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I just wanted to put it here so I can always remember. Countdown has been nominated for some state book awards and so finds itself in very good company in Tennessee, Illinois and Texas. Such sweet news. I'm honored. Thank you, lovely librarians! I went thrifting today during my writing break and bought a pair of very nice headphones for four dollars. When I got home, I plugged them into my

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...all of New Orleans last week, posted here chronologically.They tell a story only I know, although you could write a fictional story using these photos, in this order. Or, mix up the order. Or, choose only ONE photo and write a story. Choose three. Which three would you choose? What stories could you tell?

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 Day two found us at Montclaire Elementary School in Los Altos.
I *loved* seeing all these bicycles!
 Loved these students, too. We had an intimate time discussing Countdown, before I was whisked away to another teacher appreciation event, this one at the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. I didn't get a photo of librarian Deborah Fryer, but trust me, she was wonderful, and had prepared her students for my visit. We laughed and told stories, and signed some books, then I was on my way.
 After the afternoon teacher appreciation event, I was squired by my friend Kathy to Hicklebees, where I got to be hand sold some books for my new grandbaby -- she'll be born in March or April, and I'm already starting her library... lessee, what did I get? I'll do a separate baby-library post when I'm not so brain dead, and then I'll remember.

It was so much fun to visit "my plaque" on the wall at Hicklebees again. In 2005, Each Little Bird That Sings was honored by Hicklebees as their Book of the Year. I hadn't been to Hicklebees, or seen Valerie, since the 2007 All-Stars tour, and it was so good to catch up.

  Girlfriends go to dinner and take their own picture. Highly recommended (dinner and self-portraits).
 Girlfriends pour over Kathy's collection of old cookbooks. You just knew I'd love these, didn't you? Well, Kathy sure did. And I do. 
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I'm in Wisconsin. And I am blown over by my welcome here, and by this retreat center, by the nuns who run the place, and by these fabulous Wisconsin SCBWI writers who are gathered here this weekend.  I neeeed to take photos and share this place with you.

But not before I share last week (was it just last week?) in San Francisco, with my Scholastic Book Fairs friends -- I was equally blown over by the hospitality at the schools we visited, and by the grace and good humor of my Fairs buddies... I'm spending a fall being blown over, basically... let me show you San Francisco.

St. Isadore's in Danville. A sea of fourth through eighth graders -- hard to sit on a gym floor for 45 minutes, but they did, and we had fun, and signed some books, and got to visit a book fair in the making (do you see John Glenn in the photo below? I was in love with him. He is Drew's hero in Countdown):

Librarians Lee Lewis (left) and Kathy Dal Porto (right) flank Deborah Roberts Kaiser, Scholastic Book Fairs' Author Promotions and Conventions Specialist, who squired me all over the Bay Area for two days -- and I mean all over.
This is an amazing book fair, y'all... when Deborah and I walked into the library, it was full of parents who were making Kathy's creative thinking come true for their kids -- a circus themed book fair. They were one week away from Fair Day, and the room was full of activity.
Each of these clowns has a BOOK FAIR! sign at his feet with pointing arrows.
E
Thank you so much, Lee Lewis, for making this morning at St. Isadore's possible. I loved meeting you and your teachers and students.

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Hey, y'all. I'm heading into a time of being away more than home, and trying to write a novel at the same time. Hmmmm.....

I fly this morning to D.C., to work at The Langley School for three days. Personal narrative writing with grades 3 through 8. Can't wait. My bags are packed... etc.

I fly home on Wed. night and fly out again on Thursday to Daytona Beach, where I'll speak and sign at SIBA -- Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. I love SIBA, and am so looking forward to seeing my bookselling friends again.

 Home and then out again to Birmingham and Scottsboro, Alabama, for some work with my southern region Scholastic Book Fairs friends.

Then it's October. And October is more packed than September. That's saying something.

Countdown will be front-and-center this fall with SBFs, and I'm proud to be essentially on tour with Fairs this fall. I'm looking forward to the good work and good friends along the way.

It has been a packed summer. Hard to find writing time. I've given in to the need for rest between travels and events and have slept in most early-mornings, mornings that used to be set-aside for writing. Maybe I can get that rhythm going again this fall as I travel. Maybe not. In any case, book two is coming with me today, and throughout the fall. Here's to getting a messy draft to Scholastic by the end of the year. More about that soon.

Thanks for coming with me this summer, and for keeping me company on the road this fall. It's good to travel with friends.

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It's a lovely, long weekend of authors and stories, at the Decatur Book Festival, right here in my backyard. So off I go -- come see me at 1pm on the Children's Stage, where I'll be discussing Countdown! My partner is Shelia Moses, who'll be talking about her new book, Joseph's Grace.

Last night, the festival opened with a reading and Q&A with Jonathan Franzen. He was thoughtful, gracious, and smart. Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College was packed. Today, the Square in Decatur is already buzzing with festival goers and authors and more... I'd better finish fortifying myself and begone!

Come see me!

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I am here. Gettin' ready to hang out with Scholastic Book Fairs peeps this evening, talk a little with them about Countdown, and have some supper. Can't wait. This is the view from my window on the 19th floor.

I really, really, really, really, really want to swim in this pool, too. Pools.

Maybe I will.  More from the other side!

xo, Debbie

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Hey! I've been meaning to post links to fabulous Countdown reviews, and will do that as soon as I can breathe a bit -- this entire week is a race to the finish, with Jim's band playing in the Callanwolde Jazz in June series -- picnic dinner and jazz on the lawn in a beautiful setting, this Friday, June 25 -- come hang with us, Hotlanta peeps! -- I'm bringing the sweet tea and 'mater sammiches.

-- and then, I am flying off to ALA at 6am on Saturday morning -- and there's so much to get done before that.

I DID meet  my Monday deadline for a draft of book two of the sixties trilogy -- it's definitely a draft, and will need a lot of work. But it's a draft -- that's huge. More on THIS, later, too --

AND -- big news! -- Countdown has been featured on Good Morning America as one of a host of fabulous books for kids' summer reading. I loved watching the feature as much for the banter in this segment as the actual books featured, which are stellar... to see Countdown among them is unbelievably humbling, and -- dare I say it? -- exciting.

Thank you, thank you, to all of you out there who are reaching out to this little book with such enthusiasm and devotion, who blog about it, review it, put it into the hands of young readers everywhere -- I am so thankful.

And now, to turn attentions to Friday's jazzy event, and Saturday's departure for ALA.  If you're coming to ALA, come see me! I'm reading at the Scholastic Literary Brunch at the Westin on Sunday (June 27) at 10:30, and I'm signing at the Scholastic booth, #1520, at the D.C. Convention Center at 1pm.

AND -- if you are not going to the conference but live in the D.C. area, come see me at the Smithsonian's American History Museum on Saturday from 1-3. I'll be signing at the giftshop. (See? I'm right here, on the events page, along with Dorothy's ruby slippers!)

Hope to clap eyes on a bunch of you this coming weekend -- or at Shenandoah University's Children's Literature Conference (look at the line-up!)  on Wed., June 30, in Winchester, Va.

On the road again! xo

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Hey! Busy writing here. I'm popping in quickly to let you know that the Countdown playlist giveaway is still running -- you have until July 1 to go HERE and leave a comment so you can be entered for an iMix that will come directly to your iTunes account so you can hear the ENTIRE PLAYLIST -- 46 songs and other spoken word pieces from 1962 -- a fabulous companion to the novel, and a $45 value.

AND.... I've got tickets for my hubby's concert at Callanwolde! If you live in the Hotlanta area and want to come hear great jazz, come to Callanwolde on Friday, June 25 at 7:30. Bring a picnic and chairs or blanket, or join us and bring pot luck on the lawn.
 Jim and his entire band -- Jim on piano and vocals and snappy repartee, Eric South on sax, Paul Fallat on drums and L.A. Tuten on bass -- will be under the stars to entertain you, and there will be CDs as well,  Tickets are $15 online at Callanwolde before the event, and $20 at the door. Come out an support the arts in Atlanta, and hang with us for an evening of great entertainment.


I've got five tickets to give away on the blog or on facebook, to the first five responders. Let me know you're comin'!

That is all. I feel as if I've just written a commercial. Maybe I have. Love to all. And how are YOU? I want to know.

xoxoxo Debbie

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Quickly from me: I'm writing away this week on book two of the Sixties Trilogy, before I head off on the weekend to Charleston, for Jim's mother's birthday, and Spoletto. Spoletto! I'm bringing my camera... I always have fun shooting in Charleston.

This just in: Countdown is IndieBound! and is part of the Summer 2010 Kid's IndieNext List -- Yahoo! Thank you, indie booksellers! Wish I could be at BEA right now, to thank you in person. What good company I am in -- what a thrill.

 Next, Countdown is reviewed at Bloomberg.com. It's a fabulous review, and look at me, sandwiched between John Grisham and Louis Sachar. Fun! Humbling. And wonderful.

Back to work this afternoon. I've got my girls runnin' for a train. They're about to meet Partheny, who is 101 years old in 1966, which means she was born a slave, just as the Civil War was ending in 1865.

It interests me that kids in the schools I visit almost never understand that there were 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the end of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Here is a character to span that time. She is wise. She is no-nonsense. And she is full of mystery. I love her.

Back to it.

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"Portulaca in pie pans was what they set along the front porch. And the mirror on the front of the house: I told you. In the yard, not a snap of grass -- an old auto tire with verbena growing inside of it ninety to nothing, all red. And a tin roof you could just imagine the chinaberries falling on -- ping! And now the hot rays of the sun."

From The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty.

This, my friends, is voice.

Every year, I plant portulaca in pie pans, on the front porch, in honor of Eudora Welty and this wonderful story of generous, rich and lonely Uncle Daniel Ponder, his brand-new -- surprise! -- 17-year-old wife Bonnie Dee Peacock (a little thing from the country who looked as though a good gust of wind could carry her off), and the crazy Peacock family, not to mention our narrator, Edna Earle Ponder, bless her little know-it-all heart.

The book was published in 1954, when I was a year old. I found a paperback copy of it in a used book store in Front Royal, Virginia, when I was in my thirties and trying to write for children. The book was pubished for adults, but I found this copy in the children's section -- lucky me.

I have read this book so many times, I have broken the spine. I have underlined passages and just about memorized stretches of this story. I took it apart, and learned from it, as I tried to write stories of my own. "How does she do that?"

Today, I am convinced that the June family, the family I have created in Hang The Moon, the second book in The Sixties Trilogy, owes a lot to the Peacock family in The Ponder Heart. They aren't the same, not by a long shot, but... they are, in their crazy southern way. I hear echoes today, and I recognize a legacy being passed down because Eudora Welty wrote and published this book, and I reached out and said yes, I love this, I want this, I want to learn; teach me.

I didn't see this as I wrote the draft, which I started in the mid-nineties. But I see it today. What an influence Welty has been on my work.

Influences. Do you know yours? Who and/or what are they? Can you see them in your work, whatever kind of work you do? Name them out loud today. It will give strength to your sword arm.

And maybe, portulaca in pie pans.  (I know; it's a cake pan. I revised. :>)

I'm headed to Knoxville, this minute. Tomorrow I work at the Knoxville Children's Festival of Reading at World's Fair Park. I speak at 11:30 and again at 2:00. Come see me! I'll be talking about influences, for sure, as I introduce Countdown to a brand-new audience in Tennessee.

I am doing the same thing Welty did, in my own way: I am releasing my book, my tender story, into the wide world, not knowing who may need it now, or who might, years after I am gone, come across a dusty old paperback in a used bookstore one day, and say... yes.

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All I need is rice, to go with this stir fry -- brussels sprouts, onion, eggplant, and cauliflower (salt, pepper, garlic, and not too much else -- keep it simple).

I've got rice. I've also got May. An orange wall. Quiet -- just me'n'Jim in this house, now. And I've got lots of rearranging and putting-back to do, now that one has moved out, another has moved away, and the basement construction is finished as well. Whew.

And I am almost finished my roaming. Next weekend, I am at the Knoxville Children's Festival of Reading (May 22). But this week, I can claim full stop. How about that? Nowhere I must go for an entire week, and a quiet home to recover in, to boot. (Except that right now, this moment, Jim is downstairs with an engaged couple who are chatting about their wedding, while Jim plays possibilities for them on the piano... lots of laughing, down there, lots of lovely music.)

I have spent much of the past day and a half sleeping. Friends want to celebrate May birthdays this evening. I don't think I've got the energy. All I'm up for is watering the plants in the window boxes and communing with my husband.

Truth to tell, finding the house on Coolridge Drive all boarded up (and who knows what had been going on behind those high fences in that backyard -- y'all, I can't even show you the photos of the destruction I found), has really sapped my steam.

As I wrote in the acknowledgements to Countdown, I didn't anticipate the complexity of the time warp I would enter when I wrote the book... I must still be under its spell. The house has shown up in my slumber this past day and a half, and I keep dreaming about things I had forgotten -- like the time I played that "awful rock and roll," for my parents, at their request, so they would decide whether or not they would allow me to play those records in their house (I chose "We Can Work it Out" by the Beatles, a compromise tune if ever there was one) --

I dreamed it as if it were happening right this minute, today, in full color.  I remembered where the couch was, what it looked like, where each of us was standing, how nervous I was, how my father's face looked -- he was not happy... disgusted is a good word, actually... he was going to allow me to play this awful music, and he hated that he was, but I had proved my point, that it was not offensive music, that there was some value to it. It was a turning point.

I dreamed about the day I fell on that driveway and split open my elbow and had to go to Malcolm Grow Hospital at Andrews AFB, for stitches. My mother stayed with me the entire time, until they actually started stitching my elbow, and then she fainted.

I was ready to go home three stitches later, and there was my mother, lying on a gurney, not quite conscious. I saw her every eyelash, in my dream. Heard her say, I'm just fine! and wave off all offers of help to get her home. My dad was on a trip and Mom was also watching a neighbor's kids -- her plate was full; full of the heydey of raising a family.

I woke up realizing I was here, in Atlanta, in my good home with the orange wall, the musical husband, my own child-filled heydays with my own children over, my mother and dad long gone... the house on Coolridge Road needing so much repair that demolition would be kinder, and those da

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Here is where I lived in 1962, in Camp Springs, Maryland. It's where I picture Franny living in Countdown:

And here is what that house looks like today:


I drove by yesterday, after my signing at Politics & Prose. I'm still processing what I learned from the neighbors I talked with. Here is what happened at my house this past February. Gad, y'all.

I remember when this beautiful house was built. We watched it being finished, and then we moved in. It was on a corner lot -- my father loved corner lots. He planted fruit trees in the side yard, and poplar trees along the white fence that bordered Allentown Road. He bought a swing set from the Sears store on Alabama Avenue, in the District, and a riding lawn mower. He fertilized the yard and fought the crabgrass.

My mother lovingly tended her roses in the front flower bed. I took a rose, wrapped carefully in wet paper toweling and then foil, to my teacher now and then (as Franny does, in Countdown), and sometimes we got roses to wear in our hair:


If you look at the top photo carefully, you'll see my dad's VW bug -- one of the first. My grandmother (Miss Eula, up to visit from Mississippi!) is sitting on the front porch, with our French poodle, Amy. Here is the front porch today.
I pulled my rental car into the driveway -- the same driveway you see me standing in, in the photo above, with my little sister and my best friend Gale (a la Gale in Countdown) -- and... well, I just stood there for a long time, taking it in.

Then I walked into the middle of the fr

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Last July I wrote that I had assembled a soundtrack for Countdown. Go here to find that post, and a listing of all songs, along with a snippet from the book that each song corresponds to.

There are 45 songs altogether, all available at on iTunes as a special iMix. You can download one or two, or all 45, as I did. I had thought to make a mix with a "core list" of tunes as well, but I'm finding that that core list is different for each reader.

As I know the book so well, and have lived with it so long, it's thrilling to me, to hear Shirley Jones start with:

When you walk through a storm, 
hold your head up high
and don't be afraid of the dark!
At the end of the storm 
is a golden sky
and the sweet, silver song of a lark!


You'll see snippets from "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the first scrapbook that anchors Countdown. Now you can hear the song and become lost in Franny's world. You can move from the multiple meanings of the "You'll Never Walk Alone" beginning, to the theme from "How The West Was Won," as Mr. Mitchell stands with his hands on his hips like John Wayne, after the air raid drill, and tells students and teachers, "it's just a drill, folks."

Then you move to "I'm Just Wild About Harry," as the opinionated biography of Harry Truman is next... and then right into Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," to JFK... and JFK's reply.

Each song carries you through the narrative and is, truly, part of the narrative, in just the way that songs, poetry, spoken word are part of our personal narrative of our lives. Listening to this iMix, I am reminded, too, of how very rich the early sixties was in song and word -- Broadway tunes (Carousel, West Side Story, Camelot) take their place alongside Sam Cooke, James Brown, Elvis, Sunday morning hymns, Sousa marches, "The Wonderful World of Color" and "Here's Johnny!"

Anthony Davies reads "In Flanders Fields." You'll find part of JFK's speech to an anxious nation on October 22, 1962, as well as the terribly un-pc "Jose the Astronaut" by Bill Dana. Also, a young Cassius Clay reciting his iconic poem, "I Am The Greatest." You won't be able to listen to it without laughing.

Martin Luther King, Jr. makes an appearance with a snippet from his speech "We Shall Overcome," with the marvelous quote, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," and the famous ending words, "Walk together, children, don't you get weary! There's a great camp meeting in the P

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It was 95 years ago today, May 3, 1915, that Col. John McCrae sat in the back on an ambulance on the battlefields of World War I and wrote "In Flanders Fields." I love the story, here, about how the poem came about.

I decided to use the poem in Countdown, to showcase what I was trying to say about war, and to help characterize Uncle Otts, who is a World War I vet, living with Franny and her family in 1962. Uncle Otts still lives with the spectre of war, and particularly within the days he fought in the Argonne and was gassed in the trenches. This is the same battle that I write about in the biography of Harry Truman in Countdown -- every little thing in the book is connected, is part of the narrative, is part of the whole. 

Here I am reading "In Flanders Fields" at Bound To Be Read Books in East Atlanta last week.

Deborah Wiles Reads "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae from Jeff McCord on Vimeo.

You can find the entire "Thirty Days of Poetry" at Bound To Be Read at their blog link, here. I had such fun, and was so touched, as I scrolled through and listened to the poems different readers chose, and the voices with which they read them. My favorite has to be the last one, "Hungry Heart," written and read by Jef Blocker. Treat yourself. And then listen to "In Flanders Fields," to understand who Uncle Otts is, and why he wants so desperately to build a bomb shelter in Franny's front yard.

Tomorrow: Countdown's playlist!

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Publication day for Countdown.  I am signing the book in New York City, at Books of Wonder, from noon to 2pm today. Come say hey!

I woke up very early on this sunny Saturday in New York, excited and ready to go. Now, a few hours later, I feel a sleepiness coming. It's the sleepiness you feel when you have done your best, and it's time to let go... let go into sleep at the end of the day, or let go of the project you spent so many years working on... it's that same feeling. It's like letting a child go off, into the world. You have nurtured and cared for that child as best you can. You will always be supportive. But now it's time to let that book, that child, find a life of her own.

I know I'll be energized and delighted, when I get to Books of Wonder -- this is my first public signing for Countdown! -- it's a debut! But I also know that the letting go has begun in earnest, and this, also, is good.

When a book leaves my hands, it no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the reader. Here is what readers have said, so far, about Countdown. I hope you'll indulge me some of the full reviews below. I want to capture them in one place, and give you a look, too, at how different each reviewer's voice is, for that is part of the magic of good reviewing. 

Very early on, Monica Edinger, at Educating Alice, wrote about Countdown.

Then Alison Morris chimed in.

And Betsy Bird, Fuse #8, had marvelous things to say as well.

This just in: The BookPage review of Countdown by Dean Schneider --


Y'all: you take my breath away. Thank you so much. I am not good at keeping up with reviews; if you have reviewed Countdown, or know of other blog reviews, please send me a link in the comments, so they can be included.


Here is the Q&A with Deborah Wiles in Publishers Weekly. Thank you, Sue Corbett.

And one more Q&A, with Helen Hemphill at Through the Tollbooth. Thank you, Helen! I love working with my VCFA friends.

And here are the journal reviews. Still waiting on School Library Journal, but here are the other four review journals we wait for with each new book. You can see... so far, Countdown has four starred reviews! Let me say that again, so I can begin to believe it: Four Stars!

Kirkus Reviews (star): Just as 11-year-old Franny Chapman squabbles with her once-best friend in their neighborhood near Andrews Air Force Base, outside of Washington, D.C., President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev are also at odds. Franny's spot-on "Heavens to Murgatroyd" dialogue captures the trepidation as the world holds its breath during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Adding to the pressure are her college-student activist older sister, who may be a spy, her aspiring -astronaut younger brother, who refuses to eat, her steely, chain-smoking mother, who has inexplicably bur

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This is where I am right now, operating on blind faith... and a good bit of honest hard work, by me and everyone at Scholastic. I'm in NYC now (this restaurant is just north of Chicago, in Evanston, Illinois, and where I had lunch yesterday), and I'm about to go to lunch with the Countdown team -- I hope my make-up doesn't start to run when I meet the folks who have meant so much to me and have held me up, like scaffolding, as we've toiled on Countdown.

The road can feel like careening from one thing to the next, and like there is not one minute to rest or restore... so yesterday, I stayed put instead of getting on a plane.  Jim and I stole a few hours away, and spent it with our friend Dan, who chauffered us around Chicago in his fabulous 1987 Oldsmobile Delta 88.
 Look at those jackets and hats! It's cold by the lake. Jim wanted to check out the dog park.


 The best part of the day was spending some time here:

After the buzz-buzz-go-go and hard work of a roudy and fabulous convention, which, as you know, is wonderful but can turn one inside-out, the slow unfolding of a day off-the-clock, and the unhurried pace of a place like this reminds me to be mindful, to savor each moment, in that moment. We sat here for a while, yesterday... and the tears came. And came. Silent, and slow, like  a release of all I had held on to, the past few days.

As we left, the monk who lives here gave us apples. "Go practice," he said to me. "Be happy."
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At IRA in Chicago:

John Mason, Director, Library & Educational Marketing at Scholastic. Big kiss, John.

Left, Robin Hoffman. Right, Andrea Davis Pinckney. Admiration all around.

Me 'n Robin again. Just 'cause. Love. That's Ashley Bryan behind us, and Jacky Harper (double love), one Scholastic Convention Goddess....
I finally got to meet Lizette Serrano, another Scholastic Convention Goddess... (more love, all around....)



Yesterday was like an action movie, as I sprinted from a reading to a signing, to a symposium I was part of, then dashed to a meeting, and on to dinner and good conversation.

In contrast, I'm having a Zen afternoon today, my last day in Chicago.  But Zen or ACTION~! -- it's all good.

Tomorrow in the wee hours, I fly to New York City. I'll have lunch with the Countdown team -- I'm so excited about this.  These are the Scholastic folks I feel I know intimately, after working with them the past two years on this book, but I have never met them (save my editor).

Then, a meet and greet at Scholastic's offices...  and a surprise, which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

We're celebrating!

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So we took the "L" from Midway to our hotel downtown. Intrepid us! Not only did we ride the "L", we then rode the #3 bus on Michigan Ave., to our destination. We got on going the wrong way. We got off. We got on going the right way.

Bus driver, as I stuck my ticket into the kiosk and it read "invalid":
 "You just rode this bus, going the other way!"
Me: "I know! We 're lost!"
Jim: "We can pay again, no problem."
Bus driver, shaking his head: "Just sit down and don't do it again!"

Hahahahaha. So we sat down, and, between the bus driver and kind people of Chicago, we found our way to the Sheraton, walking through NBC park, and past the Chicago Tribune building,

So we came in on the "L". We're having a wonderful time. Dinner last night with Scholastic, at the top of the John Hancock Building -- what a view! I wish I'd thought to bring my camera. Lisa Yee brought hers. I now have officially had my picture taken with Peepy! I hope it will be up on Lisa's blog soon.

I'm dashing to a reading at 11:20 and a signing at the Scholastic booth at 11:30... if you're here, come see me!

Love from Chicago --

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That's what I'm doin' as I head into the last week of April. I'll be home late on May 1. If you're coming to IRA, I'm signing Countdown at the Scholastic booth (#1225) on Tuesday, April 27 at 11:30am -- come say hey!

I'm also signing Saturday, May 1 at Books of Wonder in NYC at noon. May 1 is the official release day for Countdown -- if you're in NYC on May 1, I hope you'll come out and celebrate with me!!  

A new book and a new decade deserve a new website design. Allison Adams has worked wonders with deborahwiles.com -- see for yourself.  I'm still working on copy, but the design is all there, and how I love it. We're continuing it here on the blog, so come on over and take a look and tell us what you think.

 I seem to have a thing for chickens. Must be Ruby Lavender's influence. At any rate, I promise, no live chickens at signing events... but I may have to bring along my collection of 45s....

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You know the friends that you sat up all night talking to, gossiping with, and telling all your secrets to when you were a kid? The friends who listened with rapt attention until they fell asleep? The friends that laughed -- and cried -- in all the right places when you told your stories, and whose storytelling was so superb, you felt lucky to be in their presence and amazed to be entrusted with their stories?

I have friends like that. Last night, here in Frederick, Maryland, I sat up with some of those friends until 3am, reconnecting and catching up, and picking up where we'd left off on my last visit. I slept like a baby for a few hours, in the bedroom set aside for me. This morning I savored a long, luxurious shower. I didn't even count the carbs in the fresh garlic rolls and hot coffee.

Last night was almost like a slumber party, like being a kid again, like having so few cares or responsibilities, that the world could slip away for some purloined hours. How rare.

Last night, as the old clock on the wall tick-tocked, three of us held court in a well-loved kitchen with warm light, homemade soup, and shared history. What a gift.

Every book I write is about friendship, its joys and perils. Ruby and Melba Jane (and Dove, of course) in Love, Ruby Lavender. Comfort and Declaration, in Each Little Bird that Sings. Cleebo and House in The Aurora County All-Stars. Joe and John Henry in Freedom Summer.

And now, Franny and Margie, in Countdown.

As you read it, keep in mind: There is nothing like a true friend, to remember you to yourself. 

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I caught Jim's cold, and I overextended my voice, so I croaked through schools in Mississippi last week as well as my father's high school reunion, and wore myself out before heading home to crash in bed, which is where I've been most of this week.

But I've also been floating, because I came home to a box of books -- the real, finished books.... so handsome! It's a book!
And that book has three starred reviews!
Kirkus calls it a "phenomenal story of the beginnings of radical change in America."
Booklist writes: "Wiles skillfully keeps many balls in the air, giving readers a story that appeals across the decades, as well as offering enticing paths into the history."
Finally, the Horn Book calls Countdown "a first-rate novel," and says, "The larger story, however, told here in an expert coupling of text and design, is how life endures, even triumphs, no matter how perilous the times."
Exactly. Exactly what I hoped readers would take away from Countdown. Life goes on. We endure. We help one another through. I'm so grateful for these early reviews, and so appreciative of thoughtful readers.

And so it begins! I have always said, once a book leaves my hands, it no longer belongs to me. It belongs to my readers.

And so, dear readers, here it is, my gift to you. May 1. From Scholastic. Countdown.

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