It’s Banned Book Week–that one week a year when I go out of my way to read books that have been banned for one reason or another. Today I’m reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr.  (Talk about inappropriate!) I might follow it up with something by Judy Blume–just about anything as she’s popular with book challengers. Maybe Forever or  Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. Or I may stick with the picture books, say In the Night Kitchen. (It shows a naked baby, you know!)

Yahoo New! listed  banned books including: Captain Underpants; The Lord of the Rings; Fahrenheit 451 (I love it that Fahrenheit 451 made the cut); Harry Potter series; The Great Gilly Hopkins; James and the Giant Peach; Grimm’s Fairy Tales and 2–TWO–dictionaries: The American Heritage Dictionary (“69–of course!); and Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

In banning those dictionaries were the sanctimonious they making a blanket statement that all words should be banned….What did they used to announce the proposed ban? Smoke Signals?

Banned Book Week (BBW) is held the last week in September (this year Sept 25-Oct. 1). It’s purpose is to celebrate the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of committed booksellers, community activists, teachers, and librarians many of the challenged books do not get banned. The American Library Association (ALA) maintains lists of challenged books, including a list of the top 10 most challenged books for each year.

Check the lists. Along with being “the most challenged” notice how the books on these lists are also tops on sales lists! For a book, getting banned or even challenged is sexy! It’s hot! Banned books get read and reread and passed around until the covers fall off and we have to tape the pages back in place. We especially love reading  the ones we have to sneak out of the store or library in a brown paper wrapper. Look what it did for the 1956 naughty Peyton Place–60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and 59 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.

The Fantastics is the longest running musical of all time, and my personal fav. It’s about a boy, a girl, their fathers, love, and a wall. One of the songs in the show, “The Minute That We Say NO” featured the two fathers singing about how all they have to get their kids to do something is to say No! “Why did the kids put beans in their ears/no one can hear with beans in their ears/after a while the reason appears/they did it cause we said “NO.” Look what an official NO! did for the Peyton Place?

I want a NO! So I’m asking…I’m begging…would somebody please do me and my books a  humongous favor and BAN them…Come on, at least try it! (Like in horseshoes and hand gernades, “challenged” counts. ) There has to be something ban-able about a girl with 2 fathers? What about two-steppin’ in a dance hall? Or a boy acting wild and raising a ruckus? Surely someone is against naked goldfish? Naked captive goldfish?

Go ahead, Ban my Books. I dare you….I double dare you…I triple dog dare you….

I’ve shared so much of our Jakarta life: woes about my pond; frustration over the traffic and miscommunication; sorrows, as with Suharti’s death last month. It’s fitting and especially joyful to share glad tidings:

This weekend Linda Hermawati, Rusnati and Rohemon’s oldest daughter, married Agung Iskander. As is the custom, the wedding was a three-day affair, beginning with a Muslim ceremony on Friday and culminating in a Javanese-style reception on Sunday to which Curtis and I were invited. Rusnati’s mother and father came from Cirebon for the wedding. Rohemon, an only child, has his cousins there. (Agung’s family was there as well, I just didn’t get a photo of them)

Unlike Western weddings, which are more about getting things ready for the big event, Indonesian weddings are about readying the bride and groom for this life changing event.  For 5 nights before the wedding, the bride was prepared for the ceremony. Linda prayed and fasted during the day. She could not eat certain food including chicken or eggs. Each evening her mother (and other women in the family) washed Linda with an herbal scrub to make her skin soft and sweet-smelling.

Rusnati's family in her home: her father, Kiki (Suharti's son) Rusnati, her mother, youngest daughter, Andrea and Lia, the middle daughter

Sunday’s reception was held at Rusnati and Rohemon’s home. The driveway beside the house was completely tented and festooned with flowers and decorations.

Elaborate Ceiling Decorations

A dais with chairs for the bridal party, the parents of the bride, bride and groom, and parents of the groom stood in that order to greet each guest. It is customary to hold each person’s hands between yours during the greeting. Guests bless the couple by saying “selamat berbahagia” welcome/best wishes for your wedding. The first wedding we attended, our Driver, Aan and social guru, coached Curtis and I on the proper pronunciation of that phrase. We said it to everyone we met that day, not realizing we were wishing each of them happiness at upon their wedding.

The wedding party spends the entire reception on the raised dais, at the ready for photographs and to greet the next guests, and the next, and the next. Some receptions last 2 hours, some all evening. It is no wonder that Javanese wedding parties don’t smile. (Actually, smiling for photos is a relatively new practice in Indonesian, popularized by youngsters snapping and swapping pics via Handphone.) Not only do older Indonesians not smile for photos, many will not look at the camera and some refuse to have their pictures taken. Perhaps in the style of Native Americans, they believe the process of taking a photo takes part of their spirit?

Inside the Wedding Tent

Unlike Western weddings, there’s no dancing, no toasting, no speeches by the family—at least not at the reception. (I don’t know what happens at the other wedding events as I’ve never been.)  At large, hotel receptions there are constant announcements over a microphone. Guests are announced as they approach the wedding party; family members are announced as they enter the room, co-workers, friends and family members are called up to take photos with the wedding party as per a pre-set list. All this announcing mixed with twangy-clangy gamelan music and caterwauling by traditional singers is so loud it makes polite conversation impossible, so everyone has to yell…and the decibel level rises.

Mercifully, Linda and Agung spared us from that. The tone of their wedding was friendly, a pleasant blend of eating, drinking, chattering, children playing.

It was an honor for Curtis and me to share this joyous occasion with Rusnati, Rohemon and their families and friends.

Selamat Berbahagia, Linda and Agung!

Rohemon, Aan, Kelly, Agung, Linda, Rusnati and Curtis

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?“-Winnie the Pooh.

OK, so we know what Pooh thinks about conversations; how does Pooh feel about the word count in picture books?

Yesterday, I received a note from my agent about the length of picture books. She wrote that they are getting shorter and shorter. And many comments she is receiving about rejected submissions say they are “too long” or “too many words.”

While last year 1000 words was the absolute longest length for a picture book, now it’s 600 words (according to her analysis of picture books she has sold in the past couple of years. ) Of those, 2 are mine, coming in at 151 words and 353 words.

Both books of mine are concept books not “story books.”  One, DAD and POP  explores the “concept” of being a child with 2 fathers; the other, YOUR DADDY WAS JUST LIKE YOU, is a grandmother sharing how her grandson and his father were so alike as children. I wonder, how many of the other books on my agent’s “sold” list are also concept books, or poetry? (Poems, rhymed and free verse, are usually shorter than prose.) Story books are often longer because there is more work to be done in telling a traditional story. The author must:

1. establish a problem;

2.show the main character trying to deal with the problem (often by choosing wrong solutions)and the problem    becoming worse and worse:

3. realize the error of his or her ways and best,  fall so far it feels as though all is lost;

4. choose a best solution, try it and succeed; or

5. realize his or her goals was way off base and he or she was better off before.

All in 600 words or less? Before any illustrations have been drawn to accompany the text? You try it…*

I get that picture books are getting shorter. They are more about illustration today than they have been in the past. And increasingly more picture books published are created by author-illustrators. Pictures are worth a 1000 words. And they can tell a story. The problem is, I’m not an illustrator. I’m a storyteller. I use words not images, to tell stories. Where does that leave me?

While once picture books were for children between 4 and 8, I’d say realistically, they are now for children 0-6. Those children older than 6 are reading on their own, and reading chapter books. (Not to say that older peeps don’t like being read to, nor that picture books don’t have value as literature for older students. Admit it…who doesn’t enjoy a picture book?)

I’m no sprinter. I wasn’t when I was a kid running track and I’m not now. It takes me a while to say what I need to say. One review of my 2005 award-winning, 2008 award-nominated picture book NOT NORMAN, A GOLDFISH STORY, referred to my text as being “bald” which we took to mean “tight”. (The word count for NOT NORMAN is about  730 words.) I took that as a compliment. I had done what I set out to do: Pare my story down to the absolute shortest word length possible and leave as much room as possible for the illustrator’s interpretation. Currently:  today-yesterday-tomorrow, I am revising what I hope will be a future picture book. Presently, the text is 800 words and I’m trying to cut, shave, pare it down down down…but to what? What do we sacrifice in writing that tight?

Yes. Picture books are a marriage of text and illustration. And yes, children, especially preliterate children, “read” the illustrations and with them learn to interpret text. But… Much of storytelling, of hearing/reading/enjoying picture books comes from the text, the language, the character’s voice and, dare I say it?…the author’s voice. What will disappear if I cut 200 words from my story? What will that reviewer write about the books I’m revising now—which are supposed to be 130 words shorter? What’s more spare than bald?

Me. That’s what will be lost. My personality. My voice. I am long winded. As anyone who has ever read my blog postings knows, it takes me a while to tell a story. I am not “flash fiction.”  Just as it took me a few hundred yards to reach my stride on the track field, it takes me a few hundred words more to tell a good story.

So, what do I do? Do I cut cut cut and try to sell Kelly fiction-lite? or do I just keep writing stories I enjoy telling knowing they may end up in a drawer.

Or, do I quit trying to write picture books and wait/hope/pray for a reversal in word count?

P.S. Yes, yes yes: In keeping with the current trend, I should cut this posting by half. That having been said, ask yourself: what do you wish you hadn’t read?

*This is just one example of a story model–there are others (is the word count less?)