Thursday, August 27, 2015

George R.R. Martin Confirms Stannis Baratheon Is Not Dead

In the books. And maybe the TV show. SPOILERS, maybe.

In both the books and the TV show, Stannis Baratheon is believed to have met his end following the battle with Ramsay Bolton.

In both the books and the TV show, Stannis Baratheon is believed to have met his end following the battle with Ramsay Bolton.

In the TV show, he is killed by Brienne of Tarth in the forest, surrounded by the bodies of his defeated army. In the books, on the other hand, his death is described in a letter from Ramsay to Jon, prompting Jon to try to lead the Night's Watch south to Winterfell, a betrayal of his vows that results in the rebellion against him.

HBO

Recently, on his LiveJournal, George R.R. Martin answered a fan's question to confirm that, in his books, Stannis is alive.

Recently, on his LiveJournal, George R.R. Martin answered a fan's question to confirm that, in his books, Stannis is alive.

The question, of course, is whether this is the same case in the TV show, as the two have diverged significantly, though it appeared that by the end of Season 5, the characters had ended up in broadly similar places.

grrm.livejournal.com

There has been repeated speculation about whether Stannis is in fact dead, primarily due to the failure of the typically brutally violent show to actually show his death.

There has been repeated speculation about whether Stannis is in fact dead, primarily due to the failure of the typically brutally violent show to actually show his death.

It's often accepted that when an audience isn't shown the body, it leaves a strong possibility that the character will return. Game of Thrones producer Dan Weiss told Entertainment Weekly in June that "If don’t see the body then they’re not really dead."

Additionally, some people have pointed out that based on the angle of the sword swipe, and the placement of the tree, Brienne's blow would have hit the tree before killing Stannis.

HBO / Via ew.com

However, in a Comic-Con panel in July, the director of the episode, David Nutter, confirmed that the intention was that he was dead.

However, in a Comic-Con panel in July, the director of the episode, David Nutter, confirmed that the intention was that he was dead.

So either there's some misdirection going on with the production team, or book Stannis is taking a very different journey to TV Stannis.

Flickr: gageskidmore / Via Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons


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Definitive Proof Muggleborns Have The Most Fun At Hogwarts

Listen, things had to get interesting once those kids started going through wifi withdrawal.

Muggleborns are positioned perfectly to both piss off Professor Snape and take over the Muggle world as professional magicians. That's baller AF.

And SOMEONE's gotta rep the Disney Channel original movies at Hogwarts.

Or the beauty of expressing that commonality and watching as the dominant culture looks on in bewildered awe.

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18 Journals That Will Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Get ready to ~explore your mind.~

amberweinberg / Instagram: @p/6Ty9knBJTf/


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A Conversation With Claudia Rankine

Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed

Claudia Rankine has had a hell of a year. Her most recent book, Citizen: An American Lyric, has been a barnstorming critical success – winning, among others, the National Book Critics Circle award for both poetry (in a first, it was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism) – and hoovering up praise from readers across the US, the UK, and beyond. Readers have found themselves in Citizen as both perpetrators and victims of the racial micro (and macro) aggressions the book documents. It is a mixture of prose, poetry and images, ruminating on the state of blackness over time and in different spaces.

"You take in things you don't want all the time," she writes in part III of the book. "Hold up, did you just hear, did you just say, did you just see, did you just do that?"

Rankine, who has also won the PEN award and the NAACP award for outstanding literary work and was a National Book Award finalist, spoke to BuzzFeed while in London for a brief book tour at the end of June. We talked about calling out racism, the reframing of the hoodie as a cultural icon of doom, and the strong, protective love many black women feel for Serena Williams.

You collect so many microaggressions in the book. I was once at a members' club and this man sat down pretty much on top of my friend. She protested and he said, "I'm so sorry I didn't see you!" and when I read that in the book...

Claudia Rankine: [laughs] ...there it is!

What was it like for you to hear these stories of hypervisibility or invisibility being told over and over? Is it a quiet trauma?

CR: Right, right. The thing is in collecting and hearing the stories, because, you know, I'm in my middle ages: I've lived all of the stories. It was very rare that someone told me something and I didn't have my own version. It wasn't a sense of feeling educated by the stories – I was existing as the writer in those moments, where you're actually just listening to the language. You're asking the language to communicate as much as it can about the whole historical run-up to the moment. I was listening more for how to tell the life that we all are living, and what's the sort of exact right language to do that with? And when you hear it, you hear it. Like, "oh, OK."

Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed

How selfish can we be when we’re talking about a type of everyday pain that "belongs" to all of us? Lots of people say, "That's not real racism – focus on something else!" How do you answer that and say, "this is part of the bigger picture"?

CR: Structurally, what I try to do in the book is show the accumulation of single events. How do you really, really know that person was motivated by racism? Can you really know? At a certain level, I don't give a shit. I don't care if you can or can't know. Black bodies are being subjugated to these things day in and day out, so at a certain point, whether or not it's readable or not does not matter. You're still, as a body, asked to negotiate this, and the fact that you have to ask yourself, "Is this a moment of racism or isn't it?" is part of the problem. And so the structure of the book was meant to take that question out of play by saying if you have to confront it again and again and again... Maybe something that happened only once, you could dismiss it, but after a while, it's all going to start adding up and it will lock down your ability to be objective. So it was more an attempt to replicate how for black bodies it's just so ordinary, you don't even begin to question what happens. In the essay on Serena Williams, one of the things I loved about her is that she wasn't always right. Sometimes she was wrong but it didn't matter. What was controlling her behaviour was a history of transgressions against her. So that when somebody made a call and the call actually was correct, she then had lost her ability to even read that. You know, it's like, are you that one from before, who did that other thing? So that's where I think it gets very murky.

Speaking of Serena Williams, that seems to be the chapter people glom on to. After her win at the French Open, there was an outpouring of black female love on my Twitter timeline, a real feeling of "nobody else loves us like we do". I'm interested in the solidarity that exists.

CR: Well, I think what's different about Serena than, say, Beyoncé, is that you have seen her subjected to racist moment after racist moment. [There was] the head of the Russian Tennis Federation [Shamil Tarpischev] referring to [her and her sister] as "the Williams brothers". These things come at you every day. So I think that's part of it. It's the sense of the assault of racism. We are living it in our own special ways and we have our own arsenal of insults, but to have it on the screen, watching it all the time... We've also seen it with Michelle Obama, but Serena has been around a lot longer in the public eye and she's not protected by the White House and we've had to negotiate it with her. And so I think that's why she has a special place in all out hearts. She's just out there working her way.

What are your first thoughts in the aftermath of something like the Charleston shootings? And what does it add to you, or take from you?

CR: Grief for the families, obviously. Once you hear about this and the horror of it, it very immediately begins to line up, historically. As a writer, I began to think about this, like, how is this similar or different? For me, one of the distinctions being made is that this was not police, this was an individual, homegrown terrorist. I think I was curious about how it would be portrayed in the media, and how he would be framed and interacted with, both within the media and the justice system. The ways in which whiteness privileges whiteness and the double standards. That even in the face of identified white supremacist mass murder, [Dylann Roof] is being given concessions. That even in this extreme positioning, white privilege is still at work, in service of his white body. And so those are the kinds of things that I'm at this point watching and still marvelling at, in a sense.

Kiese Laymon wrote in The Guardian about the historical call for black people to forgive, and that seemed to be all over Charleston, in the humanising of Roof over the...

CR: ...the grief of black families?

Right. I wonder what your thoughts were with people saying forgiveness is often a case of pandering to white privilege. Is there a line, do you think? How communal can grief be?

CR: For me, this whole engagement with the forgiveness from the family really doesn't concern me. Because I feel... You know, these people are traumatised. I don't know what they even mean when they say they've forgiven him. If they felt it was cathartic to say that, then fine. You know? Because it's not about him. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. If, as individuals who have just lost people in their family that are close to them, they felt like saying that, then say that. More interesting to me is the media's enthusiasm around this act of forgiveness. I mean, why does Dylann Roof need to be forgiven when he's not asking for forgiveness? I have not heard him say, "Please forgive me." And yet the media seems so enthusiastic and so pleased about this. So is it because they feel implicated inside the cultural condemnation of black people and the cultural murder of black people? That's really my question. I mean, why does the culture need to highlight the fact that these family members, at the very beginning of their journey through this traumatic loss, "forgive"?

There were many calls to take down the Confederate flag after the killings. Is there any power in taking down the flag, or is it an empty symbolism? [South Carolina governor Nikki Haley ordered its removal from the state capitol on 10 July.]

CR: No, I don't think the symbolism is empty. I think that the way you create an environment where certain beliefs are held is that you continue to confirm them. So for somebody like Dylann Roof, that flag meant something, and for him to be able to walk the streets and see the flag flying means that what he believes is believed commonly, out in public, supported by the state. The taking down of the flag doesn't signify an interior change in South Carolina, but it at least says that the state doesn't condone what the flag stands for as a political statement. So, no, I think it's important.

So it's a trickle-down effect? What was acceptable is no longer?

CR: I hope so. We hope so.

Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed

In Citizen, you write: "because white men can't / police their imagination / black men are dying". Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown, said he looked like...

CR: ...a demon. Mmm hmm.

The projection, the fear that appears to change physical characteristics, like a superhuman thing. And the flip of "superhuman" is "subhuman".

CR: Right, exactly.

How do we encourage white people not to have these overactive imaginations?

CR: I think it's not that we can encourage anything. Becuase we're not in control of the white body. But I think we need to stop not calling it out. I think that's what we can do. We can stop housing it. So that it stays where it belongs, in the person who's creating it. By not calling it out, it actually arrives somewhere. By calling it out, you're like, you might wanna deal with this, whatever it is for you, y'know?

That can be difficult.

CR: Yeah, people will act defensively, but that's not your concern. I say: You can be defensive if you want. I'm just telling you what I heard and how I feel. If you care about me, then you care about how I feel. If you don't care about me, that's fine. But I'm telling you it's racist.

So many realisations about conversations from years past.

CR: [laughs] Tomorrow's another day!

You mentioned liberal subjectivity in an interview last year. There's a distancing that takes place in many liberal circles, a lot of "we're not like that". I'm interested in the space between how many white liberals see themselves, separate to "the bad people".

CR: Well, this is why I wanted the book to exist in the space of the white liberal. Because people like to say "oh, it's the South", "it's ignorance", "it's white supremacist Fox News". And I'm like, no, no, no. It's white alliance with all of those things. So that these moments are happening in our offices, with our so-called friends, in the Congress, among highly educated people who apparently know better. So it was a very conscious thing to move the book away from scandal and towards white alliance. The use of the second person – that "you" – was meant to say, "Step in here with me, because there is no me without you inside this dynamic.”

People believe things are different in Europe, which is, of course, not entirely true.

CR: I know, because we're coming from the same post-colonial history!

Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed

There's an idea of Europe as a utopia, and you write about Mark Duggan in Citizen. I am interested in the Americanisation of blackness, and I wonder if that's something that you think about.

CR: Right. Well, that's why I wanted to bring in Duggan. And Zidane. Because this is a dynamic that comes out of post-colonial orientation. All these countries owned slaves. They privilege whiteness in a certain way. They have difficulties within their own cultures based on whatever language they're using, but it's all coming down to the same frame. And what is different in the United States is the militarised police system that perhaps is not replicated here. I haven't seen images of tanks rolling down streets. I saw it in Ireland back in the '80s when I was there. But I haven't seen it used against the black population here. In the US, obviously in Ferguson, we saw that. The white police force thinks it's in a war with unarmed black Americans and apparently, in some warehouse somewhere, had the tanks ready to go. And that's across the country. So that's where it's a little bit different, I think. I think when people say it's a utopia, it's not a utopia in terms of racist attitudes towards blacks. It's a utopia against the tolerance of blatant, daily killings and the warehousing of black bodies inside prison industrial institutes that rely on black bodies to fill them. So the new Jim Crow in the US is this kind of extended rounding up of black people and warehousing them inside of prisons, and that I think is happening less in Europe than in the United States.

There have been a lot of people talking about self-care and pulling back from the bombardment of bad news. Gene Demby wrote about remembering that being black is not "just a parade of calamities and disadvantage".

CR: I think in the book, there are moments where even in the midst of... For instance, I was very conscious about including the dinner with my white friend where the waiter took my credit card and returned it to her. And that sense that it's always happening, but you're still in part amused by it, in part frustrated – all of the emotions are still in play. One's still going out to dinner, one's still playing tennis, one's still engaged in one's life. So you're not shut down. You're just not allowed all the way in. That's the thing. In a piece I wrote for the New York Times, I quoted the critic Fred Moten, who says, "I believe in the world and I want to be in it. I want to be in it all the way to the end of it so I can be in the next one." I wanted the book to also communicate that this is a life and we're in it. It's a book about intimacy. We're showing up in it. You are constantly trying to push me out – that's your business.

It often feels tiring to explain why something is racist, like explaining your own humanity. How do you say to people, "this thing you're doing is hurting me"?

CR: One of the things that writing this book has helped me do is call out those moments immediately. In the past I was clocking them and then later on thinking about them. Since writing Citizen, I don't do that any more. Now you say something to me, I say, "You know, that's racist." And the person's like, "No, no, that's not what I meant," and I'm like, "I don't know what you meant – I'm telling you it's racist." In fact, I don't even care what you meant. And whereas before I felt like I didn't want to be the person that makes you feel uncomfortable, now I don't give a shit about your comfort. What about my comfort? [laughs] You need not to carry that around in you. Because by not calling it out, that means you receive it, and that person gets to move along like nothing happened. So they hold their space and comfort and you suddenly are the one that's made uncomfortable. But the minute you give it back... I'm not saying engage beyond that, I'm just like, I don't care what you do with that. But you need to know that that is racist. You know, I don't dwell on it. It's just like, I'm done. And oddly enough, I am done. I move on. Now I can be like, oh! [spears a pineapple cube], this pineapple is so good! [laughs] You know? If you want to know what the effect that book has had on me, that's the effect. I don't care if you think I'm an angry black woman. I don't care if you think I'm making you feel uncomfortable. I feel better. And that is important to me.

Lynzy Billing / Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

Citizen's British cover is slightly different, but still has the image of a shorn hood on the cover [a 1993 work by performance artist David Hammons after the beating of Rodney King]. The hoodie is so much more than an item of clothing: It's a symbol of menace. It's a persistent cultural artefact of fear. Why did you choose it?

CR: A hoodie is worn by everybody: kids, white men, white women, black men. But it clings to the black body as a sign of criminality like nothing else. Trayvon Martin was portrayed in all the media in his hoodie; they obviously grabbed on to that image. And so, for me, rather than any individual face, the hoodie became the thing that attested to blackness as bound up in criminality in the white imagniation. But as a projection of white imagination and not of a thing in itself. It seemed to me to be the best and most open space. Also, anybody can fit in there. So it becomes also kind of the hood of the executioner. Who actually belongs inside its construction? It becomes an open question.

Lynzy Billing / Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed


All men must die. But in what order?

Disclaimer: Some characters might not actually be fully dead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How Far Would You Make It In The Triwizard Tournament?

Watch out for ze Grindylows.

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Can You Guess The “Harry Potter” Book Based Only On Its First Line?

“There once was a boy who lived under the stairs”… is not one of them.

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24 Kids Who Are Totally Nailing Book Week Costumes

The best week of the year.

This whimsical Alice in Wonderland.

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This Ketchum out to catch 'em all.

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This smile-inducing Sadness.

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This magnificent Maleficent.

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Can You Guess The Mythological Creature Based On These Abstract Drawings?

It’s like a magical game of Pictionary!

11 Tips For Having Way Better Orgasms

From Jenny Block, author of O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm.

Jenny Block is a lifestyle writer and the author of O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm, so we decided to hit her up for some tips.

"Sex should be fun and silly and exciting and experimental and messy and loud and always an adventure. It should go where it goes for as long as you like in whatever way you like," she told BuzzFeed.

"Sex is not putting a penis in a vagina. That is one sex act of many. It’s not the main one or the primary one or the most important one. It’s just one. We have to stop having procreative sex for recreation if we can ever going to maximize our orgasm potential."

Jenny Block

Masturbation is the best way to figure out your sexual preferences.

Masturbation is the best way to figure out your sexual preferences.

"First of all, know that masturbating is an excellent idea. Seriously. It is excellent. It's safe and fun and insanely good for you. Orgasm is known to relieve pain and stress and insomnia and to make you feel generally all warm and fuzzy.

If this is your first time at bat, not to worry. The best part of masturbation is that you don't have to impress anyone and it's basically impossible to do it wrong. All you have to do is what feels good. So get comfy somewhere where you're unlikely to get caught (unless that turns you on, of course!) Get yourself some inspirational materials if you like – porn to watch or erotica to read."

HBO / Via hbosgirls.tumblr.com

If you're starting to masturbate for the first time, don't put pressure on yourself to orgasm.

If you're starting to masturbate for the first time, don't put pressure on yourself to orgasm.

"Take your time. Let your hands wander where they may until you feel relaxed and ready to focus on the main event. Then just do what feels good. Rubbing, stroking, patting, tugging, tickling, petting, penetrating, slapping, or a combination perhaps. You might want to try a vibrator (for women) or a masturbation sleeve (for men).

Whatever you do, don't focus too much on orgasm, especially if this is the first time. Masturbation, just like sex, should be pleasure oriented, not goal oriented. The only goal should be to enjoy and to learn what works for you. Then you can share with a partner what you've learned and really get to discovering your ultimate orgasm."

CBS Films / Via pastalife.tumblr.com


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The Author Of "Captain Underpants" On The Importance Of Books And Reading

David J. Bertozzi / BuzzFeed

Almost two decades ago, author and illustrator Dav Pilkey introduced the world to a character who’s now one of children's literature's most famous: Captain Underpants. The book series of the same name — a number of graphic novels that follow the adventures of two elementary school students named George and Harold — has changed the way kids read and think about books for the better.

Despite landing on banned books lists and receiving pushback from some adults, Pilkey continues to write, draw, and add to his ongoing collection of stories. Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot is the 12th and newest book to come out of the Captain Underpants series. George and Harold are up to their usual shenanigans, but eventually they also teach readers about the importance of not being afraid to question authority and standing up for what you believe in.

BuzzFeed had the chance to catch up with the author and discuss his latest graphic novel, how reading has the power to change lives, and his future plans for Captain Underpants. Here’s what he had to say:

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Dav Pilkey: It actually wasn't until I was in college. I didn't think I had any writing skills at all but I had a teacher in college who really encouraged me; she noticed that I liked to draw cartoons in my notebooks so she told me, "You should write children's books." And I did.

Why do you like storytelling in the format of graphic novels?

DP: I've always loved how in certain books, if there are a lot of illustrations they tell part of the story and the words tell a different part of the story. I've always liked the interplay of those two things, and since I love to draw I decided to do both.

What's your favorite part about writing for kids?

DP: I think my favorite thing about it is that I'm still sort of writing for myself. There's a big part of me that hasn't grown up yet, so when I write and I'm sort of focused on second, third, and fourth graders, I'm also really writing for the kid in myself.

Early on in Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot, you joke about how human beings can be too smart for their own good. Do you think there’s any truth to that?

DP: I haven't seen very much evidence of that, have you? Sometimes human beings are so smart they end up inventing dumb things. For example, leaf blowers, spray-on hair, or farm alarms, the really obnoxious things that drive people crazy and don't really have a purpose whatsoever.

David J. Bertozzi / Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed

Your books address the complicated relationships between adults and kids. Are the characters named the Grumpy Old People (GOP) in the book representative of this?

DP: Sometimes I get feedback from grown-ups and the grown-ups are upset about the books for one reason or another. It makes me feel like, I'm not really writing them for you; I'm writing them for kids to make kids laugh. They have issues with the books that kids don't have whatsoever, and so in this book and in the chapter with the GOPs I'm kind of poking fun at that and maybe sticking up for myself a little bit.

How did your own experience with ADHD shape your adolescence and influence Captain Underpants?

DP: When I was a kid I had ADHD, although there wasn't even a term for it back then. I was extremely hyperactive and had a lot of other issues; I had a hard time paying attention in class and had all the symptoms, but I wasn't actually diagnosed until I was an adult. But a lot of kids now are really dealing with that, it's something like 11% of children in the United States are diagnosed with ADHD. I felt kind of like a freak when I was a kid and I felt very alone, so I think one of the reasons why I wanted George and Harold to have those challenges is because I didn't want kids who are reading the book to feel so alone.

Is Rid-O-Kid 2000, "the cure for childhood" in the book, a metaphor for ADHD medication?

DP: ADHD is one of the themes of the book and so it's a bit of a correlation and comment on the overdiagnosis and overmedication that some experts believe is going on. I'm of course not qualified to really answer that because I'm not an expert, but some experts do believe that's going on.

You also mention in the book how when they're on the Rid-O-Kid 2000, the students say, “We never question authority figures.” Why do you think kids need to question authority figures sometimes?

DP: Sometimes adults have a problem with that; they've actually said the books tend to encourage kids to question authority and I don't see that as a bad thing. Sometimes authority figures are wrong, sometimes villains are out there and they're dressed like authority figures, and kids should know the difference. They should question things like that. I think it's a very important lesson for kids.

David J. Bertozzi / BuzzFeed

Do you think more YA and children's books should talk about topics and themes related to mental health?

DP: I think it's a good thing to do, even if you're like me where I'm not an expert but I can ask questions that get people talking and get a dialogue started. I think that if you're ever going to effect change or make things better, you need to start by talking.

What do you hope readers take away from The Sensational Saga of Sir-Stinks-A-Lot?

DP: The most important thing is for kids to have fun, especially kids who might think of reading as punishment because there are a lot of kids out there who just do not connect with books. I really want kids to have a good time, and that goes ahead of any message or anything like that at all. I just want kids to have fun because I think if one kid who has a problem with reading opens up a book and has a good time, they might go looking for another book and that could open up a door way to literacy. It could change your life.

After all these years and books, why do you keep writing?

DP: I think it has a lot to do with the reaction that I get from fans and from parents and grandparents of children. Almost every single day I hear from a parent or grandparent who will say, "This book changed my child's life. My kid refused to read before they found Captain Underpants and now they're reading Harry Potter or Narnia or something like that." They've gone on to other things but it just took that one silly book to get them started. That keeps me going.

Do you have any future plans to keep writing Captain Underpants books?

DP: Yes, there's going to be a lot more. Maybe about 10 years ago I started doing spin-offs of the stories that George and Harold write by themselves like Super Diaper Baby, and next year there's a new spin-off called The Adventures of Dog Man, which is talked about in The Sensational Saga of Sir-Stinks-A-Lot. Dog Man is actually the first character that George and Harold created when they were in kindergarten. There's going to be three books in a collection of Dog Man stories.

David J. Bertozzi / Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed

The Captain Underpants books have showed up on a lot of banned books lists. What would you say to someone who played a role in banning your books and preventing kids from reading them?

DP: I understand why a person might not want a child to read something they might consider to be frivolous or not really educational, but there's been a lot of research lately that shows the value of kids picking out their own books, reading for fun, and doing it all the time. It's really good for the brain; it helps them with their math skills, it helps with spelling and vocabulary. It's really about the fun stuff, like picking out your own books, having fun with it, and doing it over and over again. That's the important thing that's changing a lot of lives. One of the studies that came out recently showed that kids who pick out their own books are more likely to pick up new books and they read more and they have more confidence, too.

What advice would you give to a new writer who has a story to tell but doesn't really know how to get started?

DP: One of the key things I tell a lot of people is to just keep writing; the more you do it, the better you get. Even if you don't start out so great; I wasn't that good when I started out, but you learn from everything that you do so the more you do it, the better you get. And there are a lot of opportunities nowadays to publish. You can even self-publish now. A lot of people have become successful by starting out in self-publishing and eventually they get picked up by a publisher. Your library is probably a good source to find out information for how to get your work out there.

How has reading changed your life?

DP: Reading started out as a real challenge for me because I have dyslexia. When I was a kid I loved to read because I loved funny stories. The adults in my life were constantly telling me, "That's not appropriate," or they were always trying to take that stuff out of my hands, but the things that I read as a kid really shaped me as an adult. I read a lot of comics, a lot of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, and that showed me how to create a story. I also read a lot of Mad Magazine and that kind of woke me up to the world of satire. I think everything I loved as a child really shaped me as an artist today.

If you could go back in time and tell your teenage self anything, what would you say?

DP: I would probably say to not worry so much, don't be so stressed out. I was very stressed as a kid. Everyone's stressed out when they're young, especially if you grew up with a lot of problems like I did. I had a lot of challenges. I used to think that if I didn't do well in school I wasn't going to do well in life, but there are a lot of opportunities out there, especially for creative people. I would just say, "Be yourself, don't worry so much, everything will work out OK."

Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir-Stinks-A-Lot is on sale now.

Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir-Stinks-A-Lot is on sale now.

Scholastic Press