Unplugging children’s imaginations

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

One of the themes in SARAH & KATY AND THE IMAGINATION BLANKETS is unplugging the imagination.

This doesn’t mean disconnecting from the imagination. It simply means using the imagination without the help of batteries or power cords.

I grew up in a household that required my sisters and I to be unplugged most of the day. Mom assigned each of us one hour of TV time Monday through Friday. (Saturday mornings were flexible — we were allowed to watch a full stretch of Saturday morning cartoons. I used to think this was Mom’s way of taking pity on us for her strict Monday through Friday rules; in retrospect, I think it was a way to keep us quiet so our parents could get the rare morning to sleep in.)

The hour of TV time included television programs, movies and video games. If we wanted to watch a 90-minute Disney movie, we had to bargain with a sibling to pool time. The same with Nintendo. In the days before a save option was built into games, we needed more than an hour if we wanted to get past World 3 in Mario 3.

I’m not a mom yet, although my husband and I are planning (and hoping) to be parents within the next year or so. One of the parenting dilemmas I face is, how plugged in will my child be?

Today, there are a lot more screens to look at. Televisions, computers, tablets, phones. (When I’m an old lady, I’ll be telling kids, “When I was your age, phones didn’t have screens! When I was your age, tablets didn’t exist!”) An hour of screen time probably won’t cut it by the time my kids are walking and talking.

Luckily, this mom has a solution: How I limited screen time by offering my kids unlimited screen time.

Her Momentum Optimization Project, better know in her house as The List, outlines a set of rules her children have to follow before they can have unlimited screen time. The rules require the children to read, finish homework, accomplish something creative and tackle chores first.

Her philosophy is:

 If I start my day by sitting at the desk at, say, 5:00am, and digging in on actual work, I’ll keep going all day. If I start the day by, say, cleaning the kitchen or folding laundry or phaffing about on the interwebs, I’m in trouble. … I think of it as Newton’s Law of Personal Momentum, for I am an object that will either stay at rest or stay in motion, based on where I am at 5:30 a.m. … I know that if I get them up and out the door bright and early, they’ll be out playing all day. But let them sit down in front of a screen, and they’ll stay there all day. Like me, they are all about momentum.

Sounds like sound reasoning to me. I’ll have to keep her Momentum Optimization Project in mind when I have kids. It looks like a great way to keep imaginations unplugged.

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Book release butterflies

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

As a kid, the moment I finished a story I hurried to Mom or the nearest teacher so they could read it.

As an adolescent and adult, I was stingier with my writing than Gollum was with his ring. (Minus hissing “My precioussss.”)

When I was in grade school, I was confident parents and teachers thought everything I wrote was cute. I ran to the adults to get the obligatory pat on the head, then went my merry way feeling like I just earned a million dollars.

But as I got older and my writing started to feel more serious, ambitious, or exploratory, the worry set in, “What if they hate it?”

(“They” meaning pretty much everyone in the world.)

Writing stems from a personal part of ourselves. It’s daunting to open ourselves to scrutiny when we share that work.

For years, I have shared writing sparingly, hoarding projects that I didn’t deem polished enough for public eyes. Every so often I would pass a chapter here or an idea there to my husband or a member of my writing group. Otherwise, I would write and rewrite and delete and start over and edit and reread …

Honestly, it’s a wonder I ever finish writing anything.

As the release date for SARAH & KATY AND THE IMAGINATION BLANKETS inches closer, those old butterflies are stirring again in my stomach. The excitement of launching my first book is coupled with the cautious hope of the story being well-received (and the nervousness that it won’t be).

At the end of the day, I keep taking a deep breath and reminding myself I really need only two fans: the two grade schoolers for whom the book was written. The story started off as a Christmas gift for my nieces, so as long as they like it, I achieved the original goal.

Lucky for me, those two grade schoolers tend to be easy to please with Christmas gifts.

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SKIB cover concepts

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

I am fortunate to know the fabulously talented Hannah Jackson.

Hannah, owner and artist at Hannahbird Illustration, is doing cover art and interior illustrations for SARAH & KATY AND THE IMAGINATION BLANKETS. About a week ago, Hannah sent me eight cover art concepts to review and select one.

One. Just one. Even though I loved all eight.

My initial reaction was to give up on choosing and go do math. (Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate math. Math is hard … but narrowing down one of those eight covers was harder.)

The math was calculating the cost-effectiveness of publishing eight editions of SKIB, each with a different cover. Just think: collector’s editions!

Then reality set in. First of all, I can’t afford to pay for eight covers. Second of all, the book should be published and (hopefully) generate a fan base before a collector’s edition or two or eight could be printed.

So I gave up on math and went back to choosing a cover.

After a couple hours of deliberation and comparing lists of pros and cons, I narrowed my choice.

To four.

(Maybe the math would work for four editions?)

[THE FINAL FOUR]
No1No2No3No7

Except I really wasn’t in the mood for more math. I work better in letters, not numbers. So I began making more lists.

After a couple more hours, I had the choice narrowed to two, at which point I carried the printouts over to the cat, shoved them in his face and said, “Which do you like better?” He smacked one of the pages out of his face, so I interpreted that as his vote.

When the husband got home, I pretty much repeated that routine, minus shoving them in his face. He’s a bit more agreeable (and intelligible) than the cat about answering questions, so I just set them in front of him.

He pointed and said, “I like this one best.”

He voted for the same one as the cat — that was two votes in its favor.

After more deliberating, I decided I liked the same one the husband (and cat) chose. I sent word to Hannah about which we selected, and she since has started work on the full cover.

So which concept did I choose?

You’ll just have to wait for the cover reveal next month to find out.

ABOUT THE COVER

Each concept features Sarah and Katy on a magic carpet, which is one of the four adventures they imagine with their blankets in the book.

Hannah Jackson created eight thumbnails indicating size and placement of cover elements. The final cover will be a refined, detailed version of one of the four shown above.

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Mother knows best

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

I never meant to be a children’s author.

Before Sarah & Katy and the Imagination Blankets, I had not written children’s fiction since I was … well, since I was a child.

As soon as I reached junior high, I began writing YA fiction. In high school, I began writing literary fiction. In college, I branched into mainstream and women’s fiction, with a twist of magical realism. My tendency was to write toward my own age group.

The manuscripts piled up. A middle grade tale of a princess embarking on a quest. A YA novel about a junior high girls basketball team. A women’s fiction novel about a woman mourning the death of her husband and believing the dog that turned up on her doorstep is him.

None of those books were published, though. They still line figurative shelves on my laptop’s hard drive, collecting figurative dust.

Mom lamented the shift in my writing for years. She was my biggest fan, with drawers stuffed full of old wide-ruled notebook paper with misspelled words in crayon. She never hesitated to tell me she missed the days of my children’s stories that were full of talking cats and wizards and dragons and children transformed into animals.

Oh, and then there was that story I wrote in grade school called “The Witch Sister,” in which I cast my older sister as a witch. Mom still loves to laugh about that one.

But as a preteen, teenager, and adult, I thought I had outgrown that stage of fiction.

Mom tried her best to change my mind, but I continued to work — sometimes half-heartedly — on my adult fiction.

Then Sarah and Katy entered the picture.

(Do those names sound familiar?)

Sarah and Katy, my oldest sister’s daughters (currently the only kids in the family), are 8 and 7 years old. Both can read, and both love books (almost) as much as I do. Both are imaginative, and intelligent, and sincere.

Their love of reading made me want to write a book they would want to read.

(I cheated a little by starring them as the main characters. Just to guarantee they’d be interested.)

SKIB includes all of the elements back from my childhood days of writing children’s fiction. There are magic carpets, pirate ships, ghosts, dragons, talking cats, and magical “imagination” blankets.

Mom’s wish came true. As it turns out, the first book I was able to finish and launch is a children’s book.

Mom was right. As usual.

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