School's Out!

It was a wonderful, rewarding, and busy winter and spring for me, visiting dozens of schools around Minnesota and talking to kids about books, writing, and drawing. Schools welcomed me with paper dogs and dragons, their own photographed "Hidden Alphabets," and backwards stories beginning at THE END and ending with ONCE UPON A TIME.

I visited schools where there were eight students in one grade level, and other schools where there were 8 classes of a particular grade level. There was the school where they chose not to schedule a lunch for me, the school with 8 presentations in one day (what was I thinking!), and the inevitable student who had an "accident" during the middle of one of my talks. But mostly there were students and teachers who were excited about my books and made me feel like a celebrity. Wow. How lucky I am to have a job where an auditorium of students cheers for me!

But as much as I love visiting schools, I am very happy to be on summer vacation, and finally have time again to turn my attention to my own books. It was a joy this last week to work on a brand new book dummy and bring it to my critique group. I didn't realize how much I missed "creating." Spending time working on a new book was nourishment for my soul, and I'm looking forward to having a lot more nourishment in the next months.