Very Honest Children's Books I Plan to Write

• Guess How Much I Don't Love You
  
  
• Are You There, God? Stop Laughing
  
  
• The Little Engine That Couldn't Because It Went To A Liberal Arts College
  
  
• Charlotte's Web of Inappropriate Romances
  
  
• There's A Hipster At the End of This Book
  
  
• Dora the Explorer Goes to Foster Care

Good Hands Where's My Family Yes We Can Miracle On the Hudson Child Security Consultants, Inc.

Wonder if your nanny or babysitter is keeping a close enough eye on your little ones?

Are you afraid that, while your precious offspring run hollering up and down aisles, freely pulling rows of books on their heads and falling down escalators, your nanny is sitting on the floor with her nose stuck in People or Hello?

Concerned that any child molester or slave trader will be free to snatch your little darling because Betty and Conseula are having an avid discussion of whether Bernice's horoscope should have told her that her boyfriend was going to be arrested for selling pot?

Fear no longer. Contact Good Hands Where's My Family Yes We Can Miracle On the Hudson Child Security Consultants, Inc. today.*



Our highly trained and professional Public Childcare Consultants will keep your child and caretaker under close surveillance and provide you with a detailed report of your nanny's conduct while shopping.

Per your request, the weekly reports will include information as to:

• Does your nanny encourage your child to put away the merchandise it has played with and destroyed, or at least clean up after it herself?
  
  
• Does your nanny speak to your child in the language you have specified or in another of her own choosing?
  
  
• Does your nanny take the initiative to notify maintenance personnel when your child vomits or defecates in the bookstore?
  
  
• How frequently d0 bystanding parents or store employees have to protect, feed, clothe, comfort or otherwise provide care to your child?
  
  
• How many store fixtures or displays are between your child and your nanny's eye?
  
  
• When your child wanders off to put books in its mouth, how many minutes elapse before your nanny comes in search of it?
  
  
• When store employees notice your child roaming the store as Amelia Earhart roamed the globe, how long does it take them to locate and identify your nanny?
  
  
• When reunited with your strayed child, is your nanny contrite or amused?
  
  
• Does your nanny look up when your child screams in pain or terror?**
  

Should our Public Childcare Consultants find the situation demands it, they will involve one of our Code Adam Security Specialists in the surveillance scenario. The Code Adam Security Specialist's one and only role is to plan and execute a fake kidnapping of your son or daughter.***

This extraordinary measure will scientifically evaluate how large an opportunity your nanny leaves for potential pedophiles or organ harvesters. You will receive a Code Adam Dossier detailing if the C.A.S.S.' operation was highly complicated and covert, or whether your child was snatched smoothly and openly; how long it took your nanny to notice the abduction; and whether she notified authorities promptly or slipped out to sell your stroller on the black market.

Don't leave the welfare of your child up to chance or the first yahoo who likes the idea of making $20 for every hour she sits on her (ample) bum in the bookstore. Contact Good Hands Where's My Family Yes We Can Miracle On the Hudson Child Security Consultants, Inc. today.



*Not affiliated with that Geico lizard, Jack Bauer, Barack Obama or Captain Sully.

**Our Public Security Specialists are not responsible for screams, tantrums or seizures produced by the nanny herself when attempting to coax your child away from the train table.

***Your child will be returned to you, should you wish it back, in the condition in which the C.A.S.S. took possession of it, after sufficient time has elapsed and the evaluation of your nanny's response to the abduction situation is complete. If do you not wish to re-accept custody of your child, G.H.W.M.F.Y.W.C.M.O.H.Inc. will place your child in Angelina Jolie's home for a moderate fee.

Go On and Let the Rain Pour

The day before I moved to New York, my bep* Maggie and I went to Wal-Mart because I needed an umbrella. In a last-minute frenzy of preparation, I realized that my city life would subject me to more rain drops than a suburban dash from car to building, and envisioned myself stepping out of the airport into a downpour that would require squandering some of my meager moving money on a street vendor's overpriced piece of crap. So I picked out a cheap green piece of crap at Wal-Mart and clipped it to my carryon, congratulating myself on my foresight.

Well, that little umbrella is still going strong, folks. My roommate Sandra has gone through at least 6 umbrellas in her three months here, some of them getting lost and some of them self-destructing. My roommate Jill brought along a nice one from the Gap that is currently sitting in the hall, forlorn with broken spines. And Maggie sent me a pretty ruffled red umbrella for Christmas that flipped itself inside out and snapped in half on a very windy Boxing Day. My green Wal-Mart umbrella, at first a lowly estimated contender, is the superstar of our apartment.

I used the umbrella today on my errand to Banana Republic for interview pants. My roommate, whose confidence in my abilities and overall life prospects is intimidatingly high, surprised me with some lovely grey interview pants, but I wasn't sure about the size. Upon arrival at Banana Republic, I found myself in the typical tall girl quandary - one size fits beautifully except for being too short; the next is baggy but the perfect length. In typical co-dependent fashion, I involved the entire Banana Republic staff in the decision, trying on both sizes multiple times and then obsessing with them over the various options. I was grateful for their patience and insight, and in the end, I forced them to make the decision on my behalf.

So then I marched home under the green umbrella and stopped at the tiny tailor's shop around the corner to get the smaller size lengthened. Due to the desperation in my eyes and the overall sense of panic emanating off me, the sweet, non-English-speaking tailor agreed to stop work on a very fluffy wedding dress and let out the hems.

So I'm hoping that my unexpectedly successful green umbrella brings me underdog luck, and that my interview pants are full of the confidence that Jill and the Banana Republic employees have in me, because I have an interview tomorrow. A new friend and fellow book lover put my resume into consideration for a very appealing position. I'm excited and nervous (read, terrified and hyperventilating) and would appreciate any petitions sent to your various gods and higher deities on my behalf. In exchange, you can stand under my green umbrella.

*Best Evil Pal

Reading Is Fundamental

On October 23, 2009, I checked books out of the Royal Oak Public Library for the last time. It was a frightening moment - I was headed off to a strange land, not sure if my new home would be close to a library, not even knowing when I would next be in possession of a valid library card.



Since arriving in New York, I've visited the library several times - the one on 42nd and 5th, with the lions out front, where Carrie Bradshaw planned her weddings - but you can't take any books out of this library. You have to go up two flights and back through several richly painted rooms to even see the books. Then you can look at them, take them down and touch the pages, but they can't go home with you.

And I've found the little branch just three blocks from my apartment, gazing wistfully at its windows whenever I pass on my way to the bank, to my favorite overpriced vegetarian restaurant, staring longingly at it while I wait for the crosstown bus. But I can't take books out, because I have no library card.

I applied online for a library card less than a fortnight after moving, as soon as I knew my permanent address. I checked the mailbox every day for the card's arrival. Weeks passed. Months passed. Nothing. And a little piece of my soul died with each passing day on which I could read only those books I brought with me, had shipped, borrowed from my roommates, bought from the Strand or checked out from work.*

One day I went in to the little Yorkville branch and threw myself on their mercy. I begged and pleaded to be given a card, invoking Santa Claus, Gutenberg, Former First Lady Laura Bush and the Donald. To no avail. The librarians were as resolute as St. Peter himself at the gates of Heaven: I had to wait for my card to arrive in the mail. On the way home, limping under the weight of crushed hope, I opened my wallet and caressed my now-useless ROPL card, cursing myself for foolishly abandoning its domain.

Then one day - oh the glorious day! - I returned from work to find a slim envelope with the NYPL logo in the top corner. Jubilation! I screamed and leaped in the air. Inside I found the a little piece of plastic magic - blue and white and read all over.



First chance I got, I rushed back to the Yorkville branch with as much joy I filled my arms with books and triumphantly bore them home. Take that, Librarians! Can't stop me now! I am Allowed to check out books - I have a valid Library Card!

After a kind but emphatic Development Talk from my manager at Barnes & Noble, I have resolved to read more children's books. This is in part so I can recommend books to customers with more confidence and less empty rhetoric*, in part to improve my background as an author of children's literature, and in part so I will be impressively knowledgeable when I try to con someone into hiring me to work in children's publishing. So I am checking out of the library children's books that are popular right now** as well as children's books on our shelves that have attracted my curiosity.

One of my first selections was the first title from Meg Cabot's new Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls series: Moving Day. In my experience, many children's authors struggle to find the line between snarky and sappy; Cabot succeeds in this book, as the narrator is both sassy and spunky, but also sweet and respectful. While she disagrees with her parents, squabbles with her brother and has friend troubles at school, none of these characters are caricatured villains or fools. And the Ramona-esque title character, who narrates the book, gets in several pickles and cooks up grand schemes to get her way, but eventually also learns to see the situation from her parents' point of view, opens her mind about the mean boy at school and makes realistic amends to the friends with whom she's been squabbling.

And I learned a Very Important Lesson from this book about having a good attitude. Yes, I am ashamed of myself: a full-grown adult, it took a 4th-grade level story to teach me not to be a miserable, petulant whiner. Towards the end of the book, Allie Finkle has stolen a turtle from a Chinese restaurant in order to save it from being made into soup. She wants to set it free to live its own life, and she is now hiding with it in the back of the car while her parents, who are in the middle of making her move to a new house and a new school, look for her. Allie's fun-loving Uncle Jay gives her the following advice: "The thing about pretending to be okay with things is that sometimes you actually start to be okay with them. So...you never know."

Uncle Jay promises to keep the turtle at his apartment and take good care of it if Allie promises to have a good attitude towards the move and pretend to share her parents' excitement, instead of working so hard to hate everything about it. You can guess what happens - once she relaxes her many schemes, she notices the fun girl next door, her pretty new teacher, and the turret with reading nook in her new room. "I kind of was surprised to find that Uncle Jay was right. I wasn't pretending anymore. Everything really was fine. I mean, there'd be school to get through next week - my first week as the new girl, in a new class, with all new people to get to know. But I'd deal with that later. Right now, everything was good."

So I've decided to take the Allie-Finkle-Uncle-Jay approach to my current less-than-dream-job. Instead of being overwhelmed by all the frustrating, demeaning, uninspiring aspects, instead of stewing in misery as the clock drags along, I'm going to fake a positive attitude. I'm going to pretend I'm happy working there. Feigning a good mood will at least be pleasanter for everyone around me and who knows - it just might rub off on me, too. Everything will be fine, until the right job comes along. Uncle Jay wouldn't lie to me, right?



*One of BN's employee perks: lending hardcovers.

**Making up BS about the book's subject, reading level, offensive content and overall worth based on a 5 second persual of cover and back jacket.

*** This means that in the next couple months, I will be getting very drunk and reading Twilight. I estimate it will take at least 2 bottles of wine for me to sufficiently lower my personal dignity and open the book equivalent of a short guy wearing an Ed Hardy shirt, smelling too much of cologne and saying "don't got any."

Don't Stand So Close To Me

Yesterday at ye olde bookstore, a customer asked me if I had Asperger's.

At first I thought she was making a joke in very poor taste, and replied in equally if not worse taste, "No, I was homeschooled."

She frowned a little bit, and I realized she was serious.

She explained, "Well, you get startled so easily, and you don't like to be touched - like, you really hate to be touched, especially by strangers - and you get overstimulated and freak out like, a lot."

These statements are all true. It's not wildly abnormal to dislike being touched by strangers. But I also am maladjustedly uncomfortable with physical touch, in general. Like, right now, I can't really remember the last time I was hugged, and that's comforting. I get stiff and tense when more outgoing people casually touch my arm or my back in conversation, and when I am called upon to hug someone - even when I genuinely want to hug someone - I am unbearably awkward about it.

And I am very prone to overstimulation. Especially in an environment of constant but uneven noise, bright light and dispatterned colors or ongoing, frenetic movement of crowds. I can almost feel the sensory attack fraying my nervous system like sandpaper on bubblewrap. It wasn't till college that I realized it wasn't "normal" to crave being alone, still and unspoken to for large stretches of time.*

I still consider it in mildly poor taste to ask someone outright if they have a developmental disorder. It's unnerving but probably very useful to hear a description of yourself from someone who has not known you long and now spends a lot of time with you in an fairly limited context). I was discombobulated - might I have Asperger's? Has this question ever been asked before? Have people been mumbling this about me behind my back for my whole life? Does this explain why I'm so socially weird and relationally dysfunctional? Is there anything I should do about it?

At any rate, there's one situation in which my usual rules about personal space boundaries go out the window: on the escalator. I hate nothing more than standing motionless on an escalator. I trot up and down feeling bionic. Whenever someone stands slothlike in the middle of their step, or when two people stand side by side instead of tandem, I judge them from my high throne of superior etiquette. If I'm carrying something heavy or accompanied by a lazy person, I stand all the way to the side during my ride, allowing other bionic souls to charge past me uninterrupted.

At my bookstore, when I'm up and down the escalator dozens of times a day, my moral censure escalates from annoyance to fury. Disproportionately incensed by escalator blockers, I surge as close to the offender as possible, hovering on the step right below (or above) them and leaning forward until our skin nearly touches. My hope is that they will feel the anger shooting out of my pores and move the hell over. Sometimes they do, and I shoot pass with a sweet smile and an unmeant "excuse me, thanks." Sometimes they don't and I am stuck behind them for the eternity of the ride; worst is when they exit the elevator walking slowly and with such sway that I can't get around them. I also hate slow walkers - but that's a rant for another day. I don't want to get overstimulated.



*Then again, I never knew it wasn't "normal" to see numbers and months as colors until I accidentally read a book about synesthesia.

Sunday Afternoon

Our Children's department has a hallowed back corner known as "The Trains" where monsters large and small encamp around two Thomas-the-Tank-Engine play tables. This is a very special part of the department: nowhere else can you pick up dirty diapers, torn magazines and abandoned coffee cups, all while listening to unsupervised children shriek at the top of their lungs in either delight (if they have a train to play with*) or rage (if they don't). This is also a great place to gather armfuls of books from all over the department and reshelve them - over and over and over again! You might be so lucky as to find a stuffed animal that someone has chewed on, a pop-up book that has been shredded or an expensive electronic toy that has been ripped from the package and destroyed.

Needless to say, we all fight for the privilege of working in close vicinity to the Train Tables. Today, I won the coveted honor of straightening (and restraightening and restraightening and restraightening) the Bargain Gondola, and enjoyed the following special bonus.

Little Boy: [runs shrieking past me.]

Me: "No running!"

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "Please don't run!"

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "No running in the store, please!"**

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "Stop running!"

Little Boy: "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!"

Me: "Hi."

Little Boy: "I love you!"

Me: "That's nice of you! Stop running."

Little Boy: [walks 3 steps, then runs.]

Me: "Stop running!"

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "Stop running right now."

Little Boy: "That's nice of you!"

Me: "You like it when I tell you to stop running?"

Little Boy: "Yeah. I'm kind of tired."

Me: "Then stop running and look at books. This is a bookstore."

Little Boy: "Ok." [looks at books for 3 minutes, then runs.]

Me: "Stop running."

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "Stop running this instant."

Little Boy: [runs]

Me: "If I see you running one more time, I'm getting the police.*** There are no trains in jail."

Little Boy: "I still love you."

*Barnes & Noble puts out 4 or 5 trains every day and many children bring them from home. Inexplicably, we often have just 2 or 3 trains by the end of the day. Mysterious.

**For the record, this child's so-called parent was sitting 2 feet away avidly watching throughout our encounter. At one point I heard him tell the spawn, "run a bit more slowly and maybe she won't notice."

***This is a tangible threat- a NYPD officer is stationed in the store and regularly patrols the children's department, with instructions to be ostentatious around the train table to frighten parents who might be trying to pocket the trains.

Pick Me! Choose Me! Love Me!

I have odd red welts on my back. This is because, over the past few weeks, I have spent many hours sitting on the floor against the radiator. The floor is the only place to sit, other than the beds, and the bed side of the studio has no lamp, just two windows that my arctic-souled roommate insists on leaving open. If I sit on the floor by the radiator, the kitchen light is right above me and I am soaked in warmth, thanks to the bookshelf and table which block the draft. And, of course, the radiator itself puts forth delightful heat with a comforting hiss. It cycles warmer and hotter, meaning most of the time, it's a safe luxury to lean against it. Only at the height of the cycle do I have to scoot forward and be content with the circle of warmth on the floor.

I like sitting here to read, but for the past few weeks I have been absorbed (frustrated, inspired, discouraged, diligent, enraged, exhilarated, despondent, tenacious) in working on my graduate application. Some parts have been simple, like emailing professors and bosses to request letters of recommendation and looking up my GRE score from almost four years ago (has it really been that long?!). The bigger beast has been the statement of purpose - sketching the story of my life and making a pitch for my future in 500 creative and compelling words.

The scariest beast of all has been the writing sample: a 20-25 page story that's supposed to convince the selection committee that I have some scraps of talent. Not just that I have talent, but that I have a bit more of it, or at least a kind more worth investing in, than the hundreds of other applicants.

My story's not bad. But it's not great. I've worked on it as hard and as smartly as I know how. Parts of it I've worked on for years, parts of it are just a few months old. Realizing that my two incomplete stories belonged together as one was easy, compared to how difficult its been to weave them properly. I've wept and drunk and bombarded friends with codependent, self-loathing requests for feedback. I've cursed the invention of grad school and my damn conceit that makes me think it's a good idea to go.

But at times, writing it gave me that weird artist's ecstasy when you are totally outside yourself, unaware of your surroundings, completely absorbed in the thing you're making. In these flashes of hours, I didn't hear my roommates talking to me, didn't notice my neck aching, my stomach growling or my bum growing numb - didn't notice the radiator, in the hottest part of its cycle, mildly scalding my back.

At any rate, in 18 days it will be out of my hands. Until then, I will continue to hammer away on my laptop. And I will wear thicker shirts.