So a couple of months ago, I posted about how my second book was demanding a party. Well, it got one, a super wonderful “Book Birthday Party”, hosted by the literacy organization New Haven Reads. We had face painting, puppet making, birthday cake and… uh oh… what happened to the live chicken that was supposed [...]

This summer our town’s youth theater company performed the musical Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (I still have the Oompa-Loompa song stuck in my head). Soon after, I left for vacation to spend time with family. One of my nephews (who lives two states away from us) happens to be on a Roald Dahl [...]

Among my friends here in the Alley, I’m the one who wastes spends the most time online. I’m not terribly proud of this fact, but justify it by saying that the internet is (in the words of my friend, agent Jill Corcoran) “my water cooler”. Website, blog, facebook, twitter… yes, I enjoy it all (or [...]

A Penderwick Surprise When I opened an email announcing that Jeanne Birdsall, author of the Penderwick series, would be speaking at a local bookstore, I almost hit delete. Who was Jeanne Birdsall? Was that even her real name? But when I read that it was a middle grade series about real kids—no vampires, no perfectly [...]

  “It’s so heavy!”             Everyone who has held my shiny new IPPY medal has had the same reaction. “Well, it IS a metal,” I say smugly. “Bronze.” I leaven the comment with a smile because I, too, was surprised by the heft and by the honor of winning a national Independent Book Publisher’s Award for [...]

Neil Gaiman provides my favorite description of Beatrix Potter’s work: [Her] stories are fine, dark things. Odd little tales of anthropomorphic pigs and squirrels, of kittens and mice, foxes and rabbits, each story illustrated by gentle, precise watercolours. There’s nothing warm about Beatrix Potter’s world: it’s a dangerous, horrid place. Peter Rabbit runs for his [...]