Insect-free morning

No bugs today. Yay. Maybe they get the first day of fall off to make their winter travel plans. That is one advantage to living up here – when it gets cold, you don’t see insects. Of course, hordes of hungry field mice knock on your front door and invite themselves in for dinner, but it’s too early to fuss about that now.

My New York driver’s license came in mail the other day which felt weird and cool. I look like I’m doing jail time in the photo. In state prison. Maybe I am doing that in an alternative version of this world. I used to think about things like that all the time when I was a kid – all the different versions of me in different realities, and what we were all doing at the same time. (I was doomed to become an author from an early age.)

Today I MUST finish my own travel plans for next month. Oh, shoot. I have to update the website, too. Argh. I’ll be speaking at English teacher conferences in Colorado and Florida, and at schools and libraries in Maryland, Virginia, and New York City. November is still a little up in the air. I’ll get to see Kimberly Willis Holt in Colorado and am really looking forward to that. She rocks.

This weekend I have to work on my speech about censorship for a Banned Books Week talk I’m giving at the Onondaga County Public Library. SPEAK is the book of mine that is most often challenged, usually after it has been in curriculum for a few years. I know that CATALYST has been yanked out a couple of libraries. Authors like Chris Crutcher find themselves on the hot seat all the time.

What do you think about the dramatic increase in book banning efforts?