Posted in CCBC, Writing at 9:24 am by Bridget Zinn
I’m on the homepage of the CCBC website — a good ten percent of the time or so. Woo hoo! Today the CCBC homepage, tomorrow the cover of People. You have to hit refresh on the CCBC’s website to go through all of the pics. So I’m saving you some trouble by posting the image of my newfound fame here:
Doesn’t Judy look adorable as she’s seriously contemplating the book discussion book while the crazy girl next to her (me) is laughing hysterically? There are tons of other great pics of CCBC Librarians and CCBC Friends, so when you have time, you should check out the site. Just click on the image above and it will take you there. Merri helping Carin by giving her a copy of CCBC Choices is one of my favs.Â
I really need to come up with a more original Friday blog entry gimmick. And a new picture. Every time I look at that photo I think “Eek, vampire!” Except it’s just me.
1) We’re moving! It’s official. We’re moving to Portland in June. Woo hoo!
2) We’re starting to look at apartments in Portland because we aren’t ready to buy yet. We tried to get this nice woodsy one full of young bike riding environmentalists (I got this from an extensive phone interview) next to the gigantic Forest Park. Our out of town application was beaten out by mere minutes by an in towner who hand delivered the check before the postman got there. Doh!
3) The next apartment on the list was completely different and, in fact, if I wasn’t reading Suite Scarlett right now I probably wouldn’t even have considered it. It’s downtown and it looks totally like a fancy hotel inside. A far cry from the bike riding environmentalist/dishwasher-less apartment. But Scarlett and, more importantly, Mrs. Amberson make living in a hotel seem like a fun thing to do. Although the place we were going to apply to is more like Hotel Sofitel in Chicago (my favorite hotel) than the cool old hotel in the book. Unfortunately, the ad for this wasn’t put up by the apartment complex itself. Someone stole their info and put up the ad at a lower price — apparently you’re supposed to e-mail them directly and then they run with your deposit. We googled the name of the place instead of e-mailing the contact on the ad and called the number on their site which is where we found all of this out. So we won’t be applying there. Double doh!
4) On the subject of Suite Scarlett, I’m totally loving it and I think it really captures Maureen Johnson’s voice and funniness (at least, based on her blog entries) more than any other book she’s written. It’s about a fifteen year old named Scarlett who lives in an old hotel in New York that her family owns, but can barely manage because they’ve run out of money. Her parents ask her to personally take care of Mrs. Amberson, a retired actress who lived in New York in the 30’s, and who’s staying for the entire summer. She’s quite insane, but so far really funny too.
5) In a tribute to Wisconsin, I ate almost all dairy meals for the last two days. Wednesday — yogurt breakfast, cheese and cracker lunch (I’m on a writing vacation this week, I don’t have time for anything more complex!), and mac & cheese from The Old Fashioned for dinner. Thursday — yogurt breakfast, left-over mac & cheese lunch, walnut cheddar veggie burger for dinner. There were a few fruit and vegetables thrown in there, but my body’s used to eating lots of fruit and veggies with just a little dairy and now I feel like I’m going to die. Done in by WI cheese.
6) The other CCBC Book Discussion books I read for this week, besides the fabulous Sweethearts by Sara Zarr were:
The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry — a super fun play on “old-fashioned” books that is darkly humorous.
Game by Walter Dean Myers which might be more enjoyable if you were really into basketball, but I pretended it was one of the cute guys on Friday Night Lights (football and basketball aren’t too far away on the spectrum in my head, even if they are in real life) and that made it somewhat more interesting.
Ringside 1925: Views from the Scopes trial by Jen Bryant which is historical fiction in poetry format about the Scopes Trial and which sounded honestly not that thrilling to me but turned out to have some unexpected humor like when they ask the teacher if he minds if they arrest him and he says, Sure, but can I catch a game of tennis first?
The last novel on the list, I didn’t get to read before the discussion — My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger. I’m planning to read it this weekend. They talked about it at the discussion for more than twenty minutes while I waited outside, so it must be really interesting.
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr was a CCBC Book Discussion book today and I was happily surprised to discover that I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. Usually books with adorable pink hearts on the cover (cookie hearts no less) don’t get such huge rave reviews by anyone but me, but this book was so spot on perfect as far as suspense, depth, relationships, and emotions go that it won over lots of readers. My only complaint was that it had such a definite ending and I wished she’d left it open so I could have imagined what happened in years to come instead of having it told to me. But I think that was on purpose. The story is about a girl who’s remade herself in high school into a new person after a difficult childhood with a single hard-working parent and only one friend. When her past and her present connect, everything gets all jumbled and she has to find her way through. Great read!
The best part of the Kevin Henkes reception (besides the chocolate) was his reading from Bird Lake Moon. First, Katy Horning introduced him and then his current editor (whose name I can’t remember — doh!) from Greenwillow spoke. She had a great story about when Susan Hirschman had Kevin call her at the publisher she was currently working for (Simon & Schuster, I think?) because she was trying to get her to come over to Greenwillow and didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing. Of course, that didn’t work out at all. As soon as the secretary announced that KEVIN HENKES was on the phone everyone crowded around her office to listen in. V. funny. This editor also had quite possibly the best reaction of the night too when she announced that this was Kevin’s 38th book. Everyone in the room gasped and Kevin looked more than a little surprised himself. Click on the picture below to watch Kevin Henkes read an excerpt from Bird Lake Moon.
1) I just discovered Bumble and Bumble — the nicest smelling bestest ever hair products. Where have you been all my life?
2) Kevin Henkes book release party for Bird Lake Moon was last night. It was lovely — great chocolate treats and nice short speech. Strangely though I didn’t see everyone there who I thought was going to be there — writers or librarians. It was sort of a spread out party so I think they may have actually been there, but I just didn’t run into them. Then while hunting for them, I got in trouble for accidentally standing in the signing line and generally causing trouble, so that pretty much put an end to that. Plus, Afghani was calling to me.
3) Afghani food. Yum!!! So delicious. Madison is lucky enough to have two Afghani restaurants and we went to Kabul’s last night. My favorite is the vegetarian strudel.
4) Spring. I think it might finally be here. Yes!
5) Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen. Today is the first day of my vacation (at home writing vacation, not going off on adventures vacation) so I splurged and bought this one. I’m totally not going to get distracted and just read this. Really. This is a write til your fingers bleed kind of vacation. But it doesn’t hurt to have something fun to read AFTER writing. Except for the bloody fingers issue.
6) Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson. Double vacation splurge.
