Poetry Friday! EBook celebration! Rabbits! A Poetry Exercise! And just a few more days to enter our Blogiversary Giveaway!

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Howdy Campers!  Happy Poetry Friday!  Happy just-a-few-more-days-'til-our 3rd blogiversary giveaway ends! At the end is today's poem and a Writing Workout (aka Poetry Exercise).

My fellow Teaching Authors have kindly allowed me to post some good news today.

*Gasp!* My one and only child just graduated from college.  And at the exact same time, my books have begun graduating into eBooks.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Wait...wrong photo.

This guy.  He's my kid.
Go, kid, go!

For a bonus point: on what campus is he?
For double bonus points: what is the image on his gold stole?

Actually, that's not the good news they were hoping I'd post.  My fellow TeachingAuthors thought I was going to talk about my new eBook.  So...

Once upon a time...I was nine months pregnant with the guy above when we held the launch of my first picture book, To Rabbittown, at Dutton's Bookstore in Brentwood, CA.

Dutton's was our award-winning neighborhood
independent bookstore extraordinaire, whose doors closed in 2008--sniff, sniff.

To Rabbittown began as a scribble...an illustrated poem, in 1984, when I was working in the marketing department of A.T. & T. in downtown Los Angeles. Looking back, writing it was my escape.  And it really is an escape story--the child in the book runs away to live with rabbits...and slowly turns into one. How much farther can you run away to hide from the nasty corporate world?

It was one of the few books that has floated down from the clouds directly to my fingers, bypassing my brain, nearly fully formed. 

How does that happen?  And why can't it happen all the time?

1984 manuscript of To Rabbittown, now archived
at the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature

I sent it to Scholastic, it was gloriously illustrated by Robin Spowart and published in the spring of 1989, and you can bet your sweet bippy it felt like the birth of my child (the good parts of giving birth, you understand), who was born a few days later.

It became a blue ribbon best seller for Scholastic (I don't know what that means either), sold over 64,000 copies, and got a starred review in the School Library Journal (I was a newbie author; I thought everybody got a starred review in SLJ...); it was in print for eight years...

...until it wasn't in print.  This being my first Out of Print (OP) book, I was devastated.  It really did feel like a death.  I was mortified. And ashamed.  I thought it was my fault.  I tiptoed around, eyes on the ground without telling anyone. If I had been better, had done more, if I had written the next one faster, if I had picked up more trash off the sidewalk, my book would have been immortal.  I thought books were immortal, and if they weren't, well, then there was something deeply wrong with the author.  

Fast forward to 2012.  I am older.  I understand life a little more.  Not everything is my fault.  And some fabulous things are my fault.  My beamish boy is launched into this woolie, wild and wonderful world...

 

...my first born book is reborn as an eBook (for 99 cents) (and just £0.77 in the UK)!
 

First, here's the text of TO RABBITTOWN as my offering for Poetry Friday--but I really hope you have a chance to see the luscious watercolor illustrations by the amazing Robin Spowart on every page.

TO RABBITTOWN
by April Halprin Wayland, illustrated by Robin Spowart

I opened her rabbit-y cage
and while she nibbled celery
I asked her:
Where do the rolling hills go?
She said:
Beyond the wheat
to a pine forest
to the edge of it all
to Rabbittown

I snuggled her close
She told me:
Hop there
Ride the green waves
Find the cliffs
past the smell of the sea
There you’ll find
those brown rabbit eyes
And so I went

They sniffed me and I asked:
How long have you been here?
And what do you eat
in Rabbittown?

The woolly one spoke
She said:
Here before the moon
we drink milk from the milk grass
eat pine needle salad
and save water lilies for dessert

They told me:
Stay
I sat with them
burrowed with them
played games with their babies
and sliced pine branches
at dusk

I grew ears
I heard butterflies fly
I heard the movement of worms in the soil
I heard clouds coming

I wrinkled my rabbit nose...read the rest here 

text and cartoony drawing © 2012 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Writing Workout: Abracadabra--You're an Animal!

To Gazelletown.  To Wormtown. 
To Owltown.  To Sharktown. 
To Horsetown...

What animal would you like to become? Using To Rabbittown as a structure, become that gazelle, spider, eel, elephant or flamingo.  What do you hear, feel, sense, eat?  How do you move through your world?  Who do you long to be with?

Be in that world.  Pull your readers in, too.  Remember to breathe...and to write with joy.

You have only a few days left to enter our TeachingAuthors Third Blogiversary Giveaway for a chance to win one of THREE 30$ gift certificates to Biblio.com, where you can purchase new and used books from independent booksellers around the world, often with free shipping! See ...all the bloody details are here.

Katya is hosting Poetry Friday--thanks Katya!