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Ack!  Too many good videos, too little time!  We’ve an embarrassment of riches today.  The only question really is where to start.  And the only natural answer is with Obama’s nominee for the Librarian of Congress.  Not much of a question there, really.

Next up, there is beginning to be a bit of a tradition of authors and illustrators recording videos of how they got “the call” when they won the Caldecott or Newbery (I almost wrote and/or Newbery, which is an interesting near flub).  Last year we had Dan Santat’s video.  This year, Sophie Blackall’s:

At this rate it may behoove us to just give the medals to people who are good at making videos.  And the Newbery Medal goes to . . . Tyler Oakley!

Now let’s get down to brass tacks.  People, there are awards out there that go beyond the mere borders of this great nation of ours.  And the Hans Christian Andersen Award is the greatest of these (though the Astrid Lindgren Award gives it a run for its money).  Now they’ve made a video for us that goes through the 2016 nominees.  I adore this.   I just want to meet all these people.  Suzy Lee!!!  Now, weirdly, I want her to adopt me.  And Iran! How cool is that?

This next book trailer seemingly has an international flavor to it, but is homegrown Americana through and through.  It may also be the most beautiful trailer of 2016 thus far.

Thanks to educating alice for the link.

Earlier this week, Phil Nel posted a killer post called Seuss on Film.  The piece is “a brief (but far from complete) collection of Seuss on film!”  Turns out, it was somewhat tricky getting Mr. Geisel on the old camera.  Phil’s a trooper, though.  He found newsreel after newsreel and has posted them on YouTube for our collective enjoyment.  You should really read his posting yourself.  In fact, I insist upon it.  And just to whet your whistle, here’s a jaw-dropping 1964 discussion with Seuss in New Zealand where he improvises answers to kids’ questions.

As for our Off-Topic Video of the week, I give this to you because I love you.  Really, truly, deeply love you.

Short answer: at New York Comic Con! According to the interactive floor map, Pepsi will have one of the four booths located outside the show floor near the escalators which lead to the fourth floor River Pavilion. (The other three: Bandai Namco Amusement America, Nickelodeon/Nicktoons Network, and DC Entertainment.) Here’s the listing from the NYCC website!  [HTML edited […]

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I’ve been reading more poetry lately, like returning to an old friend, and this morning want to share two things.

Poet John Berryman, who died without knowing.

First, from this morning, rereading a poem by W.S. Merwin titled “Berryman.” I’ll give you the last seven lines, you can look up the rest:

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I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can’t

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you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don’t write

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As for me, I hear those words and accept them in my heart as true. Self-doubt seems central to the experience, though it’s nearly impossible to write without wild spasms of self-confidence. It’s why some writers drink, I’m sure, to trick yourself into feeling that way.

You die without knowing, that line, transcends the subject of writing. We can’t ever be sure, but we persist, and we can at times, in fact, think so. We may say, quietly, in bed to our loved one, “I think it’s a good book.” And we might even believe it. But in the next moment, in the silence between our last word and her reply, we can also know that our life has a been a delusion, a failure, and that none of it amounts to much of anything at all, when we had hoped for so much more.

Ah, the writing life.

I’ve had so many books go out of print over the past two years. Just a staggering number, more than 40 books . . . going, going, gone. It’s the business I’m in, there are all sorts of rational reasons, excuses, palliatives I can apply. But still, it cuts deep. It just does. It feels like that photograph in the movie “Back to the Future.” Marty keeps looking at it, panicked, watching the images slowly disappear.

Maybe that’s what alzheimer’s feels like during brief snatches of clarity. You are helplessly aware that it’s all slipping away, and you can’t even be sure that any of it was real.

If you have to be sure don’t write, Berryman tells us, through Merwin. Such is life. You can’t you can never be sure. What can you do? You write some more, and hopefully it will be good.

Two nights ago I stood up at the head of the table — we were hosting friends and family on Christmas Eve, just a lovely evening — and I said a few words in preamble to a poem I wanted to share, Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.”

Which is funny, right? The title got a chuckle. Typical Jimmy, to go dark at a time like this. But the truth about darkness is that it gives us an appreciation of light. Poems purportedly “about” death are really about life. At least, that’s certainly the case here. “I want to say all my life/I was a bride married to amazement.”

I hope you like it.

When Death Comes

When death comes 
like the hungry bear in autumn; 
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; 
when death comes 
like the measle-pox

when death comes 
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: 
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything 
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, 
and I look upon time as no more than an idea, 
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, 
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something 
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

–Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I got a kick out of this article looking back on the creation of Back to the Future. It's hard to imagine this quintessential 80s movie any other way, but now all sorts of back story about "what might have been" is coming to light (e.g., that clip of Eric Stoltz as the original Marty McFly).

From a writerly standpoint, I find these stories absolutely fascinating. The research required. The dozens of rejections the screenplay received. But most of all, the revisions that were required to make it work. Can you imagine Professor Brown and his trusty chimp creating a time machine in the form of a refrigerator-like carton that can only be reactivated by setting off a nuclear reaction? Doesn't sound right, does it?

But that's the magic of it. When we watch a movie on the screen, when we hold a book in our hands, it's as if it never existed any other way. I try to remember this as I wait (with some trepidation) for the next round of editorial notes on Starting From Here. The story has already been uprooted, yanked apart, jumbled up, and glued back together more times than I can count. My hope is that, when it's finally published, the cracks will be invisible, and it will appear to have emerged from my head into the world fully grown like Athena.