By the time we get to middle school, we're already indoctrinated into a whole host of "rules" that serve mainly to keep the status quo alive.
Boys are supposed to act, think, dress, and talk one way. Girls another.
The life you should seek is one which includes fistfuls of cash.
Don't take risks.
Don't question authority.
Look cool.
Fit in.
Wear the right clothes--even if they cost five times as much as the not-right clothes and you don't even like the way they feel.
And there are thousands more, over and over again pressured into our heads and hearts. But the trend can be stopped.
Reversed even--and it begins when we speak openly about the ways we've broken those rules in order to follow something deeper, more potent, more honest than a mob.
So I'm especially excited to share the news that a book entitled Break These Rules is going to be released by Chicago Review Press in Fall 2013. I'm immeasurebaly grateful to Joan Paquette, my agent at the Erin Murphy Literary Agency, for making the deal with editor Lisa Reardon at CRP.
All of the royalties from the projject will go to the Children's Defense Fund.
I'm also deeply grateful to the contributing authors whose essays and sage counsel on rule-breaking will appear in the volume: Kathy Erskine, Sara Zarr, Josh Berk, Carl Deuker, Francisco X. Stork, Matthew Quick, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Leslie Connor, Wendy Mass, Carol Lynch Williams, Gary D. Schmidt, A.S. King, Neesha Meminger, Lisa Schroeder, Mike Jung, Anna Staniszewski, Jen Nielsen, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Jennifer Ziegler, Brian Yansky, Chris Barton, Tara Lazar, Natalie Dias Lorenzi, Jennifer Reynolds, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Mitali Perkins, Margo Rabb, Lisa Burstein, Rob Buyea, Chris Lynch, Pat Schmatz, Sayantani DasGupta, Tamara Ellis Smith, and Thanhha Lai.
Here's the official announcement.
