So I’ll be posting in this space as an official part of the Daring Book for Girls blogtour on Sunday, but I’ve been thinking a lot, as I read the book and saw Enchanted this weekend and subsequently checked out Disney’s new site for the movie, about the digital playground available to girls. For an astounding contrast, check this out:

Kikistrike and the Irregulars v. Princess Nation.

The Kiki Strike site is based on a book series created by Kirsten Miller. In the series (according to the LJ review), Ananka Fishbein, a seventh grader at an expensive New York City school, wakes up one Saturday morning and finds that the small park across the street has become a sinkhole, and her decision to explore it transforms her existence. She meets the mysterious Kiki Strike, and subsequently the group of girls (each with a particular talent) who call themselves the Irregulars, and they embark on an adventure that involves exploring the Shadow City, a series of tunnels under Manhattan. The series is filled with international politics and intrigue, and chapter endings are punctuated with selections from Ananka’s guidebook on essential skills. Says LJ, “Kiki Strike celebrates the courage and daring of seemingly ordinary girls, and it will thrill those who long for adventure and excitement while they impatiently await the next installment.”

And then there’s Princess Nation, sponsored by wedding dress designer site Vera Wang. And a sponsor, in turn, of Disney’s Enchanted. I’ll leave it to you to explore, but I’m sure you can guess what the site’s goal is. Sigh.

(Thanks to Marco for the heads up on Kiki.)

Drat–I missed it! But if you did too, you can still catch my fave career journalist/guru Marci Alboher on The Today Show. To see the clip, click here. And for those of you who aren’t sure what a slash career is, a slash implies multiple professions in a single career.

(Addendum 11/28: Check out what Marci learned from the appearance–and about publicity in general–on her Shifting Careers blog at the NYTimes, here.)

This just in from my friends at Woodhull:

On Wednesday, Nov. 28 here in NYC, Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of the best selling anthology “Mommy Wars” and the writer of the WashingtonPost.com column “On Balance” opens up about her struggles to manage life as mother with ambitious career goals. At this seminar, she will discuss how she navigates through the hectic world of “having it all” and what she’s learned from talking with all types of mothers about how they made their choices to stay at home or go to work.

Completely Unbalanced: Exploding Work/Life Myths
When: Wednesday, November 28, 2007; 6:30 PM -8:30 PM
Where: The Woodhull Office, 32 Broadway, Suite 1801, New York, NY 10004
Cost: $10

For more information about this event, click here. To reserve your spot, contact rsvp@woodhull.org

Cheers to Elizabeth Curtis on her retort to recent (yet to my mind, and Elizabeth’s, tired) attacks on the discipline of Women’s Studies. You tell ’em, E 🙂

Nice, huh! Courtesy of a Women Political Bloggers , a site that answers the question, “Where Are the Women Political Bloggers?” by posting a list of 250 of ’em. Ha.

It’s new, it’s smart, it’s Dame! And my gal Courtney has a column in it. That girl just makes me kvell. Check out Courtney’s profile of Ladies Who Launch, and keep an eye out for the paper version of the mag soon. The mag’s tagline? “For Women Who Know Better.” Nice.

While waiting for the feature movie, Enchanted, with my family this week in Yonkers (long story, will tell another time), I watched trailer for the movie Juno--another film that centers around an unplanned pregnancy. And it got me thinking….

The latest figures from the Guttmacher Institute find that in America, about one in five pregnancies end in abortion. Yet, as Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, just noted, in recent American movies, every unplanned pregnancy is carried to term. What gives? Writes Rickey, turning to my number 1 favorite sociologist for a quote,

From Knocked Up to Waitress to Juno, opening Dec. 14, abortion is The Great Unmentionable, euphemized as “shmashmortion” (Knocked Up), “we don’t perform, uh, -” (Waitress), and “nipped it in the bud” (Juno), comedies in which pregnancy is the situation. Abortion is likewise obliquely referenced, if actually considered, in the drama Bella, now in theaters. “It’s as if there’s an ‘every conception deserves delivery’ policy being observed,” says Virginia Rutter, senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, a Chicago-based organization of academics and public health professionals.

You said it, Rutter. And then, this nice bit from my favorite historian, Stephanie Coontz:

Perhaps when abortion is illegal, it makes a better story for filmmakers, says Stephanie Coontz, a family historian and author of Marriage, a History, in describing the motivating conflict behind Cider House, Vera Drake, and Four Months. “When you don’t have powerful stories about women whose lives have been derailed by unplanned pregnancy,” Coontz says, “there will be a tendency to sweep the subject of abortion under the rug.” Historically, she notes, abortions were common among respectable married women in the 19th century and were easier to obtain in the 1930s than in the 1950s.

How much do I love it when such smartie pants scholars are actually quoted in the press?! I’m looking forward to seeing both Stephanie and Virginia at the May 2008 Council on Contemporary Families conference in Chicago…but I don’t think I’ll be running to Juno anytime soon.

So as I gear back up for the week, a confession: I’m in proposal writing stage–the stage I find most unsettling, as a writer. I hate this stage. It makes me want to do anything else but write, though I know that write is often exactly what I need to do.

Since I know lots of other folks who are in this phase right now too, thought I’d share some wisdom from a writer who is new to me, Rebecca Solnit. A few tidbits from her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

“‘How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?’…The question…struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation.”

“[There’s an art] of being at home in the unknown, so that being in its midst isn’t cause for panic or suffering, of being at home with being lost.”

“Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found.”

Um, here’s to being at home with being lost?! Anyone else got good some good quotes to share?!

I hope ya’ll had a fabulous feast!

Five things I’m feeling grateful for right about now:

1. My family and friends, who have embraced Marco and me with incredible warmth and love
2. Stuffing
3. Health
4. Central Park
5. That book you unwittingly come upon that gives you just what you need…!

So it’s the part of my Making It Pop seminar where participants are starting to really work on their book proposals. Thought I’d post the questions here that I urge folks to answer BEFORE sitting down to write, for those of you working on your props right now, too. Here we go:

1. In one sentence, what is this book about? (If you’re an academic or wonkily-inclined writer, be careful to phrase this in a way that will appeal to nonacademic readers)
2. What is your argument? (What is your thesis?) If you don’t yet have an argument, for now, answer this instead: What is the main question driving your book?
3. What’s new about this book? How is it different from existing books?
4. Why are you the person to write it?
5. Why is now the time to publish it?
6. Who is going to read it? Why will they find it appealing?
7. How will your book be organized? What is its structure?

Very likely however, you, like me, are thinking about turkey and stuffing right about now, and, in case I don’t get back here much over the next few days, I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

(Image cred.)