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Thank you, Flying Pig Books!

I am officially spoiled. 

Saturday’s presentation & signing at Flying Pig Books in Shelburne, Vermont was absolutely fantastic –  thanks to book-loving store owners Elizabeth & Josie and a whole loft full of enthusiastic kids, parents & grandparents.  Thanks to my husband and kids, too, who came along to help me carry props, set up extra chairs, and serve hardtack!

Flying Pig holds its author events in a big, beautiful room they call The Loft.  It’s a lovely, lovely place for book-talk, with a cathedral ceiling and tons of natural light. 

The kids liked hearing about the “experimental archaeology” parts of my research on 18th century life.  Early blog readers will remember the saga of the powder horns on my roof…

I spotted a few familiar faces in the audience.

Author Tanya Lee Stone brought her kids and another kid she borrowed from a neighbor, I think. 

My daughter and I have already planned a return visit to the Flying Pig Loft for June 7th, when Tanya will be there to give a presentation on her new book Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote, which comes out later this month.  I’m impatient for this one!

I’m also looking forward to Tanya’s nonfiction workshop at the New England SCBWI Conference later this week.  She’s giving a two-part session with Charlesbridge editor Yolanda LeRoy.  Talk about a terrific team!

Here’s the downstairs-bookstore part of Flying Pig.  This store has a HUGE focus on kids’ books.  It took me almost an hour to drag E out of this section.

But here’s the very best thing about Flying Pig Books…


            Left to right:  Josie Leavitt, me, Elizabeth Bluemle

Owners Josie Leavitt and Elizabeth Bluemle love books & authors, and like so many folks who run indies, they know their stuff.  They pointed both of my kids to perfect books right away.  E went home with Clementine’s Letter, the new Clementine book from Sara Pennypacker and illustrator Marla Frazee and a signed copy of My Father the  Dog, an outlandishly funny picture book written by the Flying Pig’s own Elizabeth Bluemle and illustrated by Randy Cecil.  J picked up James Paterson’s new Maximum Ride book, The Final Warning.

Thanks, so much, Elizabeth, Josie, and Shelburne readers for a fantastic morning in the loft!

Come Flying!

I’ll be giving my Revolution presentation and signing books at the Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, VT tomorrow. If you live in the area, I’d love it if you’d stop by to say hello!

Thank you, Ogdensburg and NCCIRA!

Yesterday was one of those school visit days that writers dream about when their first book is released.  I spent the day at Madill and Kennedy Elementary Schools in Ogdensburg, NY and spoke to about 400 4th, 5th, and 6th graders — all of whom had read at least part of Spitfire. 

My morning drive started at 5am so I could get to Madill Elementary for an 8:15 presentation.  Madill students share their artwork in displays all over the cafeteria, where I was waiting for my presentation to begin.  I loved seeing all their creations, but this project has to be one of my favorites of all time…

A young lady named Madison introduced me to kids who had fantastic questions about researching historical novels, Spitfire, and the  American Revolution.  They especially liked sampling the hardtack and watching a classmate try to disguise herself in 18th century boys’ clothing like my character, Abigail, did.

Then it was off to Kennedy Elementary, where I was introduced by Nathaniel, who has read more books than anybody else at Kennedy this year.  Seriously, Nathaniel was one of the students who joined me for lunch in the library — I couldn’t find anything he hasn’t read.  The Kennedy kids were fantastic, too. Doesn’t this look like an enthusiastic bunch?

Special thanks to librarians Karen Wright and Mark Uebler, who took care of me and got me from place to place on time.  Mark even greeted me with a special welcome on the library door.

After school, it was off to SUNY Potsdam, where I was the speaker for the North Country Council of the International Reading Association’s spring dinner.  I talked about historical fiction with some of the most enthusiastic, committed teacher-readers I’ve ever met.  And… they had this gooey, amazing chocolate cake for dessert.  Fantastic company, book talk, and chocolate cake.  Really, what more could an author want?

Thanks so much, reading association folks, especially Cindy Wells, for organizing my visit.  Congratulations to  Cindy, too – she’s the incoming president of the NYS Reading Association. Wow! 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ogdensburg kids and teachers, for a fantastic day! 

Yay, Loree!

The kids at my school are still talking about plastic tub toys, floating sneakers, the garbage patch, and reducing their use of plastics, thanks to a phenomenal author visit with Loree Griffin Burns this week. 

Loree held the kids spellbound with her fascinating, high energy presentation on Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion.  They’re hungry for more high-interest nonfiction now and are waiting (impatiently) for Loree’s next book on honeybees.  Thanks,

[info]lgburns

, for a great, great day with our students!

And a related note that writers, especially, will appreciate…  Loree and I went out to dinner Sunday night to talk writing for a couple hours.  We ended up at a Japanese steakhouse where they have hibachi tables.  Our waitress came over at the end of the meal and remarked that they’d never, in the history of the restaurant, seen two people just keep gabbing away like we did while the guy at the grill was tossing knives and spatulas in the air.  In our defense, we did pause to say “Oooh…Ahh….” when he made the flaming volcano out of the onion…

Sap’s Running!

It’s Maple Weekend in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.  For the folks who run maple farms, this time of year means long, long days (and nights) at work.  For the rest of us, it means gorging on pancakes and maple candy and getting a chance to see the whole process up close.

If you’ve never been to visit a maple farm, you might not realize that when trees are tapped, the stuff that comes out isn’t thick and sweet — it’s more like ice water than syrup.

It has to be boiled down to make the sticky syrup we love on our pancakes.  Stepping into the sugar shack, where they do that boiling, is like being covered in a big maple blanket on a March morning.

Here at the Parker Family Maple Farm in West Chazy, workers will put up about 6,000 gallons of syrup before the season ends.   Spring is always slow to arrive in Northern New York, but this is one of the sure signs that it’s finally on the way.

Poetry Friday – Farewell Winter Edition…



Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

   -from “Reluctance” by Robert Frost

Frost wrote this poem with autumn in mind, but for me, his words are just as relevant in late March.

When it comes to the end of winter, I am in a happy, catch-a-snowflake-on-your-tongue minority.  I am a hanger-on. 

This is a good thing where I live, way up north on Lake Champlain, because winter does some serious hanging-on in these parts, too.  Lots of  people have started complaining about that.  But I still find myself hoping for one more fluffy snowstorm, even as the calendar stares down April.

On Monday, E and I drove into the Adirondacks in search of enough snow for one last cross country ski outing.  We found it at the Paul Smiths Visitors Interpretive Center – a site with miles and miles of beautiful trails.  This one was our favorite –

A bridge stretches all the way across the marsh, and then the trail loops around the other side.  We spotted snowshoe hare, deer, fox, red squirrel, and fisher tracks along the way.

Soon, the tulips will bloom and the ice will clear out of the lake enough for kayaking, and I’ll be excited about that.  But this week, it was a gift to have one more winter day in the woods.

Spring in the Adirondacks…

…looks strikingly similar to winter in the Adirondacks, don’t you think?   But I swear I took this photograph today.  We spent our holiday on the slopes at Whiteface Mountain, under Easter-egg blue skies.

And here’s our version of the traditional Easter egg hunt.

Ready… Set…

GO!!!

I hope your weekend was fantastic, too, whether your eggs were hidden in a patch of daffodils or in a snowbank like ours.


best tracker


Thankful Thursday

A busy Thursday, too!  Tonight, I’m thankful for:

  • Members of the drama club at Colchester High School who were my technology saviors during my school visit today. These kids know their stuff, and I bet they’re amazing on stage, too. Tonight’s their opening night for The Actor’s Nightmare and Lovers.  Break a leg, and thanks for your help!
  • Colchester 8th graders on the Odyssey and Quest teams — a fantastic, interested audience this morning.  My visit was part of their studies leading up to a big class trip — one team to Cape Cod and one to Boston.  My 13-year-old self is officially jealous.  My biggest class trip in school was to the local apple orchard.
  • Another group of high energy, enthusiastic kids here…

…at Brandon’s Neshobe Elementary School.  I spent an hour and a half with kids in the after-school program. That’s a long time for anyone to listen at the end of the day, but these kids were terrific and had great questions.

At the end of the day, I was thankful for a weather map that looked like this…

…and made the clouds look like this. 

Snowstorms over the Adirondacks and Green Mountains left me driving through a little corridor of sunshine along the shores of Lake Champlain.  It was absolutely stunning.  I started the day worried about slippery roads, so this peaceful drive home was the perfect way to end it.

A visit with Linda Urban

My middle school students had a fabulous day with guest author Linda Urban (

[info]lurban

), talking about A Crooked Kind of Perfect, writing, setting goals, and having the courage to follow dreams.  If you ever — ever — have an opportunity to host Linda at your school, sign on the dotted line without delay.  She’s an amazing presenter who left kids laughing as well as feeling inspired and appreciated.  I took lots of photos, but I think this one might be my favorite –

Linda  spent our after school  period signing books in the school library, answering questions from kids, and listening — really, really listening — to their ideas about her book and their own goals and dreams.  Thanks, Linda, for a fantastic day!

 Tomorrow, I’ll be on the other side of the author visit, sharing Spitfire and presenting my Revolution program to middle school kids in Colchester and students in the after-school program in Brandon, Vermont.  I’ll post on our 18th century adventures later this week!

Studying Spitfire

Julia Miller, a teacher in Peru, NY, has put together a phenomenal web page to go along with her unit on my historical novel Spitfire.  And — better yet — she gave me permission to share it so other teachers can use the resources she’s pulled together. Click here to check it out!

Most teachers who have written to tell me they’re using Spitfire in the classroom are working with students in Grades 4-8, but Miss Miller’s students are in high school. They’re taking a class that I wish had been around when I was in school — Local History and Literature — and I promised a special shout-out to them on my blog. So…

Hi there, Peru High School students!  Miss Miller tells me that you have a list of questions to ask about Spitfire, the history surrounding it, and how I researched and wrote it.  Ask away!  To post a question, click on “Leave a Comment” and type your question in the comments box. You can sign it with your initials if you’d like, but please don’t include your full name for Internet safety reasons.  Give me a day or two to reply to your questions, and then check back here for my responses.  I’ll look forward to hearing from you!