1) A lovely review from Melina at Reading Vacation–a blog by a reader who’s actually the target age of my book!  Melina is in middle school, and I’m so impressed by the way she’s become a fixture of the kidlit blogging community.  She’s very up-front about her age (and the fact that she can only Tweet with her mom next to her), which I think is courageous; if I’d been her, I would have probably tried to hide those things, but she obviously understands that hiding your true self is a complete waste of time and so charms everyone.   A general brava to Melina and a link to her review of N&M:

Reading Vacation on Nice  and Mean

My favorite part: “As much as I didn’t care for Marina and her meanness, I liked getting into her thoughts and trying to understand WHY she was the way she was.  In the end, I think Marina was insecure and drunk with power.  Sachi, on the other hand, became a doormat because her parents planned her every move.”

See what I mean about the good writing?  I wish my former students had been able to whip off book reviews as craft as those!

2) On Wednesday evening, I had my live web-chat with readers at New Moon Magazine!  The girls asked fun questions, and I can’t wait to get the transcript so I can post some of it here.  But I thought I’d also include New Moon’s review, also by a middle-school reader, Rachel.  (Isn’t it funny how one review was by Melina–which is pretty close to the name Marina, the “mean” in Nice and Mean–and the other is by Rachel, Marina’s frenemy?  Are there any Sachis in the house?)  Here’s Rachel’s review.

I love this part: “I think I think I’m most like Sachi’s friend Lainey in this book — we both have *odd* styles, and are totally comfortable with being different and not dressing like everyone else.”

Little-known fact: I first created the characters of Nice and Mean in a novel about the character of Lainey!  It was my first novel and it wasn’t good enough to get published, but I do have a soft spot for Lainey, so I’m tickled that Rachel mentioned her here.

Finally, the cover of Nice and Mean, illustrated by Linzie Hunter, was featured on Jacket Knack, a great blog by my grad school friend Carol Brendler and my former grad school advisor, Julie Larios.  As you might guess, Jacket Knack contains “thoughts on the covers of kids’ books,” and as you might expect if you know Carol and Julie, it’s innovative and funny and always points out something about covers that I’ve missed.  I’m thrilled that the cover of Nice and Mean caught their attention, and here’s what they have to say about it.

Soon, I hope to show you these amazing scrapbooks that the kids at Community Prep School in Rhode Island made of Nice and Mean.  Wow.  Now when people say, “What was the best part of getting published?” I’ll have an answer.  You’re gong to love ’em.

Happy Halloween, by the way!!

I don’t know if anybody has ever read the little subtitle of my blog, up there in –hm, is it the right-hand corner?  I’m in a different window as I write this and I can’t see the blog, so maybe it is I who should be subtly chastised by implication for not reading my blog descriptor.  In any case, it says this:

Thoughts about reading

Thoughts about writing

Sometimes a love song to pickles or cake

I don’t know why I came up with it; I guess I thought I had to have some purpose or other to this frightful mayhem and madness that is called blogging.  In any case, I have to be honest and admit that while I do talk about reading and writing, love songs to cake have been infrequent, and those to pickles have been virtually nonexistent.

I would hereby like to apologize to pickles and offer some remedy.  Pickles have been very important to me in my writing life.  Around 11 in the morning, if I’m writing all day, I start to get yens for lunch but don’t want to ruin my appetite, and these salty, crunchy snacks are both low-fat and filling.  I used to go for Vlasic Baby Dills, Spiciness #2, but several years ago, The Wife brought sour pickles into my life, and I haven’t had much truck with Baby Dills since.  Thank you, wife, and thank you, sour pi–okay, waaait a minute.

The real purpose of this entry WAS to bring a recent bout with cake into the forefront.  However, when I went to the fridge to confirm the brand of pickles so I could find the appropriate image, I learned that what The Wife introduced was Kosher Dills.  But they are different Kosher Dills!  They are pale and sour, rather than urine-colored and vinegar-y.  What is this pickle mix-up?  Are there any pickleologists in the mix?  Somebody, please explain!

I’ll just add quickly here that as a compensation for having waited an hour at the doctor’s office yesterday, I stopped on the way home and bought myself a lemon tart at a place I always pass but never patronize.  So thank you, Cake Flour, for yesterday morning’s deliciousness.  See the picture; hear my love song.

Seriously, please solve the mystery of the pickles!

My burrito was nowhere near as good as this

This is the Facebook update I really wanted to post  today, except it just sounded too stupid:

JESSICA LEADER:

Fantasized about a lunch burrito of black beans, pepper jack, avocado and green salsa

But for about the first time ever in her household, there were no black beans

She should have remembered that she didn’t let herself buy pepper jack (and so there was only string cheese and fancy sour cheese that doesn’t taste good in burritos)

She hasn’t bought avocadoes in weeks and strangely, neither has that wife of hers (said wife really goes for the avocadoes.)

So instead, she made a something

(distinctly NOT a burrito) with chick peas, cut-up string cheese, and green salsa (at least she had that green salsa.)

It started out poorly, with her forgetting to flip the tortilla before piling on the filling, and since the steam-crisped tortilla is her favorite part, she scraped off the filling to flip the tortilla.

Alas, she had used the cast-iron pan, not the non-stick one

So you know that that tortilla did do?

Yes.  It stuck.

But that did not deter her.  She gamely scraped and tried to steam-crisp that second side.

It worked okay

But when she had removed the filling, it scattered

(the wife is reading over my shoulder and exclaimed, “This is terrible!  And I will get you avocadoes, and black beans!  You must tell me if you want the Jack cheese.”  The wife is the best, no?)

Anyway.  Scatteredness.  Poor cooking.  Actually, non-melting.  Something about the string cheese on the stove–I don’t know.  It didn’t work.

(The wife chimed in, “It’s also low-fat string cheese.”  She’s smart, too.)

I think I blocked out how it came to this

But I ended up sitting down with a mess of knotty chick peas and semi-melted pellets of cheese that didn’t even stay in the wrapper

They were just hard and gross and once again scattered

And it was very sad

(the wife is laughing)

(sympathetically, she notes)

And tomorrow I will go to the grocery store.

I’m sure you can see why I didn’t put this on Facebook.

As I’ve probably cheered about endlessly here, New Moon Magazine is featuring Nice and Mean on their website this month.  Readers can chat with me live on October 27th (I can hardly wait), but also–just like in Nice and Mean, New Moon ran a video contest!  The topic was popularity, and the winning video, by 12-year-old Brielle, makes some excellent points about what popularity is and isn’t.  I think Brielle’s friends are lucky to have her in their circle, and I feel lucky to have gotten to watch this.  And you can, too.  Voila!