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Last week, Jeannine Atkins awarded me a Shameless Lion Powerful Roar award! 



According to the Shameless Lions Writing Circle, the award was created to acknowledge "those people who have blogs we love, can't live without, where we think the writing is good and powerful." The recipients then present the award to five other bloggers,"helping to scream from the mountains the good news about the powerful posts that are produced every day in the blogosphere."

So, I've been thinking about the blogs I love to read. I know some of my very favorite blogs have already received this lovely nod of appreciation and encouragement (one, Susan Taylor Brown's Susan Writes, even got it at the same time I did!). I've tried to pick ones that haven't, but I'm sure I've missed it on some of them.

Anyway, here are five of the many blogs I love:

Elaine Magliaro at Wild Rose Reader is constantly introducing me to new poets and books and poems--or reminding me why I already love the ones she's talking about.

Sara Lewis Holmes at Read * Write * Believe writes clever, thoughtful, thought-provoking posts on everything writing-related. I often find myself thinking about her posts later in the day.

Kelly R. Fineman at Writing and Ruminating shares great info on her works in progress, as well as presenting amazing Poetry Friday posts: scholarly mini-lessons on various poets. I've learned a lot from her!

Andi aka Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge posts photos and haiku regularly. Her ongoing dedication to photopoetry, which I love, reminds me to look for the poetry in my own life all the time.

And the final spot goes to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Her Poetry Stretch Mondays are a terrific way to start my week, and her Poetry Friday posts are a wonderful way to end it. Thank you for making me stretch as a poet.

You're all powerful, and I hope you all continue to roar for a long time. Thanks for enriching my life!

(You can all snag the lion from above or from my sidebar or visit Shameless Lions Writing Circle to pick out your own.) 

And, even though that uses up my 5 spots, I do want to give a shout-out to Laura Coulter at Writing for the Educational Market. This is a brand new blog that I hope has staying power. It's wonderful that she's generously passing along job postings related to the educational market, and starting discussions on the topic, too. I'm looking forward to participating there!

Once you stop laughing, hear me out:>)

Of course, everyone's attention this morning is focused on the awards being announced at ALA. I have no books eligible for these awards and no expectations of ever winning one of them. After all, how many books win? A tiny handful out of all the terrific books published each year.

But I can dream.

An award (and I'm talking state lists, state book awards, Boston Globe-Horn Book, you name it!) would be wonderful reinforcement and acknowledgement of all the hard work we put into our books. But it would also mean major cash in the form of increased sales (scrotum controversy or not). So...if you won big and your royalty checks suddenly had lots of zeroes, what would you do with the money?

I'd tell my husband he could take a sabbatical from his job, and we'd pack up the family and go live somewhere else for a year, probably in another country. 

What would you do?

And while it's not the Newbery, I won myself a handy dandy  award called the Shameless Lion! I've seen a few floating around lately, and last week, Jeannine Atkins chose me as one of the five she passed it along to. Thank you, Jeannine. That made my day, to say the least!

Now, I'm going to savor my magenta lion jpg for a week, and then I'll name 5 bloggers whose posts touch me and make me think and I'll clone my lion for them! No big royalty checks, but plenty of warm feelings.