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.