The balance of the 2012 Stonewalls is a decided improvement. Taking the top award was Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy, by Bil Wright, features an Hispanic gay male protagonist, and the author is himself African-American.

Taking honors were Money Boy, by Paul Yee, about a gay, Asian-Canadian young man; Pink, by Lili Wilkinson, about a lesbian-identified white girl questioning her sexuality once again; a + e 4ever, by I. Merey, a graphic novel (!) about a girl and a boy experiencing the fluidity of gender and sexuality; and with or without you, by Brian Farrey, which does feature white gay protagonists.

So, yes: a much broader representation of ethnicity, gender, and orientation. I still feel like lesbian/queer girl lit was underrepresented, but what I’m going to take issue with now is the prevalence of all-lowercase book titles — two out of five, really? Just kidding. Sort of.

I like to see how the Stonewall Awards overlap with the annual Rainbow List, which is chosen by ALA’s GLBT Round Table. The Rainbow List is a more or less comprehensive list of LGBTQ books published for children and young adults, and they star ten titles as being the most distinguished.

This year, the honored titles were I Am J, by Cris Beam; Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray; Brooklyn, Burning, by Steve Brezenoff; Sister Mischief, by Laura Goode; Huntress, by Malinda Lo; Shine, by Lauren Myracle; Donovan’s Big Day, by Leslea Newman; She Loves You, She Loves You Not, by Julie Anne Peters; Gemini Bites, by Patrick Ryan; and Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy, by Bil Wright.

That’s one overlapping title. One. (Note to self: read that book, already!) This is how committees work, folks, and why we should not get overly bent out of shape when good books slip through a crack. Hopefully they’ll get caught in another and find the love they deserve.

As last year, I find the Rainbow List to be very nicely balanced. I Am J and Beauty Queens feature trans characters; Beauty Queens, Sister Mischief, Huntress, Donovan’s Big Day, and She Loves You, She Loves You Not feature queer girl characters. White characters dominate, though the books do include queer Hispanic and Asian characters, plus the main character of Sister Mischief is Jewish. (And I haven’t read all the books, so it’s likely I’m missing details here.)

Looking at both lists, I’m pleasantly surprised: there actually was a pretty good crop of LGBTQ books for kids and teens last year. Did they make up a minute percentage of all the kids’ and YA books published? Heck yeah. But all I have to do is go back in time to high school, and I’m impressed once again by how far things have come.

Of course, I’m interested to know what the 2013 lists will look like. Already, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, by emily danforth (seriously: capitals, folks!), is garnering starred reviews, and I imagine it’ll walk away with some awards. Then there’s my book, Starting from Here, due out in the fall. Our fellow debut authors Elissa J. Hoole and E. M. Kokie will also be adding to the canon with Kiss the Morning Star and Personal Effects, respectively. Julie Anne Peters has a new one coming out this spring.

And you better believe I’ll have my eyes peeled for more. Let me know if you’ve got a hot tip!

But this year, for whatever reason, I ended up with three:

1. Wash dishes within a day of dirtying them. Dishes are my least favorite chore because they always need to be done, and without growing science projects in the sink I must do them promptly. Also, I have very little counter space in which to accumulate them. #1 downfall of this apartment = no dishwasher, in case you were wondering.

2. Write every day. It’s how I wrote my first (terrible) novel when I was fifteen, and it’s how I wrote the novel that landed me my agent, and it’s how I wrote Starting from Here. Even if it’s just a couple of notebook pages or an hour of revisions, write.

This past fall, especially as holiday season began, I fell out of the habit. It’s very easy to go from writing every day to writing almost every day, and from there it’s even easier to write most days and then some days, and pretty soon you’re lucky if you sit down once a week.

So, I’ve been reclaiming my writing time. The biggest step was to start setting my alarm for 6:30 a.m. I’m much better at daily writing in the spring and summer, because my eyelids flip open of their own accord at 5:30. In the fall and winter, I’m more inclined to roll out of bed when the sun seeps into my bedroom at 7:30. The flip side of getting up at 6:30 is that I need to make sure I’m in bed, falling asleep, at 10:30 sharp. No more staying up watching those last twenty minutes of Stephen Fry in America or Dollhouse. They must wait.

3. Moisturize.

(Was that anticlimactic?)

There are other habits I’d like to sustain throughout 2012: go to the dog beach at least once a week with Saffy, get back into crochet and other crafty activities, eat less spaghetti. But for now, these are the three promises I’m willing to make.

It’s Day 11 of the 13 Days of Doctor Who blog hop! Whether you arrived here via Ryann Murphy’s post about the music of Doctor Who or by some other means, welcome. Be sure to comment to be eligible for two fantastic prizes!

Must Love Doctor Who: An Open Letter to Potential Companions

Hey, you: lattegrrl75, k1ttyl0v3r, twizzlerama, reading my profile, deciding whether I’m cute and clever enough to message. You love baking cookies and downhill skiing, hoppy beers and unagi, Amélie and Haruki Murakami, not to mention solving crossword puzzles on rainy Sunday mornings whilst wearing flannel pajamas and fuzzy bunny slippers…but do you love Doctor Who?

I’m sure you’ve gotten an earful of online dating advice. Stick to the positives. Write in actual words rather than LOLZ. Be honest, be funny, and, for the love of Clom, don’t mention your exes. And remember: some Cybermen are best left in the closet.

But I refuse to conceal my fondness for the Doctor. Why admit something so geeky on my profile? It’s like the Eleventh Doctor and his precious bow ties. He’ll never stop wearing them, insisting, with just a hint of defensiveness, that they’re cool. If you can’t respect my Whovianism, I’ll tell you right now: mutual passion for fish fingers and custard or no, we’re going no-where, no-when.

Now, maybe you haven’t met the Doctor yet. That’s okay. No one is born knowing that 900-year-old, double-hearted, universe-saving Time Lord from Gallifrey. I’d never heard of him before college, when I made a friend who wore a Tom Baker scarf and a Dalek T-shirt, and it was years later that I met the Ninth Doctor and began working my way through the rest of the show.

So, before you click that button to message me (because, after all, I am extremely cute and clever), watch a few episodes. Try the gripping, creepy, and ultimately joyful duet of “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances,” or “Blink,” a mind-bending, breath-taking thriller. Or perhaps the first episode with the Ninth Doctor, “Rose”—the episode where I first stepped into the TARDIS for myself.

See, Doctor Who fans aren’t merely viewers; they’re the Doctor’s Companions, adventuring through the universe across time and space as surely as Rose and Mickey, Martha and Donna, Amy and Rory. The TARDIS has room aboard for you, too—trust me: it’s bigger on the inside—if you can meet a few simple conditions.

Strange people and places should excite you, rather than frighten or bore you. You should enjoy having silly conversations and solving mysteries and pondering big questions. You must not be afraid to be ridiculous. And you should believe people can rise above greed and violence, selfishness and apathy, to create a better universe.

I guess you could say I’m looking not for a companion, but rather for a Companion, in the Whovian sense. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trapped in a banal, soul-sucking job like Rose or Donna, or whether you’ve nearly lost hope of regaining the magic and wonder you experienced as a child, like Amy. What matters is that if the Doctor suddenly appeared in his blue box and unfolded the universe at your feet, you’d go with him. Because that’s what I want: a Companion to have adventures with, across time and space.

So, watch Doctor Who, and ask yourself: are you Companion material? If so, fantastic! Brilliant! Allons-y!

But if not, don’t bother writing, no matter how cute and clever you are. It’ll never happen between us—unless the Daleks have exterminated everyone in the universe but you and me.

And even then, probably not.

Fantastic Prizes!

Grand Prize Drawing

For the grand prize, The Complete Sixth Series on DVD, please leave a comment with your name and email address. You may enter once at every stop on the blog tour for a total of thirteen chances. The grand prize giveaway is limited to the US and Canada, due to regional restrictions on the DVD. Entries will be accepted until midnight CST on December 24th. Erica and Eliza will post the winner on December 25th and notify the winner via email.

ETA: Grand Prize Winner
Erica reports that the grand prize winner is Mrs. S, who commented on Phoebe North’s post about the Doctor as an anti-hero.

Bonus Raffle

Commenters on this post will also be entered to win a signed copy of The Wee Free Men: The Beginning, by Terry Pratchett. This paperback volume collects the first two Tiffany Aching adventures, The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, about a gutsy young witch who falls in with a clan of drinkin’, fightin’, stealin’ folk known as the Nac Mac Feegle. If you love Doctor Who, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the excitement and humor of Sir Terry’s Disc World. Shipping is limited to USPS. Contest closes at midnight CST on December 27th. I will post the winner on December 28th and notify the winner via email.

ETA: Bonus Raffle Winner
The random number generator has spoken! Saskia is the winner of the bonus raffle.

Next Stop!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to visit Pamala Knight’s blog next for her discussion of Neil Gaiman and the allegory of the TARDIS! And if you’ve missed any stops along the way, consult the blog hop’s Wibbly Wobbly Schedule.

*13 Days of Doctor Who banner by Studio D

Peace Cabin at Stargazen Women's Retreat. The owners kindly cut me a deal on rent since it was the off-season.

This was my second personal retreat of this nature. The previous one was a six-day stint at SuBAMUH in southeastern Ohio, two years ago. Six days in near-solitude turned out to be on the long side for me, so this time I tried four days at Stargazen Women’s Retreat. I think next time I’d split the difference. Considering travel time and settling-in time, four days didn’t feel like quite enough.

Peace Cabin, from the inside. Bed, couch, kitchenette... just about everything but running water.

I totally lucked out in terms of the weather. All week, it was sunny and in the 70s. It could have proved distracting, but I managed to stay more or less on task. There was a big, grassy hill near my cabin where I took my notebook, my books, my guitar, and even my laptop to work and rejuvenate. Spending hours undisturbed in the warm sun, in October no less, made the retreat worthwhile right there.

Squirrel outside my window. I eventually saw some deer, too, farther off in the woods.

My goals for the retreat were basic: to get away from my regular day-to-day life (especially that great time-waster, the Internet) and work on my current writing project. When I set more specific goals, I find I constantly have to reevaluate and revise them. It takes longer than I thought to write a scene; I thought I could plow ahead with the plot, but it turns out I need to go back and revise first; etc.

And spending several hours per day writing, rather than my usual one or two, forces me to confront problems that I may otherwise spend days dancing around. On this retreat, I discovered that something I’d considered a central plot point late in the story just didn’t make sense; the story as I was writing it did not lead to that place. It was time for me to stop trying to force it and accept that the characters had other plans.

Another view from my window. I was the only person on retreat that week, so mainly I saw a lot of trees.

I went a full 48 hours without human interaction, but I broke from my retreat one afternoon to meet up with Julie Bowe, fellow writer, Chudney Agency client, and friend. We met up at Norske Nook, a Scandinavian restaurant known for its pies. They didn’t disappoint. I tried lefse (“Norwegian burrito!” Julie said), the sour cream raspberry pie, and locally made root beer—yum. Even better was the conversation with Julie.

Today's specials: Julie Bowe and me at Norske Nook.

When and where will I retreat again? I don’t know. The larger question for me, as I think it is for anyone who’s been on retreat, is how to carry home the openness, reflection, and diligence I experienced in the woods and not to slip back into the day-to-day. I fear it’s already too late—that it was too late the minute I walked back into my apartment and checked my Facebook account—but it’s something to strive for.

Arguably we’re in constant transition as the Earth circles the sun, yet winter and summer somehow feel like destinations, as concrete as Breckinridge or the Bahamas. Spring and fall are the journeys between.

Transitions are exciting. They spark the imagination. Hopes and fears flare as vividly as the leaves of a sugar maple a week past the autumnal equinox.

Everything is certain at the extremes of the year. We are guaranteed sweltering heat and humidity in July, ice, snow, and bitter wind in January. But in spring and fall, each day is a question. Will it be T-shirt or sweatshirt weather? Will I need my sunglasses, umbrella, scarf—or all three? Will today bring green buds to the trees, or will those same leaves, now brittle and brown, finally fall?

This fall seems to be full of transitions in my personal life, as well. My supervisor is retiring, and I wonder who will replace her. (I’m not applying for her position, but I’m on the interview committee.) I’m hoping to adopt a dog soon; it’s been four months since Carly died. But when and how will I find the right companion?

I’m struggling with transitions in my writing, too. This summer I finished a major revision of a “new” project, and now I’m waiting to find out if my editor wants it. It’s hard shifting gears to work on something else. I’m free; I can do anything. The possibilities are tantalizing yet also overwhelming.

But today, I put aside my hopes and fears for a while to journey around town and enjoy the fall splendor. To appreciate the “getting there” without worrying about where “there” is.

I’ve varied the series format a bit from year to year: the number and length of sessions, the age of the kids, the activities, the amount of free time. My modifications are based on lessons learned the year before—lessons learned the hard way. This year went fairly smoothly, though. I’ll still have some lessons to apply next summer, but there were also some things that really worked.

Program Format

Kids had to be entering grades 3 and up. Due to self-selection, the oldest were entering 6th. I capped registration at 30 and set up the room with tables and chairs for 24. Attendance on any given week never exceeded this number.

We had four weekly meetings during the month of July. Each meeting was 90 minutes long. The first 30 to 40 minutes, we did some kind of group activity or writing game. Then kids worked independently. Once they were busy, I called tables up to get a snack. The snacks were simple, if not the most healthy: white corn chips, unsalted pretzels, sandwich cookies, and water. The chips were most popular.

The last 5 to 10 minutes were reserved for cleanup and, on some days, sharing. I had mixed feelings about the sharing. Some kids were eager to share, but I had trouble getting the rest of the class to listen. This is why I’m not a teacher.

Writing Games

The best activities, I found, were the ones that got kids interacting with each other and sometimes even moving around a bit. Ninety minutes is a long time to be sitting and working alone. (NB: None of these games originated with me. If you trawl the web, you’ll find all kinds of variations.)

Plot from a Bag

This was a great icebreaker for our first session. I packed a laundry bag full of ordinary, unrelated objects: a can of split pea soup, a tennis racket, a roll of toilet paper, etc. I began the story, “Once upon a time…” and blindly pulled out an object. The challenge, then, is to somehow incorporate the object into the story. For example, I pulled out a tube of toothpaste, so decided to start our fairy tale with a royal dentist. I then walked around the room with the bag, and everyone took a turn until the bag was empty.

(Idea from Jennifer Knoblock)

Magnetic Poetry

This turned out to be an interesting exercise not only in creativity but in cooperation. Emulating magnetic poetry sets, I printed out a bunch of fun, vivid, and functional words on cardstock. It’s important to have “people, place, and thing” nouns and regular verbs to which you can add “s,” “ed,” or “ing.” I also included adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and articles. You don’t actually need magnets.

Each table got an envelope of words, and their task was to create a poem or story with them. Some groups embraced the activity and tried to use up almost all their words, with great success. Other groups nitpicked or argued. It was definitely interesting to see the “personalities” come out.

Fortunately, Unfortunately

I started this activity by reading Remy Charlip’s classic Fortunately. Even though it’s a picture book, it’s funny and engaging, plus it’s a great example of how to keep a plot moving through changes in a character’s fortune. Afterward, the kids paired up to write their own story. I gave them a chart something like this:

On my charts, I’d actually ended with an “unfortunately,” but the optimist in me prefers to end on an up note. As an aside, it was truly impressive how many ways the kids came up with to kill off their characters…sigh.

Mad Libs

By our fourth session, I was running out of steam, but this was an easy activity to pull off. Ahead of time, I prepared a “Mad Libs” style story-starter of about 100 words, leaving out about a dozen key words. In class, I read off the missing parts of speech, and kids produced their answers on a sheet of notebook paper. Next, I passed out the story-starter worksheets, and the kids filled in the blanks. Then they continued the story.

I missed the group-work element in this activity. Next time, I might prepare two story-starters so that one kid can take my role in reading off the missing parts of speech. Then they can switch off.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

In years past, I’ve dealt with sibling rivalry, girl-boy rivalry, inappropriate behavior, all of which were problems that—whether due to this year’s format or the kids who participated—weren’t an issue this year. But, of course, there were other challenges.

Appropriateness

This was my biggest struggle. I told the kids at the beginning of the program that this wasn’t school and I wasn’t going to ask them to write about particular topics. However, a few kids took this to meant that anything went—especially blood and guts and potty humor.

I didn’t want to be a censor, but there are limits as to what I’m willing to put in a magazine that will be scene by parents, grandparents, my boss, and the Library Board. However, explaining this to the kids in question didn’t seem to make an impression. After all, gory deaths and gross-out humor are popular at any age.

It was when one kid finally said, “Ohhh… you mean it has to be appropriate,” that I realized the word meant something concrete to them. They heard it from parents. They heard it from teachers. Now, they’ll hear it from me, too.

By the way, lest you assume boys were the worst offenders…they weren’t.

Comic Strips

Even though it’s ostensibly a creative writing program, kids were also welcome to draw illustrations and comic strips. A lot of the boys, especially, loved drawing comics. What they don’t love is drawing the boxes themselves.

After the first session, I put together a worksheet that consisted simply of a grid of boxes. No more rulers required, no more lopsided “squares.” Kids could stick to the fun part: filling in the boxes with funny drawings and explosions.

Author Visits

In past summers, we’ve sometimes had an author visit/workshop in place of a literary magazine meeting. Sometimes, we’ve had barely half a dozen attendees. In contrast, last year, when we didn’t offer the lit-mag series, we invited Marlene Targ Brill to do two writing workshops for kids instead. They attracted dozens of kids.

This year, we didn’t offer an author visit during the summer. On the whole, I think this was an acceptable choice. There were a lot of other activities going on, and since the creative writing series was only four sessions long, there wasn’t the opportunity to incorporate it into our schedule. But perhaps next year we can make an author visit a separate event and attract even more kids.

In Conclusion…

That’s it! I always forget what a huge amount of work assembling and formatting the magazine is after the program is over. But no matter how many challenges the summer has offered, it always seems to turn out beautifully—and I start wondering what I’ll do with the kids next year!

What’s in the Parent-Teacher Collection? As you might expect, it’s mainly books with an adult audience — for example, books about honing children’s literacy skills, potty training guides, some literary criticism of classic children’s books. There’s also a small fiction section, containing books for children that ostensibly require mediation from an adult. And that’s where, I realized a few weeks ago, I have a problem.

Here’s the set-up: I was preparing for a guest lecture in a Youth Nonfiction class through UIUC’s LEEP program. The topic was sex education and LGBT books for young people; I called my talk “Sex, Rainbows & Penguins @ your library.” The professor asked me to discuss the work I’d done regarding LGBT materials in my department. As I prepared my talk, I returned to My Big Fat Queer Cataloging Project as well as the bibliography I developed.

I decided to do a shelf-check for the books on the list. I’ve never noticed a problem with book theft at my library, but it’s not an uncommon approach to vigilante censorship. Fortunately, almost every book was present and accounted for. Unfortunately, when I was shelf-checking the picture books in the Parent-Teacher Collection, I discovered a displeasing pattern which should, I realized, have been obvious to me long before.

Here’s a sampling of picture books that, at the time of this shelf-check, were in the Parent-Teacher Collection:

• Mama and Daddy Bear’s Divorce, by Cornelia Maude Spelman
• Mom Has Cancer!, by Jennifer Moore-Mallinos
• Daddy Doesn’t Have to Be a Giant Anymore, by Jane Resh Thomas
• Not in Room 204: Breaking the Silence of Abuse, by Shannon Riggs
• Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah Brannen

Can we say, “One of these things is not like the others?” Most of the picture books in the Parent-Teacher Collection focused on either negative/painful life events. The major exception was books with LGBT characters. I reread all of these books — King & King, Molly’s Family, Daddy’s Roommate, etc. — and while they may not be the most amazing books in the world, their only “crime” sentencing them to the Parent-Teacher Collection was that they portray families with same-sex partners as being happy and healthy.

No, some parents are not “ready” to discuss same-sex partnerships with their children. But does that mean libraries should continue to kowtow to this attitude, especially in a state where same-sex civil unions have recently been legalized? Putting a book in the Parent-Teacher Collection not only restricts access (by keeping it in an out-of-the-way place) but also stigmatizes it. I remembered something YA author and editor David Levithan said at an ALA session in June: that there is no such thing as a neutral warning label. Simply by labeling materials as inappropriate for certain ages, you are essentially saying that there is something wrong or bad about that content. To my mind, our Parent-Teacher Collection was doing the same thing to picture books with LGBT characters.

(I should note that not all of our picture books with LGBT characters were shelved in the Parent-Teacher Collection. In more recent years, especially as the literary quality of such books has risen, books such as In Our Mothers’ House and Mini Mia’s Darling Uncle have been shelved in the general collection from acquisition on. But older books remained in the Parent-Teacher section.)

Long story short, I talked to my supervisor about moving these LGBT picture books out of the Parent-Teacher Collection and into the general picture book collection. And to my great pleasure, she agreed with little hesitation. The books went up to Technical Services to be recataloged.

That’s not the end of my story, though. Though I knew the picture books in the Parent-Teacher Collection were put there with good intentions — the notion that some topics are very sensitive or scary and should be introduced by a caring adult — I couldn’t stop thinking about David Levithan’s comment about warning labels. Was our Parent-Teacher Collection becoming a ghetto for any picture book deemed too “difficult” for universal consumption? Were we librarians usurping the parental role in making choices about what topics are “appropriate” for young children (keeping in mind that all books in question were published and purchased with a child audience in mind)? Was it right to equate a book celebrating a beloved dog who has died with a book about a parent dying of cancer? Were we acting in the best interest of families, or were we simply afraid of a hypothetical confrontation with an upset parent?

Tough questions, and I don’t know the answers. But after some more discussion with my supervisors and coworkers, we decided to reevaluate the picture books in our Parent-Teacher Collection. Some books I’ve had no trouble pulling to be recataloged — those sad but sweet dead dog books, for example — but others I still hesitate on. I do believe it is parents’ job, if anyone’s, to moderate their children’s reading, and that if parents don’t want their child checking out a book about death they should screen the books before taking them home. But are there some topics so scary or sensitive that we need to “protect” unsuspecting families from picking them up?

I’d estimate that about only 20% of the picture books that were in the Parent-Teacher Collection a month ago are still there. Many are being recataloged. Many — the older, shabbier, lesser quality books — have been withdrawn. What’s left are the books in that gray area. (This includes the items in the bulleted list above, except for Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, of course.) Books about a parent dying, books about mental illness, addiction, abuse. Books that I can imagine giving small children nightmares and anxiety over situations that they may never face. But what about the kids who do? Do we short-change them by hiding these books away? Can we trust that a caring adult will share these books with the kids who really need them, or that they will find them on their own in that hidden corner of the library?

I’m not sure what will become of these books. For now, they are staying put. What I do know is that when new picture books come into the library, I’ll be thinking harder than ever about whether they truly belong in the Parent-Teacher Collection or if I’m letting my personal fear of censorship and conflict make that choice for me.

For a writer like me, who keeps her writing projects very close to the vest, this has been especially daunting. I never share partial drafts with other people, and I’m extremely selective about who gets to read and critique the finished ones. For the most part, my friends and family have resigned themselves to the fact that they won’t get to read SfH until Fall 2012, even though many of them have been hearing about it for years. (Gold stars for your patience!)

Then, with my last round of line edits, my editor asked me to give SfH to some LGBTQ teen readers for feedback. Does the book authentically reflect contemporary teens’ experiences being out at school and so on?

For weeks, I put this off. I’d come this far; wasn’t it a bit late to change anything now? Besides, while I know lots of kids through my job, I don’t know any queer teens (that are out to me, at least). Etc. Finally, I had to face the truth: I was scared. More than scared: terrified.

Some writers of YA books claim they “didn’t know they were writing a YA book.” They wrote the book they wanted, and agents or editors decided it was YA. That’s fine, but it’s not true for me. All along, I have known I was writing a book for teens, especially teens like I was back in the early/mid-1990s. Figuring out that I wasn’t straight. Looking for myself in books at the library and bookstore. Sometimes finding such books, more often not.

In other words, while I hope all sorts of readers will find and appreciate Starting from Here, young LGBTQ readers are the ones I especially hope to reach. Theirs are the experiences I wanted to echo as I wrote this story. And so, in a way, I value their opinions more than any other readers. If I struck out with them, where would that leave me?

Still, I want my book to be as good as I can make it before it goes to press, and sometimes that means opening the door to outside opinions, no matter how scary the prospect. So, I asked some friends to connect me with queer teens they knew, and my book’s previous readership suddenly doubled in size.

When I received the initial responses in my email, I cried. After the first two, I stopped crying, but I was still overcome. Everyone I sent it to devoured it, reading it two days or less. These young women used words like “amazing” and “wonderful” and “this feels like my life.” The characters felt real. One reader said she cried during a tough scene between the main character and her father. Another reader said she was left wanting to know what happened next, after the book ended.

I don’t say these things to boast–not remotely. Instead, these comments leave me so humbled. It’s so incredibly hard to be a teen, and it’s even harder to be a queer teen battling social norms and homophobia, both internally and externally. That hasn’t changed in the past 15 years. These young women told me a little about their personal stories, and they inspired me with their bravery, intelligence, and strength. For them to deem Starting from Here worthy of a new generation of young queer readers is an incredible honor to me.

As I struggle to write my next book, I find myself mired in self-doubt more than I would like. That hasn’t changed. But even on the days when I don’t have faith in myself, I now have faith in Starting from Here. And I can’t wait for it to fly into the world next fall.

And it’s true, there’s little else of traditional Cajun cuisine to satisfy the herbivores among us. No gumbo, jambalaya, etoufee, fried shrimp or pulled pork po’boys… “If nothing else, I’m sure I can find some pasta primavera,” I told people resignedly.

So, it was much to my delight that I discovered that, with a little research and planning, a vegetarian can find great food in New Orleans, albeit not at exclusively veg restaurants. Here are the restaurants that get a hardy thumb up from yours truly.

• Green Goddess
  My colleague Angie suggested this little gem months ago, and it delivered. Located in the French Quarter, off the main drag, it specializes in fusion cuisine. I came here with Jill and our coworker Steve; the tasting menu makes it ideal for group dining. Honestly, I didn’t love everything we tried, but it was clear that everything was very well-prepared with fresh ingredients, and I appreciated the creativity of the dishes. The food isn’t super-cheap (we got away with about $25 per person), but I felt like I got what I was paying for.

  We tried mint-edamame bruschetta, golden beet ravioli (beets instead of pasta), muhamarra, and Indian lentil pancake. For dessert, we shared a “Sultan’s Nest,” pistachio gelato topped with a nest of shredded phyllo, honey sauce, and whipped cream; a black sticky rice pudding with mango puree; and a “flight” of three ice creams: Mexican chocolate, Mission fig, and absinthe. The beet ravioli was the runaway winner for savory, and the desserts were exquisite.

• 13
  This little bar is just over the border from the French Quarter into the Faubourg Marigny — a pleasant but longish trek if you’re walking all the way from Canal. The bar may be open seven days a week, per the website, but a sign on the door warns that the kitchen is not. Another thing to be aware of is that there are gambling machines inside, so people under 21 are not allowed in.

  Steve and I came here after the itty bitty Pride parade and shared an adapted po’ boy made with barbecued tofu and a spinach salad, both delicious. I can’t say I understand what the fuss about po’boys is — is a sandwich on French bread with lettuce and tomato really that unusual? — but it was a good sandwich, and the place has a nice neighborhood vibe.

• Rotolo’s Pizzeria
  It was nine-thirty on Sunday night, and the phone book had already directed us to a French Quarter pizzeria that was shuttered and padlocked and obviously out of business. Thanks to an iPhone and Google, however, we ended up at Rotolo’s, the official pizza of the Saints! The place didn’t look like much, but the pizza — pretty standard thin crust — was quite good and reasonably priced. We shared a Primavera (your basic veggie) and a Specialty (spinach, artichoke, and feta). I especially liked the Specialty, myself.

• Bennachin Restaurant
  Bennachin specializes in cuisine from Gambia and Cameroon (which, I was told, have similar foods albeit with different names). It’s not vegetarian, but it has a sizable vegetarian section on its menu. I ordered the Kone ni Makondo, which was black-eyed peas in onion and tomato stew, coconut rice, and fried plantains. The portion was so generous that I didn’t, to my disappointment, have room for dessert. I’d been eyeing the Shakari — couscous in yogurt sauce with various fruits.

• Carmo
  Carmo bills itself as a “tropical cafe,” but it also has a number of menu items that are standard sandwich shop fare. The most exciting thing for me was the daily special. The day I went, it was Feijoada, Brazil’s national dish. They sold it in both meat and vegan form. I opted for the vegan variety, obviously, and it was delicious. Again, generous portion, reasonable price.

  Carmo is in shooting distance from the Morial Convention Center and a bit of a hike from the French Quarter, but it’s an easy walk from the St. Charles streetcar. It’s important to note that Carmo is only open for lunch, and it’s not open every day.

• Gumbo Shop
  This restaurant near Jackson Square serves traditional cajun cuisine, but they do serve a vegetarian gumbo and a daily vegetarian special. The day I went, it was white beans and rice. I ordered the gumbo, and while the food seemed fresh and of good quality, it was a bit bland. Then again, I’m not sure how gumbo is supposed to taste; perhaps it’s simply not my “thing.”

I also, of course, partook of the mandatory beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde. And an especially hot day called for strawberry and Aztec chocolate gelato at La Divina Gelateria. Bon appetit!

Anyway, that was weeks ago, but yesterday Jen Robinson shared a link on Facebook to Gurdon’s response to the kerfuffle, “My ‘Reprehensible’ Take on Teen Literature”, in which she defends her original viewpoint. Which is fine—she is entitled to her opinion, though I feel it is in many ways misguided—but in reading it, I felt even more strongly that she just Does Not Get It. I believe that she is genuinely interested in “protecting” young people, but she seems to be coming from such a place of privilege that she sincerely (but falsely) believes that keeping dark content out of books will somehow keep dark content from young people’s lives.

In the outpouring of response to my essay, I’ve been told that I fail to understand the brutal realities faced by modern teens. Adolescence, I’ve been instructed, is a prolonged period of racism, homophobia, bullying, eating disorders, abusive sexual episodes, and every other manner of unpleasantness… I also don’t believe that the vast majority of American teenagers live in anything like hell. Adolescence can be a turbulent time, but it doesn’t last forever and often—leaving aside the saddest cases—it feels more dramatic at the time than it will in retrospect.

“A turbulent time” that “doesn’t last forever”? I get the impression that Gurdon believes most adolescents’ biggest worry is a zit, a chemistry test, and who’s going with them to the prom. If things are really heavy, maybe their parents are getting divorced.

A counterexample (or ten): I grew up in a largely white, working and middle class community. My friends and I were “normal” kids. I personally had a fairly sheltered life within a loving, nuclear family. Yet within my social sphere, there were kids dealing with just the things Gurdon seems to believe are rare “manners of unpleasantness.” One of my friends self-injured by rubbing at her arm with a pencil eraser until it wore spots off her skin. One had an eating disorder. I had friends who got pregnant, had abortions, gave the baby up for adoption. I had a friend who was raped by her older brother. Friends (and I) struggled with sexual and gender identity in a homophobic climate. Friends watched their parents die or helped care for disabled parents. Friends dealt with suicidal feelings. Friends dealt with racist remarks from classmates. Friends had alcoholic parents.

And those were just some of the things I knew about. I don’t know anyone whose biggest problem was whether they could borrow the car Friday night.

Yet would any of us have said we lived in hell? I doubt it. As I said, I think we considered ourselves to be more or less normal kids. Yet nor were these merely anecdotes from a “turbulent time.” These events were formative. They’ll affect us the rest of our lives.

It wasn’t hard for me to think of people who faced these “brutal realities,” either, which is what makes me believe so strongly that Gurdon is living in her own protective bubble, to think that the “vast majority of American teenagers” are actually living happy-go-lucky lives (even if they won’t appreciate it until a few years down the road). Her argument smacks of all kinds of privilege—the privilege of someone who has not faced “brutal realities” and believes that, aside from “the saddest cases,” everyone has had the same experience as she has. That or she wears some awfully rosy glasses when looking at her past.

She’s right that her article did continue to be discussed at last week’s ALA conference. At one of my sessions, UIUC professor Christine Jenkins made a comment, with regard to adults who want to “protect children’s innocence,” “What’s the difference between innocence and ignorance?” And the answer is, I’ve decided, nothing but the age of the person in question. What we call innocence in children, we call ignorance in adults. At some point, young people have to make that transition. Adolescence, when children mature not only physically but develop formal reasoning skills—the ability to “think abstractly, reason logically and draw conclusions from the information available”—seems like as good a time as any to do it.

Meanwhile, in Gurdon’s plea for the preservation of innocence, I think she’s demonstrated her own ignorance about both young adult literature and the lives of young people in America.

Yes, there are many “dark” books out there, or at least books with mature themes. But there are also many non-”dark” books out there, at least by my measuring stick. (Let’s face it, there has to be some “darkness,” or you’ve got a story without a conflict.) As someone who does collection development in my library’s junior high section as well as voraciously reading tween and teen literature, I absolutely don’t buy that anecdote about the mother in the bookstore—unless it was a really crappy store.

Books entertain. They educate. They provide means of escape. And, to use two more E-words, they encourage empathy.

When my friends told me about what they were going through—or when they didn’t, but I could see it with my own eyes—it didn’t “normalize” the experience for me. It didn’t make me want to starve or mutilate myself or run out and have unprotected sex. Instead it made me feel helpless. I wished I knew what to say or do to make things better. Perhaps if I’d read books about characters with these same problems, I would have known. I might have better understood what they were going through. At least, I know, it wouldn’t have hurt.