Thanks, Deb. I think she may have been to our conference in the past 3-4 years, though. I'll doublecheck if I get a refusal from any of the agents I currently have an open request for (since if they all accept, the agent part of our panel will be full). Also, she's already doing Whidbey Island this year, so I don't know if she'll want to do another Seattle area conference so soon.

I'm glad I looked at her website, though. I'd forgotten all about the Whidbey Island thing. No point in doing it this year, since it's just two months away, and I won't have a completed ms to pitch. But next year, maybe.

(Yeah, I know there's reason to attend conferences beside pitching a book. But they're so very, very expensive for my freelancer budget that I need that to justify the expense. Craft help can be had cheaper, and networking can be done at my local chapter and online.)

I had a very goodnatured second grade teacher. Third on the other hand... sheesh.

But there's a pretty huge range between that and just "It scared me" or whatever.

Oh, hell yes. Total agreement; trust me, I was pretty frellin' articulate at ten. But the ability to totally detach from the immediate punch of a book (not just horror, either - think about your first reaction ever to something like "To Kill A Mockingbird") is something that I don't believe is remotely the norm until some college professor gets their grip on you. (edit for future clarity: that's metaphorical - the urge to wonder about it actually came my way about 13, but the skill to follow the trail and see where it led wasn't until high school.)

I remember being in second grade, and we had an assignment to read a book and write two sentences about it. I wanted to write more than two sentences -- I had a lot to say about this book -- and I handed in my full page of writing, and the teacher called my mother, because it was "developmentally inappropriate" for me to have more than two sentences to say about a book.

If any of you scientist types can build me a time machine, I would love to go back and smack some of these "help the child formulate" adults.

Amy, YOU did that to Rachel? I thought that was one of the most effective of the later books, and so did Nick, and we didn't like many of the later ones, and hated the ending a LOT.

Yes, but my point is, did you think that at age 12, reading them?

Cast your memory back to however old you were when you read the things, and try to remember their impact on you - those writers, any writers - at that age.

Deb, that's what my post was about. Back in middle school, I gobbled down Pike and found his books deliciously scary and nasty, and thought Stine was predictable. I don't know how I can break that reaction down into smaller words, or smaller feelings, and it's a far cry from taking about the writer's reliance on the Oedipal myth and Gothic tradition, or what have you.

I try not to intellectualize what I remember of my childhood reactions to things, and like you I'm suspicious of that tendency in others. But it almost sounds like you don't believe "X is better than Y" is a valid reaction to remember from childhood, which is absurd. Those judgments may be wrong -- in eighth grade, I liked Paula Abdul more than R.E.M. -- but they're still there.

Amy, YOU did that to Rachel?

Hee! Well, not entirely. Applegate herself came up with the basic plot, and then we had to flesh it out and work out details, etc. Actually, she wanted her to be a worm, I think, which the art department balked at, and I think we also figured it out they don't actually regenerate into two separate worms if sliced in half. Or something.

"AmyLiz suggested I call you"

Hope it helped! And I know what you mean about cold-calling -- I'm not very good at it, either, at least when you're asking someone for something. (Although I think you posted that in Bitches...)

The Animorphs books were great fun. And a lot of work, too -- researching the animal characteristics and figuring out those action scene details. But the characters were solid and each very different. The first book I did was Ax, the alien, which was hilarious.

But it almost sounds like you don't believe "X is better than Y" is a valid reaction to remember from childhood, which is absurd. Those judgments may be wrong -- in eighth grade, I liked Paula Abdul more than R.E.M. -- but they're still there.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. You're missing - or adding, I can't tell which - a level to it.

ALL of my reactions at that age that were at all comparative were "X is better than Y" or, rather, in my case because of the way I process, "I like X better than Y." And that was the point of MY post: demanding that my 12-year-old self critique and break down why on a critical level would have been ridiculous and cruel. It also would have resulted in a blank stare and a fairly rude "NO, I don't THINK so, it doesn't MATTER why to anyone but me, why should YOU care?"

So, you've got me assbackward there. It's the imposition of artificial reasoning on the initial reaction I was questioning, not the initial X over Y reaction. I'm all about those.

To me, saying it's about "resonance" makes it sound like I'm picking chocolate over vanilla, whereas really this is (in terms of YA thrillers) Haagen-Dazs Dulce du Leche vs. freezer-burned bargain-basement vanilla.

Yay! Thanks for sticking up for my man Pike.

I got to write two of them, which was a hell of a lot of fun.

Wow! You wrote a couple of the Animorphs books? That's so cool! Which ones? My brother or sister might have read them.

Which ones?

Numbers 28 and 32 -- I'd have to go look up the titles. (They were all so nonspecific and similar -- The Invasion, The Threat, The Getaway, whatever.)

The first one was an Ax (the alien) book, and the second was the one where Rachel got split in two. The Ax one was more fun.

When I was writing them, Jake was nearly eight, so he was very impressed.

Yay! Thanks for sticking up for my man Pike.

(banging head against desk)

NO ONE WAS DISSING PIKE.

Please to read my lips, OK? I do not diss writers I have never read; I rarely diss writers, period.

Not. What. I. Was. Saying. Am I speaking martian, or something? This is pretty straightforward.

Put bluntly, I'm having some difficulty in believing that all you guys were little critical geniuses at age ten, or whatever. And that goes for the deep, earnest, initial soul-searching I am not for one second believing in about the choices in ice cream, either.

Maybe everyone in this thread was in fact that kind of prodigy. If so, congrats, and I'm sorry I'm doubting you. But honestly, take my word for it: when handed two flavours of ice cream to choose from, most little kids lick their lips, point at the one they like better and say "That one! Two scoops, please." The reasons for why they preferred one over the other come way later in life.

PERIOD. OK? Not "attacking" your man Pike. Are we clear? Please? Because I honestly don't know how much clearer I can possibly be.

Jesus. Frustrating.