The Ben Esch Website

There is going to be a ridiculously cool book event next Monday. 

How cool?  Well, how about a little Adam "Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich" Rex...AND Jon "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" Scieska...AND David "No David" Shannon...AND Mac "Guess Again" Barnett. 

All on one stage. 

And holy crap is that exciting. 

This is gonna be like the Woodstock of picture book writers, just with less filthy hippies and acid, so even better than that! 

Here's the event info: 

Laughing Loudly for Literacy
Monday, September 28, 2009, 6:30 pm

Crescenta Valley High School Auditorium

2900 Community Ave, La Crescenta, CA 91214

There's some more details about tickets and such here.



So, if you live in LA come out and check this out.  I will be there in all of my fanboy glory.

Also, I heard a rumor that these guys are gonna be doing this presentation at the White House at some point or another, so if it's good enough for Barack, it's gotta be good enough for you.  I mean, what the hell else are you gonna be doing on a Monday night? 


Personal Note: 


"The True Story of The Three Little Pigs" was one of my favorite books when I was a kid and I am super excited to meet Jon Scieska. 


Personal Note #2: 


Adam Rex is quite possibly the nicest and most talented person in all of literature.  And that's not just because he blurbed my book, though that doesn't hurt him either.  The dude is just that cool.

Hey readers,

So, one question I've been getting a lot lately...

The question:  when's the next book coming out? 

The answer:  Uhh...soonish?  And on a completely unrelated note, is Costco hiring? 

So, in an effort to delay my future career in cart wrangling, I'm gonna return to  my Los Angeles office (i.e. closet with card table) and get back to scribbling.  And as a sincere apology for not having too many original thoughts and/or jokes and/or writing tips, here's a video of Christopher Walken pretending to be a cat. 

Hey readers,

It's been a while since I've talked about writing, so I figured I'd remedy that with a quick writing tip.  Here goes: 

The writing tip:  Have people read your stuff. 

Let me break this down a bit. 

Question: What do you mean by "stuff" exactly? 

Answer: books, screenplays, epic poems, etc. 

Question:  Who should read your stuff? 

Answer:  Good question.  You don't want to just get any random/neighbor/person you just met in the laundromat.  Try to find some people that are A) fluent in the language that you're writing in (author's note: that one is a biggie), B) Care enough about you that they'll put some time in to give you good notes. 

Yeah, A and B are pretty much the only two requirements that you're going to need.  You may have noticed that I left off a few requirements.  You don't need readers that have advanced degrees in English or book contracts or jackets with those neat leather patches on the elbows.  You basically just need some people who give enough of a damn about you to sit down for several hours and carefully read what you have written and want to help you get better. 

Question:  And how do you find these people? 

Answer:  Ask them. 

Here's a handy little exercise that will help you to find your readers:

Step 1:  Mail your finished manuscript to ten people who you think might make for good readers. 

Step 2:  Wait for several weeks. 

Step 3:  Reevaluate your friends list. 

Step 4:  Receive responses.  Wonder what happened to the other seven people. 

This, my friends, is how you get your inner circle of readers together.  As a writer, it is your job to cultivate this relationship, listen to their notes, and work together to make the best book/screenplay/epic poem you can. 

In case you're wondering, I had three people respond when I first sent out Sophomore Undercover. 

And they were my mom, my dad, and my brother. 

Author's note: my family is kick ass. 

One more piece of advice:  Never, under any circumstances, send your manuscript to this guy. 

So, I was looking through my blog posts for the last nine months or so, and the topic breakdown goes as such:  

Blogs about writing: 1%

Blogs where I shamelessly pimp A) my book B) me reading somewhere: 4%

Blogs about cartoons:  38%

Blogs about Tony Jaa:  Whatever number is left (author’s note: I could not locate the calculator program on his computer)

I decided I would shake things up today, and do a little social commentary, because dammit, this is my blog, and I have deep thoughts, and if I’m sufficiently indignant I might even get linked on reddit or metafilter (author’s note: consider that a hint). 

The issue:  a school in Boston got rid of all of the books in their library. 

My initial reaction:  What the f? 

My reaction after I read the article: Technology is depressing. 

I don’t know if you guys are actually going to click over and read the article, but basically the school thinks the books are taking up too much room, so they bought some kindles, threw up a couple flat screens so kids could display stuff from the internet (i.e. fantasy football, facebook, and youtube videos of dudes getting hit in the pills with wiffle balls) and a freaking coffee bar and turned the place into a “learning center.”  

I have some thoughts on this, and some of them may very well be deep. 

My Thoughts

1.  A coffee bar?  Seriously?  What the hell kind of school is this?  Where I went to high school all we got were bagels and these deceptively gross cookies the size of a Frisbee (author’s note: I still get in arguments with my friends about the “giant cookie,” but seeing as I have a web presence and they don’t, you're just gonna have to take my word for it.  The giant cookie sucked.  Hard.  Square yardage should not factor in the equation for the deliciousness of a cookie).

2.  I don’t think the people at the school are evil or anything, and yeah, it’s probably a huge pain in the ass to store a bunch of books, but still…this seems a little premature.  Maybe in five or ten years every kid will have a Kindle, or one of those freaky computer implants in their brains like in “Feed” by MT Anderson (wicked book, by the way) but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case right now.  So, I’m guessing that the “learning center” is going to be less of a place where kids read so much as “the room where we get lattes and watch youtube videos of dudes getting hit in the pills with wiffle balls on the sick ass flat screen TVs.”

Sure, everybody’s got a cell phone and there’s probably some app or another to read books off it, but let’s just slow down and think about this for a second.  What do kids do with their cell phones? 

A.  Talk/text with their friends about boys or Twilight or stickers or whatever (author’s note: I'm not entirely sure what kids talk about). 

B.  Watch youtube videos of dudes getting hit in the pills with wiffle balls. 

C.  Play video games. 

And I mean legitimately awesome video games.  Back when I was in high school, there was a bowling game for the TI 82 calculator that was just a bunch of black dots on a green screen, and I’d estimate that a solid sixty percent of my total classroom time was spent playing that thing (author’s note: my grades reflected this.  Was it worth it?  Totally).  So…I’m pretty sure you can go ahead and nudge that number up a bit with the games that are out there now.

The conclusion:  If I had a book that I could also use to A) get on the internet B) talk to my friends C) watch movies and D) play Oregon Trail, there is no way in hell that I would actually use the thing to read with.  And I like books.  This is what I do for a living.  I was even an English major, okay?  I really, really like books.   

I just like Oregon Trail, too. 

Oregon Trail is easy.  Oregon Trail is fun.  Oregon Trail never makes my brain hurt.  

And sometimes, books aren’t easy.  Sometimes they aren’t fun.  Quite often they make my brain hurt.  Hell, I still have no idea what William Faulkner was talking about, and I’ve written quite a few papers about the guy.

It’s not fair to make Faulkner compete against Oregon Trail, because Faulkner is never going to win. 

And that’s a bummer.  Because I don’t think that playing Oregon Trailer or calculator bowling made me a better person.  

But I’m pretty sure that struggling through Faulkner did. 

Hey readers,

After I graduated from college, I spent a few months bumming around China.  It was a super fun and confusing (mostly confusing) time in my life, and once I figured out that A) Mandarin was super difficult, B) teaching kids English sucked really hard and C) I could only eat noodles so many hours of the day, this was when I started to write. 

So, China will always hold a special place in my heart. 

And once I heard that somebody made a video of their beard growth while spending a year walking across China...well, let's just say it spoke to me.  Because I too grew a beard in China, and spent a good deal of time walking.  Granted, this walking usually occurred when I got lost trying to find the subway, but I still feel like me and this dude have some kind of spiritual kinship.