Years ago, I remember reading a post on children’s writers’ online message board (yes, we editors lurk) about how slow things are at publishing houses during the summer months. “All the editors are at their vacation houses in the Hamptons!” a writer complained.
HA. Here in Chicago, there are no jaunts to the Hamptons for us, only trips to the Lake Michigan beaches. But sometimes we manage to escape to other fabulous Midwest destinations, such as Mankato, Minnesota. I’m a big fan of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, so when the first-ever LauraPalooza academic conference and fan fair was announced at Minnesota State University, I knew I had to go.
A LauraPalooza Lecture
The conference was everything I’d hoped it would be and then some, with more than two dozen presentations and a field trip to one of the Little House homesites in Walnut Grove, MN. I met scholars, book authors, independent researchers, teachers, illustrators, librarians, and even a meterologist who gave a great talk on the weather conditions behind The Long Winter. (And yes, I met some people who were wearing sunbonnets, too.)
Betsy's House
As a bonus, the conference offered a free visit to another beloved children’s book destination—the childhood neighborhood of Maud Hart Lovelace, AKA the setting of the Betsy-Tacy books. Of course I couldn’t miss the opportunity to be led around by a Maud Hart Lovelace impersonator (dressed in excellent 1940s garb!) and see where Betsy, Tacy and Tib lived. All this children’s literary tourism is making me resolve to get out to Putnam, Connecticut to see Gertrude Chandler Warner’s home town and the Boxcar Children Museum. (Josalyn is planning a trip there; she’ll report back!)
Dori Hillestad Butler
On my way back from Minnesota I stopped in Iowa City, Iowa, not far from where Dori Hillestad Butler, author of The Buddy Files series, lives.
(Quick quiz: what are TWO things all the authors mentioned in this blog entry have in common?*)
I answered the query letter for Dori’s first book with us nearly a decade ago, and since then we’ve worked on several novels, including The Truth Abou