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Cover Girl

File this one under “Things Laurie Never Dreamed Would Happen, Even When She Was Dreaming Absurdly Big.”

I am the June cover girl for School Library Journal.

If you have to be plastered on a magazine cover, this is definitely the classiest and coolest. Thankfully, the only cover image you can find online is sort of small.

The article, however, is huge.

I was interviewed by the all-knowing and insightful K.T. Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, AND the 2010 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer. She asked extremely good questions and was very patient with my rambling, long-winded answers. Have a peek and tell me what you think.

And those orange sneakers? Stay tuned…. they have Deep Significant Meaning.

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Writing Advice from La Wharton

I finally finished Hermione Lee’s biography of Edith Wharton. I probably won’t reread it, but it was interesting enough to slog through all 800-plus pages.

I copied out two quotes for you.

The first one has to do with the books in Edith’s library. She frequently wrote in the books she was reading and had no time for people who believed that books should be treated like fragile objects. She was fond of this quote, from W. N. P. Barbellion’s Journal of a Disappointed Man, “A Book is a Person and not a Thing.”

The second quote is one of Wharton’s diary entries from 1934, when she was working on her novel The Buccaneers.

“What is writing a novel like?
1. The beginning: A ride through a spring wood.
2. The middle: The Gobi desert.
3. The end: A night with a lover.
I am now in the Gobi desert.”

When Edith Wharton wrote these words, she was 72 years old. She had published 20 novels, more than 85 short stories, and won a Pulitzer.

I think this gives all of us permission to grumble a bit when stuck in the Gobi desert, but then we have to go back to work.

Scribblescribblescribble…

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Time Travel

I am getting ready to beam back to the 1740s. Am bringing my own toilet paper.

I will answer the questions that came in over the weekend upon my return. While I’m gone, can you please post links to the best blogging done about BEA this year?

Also, if YOU were beaming back to the American colonies in the 1740s, what would you bring?