Library Lion Wordle Fun!

Know what's awesome? Wordles. Here is Library Lion, in Wordle form:

Library Lion in Ireland!

A friend spotted Library Lion on the "staff picks" shelf at The Gutter Bookshop in Dublin, Ireland. Yay!

Boulevard Books & Cafe Event Postponed

Hi guys - just a quick note to say that my event today at Boulevard Books & Cafe has been postponed due to the snowy weather. It's now next Saturday, January 28. Would love to see you there!

Reading (Argus and Library Lion), book signing (both picture books plus The Dragon of Trelian), and fun activities (coloring! clay! eggs! dragons! yay!)

NEW DATE: Saturday, January 28, 2012

11:00am
Boulevard Books & Cafe LLC

7518 13th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11228-2410

Library Lion reading Library Lion!

Saw this great photo courtesy of Joyabella on Twitter. Are you seeing this? It's a LION reading LIBRARY LION on the steps of the New York Public Library between Lego replicas of Patience and Fortitude. There is so much awesome happening here, I don't even know where to begin. I will just let the photo speak for itself:

The Lego lions were created by Nathan Sawaya as part of the celebration of the NYPL's 100th anniversary.



You can see a larger version of the photo by clicking on it.

You can see an even larger version of the photo here: http://yfrog.com/z/hs21458721j

Bronx Zoo Appearance Rescheduled

Due to the rainy forecast, my Bronx Zoo Animal Tales appearance has been rescheduled to Sunday, May 1, at 1:00pm. I hope some of you can make it! And that we get a nice sunny day next time around...

Library Lion in Hungarian!

Got a nice surprise from the mailman this morning—the Hungarian edition of Library Lion!

How cool is that? Yay!

I was interested to see that they left Mr. McBee and Miss Merriweather's names in English. Many of the other foreign editions change the names of the characters. A friend in Israel (Hi, Sarah C.!) recently told me that in the Hebrew edition, their names are Mister Nakdi and Miss Dafni, and I know they've been changed in the Italian edition and several others. Someday I'd love to find out how the different publishers decide whether to change the names and what to change them to. It's so odd sometimes what they choose! And odd too to catch my characters walking around with new identities. :)

Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday!

Well, hello!

It's been three and a half months since my last post, and there's been lots going on, and I'll tell you all about it sometime soon, but for now I just want to say that you should come to the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday! It will be awesome, and lots of authors will be there, including me at 4pm in the Target Children's Area. I'll be reading Library Lion and answering questions and things and then signing both Library Lion and The Dragon of Trelian immediately after my presentation.

All events are FREE!

Hope to see you there.

Upcoming Events

I have some book signings and events coming up, and would love to see you!

Thursday, May 27, 1:30pm: I'll be at BEA, signing Library Lion at the Candlewick Booth.

Saturday, June 5, 2-4pm: Come to the Dragon Day event at the Voracious Reader! I'll be reading and signing The Dragon of Trelian. Kate Klimo, author of the Dragon Keepers books, will be there, too!

Sunday, June 27, 11:30am: I'll be at ALA, signing Library Lion and The Dragon of Trelian. I'll also have postcards for my new picture book, ARGUS, which comes out next Spring!

You can always see an ongoing list of upcoming events in the right-hand column of this blog.

Random Photo of the Month

Last week I had two fabulous school visits in Newfane and Lockport, NY. I'll post more about that soon, but for now here's a quick preview of some of the cool stuff the schools did in preparation for my visit. In addition to other fun lead-in activities (like the daily trivia question contest about me and/or my books), the students in both schools did writing and art projects, including these wonderful library lions that were on display in DeSales Catholic School when I arrived to give my presentation:


The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal came to DeSales and wrote up an article about my visit. You can read it here!

Library Lion in Hebrew!

This week I received a copy of the Hebrew edition of Library Lion—so cool!


Library Lion is becoming quite the world traveler—he's already been published in the following countries/languages:

• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Japan
• Korea
• Taiwan (Complex Chinese)
• Italian
• U.S. Spanish-language edition
• France
• Spain (Spanish)
• Spain (Catalan)
• Holland (Dutch)
• Finland
• Slovenia
• Turkish

Looking forward to seeing where he'll turn up next! :)

In other good news, I'm excited to share that The Dragon of Trelian was selected as one of 20 titles on VOYA's Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers booklist! You can see the full list here.

Random Photo of the Month

This afternoon I happened across this very fun photo of me, Lev Grossman, and Maura Madden at a Word Bookstore event this past December. AMAZINGLY, we just happen to be standing in a row reading one another's books. What are the odds? ;)



It was a nice reminder of a lovely afternoon at the store, meeting great authors and enjoying the hospitality of the wonderful folks at Word. For more photos from this and other events, see Word Brooklyn's Photostream on Flickr.

Bloggety Blog

There probably ARE people who blog less often than I do out there, right? I mean, even excepting all those people who do not actually have blogs. Once again, I am here to promise to do better. And now I will tell you all about how busy I have been and will continue to be and thereby lay the foundation for future infrequent blog posting.

I don't even remember where I left off. I will go check. *Consults previous post* Oh, right. Baltimore Book Festival! It was great. Had a lovely time reading Library Lion and an excerpt from The Dragon of Trelian, and signed some books and chatted with lovely authors and illustrators and bookstore people. And I bought a shirt from these nice folks. Then I spent a couple of days with my nice friends Bridey and Joe and little Evie, and went to Evie's third birthday party at a FARM with a PETTING ZOO and there were CHICKENS and BABY GOATS and OTHER FUN ANIMALS. I gave Evie books for her birthday, of course.

Last weekend I went back to Baltimore for the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association conference, which was awesome. I went two years ago when Library Lion received the 2007 NAIBA Children's Picture Book Award and once again I had a great time. Booksellers are really nice, fun people. And they love books. And there were other nice publishing types and authors and illustrators there as well, and I got to talk to people about the novel and hear about other authors' books and generally just had a wonderful time. Plus I scored so many free books that I had to send a box home from the hotel. Yay!

In other news, I am continuing to work on the sequel to The Dragon of Trelian, the first draft of which will be finished by the end of the year. And I'm still working on my critical thesis for my MFA, which will also be finished by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner—say, by my next packet deadline, which is November 10. ALSO working on a new YA novel for school, which started out great and fun and exciting but has been less great lately...still trying to figure out what the deal is with this story.

What else...on October 17 I will be at the Mandell School Book Fair, and on October 24 I will be reading Library Lion to help celebrate the opening of Brooklyn's new Greenlight Bookstore, and on October 31 I will be reading from The Dragon of Trelian while dressed as a princess at the New York Public Library Shop at the NYPL main branch. And on November 7, I will be at the FABULOUS Rochester Children's Book Festival in Rochester, NY, which is my favorite event to go to every year. This time I'll be doing a joint presentation with Rebecca Stead in addition to signing books and talking with kids and parents and teachers and other authors and anyone else who comes out that day! If you are in the area you should definitely come. This is the 13th year of the festival, and it just keeps getting better and better.

And then on December 12, I'll be reading and signing books at the Elmira Barnes & Noble in Elmira, NY.

And because I apparently did not already have enough on my plate, I am in the ensemble of the Village Light Opera Group's fall production of Starship Pinafore. You should all come see it, because it will be AWESOME and a lot of fun. If you know me personally, you can email me directly for tickets. Otherwise, you can get them online here. Performance dates are:

Friday, November 13 at 8pm
Saturday, November 14 at 8pm
Friday, November 20 at 8pm
Saturday, November 21 at 2pm
Sunday, November 22 at 2pm

And, as always, I have been playing lots of Facebook Scrabble and reading lots of books. (If you are curious about what I'm reading, you can always check out my reading list on Goodreads.)

And I suppose that is enough for this update. I should get back to work!

Baltimore Book Festival!

I hope anyone in the area will come to the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend! I'll be presenting at 4pm on Saturday at the Children's Bookstore Stage, and there are lots of great authors and events all weekend long.

You can find out more here.

I'll be reading and signing Library Lion and The Dragon of Trelian. Looking forward to seeing you there! :)

Library Lion at the New York Public Library Shop!

I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at the NYPL Library Shop at 2pm this Saturday, October 18 - please come by if you're in the area, and bring your kids! Reading starts at 2pm, and I'll be staying after to sign books. Not sure how much after, though, so if you want to get a book signed, don't come too late!

Here's all the info:

Saturday, October 18, 2008
2:00 p.m.

The Library Shop
New York Public Library
5th Avenue and 42nd Street
212-930-0641
libraryshop@nypl.org

July 2008 Update

So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Maybe I should be shooting for once a month. Ah, well. It's not like blogging is the only thing I'm not doing as much of as I would like. (Hello, writing, reading, exercising, cleaning my apartment, spending quality time with friends...)

I'm a little over a week into re-entry after my first residency at The Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was everything everyone said it would be, and more. Met some wonderful people (you can visit some of them online - see the list of VCFA peeps in the right-hand column); attended excellent lectures by faculty, visiting writers, and graduating students; received wise and helpful guidance from my awesome workshop group on two picture book stories I have been struggling with; enjoyed the (mostly) lovely Vermont weather; and was introduced to the addictive anagram game Snatch, which promises to haunt me for years to come. I was also assigned my advisor for the semester: Uma Krishnaswami! I am so looking forward to working with her for the next several months. Now I just have to actually stay on top of all that work... I've got 20 to 40 pages of creative work and two critical essays due August 12, not to mention tons and tons of reading.

I'm starting a new middle-grade novel for my semester project, and will be working on some new picture books as well. I'm also hoping to continue work on two other novels in my, uh, spare time (hahahahahahahahahaha)—a sequel to The Dragon of Trelian and a new, unrelated fantasy novel. Wish me luck. Wish me lots and lots and lots and lots of luck. Please.

In other news...Library Lion has been nominated for another state book award! It's the 2009 Nevada Young Readers' Award in the picture book category. Hooray!

And...I sold another picture book to Candlewick! It feels too early to share details, but I am very excited. I will post more about this when it feels appropriate.

So, with everything I've got on my plate, I have no idea how often I'll be able to post, but I'll try to pop my head up whenever I can. Hope everyone out there is having a good summer and doing fun things and enjoying life in general. :)

First Book Podcast!

I was honored to be interviewed by First Book as part of their celebration of National Library Week! The podcast of the interview is available here (on the First Book Blog).

Please visit the First Book website to learn more about this wonderful organization.