Betty Birney’s Blog

 Sorry -  I keep forgetting to allow comments and to classify my blogs - I just go too fast. I want comments so if you have any from the previous post, you can put them here. I’ll try to do better … and my apologies to those whose comments I missed in the past - that won’t happen again and I’m all caught up!

 Also, if you don’t know it, Humphrey “blogs” in his notebook on the Humphreyville page of my website. Check it out some time. He’s a pretty clever hamster and he LOVES-LOVES-LOVES riddles.

Now, read the post after this one, which is actually the post before it …. oh, I think I’ll go pack my which I have to pau $15 to check because I carry on my laptop and small projector.

See Y’all in Texas!

 And speaking of Texas, I’m still quite fond of my picture book,Tyrannosaurus Tex, which was very popular, had a long run, but went out of print last year.

 I look a little apprehensive on the first day of school. 

Well, I’m off again,  leaving tomorrow for Texas. Yee-haw!!

Like the readers of my books, my summer vacation is over and I’m heading back to school. School visits, that is. It’s a bittersweet transition for me, as it is for students and teachers alike. On the other hand, three-year old granddaughter Remy started preschool yesterday and LOVED-LOVED-LOVED it.

After a punishing travel schedule from January to June of this year, I was delighted to be home all summer!  My husband went to Massachusetts for a week to visit his sister (and see other family members), I stayed put, working on a new Humphrey book - a different kind of book, by the way.

And while I look forward to the schools, traveling won’t be quite the same. Charges for a checked bag, the airlines canceling my flights and giving me extremely inconvenient substitutes, etc. We all have to suffer.

Still, I’m always energized when I see those young faces and get to talk to teachers and media specialists and poke around school libraries.

I’m flying to Waco tomorrow and will speak at Midway Intermediate School on Friday. Then heading to Houston and The Woodlands. I will speak at The John Cooper School there on Monday but will get to spend the weekend with my cousin Linda and her family. I’ve never been to The Woodlands or to Linda and John’s house so it will be fun.

My cousins: there are eight of us - all girls! I am the second oldest. The order goes like this: Janet, Betty, Joan, Linda, Marilyn, Lynn, Chris and Anne. (Or is Lynn older than Marilyn?) Or are they the same age? (They’re pretty close.) Linda, Marilyn and Chris are sisters, Janet and I are sisters and Joan and Lynn are sisters. Anne is not only the baby but a singleton.

 I saw Anne, who lives in Atlanta, a few months ago when she was in California and cousin Joan as well - I see her the most often because she lives here in the California mountains and teaches elementary school. (Good source material there.) I saw Lynn earlier this year when her family was visiting from Spokane, WA.

A few years ago we were actually all together for a reunion and we laughed because for the first time ever, all eight of us went out without our parents. Grown-ups at last!!

So what is my favorite Louisa May Alcott title: Eight Cousins!

(But Little Women is my favorite of her books, followed by An Old Fashioned Girl.)

 Many of you students, teachers and librarians are already back in school and everybody will be back soon.

I miss that autumn transition now that I’m grown up and so are my kids. But I still feel the shift when my school visit schedule starts up again - and this time I’m hitting the road early - September 5 in Waco, TX and September 8 in The Woodlands, TX. Other stops this fall include Lincoln, NE, Vail, CO., Petaluma, CA, and Calgary, Canada.

 I get a little nostalgic about the start of school. As I wrote about last year, we’d wear our dark plaid cotton dresses, sharpen up a lot of #2 Ticonderogas and get on the bus. When I go back to visit the St. Louis suburb where I grew up, I usually swing by the high school on McKenzie Road. Just down the road is where I went to Junior High and 9th grade. It was once the high school. It’s not a school any more - just an office building - but it looks the same.

 However, I never go back to my elementary school, on the other end of McKenzie Road because it was torn down a long time ago. I guess the fact that my school is torn down makes me seem pretty darn old. The truth is, it was built in 1949 and sold in 1982 - a pretty short life for a school building. It was an office complex for a while but it was eventually demolished.

The school was built just in time to accommodate the first wave of the baby boomers. My class was always the largest class - none that came after could match the huge bubble of kids born right after the war. It was a time of recovery and a time of optimism. Men like my father and many of our neighbors had been lucky enough to survive terrible action in the war. They were determined to build families and careers and put the war behind them. All eyes were forward then.

Just as so many families are disrupted now, my father left behind a wife and two year old daughter to go to war. My mother and sister Janet rented out our house and moved in with my grandparents and aunt in the city. Imagine the joy when Dad returned home and they moved back to their own house. And then of course the best possible thing happened: I was born!

Dad, Janet, Mom - trying to put on a brave face

Mom, Janet, Grandma and me

My sister was in the first class at Reavis School and I followed a few years later. A year after Reavis opened, six rooms were added. A few years later - my second year there - a large addition was put on.

The picture of Reavis (top of page) looks odd to me because of that door on the right. I know what that room was - it was a beautiful, large classroom with big windows and even a stage. That door must lead out from it. But I never saw Reavis from this point of view. I always approached from the other side, left of this picture. If I were in a car or on the bus, we’d turn in the driveway to the left of the school. Sometimes Janet and I walked to school, taking a shortcut that brought us up behind the school, alongside the playing fields. I remember those walks when I was 6 and 7 and I can recall the route in my mind. It was a little over a mile. We also walked to the Bookmobile, next to Affton Pharmacy.

A few years back, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Bernice Hahn, was living in the same retirement community as my father. I went up to her apartment one afternoon to visit with her - she was a lovely person and I enjoyed my year in her classroom. She said that Reavis was rather shoddily built. In fourth grade, we were in a basement classroom in the new addition. She said that room had a lot of problems. The heat was in the floor, and if a crayon dropped, it melted. It didn’t bother me at all - I had a great year and a great time at good old Reavis School.

     Whew, I didn’t really intend to take a vacation from the blog but things have been quiet and I’ve been trying to make the most of it by WRITING-WRITING-WRITING. In just three weeks, the traveling begins again with a trip to Waco and The Woodlands, TX (and a chance to visit my cousin and her family). And we’re off!

Last weekend, granddaughter Remy (and family) came for dinner. I really am lazy this summer - we ordered out. Dinner was over and the grownups were still lingering around the dining table - our family’s favorite place to talk - but Remy went into the living room to play with a few ragtag toys I have left over from Walshe’s childhood. (My son, now 23.) There’s a Coca-Cola Polar Bear, a monkey from Camp Tumbleweed, where my son was a camper and later a counselor, another monkey that was a gift from my parents - kids love it because it waves its tail while its mouth moves and it chatters … and then there are the hamster and frog puppets that represent Humphrey and Og from the Humphrey series.

 I went in to see what was happening and Remy told me the distressing news: “They’re all sad.”

“What should we do to make them feel better?” I asked.

She thought they should go to bed.

So we found a throw and tucked them in together on the couch. Soon, according to Remy, they were feeling much better! And hopefully, our family sing-along around the piano helped cheer them up. I left them there all night and I can assure you, in the morning they were completely happy again.

I love children’s play. I guess that’s why I write for children. Next time I’m sad, I guess I’ll just go to bed … and hopefully wake up feeling a lot better.

New thought:

I’ve often told people that we rarely have lightning and thunder in Southern California. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen lightning in the 25-plus years I’ve lived here.

Last night, I got up around 4 (bathroom break - or is that Too Much Information?) and definitely saw lightning. I found this so unbelievable (and there was no thunder), I opened the curtains to watch and the sky was continually lit with what had to be lightning. I went back to bed and forgot about it until I heard the news today: there was a highly unusual lightning storm last night and there were over 400 strikes. At least I wasn’t dreaming.

What a lovely little lightshow, thanks to Mother Nature.

 Sometimes I feel like a little hamster spinning on my wheel, especially when I’m working on three Humphrey books at the same time. Which means I have been: writing a new Humphrey book while also:

- finishing the FINAL-FINAL-FINAL copy editing on Adventure According to Humphrey (coming out in hardcover in the US in February)

- writing the Reader’s Guide and activities for According to Humphrey (coming out in paperback in the US in January)

- and making the LAST-LAST-LAST little tweaks on Surprises According to Humphrey UK (coming to the UK this October)

- plus October is the month when the UK audio version of Friendship According to Humphrey, read by Greg Proops (see previous blogs) is released.

I can now reveal the UK Surprises cover (the purple one on top) and you can compare it to the US cover. I love them both! Humphrey’s fear of aliens and his encounter with the cat are both equally important in the book. But because the aliens may not be real, the UK designer made it a drawing - very clever.

If I could change one thing about myself, I would choose to be able to draw. My dad was a talented amateur artist (and an all-round creative person), my stepdaughters Anna and Becca are both successful professional artists/designers and my late brother-in-law Leon deLeeuw was likewise a very fine artist and art professor. Maybe we just didn’t need another artist in the family! I also tend to have friends who are artists. Mitch, Anne, Cynthia, Davis, to name a few.

Maybe it’s time for Humphrey to express his inner artist!

 For me, the very best thing about writing is on those days when I actually forget I’m writing. By that I mean, I’m so involved with the story that I’m in the action and lose the awareness that I’m outside of the story writing it. It’s a wonderful feeling, hard to describe, but exhilarating. My husband would never walk into the office without a little knock on the door -  first because he’s polite, but second, he doesn’t like to startle me. It’s like waking someone up from a dream. The knock helps. Otherwise I sort of bounce up out of my chair and go “oh!” and he knows that “oh” means I was somewhere far, far away.

But most of writing isn’t like that. It’s about details. I’ve been holed up trying to finish the first draft of a new Humphrey book. This will be a shorter chapter book with illustrations. It’s the same as the other Humphrey books but shorter - which made it a very different writing experience. Blood, sweat and tears were involved. (I finished and my editor’s reading it this weekend.)

I spent at least four days doing nothing but trying to figure out how to get Humphrey into a certain situation at a certain time safely and logically. This is always a difficulty with Humphrey because he’s a very small creature! I finally talked it over with my husband. I thought we came up with the solution, but when I sat down to write, it didn’t work.  We talked again and I got it and wrote it immediately.

I also enlisted Desi the dog for a little research - seen above. Yes, that’s a baseball cap she’s wearing. No, she’s not happy about it, which is why my husband is keeping her in place. But she didn’t argue about it either. I guess she knows research is important, too.

Even after a book is written there are more details to look after. Witness today. I get up really early, so I was at my desk at 6 am (not showered and dressed yet, but at my desk). An hour later, I got pages from my editor, Susan, about the fourth go-round of copy-editing of the next book, Adventure According to Humphrey. The bound galleys are already published but there were four or five more questions to straighten out. The Humphrey books seem to require more eagle eyes proofing them because of the way the names are written and hyphenated. Luckily, a diligent copy editor caught a few more things. I’m always soooo happy when this happens. I hate mistakes in books and I’m grateful to all those who help find and correct them.

Immediately after we straightened that out, I heard from Lucie, my copy editor at Faber, my UK publishers. Surprises According to Humphrey is coming out there  in October and there were still a few lingering issues. Actually, she was mostly answering my questions from the last round of copy editing - such as do kids in the UK understand our A,B,C system of grading and do they know the song Yankee Doodle Dandy? In both cases, they do.

Details are important. So if you think writing is just sitting in an ivory tower channeling the muse … remember Desi in her baseball cap. And yes, it is pertinent.

 Find Lisa, Lisa’s Peepy, Sally Nemeth, me (front row); Michael Reisman, Dan Santat, Mark London Williams, Sue Casey (back and center). Love the lighting!

Lisa Yee threw huge a LAYAS (Los Angeles Young Adult writers) get-together on Wednesday and it was what you’d expect when you get together a big bunch of people who spend a great deal of time alone staring at a computer: wild and crazy fun. (But as you can see, we did end up in front of the computer.) FYI, when writers get together they talk, laugh, talk, eat, get silly, talk … well, you get the idea. Two out-of-town YA writers, Julia DeVillers and Sarah Darer Littman, happened to be in town at the same time, which made it a great excuse for a party … thanks to Lisa’s generous hospitality.

And as an addendum to the last post, Greg Proops is not only the voice of Humphrey; he’s the voice of Bob the Builder in the U.S. And Bob doesn’t sound like Humphrey at all. in fact, he’s unsqueakably different.

   Bob                        Greg                           Humphrey

This morning, I got nice news from Humphrey’s UK publisher, Faber & Faber. The World According to Humphrey audiobook made the prestigious Sunday London Times pick of the best audiobooks for summer! Here’s a blurb:

Parents hoping to beguile children with fiction during long car journeys deserve stories they can enjoy, too. Kids of all ages should relish the American comedian Greg Proops reading The World According to Humphrey by Betty G. Birney. Proops gives Humphrey, the class hamster, a feisty and rather acerbic nasal whine in which he delivers sharp, funny observations on the education system and family life - and manages to get in plenty of poo jokes.

Sorry the picture I just took (above)  is so fuzzy but I tried a lot and that was the best I could do. Besides, the box is cracked. But you can see that Richard and Judy circle on the box. You never heard of Richard and Judy? Then you don’t live in the UK. They host the equivalent of the Oprah show of England and have a very popular book club. They started a children’s book club in October and Humphrey won the first round ever> The books were prominently displayed in bookstores, there was a primetime special, and forever that little logo will be on the book and audiobook. I did manage to catch the show in March when I was there and it’s a nice, relaxed talk show. In this country when I talk to Brits and mention Richard and Judy, I love the reaction. The jaw drops, the eyes widen and the person always says, “Richard and Judy are huge!” This has happened twice in the last three weeks. Actually, R&J are normal sized people - not huge at all. But they are popular.

Now, about Greg Proops. When I first heard Faber was doing audiobooks, I thought how funny it would be to hear Humphrey with an English accent. So they surprised me and used an American. Though we do make numerous manuscript changes to reflect the differences in their English and our English, everyone says Humphrey is perceived as an American. And kids there are used to American film and TV, so the accent doesn’t sound that strange.

  The voice of Humphrey at work …. when you’re recording two three-hour audiobooks, you have to protect your throat.

I was a fan of Greg Proops when he was a regular on the original improv show, Whose Line Is It Anyway, which preceded the American version. We watched it on BBC America. He’s really popular in the UK because of that show. So I was happy to learn he would be the voice of Humphrey. When I got a copy of the first disk in March, I was nervous. I’m pretty sensitive to hearing someone else read my books. I think I might be hyper-critical because for years, I directed voice-over talent for Disneyland and then the Disney Studios - radio commercials and the announcer tracks for TV commercials and theatrical trailers. I spent about half my life  in recording studios, working with such great announcers as Gene Moss, Danny Dark (both gone now, sad to say), Gary Owens of Laugh-In fame - who is still going strong- and Howard Morris, whom I enjoyed watching on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows as a very young child.

My first reaction was - oh wow, Humphrey is a man! But I listened for a minute to the “feisty and acerbic nasal whine” Greg Proops chose, and I was suddenly thinking, “Hey, this book is pretty good. It’s better than I remember!” I guess that’s about the highest praise I can give an audiobook reader. He hooked me.  And I’m glad he didn’t do a cute little hamster voice, which would have gotten on my nerves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think you can buy these audiobooks in the U.S. I guess you can go on Amazon.uk However, audible.com has a Humphrey book - I’ve just not heard it so no comment.

The Faber audiobook of Friendship According to Humphrey (also with Greg Proops) comes out in October. That’s when Surprises According to Humphrey (the book) will be released in the UK as well.

If you haven’t played the Nut-Ding game or posted a picture of your pet, you’ve got to check out the thoroughly wonderful Humphrey UK site - www.funwithhumphrey.com. The game is fun and not just for kids.

      It’s been hotter than hot here in Southern California, with the temperature edging up close to 100 every day. Before air conditioning, before inflatable wading pools were invented, we had other ways of cooling off. Here I am in the watering can at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. (I am much more modest now.) They lived on Humphrey Street in south St. Louis. That’s right. Humphrey, as in hamster.

Still, the heat hasn’t kept me inside. Yesterday morning, Frank and I went to the home of Lisa Yee (http://lisayee.com) author of Millicent Min, Girl Genius and others including her new American Girl book) for the South Pasadena Festival of Balloons parade. Lisa and husband Scott have a beautiful 100 year-old Craftsman house on the parade route with a large front yard. The food and company was so terrific (and it was so, um, warm) we watched from the shaded front porch and I didn’t take any pictures. Dumb. But I had great chats with fellow LAYAs (Los Angeles Young Adult writers) Sally Nemeth (The Heights, the Depths and Everything in Between), Michael Reisman (Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper) and Amy Goldman Koss (The Girls). Amy and I reminisced about our glory days as judges (with Lisa) in this same parade two years ago. And talked extensively also with illustrator extraordinaire, Dan Santat, and family.

Later, granddaughter Remy came over for a cookout (okay she brought her mom and dad, too). We read books and sang at the table (even though Amy Vanderbilt says that’s not polite) and had a rollicking good time. The kids had thought they could see the Studio City fireworks display at CBS Studios from our backyard. Theoretically we should be able to, but the trees are just too tall. I thought of the perfect spot to see them, so Frank drove up with them while I stayed home with Desi (dog) and listened to the fireworks. I couldn’t see a thing but I could hear them quite well! And then I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy - I love corny older films. Unabashedly.

 Tomorrow, Frank and I are going to the Music Center downtown to see A Chorus Line, which I originally saw on Broadway. At first we hadn’t opted for tickets but then I thought even though we’ve seen it before, hearing great music and seeing great dancing is not a bad way to while away a few hours. I hope it is still a singular sensation.

  READ is the current campaign for the American Library Association. But before I talk about my close encounter with a massive number of librarians, I have a question for you. 

Did you ever see the musical, Bells Are Ringing? It was a Broadway play and then a movie starring Judy Holliday (who left us far too early). There’s a number in it called “Drop That Name” and while many of the names in the song might be obscure to younger viewers, it’s extremely clever. I love blogs but I have to admit, a lot of blogging consists of dropping names and when I do it, I feel guilty.  Nevertheless, be forewarned: names will be dropped here, but you’d be amazed at what I’m leaving out! And I didn’t take pictures of myself with people because I just loved talking to them and sometimes the camera gets in the way. But the names I’m dropping are all wonderful people and many writers whose work you may or should know.

I went the ALA conference on Saturday and Sunday - my first! I really haven’t been in the book biz that long, not in comparison to my years in advertising and television. The ALA is the American Library Association and this year their huge, gala conference was in my old stomping grounds of Anaheim (I did used to work at Disneyland).

And WOW, it’s an awesome experience, roaming aisle after aisle of exhibits - not just publishers, but also people who make videos and die-cutting machines and library shelves, library benches, desks, and statues, magazines for libraries, magazines about libraries - it goes on and on! On Saturday, I just went to get my badge, get the lay of the land and also support my LAYA friends. That stands for Los Angeles Young Adult writers, a rather loose (in every way) group of local writers. Yes, folks, I went to Layapalooza!

Checking in went well because standing in back of me in line to check in were Alexis O’Neill and Joan Bransfield Graham, two other SoCal writers. (SoCal is Southern California - don’t you love the acronyms so far?) Alexis writes delectable picture books and Joan writes music-to-the-ear poetry books for young children. We had a few quibbles with the powers that be with bags and maps, etc. but Joan straightened it all out. Then, I was off to roam.

I visited the Penguin exhibit (they were hosting me for my signing on Sunday). And I dropped by the Simon and Schuster booth where I learned, to my delight, that my Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, was winging her way to Anaheim as we spoke. I ran into librarian Tracie Carignan - I had been at her library in Riverside. CA earlier in the year where she hosted me at her library and several Jurupa Unified Schools. She just sent me a GREAT poster of me with the four Seven Wonders essay contest winners which I now have framed on my wall. (See above) By chance, they were all handsome boys, and the five of us had a fabulous dinner together.

Eventually, I made it to the Layapalooza - a game show event that I didn’t participate in because I wasn’t around for the many planning and rehearsal sessions. But I volunteered myself as official photographer. I’m so glad I did - it was definitely entertaining, and the participants in the game show ended up being the likes of authors Neal Shusterman and Nancy Werlin and editor Arthur A. Levine, who has his own imprint at Scholastic and is now known as the editor who brought Harry Potter to America.

  LAYAS Amy Goldman Koss and Lisa Yee greet their adoring ALA fans!

And I got to see Caitlyn, which is always a delight.

I also cruised by to chat with Newbery winner, Susan Patron (The Higher Power of Lucky). We both had the good fortune to have Matt Phelan illustrate our books. In fact, The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs was Matt’s first book but his career took off immediately with good reason.

On Sunday, I arrived for my morning signing, which went very well. It’s GREAT-GREAT-GREAT to meet Humphrey’s varied fans. I also got to spend some quality time with Nancy Paulsen, publisher and president of Putnam’s Children’s Books.  Susan Kochan, Humphrey’s editor, wasn’t able to be there, but luckily, I was just with her in New Jersey for the awarding of the prize for the Humphrey Drawing Contest and it was a genuine pleasure to see Nancy again. Especially since she graduated from B.C. (Boston College) as did my son.

I also got to chat with the Penguin Young Reader’s Marketing Team, many of whom I met (and wined and dined with) at the Texas Library Association conference in April. And I met people from Penguin I’ve never met but have always wanted to. Definitely invigorating.

 I also ran into another of my VFWs (Very Favorite Writers) - Hope Anita Smith - a multi-talented writer and artist. Check out her website at http://hopeanitasmith.com. Twice. Okay three times we ran into each other.  Once she was with YA writer Marlene Perez, whom I’d had some chat group contact in the past. Loved our in-person chat much more!

So now, I have new writing energy … and boy do I need it!