A few weeks ago, a writer friend asked if I would be interested in doing a workshop at an emergency center for kids. The organization is called Kids in Crisis, whose mission is “to protect, infants, children, and teens from abuse and family crisis. To this end we provide free, round-the-clock crisis intervention, counseling and emergency shelter, prevention programs in local communities and advocacy throughout Connecticut.”

I said I would.

Writing is such a huge and many-faceted topic, as minute and detailed in its nuances as any subject can be, and yet I imagine that writers are often so involved in the day to day and sometimes frantic workings of whatever stories they are working on that they may not think about how basic a human activity it is. Even a mundane task like helping to clean out my mother-in-law’s house showed me that writing is a normal function of a normal life. She wrote (and saved) countless notes, letters, greeting cards, postcards, diaries, and journals from the 1930s on, without ever thinking of herself as a “writer.” And that’s the beauty of the craft and art of writing. The universality of it — the great spectrum of words from grocery lists to The Sound and the Fury — creates and founds the audience for serious writing, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and all words we hold dear.

When the representative of Kids in Crisis (let’s call him Chad because that’s his name) called on Tuesday to touch base before the Thursday workshop, I had to admit that deadlines had prevented me from doing much preparation, but that I would. He encouraged me, Chad did, to think about basic activities to get the group warmed up about writing and stories. Some of the kids, he warned me, may not exactly want to be at the workshop. They were residents at the house, and would be there for a little while or a longer time as they awaited transfer to a more permanent place for them. I was to imagine that the kids had been taken from abusive situations or homes in some sort of crisis.

Chad said I might find a way to draw them in, but shouldn’t be alarmed if they didn’t participate. Okay. Sounds like my house. Taking a clue from Dickens, who used to organize his talks with several points, which he would tick off, finger by finger, as he delivered them, I decided to divide the 45-minute session into five or six parts, knowing that if one brainy idea was falling flat, or I was dying a bad comic’s death, I could bounce along to the next topic without a tragic loss of dignity. I was armed with MapQuest directions, a healthy amount of material (and who is the writer who can’t fall back on talking for days about his work?), a gentle forewarning, and a stack of books to give out, should all else fail.

As it collected itself this afternoon, the group consisted of seven kids, joined later by an eighth, ranging from 13 to 17, mixed boys and girls. Chad tried, like a warmup comic, to get them settled and into place, then I came in. I had a thought to enter doing a pratfall to break the ice, but thought better of it. The kids were alert and smiling, mostly. One head was on the table. A girl yawned into her arm. Hi. Hi. And we began.

I started with the idea of control. You know that life is messy, incomplete, things don’t go the way you want, things don’t go at all, but writing — besides being a way to put all those things down on paper (or in blogs) — is a tool of control. You can shape your words and the stories they form. If you can’t govern your life, you can govern at least one thing when you write: you control your story; and that means controlling its characters, where it goes, what happens from first line to last. I wanted to make this basic, so didn’t talk about all the times that’s not quite true (characters who thumb their nose at you, etc.). The first question: describe yourself in a single word as you are right now. Second question: describe the person you want to be. The point? These words are the beginning an end of the story. What comes in between? How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? The answer to those questions become the roadmap of the story. Life is a journey; so is writing. Basic point.

Next, I told absurd stories which were meant to be bad and incomplete. What was wrong with them? One had no character, another no setting, a third had a character and a setting, but no problem to activate that character. We had a buoyant time coming up with silly and serious problems to give the story what it needed. A younger boy, F., shared his process, which was to create pictures and let others take the story from them. Simple and profound. (Thanks, F, for the take home.) All in all, this was a good activity and could have gone further, but I felt we could do more if we moved on.

Favorite movies. What is your favorite movie and can you tell me at least one character, setting, and problem faced by that character. I was thinking, naturally, of Gone with the Wind or Chinatown, or even The Dark Knight, but the movies the kids mentioned (none of which I heard of because I am of a certain age) worked just as well. (Note: know movies kids see if you plan to do this on a long-term basis; you’ll know more about your workshop participants.) The idea was relate the kids’ enthusiasms to the concept of how a story is constructed and how it works.

I talked a little about the idea of memory and how it can inspire you to write. This was a bit prickly because a childhood memory for me is a quite different animal from whatever has sent these kids to the group home. I wanted to make the point that storytelling moves on from memory and fact to create something new. This didn’t work. It was too involved an idea and not helpful.

To end, I set up the story that today is Thursday (which it is, as I write this) and that The Big Event is happening on Saturday. And we are characters in this story. First of all, what is the event? Several ideas from a summer jam to meeting the president to going to Hershey Park. Second, what happens to us between now and Saturday. And that is our story. Simple enough. Insightful suggestions. You find out the big event is scheduled at the same time as your grandma’s birthday party. (Thank you, A., for that one!) What do you do? Blow off granny? Or tell the prez sorry, maybe next time? Another suggestion, you break your leg; now what do you do? That could be comical. Or not. Aliens attack. There’s always that possibility. The president is . . . missing (see, kids, I changed that one). Now, getting from here-and-now to there-and-then becomes the texture, and the structure, of our story. And . . . time’s up. The kids had to go to their next session or class or activity and I was gone.

It was great for me, a stretch, a re-evaluation, a confirmation, a bare peek into the lives of children with things happening I couldn’t begin to imagine, but who had what every child has, the thing you see when you look into their eyes and find another human being. For them it was little enough in their cloudy day to hear an old guy blab about stories; for me it was something new, and that, along with everything else I took away but haven’t yet understood, is good.

. . . in paper, that is. For the past few weeks, my desk has been in the deep end of the pool. Multiple deadlines for two series kept me hopping from one book to another, from a first draft of the third book of a new series (The Haunting of Derek Stone) to the copyedit of the 39th book of another series (The Secrets of Droon), from an outline of the 40th book to the second draft of the third book and the outline of the fourth, and so on.

Besides that, I had interview questions to answer (for the weblog Cynsations; an absolute delight, by the way — questions make you think!), a deadline to read and judge some 20 short stories in a local fiction contest, follow up communications stemming from the recent ALA (see below), and a desperate attempt to finish reading a book before my willpower died (finally did; Other Voices, Other Rooms; a stunning first novel). To boot, I’m late with just about everything, because as I get older I find I write more slowly. Not to break the water imagery (water, which seeks it’s own level), my work expands to fill the time available to do it. Honestly, it has been something on the order of: If this is Tuesday it must be Panjibarrh. If this is Wednesday, I’m in Baton Rouge. My head is spinning, and that’s an unattractive sight at the best of times. On the other hand, keeping busy these days is a blessing.

My series editors have been great, extending deadlines a few days here, a few days there. What I’m really risking, however, are the ten days I had long ago planned to work on a couple of longer books that, while not contracted, every once in a while my hardcover editor asks me about. Those of you with more or less flexible schedules — writers, for instance — know that a calendar is an essential tool, but that, ahem, dates are often written in water. They ebb and flow. They drift. They slide. They vanish under the waves of work. So the two week window starting this past Monday that I’d carved out way back last fall (when I got my two-series publishing schedule), are now down to three days next week. Or two, if I take any longer writing this, so I’ll have to cut this week’s Friday Book Report to a smidgen. Or a smidge. A smid. I gotta go.

In this first entry of the Appreciations column, I suppose I should admit that I read very little children’s literature. I try to read books by my friends, but even then I find my tastes are extremely narrow (psychotically so), and I have so little actual time to read, and I am such a slow reader, that giving up happens more easily than it should. Part of me thinks (and this may seem snobby, but it’s so often a matter of the time allowed to us in a day, a week, or a month) that one should be reading the really fine writers — of all eras — because, in addition to their superior art, they have the most to teach one about the craft and art of writing. To be crude about it, it’s hard to spend what little time you have reading something that will give you neither enjoyment nor tips about how to write better. That may sound bad in any number of ways, but I’ll elaborate later.

Except for this: there is a time and a place for wide reading in the literature. In the beginning of your time as a writer for younger readers, you will want to read as many children’s books as you can. You need to know the market. Novelist and teacher Patricia Reilly Giff emphasizes this strongly as one of the first prerequisites of having a shot at being published. Know the field. Know it.

That being said, however, of the few children’s books I have read recently, I have to make special mention of Bird Lake Moon (Greenwillow, 2008) by Kevin Henkes. Henkes (pronounced HENK - essss, I believe, but don’t quote me) is an excellent illustrator, having a huge body of picture books to his name, both written and illustrated by, and just illustrated by. Kitten’s First Full Moon won the Caldecott Medal in 2005.

That makes it all the more remarkable (to me) that not only does he write novels for young readers, but his novels are vastly better written than most. These books, including the Newbery Honor winner Olive’s Ocean, were obviously not published as a courtesy in acknowledgment of his success in illustration. No. The guy is a writer who can draw. Puts non-hyphenates to shame, he does.

The plot revolves around the boys in two families who summer in neighboring cottages at a place called Bird Lake. Big things are going on for both boys, Mitch and Spencer. Each is suffering — Mitch because of his parents’ impending breakup, Spencer with the memory of a drowned brother. What I love is that Henkes has written these boys not as characters, not dripping with metaphor, but as real people, making their fairly simple story both a lively and deep meditation about the place of loss and longing in our lives. Ultimately, Bird Lake Moon is a book about the things that happen in boys’ heads. Henkes has a deep and humorous feel for the thickets of thought, and a very fine way with word and mood. A first-rate book, that has me searching the stores for his past novels and awaiting his next with anticipation.

Writing, reading, and publishing — for children — are the stuff of life for me, and I want to use the Friday Book Report to discuss topics that writers, readers, and publishers, as well as parents, classroom and reading teachers, school and public librarians, and anyone else who loves children’s books might find interesting. Comments are welcome. Feel free to be provocative; a lively discussion is the best kind.

Because I have a trainload of writing to do every day or the schedules topple, I thought a weekly blog might be the ticket. Of course, if something comes along that is more urgent, I’ll post more frequently, but the idea is that you can (if you want) at least count on there being something new on Fridays. You know, like the PW Children’s Newsletter comes on Thursdays (free; you should subscribe if you don’t already).

Some completely random stuff might creep in, too. Like new books I’ve read, or some old ones about which there is something to say. I also have an idea to write up what I call The Week That Was, a sort of diary of the business of writing and what happens from day to day at my desk (poor, overburdened thing that it is).

Then there is what I’m going to call Appreciations. These will be little essays about some books and authors I just can’t keep quiet about. I’ll share the reasons why I am nuts about them. Some will be topical; others decidedly not.

HOWEVER . . . to begin, I want to say a few words about the American Library Association annual meeting that just wound up. It took place in the sensory overload capital of the world, Disneyland. “Ahna—HEIM! Ahna—HEIM!” as my cabdriver described it. For four days (6/27 to 6/30), I was the guest of Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers. My lovely editor, Alvina Ling, and crew (names named below) brought me out to read and sign my novel, The Postcard. Their Fiction Lunch on Saturday hosted between forty and fifty librarians, media specialists, book lovers, and committee members. There were some good folks there, including fellow Ohioan Floyd Dickman.

Wendy Mass (Every Soul a Star) and Paul Feig (Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut) were fellow authors. Victoria Stapleton, Little, Brown’s supremely able and quietly hilarious library conference manager told us we each had — and I quote — “three to five minutes” to convince these folks how indispensable our books are. Quietly hilarious, indeed. Paul, Wendy, and I wept inwardly, flipping through pages to try to find the — what? — nine or ten words that would sum up our work. As I was set to go first (was it alphabetical?) I tried to make the case that I heard “three to five minutes” as “thirty-five minutes”, but alas, Victoria is nothing if not precise. To sum up, I took longer than either three or five minutes, sacrificing myself on the altar of duty, so that my fellow writers could take as much time as they needed. Much fun was had by all. Plus the food was darn good.

There was more, but I’ll wait until another Friday Book Report to get into it all. Among these things: the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet, the exhibit hall, the palm trees, incessant easy listening soundtrack, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.

Many thanks, first of all to my editor, Alvina, who said the loveliest things about the vague stuff I told her about the book I was writing. Then there is Victoria, who made sure that my flight, hotel, food, and fun were looked after, and, hilariously, they were. Also, my guide and good sport, Melanie Chang, the legendary Megan Tingley, new mom Andrea Spooner (what a cool name), Andrew Smith (he of the sardonic humor), and Jennifer Hunt, editor of good books I have not written.

Among the personages I met: Pat Carman (of Atherton and Elyron), Michael Emberley, Ed Young (Wabi Sabi), Edel Rodriguez (Sergio Makes a Splash), the aforementioned Wendy and Paul, of course, and then, bow down now all, Christopher Paul Curtis, whose novels are quite good indeed. Saw Peter Sis, for whom I have got THE project, if there were world enough and time.

And speaking of world enough and time, mine’s run out. Until next week . . .