Birthdays. Some places in this world don’t even mark them. Some people have no idea on which day they were born. In some places on this earth, life spins out on a thin thread and can so easily snap. In some places it’s crazy to make plans. In some places the stories that get told
Would YOU be able to resist this donkey? It was giving me donkey love as I got to talk with fourth and fifth graders at Abernethy School in Portland, Oregon on Friday. We discussed vivid details, the ways that words make us feel, and how I crafted Lanie’s feelings and experiences when I was writing
They lug books. In my next lifetime, I’m going to love something light…like butterfly wings. They buy books and sell books. Sometimes this happens in a greenhouse, such as at the Garden Party in Grand Forks last week. Sometimes it happens at Rotary booths. Sometimes it happens in huge, echoing convention halls. That will be the
South Central Kansas, land of wind sweeping over wheat fields, land of home baked bierrocks, land of generosity, was my husband’s earliest landscape. His mother told me that when she had her babies, she couldn’t bear to listen to the radio and all the grim news of war. She made rolls with surprising hollow middles
I went to a Garden Party… On the wind-swept prairies of North Dakota on May Day. I’d lived in Grand Forks–place of the twin forks–longer than in any other spot I’ve lived on this earth. My kids went to school there. I became an author there. I can’t go back without a whoosh of all
I’m in Grand Forks for happy times. A garden party at All Seasons on Sunday, May 1, to talk about how the planting of reading seeds helps the kids of Ethiopia grow hope and vision and dreams. A gathering of 400 Rotarians, where I get a chance to say, “Hey–thanks for a hand with the hoe!” At
How do books get into kids’ hands? When I’m introducing people to Ethiopia Reads (www.ethiopiareads.org) and the children’s libraries I’ve poured a bazillion volunteer hours into for the past ten years, the question always comes up… Books in English? After all, almost everyone listening to me and looking at my pictures knows it isn’t easy to learn how
Kansas is beautiful in the spring. I watched a squirrel run down one of these branches and grab a bud and munch it. Then I made my way to the airport and flew to California for one of the most beautiful, zingy weekends I’ve had in a year of zingy times. It started with a San
The area of Pittsburgh where my daughter lives while in graduate school fascinates me. At first when I heard “Mexican War streets,” it sounded scary. Later, I realized the streets are named for generals and battles and settings of the Mexican War of 1846-1848. (Henry David Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience in response to the Mexican
Wowee! Lanie came to the Kerlan award ceremony, thanks to this young reader. What a chance to have a big WOWEE moment with a whole bunch of great people–precious friends, children’s book writers and illustrators, librarians, teachers, Ethiopians, adoptive parents, even one of my roommates from boarding school in Addis Ababa. The Kerlan saves manuscripts
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