How to use this Page

Oh me, oh my, where does the time go?  Here we are, it’s Monday yet again, and I’m running about like a chicken with my head cut off.  This Friday I head off to Barcelona for a full week (weep for me), then back I come to promote my picture book (Giant Dance Party, or haven’t I mentioned it before?), but not before I’ve finished the promotional videos and my very first website.  *pant pant pant*

With that in mind, let’s get through these mighty quick.  Not that they don’t all deserve time and attention.  And tender loving care.  Mwah!  Big kisses all around!  And yes, I did consider doing an April Fool’s post today but thought better of it.  If you’d like to see some of the greatest April Fool’s posts of the children’s literary world, however, please be so good as to head over to Collecting Children’s Books and read the ones that Peter Sieruta came up with. There was 2012′s post (“Selznick syndrome” is just shy of brilliant),  2011′s Charlie Sheen Lands Children’s Book Deal (still feels real), 2009′s Graveyard Book to Be Stripped of Newbery, and his 2008 Ramona piece de resistance.  This is the first year he won’t have one up.  Miss you, Peter.

• So I had a crazy idea for a Children’s Literary Salon panel at NYPL.  Heck, I didn’t even know if anyone would show up, but I invited four different children’s librarians from four very different alternative children’s libraries.  Don’t know what an alternative children’s library is?  Then read this SLJ write-up NYPL Panelists Explore Alternatives to Traditional Librarianship.  The happy ending is that lots of people attended and the conversation was scintillating.  And timely.  A nice combination.

• Another good combination?  Me and my husband.  And it seems the resident husband recently wrote a blog piece that could be of use to you writer types out there.  How To Write Every Day, Conclusion: Is Your Goal to Keep Writing or Stop Writing? should give you enough fodder to chew on for the next year or so.  Then I’ll tell you about another one of his posts.  Trust me when I say they’re all this good.

• Did your stomach lurch a little when you found out that Amazon bought Goodreads?  Well, how much should you care?  Dan Blank has some answers.  In Short: Don’t you worry ’bout nothing (he says it nicer than that).

• A contact recently mentioned that they would like to give a little attention to the children’s book art auction at Book Expo, a yearly event that actually isn’t particularly well known.  Said they (take note!):

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is an organization that fights book censorship. We mostly work with booksellers, however, in Our Kids Right To Read Project, we advocate for kids when people try to ban books in libraries or classrooms.  Our position is that parents have the right to decide what their own children read but they do not have the right to decide for others.  Proceeds from the auction will go to our programming. Our website is www.abffe.org and for the auction we have set up a separate page where people can buy tickets and artists can donate art. It is: http://abffesilentauction.wordpress.com/.

Last night I received a phone call from Jules Danielson of the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog and one of my co-writers on a book for Candlewick.  We’d been working on it for a couple years now with our fellow blogger, Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children’s Books and had turned our edits in not too long ago.  Saturday night phone calls were not a normal thing for us, though, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Whatever it was, I didn’t expect this.  Jules informed me that on Facebook she had just learned that Peter, our friend and co-writer, has passed away.

The details are still being released at this time, but what I can say is that this loss is beyond devastating.  I’m lucky enough to say that I’ve never experienced a friend’s death.  Peter is the first.  He worked cataloging children’s books for Wayne State University and his life was dedicated to the history, the cultural import, and the criticism of children’s literature.  That’s the dry explanation.  The heart of the matter is that he loved kids books.  Loved them more than anyone else I know.  Some of us talk about dedicating our lives to them.  Peter actually did it and with his death there is absolutely no one to fill his shoes.  Peter didn’t just know the history of children’s literature, he made it accessible to the masses.  When I discovered his blog Collecting Children’s Books all those years ago it was like stumbling on a veritable goldmine.  His writing wasn’t just smart.  It was funny, infinitely witty, and easily put my own to shame.  Nobody knew as much as he did or was as good at conveying that info in such an engaging way.

Peter, Jules and I had a book contract with Candlewick to create a book about the true stories behind your favorite children’s books and I believe Jules joins me in saying that of the three of us Peter left us in the dust.  His passages came to us like they’d been in books for years yet he never seemed to show any much deserved pride in them.  He was such a professional, modest to a fault, zero ego, always willing to help us out when we were feeling stuck.  It is intolerable to lose him.

Author Helen Frost recently shared one memory of Peter with me.  If you have others you’d like to share, please consider posting them here or on Jules’ blog where she has offered up her own memories of Peter.  Said Helen:

“I met him in person a couple of months ago, at a book launch for STEP GENTLY OUT. It was hard for him to make himself socialize to that extent–he posted about that on facebook–but once he got there, we had such a lovely evening in a little room at the back of the Bookbeat bookstore. He sat in a chair and conversed with me, Kathe Koja, Sarah Miller, Rick Lieder, and my husband for over an hour, as others came in and out, and Rick and I signed books–surprising himself, I think, by how comfortable he became after a few minutes. I treasure that memory. He asked me if I’d like to see his book collection–so sweetly asked, and I said I’d love to.”

You can see that amazing children’s literary collection here.

And here’s the video he took of his Newbery books:

Goodbye, Peter.  I think you were my friend.  I was yours.