Authors are imaginary mentors and real support.

How a Kid’s Author Got to Know Kids - Again
It used to be so easy. While my kids were young, I spent time with them and their peers. I was a girl scout leader. I also led a cub scout den. I lived surrounded by kids – my readers. I listened to their cares, followed [...]

I once had the good fortune to open a letter and discover that award winning author, Jerry Spinelli, was to be my mentor at a writer’s conference. I was thrilled- certain that I had been assigned this amazing author because of my own literary brilliance and couldn’t wait to hear his praise of the first ten [...]

A cousin recently shared with me a literary treasure: the complete archives of The Weekly, a newspaper her mother Flora and a friend wrote and distributed from September through November of 1936. Flora and Mary were the sole proprietors, reporters, editors, and publishers.  Their writing is honest, straightforward and completely charming.   Both [...]

Earlier this month I shook off my summer inertia, hopped a Metro-North train, and hied myself to NYC to attend a jam-packed, standing-room only panel discussion on “What’s Hot and What’s Not: Trends in Children’s Book Publishing,” sponsored by the Children’s Book Committee of the Authors Guild.
The panel was made up of : [...]

Reporting on the Hudson Book Festival in the post below got me thinking about the value of events like it for us, the authors. Beyond the obvious…
During my many years of doggedly working toward becoming published, I was, among other things, a Book Fair Mom. Helping to run and engineer a school book fair was [...]