Six Pictures Are Worth At Least Six Thousand Words

The pictures come later. I'll start with the words.

There've been a couple of additions over on the right side of the page. Those of you with keen eyes and nothing better to do may have noticed (okay, none of you have noticed) that a new state has been added to the list of states where Life As We Knew It has been nominated for young reader awards. New Jersey put it on their list of nominees. This is very exciting for me, since my brother and sister-in-law live in New Jersey, and I asked them to devote all their spare time to campaigning for my book. Lucky for them, they have no spare time.

This brings a kind of total of 20 states to the list, only I dropped Rhode Island when LAWKI didn't win there, and the Pacific Northwest award includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. I gleefully e-mailed my editor to say LAWKI had therefore been nominated in 25 states, and she responded by saying that was almost half of the U.S.

Editors are naturally gifted in keeping writers in their place.

However, if I ever doubted Harcourt's love for me (which I'm prone to doing whenever I'm waiting for money from them), I have actual evidence of their feelings. Note, if you will, that I've added another engagement to dates I'm looking forward to. I'll be at NCTE in November. I was there in Nov. '07, as the guest of Harcourt, and did some autographing. It was held in NYC then. But in 2008, it'll be in San Antonio, Texas. And I'm going to be on a panel, so NCTE loves me too. Okay, I'm one of four people on the panel, so NCTE doesn't love me to excess. But I'll take all the affection I can get.

Speaking of dates, Tuesday night from 7-8:30, I'm going to be giving a talk at Middletown Thrall Library (Middletown, NY), and I hope all of you who live within a 500 mile radius will be there. I'll read the Yankee Stadium scene from the dead and the gone, and there will be cookies. Even more exciting, there will be Marci, who, sweetheart that she is, promised to come. It's my hometown library and even my robust healthy ego will be bruised if she's the only one in attendance.

My robust ego is delighted to report that Publishers Weekly just gave a starred review to d&g. I added the new wrenching comment in the appropriate section to the right.

Back to numbers. I was going to announce that LAWKI had gotten its 50th review on Amazon, because it did, but before I had the chance, it got its 51st and 52nd. Number 52 was a 5 star review, and therefore my favorite.

The Summer Blog Blast Tour starts on Monday, and I'm delighted to report that I'm one of the more than thirty authors interviewed by the various bloggers. What a great thing this is. Here's a link to the list of all the writers who are participating (and where their interviews can be found):

http://thejoyofchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2008/05/get-ready-for-summer-blog-blast-tour.html

I actually got interviewed twice for the Summer Blog Blast, because I'm such a little chatterbox. Okay, not so little.

In addition, I got interviewed by The World in the Satin Bag. And I got interviewed by Liv's Book Reviews. For those who might be interested, I'm linking to the interviews on the right side of the blog.

Ooh ooh, now onto the pictures. I figured out how to get my lovely new digital photographs to load smack onto my blog. I took pictures of my den, where I work and blog and waste vast amounts of time, and here they are:

The pictures below are of the chair where I read and the chair where I don't read because the light isn't as good. The pictures make the room look bigger than it is, because there are only four bookshelves across, but one of them shows up twice. Also, even though the den looks very cluttered, the rest of the apartment isn't. Really.

See the bookshelf by the window? That's where I keep all the books I've written. On the bottom two shelves are books written by people I know, but the top five are filled with my books, in their various editions, plus textbooks and the suchlike that have used selections of my writing. On the floor in the picture on the left is the Junior Library Guild Premiere Selection Award for LAWKI, and my honorary degree from Mount St. Mary College. On the floor in the picture to the right is my Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award for Kid Power. I keep lots of good stuff on the floor because when I moved into the apartment almost four years ago, I was retired and decided to use what minimal wallspace I had for my movie memorabilia, rather than displaying career awards and honors. In spite of being sort of temporarily unretired, I haven't redecorated.

Also, on the bookshelf on the left is an Albert Einstein doll. I have a Sigmund Freud doll as well, but it had fallen onto the floor, which is why you can't see it. I've picked it up since then.

Here's another picture of the shelf with all my books. The plaque with a panhandle is the Sequoyah Children's Book Award from the state of Oklahoma. I won it for Kid Power also.

On the top shelf to the left of all my books are various Rocky and Bullwinkle stuffed dolls. The redhead is Sherman. And that fabulous picture of a total eclipse of the sun was taken on Jan. 24, 1925. I got it in a junk shop for a dollar.

The picture below is of my computer desk area closet thing. Very fancy, and it cost a lot of money. It seems to be kind of cluttered also, but it's really very practical. Most of the yellow post-its to the left list my passwords, which I'm prone not only to forgetting but to writing down in code which I also forget. Other than that, it's a great system.

That midsized piece of white paper to the left of the computer monitor is a list of events that happened in the late semi-lamented version of the third book. I really could take it down. Oh, and see those top two post-its? They're not interesting, but the one below them to the right lists the results of the ghost poll I had on my blog a little while ago.

There's actually a lot of interesting stuff on the right side door as well, but I could only photograph so much. And I bought a new printer since this photo was taken, but it didn't seem worth taking another picture just to show you.

On the windowsill to the left of the monitor are two Aflac ducks, which my friend Janet Carlson, to whom d&g is dedicated, gave me. The blue thing in between them is a two footed calculator, on which I multiply imaginary numbers of books sold by the percentage I'd earn in royalties.

When I first decided to keep a blog, my sister-in-law said I should write about my cats. I haven't all that much, but here are their pictures. Emily, the calico, loves having her picture taken, but isn't particularly photogenic. Alexander, the orange tabby, doesn't understand why I'm taking his picture when I could be scratching his ears, but he has a model's classic looks. He sheds a lot more hair than a model, most of it on the chairs in my den.

And with that, Emily, Alexander and I say farewell until the next time I can find either some other pictures or a few thousand more words!