Author: hatfield13

My dad was the school superintendent in the village where we grew up.  His office was in the junior high school, which was both convenient and mortifying for me, in turns.  Convenient because he’d carry my baritone saxophone into school on the mornings I had jazz band.  Mortifying because if I got in trouble for talking in study hall, he knew before lunchtime.  But something else happened in those junior high years, too — something I didn’t figure out until I had grown into a less gawky, slightly less nerdy high school girl.  My dad was my secret admirer.

The student council at my junior high school had renamed Valentine’s Day “Carnation Day.”  In the weeks leading up to it, you could pay a dollar to send a carnation to the person of your choice, and it would be left on his or her desk before homeroom that morning.  The result was a very colorful and extraordinarily visible display of relative popularity.  There were some kids who walked in and sat down at empty desks every Valentine’s Day morning.  It’s a wonder they kept showing up.  There were other kids whose desks were so laden with flowers there was no room for a pencil. 

It was a great source of angst.  I worried.  But I didn’t have to.  In my three years of junior high school, my desk was never without a carnation on Valentine’s Day.  Some years, there was more than one.  But always, there was one.

The card was either signed “from a secret admirer” or not signed at all.  My friends thought it made me seem exotic and mysterious.  I think it was freshman  year when I figured it out.  Every year, he heard the announcements and made the walk from district offices at one end of the building to the cafeteria at the other end to order my flower. 

When we were growing up, my dad wasn’t always what you’d call the warm, fuzzy type. He was busy sometimes.  He was very organized. And he was strict.  But something happens to fathers when you have children of your own.  They turn from Dads to Papas, who have unlimited time for fishing and believe in candy before dinner. 

Looking back, though, there were always hints of Papa, even on Dad’s busiest days.  I still have a dried junior high school carnation in my attic as proof.

(I almost had to have Thankful Friday, but I have 40 minutes to spare.)

I’m thankful tonight because:

1. My ABLA agent-sister Tara Kelly just sold her debut YA novel, HARMONIC FEEDBACK.   If you’d like, head on over to her LJ (

tlcadence

) to read her publishing story and congratulate her.

2. I just finished a revision pass on CIRCUIT BOY, the companion book for my MG novel MAPLE GIRL.  It’s time to get feedback now, so I’ve submitted to my online critique group and will print out a copy for my reader-boy J tomorrow. He will be much, much tougher than the online critique partners,  in a good, brutally honest 11-year-old sort of way.

3. Fabulous Zach at North Country Books says the inside illustrations for CHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE are done.  He’ll send them soon, he promises.  I can’t wait to see them!

4. We’re having a reading celebration in my classroom after school tomorrow.  There will be books and brownies, two of my favorite things.

5. It’s very close to the end of school, which is bittersweet but mostly sweet. 

Have a great weekend!

For a while now, Loree Burns (

lgburns

), Linda Urban (

lurban

) and I  have been threatening to get together with our kids. We all love to talk writing, and we all have energetic six-year-old daughters. 

Tanya Lee Stone (

tanyaleestone

) gave us the perfect excuse this past weekend — a book launch at the Flying Pig Bookstore for her  new picture book biography, Elizabeth Leads the  Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote.

Tanya kept us captivated with stories of how she wrote this book, how Rebecca Gibbon’s charming illustrations evolved, and how the early drafts of those illustrations sent Tanya back to the research phase of the project again and again.  The result is a truly spirited book about a woman who deserves to be a household name.  E and I have read our copy five times since Saturday.  Every time, Elizabeth Cady makes us smile with her determination.

The rest of the day passed in a blur.  There was a long pizza lunch.  The girls colored; we talked.  There was a meandering trip through the beautiful Shelburne Museum.  The girls ran through the grass, asked questions, climbed trees, worried the security guards at times (they weren’t going to touch those Monet paintings…they were just pointing…), and made fast friends in the way that only children and people who write for them can.

The day passed so quickly that we barely caught the last ride on the carousel before the museum closed.  There was no music, so we made our own — a rousing version of “Take Me Out to the  Ballgame.”  The lady running the controls sang along.  In other company, it might have felt corny, but with the six of us going up and down and round in circles in the late afternoon sun, it was a perfectly fitting way to end the day.