Laurel Snyder

Today is the day. It’s PUB DAY!

After three years of researching and writing and revising and tweaking and starting over, and beginning again, and tearing my hair out…

SEVEN STORIES UP IS A BOOK!

If you want to know more about how I wrote the book, and what inspired it, you can read here. (warning, it’s a bit sad)

If you’d like to read the first chapter of the book, and see a picture of my grandmother, you can do that here.

If you want to listen to a podcast in which I talk about how this book taught me (finally!) how to enjoy research, you can tune in here!

And if you want to see some old pictures that I used to keep my in the world of 1937, you can take a peek at my Pinterest page for the book!

I’d love to think that you might also go and purchase a copy of the book, or maybe request it from your local library!  You can add it to your Goodreads list or tell your kid’s teacher about it too!

People have said very very nice things about Seven Stories Up already, which makes this day much nicer.  It was selected as #4 on the Indienext List for winter!  And look:

“Time travel is the least of the magic in the sublime Seven Stories Up, which gently and lovingly demonstrates how the right friend at the right time can heal a heart and even change a life. Like Judy Blume before her, Laurel Snyder writes characters that feel like your best friend. I wish I’d had this book when I was a kid; I would have read it a hundred times and slept with it under my pillow.” –Anne Ursu, author of The Real Boy

“Friendship, connection, and understanding are at the heart of this warm, introspective story about the events that shape a person.” –Publishers Weekly

“The perfectly paced time-travel conundrum is well balanced within the larger plot, and the entire book is imbued with the same sort of forward-driving adventure as Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me (2009) or Laurel Snyder’s Bigger Than a Bread Box (2011, both Random). A wide variety of readers will find this book wonderfully satisfying and hard to put down.” –SLJ

“Snyder infuses her novel with a touch of magical realism (and, of course, time travel), and many readers will wonder what the grown-ups in their lives were like as kids. Filled with historical facts that weave seamlessly with the narrative, this is a heartwarming story about knowing, and truly understanding, your family.” –Booklist

EEEEEP!

This week we celebrated Tu B’Shevat.

So here in Atlanta, we got dirty…

Trees, trees, glorious trees,
Full of raccoons and beetles and bees,
Full of red robins and woodpeckers too,
And if you’ve a tree house, perhaps full of YOU!

It isn’t just meant for the bark and the leaves,
The roots and the branches that wave in the breeze.
Tu B’shevat means you should stop for a minute,
In front of a tree, and think of what’s IN IT!

There are good reviews and bad reviews.  Not every book can be a bestseller or award winner.

But we don’t write for reviews. We write for kids, readers…

And when you see a picture like this, how can you help but feel gloriously happy?

So… I just realized I have exactly one week left in my thirties.  One last little week.

This means, of course, that I’ve actually just finished living my fortieth year. Wow. Forty years seems like a lot.  But the last decade has flown, and it has been, without a doubt, my favorite.

On January 12, it will have been exactly ten years since the day I got hitched. Shortly after that, we moved to Atlanta.  A year later, Mose was born, and then Lew.  Somewhere in there I published my first book, and then another 13. It’s more than I would have dared ask for or expect.

There have been some hard, sad moments. I’m older. I can feel it in my bones, and see it in the mirror.  I have RA and crowns on a few teeth. A few gray hairs. I don’t take exotic trips abroad anymore or close down the bars. But I’m glad to be forty. No part of me is scared of the number.

At the same time, I think back to what I thought of FORTY as a kid, and I’m pretty sure I thought that forty was boring and wrinkly.  I don’t feel boring and wrinkly. Though I wouldn’t object to an exotic trip abroad.

But tonight, for the first time, Mose asked me to help him pick a book to read to himself, and it felt truly momentous.  Like a gift he was giving me.  I’ve spent this decade building books and people, and now the two are coming together, and I don’t know why, but… it’s a big deal to me.  Magical, in fact.  Like I could see the last decade of my life right there in front of my face.

All this to say… whatever happens in this next decade, I feel very very very very  lucky to be living my particular life. It’s good.

Thank you, everyone, for being part of it.  Nobody constructs their own world. It’s made up of tiny bricks from other people. I’m grateful.