Definitely the week's highlight was attending Jennifer L. Holm's talk and signing at BookPeople on Wednesday here in Austin. She spoke to fourth and fifth graders from Mathews Elementary.
Jennifer was pixie cute and brilliant, sharing the stories behind Our Only May Amelia (HarperCollins, 1999), the Babymouse series, illustrated by Matthew Holm (Random House, 2005-)(illustrator interview); and her latest release, Penny From Heaven (Random House, 2006). Of late, Jennifer reads a lot of graphic novels, describes herself as an "obsessive reviser," and recommends ice cream as a creative force!
Afterward, Greg and I lunched at Green Pastures with an entertaining group of ladies, including not only Jenni--who brought us yellow roses--but also the lovely Camille Powell of Book Moot, who absolutely sparkles. What a force for good in the library world! It was quite a day!
Beyond that, because I'm the most compulsive person alive, I rewrote one of my keynotes. Now, it's just a matter of practicing.
Media is starting to come in for Santa Knows (Dutton, 2006). The review in Publishers Weekly was quite upbeat, Greg and I are featured in an interview at Authorlink, and my publicist just wrote to ask if we'd be willing to do a TV spot in College Station.
What else? After some reflection I finally have an answer to Varsha Bajaj's question at SCBWI-Houston as to what multicultural book I wish I'd written, and the answer is: Every Time a Rainbow Dies by Rita Williams-Garcia (HarperCollins, 2001). Read a recent Cynsations interview with Rita.
