05 June 2007

Where to Be on Columbus Day

The winners of this year's Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards have been announced, including an Oz and Ends/Boston 1775 favorite, M. T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party. Expectations for the acceptance speech are high.

Among the honor books in the nonfiction category is Sid Fleischman's Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini. Which I'll take as an excuse to quote a pearl that Sid dropped at last month's SCBWI New England conference:

You need two ideas to make a story.
Two ideas rubbing against each other like dry sticks. Two ideas rolling toward each other like bumper carts. Two ideas repelling each other like refrigerator magnets held the wrong way.

No comments: