Book Expo…an overnight grand dash into grand New York City to sign sign sign for Lanie fans. I sat down at a table in the American Girl booth at 10:30 and barely had time to look up–beyond people’s faces–for a couple of hours until all the Lanie books were gone. Then I signed a few bookmarks for
The life of a freelancer and writer weaves itself into interesting patterns and tangles and knots. How did I come to write for American Girl? That true story probably started when I was invited back to Ethiopia to speak in schools, and the schools offered me a trip anywhere. I asked to go north because I was
Actually, a novel takes hundreds of ideas. Every scene has to be built around an idea. Every scene has to include the right details to coax the reader to feeeeel something or think about something in interesting ways. I think most authors reach first into their own memory banks as they shape scenes. If Lanie was
Wowee. Recently, my siblings and I (and our families) raised and donated half of the money necessary to plant a library in the neighborhood of Addis Ababa where we spent so many fascinating childhood days. An adoptive family donated the other half in honor of their son’s birth mother. Today, we got to see pictures
One school where reading isn’t treated like a chore is Bank Street School in NYC. Margaret Wise Brown, the author of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon and other books I read to my kids (and now read to my grandkids) became a children’s book writer at Bank Street School. Little Golden Books (remember The Poky
Sometimes when I visit a school these days, I worry we’re communicating that reading is a chore that people do because they must. It makes me think about what reading does–how it tickles our emotions and plants visions. Good readers imagine themselves into the skin of other human beings, which leads to compassion and empathy. Thousands of
Once I was a two-year-old on a ship sailing out of a harbor in NYC, and the Statue of Liberty meant nothing to me. This spring, I gazed at the Statue of Liberty across from where I was staying in a lovely little apartment (in a building that used to be an old school house)
Luckily for me, I saw trees everywhere I went in this wild past few weeks that started with a young author conference in Kirksville, Missouri. The thrilldom of these conferences is introducing rooms full of young readers to Ethiopia and to Lanie’s story. After the banquet that night, I had to drive through the night
Earth Day! Earth Day! We could also just go ahead and call it Mothers Day II because when you think of it, where would we be…where would our mothers be…without good old Ma Nature? When the American Girl team invited me to Madison to talk with them about their early ideas for the doll of
I’m at one of NYC’s bustling airports so full of the joy of this fascinating city. I’m looking behind me…thinking about the talented young man who designed the visuals for the NYC store (and I loved standing there listening to the bird calls), thinking about Lisa and Paul’s cozy and warm apartment in Brooklyn, thinking
1997–2025 Jane Kurtz. © All rights reserved. Privacy policy.
Website services by Winding Oak, LLC.
Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission on some books in this website if you click through and make a purchase..