WRITE UP OUR ALLEY is a group of children’s book authors and illustrators dedicated to putting quality books into the hands and hearts of children. We provide a variety of resources and expertise to teachers, librarians, parents and booksellers. Welcome!

I am an author-mother in a predicament: I need to ask my son to stop reading. That’s right, to stop reading.

My son wasn’t one of those very early or very precocious readers, and there were moments when I wondered if he’d take to it at all. Well into first grade, he was happy to be read-aloud-to, to read pictures, and to make up his own version of book stories.

I remember when I discovered my son actually was reading.  I was changing the sheets on his bed to accommodate a guest. When I lifted his pillow, there, face down and open, was a book. Next to the book was a flashlight.

“Don’t lose my place,” my son said.

“Are you reading after bedtime?” I asked.

“You do it”, he said in his defense.

He had a point. There just isn’t time in my day for reading — until after bedtime.

So what do I say to the pile of  books cascading off my son’s dresser onto the floor, when my night table  looks the same?

A couple years later, he’s into chapter books which are harder to finish, never mind put down. And, after a summer of relaxed routines, things are not where they need to be to to have a (smooth) morning school and bus schedule.

“Put the book down, it’s lights out,” I’ve been saying, to set the stage.

He complies. Sort of. Temporarily. The blue lava-lamp nightlight has served as after-hours lighting no matter how many times I turned it off.

“PLEASE STOP READING OR THAT LIGHT WILL BE IN TIME OUT”.  I have become more emphatic.

Both of us tend to be sleep deprived and cranky.

“You really can’t read at night,” I tell him.

How sad. How tragic, that in the goal of advancing education, I need to limit my son’s propensity for reading. And yet, how necessary for mutual mental health!

I’ve solved the problem, at least for now, by instituting a “school year policy”. My son gets to read to himself for a few minutes, then we’ll do family read-aloud, the very last thing before bedtime.

We’ve begun the year with “Matilda” by Rhoald Dahl, and two nights in, so far, so good.

Today is the official release date for Come Fall. I’m very excited. The novel has gotten great reviews from Publishers Weekly (starred!) and Horn Book Magazine. I’ll be throwing a book party on August 28 at the Alphabet Garden Bookstore to celebrate its release.

But today, nothing much happens. There won’t be confetti. Or a special opening ceremony featuring a precious first box and a boxcutter. (Although it’d be pretty cool if there were.) Without any fanfare, bookstores will shelve the book with the many others in their store. Online booksellers will ship the book to customers. Libraries will quietly acquire it.

And people will have the opportunity to read the novel, if they wish.

Which I suppose is something.

Happy birthday!

In my last post I wrote about turning my studio into a retreat, my own private Breadloaf, a one-woman MacDowell Colony. There my imagination would roam unhindered by worries about everything that’s going on in the world at large, and the publishing world in particular.

Such a charming idea. But I want to change the rules slightly. I want to bring along one outside influence: a cheerleader. This person would pull up a chair beside me at the drawing table and at frequent intervals exclaim, “Yes! Yes! Way to go, Kate! You rock!” etc. These eruptions would occur not so often as to be annoying, and never without good reason. A cheerleader with poor critiquing powers would be worse than nothing.

Here’s an example of how it would work: Just last week I set out to paint a potted geranium in four different styles. Great project, right? But I ended up with four lookalikes. I promptly decided I was in a rut, and my spirits sank to the bottom. This is when my cheerleader would step in and point out everything that, in my state of gloom, I had missed: “Wow! Great color choices! Look how you handled those shadows! And say - you didn’t obsessively try to draw every leaf and stem! Rah! Rah! Rah!”

And having thus been hoisted out of the rut I thought I was in, I would see that the usefulness of the 4-geranium exercise was to give me confidence for the next experiment.

Of course I don’t really have an opening for a cheerleader here. Keeping one’s chin up is part of the job description for being self-employed in the arts. Luckily you get better at leading your own cheers the more you do it. And luckily there are writers’ groups to go to, where the chance to hear some real applause awaits.

So I won’t be bringing in that extra chair for my drawing table. But maybe I’ll think about investing in a set of pom-poms.