Hello, old friends. Long time no write. I’m moving; I’ve shut YA New York up for awhile so I can do some revamping (and also some moving), and I have a bone to pick about books.

You see, I have a lot of books. So far I have packed up about ten boxes to keep, given away two boxes, and set aside what looks to be another two to four boxes to give away.

I’ve even thrown away — recycled — a few that had fallen into the bathtub one time too many.

But it’s hard to choose what to keep and what to part with. As a reviewer, I get tons of books. Tons. Some are completely inappropriate for YA New York — picture books for small children, adult romance novels for some reason — and others are books I didn’t find worthy of review.

Then there are the books I did like, and did review. Do I keep them? If I do, I will soon collect so many books that no apartment is big enough to hold them all.

So I use a system. Will this book have a sequel? If yes, keep. Is this book or book series iconic? If yes, keep. What if I don’t like this series? Keep it anyway. What if I feel I’ve gotten all I need from this series? Keep the first book. (Examples:Lemony Snicket, which is tween lit and not really my area of expertise, Gossip Girl: the original series, which I’ve committed to memory though I can’t say I loved every one of the books. My YA LA correspondent should, of course, own every Gossip Girl book, because one of these days she’s going to have to write some TV pieces about the whole thing.)

But what else determines whether I’ll keep something? It feels like a sin to throw away a book … and not just that second copy of the The Book of Mormon, a duplicate gift from the boyfriend’s parents. No, anything that someone has put time and effort into feels like a living being to me.

Still, the idea that I’ll give this book away, and maybe it will circulate, and a few new people will pick it up from the library or the Salvation Army or wherever else books end up, is something that makes me feel better. My galleys of Alma Alexander’s books will live on, and I get to keep the nice hardcover copies for myself. Those books I never reviewed and never will? They too may find an audience. (And some of those books, by the by, are books I meant to review and never got around to. Which is why I’ll be restarting some sort of catchup review thing over at my site, when things get going again.)

But I want to ask all of you, especially Mr. Michael Grant, what you do with your books when you move? Other reviewers, how do you deal with all the books you receive?

In spite of it all, there are always too many books I can never part with — I’m looking at you, Ms. Cabot, with a little bit of resentment because I absolutely must keep every one of your books, always. Books by people I care about, or books about things I care about, or books that are one of a kind, or books I want to study and compare to other books, or books I just want to hug and love forever because they’re so good.

My boyfriend, by the way? Is totally annoyed by how many books I insist on lugging along with me to our new apartment. We’ve been keeping books in a closet for the last year or so, and now we’ve got to buy yet another bookcase.

When my son was two years old, he used to play with Power Rangers figures. I hope he never reads this, because now that he’s a teenager, he’d probably wire a bomb to my car for saying it. Or strangle me with his iPod earbuds.

His favorite was a green one. Trevin’s Green Ranger was missing a leg, so my son named him “Lucky.” He explained, in perfect two-year-old oral arguments, that the Power Ranger had to be “Lucky” because he wasn’t missing the other leg, too. Trevin took Lucky everywhere with him, even several times to Hawaii, when we’d go there to visit my wife’s side of the family.

We live on a farm. I brought home some baby chickens a few years ago, but they were too small to put out in the henhouse, so we kept them in the bathroom. One day, our Aussie dog came into the house to herd and play with our little chickens. The dog played with one of them a little too enthusiastically, and ended up removing all the bird’s feathers. But the chicken didn’t die (yet), so, of course, we named her “Lucky.”

When the chickens got big enough to move out to the henhouse, they thrived there (except for the ones who got eaten by a mountain lion). They lay so many eggs that we have to give them away. And they pretty much have their run of the place, going anywhere they want to (they’re fast enough to keep clear of the dogs).

One day, one of our horses stepped on Lucky’s leg and broke it. So I guess there was some kind of weird prophesy in naming her Lucky. Anyway, she still didn’t die (yet). But her leg was permanently bent backwards, and she didn’t so much walk as hop. But she still got around okay.

When we go out to the henhouse in the mornings, all the chickens follow us inside for food. Sometimes, when we stir around the straw and nests, we’ll uncover mice. The chickens love to chase the mice. They’ll even fight over them and eat them.

I have no doubt that if chickens were big enough, they’d eat people.

And chickens can live a long time, but not Lucky. When she died (finally), I found her outside the henhouse. She had choked to death on a really big mouse. The mouse was dead, too, hanging half-way out of Lucky’s unlucky beak, a weird kind of barnyard murder-suicide.

We still have lots of chickens, but none of them have names (yet).

As we sit, some of us, the fortunate few, in our warm bright houses with food-filled cupboards, glass in hand, surveying the piles of wrapped gifts and speculating on what might be inside, it’s a good time to remember how many of the Christmas stories—including the Christmas story—are tales of poverty and homelessness and deprivation.

One doesn’t have to be Christian to be moved by the plight of a young couple, the wife heavily pregnant, homeless and wandering, forced to bed down in a barn for the evening. Even by the standards of the time, a manger can’t have been considered an appropriate or safe place to give birth, and yet that very birth gave rise to the current spectacle of excess we all enjoy/ endure every December. A homeless, ill-treated, poverty-stricken couple and a child they were not equipped to care for: this unwanted trio have done much to change the course of history.

That story at least has the benefit of a happy ending, give or take a few hours from Gethsemane to Golgotha. Hans Christian Andersen’s morbid Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne, or The Little Match Girl, offers us the horrifying tale of a young girl, barefoot in the cold of a Danish New Year’s Eve, huddled in an alley, exhausted and afraid to go home: she hasn’t sold any matches and her father will surely beat her. So she lights three matches, one by one, to enjoy their brightness and warmth. As she slowly freezes to death, she sees visions of happier things: Christmas trees and roast goose dinners and finally her dead grandmother calling to her. She dies surrounded by homes full of prosperous Danes enjoying all the comforts of the season.

I bring these two tales to your attention tonight, on Christmas Eve, because I would like those of you who do have enough, even in these uncertain financial times, to remember those who don’t: not enough food, not enough clothing, shelter, medical care, one might even say not enough love. We are bombarded with appeals for money for causes and I’d like to think most of us do what we can, but there’s one segment of the population that I’d like you to focus your attention on this evening: the homeless Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) population. While several among us have created and edited wonderful books, among them Nancy Garden’s transcendent Annie On My Mind, David Levithan’s blissful Boy Meets Boy, and The Rainbow Timeline (as yet unpublished, attention all editors), Karen Romano Young’s brilliant nonfiction work about LGBT life from 3000 B.C. to the present. But while these books feed the minds of our children, they aren’t putting food in their bellies or clothes on their backs.

One of the by-products of the increasing acceptance of the LGBT community by the mainstream is that kids are becoming more comfortable with the idea of coming out and are doing so at an earlier age. (I myself waited until the last college tuition check was paid, the last rent check sent before coming out: I wasn’t brave enough to risk the hardship that might have come from revealing my sexual orientation to my parents.) Today kids as young as 12 are coming out, and not all parents react with even begrudging acceptance. More young children are forced from their homes—by their parents, by mistreatment at school, by emotional and physical neglect—and taking to the streets.

New York City is a tough place and there are a lot of unpleasant lessons to be learned by an unprotected pre-teen or teen, and most of them, some irreversible (HIV, for example) come within a few days of street life. The rate of HIV infection among homeless teens is very high. The medical care available to a homeless person is inadequate and not designed to foster ongoing good health, especiallly for a still-growing youth. Homeless LGBT youth suffer from inordinate rates of mental illness, trauma, HIV infection and substance abuse. And the basics—food, clothing, shelter, education—all things many of us take for granted, are often unavailable to these children.

There are organizations in NYC that aid these children, and I would like to bring your attention to one of the most amazing of them: The Ali Forney Center. Ali Forney was a homeless gay teen who was forced to live on the streets of New York during the 1990s. Ali was dedicated to the safety of other homeless gay youth. He was a tireless HIV prevention worker and an inspiration to all who met him. In December of 1997, Ali was murdered on the streets; his murderer has never been identified. Violence is a very real part of life on the streets.

Since 2000, Executive Director Carl Sicilano, along with staff, volunteers (and the help of a small board and generous donors) have run The Ali Forney Center, an organization to house, clothe, educate, and offer medical care to homeless LGBT youth. But it’s an ongoing struggle. City, state and federal funding help, but we really depend on the generosity of people like us—people who care about children. On a daily basis, everyone who reads this blog works to nourish the minds of our children—and they are ALL our children, regardless of color, religion, political leanings, or sexual orientation. How about taking a moment to fulfill some more basic needs, like food and shelter?

I am asking, in the spirit of the holidays to do at least one of two things. First, please click on the link just above this paragraph in the left-hand column for The Ali Forney Center and learn more about us. If you can make a donation, no matter how large or how small, PLEASE DO: every bit helps. Second, I would ask that if you have a blog or don’t mind sending e-mail blasts to your friends, please link to this post, so we can get the word out to even more people. Donations are appreciated, but even if someone can’t give money, I’d like them to consider the parallels between the too-often-forgotten status of the principal characters in the Christmas story and the children of the Ali Forney Center. Joseph and Mary, pregnant with Jesus, were homeless because the stood up for what they believed in and did what they felt to be right, not what those around them or their communities told them was right–just like our children.  In our now idyllic recreation of the nativity scene, the manger is warm and clean and hushed with the reverence of the moment–but in reality it must have been filthy and noisy and every bit as frightening and uncertain as it is right now, on the streets for LGBT children thrown out of their homes.

I’m proud to be on the board of this organization that does so much for those who need it so badly and I hope that you will consider helping us in a large or small way. These children lost so much simply for being who they are and being brave enough to tell the world. Won’t you honor their bravery in this harsh world with a helping hand? The aid you give now could help a youth move on to great things. In its brief life span, we’ve seen many of our graduates move on to amazing things: one has studied with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, while another appeared for a season on a national television show. Still others are leading productive lives outside of the spotlight. Think back to the inn-keeper who gave that homeless couple a barn to sleep in overnight: how different would the world be if he had simply said, “I can’t help you,” and closed the door?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. I hope 2009 brings you and yours all the happiness—and comforts—you hope for, and I wish the same for the children of The Ali Forney Center. If anyone would like to know more about the Center, take a tour, or find out other ways to help, feel free to e-mail me at markwmcveigh@gmail.com.

Thanks again, and good night to all.

I know, I know:  I’m not keeping up with this blog.  I’m behaving very badly.  Useless.  But I promise I’ll do better, starting in, oh let’s say three days.

I’ve been preoccupied.  I am ashamed to admit that I am a hopeless political junkie.  Politics is my sport.  I’m checking polls literally hundreds of times a day.  Yes, I know the meaning of “literally.  I literally mean “literally.”  Again and again and again, starting with the DailyKos poll first thing in the morning and proceeding around and around like a crazy person until I pass out at night with my laptop open to FiveThirtyEight.com.

I could draw you a color-coded map right now, showing every state as red, pink, yellow (toss-up) light blue or dark blue.  It’s really kind of sad.  But it explains why I’m not pushing people for posts or writing my own.  I’ll be better in a couple of days.  And since this is a YA lit blog and not a political blog I’m not even going to tell you who I support.

Unless you click on the “More” button.

(more…)

I cannot imagine that young adult readers will turn in droves to this blog to explain the current state of the world.  That’s what parents, teachers and South Park are for.  Nevertheless kid readers who may be watching their parents weep uncontrollably as they watch CNBC, or who overhear them wondering whether there’s an iPhone app for translating hobo signs, may be wondering if the world really is coming apart.

Short answer:  nah.  

I’d be the last person to want to go “age and experience” on you, but I’ve lived through ten of the last zero apocalypses.  The end has been nigh since I was born.  Always nigh.  Nigher.  Nighest.  But no, the end will not come soon enough to keep you from having to write that history paper.  I had to pay my taxes today, so once again the end is running late.

There’s a really great song called Eve of Destruction.  I was playing it today as I went fishtailing around the gravel road that leads to my home.  The tune is portentous, the lyrics grim.  The chorus goes like this:

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Yeah, well, it’s true, I do tell you over and over and over again, my friend.  You know why?  Because that song was written in 1965.   The big thing the songwriter was worried about?  Red China.  Kind of thought they were going to blow up the world.  Turned out they were just going to send us toys decorated with lead-based paint.  

I was 11 in 1965.  In 1970 I was in 10th grade.  I was one of two kids to put together my school’s first ever Earth Day assembly.  Our big concern at that point?  Overpopulation that would lead to wordwide famine within a couple of years.

Yeah, that kind of didn’t happen.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your best to figure out what’s happening in the world and decide how you can help things work out for the best.  Not saying there aren’t very real problems and threats.  I’m just saying stay cool, don’t lose too much sleep over things and keep a clear head.   People who panic end up looking like idiots down the road.