Week 1 of the Thalia Book Club  Camp 2011 started off  with a fun morning on the Symphony Space stage, with some games to help us get to know everyone’s names.  We talked about our favorite books — which include Harry Potter, the Pendragon series, Matilda, Kiki Strike, The Hunger Games , the Alchemist series, Breadwinner, the Maximum Ride series, the Box Car Children series, Eragon, The Penderwicks, The Golden Compass, A Mango Shaped Space, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Giver.  We gathered in mini book groups to discuss our thoughts about the books of the week.

When we got back to the camp studio, we talked a little about the week’s activiites, then we headed out to Riverside Park for lunch and a good, if brief,  game of Capture the Flag.  We also learned how to play the detective game, Mafia. 

After lunch, the highlight of the day was our visit from Adam Gidwitz, author of  A Tale Dark and Grimm.  Adam talked about the roots of fairy tales, about the Grimm Brothers who wrote in Germany 200 years ago.  Adam brought a collection containing hundreds of Grimm’s tales, which he told us are very dark and scary and bloody.  We weren’t surprised to learn that  the word for ‘grim” in German is the same as the English word  — so the Grimm Brothers seemed to have found their true calling!  Adam told us that the original of the Cinderella story is much darker than the one most of us know.  He told us that some of his Grimm tale adaptations are very faithful to the originals and some are very different.  He looked for the strangest and bloodiest Grimm tales he could find to adapt.   One of the stories in his book is based on a tale he just heard a tiny but vivid and wonderful description of — “the hero drinks in a stream and turns into a wild beast.”  He loved that snippet and wanted to imagine an entire story with that scene.  He also explained that his style of writing is to give just enough detail but not too much — so that the reader can flesh out and imagine the characters and scenes him or herself.

Adam told us that as a boy growing up in Baltimore,  he loved to tell himself stories and was constantly inventing them to entertain himself — these were the beginning of his becoming a writer.  He told us about his next book, also a fairy tale book, based on Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales.    It took him a year and a half to write A Tale Dark and Grimm and then another year for the publishing process and it will take as long for the new one, which will be called In a Glass Grimly. 

Adam described for us his writing day:  He makes toast and tea, puts on his slippers, does one hour of writing and then lies down on the couch and stares at the ceiling.  When his wife gets home from work, there he is on the couch, staring — and creating his stories in his head!

Next we learned from Adam his secrets for plotting out a story:   He explained how he structures his stories.  He begins by coming up with the characters — he emphasized that having just one or two heroes of your story is best.  Every story must have the following:  A set-up, a Catalyst, the New World, New Challenges, The Biggest Problem, All is Lost, Big Idea, The Climax and finally, the Aftermath.  We all talked through these parts of a story, using Harry Potter and other books we all knew as examples.  We agreed that most books have these elements/develop in this way.  Adam gave us a worksheet to work up examples of our own for stories we might write later in the week.  We shared some of our story ideas with the group.

Finally, Adam held us rapt, as he read us the beginning of the gruesome Grimm tale, The Juniper Tree, and then Adam, a mesmerizing storyteller, told us the rest of the story in his own words.

Before heading out into the rain, Adam signed our books, we took a group photo and we got our camp t-shirts.

See you tomorrow!

We spent the entire day today with Libba Bray, author of Going Bovine.  And what a day!  She started off telling us the answer to the question an author is inevitably asked: where do you get your ideas from?  She likened her process to the video game, Katamari, where a big, highly-adhesive ball rolls around the universe picking up random, yet important things, from thumbtacks to mountains.  If you’ve read Going Bovine, this image really makes sense.  Here are some of the images, characters,  inspirations, impulses, and wacky ideas that eventually became Going Bovine: hearing about a man from her hometown who, after exhibiting psychotic behavior, was finally diagnosed with the human variant of mad cow disease; her love of road trips and quests; reading Don Quixote again, along with other legendary road trip books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, On the Road, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Then there was the ex-boyfriend, a jazz musician, who explained jazz to her by saying “When you’re playing jazz, you can spin out and jam as much as you want.  But you always have to come back to 1, the downbeat.”  For Libba, “1″ is her story and her characters.  And that’s just a small part of the list which also included New Orleans, Disneyworld, string theory, and Norse mythology.  All of these things bubbled and percolated in her imagination until, after casually agreeing in February to submit a manuscript to a friend’s writing workshop, she was faced with writing the first draft by May 1.  She wrote the book.

Libba was then joined by Trish Parcell who has designed the covers for all of Libba’s books.  She brought in pictures of rejected covers for Going Bovine, and photo shoots for one of Libba’s other books, A Great and Terrible Beauty.  She described how a cover designer has to take direction from the publisher’s art director and their editorial director and they don’t always agree.  The author gets to have some input.  Happily, Libba and Trish have pretty much always seen eye to eye.

Libba shared the reason she likes to write for teens: those years were very significant for her.  They were fun, formative and tumultuous.  They’re inherently dramatic.  So she’s drawn to that period of life.  She also spoke about the issue of gender as a writer (Going Bovine is written from a boy’s point of view,) as well as a person.  Although her previous books have had female protagonists, she had absolutely no trouble writing from Cameron’s perspective.  Her next book, however, is about teen beauty queens!

Then we all piled into the #1 subway and went to Central Park and had lunch in Sheep’s Meadow.  There, Libba revealed a little-known document, The Complete Care Book for Miniature Invisible Flying Penguins, by Libba Bray, Penguin Authority.  This was her very first book, written in sixth grade.  A number of campers read it cover to cover and prounounced it “brilliant” and “funny.”  Clearly, Libba has always had a very healthy imagination.

 Our ultimate destination?  One of Libba’s very favorite places in New York City: the carousel.  It’s connected to the book she called her “bible’ when she was a teen, Catcher in the Rye. She insists that she gets her best ideas there.  With hope in our hearts (for great ideas,) we all mounted our steeds and whirled around to the music of the calliope. 

Back at Symphony Space, Libba confided in us that she has another muse: lollipops.  And she gave each of us one.  It worked!  We all wrote memories, poems, songs, and stories evoked by the lollipop.  This was followed by another writing activity in which the phrase “In the letter I never wrote to you, I said. . . “  Once again, the variety of responses to the one prompt was so interesting.

We had spent the whole day with Libba.  She ended her visit with a sneak peak of the beauty queen book she’s currently writing.  And we learned yet one more fascinating thing about her before she said goodbye: she’s in a rock band comprised of young adult book authors . . . of course!  Check them out at the Brooklyn Literary Festival on September 12 and at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble on September 13.  And here’s the link to the playlist from Going Bovine.  

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2009/10/book_notes_libb.html

Happy listening!

We look forward to tomorrow’s visit with Kekla Magoon, author of the powerful book, The Rock and the River, as well as to our afternoon behind-the-scenes visit to The Colbert Report.

Another amazing week at the Thalia Book Club Camp came to it’s inevitable close today.

Sad as this is for campers, counselors, and administrators alike, we were sure to go out with quite the literary bang. We started off the day with games and drama activities to prepare for a visit from Dan Poblocki, author of The Stone Child. We wrote some whacky pass-along scary stories influenced by the book before heading down to meet the author.

Mr. Poblocki talked to us all about some paranormal activities he witnessed as a young child growing up in New Jersey. These experiences clearly influenced his current writing, and the kids loved hearing about his encounters with beings from…the beyond! The room was eerily quiet as Dan spoke about The Stone Child and his other work. Despite the decidedly creepy tone of his book, Dan himself was bubbly, warm, and energetic. He asked us about any scary or paranormal experiences we have experienced, and then we wrote about them briefly and bid Mr. Poblocki farewell.

Next we had our final lunch in the park and our final (epic) game of Capture the Flag– counselors vs. campers. Even though vastly outnumbered and severely battered from a week of rough play, the counselors emerged triumphant, winning in a landslide victory against all 23 Thalia Book Club campers…kidding. The campers whooped the counselors, as per usual.

We returned anxious for the afternoon’s activities. We began our final afternoon with games on the stage– improv games, “subtext” theater games, The Big Wind Blows, and Spit, a card game absolutely dominated by our very own ninja card-handler Olivia A.

After that it was time for a well-deserved PARTAY. We ate cupcakes, fruit, and bubbly juice spritzer drinks while talking about the week and reflecting on what was truly an amazing experience. Speaking from a counselor’s point of view I can truly say with confidence that this week’s kids were an outstanding, creative, lively, wonderful bunch, and I feel lucky to have met every one of them. We proceeded to the theater for our final reading with this sentiment in our hearts, and we watched with pride as two amazing TV and movie actors, Michael Cerveris and Rita Wolf,  read the absolutely amazing writing the kids put out this week. I won’t go into too much detail, as most readers of this blog saw the reading for themselves and experienced firsthand how amazing it was. Many kids mentioned afterwards how exhilarating it is to hear their work interpreted and performed by a professional in the spirit of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts, and we are so lucky to have had this opportunity.

Finally, the farewells had to be said. There were hugs, high fives (which quickly degenerated into a series of high-jellyfishes and octopi– if you have ever picked up your child at camp you know what this means), and email exchanges, as well as pledges to return to camp next summer. We were sad to see everyone go, but also ultimately thrilled with what an amazing week it has been. We could not have had a better bunch of kids, and we are so happy to have experienced the presence of each and every one.

Look out for our posts next week on the TEEN Book Club Camp!! It should be a really exciting week.

SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER!!

-Sarah, Gwen, Sam, Madeline, Jenny, and Kathy

Note:  Check back here on Monday to see some great photos from today.