To my great good luck, Nancy Werlin, one of my author friends, chanced to meet the dad of the girl who was the model for Lanie in my books…and–isn’t this a kick?–she’s a lot like Lanie. Her dad shared some pictures, including ones where she’s doing her thing for bird sustenance. Awwwww. I love it. My efforts
To be fair, those two things aren’t really linked, except in my headline. The rain in Lawrence is making my yard smell…well…I guess I wrote it best in RAIN ROMP. The whole world smells like dark, wet dirt. So I’m thinking about dirt while I pack my bags for Dallas, where I’ll be signing at a
One of the problems with talking about research is that it starts with some things that are hard to measure, hard to teach. Curiosity. Determination. Maybe even obsession. It takes the same instincts that drive people to do detective work. (Okay, I really wanted to include this picture of my own little detective.) When I
Sometimes a writer wants to write about something–cares passionately about something–but has no vivid, compelling details about that something tucked away from memories or observation. Research to the rescue! When I said the word research to my university students, their minds zipped to The Research Paper. But research underpins a lot of genres, including fiction. As I
My parents took me traveling…Ethiopia, no less…when I was two years old. That’s where I fell in love with gardens, with the outdoors, with other things in the threads I wove into Lanie’s story. But one thing I don’t remember paying attention to in Ethiopia was birds. Maybe I was too active and wasn’t able to
As I learned and as I wrote, I dreamed of girls who would make the same bird-bug-garden discoveries as they read Lanie’s story–so this was extra sweet fan mail from a girl who describes herself as Lanie’s twin: OMG you have made a change to my life. I LOVE the Lanie books. I enjoy listening to birds
People have asked me at a few of my signings why I didn’t weave Ethiopia into my Lanie books. Lanie’s dreams of following animals across the savannah (something I did as a girl and as an adult in real life) are maybe the most obvious nod to my childhood in Ethiopia. It’s great that a teacher or
What good is reading? When a young man at a school visit once asked me those words, I spent some time mulling–and then talking about–what reading has brought into my life. 1) Knowledge and skills. My dad was able to harness the power of this waterfall and put in a mill to grind grain for
Denver has donkey carts, too :> One of them sits in this school and reminds kids to bring their pennies for Ethiopia Reads. I was proud to meet this leadership team, glad to meet kids making a difference…and also the ones who like to wear funny hats to school. Denver had smart kids, great questions
The story goes that a man, walking on a beach after a storm, comes upon a person who stoops, picks up a starfish, and flings it into the ocean. The man looks around. Starfish litter the sand all up and down the beach. “You’re nuts,” he says. “You could work all day and not make one tiny bit of
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