The John, Paul, George & Ben Archives

june-july 2006

august-december 2006

May 31

The bad reviews are always more fun than the good ones. This Customer Review of John, Paul, George and Ben appeared on AMAZON:

I was thinking, Yeah! Hey publisher, send this guy an excerpt! What are we hiding?
Then I saw one of his other reviews. I guess this is his schtick:

Mommymac didn't like anything about my book:

I.M. Smart agrees (although rumor has it that Prankster Bob at CAMPZINE might be behind this one):

I guess some bell ringers are mad too. This from a Ms. Dickerson writing on an Old North Church Change-Ringer discussion board:

“Don noted that a recent picture book by Lane Smith had a section about Paul Revere's experiences ringing at Old North. I have now read this book, and I'm not really pleased…Mr. Smith lives in Connecticut. I'm planning to email and invite him to see the real bells. I've done this with other authors/illustrators who've mentioned the Old North bells, but nobody has shown up yet.”

I e-mailed her and explained that my intention was not to offend. I’m only in it for the Laffs. I love bell ringers. Really!
Check out a nice site on change ringing HERE. And one specifically about bell ringing in the Old North Church HERE.
Finally, someone likes you:
"I'm accumulating a list of people with whom I'd love to sit and visit over a bottle of wine. They inspire and intrigue me--and I want to find out what makes them tick. Some of these people are writers, some are artists, some are runners, some are great cooks... and some, like Lane Smith, are on the list because they're so darn cute. And his latest book, John, Paul, George & Ben, is a prime example of why he makes the cut..."
I'm cute! My wife doesn't even call me that. Read more about how cute I am at the WATERMARK BOOKS review site. And see how cute I am below.

May 30

Hey, big underwear is always funnier!

Thanks to Ms. Daniels' class for the letters.

A wedgie in Philly.

Washington Art Association

Look! Me and Mo made a (45 minute) mural...

with a little help from our friends.

Check out the movie in ye olde fun section.

May 22

The airport in D.C.

May 15

From ye olde mailbag...

May 11

The link in yesterday's CartoonBrew to Cameron Moll's design blog What Designers Read to their Children, had me thinking that designers are the most underrated in the whole book-making process. Humble little Molly Leach has designed all of our books from The Stinky Cheese Man onward but she rarely gets any mention. The success of all of our books is due not only to the story and art (really fantastic art) but the design as well. A few years back, Jon tried to remedy things with this great article on children's book design in the Horn Book. You can read it here (don't worry, it's informative and funny).

May 10

Cartoon Brew (in my opinion, the best animation site out there) posted a nice piece about my book . Read it here.

May 7

Check out the cool bobbles that Hyperion made of John, Paul, George, and Ben.

The boxes are nice too.

They won’t be sold in stores but handed out at book conventions and the like. Actually, these are the brainchild of my agent Steven Malk, known in some circles as Steven Bobble. The fact that he is a nerd with dozens of bobbles in his office had nothing to do with his decision to make a bobble clause, "Clause #1a" when he negotiated my author contract (although he was four bobbles shy of an even 100 which would have made him eligible for the coveted “Most Bobbles Owned By A Guy Over 13 Award." Hmm…).

Years ago, Barnes and Noble made a bobble of the Stinky Cheese Man. It was great. Except he kept losing his head.

So B&N never released them. Jon Scieszka and I didn’t know what the problem was. It wasn’t as if the heads were a choking hazard. They were way too big for that. That woulda been kinda cool in an X-ray though...

You can occasionally find the recalled Stinky Bobble on Ebay.

Back to Mr. Bobble, I mean Mr. Malk. Not only did he get John, Paul, George and Ben (The Bobbles) made, he was also the wise lad responsible for getting John, Paul, George and Ben (The Book) published. He’s a very smart agent… in fact he’s so smart I feel bad calling him an agent. The term Agent or Rep has gotten a bad rep… mostly due to all the uninspired yahoos out there who call themselves one. Naw, Steve is a really stand-up, honest, hard-working guy... a nerdy guy, but a smart one. In fact, he is one Kids’ Book agent who actually knows Kids’ Books. You can mention Florence Parry Heide or Laurie Keller or Dr. Seuss or Barbara Cooney, Arnold Lobel, Munro Leaf, Peggy Rathmann, Crockett Johnson, Vladimir Radunsky or Ruth Krauss and he’ll know every book they’ve done. (Of course, he always says it’s a shame they didn’t do bobbles, but that’s okay.)

Funny thing is, we’ve never met. Like Charlie to my Angel, he’s a disembodied voice coming over my phone…

well, that’s not entirely true. We met once… years ago… 1989 or ’90… Jon and I were promoting our very first book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and we were fortunate enough to have been sent to one of the great independent bookshops of all time, The White Rabbit in La Jolla, California (back then, it was teachers, librarians and hand-selling booksellers who, through word-of-mouth, made a book successful). Anyway, we were doing our dog-and pony show when this little kid, babbling mostly about bobbles, kept interrupting us. Strange.

Do I sound like I’m babbling here? Do I sound feverish? Well, I am. Did I mention I have some sort of end-of-the-book-tour flu bug? No? I thought I did. But what do I know? I’m babbling! I’ve heard this end-of-the-book-tour-bug phenomenon from other authors and it’s certainly true of me (I've been promoting John, Paul, George and Ben for the last few weeks). At any rate, it never fails...at the last minute of the last event I start to feel a scratchy throat, then a light-headedness and by the time I’m on the flight back home I’m sick as a dog. I guess the body tells the head, You will not get sick! At least not until the last minute of the last event. Then it’s okay.

Okay, back to the White Rabbit. Turned out the babbling, bobbling boy was the owner’s son so of course we didn’t dare complain.

But we never forgot that kid.

Cut to: 16 years later. That kid is now, you guessed it, famous agent, Steven Malk and it just so happens, I’m in the market for an agent to shepherd my new goofball history manuscript to a new publisher. I looked him up, and with the obligatory bobble talk out of the way, we hit it off. And a few months later, thanks to his keen smarts, John, Paul, George and Ben found a home at Hyperion and became a really classy book.

And an even classier set of bobbles.

Here’s a recent picture of Steven.