See ya, 2010

I hope everyone who's been stuck in the snow this week has made it home (or to whatever intended destination) safely by now.

I will not be sorry to see the end of 2010. There were some good parts in there too, of course, but I know this was a tough year in many ways for a lot of people, myself included, and I suspect I am nowhere near alone in looking forward to a fresh start tomorrow. Here's hoping 2011 brings lots of good things to all of us.

If you're the resolution-making type (or even just the resolution-reading type), head on over to Through the Tollbooth where we are posting our writing resolutions for the new year.

Have fun tonight, whatever you are up to! Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and all-around awesome 2011.

Cynsations interview: writing across formats

Click on over to Cynsations today for Cynthia Leitich Smith's interview with me regarding writing across formats in children's publishing. She conducted a series of interviews on this topic with various authors while preparing a keynote address for a fall 2009 SCBWI-Illinois conference.

You should be reading Cynsations regularly anyway, if you aren't already! :)

Look, it's Argus!

I just realized I never posted the wonderful cover for Argus! Behold:

ARGUS received a lovely starred review from Publishers Weekly, which concluded: "Knudsen (Library Lion) never overplays her hand, but lets the story's laughs unfold naturally from the characters and circumstances. Her grasp of the life of the elementary school classroom is spot-on; this should become another favorite."

And here's an excerpt from the Kirkus review: "Kudos to unflappable Mrs. Henshaw, Knudsen and Wesson . . . naughty Argus will capture attention and hearts." (Mrs. Henshaw is a character in the story.)

ARGUS comes out in stores on February 22. Which is also my birthday. Yay!

In the meantime, you can get yourself a copy of the Dragon of Trelian paperback on January 11!  :)

Friday Five

1. Tonight is opening night of Iolanthe! Performances this weekend only!! You can buy tickets here. Come see me and the other ladies of the cast work some fairy magic. Also, there are Peers of Parliament and a half-fairy shepherd and a lovely young ward of chancery and a general abundance of awesomeness, set to music, with occasional dialogue.

2. I am very pleased to announce that I'll be teaching a course with Gotham Writers' Workshop in 2011! It's Children's Book Writing I, and it meets Tuesday nights, 7–10pm, January 18 through March 29. You can enroll online through the GWW website.

3. The third and final part of my blog series on sequels is up at Through the Tollbooth today. Click on over for more Q&A with Ellen Jensen Abbott, Cinda Williams Chima, Janni Lee Simner, and Jill Santopolo.

4. I'm currently scheduling school visits for the spring 2011 semester. See the School and Library Visits page on my website for more information.

5. Have you come across Hyperbole and a Half yet? It makes me happy.

Visit me at the Tollbooth! Also: Iolanthe!

I'm blogging this week over at Through the Tollbooth. Come on over today for the first of three installments about the pains and pleasures of writing sequels.

Also - if you're in the NYC area, you should come see The Village Light Opera Group's production of Iolanthe this weekend! It's our 75th anniversary season and Iolanthe is one of Gilbert & Sullivan's most beloved operettas. There are fairies (I am one) and peers of Parliament and a love triangle (kind of a love pentagon, really) and beautiful music and dancing and general awesomeness of all kinds.

Performances are this weekend only:
Friday, Nov. 19th @ 8pm
Saturday, Nov. 20th @ 2pm & 8pm
Sunday, Nov. 21st @ 2pm

At our new theater:
The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University
3 Spruce Street
New York , New York 10038

You can buy tickets here.

Also, you can watch this fun promo trailer:



You can see more about the show at VLOG's Iolanthe website.

Yay!

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. :)

Katie Davis on the Rochester Children's Book Festival

Children's book author and all-around awesome person Katie Davis does a great kidlit podcast, and she just put up a new one about the Rochester Children's Book Festival from this past weekend. You can hear her interviewing several of the authors who attended, including ME! :)

Here is where you can go and listen:

New Podcast! Brain Burps About Books: a fly-on-the-wall at Rochester Children's Book Festival! http://t.co/SMy68a7

The festival was awesome once again, by the way, and if you were not there you should feel very sorry to have missed it. But don't worry - you can make yourself feel better by resolving right now to come next year no matter what!

As usual, I did not take nearly enough pictures, but here is one of me at my table, either about to sign or having just signed a copy of Carl the Complainer for a very nice young reader:

I am already looking forward to next year - can't wait!