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If someone points a camera at me, I will reflexively point at something else.
Every time.
Don’t worry, it’s not loaded.
Here I am celebrating a “masked” outdoor children’s book festival in Chappaqua, NY. Despite the safety precautions — or more correctly, because of the safety precautions — it felt like a victory for community, for literacy, for normalcy.
Nice to spend the day surrounded by book people.
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Lisa took a photo of me playing cards. It’s become a regular thing in our home, the four of us frequently convene after dinner for highly competitive games of “Oh, Hell!”
I took Lisa’s original color photo and fooled around with simple iPhone edit features, then cropped it a couple of times, to come up with this angsty sequence. Mostly this post is because I wanted a way to see them together, like rolling film.
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This is our rescue dog, Echo. He’s about 15 months old, part Border Collie, and we’re crazy about him. Very smart and energetic and fast. I work at home in relative solitude. Together Echo and I usually go on two long walks in the woods, or near the river, and wherever there’s open space. He’s great off-leash and comes running whenever he’s called. Love him. Anyway, this is a recent (unsmiling) photo of me, a few days before my 59th birthday. Still feel alert and creative and strong. Not dead yet! Many more books to come — so long as there are readers. Thanks for stopping by.
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Thought I’d throw some photos up here, documenting my school visit to Montgomery C. Smith Elementary in Hudson, plus a shot from the pre-festival soiree, and the magnificent event itself. My thanks go to Lisa Dolan, Jennifer Clark and Bridget Smith for the kindness, the coolness, and the support. Besides, it’s not often you see me in a laundered shirt, so I had to over-share. Let’s do this, people!
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This is the banner that greeted me in the main hallway of the school. Literally a great sign that it would be a happy visit.
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Besides my presentation to the 3rd grade in the auditorium, I was given the opportunity to visit an eager classroom for a cozy Q & A. At the end, this boy, Logan, was eager for me to see his writing. To bear witness. To be seen. Isn’t that what we all want? These are the moments, folks.
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My basic go-to move in a photo is to point at something/anything. For some reason I went with the triumphant fist pump thing here: an abject failure. Though staring directly at the photographer, I seem unaware that a photograph might be transpiring. Oh, sigh. What a warm, beautiful, diverse group of students. Treated me like I was something special. Go figure.
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Two of my pals in the book business: Matt Phelan and Jennifer Sattler. So much talent. It’s one of the nice parts of these festivals, getting together with fellow authors. We don’t actually complain ALL of the time. True story!
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Signing The Courage Test. That title sold out early! All my “Scary Tales” disappeared quickly. Bystander, too. But more importantly: how do you like my shirt?
This shot is a little blurry — the day was a blur — but I remember this young man vividly. He drew this picture, based on a Jigsaw Jones book, sometime over the winter. He was eager to bring it to the Festival so he could give it to me. Proud of what he’d done. He knew it would make me happy.
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A festival is full of small, intimate encounters such as this. Brief conversations about books, reading, life, school, whatever. To my right is a boxed lunch which I never did get around to eating. Thank you, Hudson Children’s Book Festival!
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