{"id":2202,"date":"2011-09-12T22:59:04","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T04:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2202"},"modified":"2011-12-05T12:58:29","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T18:58:29","slug":"some-impossibly-excessive-fangirling-before-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2202","title":{"rendered":"Jack for Ambassador! In Which My Friends Join Me In
Some Impossibly Excessive Fangirl’ing Before Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

See my special tee shirt that I’m wearing today for a special reason? And I’m wearing it in solidarity this morning with two other friends, sportin’ the exact same haute couture. What in the actual what the?<\/em> you may be wondering. Let me explain. <\/p>\n

It goes a little like this: Whenever author Jack Gantos<\/a><\/strong> very simply either writes or speaks, cyberspace chatter amongst myself, blogger\/public librarian Adrienne Furness (What Adrienne Thinks About That<\/a><\/em><\/strong>), and blogger\/school librarian Camille Powell (BookMoot<\/a><\/strong><\/em>) enthusiastically ensues — all on account of our most sincere (and long-time) fan-dom. Jack has written a new novel, Dead End in Norvelt<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which I covered over here<\/a><\/strong> in a July Kirkus<\/em> column (and followed up here<\/a><\/strong> at 7-Imp with an interview with the man himself). This book sees its official release today. Adrienne, Camille, and I exchanged many emails about the book over the past few months (we were lucky enough to have early copies of it) and discussed how much we enjoyed it. Natch. This didn’t surprise us. <\/p>\n

But I also had the distinct pleasure of hearing Jack speak in April at The University of Tennessee, and I contacted Adrienne and Camille, my number-one fellow Jack-fans, at that time to say, “I saw Jack speak again, ladies, and once again I was reminded why it is that I decided to study children’s lit in the first place.” Because, you see, hearing Gantos speak will do that for you, as well as make you laugh so hard that you think you’ll nearly split in half. (Thank goodness for his wicked and refreshing sense of humor.) His words are just invigorating is all there is to it. The three of us chatted about, as always, his general awesome-ness as a force in children’s lit, given this new novel and his appeal as a speaker. So . . . <\/p>\n


\n

(Photo from the April children’s lit conference at the Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature<\/a><\/strong>, or CCYAL, at The University of Tennessee. Pictured left to right is Dr. Cindy Welch<\/a><\/strong> from UT, Steven Withrow<\/a><\/strong>, Mary Pom Claiborne from Knox County Public Library, Gantos<\/a><\/strong>, Dr. Kenneth Wise from UT, Miranda Clark from the CCYAL, Kristie Atwood from Webb School of Knoxville, me, and author Richard Michelson<\/a><\/strong>. Photo credit: The One and Only Robin Smith.)<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

. . . this led Adrienne and Camille and I to ponder, amongst ourselves, what a wonderful Ambassador for Young People’s Literature<\/a><\/strong> Gantos would one day be. If we could rule the world anyway, we’d proclaim that. So, we got all crazy and decided to have tees made. (As you can see, we kept the text and design super simple.) Just for the three of us nerdy fans. But then we decided, hell, why not share ’em on our respective blogs? And why not post our pics on the official book-release day for Norvelt<\/em>? (I commissioned a long-time college friend in the T-shirt screen printing business to make these shirts quite a while ago but got so super SUH-WAMPED-busy with my manuscript deadline that I honestly forgot about it. So, when this book-release date neared and we three started talking again about doing this post, I was happy to finally put on the tee and wear it with fangirl pride.) <\/p>\n

So, here we are, our tee shirt reveal: Adrienne’s post is here<\/a><\/strong> this morning, and Camille’s is here<\/a><\/strong> today. <\/p>\n

{I’m including one more photo here, because I like how you can anagram “bad ass” from this view of the letters on the shirt. That somehow seems fitting. Let us not discuss the sassy, it-looks-like-I-took-a-photo-of-myself, Facebook’y look to that photo. I don’t know what that<\/em> is all about.}<\/p>\n

Are we gonna, say, start a nation-wide campaign and embarrass Jack? Nope. Are we gonna start a club and sky-write about it? Nope (though that’s tempting — I always like an excuse to meet in a tree house with s’mores and take minutes, and I’m a wicked nerdy note taker.) Though our fansanity seems to know no bounds, we’re just having a bit of fun. (But, SERIOUSLY, people, he’d make a great ambassador … we’re just sayin’…)<\/p>\n

So, yeah. Next time Gantos is speaking in your vicinity, if you’re lucky enough for such scheduling to happen in your life, don’t miss a chance to hear him do his thing and impart his wisdom. If you already make children’s lit a part of your life, you’ll want to cheer when you’re done hearing him. If it’s not part of your life, his words will make it want<\/em> to be. <\/p>\n

And maybe one day we’ll hear him speak as Ambassador. If we nerds have our way …<\/p>\n

(P.S. Thanks to my friend Rob Riehl and Riehl Printing in Knoxville, Tennessee, for making the tees for me, Adrienne, and Camille. Thanks to my seven-year-old for snappin’ my picture in my own home library, even though she had to step away from her favorite show<\/a><\/strong> to do so. And extra special thanks to Adrienne and Camille for playing along — as well as for their excellent taste in books.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See my special tee shirt that I’m wearing today for a special reason? And I’m wearing it in solidarity this morning with two other friends, sportin’ the exact same haute couture. What in the actual what the? you may be wondering. Let me explain. It goes a little like this: Whenever author Jack Gantos very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etcetera","category-intermediate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}