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Back to School, Spidey-Style!
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I wrote a Lilo & Stitch activity book called The Adventures of YOU & Stitch!
It will be available from Scholastic starting tomorrow, September 1st, 2023, just in time for the 2023-2024 school year.
But I also wrote two other Scholastic books that will be available starting tomorrow.
One is a Spidey and His Amazing Friends board book titled The Great Food Truck Caper, which was illustrated by Shane Clester. *
And the other one is The Spider-Man Comictivity Book, which I co-wrote. That book is a sort of a hybrid. It’s part comic book and part activity book. Steve Foxe wrote the “comic book” sections, and I wrote the “activity book” sections. And the “comic book” sections were illustrated by Claudio Sciarrone (pencils) and Valentina Taddeo (colors).
All three of these books will only be available for distribution through the school market. In other words, they’ll be exclusively available through Scholastic Reading Events, so you won’t be able to find them on Amazon.
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* NOTE: Previously, Shane and I collaborated on an Avengers Little Golden Book called The Threat of Thanos (which I wrote and Shane illustrated). That book was published by Penguin Random House in 2018.
The Ballad of Shirtless Lou
Happy May the Fourth, everyone! In the spirit of this Star Wars-themed quasi-holiday, I wanted to share a Star Wars-themed story. A few years ago, I wrote a LEGO Star Wars book called The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual, which was published by Scholastic in 2016. I decided to write it from the POV of a stormtrooper. So the idea is that an ordinary, lunkheaded stormtrooper is narrating the book. On the section of the book which deals with the “AT-AT” vehicles, I wrote the following joke (among many others):
“The AT-AT is often the first thing sent into a combat zone. The LAST thing sent onto a combat zone is a stormtrooper named ‘Shirtless Lou,’ who has the words WE WON painted on his belly.”
And I didn’t think anything more of the joke after that. Like I said, it was just one of many jokes I jammed into a very joke-heavy book.
But then, years later, while looking through the comments section on the book’s Amazon page (why I was doing that I don’t really know, it’s not a healthy thing to do), I saw the following comment from a parent:
“The text is full of silly jokes that crack my 5 year old Star Wars superfan up. There’s a reference to ‘Shirtless Lou,’ the last stormtrooper to go into battle, that made him laugh so hard that I ordered the Batman-in-swimsuit minifigure and swapped that torso with a stormtrooper so he could have his own Shirtless Lou, and he plays with him all the time. Shirtless Lou is always doing something silly during stormtrooper training and causing Captain Phasma all kinds of headaches.”
Reading that totally made my day. I was – and still am – very happy that somebody appreciated The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual enough to write such a flattering comment about it. And now I’m just upset that I never pitched a “Shirtless Lou” spin-off book, because apparently there’s at least one kid out there who’d read that book.
But the saga of Shirtless Lou doesn’t end there.
Later on, I noticed that someone decided to give Shirtless Lou his own entry in Wookieepedia, the (crowd-sourced, fan-edited) Star Wars Wiki. Here’s the Wookieepedia description of Shirtless Lou:
“Lou, nicknamed ‘Shirtless Lou,’ was a human male stormtrooper of the Galactic Empire. He was considered to be the last thing sent into combat zones, as he had the words ‘WE WON’ painted on his belly.”
Which is…fine. I mean, Shirtless Lou’s Wookieepedia entry is totally accurate, in a way. It never mentions that The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual is a humor book, which is kind of an important detail to leave out, but whatever. Again, I’m just flattered that somebody at Wookieepedia mentioned Shirtless Lou.
I guess my point is that my little one-off joke about Shirtless Lou was apparently a good one, because people seem to have taken notice of it. And as a writer, sometimes you never know which stories (or jokes) people will respond to, and which ones they’ll ignore.
Also, if they somehow work Shirtless Lou into the Ahsoka Disney Plus series, or the fourth season of The Mandalorian, that little shirtless dude will have truly made the big time.
Milton Makes Things!
For a little over a year now, I’ve been writing children’s stories for a company called Chapter One. (I talked about it in an earlier blog post.) You can find my stories on the Chapter One website, in the Global Free Library section, which is an online collection of stories and materials that celebrate the world’s diversity.
One of my more recent Chapter One stories is called “Milton Makes Things.” I think it may have just gone live on the Global Free Library yesterday, so I wanted to spread the word about it. “Milton Makes Things” was illustrated by the amazing Monique Parlevliet, and you can read it right HERE.
And if you scroll down on that page, you can also see a few of the other Chapter One stories I’ve written.
Here’s the official description of “Milton Makes Things,” from the Chapter One site:
“Milton helps the environment by making old things into new things. He specializes in making these new things out of paper. Soon, there’s a mile-long line of children who want him to make them one of his ultra-stylish paper creations!”
I’ve also made short videos for all of the Chapter One stories I’ve written. In these videos, I explain what inspired me to write the story in question. You can see the “Milton Makes Things” video once you scroll down after reading the story of the same name. But you can also see the “Milton Makes Things” video right here:
Monique Parlevliet, who illustrated “Milton Makes Things,” also made a video about the story, and it’s really great. In Monique’s video, she talks about how much she identifies with the Milton character. You can check out her video on the “Milton Makes Things” page of the Chapter One site (it’s right next to my video for that story). But I’ve also put Monique’s video right here:
One last thing I wanted to mention about “Milton Makes Things”: When I was writing that story, I did quite a bit of research into cardboard furniture, cardboard toys, and all of the other cardboard stuff Milton makes. I wanted the story to be somewhat grounded and realistic, so I thought I’d see whether it was really possible to create (for example) a cardboard chair which is sturdy enough for an adult (or even a child) to sit in. Turns out that it’s very possible.
I’m explaining all of this because I want to make it clear that everything Milton makes in this story – whether it’s a cardboard table, a cardboard marionette, or a cardboard bookshelf – is something you can actually make out of cardboard. If you build it a certain way, that is. And as with almost anything in life, it’s largely about planning and designing it carefully, so that it’ll actually work in the way you’ve intended.