The sequel (or prequel?) to “How to Publish Your Book,” here’s something else they don’t always teach you in graduate school. As in that earlier post, this is what has worked for me. Results may vary. Please note: the advice below derives from my experience as an English professor who specializes in children’s literature.  This…
A number of folks at MLA 2011 were kind enough to mention that they’ve found my “advice” postings useful. Â In the hopes of continuing to help, here’s one more before I veer back to other blog topics (children’s literature, comics, biography, music, etc.). Â Today’s topic is: how do you develop a robust CV quickly? As…
In yesterday’s post, I skipped past the actual getting of the job. (Oops.) Today, I’ll talk about that. Oh, but enough about me. What do you think of me? – old joke 4. To Market, to Market, to Get Me a Job In 1999, I had three interviews. The first was pleasant enough. The second was…
MLA’s coming up later this week. Can you bear to read yet another advice column? If not, then you may want to skip the following personal narrative that, yep, includes some advice (well, inasmuch as my personal example may be instructive… which it may not be). You may ask yourself: well, how did I get…
For those of my readers who might be attending the MLA in LA this week, I am posting all of the Children’s Literature sessions. Hope to see you there! Â (Well, except for the first one. Â MLA’s sessions are – for the first time that I’m aware – beginning before 3:30 pm. Â So, I won’t have…
Yesterday, I sent off (what I hope is) the final revision of the manuscript for my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. After I did, I began reading Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (2010), which Donald Sturrock (the author) begins by describing his own relationship with his subject. It helped me understand…
This post is for my fellow intellectual laborers – be you academics, teachers, authors, artists, carpenters, curators, architects, doctors, plumbers, web designers, or… well, any job that requires you to use your noggin’. Â If you think about it (and people reading this blog probably do think about it), intellectual labor covers many jobs – you…
My article, “Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President,” is now available on-line in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly‘s current issue (35.4, Winter 2010). Â To give you a sense of its thesis, here’s a brief excerpt from early in the piece: To examine how these Obama biographies attempt to fit him into dominant national…
Not That Kind of Doctor‘s delightful post on “The Five Stages of Grading” prompts me to share my own grading method: Procrastigrading. Â While the word is a portmanteau of “procrastinating” and “grading,” I do not mean “put off grading indefinitely.” Â Instead, give yourself a one-week deadline for each assignment (quizzes, exams, papers, anything), and begin…
Lissa Paul talks about our new book, Keywords for Children’s Literature, forthcoming from NYU Press in the Spring of 2011. Â I say “our” new book, but we are merely the editors. Â We did each contribute an essay of our own (Lissa wrote on “Literacy,” I wrote on “Postmodernism”), but other experts wrote the other 47…
