News summary: After a very fun run of it, my serialized story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Not That Girl, has wrapped up its monthlong appearance.  You can read  You can read the series from start to finish here.

I was also thrilled to get this lovely review from Tweendom, which is run by the lower-school librarian at Little Red School House in NYC.  (I did a little Internet sleuthing; it’s true.  The school looks almost nothing like that picture, by the way; although it is, in fact, little and red, it’s on the corner of very busy 6th Avenue.  That image was so gorgeously Maxfield Parrish, though, I couldn’t resist including it.)  Little Red was so much cooler than I was that I didn’t even know anybody who went there, but I can recoup some of that lost coolness now by having a nice mention on the librarian’s review blog.  You can read it here, or just enjoy this part:

“Jessica Leader has gotten the multiple worlds of the middle schooler down pat. Seventh grade tends to be a time of big changes…of kids figuring out who they want to be and where they are going to fit in. Marina and Sachi, while seemingly opposites, illustrate this beautifully. Round out the cast of their satellite friends and many types of kids are shown without seeming like Leader simply lined up types and put them in. Nice and Mean shows readers that most likely, the kids they think of as mean aren’t all mean, and the kids who seem nice definitely have some back story of their own!”

Off to the beach this weekend, and I desperately hope that Earl does not delay me!  I have kind of a horrible fear of flying,

and if this flight is punctuated by turbulence, I don’t know what kind of state I’ll be in when I get off the plane.  If you want tosay a little prayer, I wouldn’t mind being included.

Happy Labor Day weekend!  May the fruits of your labor be recognized!

At my reading on Saturday, a brave middle-schooler asked me, “If you had a daughter who was dealing with mean kids like the girls in your book, what would you do?”  I tried my best to answer the question in the moment (see my earlier post on this), but I went home and thought about it a lot.  Here’s my 8-step plan for dealing with meanness in school:

1. Don’t try to address the mean person directly

Usually I’m in favor of addressing people directly, but in the case of school meanness, I don’t think a talk from another kid is going to change the mean person.  I know that novels tell you that standing up to bullies is good, but I think that mean people are secure in their meanness and aren’t going to stop just because someone their age asks them to.

2. Do Involve a Teacher

Maybe I’m just saying this because I’m a teacher, but teachers care about how kids are doing and want to help.  Teachers want to create safe schools where kids feel good about themselves and are undistracted from learning. In addition, luckily for you, they love to be approached personally for help. (Teachers can be vain, just like anyone else.)  Also, while your powers may be limited to talking to the mean person directly, teachers can do sneaky things to limit bad behavior (more on this later.)  So ask your teacher if the two of you can find a time to chat, although a word about timing:

3. Don’t Wait Until Something Really Bad Happens to Ask for Help

We’ve all been there–that one week when everything just goes to you-kn0w-where and we want the adults to step in and do something.  Definitely ask for help if you’re in that situation right now, but if you’re not, now is the time to meet with your teacher.  Specific events of meanness get sticky; there’s a lot of blaming and denial and it’s hard for teachers to get at the truth and figure out the right thing to do.  Just choose an ordinary day.

4. Also, Try to be Brave Enough to Go in Alone

As a teacher, I always got a little suspicious when more than two kids approached me at a time, and three or more turned into a teary free-for-all.  Come to me one-on-one and you’ve got my attention and respect.  I also had an easier time responding to kids without their parents there.  It was easier for me to feel sympathetic and come up with good ideas because I didn’t feel like I was under pressure.  Imagine yourself as a teacher, and some brave student comes to talk with you alone.  You’d feel sorry for the kid and have the urge to help them, right?

5. Tell Your Story, With a Medium Number of Details.  Be Humble.

You might want to begin like this: “I’m not saying this to tattle, but I’m having a really hard time with so-and-so being mean to me this year.”  You can give a few examples of the ways this person is mean and how it makes life hard for you.  Does he or she make fun of you in the hall or hide your belongings? Does this person send around rumors that have caused fights with your friends?  Without going into too much detail, give some examples.  (If the teacher wants more specifics, he or she will ask.)

Then say, “I know I’m not perfect, and I’m sure there’s more I can do to be nice and include people.  But it would be great if this person could be just a little less mean.  And I wanted to tell you because I thought maybe you could help.”

6. Come Prepared with Suggestions

Before your talk, think: how could teachers be effective?  Do they need to monitor the halls, bathrooms, or lunch tables better?  Teachers are stationed at those places for a reason, but they get lazy and even shy and don’t wander among the lunch tables as much as they should.  Your request could spread the word that they need to do this more.  Maybe teachers need to assign partners in certain classes so one person isn’t always left out, or make sure that two people never get to sit near each other.  There’s no such thing as a school where the teachers’ only job is to teach.  If there’s meanness at your school, the teachers need to be doing their  job more thoroughly.

7. Also Ask the Teacher for Suggestions

After you’ve shared your stories and your request, pause so the teacher has a chance to think.  Hopefully, he or she will have some ideas but that may not be the case just yet.  If you feel like your teacher is stumped, you can provide assurance: “I don’t expect everything to change right now, because I know teachers are only human.  However, it would be great if things could get even a little better.  I even feel glad that we got to chat just now.  Can we maybe talk again later this month?”  This will signal to the teacher that a) you are polite and reasonable; b) you’ll be back, and they need to come up with some solutions!

8. If it Doesn’t Work the First Time, Keep Trying Until it Does

Maybe you chose a teacher who had the time and desire to help, but maybe not.  Try not to feel discouraged–just find another one to talk to.  Or approach your principal or the school counselor.  If you talk to two or more teachers and no one does anything, it’s time to involve a parent.  Share with your parent all the approaches you have tried and the suggestions you made.  They will probably be peeved that the teachers didn’t help you and will summon all that energy when they go in and talk to the adults at school.  I’m optimistic that that will get things moving, but I’m more hopeful that you’ll have already made some difference.

Whew!

That was a longie, I know.  But I repeat my question to the girl in the audience: on a scale of huge tiny, was that helpful?

And as for the rest of you–kids, parents and teachers–is there anything you would subtract or add?  I’d really like to know.

Things have been getting a little serious, what with this Stepping in the Same River business and Musings on Gurgi , so I’m going to add a little levity.  I was just reading the funny phrases on the back cover of my notebook, and I thought I’d share some of the faves. 

“I don’t know.   I’m not, like, a professional smellologist.”  — Dick Casablancas on Veronica Mars

“…and he doesn’t demand apologies from people who criticize him, because what is there to criticize?”  — Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! Host Peter Sagol, on Carl Kassel

(or is it Karl Cassel?  And am I going to be divorced for not knowing?)

“I had to be very mature and very tolerant, and those are not my usual qualities.”  — Someone Benedictus, on the experience of writing a new Winnie the Pooh Story

“Milkshakes!”  Ariana snapped to attention.  “Double back.  We need to get some milkshakes.”  — New York Times Article on driving the Oregon Fruit Loop, where you can get fresh cherries

“Managed to avoid the hoyden Emily Thompkinson, who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious Creature!”

–From Emma Thompson’s Golden Globe acceptance speech, in the style of Jane Austen, for adapting Sense and Sensibility

I hope you enjoyed.  They certainly cheered me up!

To SJJ

If there was some part of you that wanted to indulge in a pedicure in the next day or so

just know that I would be amenable to such a thing

I have a wedding to attend, after all

and you and I have a tradition of such things

and you might not be able to see your feet for too much longer, I am told

so think pink

(or maroon, really, as is your wont.)

Hello! Gosh, I feel like I’ve been a non-internet vacuum these last couple of days, even though I think I posted less than a week ago. I certainly am in a vacuum of sorts–I’m in New London, Connecticut. Not that New London is a vaccuum in and of itself (and maybe I just like saying vacuum, because I like those two u’s next to each other, and the way I pronounce it in my head as “VACK-you-um”)–I’m just in an, um, self-contained pouch.

My partner is working at the venerable Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, and since I am about to attend–nay, participate in–my best friend’s wedding in New England this weekend (!!!), it made sense for us to come up here together.  (Thre is a much more ridiculous picture of O’Neill at the center itself, but I can’t find it online.)  Anyway, while A. has been faithfully attending to the play at hand, I’ve been hiding out at the lovely house they’ve let us stay in, working on a la novel.  Did I mention that I finished a draft?  Maybe I did, which is a huge accomplishment, at least a year in coming.  I also re-outlined and cut 90 pages just for starters!  I always laugh at how hard we writers try to nudge up our page counts and then how much we cackle when we’ve cut whole chunks.  It makes a certain amount of sense, but it’s still funny.  As a teacher, I never would have been like, “The students just learned twelve new vocabulary words and forgot five!  Bliss!”

In the midst of all this novelicious productivity (which is also, I might add, somewhat lonely, although the beach awaits at the end of the day)–are odd memories of New London.  I passed through here all the time on my AmTrak way to and from college, of course, but I think I only stopped here once, and not even on purpose.  It was the summer of 1996, and I was on my way back from visiting a friend, whom I’d formerly had a huge crush on.   I’d thought we’d had a good visit, including a nap for me on Saturday afternoon that was, no joke, The Best Nap I have Ever Taken, but then Sunday morning we got into a fight somehow.  It was strange, because we’d never fought, but I remembered her accusing me of not, I don’t know, supporting her relationship with her boyfriend, and I burst into tears.  “That’s so not true!” I blubbered.  “I always ask you about him and how things are going.”  Who knew which one of us was right, but I’m not the kind of person who bursts into tears during fights at all, so it obviously really upset me. 

We reconciled enough to go on a great bike ride and meet up with two other friends for Mexican food, and then I was on my merry way back on AmTrak–except that the train stopped in New London with a bomb threat.  Since this was in the late ’90s, it was way more of an eye-roll than the actual scare it might be a few short years later.  (Gosh, it’s kind of crazy how much things changed in such a relatively small amount of time.)  Anyway, we all had to unload off the train and of course there was hardly anywhere to go and I hadn’t eaten dinner, but we ended up at the bar across the way that must make a huge living from stranded travellers.  I don’t remember if I got anything in the way of enough to eat, but the great thing was that the Women’s Gymnastics Team Competition was up on the screen!  So not only did I get to see my beloved gymnastics (I’m sure readers of this blog will understan what that means to me)–but I also got to see Keri Strug do her amazing vault with a cracked ankle or whatever it was to victory!  I can be a bit of a wimp and I am sure that if I injured myself on a vault, I would have been like, “Sorry, Team USA; you may be the Magnificent Seven” (a reference I didn’t understand then and still relate to only hazily), but you’ve made your bed with your poor scores.  I can’t do anything for you at this point, so I think I’m going to sit it out for Vault #2.”  Not so for Keri Strug!  As I slurped Diet Coke at a New London bar, Keri Strug ran and flipped and landed on that injured ankle and brought the US GOLD.

Or at least, I think she did.  The crazy thing about memories of important events, as I learned ound September 11, 2001, is that they create–oh gosh, this is becoming eerily related–a sort of vacuum.  They suck nearby events into their orbit to the point where people who attended weddings in July or November of 2001 will say, “Yeah, that wedding was right around September 11th.”  I suppose the important event in my story, embarrassingly, might be the winning vault.  Maybe it didn’t occur that night as we waited for the train to be searched; maybe that was later, on my mom’s bed, with my cousin who was living with us for the summer.  I honestly don’t remember. 

What else to say?  I stopped being friends with the crush, although we did have a rather poetic re-meeting.  We didn’t correspond over the summer except for me to send her a postcard requesting that she return a library book I’d left behind, and apparently I’d said something like, “I’ll see you online at the bookstore,” because that was pretty much how you’d see everyone back on campus. 

I didn’t see her then, and I didn’t contact her, but a few weeks into school, my roommate and I were at Shaw’s (oh, that great Shaw’s–I still think of their Indulgences chocolates sometimes)–and there was the crush in the cereal aisle.  (Okay, I made that up–I have no idea what aisle it was.)  It was deep enough into the year that it was clear that our silence meant something, but I hadn’t known she cared until she said, “Well, I guess it’s not the bookstore after all.”

She may as well have been speaking Sanskrit.  “Um, what?” I asked.

“You know.”  She blinked.  “That thing you said in your postcard–how you’d see me at the bookstore.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I guess not.”

And we weren’t really friends after that.  Which in way was too bad, because I’d really enjoyed her when I’d thought she might like me back, but the things that had complicated the crush (including the fact that she turned out to be, you know, kind of straight) got in the way, and in some ways, at least at that time, she wasn’t such a good friend.  I will say, though, that that is the only time I ever remotely felt like I had the last laugh on anything, though if for some reason the crush is reading this (which I sincerely doubt), I hope she knows it does not reflect on her.

So au revior, bad crushes–I’d get a much better one several months before September 11th, 2001, who would become my wife–and hello to a less troubled New London; and hello wife herself, whom I am about to go off and meet, maybe for Mexican food, not at a bookstore.

[That's my answer.  A picture's worth a thousand words, and while this post is only half that, you don't need to read it to provide your answer.  You will, however, miss an amazing coincidence unless you read!]

Right around Thursday is when I run out of steam with the work-week and start posting questions on Facebook like, “What pipe-dream profession do you wish you could have?” or “What were the favorite foods of your misspent youth?”  The answers are always great–etiquette consultant!  spy!  Lick-em-ade!  Hot pockets!–and add a real boost to my productivity.  Some people work best when they are totally unplugged, but I find that as the week wears on, I work best when I have frequent, fun, brief distractions. 

Today, I’m going to try a little experiment: putting the question on my blog.  I’m excited to hear answers to the question,

What movie are you embarrassed to love?

I ask because of a funny coincidence.  Fellow Tenner Jenn Hubbard and I were both psyched to be on the Summer Blast Blog Tour, she on Writing and Ruminating and I on Shaken and Stirred.  Amazingly, we both referenced the incredible Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore movie, Music and Lyrics.  (Is anybody else noticing the conjunctive titles here?  “Writing and Ruminating”–”Shaken and Stirred”–”Music and Lyrics”–”Nice and Mean”…  I tigress.) 

Anyway, I had to laugh, because while Jenn relates to the youths of today (I haven’t read her book, The Secret Year, just yet, but I’m dying to), she has a very thoughtful blog, and I’m basically kind of an entertainment snob, so the fact that we both have a thing for this goofy, kind of predictable movie was quite a surprise. 

But I even cringe to dismiss the movie, because it is so great!  First of all, it start out with a dead-on-the-nose (if that’s not from the redundancy department of redunancy) spoof of an 80s video, featuring Hugh Grant’s character, called “Pop! Goes My Heart”:

A movie that can put that together knows what it’s doing, right?  Plus there are incredibly charming scenes of the songwriting collaboration:

And Hugh Grant is funny, right?  Sarcastic but also suave.  You’ve got to be observant to pull that off, too.  There’s a wicked parody of a Brittney Spears type (I’ve given you enough YouTube links to last the lunch break, but just put in “Buddha’s Delight + Music and Lyrics), a legitimate backstory for our creative collaborators…Darn it, I’m not going to be ashamed anymore:  I love Musis and Lyrics!  I think it’s great.  It’s charming and real and has New York City in the background and Hugh Grant in the foreground, and Drew Barrymore is pretty cute, too.

And now I want to know–

which movies are you

kind of

sort of

embarrassed to love?

Why, it’s good old reliable Nathan –Nathan, Nathan, Nathan Detroit!

– Guys and Dolls

I have a long history with that song.  An excellent history!  It all started on a very slow cab ride to a play called, ironically enough, Full Gallop.  I had the number, “Good Old Reliable Nathan” in my head, and I kept sort of bursting into song.  My dad was mildly amused, but you know, it’s never a total joy when someone keeps bursting into song next to you.  Until I turned it into a game…

“Oh my gosh,” I said, ”guess who called me out of the blue?”

“Who?” my dad asked.

And I started vamping: “Good old reliable Nathan–Nathan, Nathan, Nathan Detroit!”

Chuckles!  Score one for Jess.  I should clarify that there’s nothing inherently anything about Good Old Reliable Nathan.  He’s the guy who runs the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York–the gambler who never makes good on his promise to wed his fiancee (hence another famous song from Guys and Dolls, “Miss Adelaide’s Lament.”)  I don’t really care about crap games or gangsters; I wouldn’t even name Guys and Dolls as one of my favorite musicals.  But that song just has a great swing to it, and I really loved singing it.  So a game to give me the chance–well.  Too good to be true.

Once the game was established, though (and the cab was still inching its way across West 45th Street), my dad and couldn’t carry on a real conversation. He would venture, “Hey, do you know who I — ” Sputter, sputter, sputter.  We both kept veering into the obvious, and we both knew it.

He got me good at intermission, though, coming back from the bathroom.  “Oh my gosh,” he said, settling into his seat.  “Do you know who the assistant director is on this show?”

I was pretty knowledgeable about people in the theatre scene, and I was very curious to know who my dad thought was an interesting AD for the show.  “Who?” I asked.

No!  Walked right into it!  “Good old reliable Nathan–Nathan, Nathan, Nathan Detroit!” 

Fortunately, that was not the end of the game.  Well–my dad and I didn’t play much after that.  But a few months later, when I was a camp counselor, Good Old Reliable Nathan struck big-time.

That’s all we have time for today.  Stay tuned for more GORN and the real pay-off, the thing that made me start this post in the first place — how a line from this storied song found its way into an RSVP for my book party.

Hello, readers!

I’m sure you’re with me in thanking Micol, Irene, Susan, Tami, Margie, and Emily for their guest posts.  I had immersed myself in the world of niceness and meanness for so long to write my book, but they all reminded me of the emotional consequences of how we humans treat each other.  Plus, some of them made me laugh or had cute photos, and it was a treat to come back and see something new on the blog.  So thanks!

In another version of the world, I’d be telling vacation tales, but I’m trying to limit my computer use because I’m still landsick from being on a boat for so long.  I’ve tried ginger, Bonime, sea bands and sleep, and nothing seems to be working, so I will probably need to call my doctor or pharamacist, but that’s another story.  The real story is that while I was away (and, um, a bit before), two bloggers were kind enough to feature leetle interviews with me on their blogs. 

The first was Julie Halpern, a writer whose website is about the cutest I have ever seen (go ahead–click on it!) who asked me some of those Inside the Actors Studio questions.  She’s the author of, among other things, Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, which examines the upside of nerdiness in a very pleasing manner.  Here are some of the q’s she asked.  My favorite, of course, is, “What is your favorite swear?”  I remember fondly watcihng Stephen Sondheim’s lips form the F word to the sound of a skipping stereo.

Also, Chick Loves Lit (who has a supremely beautiful blog header, herself) gave me her Fun Five questionnaire.  I got to regale her with my first unfortunate introduction to “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” and my not-very-kind feelings about birds.

That’s all she wrote today, folks!  Hope your life is balanced in more ways than one.  I will be searching for that as I do un-computer things, like oh, folding the laundry that’s been sitting in the dryer since last night…

Okay, so, nice and mean. 

One of the questions I get asked over and over at school visits is, which one of the characters in LEAVING GEE’S BEND are you most like?  While I am tempted to say “Ludelphia,” because she is so delightful and determined and even when she goes astray, is completely motivated by love…. But the real answer is this:  there is something of me in all of the characters – even the villain, Mrs. Cobb.

Where does this meanness come from?  I blame my older brothers.  Particularly Ken, who is just 17 months older.  Ken’s the one who taught me to be “Mean Irene.”  The truth is, I had to be mean, just to survive.

 While I don’t remember it myself, one of my earliest experiences of meanness came when I was an infant.  According to my mother, Ken and Stan tried to kill me with baby powder.

 Later, Ken tormented me in adolescence by saying my new breasts, of which I was so proud, looked like “rat droppings.”

 Lovely, huh.

 And yet, this boy was so charming with all my best friends, that each and every one of them eventually fell head over heels in love with him (no kidding – -he even MARRIED one of my best friends!).  Which left me alone.  And so very angry at Ken!   All this to say, I was completely justified in the meanest thing I ever did to Ken.

See, Ken had a Samson-like thing about his hair.  He was constantly trying new hairstyles.  And at one point, he had this rat tail.  Well.  One night he made me sooo mad, for reasons I can no longer remember.   I waited for him to fall asleep, then I tiptoed into his room.  And, whack!  Say goodbye to rat tail! 

Cruel, huh?

 But oh man, did he deserve it.

 And ladies, tell me the truth:  I did him a favor, didn’t I.  (Love you, Ken!)  To find out more about me or Ludelphia, please visit www.irenelatham.com.  And Jess, thanks for inviting me over!  xo

Hello NICE readers of the blogosphere!
My name is Micol Ostow, and I’m so excited that Jessica was NICE enough to have me here!
(Okay, I’ll stop with that. Promise. Just had to get it out of my system.)

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a young adult author living and working in New York City. Jessica and I met at the amazing Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in writing for children program, and have since bonded over our mutual love of fiction, young readers, and snark.
You can read more about my books at www.micolostow.com, but this week is ALL ABOUT JESSICA, and NICE AND MEAN, so let’s get to it!

Once upon a time, there was a young, insecure, high-strung little girl who had just graduated from a big scary college and was now thrust into the even bigger, scarier black hole known as the “real world.” The real world was loud. And dirty. And occasionally construction workers would shout things at the girl when she walked to work.
It was awkward.

And, yes, there was this “work” thing. What to say of that? Suddenly there was an alarm clock, and a commute, tepid, stale office coffee, and Xerox copies to made.
The girl, you see, was working for an EDITOR. This meant that she traveled every day to an office teeming in cubicles and, when she’s wasn’t busy answering phones and mailing out contracts, she even sometimes got to help MAKE THE BOOKS.

Despite the airless, windowless cubicle, and the paltry so-called “paycheck,” the girl enjoyed MAKING BOOKS, and working with some of her favorite authors from her own childhood, and would have spent her time editing until the end of her days. Happily.

BUT her fairy-godmother-editor-boss knew something about the girl, which was:
In her own day, back in COLLEGE and even before, she’d been a writer of sorts. The girl had written poems, short stories, and even novellas. These days, she was too busy EDITING to write books.

FGEB had no need to extend a particular kindness to her lowly assistant-girl. AG would have been pleased as punch to while away the hours on such things as cover copy, and the taking of phone messages. But FGEB was fair and benevolent, and offered a gift: the opportunity to contribute a short story to an ANTHOLOGY that the house was organizing.

Reader, she wrote it. AG wrote a story, and then PUBLISHED that story (though it was written under a pseudonym and she has since come a long way and NO I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU SO JUST LET IT GO).

And lo, when other editors heard of this, they contacted AG for more and more projects. Ghostwriting, work for hires, and then finally, HER OWN ORIGINAL NOVEL, with her name on the cover and everything.

And now she lives in NYC and works as a writer ALL OF THE TIME, and looks a lot like that gal in the picture above.
Feel free to pre-order her latest forthcoming novel:

http://tinyurl.com/yezmcrh

AG never dreamed it would be possible to make an entire career out of what had once been her passion. So, thanks, FGEB*. That invitation to write was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

*(she knows who she is)