Are you a library book? Because I’m checkin’ you out.
I couldn’t help it. Cheers to love this Valentine’s Day highlighting a handful of my favorite romances in every format and for different audiences.
Category Archives: Events
Love: Book announcements and cover reveals
My bookish Instagram is all about following authors, publishers, and book-related creators to keep track of the social side of the business. There’s nothing more fun than stumbling upon an author’s tease about an upcoming project or cover reveal as was the case two days ago from an author I follow.
There are only a few great surprises left in the world. This is one of them!
Love: the YMAs
Blogging each day during a month has been a fun adventure to challenge me and I’ve decided February is a LOVE-ly month for another round using the theme of love. Have an idea for a post? Drop it in the comments.
This past Monday was the premier event in children and teen publishing: the Youth Media Awards. While it will undoubtedly look different next year without having a midwinter conference beforehand, it will continue to be an event to be viewed. It’s where winners of big awards that add seals to books get announced to the gasps, claps, and exuberance of all who are watching. There are years I’ve been “in the room” and years like this year that I was watching the livestream making audible noises and shaking my hands in celebration. Here were the titles that I was most excited to see come across the screen either because I devoured them (not having known about them previously in the days following the YMAs or precisely because I loved them leading up to the YMAs).
Favorite posts from 2024
With the last day of the year, what’s better than a quick post of my favorite posts from this year because they were often about amazing moments or reads from this past year.
- The “best” lists from this year
- My forty-book reread to celebrate turning forty
- Meeting authors and celebrating books
- The best new comic series this year
And it wouldn’t be the end of one year and the start of another without having my last book of the year and first book of the new year lined up. Several hours ago I finished the National Book Award winner Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi. It’s clear why it’s a winner.
And as if Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan made a wish come true that I whispered into the ether or not, my first read of 2025 will be Saga #71.
There’s no doubt this will be the perfect way to usher in a new year of reading. If you haven’t hitched your wagon to Saga yet, make this your year.
Riddle me this
Book birthdays are as special as human birthdays, especially for book lovers who adore the authors that have put the book out into the world. Therefore, happy book birthday to The Bletchley Riddle, coauthored by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin whose individual works are as impactful as their first collaboration and must be celebrated.
The Bletchley Riddle is a middle grade historical fiction set in 1940 at Bletchley Park, home to the infamous codebreakers during World War II. In addition to incorporating ciphers into the text and providing an entrancing overall mystery amidst war, the book’s best feature are the vivid brother and sister duo. Who doesn’t love an alternating point of view? Intricately layered with historical facts because both are powerhouse researchers, Sheinkin wrote Jakob’s character and Sepetys wrote Lizzie’s character. How did it all blend together? Some of their secrets were revealed at an event at Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, NY last night as the last event for the Saratoga Book Festival; plus the hometown indie bookstore for Sheinkin. To have both authors, since Sepetys lives in Tennessee, was a real treat. Then to have the book in hand (if it was preordered, a spy pen was a bonus gift) and signed after an enchanting evening of their conversation and answering audience questions, made for a memorable book launch.
I’ve only teased a few elements of the book because it’s better to clear your calendar and spend a weekend with a cup of tea and Jakob and Lizzie. And if you want to put a goulash casserole in the oven for later, even better. I did this a few days after I read the advanced reader copy.
Collaborations are hard work, as they attest to, but readers will read the book and find it an effortless meshing of two talented authors who find history that we all need to remember more than we do; finding palatable ways to learn, question, and feel. I wonder… is another collaboration on the horizon?
Isn’t she lovely?
The week or two before the school year begins is a weird one. I try to tie up loose ends from the summer. I start thinking about what I want out of the upcoming school year. But there’s also work that goes into a full-day book presentation my co-presenter Stacey and I do through our local BOCES’ for mostly librarians and a handful of educators.
We met a few times throughout the summer to plan for this and upcoming opportunities around the state to spotlight new books. This past year it morphed from a half day with each of us as the primary speaker to a full day where we are both the primary presenters all day giving a full picture of what’s out for PreK through 12th graders in the book world. This organic merging of our voices came through feedback and constant reflection. With this new journey we wanted to merge our different personalities and styles into a cohesive presentation that focuses on our collective love of literature.
Thinking about yesterday after a quick debrief at the end of the day, reviewing evaluations the participants submitted, and talking on the phone this morning, I’m grateful to do this work with her. We still can’t remember how this came to be that two women from different school districts (hers more small and rural, mine large and urban), from different backgrounds (she’s a career changer librarian and I have been a librarian almost all of my career), with different lifestyles (she’s always on the go and I’m a homebody), and varied approaches (she likes to leap and talk to strangers with pink and blue in her hair and I’m an orderly, organized dress-wearer who makes polite conversation with the same brown hair I was born with) are bonded in this way. We often joke that we are like Matthew Cordell’s Cornbread and Poppy.
I would never and could never do this with any other person. And yesterday was that reminder.
Stacey is energetic. Stacey is personable. Stacey is caring. Stacey has gone to school only to discover that her leggings matched a pair that a second grader had on that day and another day discovered she had the same backpack as another student. Stacey throws the best book birthdays and is a friend to many authors. Stacey is the cohost of Author Fan Face Off with Steve Sheinkin.
Isn’t she lovely?
National book lovers day
What does a book lover do on National Book Lovers Day? Here’s a list of possibilities.
- Read a book
- Go to your indie bookstore and treat yourself to a new book
- Post a favorite book meme to your bookish account
- Take a shelfie
- Quote a book
- Read and snack
- Reread a favorite book
- Stay up late… and read
- Read and sip
- Smell a book
- Buy a bookish item (bookmark, tshirt, etc.)
- Read aloud to your kid, your pet, or your spouse
- Take a walk with an audiobook
Mourning Monday
Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day are often confused and it’s frustrating that it perpetuates even with the gentle reminders. Inspired by today’s honoring the fallen I wanted to highlight several military stories that feature the death of soldiers both fictional and true.
It’s Delicate(s)!
When Sheets, published by creator Brenna Thummler, dropped in 2018, I read it and enjoyed it. When its sequel, Delicates, dropped in 2021, I read it and was moved by it. Then the last of the trilogy, Lights, dropped in 2023 and not only did I read it, I read it from an advanced copy and completely melted. But maybe that’s not the right analogy with a series full of ghosts. I was levitating.
To be brief: the series follows lonely Marjorie, a motherless girl being raised by her dad running a laundromat where ghost friends including Wendell live. Making friends is a struggle and when Eliza and Marjorie pair up as oddball friends, there’s the sweetest sense that they’ve found someone special. But teenagers are fickle creatures and school is hard. The characters drive the story but equally evocative is the carefully selected color palette enhancing every scene. Feelings are felt among every panel and page because of the skilling coloring and illustrations.
Those feelings were no different when I figured out a way to drive nearly six hours from home for the last of only three staged musical readings of Delicates at Dramashop in Erie, PA. My only regret is that I didn’t bring my teenaged sons to see it with me. Not only would they have admired the talent of the cast (so, so much talent) but the skilled storytelling and the whimsical use of the small set and props. The experience of watching the pianist play right in front of the audience and the intimate setting of being so close to the stage with the lights the same colors as the colors in the graphic novels felt like a warm hug. Layered with raw emotions like Marjorie’s loneliness or Eliza being bullied while her helpless dad tries to help are turned upside down when the audience can’t help but laugh at the catty popular girls’ snarky comments and Marjorie’s little sibling. In two hours, everyone relived their youth. It was all laid bare through Thummler’s story.
Of course only one thing could top the night, but I made sure in advance that there would be a cherry on this sundae and that was the presence of the creator, Brenna Thummler herself. Wearing a fabulously fantastic pink jumpsuit with a vivid backpack, she had her pastel Sharpies ready to sign the books I brought only after she wiped away the tears of love and gratitude for the cast and crew to bring life to her stories on stage. She was being gifted items from fans and friends after giving us all the greatest gift to see it live.
Life had other plans
I wish I was here to give you a gushing event recap of our author visit today, but instead, I’m going to share a reminder that there are things that are out of our control and we have to roll with them. Yesterday, life had other plans instead of an author visit.
With an unfortunate medical emergency, our author’s relative reached out that they were not able to be at our school and that when better, would reschedule. It was a hard hit after all as the last few details had been put in place including the event setup of chairs from our maintenance staff and school secretary making the 15-minute reminder announcements for students to head to the library.
It might be a dirty word in education, the word “pivot”, but that’s exactly what happened. We pivoted. We still had the students who were invited to the special-invitation lunch down to talk about their books and reading in general because the food had been pre-ordered. We reopened the library. Students still came to grab the books. Staff and students came to express their sadness and disappointment. We told them that the option to reschedule will be our next big announcement and we’ll welcome the author back since so many students had been reading the books or were excited about meeting an author even if their classes weren’t and they were reading them independently. It still stings just a little. Yet it was out of our control entirely.
I suppose at our fifteenth in-person author visit, maybe there’s a statistical probably that it would happen. Life happens. It gets in the way of carefully laid plans. We pivot.
Look for a new post in the next few months where we celebrate the coming of our author, we know we’ll be ready!
