Category: Uncategorized

A sweet & snowy afternoon in Lake Placid

Lake Placid was all lit up for the Holiday Stroll this weekend.

But the window of The Bookstore Plus was my favorite!

Inside, the store was crowded with holiday shoppers. (I am up there at my table somewhere!)

Having a book launch event at a great indie is like showing up at a friend’s house for a party.  Owners Marc & Sarah greeted us with hugs, hot cider, brownies baked by their adorable daughter Norah, and a big stack of pre-ordered books waiting to be signed.

That’s me with Bookstore Plus co-owner Marc Galvin.

If you ordered a book to be signed, it’s in this pile…and will soon be in the mail…and thank you! It was so much fun to sign books for far-away friends and made it feel like you were there, too. 

I have one more SUGAR AND ICE book signing in 2010…at the Skating Club of the Adirondacks Holiday Extravaganza Saturday, December 18th at the Plattsburgh State Field House.  The figure skating show starts at 4:30, with refreshments & public skating with free skate rentals to follow, and I’ll be signing books as a fund raiser for the skating club before and after the show.

Lake Champlain Ice Fog, Signing Books, and Signing Skates

The temperature here dropped below ten degrees Thursday night, so I woke up Friday to the first real ice fog of the year over Lake Champlain. I stood and watched the sky change for so long, I was almost late for school. But I think I could have used these photos as my excuse…


Doesn’t this look all the world like a tornado or waterspout?  I can’t offer a scientific explanation, but it sure looked cool

School (yes, I did manage to make it on time) brought a day of Colonial America research & diary writing with my 7th graders and a lunch hour Skype chat with Alison Follos’ 6th graders at North Country School in Lake Placid.  They’d read the first chapter of SUGAR AND ICE and were excited to ask questions.

After dinner, it was off to visit the kids at the North Country Skating Club in Rouses Point, where I signed lots of books, and autographed my first skate!


Here I am with Miranda.  I told her she needs to read Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOU REACH ME, partly because the main character shares her name but mostly because it is amazing.

This afternoon, it’s off to Lake Placid for the official SUGAR AND ICE book launch at The Bookstore Plus from 3-5.  It’s part of the village’s Holiday Stroll, so Main Street will be all decked out for the holidays.  Can’t wait!

How to Make an Author Cry

No, the answer has nothing to do with the fact that we can now access our BookScan sales numbers.

It’s this photo that Sarah, the owner of The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid, sent of their store window.

From the sap buckets to the figure skates, she captured the spirit of SUGAR AND ICE so perfectly!

Our launch event for SUGAR AND ICE is Saturday from 3-5 this Saturday, and I’m so, so excited!  If you live near Lake Placid, I hope you’ll stop by and say hi.  And if you don’t but would like a personalized, signed copy, just call The Bookstore Plus to order one – (518) 523-2950 – and they’ll send it out right after our signing.

Rube Goldberg Engineering Awesomeness

The boy is taking an absolutely terrific engineering class at his high school this year, so there’s been a lot of design & construction going on at our house lately.  Last week, it was mousetrap cars, and I came home one afternoon to find the boy at the kitchen table, sawing away at a piece of particle board with my bread knife.  "I couldn’t find the hack saw," he said.  (If you come for dinner any time soon, you’ll have to tear the bread apart with your hands, but we’ll be able to show you a mighty fast and accurate mousetrap car.)

Now, he’s working on a Rube Goldberg device for Science Olympiad, and we’ve been watching some examples of these online. I have to say, I think this one takes the cake. It’s too cool not to share.


Pretty amazing, no?  You can learn more about how it all came together here.

TAKING OFF by Jenny Moss

I remember sitting in my dad’s car one January afternoon in 1986, listening to the radio news of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and feeling like it was impossible, like it couldn’t really have happened. But it did.

And so I knew how the story of the shuttle launch would end before I opened this book ~

Somehow, I ended up gasping when it happened all the same.

TAKING OFF is about a girl named Annie, a high school senior growing up in a community of NASA engineers but worshipping words instead of numbers, colors instead of computations. She wants to be a poet but sees that dream and college as completely out of reach until serendipity drops her at a dinner party in the seat next to Christa McAuliffe. 

McAuliffe, the New Hampshire teacher chosen for NASA’s teacher-in-space program, exudes an energy that Annie can almost touch, so different from her own guarded outlook on life.  Inspired by McAuliffe’s charisma, drive, and infectious zest for life, Annie vows she’ll be there for the launch. She sets the wheels in motion for a road trip to Florida with her father and a handsome young friend of his, which doesn’t sit well with Annie’s long-time boyfriend, Mark.

What happens on that trip – in her father’s broken-down art-car, at Epcot, on the beach, and ultimately on a cold morning at Cape Canaveral, will change everything Annie thought she knew.

This book made me laugh and cry. It made me sigh with some of the most beautifully written passages, and it made me think about the connections that art and poetry share with math and science. As a writer married to a weather geek scientist, I particularly appreciated the bridges this book builds between the two.

But mostly, I was swept up in the emotion of this coming-of-age story.
 
I knew what was going to happen. I did.

But that didn’t stop me from crying.  It didn’t stop me from feeling everything Annie felt when the shuttle exploded.  I might as well have been there with her, watching a teacher’s dream of flying in space come true, then end in cloud of white smoke in a blue sky in a matter of minutes. It didn’t matter that I knew. Not one bit.

That, my friends, is great writing. 

TAKING OFF is due out from Walker/Bloombury in January 2011.

Waiting on Winter~ and a big Thank You!

First of all, thank you SO much for all the warm, wonderful SUGAR AND ICE wishes yesterday.  I woke up to a bouquet of blog posts and good wishes that kept coming all day, and I want you to know that it was downright sparkly to know people were celebrating with me, however busy the day was. Thank you!

It was a busy day on my whirlwind blog tour, too…I had a coffee break with writer-friend Debbi Michiko Florence here, shared the first page of SUGAR AND ICE with a great blog called First Page Panda, and was celebrated in grand culinary style with Jama Rattigan here.  Today, I’m talking about how my kids get involved in my writing at Great Kids Books.

I am also having winter-envy today.  Across the lake in Vermont, some places got more than two feet of snow yesterday.  Two feet! Here, the grass is still brownish-green and showing, and the lake remains stubbornly liquid.  Sigh. It’s December, and I am ready for some of this….

The good news? I’m headed to Lake Placid this weekend, where Sarah at the Bookstore Plus tells me they have at least 15 inches on the ground. Winter, here we come!

So what are you doing for your book release day?

My figure skating novel, SUGAR AND ICE, is officially out in the world this morning!  I’m visiting a couple more blogs today, talking about winter inspiration with Terry Lynn Johnson and chatting with Jill of the O.W.L. and her students.  You can read the first page of the book today on First Page Panda.

I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I’ll be signing books at The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid this Saturday from 3-5. And that you can get a personalized, signed copy even if you live far away – just call the awesome Bookstore Plus people at (518) 523-2950 by Friday to order.

But the real reason for this blog post is to answer this question that authors are almost always asked when a book’s due out in the world:

So what are you doing for your big release day?

Fits of laughter threaten to consume me when someone asks this question. I suspect they are imagining long leisurely lunches with publicists, limousines, caviar, unicorns, fireworks, and other kinds of revelry. I explain that reality is slightly different:

What I’m doing for release day:

6:00 Put meat & veggies in crock pot, pack lunch, check email.

6:40 Leave house to get son to jazz band on time.

7:00-8:00 Respond to students’ reading letters. Drink coffee. Try not to spill on reading letters. Spill on skirt instead.

8:00-8:11 Homeroom. Take attendance. Pass out school pictures. Attack coffee stain with Tide Stain Stick from desk drawer.

8:15-3:45 Help students find additional notes to add detail to Colonial America diaries, parent conference.Teach bibliography format. Show Easy-Bib website. Conference with student writers in computer lab.  During lunch, finish grading reading letters. Help find books for kids who finished theirs last night. Then use last eight minutes to eat soup, chugging second half straight from Tupperware as students arrive for silent reading period. Clean soup off shirt with Tide Stain Stick while taking attendance. Read & conference with student readers. Recommend books. Record progress.  Cheer. Try again with Stain Stick. Teach more 7th grade English students. Bibliography, conferences on student writing, etc. Answer email, call parents, prep for Friday school-wide book club mtg & Skype visit with Nora Baskin. Work with students who need after-school help.

3:45-4:30  Take daughter to piano lesson.

4:45-5:15  Pick up son from track practice. Go home. Thank Universe for crock pot.

5:15-9:00  Dinner with family, clean up, homework help, answer email, (and okay…Twitter, too)  listen to Jingle Bells played on piano, violin, and recorder, read aloud.

9:00-11:00 Write.

11:00-11:03  Bedtime…Try to stay awake for a few more pages of reading. 

Fail.

Remember in the haze between sleep and waking that readers have my new book today.  

Smile. 

Dream.

It’s Christmas Time in the City…of Montreal

I’m off again on my SUGAR AND ICE blog tour, where I’ll be visiting these great bloggers today:

Ice Mom, where I answer questions about the figure skating inspiration & research behind SUGAR AND ICE.

The Reading Zone, where we talk about writing, reading, revision, and snacks. (She is a woman after my own heart.)

Jo Knowles, where I share advice for reluctant writers (aren’t we all sometimes?)

Jennifer Bertman’s Creative Spaces, where you can learn about how and where I write (and see my writing room!)

Here on the book blog, I thought I’d share a taste of the holidays my family enjoyed on a quick day trip to Montreal’s Atwater Market this weekend. Just being around all these trees put me in the holiday spirit!

You have to love a city where people are hardy enough to shop for produce outdoors in December.

Yes, that’s snow on the apples!

The indoor part of the market was decked out in its holiday best, too.

Here’s one of our favorite shelves in the whole place…in a shop that sells about a million kinds of olive oil.

It’s topped only by the bakery that we saved for our last stop, followed by a car ride home in which my husband and I engaged in the great croissant debate.

Husband: Why would someone put chocolate in a croissant?

Me: Why would someone eat a croissant without chocolate when there’s a chocolate-filled one right next to it?

Feel free to share your thoughts on this important matter in the comments…

Hope you had a great weekend, too!

Walking by the Lake… You come, too

We have been busy Christmas wrapping and getting ready for holiday skating shows and a book launch this week and were so due for some fresh outdoor air yesterday. So with a nod to Robert Frost’s "The Pasture" …here is an invitation.

I’m going out to walk along the lake
I’ll only stop to skip a stone or three

And feel the gnarled wood of one lone tree.

I sha’n’t be gone long. You come, too.

I’m going out to touch the layered rocks,

To tread on leaves that mat the forest floor

And watch the silver sun set at the shore.

I sha’n’t be gone long. You come, too.

Five Bookish Things on a Friday

1. SUGAR AND ICE has made an appearance on a Best of 2010 list (other than my  mom’s…my books are always popular there!)

It’s on Fuse #8’s SLJ Blog list of 100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2010, along with so many other books I read and loved this year. You can check out the full list here.

2. I’m guest blogging today with Carol Rasco, the CEO of Reading Is Fundamental, an amazing organization that puts books into the hands of kids. The post is about literacy and student athletes, like my main character Claire in SUGAR AND ICE.  You can read it here.

3. I’m reading two books right now because they’re both so good I can’t commit to one, so I keep juggling back and forth. This one…

…is about a Texas teenager who meets Christa McAuliffe in the days leading up to the Challenger space shuttle disaster.  And isn’t that a gorgeous cover?  TAKING OFF is by my friend Jenny Moss, whose characters are so real my heart aches for them. Beautiful, beautiful writing – and due out from Walker in January ’11.

4. I’m also reading this book…

SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD by Lindsey Leavitt (Bloomsbury – March ’11).  I’m only a few pages in, but already, it’s fantastic. It’s funny and poignant and about a girl who discovers her true love sitting in front of her in science class the same week she learns her father has MS. I can already tell it’s going to make me laugh and cry in that way that only special books do. Lindsey is going to be Skyping with my creative writing class in a couple weeks, and I’m so excited to share this book with them!

5. This is our new bedtime read-aloud at at the Messner house.

My daughter and I are loving Jennifer Choldenko’s latest, NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT (Dial, February ’11).  It’s full of characters that we’re already in love with,  twists that have us perplexed and guessing, and magical realism that’s filling us with smiles and a sense of wonder.  It’s a keeper, for sure. 

What about you?  Any bookish updates this Friday, either on the writing front or the reading front?  Share away in comments!