I blog regularly for I.N.K. (Interesting nonfiction for kids.) It’s a great blog for people interested in not only nonfiction for kids, but in any kind of writing for kids, or writing, period. The authors who blog there share insights about the writing and research process, about Common Core, about teaching and working with kids, and sometimes personal things about their lives. And the folks who comment always add more to the discussion. The way we do it is we each have a day a month. So I write my posts ahead of time, and then set it up to post on the day it’s due to go up. This past week my post came out the day after the bombing at the Boston Marathon. I wish I had had time to rewrite it, to address that horrific event. But I didn’t. I managed to add a comment. Like many others, I was focused on the news on Tuesday, and not reading blogs or much else. I’m sure many people did the same thing. Of course then life goes on, we get back to work, and we just check in every hour or so to see if there’s something new.

Anyway since my post is a topic I feel fairly attached to, I’m linking to it here so that it won’t get lost in the shuffle.

Now, back to work. I’m getting ready to go to IRA. If you’re going to be there, please check my schedule on my Appearances page so you can come say hi.

The post Writing and Teaching Outside Our Comfort Zones appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

Today is the 100th anniversary of  the birth of mathematician Paul Erdos.

Check out this wonderful blog at The New York Times about Erdos and my book! 

I wrote here yesterday that today I would write more. I was wrong–at least for now. Yesterday I was making food for our seder. Today I am cleaning up from the seder. Paul Erdos, by the way, though Jewish, was not exactly the most religious guy. He referred to God as the Supreme Fascist. THAT is not in the book. 

The post Happy 100th Birthday, Paul Erdos! appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

Please know that the list is not meant to be comprehensive, nor have we read every book, though we have read many of them, of course, and have even written a few (two each to be exact).  Most are fiction, but a few are nonfiction. We compiled it based on recommendations by other writers, teachers and librarians. Please email me (Deborah@DeborahHeiligman.com) with additions or corrections. The books are listed by religious tradition and in each section alphabetically by author.

BUDDHISM:

Blue Jean Buddha Voices of Young Buddhists -Sumi Loundon, Editor

Taneesha Never Disparaging -M.LaVora Perry (this is middle grade, or young YA, really)

Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea-Jaimal Yogis

Hardcore-Zen-Brad Warner

CHRISTIANITY/CHURCH OF LATTER DAY SAINTS/SPIRITUALITY

Clay-David Almond

Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature-Robin Brande

The Girl of Fire and Thorns-Rae Carson (fantasy but religious)

The Miracle Stealer –Neal Connelly

Box Out-John Coy

The Miseducation of Cameron Post—Emily M. Danforth

The Dark Divine –Bree Despain

Stranded-by J.T. Dutton

Quaking – Katherine Erskine

The Gorgeous Game –Donna Freitas

The Possibilities of Sainthood – Donna Freitas

Godless –Pete Hautman

The Obsidian Blade-Pete Hautman

Charles and Emma – The Darwins’ Leap of Faith  –Deborah Heiligman

With a Name Like Love-Tess Hilmo

Stained-Jennifer Richard Jacobson

Losing Faith – Denise Jaden

The Opposite of Hallelujah-Anna Jarzab

Saving Maddie -Varian Johnson

Born Again-Kelly Kerney

Dietrich Bonhoeffer-Michael J. Martin

Taken By Storm -Angela Morrison

Days of Little Texas – R.A. Nelson

Send Me Down a Miracle –Han Nolan

When We Were Saints – Han Nolan

Sorta Like a Rockstar — Matthew Quick

There is No Dog-Meg Rossoff

The God Box -Alex Sanchez

Back When You Were Easier to Love -Emily Wing Smith

The Way He Lived -Emily Wing Smith

Irises –Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo in the Real World – Francisco X. Stork

Small Town Sinners – Melissa Walker

Full Service – Will Weaver

Where Things Come Back – John Corey Whaley

The Chosen One -Carol Lynch Williams

Once Was Lost -Sara Zarr

HINDUISM

Maya Running –Anjali Banerjee

Siddhartha-Herman Hesse

Life of Pi-Yann Martel (more than Hinduism in this book, but it seems the best place to put it)

Karma – Kathy Ostlere

ISLAM

Ask Me No Questions –Marina Taimar Badhos

Where I Belong – Lillian Cross

Overboard – Elizabeth Fama

Does My Head Look Big in This? –Randa Abdel Fattha

Arts and Culture in the Early Islamic World-Lizann Flatt

In the Name of God-Paula Jolin

Skunk Girl –Sheba Karim

A Little Piece of Ground – Elizabeth Laird

From Somalia with Love – Naima B. Robert

Boy vs. Girl –Na’ima B. Robert

A Handful of Stars –Rafik Schami

Bestest. Ramadan. Ever –Medeia Sharif

JUDAISM

Hush –Eishe Chajil

The Diary of A Young Girl-Anne Frank

Hereville –Barry Deutsch

Intentions – Deborah Heiligman

A Family Secret-Eric Huevel

Real Time – Pnina Kass

One is not a Lonely Number –Evelyn Krueger

Gravity –Leanne Lieberman

So Punk Rock: And Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother-Ostrow & Ostrow

The Chosen-Chaim Potok (and others by Potok)

Cures for Heartbreak-Margo Raab

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust-Doreen Rappaport

Never Mind the Goldbergs –Matthue Roth

The Weight of the Sky-Lisa Ann Sandell

Goy Crazy –Melissa Schorr

The Berlin Boxing Club –Robert Sharenow

The Devil’s Arithmetic –Jane Yolen

NATIVE AMERICAN

Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative-Ignatia Broker

Moccasin Thunder: American Indian Stories for Today- various authors, edited by Lori Marie Carlson

Stories for a Winter’s Night: Fiction by Native American Writers edited by Maurice Kenny

 Rain is Not My Indian Name-Cynthia Leitich Smith

Walking the Choctaw Road: Stories From Red People Memory-by Tim Tingle

Places to find award-winning books and lists:

http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/

The Christy Awards: http://www.christyawards.com/ca_new/

The Christian Book Awards

http://www.ecpa.org/?page=cba_1_overview

www.Wisdompubs.org

www.Yalsa.ALA.org/theHub

Sydney Taylor Awards http://www.jewishlibraries.org/main/Awards/SydneyTaylorBookAward.aspx

Here’s this post as a PDF Religion Books for Web site.

The post YA Books with Religious Themes appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

What is the Next Big Thing? It is an author blog tour. What’s a blog tour? A blog tour gives those on the tour a chance to meet different authors by way of their blogs. The Next Big Thing began in Australia. Each week a different author answers specific questions about his or her upcoming book. The answers are posted on author’s blogs. Then we get to tag another author. On and on it goes.

The tour came to me from Tanya Lee Stone over on INK. She was tagged by our mutual friend Elizabeth Winthrop. She was tagged by her friend Eric Kimmel. I’ll tell you whom I’m tagging at the end.

Now for the questions.

What is the title of your next book?

My next book is… ta da: The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea came from my sons. First Aaron came home and told me about this mathematician who didn’t have a home and traveled all over the world doing math. Aaron was (and is) a real math guy, and so I kind of put Erdos in the category of someone only a math person would be interested in. When, three years later, Benjamin told me about Erdos with the same enthusiasm, I took note. Benjamin liked math, but he wasn’t a real math guy like his older brother. So I read a little bit about Erdos and was immediately hooked. I fell in love! (And as a quick aside: just yesterday I read the book for the first time to a group of children–Benjamin’s second grade class!) 

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s a nonfiction picture book. I guess you’d call it a biography, too.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I think Daniel Radcliffe could play Paul Erdos at most of  his ages. You need someone who is smart and eccentric and warm. I think Daniel could do that.

Ok, it might be a stretch. But I think it could work. I see Meryl Streep playing all the female roles. Why not?

Who is publishing your book?

Roaring Brook, which is part of Macmillan. I love Roaring Brook. And Macmillan. 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I don’t know how to answer this exactly. I did so many drafts of this book that I can’t even think …. OK:  I started working on it in 2004. I sold it in 2006. So maybe we can say that the first draft took two years. I continued to work on it, though, until, the very last minute. They practically wrestled it out of my hands.  A book is never really finished, right? It is surrendered. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My sons, as I said, but also Erdos himself. His life is such a story of triumph and beauty and kindness and brilliance.  

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a book about a boy who loved math, but more importantly it’s a book about how someone who didn’t fit into the world in a “regular” way figured out not only how to live his life happily, but also how to contribute to the world in a very special way. You have to read the book to find out in what way. It doesn’t come out until June, but you can pre-order it here and here and here!

And wait until you see the magnificent illustrations by LeUyen Pham. They rock! She put math in the art in such gorgeous and inventive ways. The illustrations scream: math is fun, math is part of our world! They don’t just scream–they laugh and giggle and roar!

And now, drumroll, please! Who is next? 

For the next Next Big Thing, I am tagging a new friend of mine, Linda Urban. Her answers will be up soon. Tag, Linda, you’re it! 

The post The Next Big Thing Blog Tour appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

     The other day I picked up a book I’d had for years but hadn’t gotten around to. It’s a small volume, a biography. I decided to read it because I’m writing a biography and although I don’t usually like to read  in the genre I’m writing, I thought this would be a small investment in time to see how someone else wrote a biography about someone whom a lot is known, but not, perhaps, enough. I thought it might help me figure out how to write my book.

     However, instead of a guide, I found a treasure. 

This book is a cross between an essay and a biography. There are no footnotes. There are a lot of suppositions: she might have been taught dancing at that school; she probably had trouble writing for those seven years because she was not comfortable in Bath. Normally those kinds of things in a biography bother me. Especially, frankly, if I am writing about that person and want FOOTNOTES & SOURCE NOTES & CERTAINTIES! But I went along with Carol Shields because she, by way of Jane Austen, has brilliant and insightful things to say about the writer’s life. Portraying the writer Jane Austen, Shields manages to be universal. Or I should say, I feel as if she’s speaking about me, to me. I am certain many writers out there will feel the same way reading this book. 

One of the things I’ve been struggling with is how to fulfill my social needs while tackling this big project. I need a lot of time and space around me to write this book (or any long book) and I’d been finding that harder and harder to do. It’s partly living in New York City (this city really never sleeps). But it isn’t just city life, it’s internet life. I know you know what I’m talking about if you’re a writer and you have the internet.   

Shields writes, “The ability to sustain long works of fiction” [and here I would insert--or narrative nonfiction] “is at least partially dependent on establishing a delicate balance between solitude and interaction.” Too much human noise, she says, “distracts from the cleanliness of its overarching plan. Too little social interruption, on the other hand, distorts a writer’s sense of reality…” 

Shields, who died way too young in 2003, has nailed it. Most writers, she says, “knowing that ongoing work is fed by ongoing life, prize their telephones, their correspondence, and their daily rubbing up against family and friends.”  

I certainly prize my family and my friends. I live for moments of meaningful social interaction. I am dependent upon my writer friends–for support, love, fun, and sanity. Shields says: “Writers uphold and defend each other with discussion of their difficulties–this has always been the case–and persuade each other that their individual endeavors, which often seem no more substantial than paper airplanes tossed into the uninterested air, are not egotistical projections… but contributions…”  

Poor Jane Austen did not have writer friends. She was isolated in her family and in her community. She loved her family, and obviously got great material from them and her community. But she didn’t have a community of writers with whom she could talk about the ups and downs of writing and the roller coaster ride of publishing. She probably would have loved Facebook. Jane Austen needed Facebook. 

I got off Facebook a few months ago. It was with fear that I did so. I was scared I’d be lonely. And feel terribly disconnected. And miss things. I’m here to report that I do feel sometimes like I’m missing things. People publish books and move and have babies and eat a great sandwich AND I MISS IT. I can do without the sandwich (but what kind was it?), but I’m sorry to miss the rest. And yet, I feel better, saner, more alive as person and as a writer for not being on it. I relish my in-person connections with my friends and family so much more. I seek out the nourishing moments and live IN them, without thinking what I might post about it on Facebook. So for now, I’m staying away. I might go back. I might… But for now I’m living the life that I wish Jane Austen had been able to have–solitude surrounded by friends and family. And a rich writing community nearby and on the telephone (and email). Jane would have loved email.

I hope you will pick up this book by Carol Shields. I’m going to reread her novels soon, too. Being off Facebook has given me, as was part of the idea, so much more time to read. Also a yay. 

Ok, I’m going to tweet this post and then get back to work, she said with full knowledge of the irony. But Twitter is, somehow, different. In fact, maybe Jane would have liked Twitter better than Facebook. To the point. Easy to be witty and ironic and incisive in 140 characters. 

The post Why Jane Austen Needed Facebook, But I Don’t (Right Now) appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

The last stop in the Sydney Taylor Blog Tour is today, on Barbara Krasner’s THE WHOLE MEGILLAH: go HERE.

And after you’re done reading that, take yourself a tour around Barbara’s site. It’s a wealth of information about Jewish kidlit and so much more. As is she. Thanks, Barbara!

The post Last Stop in the Sydney Taylor Blog Tour appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

Happy Birthday, my dear Charles. (And one to you, too Mr. Lincoln!) Thank you to Anita Silvey for this lovely tribute to Charles and Emma. The comments slay me, and the new ones this year especially so.

Thanks, also to Margo Tanenbaum for this interview with me about Intentions for the Sydney Taylor Blog Tour (click on the poster on my home page to see the schedule and read more interviews with other authors).

Reading: I’m halfway through Okay for Now, which I’m loving. Not sure what’s up next. Keep the suggestions coming!

Writing: Good bubble today! Need more hours in the day, though. Please?

The post Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

At the retreat a bunch of us talked (second big take-home lesson: friends who do what you do and are smart and kind are golden) about where are nonwriting time is going, and many of us realized too much of it was going to that dubious activity of sitting in front of the computer doing—what? It’s a trick we play on ourselves. We think that if we are in front of the computer doing almost anything (maybe not ordering clothes from Eileen Fisher or sheets from–where do you get your really nice sheets?, but definitely reading Huff Post or ordering pencils and notebooks) we are working. When, in fact, duh, our time would be much better spent reading. Because reading is a huge part of a writer’s job. I know, I know, we all KNOW this. But we don’t do it. So on the train back from Vermont, after my friend Judy got off, I made a list of resolves. And the first one, you guessed it, was to diet. But yes, the second one was to put “READ” on my daily “to do list.” I should not NEED to put it on the list to justify doing it. But for now I am, so that it becomes, once again, central to my life as a writer. And specifically this means I am allowed to, no I MUST, read during the working day. Not just at night five minutes before my head hits pillow oblivion.

It’s been going great! I finished TENTH OF DECEMBER by George Saunders, which I loved. I finally read WONDER, which I thought was really really good, and now I am reading OKAY FOR NOW. (Gary Schmidt was one of the teachers at the retreat and that man has READ!)  I don’t know what will come next, but it probably won’t be a kidlit book. I like to change it up a lot. Fiction, nonfiction, kidlit, adult books, graphic novels/memoirs (FUN HOME turned the tide for me on those; it is so brilliant I almost can’t stand it)…

One more thing: I remember in fourth grade, my beloved Miss Ryan allowed us to go read when we were finished with our regular work. She had special places where we could read–my favorite was in a claw-footed bathtub. My second favorite was under a table that had a tablecloth draped on it. The cloth hung down to the floor on all sides so that you were in a tent. I finished Charlotte’s Web there, which was a good thing. No one could see me sobbing.

Here, at home, I like to read on my office couch, on my living room couch, and in bed. I’m trying to read on the treadmill, too, walking slowly. When the weather is good and the sun’s not too hot, I love to read on the terrace. But now I’m thinking I might make myself a little tent somewhere inside or, what would be so bad with putting lots of pillows in the less-used bathtub, and crawling in there? Photos, possibly, to come!

What is going on with you and reading these days? Please recommend books to me either by posting here, or by email, and feel free to share your reading adventures…where do you read? When? For how long every day? Do you have to put it on your to-do list now that the internet has taken over our lives?

The post Reading, reading, reading appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

But, really, this is the image I’d rather share with you:

Ok, go to Debbi’s post. You will find out more about me than you want to know. But you might get a free book. I bet I could even manage to autograph it for you. I’ll take off the mask first.

The post Win a free copy of Intentions! appeared first on Deborah Heiligman.

Feature story.

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