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.

Hudson Children's Book Festival!

I'll be signing books with more than ONE HUNDRED other children's book authors and illustrators at the Hudson Children's Book Festival this Saturday, May 1, from 10am to 4pm.

For more information, including a full list of the authors and illustrators who will be there, please visit the Hudson Children's Book Festival website.

I hope to see you there! :)

Operation Teen Book Drop

Tomorrow, on April 15, Operation Teen Book Drop will deliver 10,000 new books to teens on native reservations and tribal lands, an event that coincides with Support Teen Literature Day. This event is being coordinated by readergirlz, the Young Adult Library Services Association, GuysLitWire, and If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything, a national reading club for Native children.

How can you participate?

Visit GuysLitWire to help “rock the drop.” GuysLitWire has created a wish list of 750 books that supporters can buy from Powells.com. These purchases will be sent directly to one of two tribal school libraries, Ojo Encino Day School or Alchesay High School.

In addition, if you are a teen author, you can leave a copy of one of your books in a public place for a young reader to find. Download a bookplate at the readergirlz site to paste into your book. More than 100 YA authors have already pledged to do this in their local communities.

Teen readers and fans of YA literature are also invited to leave copies of favorite teen books in public places for other readers to find. There are bookplates for you to download at readergirlz, too.

For more information, please see the far more comprehensive posts at Cynsations, readergirlz, ALA, and GuysLitWire.

You can also watch the TBD trailer below, or click it here to view at YouTube.

Five reasons why there isn't a real Friday Five today

1. VCFA Packet 3 deadline April 19.

2. Trelian sequel revision deadline May 24.

3. Appointment with tax guy today at 3pm.

4. Spent most of the past week doing activities related to the above (mostly, sadly, #3).

5. Okay so I only have four reasons but really #1 should count twice at this point.

Bonus random #6: Since my blog didn't take up much of your time today, go over to books i done read and read this review of The Dragon of Trelian!

Friday Five

Hooray for another week of good things! :)

1. On Sunday afternoon, a bunch of us went to see our friend Freddie perform in ImaginAerial's fabulous production "Luminarium" at the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. Freddie was in the duo trapeze act, and the whole show was amazing and lovely. You can see a cool slideshow of photos from the performance here.



2. On Monday, I met up with Margaret and Paula at our secret writing location and DANNY STRONG from BUFFY (and, apparently, Gilmore Girls, if that's more your thing) was sitting at the table next to us! We behaved very responsibly and didn't even make any fangirl comments until he was getting up to leave. At which point he was very sweet and shook my hand and introduced himself to all of us and asked our names and it was a very nice celebrity-meeting experience all around. Yay!



3. I finally hooked up my Wii and Wii Fit this week, which was a small personal success since I'd been meaning to do this for at least a week and aside from the suspiciously unhappy sound the balance board makes when I first step onto it, I was pleased with my first day of playing around with the system. I like the balance games and the yoga stuff, so far. I also ordered myself a Super Mario Brothers game, since having the Wii can't just be all about the Wii Fit, of course.

4. On Wednesday it stopped RAINING and I finally got back outside to the park.



5. Today promises to be gorgeous and I am going to (a) be productive for a while as soon as I finish this post, (b) get outside for a nice long walk, and (c) go out to dinner and possibly a movie tonight with the boyfriend. Yay for Friday!

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!

Thanks for the library love!

Hooray! Thanks to all the fabulous people who left comments over the past several days, I'm giving $250 to the Brooklyn Public Library. You guys are awesome! Thanks for helping out with the challenge, and for all the great comments, library-related and otherwise.

Jennifer R. Hubbard, who came up with the library-loving blog challenge idea, is compiling all the totals—stop by her blog to see how much money has been raised all together.

Thanks again, and I hope all of your own local libraries continue to be places you love to visit and support for years to come!