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... I am grateful to Amy Robinson, for an email exchange she had with Ramon Renteria of El Paso Times, and I am grateful to Ramon himself, for last evening's conversation. I am grateful to Janet and her work with children with special needs in Anapra. I am grateful to Anna, for the crystal amethyst, the Amazonia, and words of calm; to Mario, for something very special from Paris; to my sister and her kids (my nieces and nephew!) for their crazy card; to Sherry, for her amazingly loving email; to my dad, with whom I spent time yesterday; to Jean, who yesterday led me around the dance floor even though I can still barely breathe; to Amy Riley for everything she does; to Magdalena Piekarz, who will spend this morning with me at Chanticleer garden; to my son for his midnight text message; and to my husband, who has promised to learn to cook and to share what he has learned with me, in a once-each week extravaganza.

I am grateful for sun—its rising and its setting.

Magnificent Priya honored me with one of the very earliest reviews of Nothing but Ghosts, and she has honored me again this evening with this most exceptional review of The Heart is Not a Size, in which she found what I dared to hope (in my quiet, hopeful hours) a reader or two would find.

I shall say it again today; I shall say it, I am sure, tomorrow: It's a life of blessings.

Thank you, Priya.

I am deeply honored this morning by the Shelf Elf's review of The Heart is Not a Size, a story inspired by a trip that I took to Anapra, a squatter's village, in 2005. I want this book to matter because the people of Anapra do. Because theirs is a story that doesn't get told; it is suppressed, instead, by the drug-war headlines.

The Shelf Elf has given me many gifts these past few weeks—that stunning review of Nothing but Ghosts, this remarkable review of Heart. And as if that were all not quite enough, the Shelf Elf generously invited me to participate in the Winter Blog Blast Tour 2009; I'll be her featured interviewee this coming Wednesday. Please take the time to read all the interviews during this remarkable week-long feature. I've been online this morning doing just that. This is blogging at its best.

The Reading Junky received an early copy of my fourth novel for young adults, The Heart is Not a Size, and begins her review with these words:

Beth Kephart fans are not going to be happy with this review. Don't get me wrong...

To be honest, that left me hanging, too. And then I read on.... I hope you will, too.

How do we meet people? How do we continue to know them? Years ago, it seems, Ed Goldberg, a Syosset, NY-based librarian and an avid reader/reviewer, asked if he might have a copy of one of my books. It was sent. He wrote a gorgeous review; it was posted. There was, after that, another book. Ed asked. It was sent. He read carefully and dearly once again, sharing his thoughts with me, then with the world, and in the meantime advocating my work to others. He became—over Facebook, on the blog—a constant presence and friend.

A few weeks ago, Ed asked if he might read Heart. It's a different book for me, purposefully so. I held my breath. I knew Ed was going to speak his mind, say whatever it was that he truly felt; he's that kind of ethical reader. Here, now, just as my dinner guests arrive, is Ed's review of Heart.

Kephart, Beth. The Heart is Not a Size. HarperTeen. 978-0-06-147048-6. 2010. $16.99. 256

Georgia, a high school junior, needs a life altering event, something that might end her frequent panic attacks. Described as plain and responsible, she is an avid reader of fliers tacked to shop bulletin boards. The flier from Goodworks about spending two unforgettable weeks in Mexico, “planting a seed” so that some small, impoverished community can begin to improve, intrigues her. She convinces her artsy best friend Riley, who overheard her own fashion-plate mother once describe her as average, to join her.

Anapra, Mexico, is an arid colonia on the outskirts of Juarez containing one-room huts pieced together from scraps of tin and cardboard. It is a land of dust storms and las muertas de Juarez, girls who mysteriously disappear, never to return. Georgia and Riley join nine other teens, whose goal is to construct a community bathroom for the Anapra people. A small seed, indeed.

In The Heart is Not a Size, Beth Kephart has written an engrossing novel contrasting the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, both groups surprisingly in need. The Anapra people need life’s most basic elements. A people with nothing, their hopefulness is evidenced in the way they dress their children in bright colors and the care they take in digging out after dust storms. Georgia and Riley, two girls with bright futures, are equally in need. Georgia’s panic attacks are debilitating. Riley’s reaction to her mother’s indifference is to stop eating. As Georgia watches Riley waste away, as Riley’s health is seriously endangered, Georgia can no longer remain the silent friend.

Kephart has veered slightly away from her usual poetic prose, although the care she takes with her wording is still quite evident. Heart is a faster paced novel of self exploration. Hearts know no size limit. They can encompass five year old Socorro searching for her missing sister’s spirit or the entire Anapra community. They can enfold Riley, an extraordinary person whose mother is blind to her wonders, or Georgia who must realize how smart and capable she really is.

The writing in Heart is so descriptive that after reading about a dust storm, I felt the need to wash the dust off my hands. The characters are wonderful, from the teens performing the community service to the Mexican men who sit on a roof watching them. The poet that Kephart quotes has prompted me to read Jack Gilbert’s poetry. Reading some books can be considered an enjoyable pastime. Reading others is more of a “reading experience”. The Heart is Not a Size falls into the latter category. Beth Kephart has not disappointed her current or future fans.

Once there were two sisters—elegant and kind, smart but also (we suspect, we have been told) prone to giggles. One was two years younger than the other. She wrote a poem a day, sometimes two. The older one wrote beautiful poetry, too, and read deeply and wisely, and journeyed far to American Idol concerts and reported back with photos. She made so many friends in the blog universe that only she knew how to keep count.

The older sister, Priya, cherishes her younger sister, cherishes the poems she writes, makes it possible for her write them. She (we read in the preface to Maya Ganesan's Apologies to an Apple) "guards Maya's bike, she runs manuscript pages up the stairs from the printer and sometimes supplies piano accompaniment to our (poetry) lessons."

Not to be outdone, the younger sister, Maya, loves her sister, too—so much so that she has thrown her a surprise blog birthday party, inviting those of us who have grown to love these girls to welcome Priya into her fourteenth year.

Happy Birthday, Priya.

"In Ciudad Juarez, young women are vanishing." It's a front-page headline, LA Times, a story reported by Ken Ellingwood. "The streets of Juarez are swallowing the young and pretty," the story begins, and then, young woman by young woman, we are told the details. Of a studious, reliable college freshman who simply did not return from exams. Of a 17-year-old Brenda and a 16-year-old Hilda last seen downtown. Of girls as young as 13 simpy not coming home.

This breaks my heart. This is more bad news for a place beseiged by a viscious drug war. A place I loved after spending long, enriching days there with nearly two dozen teens a few years ago. Today I am remembering lost sisters, daughters, friends. I am hoping for an end to the madness.

Next March, my fourth YA novel will be released by HarperTeen. The Heart is not a Size was inspired by a trip that I took, along with my husband, son, and two dozen others, to a Juarez squatters' village called Anapra. It features a girl named Georgia (who just happens to be an anxiety-prone photographer) and her best friend, Riley. It asks the question, What difference can one person make?, while plumbing buried, dangerous secrets.

Today the cover for Heart was approved. I thank Jill Santopolo and Carla Weise for seeing it through, and I share it with you here. I share as well this small excerpt:

What I remember now is the bunch of them running: From the tins, which were their houses. Up the white streets, which were the color of bone. All the way to the top of Anapra, to where we were standing in our second-hand scrubs, and where Riley said, “They might as well be flowers, blown right off their stalks,” and Sophie said, “This is so completely wild,” and The Third said nothing at all. The Third: He wasn’t talking yet. He was all size and silence.

“I should tell Mack,” I said, but I didn’t budge, didn’t even turn and glance back toward where Mack and the others were digging in, hanging tarp, toting two-by-fours from one angle of sun fizzle to another. Because the kids of Anapara might have been chunks of blown-off petals, like Riley said, but they mostly looked like wings to me, flying and flying in their bright, defying best, their yellow cotton shirts, red fringy skirts, blue trousers. They looked like something no one should lose to a single instant of forgetting.

It was only our second day.

We’d pinned everything on nothing.

Last night Bill and I watched the Madonna Malawi documentary, I Am Because We Are, a work of art that scours the soul. Among the poorest countries in the world, Malawi is home to some 1 million orphans—children fending for themselves and for one another in a dusty, AIDS-afflicted world. Their struggles to live, to learn are here, in this film. So is their evanescence, their odds-defying radiance.

You can't watch a film like that without being moved to do something. This morning, in honor of all of us bloggers who clearly care about children and their future, I've again turned to the exquisite organization, Pump Aid, which, through its Elephant Pump technology, provides clean water to rural Malawi and Zimbabwe, in environmentally thoughtful fashion. Clean water helps to prevent disease. It nurtures gardens. It feeds communities. It affords hope. Pump Aid, the organization, allows those of us living here, in our comfortable homes, to do something.

Someday soon, through what is, in the scheme of things, a modest donation, a water-rich garden will flourish in rural Africa. A garden that feeds 250. That will be our garden, we bloggers. Seeds that we together planted.

Finally, the image here is a photo I took in the squatter's village known as Anapra, in Juarez, Mexico, where my fourth novel, The Heart is not a Size (Winter 2010), takes place. I have not myself traveled to Malawi. Last night's film made me wonder how and if I someday could.