Good News! I received an email Kerrlita Westrick and Shirley Berow, co-chairs of the Grand Canyon Reader Award, organized by the Arizona Library Association. Instead of telling you about it, you can read the important bits for yourself:
Dear Mr. Preller,
It is out pleasure to inform you that your book, Justin Fisher Declares War, has been nominated for the Intermediate Book category of the 2015 Grand Canyon Reader Award! Congratulations!
The Grand Canyon Reader Award is a children’s choice award with approximately 45,000 Arizona students voting each year. Your book, along with nine other tiles, will be read by teachers, librarians, and students all over Arizona and voted upon by April 1, 2015.
Well, that felt good.
As a writer, all I’ve ever wanted was to be read and, hopefully, acclaimed to some extent. Approved of. Valued. Appreciated. I dream of at least some fraction of the reading public to say, in essence, “Hey, you did good.”
Making it on these state lists is so important to keep a book in circulation. So, absolutely, a heartfelt thanks from me. Much appreciated. When I look at the other titles on the list, well, it’s just crazy. Not expecting to win, that’s for sure.
Though it’s been well-reviewed, and sometimes even praised, Justin Fisher has been pretty much ignored by the purchasing public (not to mention my own publisher). A paperback edition has never been made available in stores.
Justin Fisher was conceived as part of a series of school-based stories, including Along Came Spider, which was honored by the NYPL back in 2008. Both books share characters and the same setting, Spiro Agnew Elementary.
Here’s a nice review of Justin from a 5th-grade teacher, Franki Sibberson, who called it “One of my go-to funny books for boys.”
From the first moment I saw these covers, I thought: “Uh-oh.” I expressed my worries to my editor, that they didn’t at all convey that the stories were school based, but was told that the decision had already been made. End of discussion. Oh well. Everybody does their best, I guess.
To help the humor come out, I had really, really wanted the books to be illustrated, ala “Wimpy Kid,” but that was not in the cards. But most wonderfully, a group of students from Pennsylvania sent me their own illustrations a couple of years back. I love student artwork. Here’s some highlights:
Now I can only hope for an invitation to visit school in Arizona.
February is wide open! Brrrrr.
I've been having kind of a hectic day: work, laundry, doctor's appointment (with shots!) for my daughter, etc. But finally I sat down to my personal email, and found this email from Reading is Fundamental:
"A gift was given to Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) in your honor. The nation’s largest children’s literacy nonprofit, RIF helps get books to kids in need. For many of the kids RIF serves, their RIF books are their only books. The books provided through this gift made in your honor can spark lifetimes of ambition."
There was an accompanying note from Mary Lee Hahn and Franki Sibberson. When I traveled to their wonderful blog, A Year of Reading, I found this post: Celebrating Jen Robinson with a donation to RIF. I had been following Franki and Mary Lee's year-long celebration of their blog's eighth birthday, in which they highlight fellow bloggers whose work has inspired them, and make donations to relevant charities in those bloggers' names. But it never even crossed my mind that they might pick me. I feel so honored and grateful that I am nearly at a loss for words.
Their post is full of reminders of my very earliest days of blogging, when those of us who discovered blogging started coming together. My lists of Cool Girls of Children's Literature and Cool Boys of Children's Literature helped lead to Mary Lee and Franki's list of 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature. And the rest is history! We all had so much FUN blogging back then. I mean, I still do, but there was such a relief for me when I first started in finding kindred spirits, other adults who cared about children's books even more than I did.
Later, when my daughter was born, Mary Lee and Franki were among a group of wonderful online friends who had become real friends who gave me a virtual book shower. Franki and Mary Lee sent me two books that remain among my favorites (though my daughter now declares them to be for babies): Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox & Helen Oxenbury and Ten Tiny Babies by Karen Katz. I have in turn passed on copies of these books to many other friends and family members in the four years since.
I've been fortunate enough to meet Mary Lee and Franki in person at a conference or two over the years, and I hope to see them in person again before too long. They have brightened my blogging experience over the years, and today they made me stop in the middle of a not so fun day and remember the value of finding kindred spirits. I hope you'll check out their post. Thanks, Franki and Mary Lee! It's an honor to know you.
© 2014 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
Well, how can I not share these wonderful, insightful critiques of On the Road to Mr. Mineo's presented in such a creative way
by
Two Teachers Who Read. A Lot.
Thanks, y'all!
I love it when I pick up a new book to start reading and find myself a couple of hours later still reading, unable to close the book. With the numerous calls on my time to do other things, if a book refuses to be ignored, it’s a good one. This happened to me today with young adult novel called griEVE, by Lizzie Wilcock.
griEVE is a compelling tale of a teenage girl struggling with the
As a writer, all I’ve ever wanted was to be read and, hopefully, acclaimed to some extent. Approved of. Valued. Appreciated. I dream of at least some fraction of the reading public to say, in essence, “Hey, you did good.”
Here’s a nice review of Justin from a 5th-grade teacher, Franki Sibberson, who called it “One of my go-to funny books for boys.”
Thanks for the shout-out, and thanks for another GREAT book!
You should have heard the squeals when Franki passed the ARC on to the next reader yesterday at Leadership Academy!! Excitement is building!!