So, I don’t know if you know about this awesome article, where a kindergartner looks at covers of the classics and tries to discern what the stories are about, but I got a good laugh out of it earlier this week. Here is my very favorite description, which is of Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" cover:
"I think this is about a gigantic robot who goes on fire and he doesn't like himself. It has a sad ending. It looks like a book for teens. The title means fire, a really really really big fire since the number is 451, that would mean it was really hot. So the robot must get really hot. Maybe that is why he is so sad."
Hee-larious. Maybe that IS why that robot is so sad.
Anyhow, yesterday, an amazing convergence of circumstance happened, whereby I revisited the past (in a good way) and was part of this meme all at once, and I want to share it with you because it was great.
So, yesterday morning I’m the way to give a speech about books and marketing to the Women’s Media Group (of which I am a member) which coincidentally was held in the Simon & Schuster building where I went to my first-ever “I sold a book!” meeting back in 2007 (here’s that story in case you don’t know it). I got to see some of the people on my original “Hollywood Car Wash” team back in the day, and it was just awesome.
This was already cool enough, and I was excited about that, and then I got a tweet from a book blogger who was/ is a big proponent of my books (love her!). She runs the "Me, My Shelf, and I" blog, which you should really read if you don't already. She sent me a link to a blog post where she repeated this experiment with YA books and her eight year old, and she used my book, Hollywood Car Wash, as one of the books.
First of all, I love that she used my book, because in some lateral, “I am delusional” way, the fact that this experiment started with books by Bradbury and Hemingway and Salinger and then extended to include one of my books makes me think “Wow, I have (almost) just been included on a list with Hemingway and Salinger.” Laugh if you will, but writing books is hard, and sometimes you have to pat yourself on the back for having written one in whatever way you can.
Secondly, I super love what her 8 year old daughter came up with for what she thought my book was about (based on the cover). You'll notice that I exercised restraint and did not make the cover of my book bigger than the cover of Farenheit 451.
A girl who moves to Hollywood for school and she still needs work and the only work that she can find a carwash. She’s rich and she has to work at the car wash and she’s upset because she doesn’t want to get messy, like her hair and her nails because every morning she would get a new hairdo or a manicure.
Ha, ha, HA! I almost feel like I should write another version of Hollywood Car Wash based on this description. The whole exercise will be like a big game of “Exquisite Corpse.” I told Amber (the owner of the blog) I thought Big Publishing America should hire her daughter as a consultant immediately.
So, that was my day yesterday, and I thought the whole thing was entertaining in a very "Funny Strange" kind of way. Be sure to read both of the posts where the kids interpret the book covers, because they really are very funny.
Oh, and if you haven't read Hollywood Car Wash, don't you think it's about time you did? It's not quite as awesome as Amber's daughter describes, but it's still a good story, although it's definitely not about my best friend Katie Holmes and her marriage, ok?
