Laurel Snyder

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tad Hills came to Mose and Lew’s school last month!  The boys are STILL talking about it.  ”We got our book SIGNED BY AN AUTHOR, MOM!”

I’m a huge fan of Rocket, and Duck & Goose, and Tad was hilarious and brilliant and awesome. I’m always so jealous when I get to peek into the brains of illustrators…

And I feel so grateful that I get to be the mom at a school where author visits happen.  Jerry Pinkney is coming soon!

No matter how many other authors I meet, and no matter how many books I write and publish, my admiration for other people’s art only grows.  Each book is a miracle, in its way. Each author is a new brain full of ideas I haven’t had yet.

I’m still the little girl, clutching her book, staring with big eyes at the “real live author.”

It never never never gets old.

I recorded the audio book of Bigger than a Bread Box, and it was a moving experience. I’d never read one of my own books straight through, much less out loud!

At the end of the book, I cried.  I’ll be curious to see if you can tell…

If you like audio books, or have a road trip coming, or you buy for a library or school, I’d be honored if you’d consider a copy. I’m proud of this.

You can also get it on Amazon, if that’s your thing!

Or you can grab it on itunes, if you’re an apple sort of person.

Penny Dreadful is now an AUDIO BOOK?

Okay, so… I owe this one to Lisa Brown, but it’s the coolest thing ever, so I’m blogging it anyway, because I’m not above stealing from a genius. Allow me to present:

THE CARD CATALOG JUNK DRAWER! (with some schmaltzy little boys on the side)

Every day my boys come into the house with handfulls of what can only be called CRAP.  Bits of plastic, bottle caps, flakes of mica, lego heads, broken sticks, gum wrappers.  They tell me these are “treasures.”  Then they leave them ALL OVER THE HOUSE.

Meanwhile, we are learning to read, slowly.

Meanwhile, we have an empty card catalog in the dining room.

So Lisa said I should turn it into a junk-drawer (they have one)!

Because it is generally best to listen to Lisa,  I did so.

Guess what? Not only do the boys spend endless amounts of time alphabetizing the CRAP (and re-alphabetizing.  Because, for instance, a Groucho Marx mask can be filed under M for moustache, or mask, but  also under N for nose)…

ALSO, I no longer have bits of CRAP everywhere.

AND, they’re working on their reading.

HA HA! Subversively educating those little monsters, that’s what I’m doing.

I suggest you go out right away and get yourself a card catalog. RIGHT THIS MINUTE!

I revised. And revised. And revised.

I don’t know if the book makes any sense at all any more, but I revised…

And then, on my last day of revising, my husband walked in the door and handed me a NEW COMPUTER.

!!!

My old one was 5 years old, and falling apart. Literally held together with tape and stickers, and the battery was dead, so I had to save every 2 minutes, lest the power cord fall out (which it did, often) and the computer immediately die.  But I refused to replace it until I finished the book.

And now I am typing on a computer that is fast and light and lickity-split!

AND I TURNED THE BOOK IN.

In might be awful. We shall see.