{"id":53,"date":"2011-03-07T09:23:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T15:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=53"},"modified":"2011-03-07T09:41:51","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T15:41:51","slug":"mad-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/mad-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure: while I live in Minnesota, I was born and raised in Wisconsin. I’ve always held an affection for my homestate, though I was severely disappointed when they passed a very hateful law preventing marriage equality a few years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 In particular, I’ve always loved Madison, a shining oasis of progressive values in an otherwise frustratingly conservative state.\u00c2\u00a0 So when presented with the opportunity to travel there this past weekend and present a DECA scholarship in memory of my mother at an awards ceremony, it required little coaxing.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u00c2\u00a0 knows that times are turbulent in Madison right now. The city is no stranger to conflict like the one that’s been brewing there for several weeks since Scott Walker created a budget deficit and proposed to eliminate it by destroying unions (a curious solution at best).\u00c2\u00a0 With some time to kill before the ceremony, my husband and I created our own protest signs and joined the thousands who were rallying outside the state capitol.\u00c2\u00a0 It was exciting to see so many people standing up and giving voice to their grievances.\u00c2\u00a0 No violence,\u00c2\u00a0 just civil disobedience acting as\u00c2\u00a0 a cornerstone of true democracy.<\/p>\n

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State Street was lined with anti-Walker signs<\/p><\/div>\n

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The start of the rally.<\/p><\/div>\n

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This is what democracy looks like.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/dt>\n

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On Sunday, we had the extreme pleasure of meeting KT Horning<\/a>, Director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at UW-Madison. KT is amazingly intelligent and such an incredible advocate for children’s literature.\u00c2\u00a0 After chatting for a while, she gave us a tour of the CCBC, where we luckily got to meet recent Caldecott winners Philip and Erin Stead<\/a> who were in town. Philip and Erin were incredibly charming and I’m so pleased their beautiful book was recognized by the ALA.\u00c2\u00a0 KT then gave the four of us a treat I hadn’t even dreamed of. <\/dt>\n
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\nGrowing up, one of my favorite books was THE WESTING GAME.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s one of those rare books that, for me, has stood the test of time and I reread it once every year.\u00c2\u00a0 Ellen Raskin, WESTING’s author, was a Wisconsin native and in her desire to help other authors and illustrators understand what goes into making a book, she donated all materials related to THE WESTING GAME to the CCBC. These included character notes, story outlines, edited manuscripts, publisher correspondence… every single thing she’d ever scribbled down regarding the book.\u00c2\u00a0 My heart leapt when KT took out her key and opened up the drawer where all the Raskin papers were stored. As a creative process geek, THIS WAS HEAVEN!\u00c2\u00a0 KT told us that Raskin was very particular about how the words fell on the page and would rewrite a sentence if it meant getting rid of a word that would be hyphenated at the margin.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of the Raskin file detailed how meticulously she worked to get the look of each page just right.\u00c2\u00a0 Here are a few items from the file:<\/dt>\n
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I could have stayed for hours, pouring over the documents. If you ever get a chance, stop by the CCBC and say hi to KT.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s incredibly cool and a font of knowledge. And maybe, if you’re reeaaally nice, she’ll let you rub shoulders with the amazing Ellen Raskin. <\/dt>\n
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\nYou can find more info about the collection here<\/a>.<\/dt>\n
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*=Possibly because I made it.<\/dt>\n
<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure: while I live in Minnesota, I was born and raised in Wisconsin. I’ve always held an affection for my homestate, though I was severely disappointed when they passed a very hateful law preventing marriage equality a few years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 In particular, I’ve always loved Madison, a shining oasis of progressive values in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}