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Recently, Stan was a guest on
The New Screen Savers. It's a show about computers and technology which used to be the headline show for cable's Tech TV channel. Since the channel's demise, the show has gone live online. If there's a geek in your life, you can be sure he or she knows about it. Stan has been an avid fan of the show since it's inception.
Stan had a question about saving my enormous art files to the Cloud - something we've been trying to figure out for some time now. I work digitally and my illustration files are enormous - often about a half meg each. I can't keep them all on my laptop because it has limited space. So we've been employing external hard drives. It works, but it's not ideal from an access or safety standpoint. Cloud storage is available out there for average-sized files, but we've not found an affordable service available for files like mine.
Stan turned to the experts. He submitted his question earlier in the summer and the show's producers got back to him a few weeks ago. The show is filmed live in California and now that we're in Scotland that meant an 8-hour time difference in screening. So Stan set up Skype to talk to Leo and the guys at our new kitchen counter and was filmed at about midnight.
The show is now archived online and you can see Stan do his bit. Stan comes on at the 57:00 mark.
CLICK HERE to go see it, and Go Stan!
I'm thrilled to share that A Bird on Water Street has been nominated for Tennessee's Volunteer State Book Award for the Middle School Division (Grades 6-8). The award is co-sponsored by the Tennessee Association of School Librarians (TASL) and the Tennessee Library Association (TLA). In 2016 and 2017, teens across Tennessee will be reading my book. In May of 2017, they will vote on their favorite title. The book with the most votes will win the award. You can learn more about the Volunteer State Book Award by visiting TASL's web site at http://www.tasltn.org/vsba. Woohoo!!!
You read that right! Tricia Lawrence of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency is my agent for children's books. But one of my recent projects turned out to be an adult one, outside her scope. So she very generously connected me with her friend and colleague, Gordon Warnock of Fuse Literary. Gordon and I hit it off and he has wonderful ideas on how to take my project to the next level. So I now have TWO agents looking out for me and trying to share my creations with the world!! I am so excited and grateful to have these two allies on my side!!
Oh wow! I am the Georgia Author of the Year in the Young Adult category for A BIRD ON WATER STREET hosted by the Georgia Writers Association! Friends James Taylor and Lynn Myers were at the awards banquet and Facebooked this photo to me:
What a bizarre feeling to learn that you were being talked about in such a public setting and with accolades! It does my heart good to know that
A BIRD ON WATER STREET is slowly getting on more people's radar and gaining momentum among readers. I can't tell you how humbled and honored I have been to have my debut novel recognized with so many awards (this makes eleven!)
and to have my decade of hard work on the novel validated. This book is a tribute to the Copperhill community and it's been my pleasure to get the word out about their history through my story of Jack. I've especially been touched by the warm response from my readers, colleagues and peers, like the Georgia Writers Association. THANK YOU!!!!!
I believe this is what the new sticker will look like. Woohoo!
Learn more about
A BIRD ON WATER STREET - click the cover.
Daren Wang, founder of the Decatur Book Festival, cc'd me on some wonderful news recently. MY Little Free Library is on the COVER of the new tome, THE LITTLE FREE LIBRARY BOOK: TAKE A BOOK • RETURN A BOOK by Margret Aldrich (Coffee House Press).
How honored am I? SO VERY!!! (It's the LFL on on the lower right covered with my reading fairies. CLICK HERE to see some close ups.) YAY!
You can check it out on Amazon here, but please support your local economy and purchase it from your local independent bookstore!
Oh WOW! A BIRD ON WATER STREET has been shortlisted for the Green Earth Book Award sponsored by The Nature Generation! With the strong environmental angle of my book, this award means so much to me! As well as the to American Library Association:
“One of the beauties of the Earth Book Award is that it recognizes an author who’s writing about a topic that is of vital importance to our Earth, yet it’s an area that, until recently, received little attention.”
-Pam Spencer Holley, author of the American Library Association’s Quick and Popular Reads for Teens
The competition is stiff - some amazing books with which to be associated - but winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2015. Fingers crossed!
ABOWS keeps winning over fans and I'm so honored! This one is the shortlist (12 chosen titles) for the Juvenile Fiction 2014 INDIEFAB BOOK OF THE YEAR. It's an award for books from smaller publishing houses like Little Pickle Press. As they say:
"it's a joyous occasion because we get to share with the rest of the world something we've known since our magazine's founding seventeen years ago: Some of today's best literary voices can be found among independent publishers. It's our job to find those voices and amplify them."
I just say, THANK YOU!
OMG! I opened my computer today and there are dozens of "Congratulations"! Turns out A BIRD ON WATER STREET has been nominated for a SIBA Book Award! ABOWS is up against some very strong competition, so I'm just so honored to have it nominated!!! WoW! Truly, it just keeps plugging along getting such great attention. I am so pleased with how my debut novel has done!
I am thrilled to share that A BIRD ON WATER STREET is a 2015-2016 Nominee for the Georgia Children's Book Award! Woohoo!!! CLICK HERE to see the illustrious list of nominees - I am proud to be among them!
You may know that I teach at Hollins University in the MFA in Children's Book Writing and Illustrating as well as the Certificate in Children's Book Illustration programs every summer.
Well, we are thrilled to announce that Hollins has received a gift of $60,000 from James Rockefeller, Margaret Wise Brown’s (a Hollins alum) fiancé (at the time of her death), to establish the Margaret Wise Brown Award for the best published picture book text, with the first award to be given at the Francelia Butler Conference in 2016, for a picture book published in 2015.
This annual award will carry a $1,000 cash prize plus travel to Hollins (in Roanoke, Virginia) to accept the award and give a reading, and a bronze medal with a portrait of Ms. Brown on one side, and the recipient’s name and year awarded on the reverse.
There is no comparable award for picture book writers. The Caldecott is for illustration, the Newbery rarely (although occasionally) goes to picture books, and the Charlotte Zolotow, and other awards for picture book text, do not include monetary winnings. So we are very proud of this new award!
Publishers - if you would like your picture books to be considered, please contact Amanda Cockrel, founding director of the children's literature graduate program at Hollins University for further details.
I'm thrilled to announce that A BIRD ON WATER STREET has been nominated for the 51st Annual Georgia Author of the Year Award - the oldest literary award in the Southeast! Cross your fingers for me!
I am not even believing what arrived in the mail Monday! An actual MEDAL - my Gold Moonbeam Children's Book Award MEDAL. It was forwarded to me along with a lovely free-trade bracelet, stickers to put on my books, and a note from fellow pickle, Audrey Litner – the one who came up with the great tag line for A BIRD ON WATER STREET: "When the birds return to Water Street, will anyone be left to hear them sing?"
Never at a loss for words, she also included the lovely quote:
"La reconnaissance set la memoirs du coeur." by Jean Baptiste Massieu
I think it translates into "Recognition is the heart of memories" or some such. Does anybody have a clearer translation? Audrey?
Answer! Marcy says it means "Gratitude is the memory of the heart!
At any rate, as if I wasn't feeing special enough!
Having never won a
medal before, I had to wear it around the house. Let me tell you, that sucker is
heavy and it kept hitting my tummy. ("Heavy medal" - Ha!) I don't know how the important people do it!! It certainly won't let you forget it's there. Wowsa - what a hoot!
THANK YOU to my fellow pickles at
Little Pickle Press!!!
I recently answered some questions as "Featured Blogger" for the Cybils - Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards site. I was so honored to be nominated for this, and so appreciate the interest! CLICK HERE to go have a read!! I hope you enjoy!
Lovely things keep happening to A BIRD ON WATER STREET! I just heard that ABOWS is an Academics' Choice Award Winner! I'm so flattered! This is a review highlight:
"This thoughtful book would be perfect for my 6th grade class. I'm just about done with it and don't want it to end. Dulemba has made her characters believable, real, and enjoyable. Coppertown is a symbol for all things industry. I'd use this book to help my students learn about the pros and cons of industry as it relates to nature and family life. It could also be read during 19th century American studies as it relates well and brings the human stories into play when talking about the effects of industry on nature, family and the economy. I highly recommend this well written book!"
YAY!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!
A BIRD ON WATER STREET TEACHER'S GUIDE!
If you're a teacher and you'd like to use A BIRD ON WATER STREET in your classroom, there is a free teacher's guide with talking points available -
CLICK HERE or the image to get to it on the Little Pickle Press website.
I'm proud to announce that my artwork was selected to grace the new calendar for Reading Rainbow as part of their Kickstarter campaign to bring Reading Rainbow back into the schools that need it most! What an honor! If you participated in the campaign, you should be able to read more about it here. (Cick the image to see it larger in a new window.)
I recently had the great honor to be the guest author for the Denver Public Library by invitation of my kind hosts, Librarians Joan Vigil and Martha Garbison (lovely, wonderful new friends), as well as the behind-the-scenes Jeanine Haney.
It meant flying to the mile-high city to visit six elementary schools and one teen group in two days (with a day on each end for travel). The only down side was, while I expect to get sick upon my return from intense public speaking schedules like this, I did not expect to catch a cold on the plane to Denver. Pah! Still, I'm proud of my extreme rallying skills, as apparently nobody could tell (except my kind hosts who were extremely understanding). I just slept like a coma in my room each night, which seemed to work, because I really did have a FABULOUS TIME!! I'll try to share some of it with you...
Flying into Denver at sunset was remarkable. The sun made the mountains glow like solid gold. And I don't know what it is about the lights in Denver, they remind me of Paris - yellow, lovely, inviting. What a pretty city. The photo from the plane doesn't do it justice:
Two awesome EMLA (Erin Murphy Literary Agency) Gangos met me for dinner on Sunday, my first night there - Jeannie Mobley and Tara Dairman. We've been chatting for ages online, so it was so nice to finally meet in person and talk shop, life, travel, you name it. What a great welcome to Denver! (They both have new books out, we clinked glasses at dinner, so I hope you'll click their names and check them out.)
I also learned a very cool fact about my last name. Our waiter was from Malawi and commented. Apparently "Kulemba" (rather than "Dulemba," which is Polish) means "to write" in Chichewa, a Bantu dialect. WOW! How cool is that, and ironic? Zikomo! (Thank you!)
Joan and Martha picked me up the next morning and off we went!
It cracks me up when people refer to children's book visits as glamorous. There's a good bit of heavy lifting
and punting involved. Joan, Martha and I got really good at quickly setting up my slide-show, drawing easel, microphone and such. Every school was different. We met in libraries and auditoriums, both formal (kids in chairs) and informal (kids on the floor) in groups of 60 to 90 2nd graders. And best of all, every single child got a free copy of SOAP, SOAP, SOAP ~ JABON, JABON, JABON. Wow.
The first stop was Stedman Elementary School - mostly 2nd graders with a few 3rds scattered in. They were fabulous and it was a great kick-off to the tour!
The kids at CMS made a lovely welcome sign for me. (I'll post more photos as I get them.) And it was so fun to hear so much Spanish in this dual-language school environment. (What a sweet little library too!)
After a lunch of Pho Ga (basically, Vietnamese chicken soup with all kinds of fresh herbs - yum!) we visited the third school - McGlone Elementary. (Martha was taking pictures with her camera and I'll share as she shares with me.)
What really made an impression on me was how involved and tight the local librarians were. The librarian from the nearest library was at each school and they knew their kids. They also knew and supported each other. I like to think that's how it works everywhere, but I'd never seen that before and was really quite touched and impressed by how proud they were of their libraries and connected they were to the school libraries and librarians and especially to the kids. Not to mention, many were bilingual - important in these highly Hispanic-populated schools. (It's part of why they invited me - two of my picture books are bilingual - what a treat!)
After a successful day, I was feeling poorly, but still wired. Martha drove me by the Tattered Cover bookstore. I have a story about this store... When I lived in the mountains and didn't have a bookstore - any bookstore within 100 miles, I used to listen to the podcasts of authors visiting the Tattered Cover. It was before I was published and was such a dream of "what if..." So, it was a thrill to finally get to visit this bookstore with which I've always felt such a connection. Even better? They had two copies of A BIRD ON WATER STREET in stock!
Then we stopped by The Bookies - an all children's bookstore which was so packed to the rafters I could have lost myself in there as a kid - oh! What a wonderful space!
I was originally going to have dinner with more friends, but they were called away on a family emergency (sending love!). Perhaps it was for the best (not the emergency part), as I went back to my hotel, ordered take-out, and slept for 11 hours. Zzzzzz.
The thing about being around kids is, they are incredibly energizing. When they are being attentive and participating, there is no better feeling in the world. And it's up to me to give them something to pay attention to - so it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. Kinda cool.
The next morning was a much prettier day - blue skies, green and golden leaves everywhere (this whole town seems gold to me) and the mountains can be spotted everywhere of course - stunning! We set off for Barnum Elementary and librarian Ms. Hungerford (who has already friended me on FB - hi!). Gads I love Smart Boards. Can I tell you how awesome those things are? Every school should have them, they make life so easy. We talked about the evolution of storytelling via the Jack Tales. Here, the kids are being mountains...
The kids at Swansea Elementary liked being mountains too:
Although the biggest hit was when my dog Bernie came up in the slideshow (wearing his glasses from ARLO NEEDS GLASSES by Barney Saltzberg. Can you see the slide? Huge screams and laughter!
Joan, me and Martha grabbed lunch at a very funky and yummy Tex-Mex sort of restaurant:
Our last school was Goldrick Elementary and boy do they have a dedicated teacher in Ms. Denise. It always amazes me how hard teachers work, in and outside of their regular work hours, to get what each child needs to move ahead. They should all be canonized (made into saints).
This was the most formal setting of all the schools. Isn't it adorable seeing all those little heads poking above the seat backs?
At each school, I do a demonstration drawing where the kids come up to help draw the basic shapes I'll work with. I have to say, the rubber duckie we ended up with at Goldrick was my favorite one ever! He ended up so wonky and happy with a huge head. We mostly did duckies, but I did a cow at Swansea. I let the kids shout their favorite color and whatever color I hear first or loudest ends up being the color of the cow. It's my own version of Andy Warhols. I dedicate any art we make to the schools, so they're all over the country now - that makes me happy.
But we weren't done yet! For the cherry on top, we visited the lovely old Carnegie library of Park Hill where I shared A BIRD ON WATER STREET with budding teen writers while we ate yummy Chipotle - buffet style. (It was really good and worked well for those of you who need an idea for a similar event.) These were smart young women (+ one guy) and it was a thrill to share their brain-space for a little while.
Okay, so after that I was done, fried, kaput. My now good friend Martha drove me to the airport the next morning. We saw fields of protected Prairie Dogs - I wanted to hug them all, and more of the gorgeous Denver landscape. The airport and flight were uneventful and direct - all good. And hubbie caught me when I landed. That night and Thursday were a bit of a boneless blur on the couch, must admit. But now I'm feeling better and going through the sweet thank you art and "I love this book" art students made for me. I tell ya, that's the best chicken soup of all!
Thank you so much to Joan and Martha as well as the Denver Public Library system for making my visit possible. I know I love school visits, but I also think they're amazing for the kids (even when it's other authors). It helps them understand writing and the creative process and to see that all the books they love have real people behind them, and that they can do something like become an author too if they want. (Or a fireman, or a basketball star, or, or, or...) It's all about building exceptional futures and I'm proud to be a very small part of that.
Esther Levine of Booking Authors connected me with Channel 11's daytime show, Atlanta and Company, and I'm so glad she did! They invited me on recently to talk about A BIRD ON WATER STREET! Have a looksie - the image will take you to the show's website where the video is archived:
November 1st kicked off
PICTURE BOOK MONTH! How to celebrate?
CLICK HERE to check out the calendar I created. Each day features a different reading theme and different author. You can go read the author's thoughts about picture books
ON THE BLOG. You can add this cool ambassador badge to your blog or website. You can also find suggested Story Time Activities and Common Core Connections for many popular books. Then, of course, read related books to the young ones in your life! Best of all, I have
COLORING PAGES that also fit with many of the themes (you'll see hints of them on the calendar).
I'm so proud to be a part of this exciting month dedicated to the books I love most! I hope you'll participate!
Also, check out this adorable comic strip from Debbie Ohi (shared with permission):
I submitted an illustration for consideration for the Reading Rainbow calendar and voting is now open! (It closes Sunday.) I hope you'll check it out! You do have to be a Reading Rainbow backer to be able to vote, but try this link: CLICK HERE!
I returned from vacation to some GREAT news! A BIRD ON WATER STREET won the GOLD Moonbeam Children's Book Award in the Pre-teen Historical/Cultural category! You can read all about it HERE. Here's what this award stands for:
“Celebrating Youthful Curiosity, Discovery and Learning through Books and Reading”
and
"The Moonbeam awards are dedicated to the notion that reading to and with your children will inspire them to become lifelong readers and learners."
and
"The Moonbeam Children's Book Awards are intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary children's books and their creators, and to support childhood literacy and life-long reading. The Awards recognize and reward the best of these books and bring them to the attention of parents, booksellers, librarians - and to children themselves."
Such an honor - thank you!!!!
I just discovered that every single one of my newsletter subscribers except for one, is signed up for my WEEKLY "e's news and coloring page Tuesdays" newsletter (plus book giveaways). As of today, that means 3,768 folks (the number is always fluctuating) get my newsletter in their in-box every week. WOW! I am so flattered!
If weekly is too much, did you know I have a "Special Editions" option too, where you can just get my news every now and then? It only comes out every few months or so when I have big news to share. I try very hard not to inundate that group. Although, I thought there were more people subscribed to that option. Upon investigation this morning, I found that almost all the names in that group were redundant. Only one person had signed up that way!! ONE! Bigger WOW!
That's a lot of loyalty I wasn't expecting to stumble across today. I'm so grateful!
But I hope y'all know, signing up for my "Special Editions" is perfectly okay too! (You won't get the giveaway notifications, but we'll still be in touch from time to time.) Anyhow - for either one, you can sign up at http://dulemba.com/index_newsletter.html
CLICK HERE to see an example of my latest newsletter!
The e-version of ABOWS is the eLit 2014 Gold Medal Winner in the Environment/Ecology/Nature category!!! How awesome is THAT!? YAYYYY!
I'm thrilled to announce that I will be a guest speaker at Highlights Foundation's "From Prose to Picture to Published: Writing a Marketable Picture Book 2014" in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, on October 31st - November 2nd, with fellow picture book creators Candace Fleming, Eric Rohmann, and David Wiesner!!!! Wowsa - I can't wait!
Highlights Foundation hosts workshops like this one throughout the year on what I'm told is a gorgeous campus with sweet cabins and fabulous food. The tag line is "Intimate & inspiring workshops for children's authors and illustrators," and the line-up of options is impressive. CLICK HERE to check them out!
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