One of the 36 mystery desks waiting to be identified

Award-winning authors Steve Sheinkin, Deborah Heiligman, and Neal Shusterman are among the 36 author/illustrators who are giving kid lit lovers an inside look at their personal work spaces. In a recent blog post, author Marc Tyler Nobleman challenged his readers to examine 36 photos of the places where children’s and young adult books are created and guess each respective creator. “I am fascinated by the work spaces of fellow authors and illustrators and figured the kid lit community would be, too,” Nobleman told School Library Journal. He was inspired by Jill Krementz’s book The Writer’s Desk (Random, 1996), in which the photojournalist and author took pictures of iconic writers, such as E.B. White and Eudora Welty, at their desks. “Strip away the contest and it's still a simple study of how different creative minds function. Who can work surrounded by piles of papers, coffee cups, tchotchkes, and the like, and who prefers a less cluttered environment? Laptop vs. desktop? Who is near natural light and who gets his or her vitamin D on the outside?”

Marc Nobleman. Photo by Karen London

This is not the first time that Nobleman has inspired his colleagues to submit photos. In 2012, he asked them to share shots of themselves as superheroes, which resulted in a flood of photos that included Wendell Minor’s childhood photo of the artist as Roy Rogers and Peter Brown as a young Superman. Two years later, he had authors send him videos of them reading their bad reviews. He wasn't planning on doing any more such quirky callouts but the enthusiastic response from librarians, teachers, and aspiring writers convinced him otherwise. “I've been thrilled so many peers have been willing to play along,” says Nobleman. “It speaks to our nature as storytellers.” Of the 36 author/illustrators participating this time, Tom Angleberger, Matthew Cordell, Daniel Kirk, and Terry Trueman have also been involved in all of Nobleman’s contests. Prizes are up for grabs. Anyone who matches all 36 correctly receives a school visit from Nobleman anywhere in the United States. Nobleman will send autographed copies of his new book, Brave Like My Brother (Scholastic, 2016), to entrants matching 18 correctly in two subcategories. The upper-elementary novel tells the story of an American soldier in World War II England who shares his experiences (including a historic, dangerous secret mission based on actual events) with his 10-year-old brother via letters. Here’s a hint: Nobleman’s own desk isn’t one of the 36, because a picture of it is widely available online. But to give you an idea of what it’s like: his most precious possession on that desk is an unassuming little paperweight shaped like a scarab that is one of last known surviving belongings of Bill Finger, the man he wrote about in Bill, the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman (Charlesbridge, 2012). “It was an honor to have it on my desk as I wrote a book about the writer whose desk it used to be on,” shares Nobleman. The contest runs through August 26.