You're Invited To My Virtual Book Launch This Wednesday! (Please Come 😂🙏🏽)
Plus: thoughts on blurbing, Books of Wonder, reading recs and more :)
In case you haven’t already registered, my virtual book launch for Snow Struck (with Caroline Carlson) is this Wednesday!
I very rarely do public virtual events — most of my Zooms are for schools and classrooms, and they don’t usually encourage me to invite a bunch of friends to those 😂 I haven’t been planning a ton of real world events either thanks to < the world in 2022 >…
So if you’d like to help me celebrate, this is the time and place to do it!
This event is part of Penguin Bookshop’s “Writers Series” and it’s definitely not just for kids. There’s nothing sadder than a book launch with a bunch of empty digital chairs, so I’m hoping all the grown-ups and authors on this list will stop by and say “hi,” too! :)
PS. If you’re looking for signed books, you can order books online at the Penguin Bookshop and I’ll go into the store to personalize them!
I did do one other public zoom recently, my event with a bunch of big time Middle Grade authors at Books of Wonder in (virtually) New York City. From the top left in the picture above, that’s: Aaron Reynolds, yrs truly, Katryn Bury, Keith Calabrese, James Ponti, and Peter Glassman from Books of Wonder.
Books of Wonder is New York’s oldest operating children’s bookstore and when I used to work at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, our offices were right above their 17th Street bookstore. It’s so awesome walking into a bookstore that focuses on kid lit because all the books look like candy — you just want to pick everything up.
I used to go downstairs to Books of Wonder on my lunch break and daydream about getting to work on children’s books instead of serious adult fiction with sad and ambiguous endings… so getting to do an event with them is always (literally) a dream come true.
This event was especially fun because Books of Wonder lost their internet right before we started so the owner Peter Glassman ended up moderating from his home, which was a real treat. Peter started out his bookselling career as a rare and antiquarian children’s book dealer and just knows so much about the history of children’s literature—which is, if you’ve seen the “collecting books” page of my website, very much my jam.
The highlight for me was when he said that the section I read from Snow Struck reminded him of (my hero and author of My Side of the Mountain!) Jean Craighead George . . . and then talked a little bit about how he knew her, and how wonderful she was — that actually might have been the highlight of this entire Snow Struck journey so far!
Now I just need someone to say that in the New York Times 😂
If you’re interested in picking up a signed book from Books of Wonder, you can do that in the store or online!
If you like my books and survival stories, I have a recommendation for you…
And also, some thoughts about blurbing!
Last weekend I read an advanced copy of Adrift by Tanya Guerrero, who reached out to me for a blurb… which happens less often than you’d think, at least in kid lit!
I remember when I reached out to Lauren Tarshis with an early draft of Storm Blown, I’m pretty sure I was the first person who’d ever asked her for a blurb. Which makes sense, because randomly emailing authors to read an unpublished word doc is kind of scary, especially when they’re so big in the field (like Lauren is with her excellent and much-loved I SURVIVED series).
There’s definitely always a fear of rejection there.
But I absolutely loved Adrift, which is set (in part) in Indonesia.
I asked Tanya if she knew that I graduated from Jakarta International School, and she didn’t—it was just a happy coincidence. After we made that connection, we realized how much we had in common (from our interest in classic survival stories to having spent time in international schools in South East Asia) and I think I just might have made a new friend!
Sometimes I forget that stories aren’t just plots and characters… they’re one of the most elemental ways for people to connect and empathize and share experiences, and this was a fun reminder of that.
The same thing kind of happened to me when I reached out to Lauren, where she was, like, “Did you know I would be the perfect person to blurb this book because of (x reason)?” . . . so, at the risk of opening myself up to a bunch of people asking me to read a bunch of PDFs, I guess the moral of this story for any authors reading this and stressing out about blurbs is: don’t be shy about it!
Speaking of recommended reading, I also want to shout out a new newsletter I’ve been really enjoying by my friend Boaz.
It’s called Rootbound and it’s all about gardening and the history of gardening and the science of gardens:
The funny thing is that I’m not even really that into gardening — but Boaz is a force and I always learn something fun in his emails — so if you’re interested in seeing a little sprout of sunshine in your inbox every two weeks, check out Rootbound.
I think that’s it from me for now…
PS if you’ve read this far, definitely RSVP for the virtual book event at Penguin!
Your friend,