for me (beyond it being my first time in Murfreesboro). It was the first time I…

  • signed the cover of one of my books, by request
  • offered a discounted visit for the next school day, meaning Monday (meaning any interested school would have to arrange/contact her/his principal/PTA over the weekend)
  • told a conference crowd my Bill Finger story with the new, more uplifting ending (after being introduced by Batman himself...and on International Batman Day, no less!)



A selection of reactions to my presentations:






It was also the first time I encountered a librarian with the following great idea. First, the background.

In one of my TASL talks, I explained how a Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman spread my editor showed me in the penultimate layout stage was in full color, but ended up in black and white in the finished product—changed without consulting me. Unfortunately, that was a goof—that spread depicts (what is implied to be) the first movie appearance of Superman, circa early 1940s, and while I can understand why someone would assume a film of that period should therefore be in black and white, it was actually in vivid Technicolor.


I mentioned this to demonstrate the level of accuracy I strive for.

A librarian sympathetic to this situation said she is going to color-copy the correct spread and attach it to her library copy of Boys of Steel with an explanation, so kids will learn of the error—and part of the process of making a picture book. Though this was a relatively small oversight, it obviously bothered me, and now it makes for a great teachable moment. If this librarian shares photos of this with me, I will in turn share them here.

Thank you again to the delightful Mindy Nichols for the TASL invitation.


Thank you also to the attendees for your attention and enthusiasm. I’ll come back anytime!
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Monday, August 17, 2015

My Phi Beta Kappa cartoon controversy

In 1998, upon revisiting my bucket list, I began drawing single-panel cartoons (aiming for 10 a week) with the sole objective of selling one to The New Yorker. At least 2,000 cartoons later, I haven’t (and in fact haven’t tried since about 2003), but I hope to resume that pursuit one day. In the meantime, I ended up licensing cartoons to more than 100 other publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Barron’s, Good Housekeeping, the iconic Punch (in the UK), and the venerable Saturday Evening Post.

Another was The Key Reporter, the magazine of Phi Beta Kappa, the university-level national honor society for academic achievement, of which I am a member.

The first time TKR published one of my cartoons was in its spring 2001 issue, which was also the first time the magazine published any cartoon.




The summer 2001 issue ran a second cartoon of mine—and also a three-page article entitled “Do Phi Betes Have a Sense of Humor? Some Philosophical Thoughts about Jokes.”




I found it intriguing (and, at first, strange) that the traditionally staid publication would run a cartoon and a treatise on humor in back-to-back issues. Then I realized that this defense of the value of laughing was because of me.

A 1972 alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania had sent TKR a letter in which he stated:

As a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Professor in a University School of Medicine and a practicing physician, I was distressed by the cartoon on page 16. This derogatory, abusive and near-slanderous depiction of the physician as buffoon is inexcusable and deserves an apology.

My first controversy! Well, my first “controversy.”

I was surprised that TKR had not told me about this before the issue went out. (More so, I was surprised that someone would have such a reaction to a particularly innocuous cartoon.)

But I was thrilled at the sly way TKR chose to address the criticism. Rather than stop running my cartoons, or place any parameters on the cartoon topics I submitted, they published a thoughtful analysis on the nature of humor itself. Looking back, that seems like the only approach an esteemed organization like PBK would take.

More than thrilled, I was proud that my little cartoon (indirectly) took up so much real estate.

And it wasn’t over yet.

In the fall 2001 issue, under the headline “That Cartoon Critique,” two letters were printed. Excerpts:

letter 1:

I am a retired professor of surgery and pediatrics, and I’d like to twit my fellow PBK for being so exercised over a cartoon which depicted a physician as a buffoon.


letter 2:

I found the quote from the Phi Beta Kappa alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania regarding the Reporter’s Spring 2001 cartoon rather unsettling.

...

The inability to find humor in the Spring 2001 cartoon conveys to me an elitist state of mind. As in, “I am a physician AND a PHI BETA KAPPA member...how dare you poke fun at me or anyone like me.”

Both in law school and now professionally, people feel a need to share lawyer jokes with me. And you know what? I like them. I usually have the ability to top them with some of my own.

No one is above being the target of good-natured humor.

Amen.
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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Author AWOL

I’ve published about 75 books and my name is properly on the cover of about 73 of them.

In my first years as an author, I wrote quite a few work-for-hire books. Educational publishers would develop a series (on, say, animals or countries) and divvy up the titles among multiple writers. They’d email me a list of the available topics and I’d choose the ones that most appealed, but often, the overarching subject was not a particular passion. It was a chance to get paid to write, which was closer to my goal than getting paid to do something in an office.

Authors do not tend to read work-for-hire contracts as carefully as contracts in which we will be retaining ownership rights. Therefore, I did not know that I was agreeing to an undesirable credit situation until the book came out…and this happened two times.

The first instance was with a book published in 2005. I wrote a humorous yet practical guide called How to Do a Belly Flop, which was a companion to a book that I was not involved in, How to Give a Wedgie.
 
 
Did anyone not write this book?

One of the authors of Wedgie was David Borgenicht, who also co-authored the massively successful Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series. So the publishers of Belly Flop wanted to take marketing advantage of that name (and his brother’s, who apparently co-authored Wedgie).

I understand it. I just didn’t like being blindsided with not one but two names under mine on the cover of a book I wrote all by myself. But unlike Bill Finger, I was at least able to say that my name was there.

The second instance was with two short novels published in 2009:



This case was a bit more galling because the name plastered on the cover was not even a real person. “Jake Maddox” was a pseudonym created for a large set of sports and adventure novels (written by various authors) so they would be shelved together.

My name is on the title page of these two books, but the wording rankled me. 


It doesn’t say “story by” but rather “text by,” which sounds mechanical, not creative. I realize the editor was trying to distinguish from the implied “written by,” but it sounds like I was the guy who typed in someone else’s words. As with Belly Flop, at least I am credited, but I wonder how young readers make sense of seeing both the mysterious Maddox and my name on the title page.

And now as I recount this, I’m vaguely remembering that the contracts for these two books actually may not have stated the possibility of assigning credit elsewhere, meaning even if I read them, I’d have been surprised when the books came out…but since I no longer have my copies of the contracts, I can’t doublecheck.
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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Children’s authors read reviews of their own books: the encore!

A month ago today, I posted videos of 53 kidlit authors/illustrators being good sports and reading aloud a particularly critical excerpt from a particularly harsh online review.

Those are episodes 1-3.

Turns out a lot of people agree that a bad review can equal a good laugh.

Thirty more authors have since enlisted in the cause.

Welcome to episodes 4-6.


All-new line-up! All-new beat downs!

(Disclaimer: We lurve kids, of course, but this is for teens and adults only.)

The cast (not in order of appearance, so that you will watch all three):

Kathi Appelt
David Lubar
Gene Barretta
Eric Luper
Michael Buckley
Maryann Macdonald
Shana Corey
Marissa Moss
Sharon Creech
Gae Polisner
Doreen Cronin
Nora Raleigh Baskin
Katie Davis
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Sue Fliess
Dan Santat
Liz Garton Scanlon
Tammi Sauer
Chris Grabenstein
Judy Schachner
Alan Katz
Andrew Smith
Laurie Keller
Elizabeth Rose Stanton
Jarrett J. Krosoczka
David Ezra Stein
Tara Lazar
Deborah Underwood
Loren Long
Emma Walton Hamilton

episode 4



 episode 5



 episode 6



 “If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.” —Marie Osmond
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Monday, January 6, 2014

Children’s authors read reviews of their own books

A bad review can equal a good laugh.

 Therefore, please enjoy episodes 1-3 of “Children’s Authors Read Online Reviews of Their Own Books.” (Disclaimer: We lurve kids, of course, but this is for teens and adults only.)


Why three instead of a single episode? Not because binge-viewing is the new normal but rather because I received more submissions than I could’ve hoped for: 53. (This includes not one, not two, but five kidlit couples, two of whom appear together on camera.) While I’m not proficient enough to know if formatting at a resolution of 720p (HD) is ideal, I do know that I should not post a 15-minute video.

The cast (not in order of appearance):

Tony Abbott
Katherine Marsh
Paul Acampora
Wendy Mass
Selina Alko
Meghan McCarthy
Tom Angleberger
Richard Michelson
Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen
Marc Tyler Nobleman
Mac Barnett
Erica Perl
Chris Barton
Susanna Reich
Cece Bell
Adam Rex
Samantha Berger
John Rocco
David Biedrzycki
Dave Roman
Lisa Brown
Adam Rubin
Peter Brown
Steve Sheinkin
Nick Bruel
Mark Shulman
Matthew Cordell
Lemony Snicket
Bruce Coville
Michael P. Spradlin
Sarah Darer Littman
Tanya Lee Stone
Drew Daywalt
Don Tate
Julia DeVillers
Matt Tavares
Marla Frazee
Chris Tebbetts
Gary Golio
Raina Telgemeier
Tad Hills
Terry Trueman
Daniel Kirk
Audrey Vernick
Jo Knowles
Melissa Walker
Michelle Knudsen
Hans Wilhelm
Gordon Korman
Lisa Yee
Jeff Mack
Jennifer Ziegler
Scott Magoon


The series (so far):

 episode 1


episode 2



episode 3
 

2/6/14 addendum: episodes 4-6.

The backstory:

At a kidlit festival in September 2013, while a group of authors/illustrators talked shop after hours, an idea came to me: a variation on a poetry slam at which kidlit/YA authors read aloud their most critical or absurd user reviews (from Amazon or Good Reads) for comic relief/catharsis.

Then I discovered something similar: a recurring segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which celebs read a mean tweet about themselves.

I find this entertaining and endearing.

The last two times I rounded up authors for non-regularly scheduled programming, the results were, respectively, hilarious and humbling.

This time, I put out a call for short videos of authors embracing the reality that not everyone likes every book.

This was not about reciprocating with mean-spiritedness. It’s simply a self-deprecating nod to a universal author experience that is already public anyway.

(I would love to get the band back together at BEA or ALA to “perform” this for a live audience, maybe as some kind of fundraiser.)

As Rosey Grier sang, it’s all right to cry. But, as my kind compatriots have demonstrated, it’s sure fun to laugh afterward.

2/6/14 addendum: episodes 4-6.
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