Adventures at Wilder Farm

New England Voices:
Three Area Authors Read from their New Books
Free & Open to the Public

Tuesday May 20, 2008 7:30 p.m.

Join us for an evening of readings from Barbara O’Connor, Susan Goodman and Lita Judge

Barbara O’Connor will read from her latest middle-grade novel Greetings from Nowhere. Barbara has written 14 novels and biographies for children and her books have won the Massachusetts Book Award and the Parents’ Choice Award.

“O’Connor’s knack for well-developed characters and feisty protagonists is evident, as is her signature Southern charm.”-School Library Journal

Susan Goodman will read from See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes and the Race to the White House. Susan is the author of dozens of non-fiction books for kids.

Using witty anecdotes and clear explanations, Goodman takes readers from the birth of democracy to the Electoral College; from front-porch campaigning to hanging chads. Illustrated by Ellwood Smith.

Lita Judge will read from One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II, a 2008 ALA Notable Children’s Book, which she wrote and illustrated.

“Based on a true story of the author’s grandmother and mother, this touching bit of history humanizes war and demonstrates the difference a few people can make.”- Kirkus Reviews

Note: new location at Walsh Hall, Boston College (behind Vanderslice Hall)

This event includes book sales from the Children’s Book Shop and signing, as well as refreshments.

Free and Open to the Public. No registration necessary. Bring your friends and colleagues to introduce them to the FCB!

Where and When:
Walsh Hall, Boston College

Tuesday, May 20 7:30 p.m.

For more information:
The Foundation for Children’s Books

The Foundation for Children’s Books
P.O.Box 320284
21 Stratford Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02132-0003
617-469-7222

The Foundation for Children’s Books (FCB), a nonprofit, educational organization, was founded in 1983 to assist the professionals who most directly influence young readers: teachers, librarians, and parents. We achieve this through professional development programs, including a dynamic speaker series, innovative conferences and workshops, as well as through author visits and residencies in under-served schools.

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Last week I joined Lita at her events, in Michigan and then in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Today, Lita is on her own and headed down to Atlanta for the International Reading Association Conference. She has a full and deserving schedule of dinners and parties in the evenings. The award luncheon is on Thursday—One Thousand Tracings won the 2008 IRA Children’s Book Award for Primary Fiction. We also heard that one of the IRA special interest groups on “Engaging Literacy Learners with a Global View” is announcing a list of Notable Books for a Global Society and One Thousand Tracings is on that list.

Lita will be doing two autographing events: at the Anderson’s Bookstore Booth (#2452) on Wednesday from 2-3 pm, and at the Hyperion Booth (#1958) from 10-11 am on Thursday. Please stop over and see her if you’re at the conference.

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The 2008 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards, given by the Jane Addams Peace Association, were just announced last Friday from the Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois-Chicago. I am very, very proud that One Thousand Tracings received an honor! I’m looking forward to the awards ceremony at the United Nations Plaza in New York this October. I really feel like I’m accepting this particular award on behalf of my grandparents. One Thousand Tracings is their story—their efforts to help people who were suffering after the war and to bring healing to all people. I continue to feel very fortunate that I was able to write their story.

During last year’s awards presentation Susan Griffith read a quote from Jane Addams: “We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.” I love this quote!

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I’ve just sent a pile of Pennies for Elephants artwork to my editor and art director. This is my next book with Hyperion—hopefully a spring/summer 2009 release. The story is based on the true event of Boston area children earning money to buy the first elephants for the zoo in 1914. Here are a few images:

I’ve added these images to the main illustration page on my website and added a few other new images as well.

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Lita is over in Nashua this weekend at the New England SCBWI conference. Apparently she lent her laptop to Kevin Hawkes for the afternoon keynote. I was out yesterday, but when I got home there was a whispered message about the projector not working, and 600 people in the audience, and I could hear Kevin delivering his talk in the background, and Lita said something about being under a table with a bunch of wires and a couple of confused tech guys. These conferences sound fun, maybe I should start going.

I’m proud to say that Lita got the laptop and projector working with about 5 seconds to spare — after the tech guys gave up. If they had listened to Lita in the first place there never would have been a problem…

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One Thousand Tracings was selected as a 2008 Notable Children’s book in the Language Arts! This list of thirty books was selected by a committee of the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE. We saw the announcement and the full list of titles at Educating Alice.

Don’t you think the Children’s Literature Assembly has a great logo (Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes)?

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Lita is in snowy New Hampshire but I’m back in California where the poppies are in full bloom. And with the coming of spring, our good friend, Howard Mansfield, has a new book out next month—Hogwood Steps Out: A Good, Good Pig Story. Check out the good, good review today at Just One More Book.

Lita and I love pigs. Last year at the IRA conference in Toronto, we made a special trip to visit a pig farm just north of the city. This wasn’t just a pig farm—these pigs had been rescued from precarious situations (I’m sure you can imagine what I mean) and are now living in luxury accommodations on the side of a large pond with nice clean mud and shade trees. Look how happy they are…

Good luck to Hogwood!

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A teacher at New Palestine Elementary sent these pictures and story to Becky Gaines, the publisher of the New Palestine Press. Thanks to Becky for sending this to me. And congratulations to the students at New Palestine Elementary for working on a great service project!

“One Thousand Tracings,” by Lita Judge, gave a glimpse of time in the 1940’s and of the need for people in the war stricken countries for shoes.

(…) This year’’s event included a special service project. New Palestine Elementary students donated good used shoes to aid Indianapolis children in need. Two books the children read helped give an understanding of other’s’ needs. “Those Shoes”, written by Maribeth Boelts, gave a warm understanding of how important a good pair of shoes can be. It can bring pride and dignity to many children. The second book, “One Thousand Tracings”, by Lita Judge, gave a glimpse of time in the 1940’s and of a need for people in the war stricken countries for shoes. They would trace their feet and send them to a family that would search to find their size and send them back to them. The students each traced both of their feet, making over 1,000 Tracings.

The feet tracings are hanging up at New Palestine Elementary to represent their wonderful service project. They had a special opportunity for school spirit, good exercise and, most of all learned how to give to others with their community service.”

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Lita visited the 1st and 2nd graders at Pompositticut School in Stow, MA yesterday. A lot of the presentation was about dinosaurs so we wanted to post a link to Lita’s dinosaur coloring pages.

They’re also available here.

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Andrea and Mark at Just One More Book (JOMB) did a wonderful podcast review of One Thousand Tracings in January at the JOMB coffee shop. I also read this Q&A interview about JOMB and I find their story and partnership quite interesting.

Lita did an interview with Mark in early February—they discussed books and blogs and the topic of partnership. The interview was just posted on JOMB yesterday—you can listen to it here.

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