Michael Stearns and M.T. Anderson: A love story
Thanks to Renata for teaching me how to do HTML.
Let's see if it works. Here's a few links to blogs that I read every day, because they're awesome (you can also find these links in smaller type in the left-hand column of this page):
Miss Snark. Miss Snark is an anonymous literary agent living in NYC, and her blog is hilarious regardless of whether you know or care anything about publishing or not. If sarcasm was measured in gold bars, Miss Snark would be rolling over J.K. Rowling right now.
Agent Kristin's blog. Kristin Nelson is a literary agent operating out of Denver, CO. She's from the Midwest and is a lot nicer than Miss Snark, which unfortunately makes her more boring. Her blog still has a lot of great info on it, though.
Jenny Rappaport's blog. Jenny is an agent working for the L. Perkins Literary Agency. She's more my age and has some interesting posts every once in awhile. Her blog is nothing if not honest.
The Rejecter. This is the blog of a literary agent's assistant who goes by the handle Rejecter. S/he (I think she's a female) boasts about how she instantly rejects 95% of the query letters she receives. Ouch.
raleva31 is Rachel Vater, a fantastic and fantastically nice literary agent with Lowenstein-Yost Associates. She occasionally runs something she calls the Query X Workshop, where she critiques samples of manuscripts sent in by blog readers. This is how I (very luckily) got my query letter and first pages evaluated by her a month or so ago.
Now that those links are out of the way, let me take the time to dote upon two of my all-time favorite children's-bookish celebrities, Michael Stearns and Tobin (M.T.) Anderson.
I first read M.T. Anderson's book Whales on Stilts! about a year and a half ago, and fell in love with it instantly. Not since I was little had I felt such intense, extreme love for a book. Whales on Stilts!, for me, embodies everything that is right with America, purely because it proved to me that American authors do exist who can be as funny or funnier than British authors. I had thought previously that such a thing was impossible-- the only American writer I had ever found who I kind of sort of thought was approaching Brit-funny levels was Lemony Snicket.
And that is why I am in love with M.T. Anderson... because he wrote a book that I love as much as I love Roald Dahl books, and because, for the first (and possibly last) time EVER, he forced me to slash a dividing line in my Favorite Authors category, so that it changed from the simple Favorite Author: Roald Dahl to Favorite Author (Dead): Roald Dahl, and Favorite Author (Living): M.T. Anderson.
In my thirst for more information about M.T. Anderson (I had never heard of him before picking up Whales on Stilts! at the library), I discovered that he taught writing at an MFA program, which I applied to immediately and was just as immediately cruelly rejected from, but that's a story for another day. The important part is that I also discovered that he had written several other books, all of which were thoroughly amazing (not as amazing as Whales on Stilts!, however).
To bring the M.T. Anderson leg of this love story race to an end, suffice it to say that my Whales on Stilts! mania has not ebbed in the least and that I have been known to read the book serially to friends as a bedtime story, to draw overly dramatic pictorial renditions of whales on stilts as summer camp fingerpaintings or notebook doodles, and to receive my own genuine mini-replica of actual whales on actual stilts as a one-year anniversary present from Rup, the best boyfriend in the world (replica can be seen here).
Now, Michael Stearns. Michael Stearns is the Editorial Director of HarperCollins Children's Books and also the Editor of my Dreams, for almost more reasons than I can count. I met him at the SCBWI-Iowa conference in the late half of October and immediately thought he was awesome, although couldn't figure out why. He was funny, and cynical, and I liked his attitude and everything he said, but even all of that couldn't justify why I felt he was so utterly amazing. Finally, on Saturday morning of the conference, he gave a talk entitled "The HarperCollins Difference," and I found out why he was so awesome.
First, he mentioned something he liked particularly in books, something that he termed the 'WTF factor.' I nearly did a double-take at his overhead pen markings at this point, because not a week before that I had been doing research for my fellowship and trying to put names to the things I liked most in children's books, and one of the phenomenon names that I came up with that I liked the most was something I had called the 'WTF factor.' Brilliant. Michael Stearns and I were on the same wavelength! THAT must have been why I liked him so much!
But no. To help us better understand the 'WTF factor,' he said, he was going to show us some examples of first pages from books he had edited in the past. Okay. I semi-zoned out at that point because the first few pages he showed were not, in my opinion, all that interesting. But then he put up a first page that I recognized immediately.
That page was from (you guessed it!) Whales on Stilts! I gasped audibly when I saw it (much louder than I meant to), causing weird looks to arrive from my few surrounding neighbors. I listened to Michael Stearns talk about the book that is tied for my favorite book of all time (with Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and I was mesmerized. Of course I liked him. He had edited Whales on Stilts! The man was astounding. He loved all of the same things that I loved in books. THAT was why I liked him so much.
Michael Stearns went on to show a sample page from one of Bruce Hale's Chet Gecko mysteries, another series of books that I love more than most small children or types of chocolate. After I had my manuscript critique with him and he told me that someday I would have to meet Tobin Anderson, I knew that it was forever: forever would I be destined to love these two men, Michael Stearns and Tobin Anderson, who both have awesome spilling out from their socks and hobo gloves and who have both made me want to toil around the clock to become the very best children's book author that I can ever possibly be.
Let's see if it works. Here's a few links to blogs that I read every day, because they're awesome (you can also find these links in smaller type in the left-hand column of this page):
Miss Snark. Miss Snark is an anonymous literary agent living in NYC, and her blog is hilarious regardless of whether you know or care anything about publishing or not. If sarcasm was measured in gold bars, Miss Snark would be rolling over J.K. Rowling right now.
Agent Kristin's blog. Kristin Nelson is a literary agent operating out of Denver, CO. She's from the Midwest and is a lot nicer than Miss Snark, which unfortunately makes her more boring. Her blog still has a lot of great info on it, though.
Jenny Rappaport's blog. Jenny is an agent working for the L. Perkins Literary Agency. She's more my age and has some interesting posts every once in awhile. Her blog is nothing if not honest.
The Rejecter. This is the blog of a literary agent's assistant who goes by the handle Rejecter. S/he (I think she's a female) boasts about how she instantly rejects 95% of the query letters she receives. Ouch.
raleva31 is Rachel Vater, a fantastic and fantastically nice literary agent with Lowenstein-Yost Associates. She occasionally runs something she calls the Query X Workshop, where she critiques samples of manuscripts sent in by blog readers. This is how I (very luckily) got my query letter and first pages evaluated by her a month or so ago.
Now that those links are out of the way, let me take the time to dote upon two of my all-time favorite children's-bookish celebrities, Michael Stearns and Tobin (M.T.) Anderson.
I first read M.T. Anderson's book Whales on Stilts! about a year and a half ago, and fell in love with it instantly. Not since I was little had I felt such intense, extreme love for a book. Whales on Stilts!, for me, embodies everything that is right with America, purely because it proved to me that American authors do exist who can be as funny or funnier than British authors. I had thought previously that such a thing was impossible-- the only American writer I had ever found who I kind of sort of thought was approaching Brit-funny levels was Lemony Snicket.
And that is why I am in love with M.T. Anderson... because he wrote a book that I love as much as I love Roald Dahl books, and because, for the first (and possibly last) time EVER, he forced me to slash a dividing line in my Favorite Authors category, so that it changed from the simple Favorite Author: Roald Dahl to Favorite Author (Dead): Roald Dahl, and Favorite Author (Living): M.T. Anderson.
In my thirst for more information about M.T. Anderson (I had never heard of him before picking up Whales on Stilts! at the library), I discovered that he taught writing at an MFA program, which I applied to immediately and was just as immediately cruelly rejected from, but that's a story for another day. The important part is that I also discovered that he had written several other books, all of which were thoroughly amazing (not as amazing as Whales on Stilts!, however).
To bring the M.T. Anderson leg of this love story race to an end, suffice it to say that my Whales on Stilts! mania has not ebbed in the least and that I have been known to read the book serially to friends as a bedtime story, to draw overly dramatic pictorial renditions of whales on stilts as summer camp fingerpaintings or notebook doodles, and to receive my own genuine mini-replica of actual whales on actual stilts as a one-year anniversary present from Rup, the best boyfriend in the world (replica can be seen here).
Now, Michael Stearns. Michael Stearns is the Editorial Director of HarperCollins Children's Books and also the Editor of my Dreams, for almost more reasons than I can count. I met him at the SCBWI-Iowa conference in the late half of October and immediately thought he was awesome, although couldn't figure out why. He was funny, and cynical, and I liked his attitude and everything he said, but even all of that couldn't justify why I felt he was so utterly amazing. Finally, on Saturday morning of the conference, he gave a talk entitled "The HarperCollins Difference," and I found out why he was so awesome.
First, he mentioned something he liked particularly in books, something that he termed the 'WTF factor.' I nearly did a double-take at his overhead pen markings at this point, because not a week before that I had been doing research for my fellowship and trying to put names to the things I liked most in children's books, and one of the phenomenon names that I came up with that I liked the most was something I had called the 'WTF factor.' Brilliant. Michael Stearns and I were on the same wavelength! THAT must have been why I liked him so much!
But no. To help us better understand the 'WTF factor,' he said, he was going to show us some examples of first pages from books he had edited in the past. Okay. I semi-zoned out at that point because the first few pages he showed were not, in my opinion, all that interesting. But then he put up a first page that I recognized immediately.
That page was from (you guessed it!) Whales on Stilts! I gasped audibly when I saw it (much louder than I meant to), causing weird looks to arrive from my few surrounding neighbors. I listened to Michael Stearns talk about the book that is tied for my favorite book of all time (with Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and I was mesmerized. Of course I liked him. He had edited Whales on Stilts! The man was astounding. He loved all of the same things that I loved in books. THAT was why I liked him so much.
Michael Stearns went on to show a sample page from one of Bruce Hale's Chet Gecko mysteries, another series of books that I love more than most small children or types of chocolate. After I had my manuscript critique with him and he told me that someday I would have to meet Tobin Anderson, I knew that it was forever: forever would I be destined to love these two men, Michael Stearns and Tobin Anderson, who both have awesome spilling out from their socks and hobo gloves and who have both made me want to toil around the clock to become the very best children's book author that I can ever possibly be.