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I’m still just a tad too jetlagged to write coherently about the two topics I’ve been mulling. So instead, here, in no particular order, are things I learned in Hawaii.
* Even overcast rainy-ness seems glorious at 70 degrees on a tropical island when you’ve left a foot of snow behind on a not-so-tropical island.
* Pineapples grow OUT OF THE GROUND. Out of the ground, I tell you! And here I was, thinking my whole life, that they grew from trees. They are bromeliads, which may be one of the coolest words, but strangest plants around.
* There is a delicacy called shaved ice. It is what I’d call a snow cone. Except way better. And you can get condensed milk drizzled on top, which at first sounds like it could be bad, but it is so, so good!
* It seems I’m on an unintentional SCBWI-Obama tour. The last one I did in ’08 was in Chicago, just weeks after the election. Now Honolulu, where I got to see the condo building where Obama’s grandma lived, the school he went to, and the Baskin Robbins where he worked. So I guess I need Boston and DC speaking engagements before I’ve collected all towns Obama has called home?
* I get lost in the middle of Hawaiian words. So getting around for five days sounded a little like this: “Oh, we need to go down Kala…mumblemumble to Lili’o… that L street….” Also, there are apparently no B’s in Hawaiian!
Kevin Henkes sums up how I’m feeling today best. 
During dinner with friends last night, I wondered in passing if I like Obama for the same reasons I like YA fiction better than adult fiction. Sure, I was being a bit flippant. But then I thought more about it, and…well…
1. Better edited. (Oh, snap!)
2. Change: YA books are full of change, because teens are full of change.
3. YA books are about taking on the world. Fix it? Change it? At least our part of it? Yes we can!
4. Hope. I’ve always said this is one of the key differentials between adult and YA. YA books need hope at the end, we need a sense that everything the character has been through has lead him or her somewhere better. That we are better for having spent time with him or her.
5. Gets you where you live. YA books are unafraid of using new formats, different structures, and incorporating cell phones, blogging, text messages, email, and tons more ways that young people actually communicate.
6. Not issue driven. Issues are important. You’ve got to know how to handle them. But then you’ve got to be about more.
Courtesy of the NYTimes, various artists and illustrators design lapel pins for Obama.
Peter Sis’s:
