Day: October 22, 2009

Thank you, Queen Louise for doing such a great job filling in yesterday. (I was off conducting cooking experiments under conditions that sort of simulated the Valley Forge encampment in December 1777.)

Zoe continues to be in the running for inclusion in a million boxes of Cheerios, but there is bad news.

Other books (which are sweet books, lovely books, but still) are surging ahead. ::cues threatening music:: This is not a winner-takes-all competition. The top FIVE books will be put in Cheerios boxes for eager breakfast readers. (For the record, the authors and illustrators will not see any royalties from these cereal books. It’s just wicked cool and fun.)

::threatening music again:: Zoe has slipped to fifth place. SHE NEEDS YOUR VOTE. (see below the photos for details)

I mentioned a couple of days ago that authors generally get to see early sketches.

They are just to give everyone a rough sense of the illustrator’s ideas.

Don’t know if you can see it, but I changed some of my text based on Ard’s work.

After the sketches, Ard went back and painted. The author gets to see the early page proofs, too.

One of my favorite things Ard did was to add in a group of gerbils who act like a visual Greek chorus during Zoe’s saga.

  (I couldn’t figure out how to rotate this photo – sorry!) Originally the cover’s background color was white. Then there were MANY discussions at Simon & Schuster. The concern was that less-than-perfectly-clean hands would smudge up the white cover in a hurry. In the end, the powers that be – and Ard, I think – chose the lilac shade.

OK, dear friends. Warm up your clicking finger. Do a couple of jumping jacks. IT’S TIME TO VOTE!!!

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October.

TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY!!! WANT TO GIVE ME A PRESENT? VOTE FOR ZOE TODAY!