Beginnings and False Starts
I am thrilled to be working on my internship with Jenn Stratton. I’m hoping to be of use to her, but these days, I feel a little bit like a child who has ordered too much food in a restaurant. I’m overwhelmed by all that is on my plate. My appetite is not equal to what I had hoped to accomplish by now. I can hear my mother chidling me, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, sweetheart.” The little Ann of memory nods, somehow ashamed,
Obligations at school have collided over the past three weeks with my responsibilities as an intern. Tomorrow, I am going to get a grip—or so I tell myself each day. We are supposed to have a big storm, and if that is the case, we will have a Snow Day, and I will use it to catch up—fast—before I meet with Jenn on Sunday. I remember being in high school and knowing that I had assignments that were overdue. My teachers were kind, yet I’d wake up each morning with a feeling of dread. In college, I learned to manage my time better—in part to be sure I didn’t feel that combination of guilt and inability to knock something out—for the first time in decades, I’m feeling that way again.
Jenn has set me a list of tasks, all of which I feel I ought to be able to knock out quickly, but when I sit down to send emails or do research, inevitably, I get interrupted. I feel as if I need to go to an undisclosed location to get anything done! I also notice that I am easily (and often) sidetracked by all the interesting materials Jenn has shared with me. Yesterday morning, determined to have something to report for this very blog, I watched an amazing video she had shared about diversity in Children’s Literature and the impact Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day, published in 1963, had on the world of children’s books. I knew vaguely that having a Black child on the cover and as the main character was significant, but I don’t think I realized just HOW significant it was. I talked to my English department chair at school about it; I’m thinking about showing it to my 9th graders as we continue our study of The Harlem Renaissance. But the images of how Black and Chinese characters were portrayed are racist and ugly—could I show that to the girls in a way that does not crush my Black and Chinese students? I am mulling.
I have used my own social media contacts to acquire some information for Jenn.
I;ve started a spreadsheet about women/girls with physical disabilities, and Jenn shared a spreadsheet she has, too, so now I will transfer my entries onto hers. She’s given me an assignment to review the literature that currently exists featuring children with disabilities—I am planning to talk to my school librarian about how to go about such a big task. I emailed with a friend who works at Scholastic about how Jenn might proceed to get her board book published. She wants to do a book for very young children that features moms with physical disabilities. My friend was not very encouraging—kind, but said that having an agent is really the way to go and that children’s books need to avoid being “teachy.” Good to know in case I ever wanted to write one… and that is an interesting piece of this internship that I am, so far, not very efficient at doing. I keep thinking about what I would do if I were the writer—Jenn is the writer. I am the intern. I can feel myself imagining my own board book—who doesn’t love Good Night, Gorilla? But until recently, I had thought about writing children’s books or YA books, but never board books. Ayyyyiii. I am suffering from scope creep in my writer’s life—I write creative nonfiction, don’t I? Actually, I’m not doing very much of that either these days…
Beginnings are often my favorite bit of a process—it’s all before us; we have a metaphorically blank piece of paper, so much to look forward to, opportunities galore. And that is all true in this case, because, as it happens, thus far, I have not begun much!
