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At 4:11 pm today I received an e-mail.

The sender: Lin Oliver

The subject line: The Crystal Kite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The first line: Congratulations! Your book PEARL has been awarded the Crystal Kite from your SCBWI region.



THANK YOU, New England SCBWI and all the members who gave PEARL (and me) some love. "Thank you" seems not nearly enough for what I am feeling at this moment. But this writer is feeling speechless at the moment.

So THANK YOU. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

And BIG CONGRATS to all the other winners. The list is here: http://www.scbwi.org/Pages.aspx/2012-Crystal-Kite-Winners

WOW

I totally forgot that my blog tour started today! Ack!

First, thank you, Teen Book Scene for hosting this tour!

Second, thank you, Jessica at "Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile" who hosted the first blog stop. It's called "Talking characters with Jo Knowles, author of Pearl" and she interviewed me all about Bean, the main character in PEARL!

Wow, I can't believe PEARL will be here in EIGHT MORE DAYS! :-)

1. Pandas are cute, especially when they are reading and giving away PEARL! :)
You can read the first page of PEARL and enter to win a personalized, signed copy of the book over at First Page Panda. Only 11 people have entered as of my writing this so your chances are quite good! All you have to do is comment. Thanks First Page Panda!

2. YA Scribe is also very cute, and she's giving away a copy of my book, too!
Angelina C. Hansen (AKA YA Scribe) has an interview with me over here and she's also giving away a copy of PEARL! So far only 18 people have entered, so again, your chances are very good there, too! Just leave a comment! :-) Thanks Angelina!

3. I <3 Kate Messner.
Wonderful author, teacher and friend, Kate Messner, is doing a series of interviews with authors about revision in conjunction with the release of her fantastic new book: REAL REVISION, and it was my turn to share thoughts about revision with Kate yesterday. You can read/add to the discussion by going here.

4. Thoughts about Henry
I answered some questions about Henry's character from PEARL here. I had a nice note about Henry on Twitter yesterday and it made me feel warm and fuzzy. I love it when people share thoughts about a character with you, as if they are as real to them as there are to me.

Note: Please excuse all the self-promotion going on lately. But, it's PEARL's week and I've gotta do what I can to give her the best birthday. :) I'll be topping everything off tomorrow with a big launch party at my house. Unfortunately, the weather is going to be HOT, so it may be a little uncomfortable. But we have lots of water guns, lots of cold drinks, and lots and lots of food, including Suzie Q's! Go Suzie Q's! Hopefully, this will make it all bearable. OK. Now for a completely non-promotional last but not least:

5. Are blueberry eyes as scary as button eyes?!
Is this photo really that frightening?

I was merely trying to illustrate that our blueberries are particularly large this year. I wasn't trying to scare anyone! But apparently when I posted this on Facebook yesterday, I frightened a number of people. Sorry 'bout that!

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!!

This past Saturday my family and I hosted a launch Party for my new book, PEARL, at my house.

Since much of my favorite junk foods are in the book, I thought it would be fun to make a little display of them, with excerpts from the book to show how they fit in. :-)


It was a HOT day, but a lot of dear friends still came. Including these lovely ladies, Kathy Quimby and Cindy Faughnan.


Many of my former students came, too! (I can't look at this photo and not smile.)


Susan of The Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock (our local Indie bookseller), came to provide books at the party. She warned me ahead of time that I would have to read. Here are some funny shots of everyone listening. Can you tell I chose something a little serious?


Everyone looks so bored and depressed! Nice choice, Jo! ;-P

Everyone had arrived all at once and the party became so chaotic for me that I forgot to put out a bunch of food I'd made ahead of time and kept in the fridge, including the cake balls I worked so hard on in my 90º kitchen! But they went quickly. This started as a towering pile. They taste better than they look, I hope.


After the reading, I could finally relax (I was so nervous I felt ill), and enjoy seeing all the lovely friends who came from near and far, including one of my favorite people in the world, Kate Messner.


And people had even saved some Suzy Q's for me! (These are another food from the book.)


As the party wound down, some friends who came with their instruments brought them out and we played some tunes on the deck. There were guitars, a drum (that box David is sitting on is a drum he made!)...


More quitars...


And even a ukelele!


It was a long and wonderful day, and all the next, images of friends came to mind who made it the special day it was. At some point in the day, my aunt, who came all the way from Rhode Island, said to me, "You have the nicest friends." She is so right. And I am very, very grateful to all of them for making this celebration such a h

It's Activity Corner here on Tappity Tappity!

Here's a fun thing to do. Seriously. It's addicting like Orange Tic-Tacs and giant bricks of crack cocaine. (Or so I've heard...)

Instructions:

1. The first article title on this page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quotation is the title of your album.

3. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result:

Here's a couple of mine:

Seriously. How could you not buy a couple of sweet CDs that looked like these? I know what I'm doing in my (ahem) off-time.

Pretend: Ever wonder what it was like to be a goldfish.This is the picture I am currently working on. I posted most of the steps I took to where I was at on monday (I am still working out details).

I love revising!!!

Here are what some of my notes on my editorial letter for PEARL look like:



And here's what my average manuscript page is looking like:


And here is what my inspiration for daring looks like, thanks to my awesome class who gave me this for an end-of-semester present:



:-)

Must stop now to attend my son's holiday party, where there will be more singing! Yup, it's still all holiday tunes all the time at chez Jo's.

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!

It seems so early, since the book doesn't come out until July.

And yet...

PEARL's here!

And the best part? This is my first book my son is old enough to read! (Along with his very patient cat.)

With spreading unrest In my country, I am deeply saddened by the situation in Bahrain. All those who want to express solidarity with my views, please message me. Your voice will be heard! What the international media states is very biased. The police and the Saudi forces have driven away protesters much to the relief [...]

Many years ago, I was getting ready for my first bookstore event with literaticat back when she ran Not Your Mother's Book Club in San Francisco.

A few weeks before the event, Jenn e-mailed to ask for an author photo.

The only photo I had was several years old and didn't look anything like me anymore. So, in a panic, I shoved the camera in my then 8-year-old's hands and said, "I have a job for you."

We went up to my office and he took a few photos. I sent the one we liked best to Jenn, and she used it for the poster.

Since then, every so often I'm asked to provide a high-resolution photo, and since the only photos I have of myself are taken on the little PhotoBooth thing on my Mac, I send the one E took.

So last night, when the final sample cover for PEARL came, I surprised E with this:



That is his photo credit along the side of the frame for the inside jacket flap. :-)

His reaction? "Cool."

Oh man, he is turning into such a little pre-teen. But I could tell he really did think it was cool. And later he said, "That was a funny day." And it was. I think I was wearing pajama bottoms in that pic. heh

Other surprises on the jacket were the back:



An oyster shell! I love it. :-) And the image is embossed. Is that the right word? Anyway, fun!

And the inside jacket copy is new to me, too. But I'm not going to share it here because it has a big spoiler. ;-P

I can't believe the book comes out in one month and 2 days. Not that I'm counting. Well yes. Yes I am.

Have a great weekend, everyone! We're heading to Maine tomorrow for our annual family vacation. Hopefully the cats will be kind to our very kind house sitter.

xx

My first print review is in and it's a good one! From KIRKUS!

*happy dance*

An excerpt:

A touching family melodrama about the corrosive nature of secrets and the cleansing power of honesty...Knowles’ fine ear for dialogue and her sensitive, nuanced portrayal of ordinary people’s mishandling of complex situations allow her to play with soap-opera conventions without being crushed under their clichéd weight.

Full review HERE</i>.