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One single man unites three cities, also the world. He wears white. He raises his hand. He stops his Fiat to kiss a young boy on a head, to touch a baby, to nod at an Argentine flag, to laugh at something, to mime a quick sprint. He speaks, at a mass, of St. Katherine. He honors educators and peacemakers. He talks about the power of being individually different together and about the devastations of attempting global sameness.

Celebrate your history.

Celebrate your culture.

Celebrate our many languages.

He celebrates the immigrant, reminds those who must be reminded that we, here in America, we, here, in Philadelphia, are all products of movement; my own Italian great-grandfather became a naturalized citizen not even 100 years ago. He asks us to look past walls and barriers. To be honest with each other. To seek out peace, to stop perpetuating damage, to hold together family and family life.

Money, fame, celebrity, awards, job titles: These things do not impress him. He prefers his own shoes, his own small apartment, his single suitcase of possessions.

We are watching him, learning from him, studying the skies (the morning hue here is the brightest pink). We are celebrating with those, like Sister Kimberly Miller, who have stood in his presence. We are praying for him today, another long day, and we will be praying for him, as his plane departs tonight, and then after, when he has more meetings to attend to, another continent to greet and to inspire.

Make the peace, he says. Or to keep it.

Be honest.

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Above? That's Libba Bray reading from her forthcoming novel (Lair of Dreams, due out in August) at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA—a scary little ditty that has Amy Sarig King and Gayle Forman shaking in their respective (albeit from opposing sides of the fashion world) boots.

Before them sit many of my neighborhood's finest writers. Also Sister Kim and her Little Flower students. Also bloggers and readers and enthusiasts and at least one bookseller from down the road and shall we go no further before we mention Heather Hebert, who makes it all happen, and with enthusiasm, and while I am at this, because heck, why not, can we locals all just pause for a minute and welcome Margo Rabb to our neighborhood, because she's here now, newly arrived from Austin, with her second YA novel (Kissing in America) due out in May.

(Seems like I might be reading with Margo and two other fabs from Round Here soon, but more on that to come.)

What a performance these three gave—Amy and Libba gamely (respectively) playing the parts of a stoner and a slick boy in a choral reading from Gayle's new bestselling book, I Was Here. Amy giving a thrilling preview of I Crawl Through It. Libba forcing everyone else into scare mode, then zapping the conversation with four parts hysterical ad lib and one part Barbara Waters. And then plenty of talk about the F word, by which I mean (of course) Feminism.

The doors were open at Children's Book World, to dispel all that animal heat. The skies were ripped apart with rain. I headed home among storm-imperiled drivers and then I fell asleep. At which point I dreamed I was still with the gang, only we had moved onto a Friendly's Restaurant (note: Friendly's, I lie not) and we were having high-calorie ice cream and nobody would speak to me. My offense, in my dream, was that I been me—asking too much, pressing too hard.

I woke just after I'd leaned over somebody's shoulder and read the texts that were circulating about me.

"Beth Kephart," it said, "is so annoying."

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Can we give it up this morning for Sister Kim of Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls? Who has ignited her students with a love for stories. Who drives them to their super stars. Who gives them book projects that yield stunning results. Who makes videos that make writers cry. Who puts together a massive and massively successful Little Flower High School Teen Writers & Readers Festival.

(Look for the 2015 festival on April 18, 2015, when I will join a fantastic cast of area writers for a day of workshops, panels, and signings.)

Who writes to me last night to say that 42 copies of Going Over have arrived at her classroom and will be taught this spring.

Who tags me this morning to say:

Going Over is on the 2015 Tayshas Reading List. This was a dream I had. But. I hadn't dared to dream it fully.

Props. To Sister Kim. To the so-generous TAYSHAS committee. To Chronicle Books, whose glorious team members have opened more doors for me than any publishing house ever.

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In just a few days the world will turn its eyes to Berlin, which will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall.

In the days to come I'll be taking that story, and GOING OVER, into a series of schools—Downingtown West, Masterman, Radnor, others—to look back, through, over walls. Why was the wall there? What did it mean? What did it do? What stories has it left behind?

Readings and workshops. Conversations and research. A few poems, a few songs, an animation. I look ahead with optimism, as I always do when I am about to meet with teens.

(With thanks to the ever gracious Ellen Trachtenberg for her great help in all of this.)

In the meantime, an utter surprise, Sister Kim of Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls, will be teaching the book in the third semester this year. A joy for me.

Also in the meantime, unbeknownst to me, GOING OVER was found in the window of the University of Pennsylvania bookstore by a friend not long ago. Thank you, Kathye, for stopping to take this photograph.

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First among the privileges of attending writing festivals is this: the young people you meet. Just look at those Little Flower Catholic High School girls. Look at those faces, that youth, those smiles, that Sister-Kimberly-Miller-inspired love for books. These students made the enormously successful first Little Flower Teen Writing Festival a few brief Saturdays ago. They (along with all the hard work of Sister Kim and Kate Walton) were the reason we were there.

But the twenty writers who gathered for this event also had the chance to talk with, and support, one another. That, too, is excellent stuff. That, too, makes a weekend.

Today I'd like to share a few opening lines from two of the new books that I brought home, to entice you to go out and find these books for yourselves.

First, from Jennifer Hubbard, author of Try Not to Breathe and The Secret Years, comes her new story, Until It Hurts to Stop, about a teen trying to overcome a legacy of brutal bullying, a teen trying to believe in her own worth. (It's also about hiking, about which Jenn knows a whole lot.)

That story begins like this:

My friend Nick reaches across the cafeteria table and drops a knife into my hand. "Happy birthday, Maggie."

I turn the knife over in my hand. I have always wanted one of these. I've borrowed Nick's often enough, out on the trails.

I know I should hide it. It's a Swiss army knife, not a weapon, but our school gets hysterical over nail clippers. They'd probably confiscate it and put me on some list of budding terrorists.

Even so, I can't resist stroking the smooth metal and snapping open the different tools: the nail file, the screwdriver, the tiny scissors. Best of all, I love the tiny scissors....

Second, from Elizabeth LaBan, a story inspired by an assignment the author herself was given as a teen—to write something called a "tragedy paper." LaBan's novel (The Tragedy Paper) is told in two voices—that of an albino boy who leaves a record of his last semester in a boarding school behind, and that of the boy who discovers and ponders the tale.

That story begins like this:

As Duncan walked through the stone archway leading into the senior dorm, he had two things on his mind: what 'treasure' had been left behind for him and his Tragedy paper. Well, maybe three things: he was also worried about which room he was going to get.

If it wasn't for the middle item, though, he tried to convince himself, he would be almost one hundred percent happy. Almost. But that paper—the Irving School's equivalent of a thesis project—was sucking at least thirty percent of his happiness away, which was a shame on such an important day. Basically, he was going to spend a good portion of the next three months trying to define a tragedy in the literary sense, like what made King Lear a tragedy? Who cared? He could do that right now—a tragedy was when something bad happened. Bad things happened all the time. But the senior English teacher, Mr. Simon—who just happened to be the adult overseer of his hall this year—cared. He cared a lot, and he loved to throw around words like magnitude and hubris....

Of course, no matter how many books I own, I'm always wishing I had room and time for more. But here, for this rainy day, are the start of tales from my big reading pile.

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Trust me. Just trust me. Click on that link above. And find a piece of magic that means so much to me. Thank you, Sister Kimberly Miller and your girls — Kathleen, Amber, Julia — for sharing this evening with me. For remembering this evening with me. For giving this to me.

Oh my. A launch for forever  — on a day of such flooding weather that Noah himself would have felt intimidated.

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In just a few hours, I will at long last meet the girls of Little Flower Catholic High School. These girls who are led by the endearing, catalytic, life-changing Sister Kim.  These girls who read Undercover and House of Dance with such love in their hearts. These girls with whom I will sit and write a little memoir, sit and talk a little Berlin, sit and then maybe stand and dance.

This summer, the girls will be reading Going Over and writing a poem somehow evoked or provoked by this story about love on either side of the Berlin Wall 1983.

This morning, I give this poem to them:
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Good morning, Sister Kim, Kate Walton, my fellow authors, and all the Little Flowers. This poem is for you. And here, thanks to kind Serena Agusto-Cox, is another poem, written on another day, about the lit-up glass of others' stories.

The world, my girls, is your oyster.

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