Tag Archive for Lisa Dolan

Seven Photos from the 11th Annual Hudson Children’s Book Festival

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!

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. 

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

QUICK EXCERPT: Two Pages from “THE FALL”

Purportedly a photo of the last Great Auk, on the Icelandic island of Eldey. It was strangled on July 3, 1844, because it's what we do.

Purportedly a photo of the last Great Auk, on the Icelandic island of Eldey. It was strangled on July 3, 1844, because it’s what we do.

My newest book, The Fall, consists of many brief sections, often just a page or two in length.

I never know which sections to read aloud on school visits, or to share here. Nothing feels exactly emblematic, since it’s all about the cumulation of detail, images, perceptions, facts.

This part was inspired by Elizabeth Kolbert’s brilliant book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. I’ve been telling everyone to read it since the book came out, and I’m glad to see that it recently won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

In my imagination, I thought that maybe a science teacher had read the book and passed along the story of the auks to my book’s narrator. To get that teacher’s name, I thought of my pal, Lisa Dolan, who has dedicated her career to pressing good books into the hands of young readers.

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