BIG, BAD BARTLESVILLE UPDATE

Many of you have been asking me for updates on the Bartlesville situation. The reason I haven’t given one is that I have been working to get information, with little success until today.

A quick recap, just to get everyone up to speed. If you know this story backwards and forward, skip to the part at the bottom that says PRESENT DAY.

IN OUR LAST EPISODE:

April 27th: I get an e-mail from Ninja Librarian Susan Hunt telling me that The Bermudez Triangle had been challenged and removed from the Bartlesville Mid-High Library. She asks for my help.

When I put the story up on my blog, and when excellent writers like Justine Labalestier, Scott Westerfeld, John Green, Maryrose Wood, Meg Cabot, and Neil Gaiman (to name a few) picked up the story . . . and when all of you got involved with letters and posts . . . the committee that banned the book realized that this was not just going to be slipped under the carpet. After a week of effort, during which they stubbornly refused to answer my e-mails and calls, I finally spoke to one person on the committee.

He denied that they ever did this. “We can’t ban the book!” I was told. “Only the school board can do that!”

But I had information saying that yes, they really did do that, and no, they aren’t supposed to, for that is very naughty indeed! Remember how I kept insisting and insisting that it had really happened that way?

They couldn’t admit that, because it’s wrong and they would have gotten into trouble.

As the story got bigger and the local paper got involved, they gave the same story to the reporter, making both me and Ninja Librarian Susan seem like we were making something out of nothing, and doing a classic, “Who, me?” defense.

Which pretty much none of you believed, thankfully.

Then we entered into a period of bureaucratic weirdness, during which I learned more than I ever hoped to about the inner workings of the Bartlesville school district. I heard about the many tiny technicalities, the by-laws, the little things that they were using to say that the book hadn’t been banned, when it actually had been.

Except what they were saying kept changing. And it wasn’t just what they were telling me. My many Bartlesville friends told me that they were also all getting different stories about what went down, but the bottom line was . . . many mistakes were made, and the book was still off the shelf.

Finally, a committee member wrote to me to tell me that they had finally made a recommendation about the book, but that they couldn’t tell me what that recommendation was. Which was annoying enough. I then read in the paper that they said that they HADN’T made a recommendation.

“But!” I sputtered, pointing at my screen to the e-mail from the committee member that said that they had made a recommendation but could not tell me what it was. “But, but, but!”

Then my phone rang. It was a Friend in Bartlesville who I cannot name put who was very much involved with that story. She told me that no, I wasn’t going crazy. They had made a recommendation, but then . . . whoops! . . . they violated public policy by not informing the public of the challenge!

So they had to withdraw it. So they said they hadn’t made one. Well, except they forgot to tell the school PR person about the “new story,” so the truth was still getting out until they got that fixed up.

Still with me? Does your head hurt yet? We’re getting to the new part.

They then notified the public (by putting up an opinion box on the school website). While many of you expressed serious concern and anger about banning, it seems that several people in the area were all for it! And so, for a period of about a week and a half, I got nasty letters full of very non-Christian remarks, explaining how I was a bad person and certain to be hit by lightening.

I began to get grouchy. Still, I tried and tried and tried to reach the committee members again. I tried to reach ANYONE. I heard only from my friends in the town, but they had no new information. I thought over some new strategies. Many of you signed my petition to have the book replaced.

Weeks of silence followed, until today.

PRESENT DAY . . .

Today, Ninja Librarian Susan Hunt got in touch with me and told me two things.

The first thing is that the only librarian on the committee, the only person who stood up for the book . . . was removed from her position as a chair of one of the library committees by Janet Vernon, the head of the committee, and the person who STILL refuses to talk to me about the book.

The second is that Ninja Librarian Susan Hunt was called in for a meeting. It was fairly clear that this was not going to be the best meeting, and that there would not be hugs and sloppy kisses all around. She decided that rather than back down, she would resign her position. And I quote:

“I have taught for 33 years and have now gone out doing what I know was right. I continue to stand by my original statement to you, Maureen. The committee headed by Vernon voted to remove your book without having read it. I did not lack patience in the process in revealing this. I have no doubt that had we not made this information public that the book would have been immediately removed.”

So there you have it. One book advocate punished, another leaves because she refuses to go along with this insane situation.

This afternoon, I called Janet Vernon yet again, but got no answer. So let me put my message here.

Janet, if you are listening . . . I am officially #&$^#&^ed off. I was bemused before, sometimes addled, and occasionally irate. But now I cannot print what I am. And FREE MONKEY isn’t even here now to talk me down, because he is on his way to Los Angeles to start the World Tour.

I think you think that this kind of thing can go on, and that it’s okay, and if you just keep quiet and keep lying it will go away.

But it won’t. Especially not now.

I have left my e-mail and phone number for you on multiple occasions. What are you afraid of, Janet, if what you are doing is so proper? People with nothing to hide usually aren’t so shy and retiring.

Feel free to reverse the charges if that’s the problem. I’ll gladly accept them.

That’s the end of my message.

I’m opening this up to you, friends. What do you think the next step should be? Comments, e-mails . . . send away. I am all ears. How do we deal with these book banners? Because where they’ll remove one book (without reading it, natch), they’ll remove others.

THE NO ME GUSTA/ME GUSTA POST

Tonight, friends, I was out celebrating the release of Girl At Sea. This is something I usually don’t do. Not Girl At Sea, specifically, but book releases in general.

Book releases are strangely ninja-like. The books just appear. No one wakes you in the middle of the night to let you know that they’re stacking them at Barnes and Noble. They just show up, sometimes over the course of a few days. So, it can be kind of easy to slide over the whole thing. Sure, I like to blog, and send out Free Monkey, and give away books, and talk to you guys! But me, personally? I tend to just go about my business.

Besides, the last time I really tried to do anything on the release day was when my first book, The Key to the Golden Firebird, came out. And that something basically consisted of:

1. almost getting arrested in the HarperCollins building
2. falling into Sixth Avenue because the heels I was wearing destroyed my feet (see below for details)
3. sitting on Daphne Unfeasible’s couch all night because my feet hurt so much, and eventually putting on her comically inflated flip-flops and stumbling to the corner to buy ice cream

I told John and Sarah Green that I generally don’t do anything big for myself when my books come out. They said, “No way, mj. You must do something!” So we met tonight and had drinks at the famous Algonquin Hotel, home of the Algonquin Round Table. I have an unabashed fascination with the Algonquin’s literary history. Anywhere that Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker had drinks . . . it’s good enough for me.

Then John and Sarah took me to a breathtaking fancy dinner, where I got to watch John Green try to pick out wine, which was kind of like watching a cat pick out a television. (To be fair, the wine list was easily seventy-five pages long, and all we had really figured out was that we wanted white, and that we didn’t want it to cost $3500, which was what several of the bottles were going for.) We were somewhat baffled by the total fancitude of the menu, as it did seem to be going out of its way to be confusing. In the end, I had plain old spaghetti, because the waiter recommended it so warmly that he almost wept. And you know what? It was some of the best spaghetti I ever had—with a smoky, spicy sauce—rivaled only by the spaghetti I had in Sorrento when researching Girl At Sea. (I work hard for you guys.)

In any case, it was a fantastic evening.

Many of you working on book reports write in and ask me what I like. I like so many things, I find this hard to answer. But I can tell you what I don’t like, because those things are less numerous, and I dislike them in enough detail that I can go on and on about them. And what else are blogs for, if not to go on and on and on?

Plus, these things are very relevant today.

I’ve included some things I do like as a counterpoint, just to keep things balanced.

NO ME GUSTA: READING AT READINGS

I don’t like reading passages from my books aloud, in front of groups. Which is a massive problem right now, as I face down what is pretty much a month of doing nothing but.

I don’t suffer from stagefright. It’s not that. I’ll happily sit in front of a large audience as long as you make me and do pretty much whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t involve me reading from one of my books. I think this is because the monologue in my head goes something like this, whenever I am forced to read:

Okay, Johnson, what was the point of that last sentence? You could have skipped it. In fact, you should have tied that sentence to this next paragraph, which cuts way too early. Just skip. Skip! Skip to the . . .

Oh, now you’ve skipped and it makes no sense.

Wait . . . wait . . . Oh God. It’s a typo. This book is ENTIRELY MADE OF TYPOS! I’VE WRITTEN THE FIRST ALL-TYPO NOVEL!

It’s not said in a terribly self-critical, everything-I-do-is-bad voice. It’s more of a crisp editorial voice that wants to go home and start rewriting. Which I can’t do, because the book is out, and I am reading it in front of people. And the process of revision (blog entry coming soon) is not a pretty one that you would want to watch, anyway.

No amount of cheering makes this better. I am 100% NO ME GUSTA on this. Which is why, if you’ve ever seen me read, you may have watched:

- me rambling about whatever comes to mind
- me trying to start a Q&A immediately after my name is announced, even if the audience has no questions because they don’t know who I am
- me doing imitations of John Green, even if the audience does not know who he is
- me doing an improvised dance (everyone speaks dance)
- me asking questions of the (now slightly alarmed) audience
- me reading from books that I did not write
- me quietly trying to escape the room via an alarmed exit

ME GUSTA: MEETING READERS

However much I don’t want to read my own book to you, I love coming out and seeing you and doing all of the above things. In fact, if you guys have any ideas for things I can do instead of reading aloud, PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS!

NO ME GUSTA: SHOE SHOPPING

You know how girls are supposed to love shoes and shoe shopping and how we’ll do anything for shoes? Not this girl. This girl thinks shoe shopping should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Shoe shopping is something I do under extreme duress.

The why behind this one is anatomical.

I made out fairly well, in the generally healthy, normally formed body department. I am one of those people who can be heard bragging, after a glass of wine or two or when sitting in front of an audience expecting me to read from my book, that I have better than perfect vision. No one ever cares, but I go on about it anyway.

But it all falls apart with the feet.

I have horrible feet. Seriously horrible feet that should be cut off at the ankle and stored in carefully sealed jars, which should be locked away and guarded at all times in case they reanimate and become evil zombie feet. (I have, in fact, long been working on a musical based on this premise with my friend J. Krimble. It’s called FOOTZAPOPIN!)

They are flat. Not just a little flat. Very, very flat. So flat that I have caused at least one doctor to let out a low whistle and say, “Wow, those are profoundly flat feet.”



My feet are flatter than these.

The result is that I can never seem to find shoes that don’t feel like tiny bear traps clamped to my feet. This rarely stops me from buying heels, but the pain I suffer can go on for days.

The truth is, I’d just rather go barefoot. Or have my feet cut off, jarred, and have a hoverboard attached right to my legs. But since no one will do this, and since I have to go out of doors, and since hoverboards don’t exist, I have to shoe shop.

Everyone I know loves to shoe shop. Daphne Unfeasible swoons at the idea. I wish shoes would just show up in my closet, placed there by elves. I get so bored, looking for shoes. I can see that many of them are pretty, and I like pretty things as much as the next person, but mostly, they just all look the same. Especially summer flat sandals, which I definitely can’t wear, because the flatness of it all would become so overwhelming that I might actually start evolving on the spot into some new kind of flat human.

I needed shoes to go and do the readings. You can see the problem here.

ME GUSTA: I CAN HAS CHEEZEBURGER

After I come hobbling in, I like to put my feet up and do a little internet research at my favorite site, I CAN HAS CHEEZEBURGER. I could look at this site for hours, because it has pictures like this:



Foot pain, forgotten!

I am already waiting for your brilliant comments about how to deal with this reading situation. You guys are my only hope. And if you want to bring be shoes, or if you are cobblers . . .

And you’re still coming out, right? I mean, I may make puppets or something. Trust me, you’ll like it!