Memories of the Arrow Book Club

One of my favorite memories of my grade school years (and there aren't that many of them, good memories anyway) was the day that we received the new brochure from the Arrow Book Club.  Since I believe Arrow still exists, you may already know that it was part of the Scholastic Book Services and was aimed at kids in 4th, 5th and 6th grades.  Each month a new catalog came out allowing kids to choose and order their own books, right from the classroom.  What I liked even better than the day when the new catalog came out, was the day that the books arrived and they were handed out.  As I recall, all of my teachers gave the students a few minutes to look over their purchases before returning to our lessons. But even after lessons resumed, the excitement lingered, knowing that those brand new books, that you yourself had chosen, were tucked away in your desk, waiting for you to take them home so you could begin reading them.

I still have most of my Arrow and TAB books (TAB was the book club for kids in 7th grade and up) and I even have one of the catalogs.  As you can see in the inside of this particular catalog, I even had the order blank all filled out and ready to go. Since I never clipped out this order form, I must have had a duplicate of this catalog, or maybe some of the books were repeated the following month, because I do have two of the books that I marked on the form. As I look at these books now, it amazes me that you could purchase some of them for a mere 25 cents.  These days, I doubt there is anything under $3 to $5 dollars.  (By the way, you can click on all of these images to see them enlarged).

Here are some of the books that I have in my collection.  A couple of these belonged to my younger sister.

 "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet," and its sequel, "Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, "were two of my favorites.

 "The Enormous Egg," was another favorite. Although I don't remember a thing about their stories, two of my favorite cover images were from "The Runaway Robot" and "The Forgotten Door."

My love for stories involving time travel were satisfied by "The Magic Tunnel" and "Tunnel Through Time."

I loved books on animals but one of the reasons that I was attracted to "Here, Buster!" was because I had loved the Disney film "Sammy the Way Out Seal," which had come out a year or two before and shared a similar story to "Here, Buster!".  I had always loved reading the Mark Trail comic strip in the Sunday paper, so I was excited to find a whole book devoted to his animal stories.  

Books of science fiction, ghosts and the supernatural were other favorite topics of mine and tended to make up a large part of my book orders, especially as I got older and started receiving the TAB book catalog.

Many of these books are available in either new, or used editions.  Many of them can be found at fairly reasonable if not downright inexpensive prices.  For example, there is a listing on Amazon for "Humor Horror and the Supernatural," for only 58 cents.  I quite often see some of these books for sale in our local Goodwill store.  So, if you're interested, they're not too difficult to find.

My Weekend in New York at the SCBWI Conference

On Sunday night I returned from my first big New York City conference.  It was put on by the SCBWI, which stands for Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.  Over a decade ago, in my previous life as a Washingtonian living north of Seattle, I had attended a few of their west coast regional conferences, but this conference was bigger, better and lots more fun than any of those had been.  First of all there were some really top-notch speakers, superstars of the Children's Book world - Paul Zelinsky, Jacqueline Woodson (who gave a wonderful talk), Kevin Hawkes (who led a fun workshop), Jim Benton who gave a very funny and entertaining presentation, and last but not least, the legendary Jane Yolen who ended the conference with an enlivening talk that had every writer and illustrator in the room excited about getting back to work. 

During her speech, Ms. Yolen gave the audience her own personal 20 rules for writing, many of which can also be applied to illustrators.  The first two were fairly elementary - get rid of the exclamation point and go easy on the adverbs.  Some of her other rules included: have fun writing, have fun illustrating; some magic formulas - BIC (Butt in Chair), HOP (Heart on Page) and PNF (Passion Not Fashion);  in writing, it's not the opening line itself that is so important but what the opening line portends for the rest of the story, the DNA for the book is carried in the opening line; exercise the writing muscle, exercise the illustration muscle by working EVERY day at your craft; be open to revisions: if you are asked to revise something and you go into those revisions with anger, you won't learn much from the process; don't ignore the landscape/setting of your work, be precise with your details, make your reader feel as if you've been there; read what you've written aloud (this is especially helpful if you're writing a picture book);  if you feel blocked, get up and do something else for a while - go for a walk, eat a cookie, read a magazine, watch TV, if none of those things work, then go on to another project for a while; and finally, a rule that I found most helpful - realize that there are projects you will never complete.  A few projects will turn bad, go septic along the way.  When this happens, put them away, don't look at them for awhile, but keep them, in the future you might be able to transform them into something else.

While at the conference, I bought a lot of books, way too many, but who could resist when there was no sales tax charged, plus one received a discount for paying with cash?   With the authors there to give me inspiration each day, it made me feel like I should show my gratitude by purchasing the results of their hard work.  Maybe this was a resurfacing of Catholic guilt ("how can you not buy something from these people who have worked so hard for you?"), but, on the other hand, I didn't buy anything that I didn't really like.  Here are a few of the things that I bought: "Show Way" a beautiful picture book by Jacqueline Woodson which is a generational story dealing with slavery and freedom quilts and the belief that there is always a road to a better place.  This book deservedly won a Caldecott Honor award.  "Library Lion," a sweet, funny and old-fashioned (in a good, nostalgic kind of way) picture book by Michele Knudsen and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, a book that pays tribute to the joy of reading and in particular the importance of libraries.  Of all of the books I've seen by Kevin Hawkes, I think this one contains my favorite of his illustrations.  I also bought Paul Zelinsky's beautiful version of "Rumplestiltskin," which won him a Caldecott honor award.  Mr. Zelinsky gave a wonderful opening talk that was not only laced with humor but gave us a glimpse at some of his working methods.  I also bought an amazing book by Peter Sis titled "The Wall," about his early life in Czechoslovakia, growing up behind the iron curtain.  This was another book that won a Caldecott honor award.  Last but not least, I bought two books on writing - "You Can Write Children's Books," by Tracey E. Dils and "Illustrating Children's Picture Books," by Steven Withrow and Lesley Breen Withrow.   From these last two titles, I'm hoping I'll gain some valuable insight and tips.

The conference was a great experience.  And even though my portfolio didn't win a prize, I was proud of the work I brought along with me and for the first time in a long while, I felt like a grown-up and a professional who, with some hard work, might actually end up having a career yet.