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Last weekend, I had an author signing at The Bookstore Plus, a terrific independent bookstore in Lake Placid. In addition to signing for holiday shoppers in the store, I spent nearly three hours personalizing & signing books for students whose classes had Skype visits with me this fall. The Monday after my event, Sarah, one of the store owners, sent me a picture of all the books, boxed up and ready to be shipped to schools all over the country – from Georgia, to Maine, to California and everywhere in between.

Many thanks to Sarah, Marc, and Cherise for handling the phone calls, paperwork, and organization for this, and to all the teachers and librarians who offered their students the chance to order personalized, signed books.  They’re on the way!

There’s a bit of snow on the ground where I live now, and the Christmas lights are up, leaving me to wonder how on earth it’s gotten to be December already. But December is good because it means family and Christmas cookies and the smell of evergreen in the living room, and cuddling on the couch laughing at The Grinch.

Consider this a catch-up blog since I’ve been quiet lately, busy writing and Skyping and signing.

First, the writing…

I’m working on the third book in my Silver Jaguar Society mysteries with Scholastic. It’s called MANHUNT, and it takes place in all the brightest and darkest places in Boston and Paris, and that’s all I want to say right now, other than that I am having SO much fun writing it. The first book, CAPTURE THE FLAG, came out this summer, and the second, HIDE AND SEEK, is coming out April 1st, but the cover is already online, so I can share it with you.

In other writing news, WAKE UP MISSING, my Fall 2013 novel with Walker/Bloomsbury is off to copy edits, which makes me very happy. I’ve seen a draft of the cover, too, and this makes me even happier because it’s a stunner. I can’t share just yet, but I’m excited.

And the third book in my Marty McGuire chapter book series with Scholastic is with my editor there now. It’s called MARTY MCGUIRE HAS TOO MANY PETS! There will be animals and shenanigans of all kinds. It comes out in Spring of 2014.

Now, the Skyping…

I’ve done more than forty Skype visits in the past two months, talking books and writing with hundreds of readers from Pennsylvania to Calgary. Here’s one of my groups from this week – a crew of Gwin Oaks Elementary School kids in Georgia. Can you guess which book they read?

And finally, the signing…

It’s been a busy fall for me with book events, but I’m getting ready to hibernate for a couple months. I have one last event this weekend — a book signing at The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid, NY on Saturday, December 8th from 11am-12pm. If you’re local, I’d love it if you’d stop by to say hello – and if you’re a far away friend who would like to have one of my books signed and personalized as a holiday gift, you’re more than welcome to order from afar. Just give the bookstore a call any time this week – it’s 518-523-2950 – and let them know which books you’d like and how you’d like them signed. They’re great about shipping them out in plenty of time for gift giving. (And if you’re one of my Skype schools that ordered books, I’m signing yours this weekend, too – look for them next week!)

Hope your December is off to a great, sparkly start!

I’m still catching up from last week…Thanksgiving and the NCTE Conference and ALAN Workshop in Las Vegas.  But now that I’m digging out from the turkey bones and piles of laundry, I wanted to share a few more photos from an amazing week.

After three days of speaking and signing at NCTE, I had one last event before heading home — an ALAN breakout session called “Creating Ripples: Writing for Kids in the Middle” with some of the authors who inspire me most.  We had a wonderful afternoon talking with teachers about why writing for middle school kids is such a privilege for us.  Here’s our panel:

I loved hearing the other ALAN speakers in the main ballroom, too — so many amazing ideas and so much inspiration. But I also spent a little time away from the conference center on the Monday afternoon of ALAN.

 

This is Valley of Fire State Park. My friend & fellow TED2012 speaker Angie Miller decided that a little fresh air would do us good after Monday’s morning workshop, so we rented a car and headed out to climb rocks, spot wildlife, ogle 4000-year-old petroglyphs, and just explore. Here’s some of what we found.

 

Valley of Fire is a truly stunning landscape — one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen with so much space to roam. It was so very welcome after the bright lights and loud music of Vegas.

Between the wonder of the desert and the magic of so many book lovers at NCTE/ALAN, I came home feeling refreshed and full of hope. The world is a pretty amazing place, full of some truly awesome people.

Imagine a conference center full of thousands of teachers who love books, reading, and writing more than anything.  Add in a hundred or so enthusiastic authors, an enormous exhibit hall full of amazing books, and a music-pulsing, neon-light flashing hotel lobby, and you can begin to imagine this year’s NCTE Conference and ALAN Workshop in Las Vegas.

 My conference began with a signing of EYE OF THE STORM, followed by a wonderful dinner with the Walker/Bloomsbury crew, including my fellow KidLitCares organizer Joanne Levy. Here’s the whole bunch of us showing off the team’s latest books.

 

(From left to right: Linette Kim, Susan Vaught, Michelle Naglar, me, Emily Eason, Donna Knoell, Megan Miranda, Shannon Hale, Sarah Maas, Jessica Warman, Lindsey Leavitt, Caroline Abbey, and Beth Eller)

The next morning, I headed to my first speaking engagement, where I met up with my fellow panelists, Donna Knoell, Anita Silvey, who talked about THE PLANT HUNTERS, which I started reading on the plane home, and Lindsey Leavitt, whose upcoming book GOING VINTAGE looks so funny. Here’s Lindsey…

 

My long-time online friend, author April Henry, stopped by my signing at Chronicle Books to say hello.  We figured out that we’ve been chatting over our blogs since 2006 or so but never connected in person until Saturday.

 

I spent an hour at Chronicle, signing SEA MONSTER’S FIRST DAY along with lots and lots of copies of OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW, which was on the NCTE Notable Books in the Language Arts list this year.

I also signed copies of REAL REVISION at Stenhouse, and the very first advance reader copies of HIDE AND SEEK at Scholastic.

This one’s the second book in the Silver Jaguar Society Mysteries with Scholastic, and it comes out April 1^st.

 I got to spend much of Sunday morning with the Scholastic team and several hundred amazing teachers at the Scholastic Literary Brunch.  We shared excerpts from our new and upcoming books, using a readers’ theater format, which was so much fun. I got to read from CAPTURE THE FLAG, Blue Balliett’s HOLD FAST, and Eliot Schrefer’s ENDANGERED, along with Blue, Eliot, and David Levithan.

 After brunch, it was time for the session celebrating NCTE’s Notable Books in the Language Arts, where OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW was one of thirty books honored.  I was happy to see my friend Linda Urban’s HOUND DOG TRUE on the big screen, too!

Sunday night brought a Scholastic family dinner at a great Mexican restaurant whose name eludes me.  A few of us decided to forego the cab ride and walk back to our hotel instead.  Las Vegas is very shiny.

 

I’m not much of a fan of casinos and loud music, but the lights were pretty, and Las Vegas sure knows how to do dessert.

Monday kicked off the amazing, author-filled ALAN Workshop, along with a little time away from the city lights, climbing rocks at Valley of Fire State Park.  More photos to come in a future post, but now…it’s time for the quiet of home and some turkey this weekend.  Hope you’ve all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Earlier this week, I attended the biggest Scholastic Book Fair in the country – absolute heaven for a book geek like me!

This is just part of the set-up at the amazing Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey, which is celebrating its 125th birthday this year. There were SO many books, and Scholastic brought in authors to speak to the students each day. I was one of the featured presenters, along with Trent Reedy, Lisa McMann, Loren Long, Matthew Reinhart, and Dav Pilkey.

Because this whole part of New Jersey was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy, I wondered for a while if this scheduled event would happen, but the Scholastic folks assured me that the school had power, even though most of the families’ homes did not, and the book fair would be a welcome break from storm clean up.  I knew there were lots of people in this area who couldn’t even think of getting to a book fair, though, so I checked with a Newark Red Cross shelter to see if they could use some books and things for the kids. They said yes – and told me they sure could use some socks and sanitary napkins, too –  so I loaded up my suitcase with books and notebooks…

…then stopped at the store to buy sanitary napkins and lots and lots of socks on my way to the airport. I can only imagine what the TSA inspectors thought of my stuffed-to-bulging bag full of books, socks, and feminine supplies. I had the chance to drop it all off at a shelter not far from the airport in Newark and spend some time talking with the coordinators there, who were still friendly and smiling a week after the storm.

There were plenty of smiles to go around at the book fair, too.  I loved chatting with these kids about books and reading and their own writing, too. Many were working on stories of their own and were eager to tell me about them.

Thanks, Montclair Kimberley Academy and Scholastic, for a wonderful book fair day!

 

More than fifty million of us are stocking up on peanut butter and jelly and flashlight batteries this weekend, preparing for the arrival of a monster fall storm. If predictions for power outages come true,  we’ll all need something to read by flashlight or candlelight tomorrow night. Here are some timely suggestions…

I’ve gotten more than a few emails and social media message this week, accusing me of being somehow psychic when I wrote this book…

EYE OF THE STORM is set in a future world where climate change has led to severe and widespread catastrophic storms. (Frankenstorm, anyone?) In this novel for readers ten and up, Jaden Meggs goes to spend the summer with her meteorologist dad in his company’s “Storm-Safe” compound in the heart of tornado country. When she enrolls in an elite science camp for gifted kids, Jaden teams up with a boy from across the river to study the strange paths some tornadoes are taking…and discovers a terrifying secret about her own father.

NINTH WARD by Jewell Parker Rhodes is another great storm story. In this book, twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. She doesn’t have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker, wise in the ways of the world and able to predict the future. So when Mama Ya-Ya’s visions show a powerful hurricane–Katrina–fast approaching, it’s up to Lanesha to call upon the hope and strength Mama Ya-Ya has given her to help them both survive the storm. Ninth Ward is a deeply emotional story about transformation and a celebration of resilience, friendship, and family–as only love can define it. This one is great for middle grade readers.

Paul Volponi’s HURRICANE SONG tells the story of Katrina for older teens, leaving out no harrowing detail of the storm and the struggles of those who sought shelter in the SuperDome in the days that followed. It’s action-packed, and many scenes in this one are tough to take, but it paints a realistic picture and will be a draw for older reluctant readers.

And finally…since this October storm will bring snow for some…

Michael Northrop’s TRAPPED is another great storm read for ages 12 and up. This one features a blizzard. The day it started, no one knew that it was going to keep snowing for a week. That for those in the storm’s path, it would become not just a matter of keeping warm, but of staying alive. . . . Scotty and his friends Pete and Jason are among the last seven kids at their high school waiting to get picked up that day, and they soon realize that no one is coming for them. Still, it doesn’t seem so bad to spend the night at school, especially when distractingly hot Krista and Julie are sleeping just down the hall. But then the power goes out, then the heat. The pipes freeze, and the roof shudders. As the days add up, the snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision. . .

Stay safe, everyone. Stay warm. And I hope you have plenty of batteries and books to see you through the storm!

Most of my school author visits this fall have involved airplanes and multiple days away from my family, so it was lovely to visit a school closer to home today. When I pulled into the parking lot at AuSable Valley Elementary School, I saw this trailer…

…and thought, “Oh, dear.”  I’ve been told that I give a pretty entertaining presentation, but there’s no way I can compete with miniature donkeys. But it turns out the donkeys were here for their own event, a special presentation arranged for one of the third grade classrooms that had been reading about therapy dogs. These are therapy donkeys, and I got to visit them to say hello.

After the donkeys went home, the third graders headed to the gym for our author visit. Both groups I worked with today — the K-2 students and the 3rd-6th grade crew — were just fantastic. I can always tell when kids are enthusiastic readers and writers because of the great questions they ask.  After my first presentation to the younger group, one of the boys came running back to the gym a few minutes later. “This is for you,” he said.

I asked him to tell me about his picture. “That’s you,” he said, pointing. “You’re the pink one, and you’re walking in the woods. And those are animal tracks.”  They were from a desert animal, he told me, maybe a frog or a prairie dog. This is one of the reasons I love school visits so much!

Thanks, Kobe, for your illustration, and thanks to everyone at AuSable Valley Elementary for a magical, story-filled morning!

My second day of Missouri school visits this week brought me to the fantastic readers of Henry Elementary School, who had  warm welcome waiting outside the library!

My first two hours of the day were dedicated to a marathon book signing that claimed the life of a brand new Sharpie.

This book especially made me smile…

I love when a student drops off a book to be signed & there’s already a bookmark in the middle!

After the book signing, I gave presentations to the K-1st, 2nd-3rd, and 4th-5th grade groups. They were all amazing listeners, readers, and writers – and near the end of the afternoon, as the kids were leaving the library, I heard one of the best things an author can possible hear after a talk. A girl turned to her teacher and said, “Can we go write now?!” It made my whole day.  And so did these smiling faces…

Thanks, staff and students of Henry Elementary School – I loved spending my Tuesday with you!

I’m in Missouri this week for two days of author visits. Today, I spent the day at Bellerive Elementary School just outside St. Louis, talking books, reading, and writing with some amazing readers and writers.  And boy, does this school ever know how to make an author feel welcome. Check out the artwork that greeted me everywhere I turned.

It’s so much fun to see my characters brought to life in kids’ artwork!

Cassie even created Gianna’s leaf-mobile from THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z.

School librarian Melissa Biehl organized this whole extravaganza – what an amazing woman!

She also introduced me to Jerome.

He’s the official bearded dragon of the Bellerive Elementary Library. I even got to hold him for a bit while the students cleaned out his cage.

Jerome was very friendly, if a little prickly.

After school, I got to spend time with district teachers, giving a “Real Revision” workshop. They were great sports – and enthusiastic writers even after a long day of teaching!

Thanks so much to EVERYONE  at Bellerive Elementary School for a great visit! What an amazing group of readers and writers!