Hey!

Who likes our different look? No one?! 

Okay, we admit, we do not know templates— but we know everything else!  We enjoy keeping items light-weight, a passing record of the vicissitudes of publishing, publishers, editors, authors, books, and of course we love putting up our rhymes.

What do you want? Do you want info or stories or opinions or just booksbookbooks?

from BAD SCHOOL

"Terse Nurse"

Her door decor a bright red cross;

Her name, Ms. Nurse: First Aid Boss.

The tidy station draws no mob,

Not since Ms. Nurse got the job.

Say you enter coughing, wheezing—

"Stop!" she snaps. "I take no teasing."

But it's true, I skinned both knees—

Her eyeballs roll around, "Puh-leez".

Don't try— oh, my—sneezing! sneezing!

Or Ms. Nurse gets worse displeasing.

Try a cough—

"Knock it off."

If you pout—

"Cut it out."

And don't let OUCH!

Be what you say.

She'll sigh "Good Night" then bark "Good Day!"

We heart Julie!

By the same illustrator?

Yes, the same illustrator

Rhyming

People (most of them) think children's verse is Dr. Seuss, full stop. Pre-pub'd and pub'd authors would submit (when we took unsolicited submissions, namely always until a few months back) Dr. Seuss-style silly verses at a rate of, let's say, a dozen a week. Every week. All year long. We bet most of these writers do not know where they got their sense of rhythm and rhyme and do not know that they are mimicking. They may even think the singsongy galloping quality in their verse is simply the universal sound of kids' rhymes.

It is.

But do not try it.

Why? You will not best Dr. Seuss. And that is how we see these manuscripts, as ill-advised competition. Dr. Seuss was original and a grand mater. And he illustrated his books, so his vision of silliness exists as a thorough integration of word and pictures. His oeuvre is large, and Random House keeps his book line bright and fresh. One Dr. Seuss is plenty.

The second stanza of THE CAT IN THE HAT, the last two lines, display the ubiquitous quintessential Dr. Seuss sound

I sat there with Sally.

We sat there, we two.

And I said, "How I wish

We had something to do!"

The meter is ANAPAEST, two short or unaccented syllables followed by a long or stressed syllable. Anapaest makes a lively platform for humorous verse— LIMERICKS are written in Anapest—and its structure presents rhyme well.

An "adult poem" might be easier to hear. Listen to the anapest in Tennyson, whose poem nearly sings.

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion flower at the gate.

She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life my fate;

The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;

And the white rose weeps, "She is late";

The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear";

And the lilly whispers, "I wait."

We do not recommend writing in a single meter. You lose the textured sound and meaning possible when you mix in some IAMBIC (one un-stressed, then one stressed syllable) or a potent little SPONDEE (two stressed syllables: never is a Spondee). His rhythms, rhymes, and cadences make Dr. Seuss's verse compelling. The fact that he is copied unknowingly testifies to that.

Much more can said on this topic, but we will venture only this advice on word choice. Eschew tired words and tired rhymes! No excitement results from rhyming play with day or sun with fun. These are deadweight hackneyed rhymes: they suck energy from your verse and dull your readers' engagement.These couplings are too, too familiar: they do not emit f-u-n. Part of the work of a poet is to make fresh rhymes. Look at Jack Perlutsky and Shel Silverstein—both, just like Dr. Seuss, make up rhyme words all the time. The goal is lively rhymes.

Now, of course Rhyme is a bigger topic than this little lesson. And we are not experts, either, just perceptive, we hope, readers and writers who learn as we go.

Next time, maybe we will write about the trials of the COUPLET, to writer and reader.

Questions? Comments?


p.s. Think Reader is a slogan to tape to your keyboard.

from BAD SCHOOL, a collection

"Chorus"

Johnny was in chorus,
Though for talent he had none.
When he practiced vocalizing
Friends would wince in unison.
And they whispered to each other
Can't the Chorus teacher hear?
To which the Spring Assembly
Answered sadly loud and clear.

Another BAD SCHOOL verse

"Lesson Plan"

Tommy went to summer camp
And caught a naughty habit.
Back in school when Tommy saw
Any toy he'd grab it.

Tommy's teacher knew to head off
Classroom wide d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r.
She taught Tommy's classmates to
Pull their toys back faster.

What is High Concept?

 

Scholastic launched Comic Guy author TIMOTHY ROLAND's new series this month. Premise: a boy eats a radioactive banana and whenever he is over-excited he turns into a monkey. Voila: high concept! In MONKEY ME, the narration moves from prose to graphic storytelling when Clyde, the afflicted, turns monkey. MONKEY ME is part of Scholastic's new early reader program Branches.

Youth Wants to Know!

Is the ornery gender issue that compels using the plurals THEY and THEIR when referring to a single HE or SHE, is it solved? We notice women using SHE and men using HE. Is the problem neutralized?

We love reading watching Ask the Editor on Merriam Webster dot com. Listen to what the professional usage arbiters think. You have to click the tiny image below to make it readable. Twitter's usage sounds wrong to us.

Questions? Comments?

Dear Teen Me

Read the accumulated wisdom debut author Christopher Long delivers to his teen self. Check it out.

And buy HERO WORSHIP. See why we are interested in Chris.

Sharon Biggs Waller— Who?

Hey! Read this Penguin interview 

with debut author Sharon Biggs Waller.

The 2014 ALA Awards!

Has it always been called Youth Media? We never use the phrase. Anyways, we say the awards look well balanced— and we are not adding for a change— this year. And look at all the non-fiction! Follow this link to see the ALA's choice of last year's most glorious books.

from BAD SCHOOL, a collection

"Odd Man Out"

A ruckus at the kickball game 
Cut recess time in half.
It ended when the principal
Let loose a belly laugh.

The students had been battling
About the kickball score.
The principal said, “Children,
Shall I call an auditor?”

Astonishment understates
The look the students had,
As cautiously they lined to leave,
For plainly he’d gone mad.

*ditties on this blog are ST copyrights, if you are wondering....

From the Department of It's Always Something

We are asked How can I follow this blog? Our answer: dunno. We still took action. We added a gadget to the panel of options, on the right. Hit the bottom button +1. You now are a follower— either that or you just gave us a thumbs up. One or the other. No matter: STNY thanks you.

MONKEY ONO and Its Publisher

Here is a VerY FunnY book by J.C. Phillipps's— Julie. Viking inexplicably pub'd it oh, so quietly last year. (Why, Penguin, why?) Early sales reflected the inattention and it is struggling to catch up.

Now what?  

It's a race against time, that's what! Will the rate of sales pick up fast enough? Or will the Penguin bean counters show MONKEY ONO the indignation of a remainder sale? 

That only slightly overstates the dynamic at the big houses— the shrinking timeframe a book has  to prove itself. MONKEY ONO is Julie's third Viking picturebook,  (none remaindered!) and her best— so far, that is (just wait until April!)— and it is confounding sales do not reflect it.

Check out, MONKEY ONO's trailer. And buy the book! It's a keeper!

Take Note People!

We found Christopher Long in the slush pile! Of course, STNY no longer accepts slush but pre-pub'd authors take heart: discoveries happen.

We liked Chris's original view of hero-hood and his teen-like, contemporary regard for his renegade principles (they refuse to register their powers with authorities and must hide out in a shelter beneath a highway underpass and scrounge out a living). HERO WORSHIP required more revisions than we like. Chris had to learn how very high the bar is set; but he did and we got what we wanted. Several editors rejected the ms. (Darn anti anti-hero Editors!) Brian Farry at Flux saw what we see, Chris's promise for a sustainable career. That is what we look for. Chris's new manuscript suggests we picked right. Check back here when we are ready to make an announcement. In the meantime, read HERO WORSHIP. It is dang exciting. And fun!

HOLY SMOKE!

Yikes! We may have tripped into a LinkedIn situation.

This week, we invited colleagues and cohorts to become connections (like FaceBook's friends) and also accepted several dozen longstanding invites.

Well, yikes! 

Either we goofed or LinkedIn went haywire— because acceptances are running 300% above invites. 

Um...?

While it may be embarrassing to be supposed to have come calling, unbidden, with what must seem hat in hand— Honey! There's a literary agency at the door. Did you invite them? What should we do?— we are happy folks want to connect with STNY.

Welcome new connections! Even you wondering Literary agency? Are they staying for dinner?

A whopping Discount!

The ebook edition of John's second and very, very good novel is on sale within Candlewick's E-Volt site for $2.99 or less! until Jan 31. You'd be a fool to miss this smart, contemporary, original YA with a fierce protagonist who cusses up a storm. And makes pals with an A-list Hollywood starlet.

Extra Clever Cinderella!

Extra clever Cinderella

Slips a heel and gets a fella.

My, my but those two step sisters—

Mad as hornets, both with blisters!

*this is copyrighted*

TEA PARTY RULES!

How we have longed to brag about our Ame Dyckman's TEA PARTY RULES (with pictures by K. G. Campbell), new from Viking. But our efforts to share the fab trailer were thwarted. You can see it on Ame's site. In the meantime, look at this good attention it is getting.

a Publisher's Weekly STAR!

a Kirkus STAR!

a Booklist STAR!

and is a Junior Library Guild selection. 

And TEA PARTY RULES sold in Hebrew, too— because bears in the backyard is a big problem there....

Vicky Darling is the rebellious, artistically talented daughter of a wealthy plumbing magnate, coming of age in Edwardian England at the height of the women’s suffrage movement.

Capitalizing on the Downton Abbey trend, Viking is publish our terrific historic novel by debut author Sharon Biggs Waller. Sharon's title comes from Queen Victoria's sour comments on the suffragette movement, which supplies the novel's backdrop and, increasingly throughout, its protagonist's concerns. 

A MAD, WICKED FOLLY is pub'g tomorrow. A whole lot of buzz is brewing (if buzz may be understood to brew). SLJ *starred* its review. USA Today is featuring the book today. Check it out now! Buy this book! 

A Cetain Young Lady, Veronica,

A certain young lady, Veronica,

Had trials in Santa Monica.

She dreamt of a car

But could not pronounce 'R'

So went about saying I wannaca.

BIG NEWS!
After 20 years racing through or studying over 40,000 unsolicited submissions— to our delight, consternation, joy, bafflement, awe, horror, (and more!)— STNY's unsolicited submission chute is closing. In fact, it already is. No longer can we consider unsolicited submissions.
STNY's list is heavy with clients whose work came over the transom (do people even know this term nowadays?), unpublished creators STNY is proud we discovered and developed (and continue to develop) and whose careers we continue building. (Notice we eschew 'to grow'.) STNY will of course continue to discover talent and add clients, only differently.
Henceforth, we will accept submissions from attendees when we appear at conferences. And we will consider submissions recommended by our big passel of editor pals, author friends, and STNY clients. Lastly, we will read materials as participants on awards committees, etc. So we are not going anywhere. We wand to continue to discover new talent.
Look for STNY's participation at regional and national conferences and retreats and award shows and trade fairs and seminars and maybe a bookstore signing or two.
—ST
To the thousand-plus 2013 solicitors who came before the hatches closed on June 10, 2013, thank you for your extra patience. Most already heard from us, some even favorably!, and the few remainders will directly.

Isn't This Awful?

At 4 pm, we deleted 220 submissions, all received after our Jun 10 submission cut-off for the summer. 

Those aspirants will never hear from us, poor them. But poor us, too— such wanton disregard. 

Who's with us?

EXTRA * EXTRA * EXTRA * EXTRA

OUR SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED UNTIL 

AFTER LABOR DAY. SPREAD THE WORD!

Bank Street BEST Children's Books of the Year

Yo! We landed THREE picture books this year. Congratulations to STNY's winning talent!

HISTORY
Mo Manning, LAUNDRY DAY, Clarion

HUMOR
Rick Walton, I NEED MY OWN COUNTRY (illust Wes Hargis), Bloomsbury

TODAY
Maribeth Boelts, HAPPY LIKE SOCCER (illust Lauren Castillo), Candlewick

Content at Last! A Silly Song!

Sing a song of mischief,
Pocketful of rye.

Four and twenty peppercorns

Sabootage a pie.

When the pie was opened

The king began to sob,

 “I long to eat a dainty thing––

And, lo!  A pepper job!”

Blog Blog Blog

How our blog sags!

We promise more posts henceforth— at least to match our record last year. Can't be too many. We'll check.

MERRY XMAS!

TO THE TUNE "WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND"

Therapist schedule extra,

To-do lists really vex ya;

But what's to be done?

He's God's only son—

Christmas is a yearly funky time.

Store decor gets a fix-up,

And what's more, now St. Nick's up.

Bright colored lights

With neon now fights—

Christmas is a yearly funky time.

Fraternizing at an office party:

Who said what to whom and who found out?

Satirizing that same office party—

Until our senior colleagues come about.

Later on, lounging boozy,

We'll be drawn to crack a doozy,

Our addled minds fray,

Our hearts want to say,

Christmas is a yearly funky time.

Greedy and Unfair

Penguin is demanding advances be repaid for never-delivered manuscripts* —and charging interest. 

Ha! A hearty laugh in Penguin's face! Whose contract provides for Penguin to pay interests if a royalty underpayment is discovered? Ha! Greedy, unfair Penguin.

This is the way of things today. STNY is biting back!

A lousy experience at Harper resulted when editors asked a pedigreed author/illustrator to revise a dummy thrice, THREE times!, and then declined it. STNY demanded a kill fee**— for our client had invested hours (in other industries, billable hours) working at two editors' behest. Why shouldn't Harper share with the creator a risk that its editors suggestions will not, finally, work?

The editors blanched to be asked to pay for the work. "STNY is happy to appeal to executive management, if your immediate supervisor lacks the say-so for releasing a few hundred bucks," said we.

Three months later, we still have no proper response, despite our follow-ups. Why? Because Harper is greedy and unfair.

Even though STNY is biting back, publishers' skin (always tough) is virtually impermeable today. To test that assertion. . . 

In the coming months, we shall broadcast publishers' greed and unfairness, in all its multiple manifestations, as we slam up against it. 

*      *      *

*For our younger readers, some history: in the distant past (like, ten years ago), advances were paid before work was revised on spec: publishers paid a signature advance intending it to sustain authors while they rewrote.

**This term derives from a standard magazine practice: when an assigned article is cut mid-development, the author is given a kill fee, less than the completed article would earn but recognition of the professional, goodwill effort of an author under contract. 

Pub Stories: A MAD, WICKED FOLLY

Hi all! Sharing this post, which appeared originally on my blog. - John

--

At conferences I’m often asked What do you actually do all day? On camera, my job would look fairly boring: a Warhol-esque single-shot film of me staring at a computer, getting up every few hours to fetch a Red Bull from the office fridge… Truth is, what I get up to varies from week to week. Every book has a different story, from conception to sale to shelf. In my experience, there’s no real “usual way” a manuscript gets rep’d, sold, and published. The best I can offer is anecdotes. So here, for your enjoyment, is one book’s (ongoing) story:

I was sitting on my couch one Saturday afternoon, having just finished a four-hour marathon of the Masterpiece Theater program Downton Abbey. In case you live in a cave, and read this blog on printed transcripts winged to your dark little fissure by carrier pigeons, Downton Abbey is an immensely popular Edwardian soap opera following the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family, their romances, exploits, and financial disasters. It’s smart, sexy, and addictive.

Now, I’m of the opinion that young adult trends follow television and visual media. I’d seen twenty-somethings and teens swooning and speculating online over the Crawley’s romantic entanglements, and thought this needs to be a book, if it isn’t already. Waiting for a brilliant Edwardian y.a. to drop in my lap would take too long, so instead I tweeted I was in the market for a Downton Abbey for teens.

Sometime that evening, a freelance writer and farmer named Sharon Biggs Waller was scrolling through her feed and spotted my tweet. It just so happened she had an Edwardian y.a. she’d not yet been able to sell. In fact, historicals can be difficult to place; Sharon had shopped her manuscript, A MAD, WICKED FOLLY, before there was a swoon-worthy cult hit to compare it to.

Sharon queried me via my agency’s online form. The first line of her cover letter hooked me utterly. I mean, how can you not love this?:

London, 1909. When 17-year-old Victoria Darling poses nude for a forbidden art class, she gets dismissed from her posh French boarding school.

SOLD. I requested the full manuscript and read it overnight. I discovered Victoria was a bold, forthright, talented, passionate protagonist, ahead of her time and yet steeped in the attitudes of her era. The story had romance and high stakes, but on a deeper level, something I hadn’t known I’d been looking for: an examination of women’s suffrage, gender politics, and sexism that would resonate with a contemporary audience. It was a deeply-felt and socially relevant story wrapped in a delectable crust of Edwardian fashion and romance. Smart and sexy. Agent catnip.

The next day I called Sharon and offered representation. She agreed, we popped the metaphorical champagne, and I put together a list of editors I hoped would love FOLLY as much as I did (including a few editors who’d contacted me after I’d tweeted about signing Sharon- Twitter for the win, again). Responses began to roll in. Editors offered notes, some wanted to speak with Sharon directly. Particularly exciting was the afternoon I was away at a conference in Salt Lake City and had to keep excusing myself to “run to the bathroom,” dashing outside to field calls from excited editors, relaying that info to Sharon, then hurrying back to the conference in time for my phone to ring again (I’d switched my ringtone to the Downton Abbey theme song, for luck).

After some back-and-forth, we placed A MAD, WICKED FOLLY with Leila Sales, a brilliant editor (and y.a. author herself) at Viking books, an imprint of Penguin. After so many phone calls and emails, Sharon and I were able to meet in person last month when she came out to NYC for lunch with Leila and me. Afterwards I took Sharon for coffee and she pitched me ideas for future projects (one of which I so wish  I could talk about now. But soon, boy, soon.)

Now, Sharon is revising A MAD, WICKED FOLLY, which will be released by Viking in 2014. Sharon and I found each other via twitter, but I’ve picked up clients at conferences, via their blogs, at parties, and of course, through the slush pile. Every story is different.

A Silly Song!

Jimmy was in Chorus
But for talent he had none.
When he practiced vocalizing
Friends would wince in unison,
And they whispered to each other
"Can't the Chorus teacher hear?"
To which the Spring Assembly
Answered sadly loud and clear.

Click the Link!

Scott-o-Lantern

Happy Anniversay!

John M. Cusick came to S©ott Treimel NY FIVE YEARS ago today! The rest is history.

Don't Be Caught Short!

Buy Yours Today!

A Silly Song and a Half!

Jack and Jill

Start up a hill

But stop at the house that Jack built.

There was a mouse

That hid in the house,

Which terrified Jill,

Who took to the hill—

For Jill was, all-in-all, a responsible girl and she stayed mindful of her commission—

namely fetching a pail of water.

Back at the house,

Still hiding the mouse,

Jack set out to jail

The pest in a pail;

And Jack—

Adept at catching mice, cats, dogs, mammals of all kinds, really—

Looked high and low and caught her.

Happy Pub Date to You

Arthur Slade concludes his rousing Steampunk romp with this brilliant shocker, on sale (in the U.S.) this very day.

Happy Pub Date to You!

Buy Yours Now!

More Silly Songs, You Say?

Red Riding Hood goes on a spree;
Granny ends bad as can be.
She starts off scarcely ill, then
CRUNCH! CRUCH!
She's landfill.
Red Hood's tale ain't her cup of tea.

Reprintings We Love

Debut Ame Dyckman's tour de force (with an assist for DanYaccarino) is racing for its FOURTH printing, giving folks 5ooo more copies to buy!

Meanwhile, Candlewick editor Sarah Ketchersid says Maribeth Boelts's lovely, lovely, NECESSARY book is heading for its TENTH PRINTING!