And then, the payoff for an editor: "New Harry Potter Book Lives Up to Hype Surrounding Its Release, Gets Rave Reviews," on the news crawl outside the NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center, 6:10 p.m., July 16, 2005. My sister Melissa and I saw people reading it all over the city: on the subway, at Tiffany's, in line for Mexican food with us at Grand Central Station . . . and if these people had to pay attention to other things, like ordering enchiladas, they invariably showed the mark of the deeply involved reader: one finger holding their place in the book while they attended to the small unimportant details so-called "real life." It was fantastic.

The Toys 'R' Us screen in Times Square, 12:18 a.m., July 16, 2005.

Me and my babies in the Toys 'R' Us at Times Square, 11:32 p.m., July 15, 2005. They let the first wave of people in about ten minutes later, and the Scholastic staff gathered near the front window at 11:55 to watch the countdown on the Times Square JumboTron, ticking off the last 30 seconds aloud, exactly like New Year's Eve. It was so cool to watch people run for the books, get them, clutch them to their chests -- their babies now -- then flip them open and read desperately, as if the words were air.

July 15, 2005

At last! Thank God! In less than 24 hours you all can know everything I know and we can talk about it! I can't wait. I'm going to the Scholastic party in the early evening, then meeting my sister's train from Washington at Penn Station at 10:30. From there I plan to go to Toys 'R' Us in Times Square for the actual release at midnight -- it's like New Year's, that moment, all the waiting over and the anticipation released, even if you don't actually have the book in your hands yet. And when you get the book in your hands, ah . . . all the story and all the secrets, yours yours yours, at long last. I hope it lives up to everyone's expectations and look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

Of course Melissa Anelli will have the book at 7 p.m. UK time, and I fully expect her to call me and scream several times in the course of the evening. And R. J. Anderson always has interesting theories on the HP series (as well as by far the best fanfic I've read), so I look forward to seeing her thoughts too.

A little Arthur A. Levine Books boasting: Arthur was profiled in the Baltimore Sun here. (The picture, incidentally, must have been taken with him sitting on the floor in the Scholastic hallway, as that's our hall carpet (printed with the Scholastic mission statement) in the background behind him.) I was listed as a source in two USA Today articles about Harry Potter, here and here. Thanks to the truly heroic efforts of the marvelous Rachel Griffiths, our imprint website is finally fully up and running here. Thanks to the likewise brilliant efforts of Lisa Yee, she, I, and Scholastic CEO Dick Robinson appear in a photo (taken at ALA) on the Publishers Weekly website here. And this is as good a time as any to make the announcement: I have been promoted to Editor, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, and I'm very pleased and proud. (Rachel and I went and got pedicures in celebration, so my toenails are currently a pearlescent aqua, the better to coordinate with the HP5 shirt I'm planning to wear tomorrow.)

Recent cultural events: Last night I went to the Housing Works Used Bookstore and Cafe to see a taping of the Air America show "Liberal Arts," starring Dar Williams and the very funny Chuck Klosterman. Chuck looks exactly like the stereotype of the pasty overgrown rock geek with big glasses -- an impression confirmed when he compared each of his past girlfriends to a different member of KISS -- but his previous book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto, made me laugh and nod in recognition more than any other book in 2003, and based on the excerpt I heard last night, I look forward to reading the new Killing Yourself to Live for the same reason. Dar performed three songs from her forthcoming album, whose title I unfortunately cannot remember, but I liked the one called "Teen for God" the best . . . and she was just as interesting and articulate in person as she is on "Out There Live."

And tonight Ben and I went to the Jewish Museum to see the Maurice Sendak exhibit, which I commend to anyone in the New York area before it closes on August 15. Being an editorial dork, I got most emotional and excited about the manuscript of Where the Wild Things Are with Ursula Nordstrom's comments on it, but there is plenty of interest to anyone with even the mildest interest in children's books, Jewish literature, or artistic interpretations of the Holocaust.

Finally, if you will indulge me in one last evil laugh for old times' sake: hee hee hee. :-) Enjoy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, everyone!

Fish Fish Bang Bang

Courtesy of Maud Newton Blog and Capitolbuzz.com: Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is writing a book called It Takes a Family, in which he proclaims single mothers shouldn't go to college, Wal-Mart is a good corporate citizen, and children who graduate from public schools are lucky they're not weirder.

I've started to type all sorts of things like "Commenting on this is like shooting fish in a barrel," and then erased them, because (1) that's a cliche and (2) it smacks of liberal glibness and smugness, and there's enough glibness and smugness on both sides of the political divide without my adding more. So instead I'm trying to tease out what exactly it is I find so disgusting about Santorum and his Republican colleagues, and I think it's chiefly the lack of empathy for anything beyond their privileged (and for the vast majority, white male heterosexual) viewpoint. Racism happens. Sexism happens. Financial and medical bad luck happen (and are often linked). Not everyone is born rich and connected. People from the same gender fall in love as deep and true as that between people from opposite genders, and often experience hate and hurt because of that affection. All of this pain is real, and deserves compassion -- and from the government, as much consideration and protection as it can grant without stepping on other people's rights. Republicans often somehow seem to forget anything beyond their bubbles exist, or act in deep denial of that fact. (George W. Bush quite possibly has never known.)

And then when they claim this is Christian behavior (like the man I met in Pennsylvania last year while I was canvassing for John Kerry, who insisted he was against welfare because he was a Christian and "when you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day" yadda yadda) . . . Well, this was the reading at church yesterday -- Isaiah 58, verses 6-10:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of God shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and God will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

I love the promise in the last verse here: If you act for justice, speak not evil, share your food with the needy and your mercy with the afflicted, your light (which I read partly as personal happiness) shall rise, your gloom dissipate. And if we could all do that . . . Creating a better world takes more than just one family, Rick. It takes empathy. It takes humility. It does, in fact, take an entire village of people working together for the good of all, and thinking about more than their own egos and power and the next political race. It is perhaps impossible to ask that of a modern politician -- but I would be delighted for a Republican to prove me wrong.

The Happy List, Episode IV: A New Happy

(also known as the Happy List, Summer 2005 edition)

• Sliding my bare feet through grass
• Pedicures
• Sparkly nail polish
• Sandals that don't hurt my feet
• Movie previews
• Watching baseball
• The International House of Pancakes
• Postcards
• Long Island Iced Teas
• Marty Markowitz
• Finding things on the street in Park Slope (two recent notables: a plastic foot attached to a stuffed leg and a record from the Cornelia Street Cafe reading and music series)
• Stoop sales
• See's candies
• Bliss toiletries
• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge
• Lying in the sun talking/drowsing with friends
• Being incredibly smug and annoying about Harry Potter (a pleasure I have for only six more days)
• Smart action movies
• Sunglasses
• Rice pudding; also chocolate, vanilla, tapioca, and bread pudding (but not bubble tea)
• Fresh-grilled meat
• Fresh-made s'mores
• Rain on the roof
• Sitting in the park reading/writing/editing
• The park in general, actually, and doing just about anything in it . . . I say this often, but I think heaven will look like a New York City park on a sunny Saturday afternoon in June: The whole diversity of humanity eating, drinking, napping, rollerblading, running, making music, listening to music, playing Frisbee and baseball, reading, tossing tennis balls to dogs, grilling, sitting in lawn chairs, getting ice cream, strolling, all in utter peace and harmony and beauty, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.
• The way a box fan makes one's voice sound funny when one speaks into it
• Croquet!

"To A Terrorist," by Stephen Dunn

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

-- from Between Angels (Norton), 1989

Essaying Forth

For those who might be interested, I recently wrote an essay about editing the English-language translation of The Legend of the Wandering King by Laura Gallego Garcia, and you can read it here. This was one of those manuscripts I just fell more and more in love with the more I worked on it, so I get a little carried away at the end, but it truly is an amazing book -- history, fantasy, and philosophy of life all rolled up in one beautiful, fabulous (in the sense of fable-like) package. I am proud of it.

A note on when I refer to something as "my book": The books I edit are not really *my* books -- books belong to their authors, and they're mine only insofar as the author trusts me to help him/her achieve his/her vision and share it with readers. But I love all the books I work on quite passionately, so I feel both the reader's love for a great story and the artist's pleasure in taking part in the creation of something new and wonderful; and thus often I slip and call the books "mine."

BMG Music Service called tonight and seduced me back into joining with a "Buy 1 CD, Get 5 Free" offer. The first CD had to be ordered on the phone, so I asked about, in order, Dar Williams (whose "Out There Live" seems to be my album of the summer); Modest Mouse, pre-"Good News for People Who Love Bad News"; the Beatles (not carried by BMG); Al Green (because I need more funk in my life); and finally Mary Chapin Carpenter, whose "Between Here and Gone" I settled on at last. So now I have to buy one CD and I get four more free ones . . . I need more Cassandra Wilson, definitely, and maybe I will get that Modest Mouse, or some Nina Simone at last. Suggestions and recommendations are gratefully appreciated.

Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt.* I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband.**

* Truly -- the one negative effect of my weekend of Harry Potter / Fourth of July decadence. Aloe vera gel, anyone?
** Ten points to the first non-Katy reader who recognizes the reference. :-)

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Posting from my lovely friend Melissa's house on the Jersey shore, where I am having a great time hanging out with her family, reading trashy magazines, swimming, eating, and successfully avoiding answering questions about "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." The methods they have used thus far to interrogate me include

* Home-brewed alcohol
* Abrupt changes of subject meant to catch me off-guard
* Subtle streams of questions designed to lure me into a false sense of security (e.g. "What's your favorite food?"; "Where did you grow up?"; "Who's the Half-Blood Prince?")
* Extremely cute children making puppy-dog eyes at me
* Vast quantities of delicious food
* Kidnapping threats. (Hey, they're Sicilian.)

But we're less than two weeks away now. I shall stand firm. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Happy Fourth!

Cheryl, Lisa, and STANFORD WONG FLUNKS BIG-TIME