a May into June Kidlit Newsletter
Your Clade, Meel’Lady
Look at this cute little eel or eel-like fish that my nephew sent me. He spotted it in a tide pool along the Northern California coast.
I don’t know what it is. I thought it might be a type of cusk-eel, but I’m not sure if a cusk-eel is even an eel. I feel like the more I read about eels the more I find out about eel-like fish who are not actually eels because they don’t originate from the Champagne region of France. I’m kidding. But it’s confusing!
According to Wikipedia, cusk-eels aren’t true eels, because “true eels diverged from other ray-finned fish during the Jurassic period, while cusk-eels are part of the Percomorpha clade, along with tuna, perch, seahorses and others.”
I only know what like one of those words means.
But I learned that a clade is like a natural family grouping of a species who have a shared ancestor. And that clades and cladistics (amazing word) is the most common way to classify animals and that cladistics has maybe rocked the taxonomy boat a lil bit. Anyway, long story short story, I guess cusk-eels have different ancestors than a True Eel™. But I’m still not sure if the eel in this photo is a cusk-eel or another eel imposter or a real bonafide True Eel™.
If you know what type of eel or eel-like fish this is, please reply to this newsletter!
Book Events and News
I’ll be heading to Rediscovered Bookshop in Boise, Idaho on August 10th to do a joint story time and book signing with my friend, Lisa Frenkel Riddiough. More details as we get closer to the date!
Save the date for the Bigfoot Kids’ Book Festival in Redmond, Washington on September 7th, 2024. They have an amazing line-up of authors and illustrators, and I’m so excited to participate and see writer community friends from the west side of the state!
I’ve had a handful of parents in the past week share with me little stories about the door hangers my publisher, Tundra Books, made for The Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime. Everything from making sure their door sign is flipped so they can have their privacy in the bathroom, to making sure it says, “being a good a little mermaid,” before bedtime. I love these little stories of autonomy and independence, which is so much at the root of The Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime.
If you’ve read The Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime or Crocodile Hungry and want to review them on Goodreads or The StoryGraph, or wherever you buy books, that is a nice thing to do to support books and authors and I’d appreciate it.
Stay up to date on all my book events and news and subscribe to The Eel Report & Other Things for all the eel, kidlit, and writing updates and shenanigans.
Authors Against Book Bans
The Idaho legislature passed a library book removal law, HB710 this spring, and it goes into effect July 1st. Read about it here. Since the law passed, I’ve been trying to go to my library board meetings so I know what’s going on and how this law will affect our libraries, communities, readers, and authors.
I’m a member of the single-issue grassroots organization Authors Against Book Bans, and if you’re an author, editor, illustrator, translator, contributing writer to an anthology, poet— basically, if your name is on a copyright page, I encourage you to join.
AABB is building a great network of support for creatives, and if you were like, I’d love to speak out and show up for myself and my fellow authors but don’t know where to start, or I don’t want to feel alone in this book ban fight, or I’d love to know how to help against book bans, AABB is here.
Writing Research and Ghost Stories
I don’t really read scary books, I am what you might call an L-7 weenie scaredy pants extraordinaire. I have only read one Stephen King book, and it was about writing, and even then when Stephen King wrote about his accident in On Writing, I was SO FREAKED OUT, like is he going to be okay? is he going to make it?? knowing full well that SK had to survive the accident in order to write about it.
But I have an idea for a ghost story— it’s an idea I’ve had for a few years— and I’m trying to figure out if I know enough about this idea and ghost stories to actually try and write it.
So I’m doing my research and reading ghost stories which have their own rules and conventions.
So what’s next in this idea development story writing phase— honestly, maybe not much. I don’t know if I know enough about this story to write it, which happens sometimes.
Maybe that feels like the yips, but I am convinced that no matter the genre or audience, all writing is like building a puzzle. Sometimes a piece is missing, or a whole chunk, sometimes a whole other puzzle is mixed in— rude!— and so many times there are pieces that should look like they fit but then they don’t.
What I like about ghost stories is the opportunity to bridge time periods and histories and for whatever is haunting the ghost, whatever keeps them tethered, that story more often than not parallels the protagonist’s story, adds meaning and depth, or can reveal hidden mysteries.
So I have this idea, this setting, this specific moment in time connected with the present day, I know the historical events that led to the creation of this ghost, but I currently know more about my modern-day living protagonist. Because I don’t yet know what puzzle, what deeper connection there is for the ghost, what is haunting them? Which is a big piece of the ghost story writing puzzle.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote something about a shared inspirational pool in Big Magic— about a story idea, a development, an obsession— and how ideas will find the right writer. So for Gilbert, she had this idea, and explored it, but also that story wasn’t right for her, and the inspiration for it left, but it was right for Ann Patchett, which had similar inspirations and eventually led to what is now State of Wonder. Not like a shared writing experience or plagiarism or anything like that, but an acknowledgement that maybe ideas live in this mysterious ether and find the right writer who has all the puzzle pieces.
As an aside, I also feel like sometimes I could use a little picture book inspiration sharing from the ether! Like helloooo, hey, idea ether, send me some inspo!
Anyway, I’m not ready to let this ghost story go and release it to the imagination pool that we all like to play in. I don’t know if I’ll figure it out, sometimes with stories, you have to explore enough to know whether or not it’s a story you can tell.
I thought I might write about generative AI for this newsletter, and my thoughts and experiences— especially when so many workplaces, people, professionals are willing to adopt and incorporate generative AI tools. But the thing I keep thinking about the most, is that as a writer, as a creative person, generative AI tools make me want to show my work. To show how I think, to show how an idea develops. So maybe this ghost story will get shelved or maybe it’ll find a writer that isn’t me, but here’s to showing my work. Here’s to still exploring.
If you read scary stories, please send me more ghost story recommendations and all your favorite hauntings. And also as a little sneak peek into the setting, what books should I read that are set in the British Isles?
Happy reading and happy writing.
If you like this Eel Report Newsletter, and you think someone might want to know about eels, or can identify cusk-eels, or have some great ghost story recommendations, you can share it with a friend: