Sid Fleischman in person!

Again, I'm overwhelmed by the amazing response to my previous posting, both what's been posted here and what people wrote to me privately. I have so much to think about, especially creating an official SHM logo. I think it should be a dragonfly, for reasons I believe I mentioned in a previous posting:

1. Homeschoolers are like dragonflies. Once we open our wings, we can never be the same again.

2. We'd have a logo that's a cute, harmless looking animal -- appropriate for mugs, canvas totes, bumper stickers, and T-shirts. Said logo can stand alone and be all lovely and symbolic even if it doesn't mention the words Secular Homeschooling. This is nice for those readers living in the Bible Belt who'd like to be able to buy SHM products and have them recognized by other SHM readers, but don't especially feel like having rocks thrown at them as they go about their merry way.

3. Anyone who sees any historical connection between secular homeschoolers going around with a little drawing of an animal that's only significant and recognizable to other members of the club, raise your irony hand.

But before I do any more work on the publicity front, I have something more urgent coming up.

I live in the same southern California town as Sid Fleischman, the famous children's writer.

If you don't recognize the name, you may remember his books: the stories about McBroom and his amazing farm, The Whipping Boy, the children's biography of Houdini, and many others.

Fleischman just came out with a young readers' biography of Mark Twain. I love Twain.

I think I mentioned Fleischman lives in the same town I do.

I got in touch with him, and he agreed to an interview for the magazine.

We have an appointment for this Friday. I'll bring the brownies, the questions, and the child who has sworn to be all things sweet and helpful.

The Y-chromosomes are out shopping for a voice recorder as we speak (or a microphone for the dinky one I have already), although I'll take notes as well.

I've done what feels like about a skillion email interviews with homeschoolers all over the world for the upcoming International Homeschooling issues (note the plural; more about that later). However, all of those were with nice not-famous people who had time to think about my questions and leisurely type their replies, which I then had time to read and think about before I leisurely typed any additional questions back.

This is my first in-person, famous person interview.

Any tips?

Like -- oh, I don't know -- what the heck I should ASK him?

Okay, I'm not quite that badly off. One thing I definitely want to do is get a bit from him for our Home Scholars section. I want to ask him a question inspired by something Jane Austen wrote to her niece -- that she wished she'd read more and written less as a child.

What does he think of that? Does he have any similar feelings? Does he disagree completely? If he were going to give a piece of advice to young people in general and hoping-to-be-writers in particular, would he give the edge to one or the other, reading or writing? Or are they both important in different ways, and both valuable?

But I'm feeling jittery about the main interview for the grownup part of the magazine, especially since I don't know how long Mr. Fleischman expects me to stay.

I do have some stuff in mind. For instance, I think it's very interesting that he chose to write biographies of Twain and Houdini. Twain is famous now for his writing, Houdini for his escape art -- but during their lives, both were equally well known for their skepticism, and both seemed to do everything they could to debunk hooey in general and frauds within their own professional realms in particular.

I guess I'd like to talk about children and skeptical thought, and why it isn't encouraged more. Why, when I was a kid, I read every book in both the school and the public library about UFOs and astrology -- and didn't find one title that was even remotely skeptical.

I think this must be a subject Fleischman would be interested in. As a friend of mine pointed out when I mentioned the upcoming interview to her, Fleischman was once a magician himself, and must have a strong interest in "the reality behind the appearance of things." And anyone who garnered a fair amount of fame with delightful tall tales might perhaps be hoping that the children reading them would begin to think about exactly what's impossible in these stories -- and maybe take that questioning thought process to other realms.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Things you'd dearly love to ask the guy yourself, but you live too far away to get the job done right?