Parenthetical

Ladies and gentlemen, I just listened to two of the most hilarious interviews with children’s authors ever in the world. Please, if you know what’s good for you, watch: Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report and then listen to: Jack Gantos on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.

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Oh! I can’t believe I haven’t announced this here! John Green (author of An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns) has a new book coming out: The Fault in Our Stars. Such a big, anticipated release needs a tour, of course. Tours, as we all know, need venues. (You see where I’m [...]

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Thanks to our ever-beloved local independent bookstore Wellesley Books, we hosted Laini Taylor last week on her book tour. (Laini, you will remember, is the author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, about which I kvelled with an uncharacteristic lack of criticism in June.) She signed books (and, patiently, bookmarks), chatted to a group of [...]

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Roger Sutton asks, what authors are famous for the wrong book? The Long Winter is better (he says) than the earlier Little House books; Lois Lowry’s Autumn Street (which I haven’t read) is better than The Giver. I don’t actually have examples of my own yet; I’m pondering. But I love the question! Thoughts?

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We were delighted to host the charming Shannon Hale a couple of weeks ago! She signed great heaping piles of books while chatting with our kids, gave a fabulous presentation to a room full of rapt middle schoolers, and even handled their slight rowdiness (born only of enthusiasm, I assure you) like a teaching pro. [...]

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Some personal stuff intervened last week*, but I still have many, many thoughts about the Simmons conference to post. The theme was “Crimes & Misdemeanors,” and most of the authors stuck remarkably well to it. A few smart thoughts from smart people, lifted from my notes: Many people argued that crimes (for a sufficiently loose [...]

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What I didn’t want to announce when I read the first Bartimaeus (because it was still in the works) was that I read it in preparation for a school visit from its author! He was here yesterday, signing loads of books and talking to my middle schoolers about the writing process. He read to us [...]

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