Good Kirkus Review for 1 ZANY ZOO

My editor sent me the Kirkus review for my book, 1 ZANY ZOO, and they like it!!  Here are a couple of quotes from it:

". . . An array of further animal antics unfolds in bouncy verse (full of phonetic Seussian crunch) amid equally antic pictures . . ."

" . . . Degman’s verse is bright—this text won the Cheerios New Author Contest—and animator Jack’s digitally produced creatures, both animal and human, are pleasingly Bill Peet–esque. Crackling good fun . . . "

YAHOO!!

Pomp and Circumstance

My son, Sean, graduated from Western Illinois University yesterday!  He got a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education.  I know he's going to be a phenomenal teacher!

Congratulations, Sean!  I'm so proud!!

National Limerick Day

Did you know today is National Limerick Day?  I didn't know until this morning, but I'm going to put it on my calendar for next year.  In honor of NLD, I wrote a little limerick.  I'd love if you'd write one too and post it in your comment :-)

There once was a picture book writer,

Who’d edit to make her work tighter,

She polished each line,

To make every word shine,

A contract would surely delight her.

Hearing vs Not Hearing

One of my students, Alix Z., drew the picture below to enter in the SEDOL Student Art Fair.   The right side (our right) shows how she hears without her hearing aids and the left side shows how she hears with her hearing aids.  Didn't she do an awesome job?!

Tales From the Front in Prairie Wind - Spring 2010

The Illinois Chapter of SCBWI has a quarterly newsletter, The Prairie Wind, and I was asked to write an article for a column called Tales From The Front.  The column is written by newly published authors and their paths to publication.  I wrote about  the publication of 1 Zany Zoo and my article, 1 Peculiar Path To Publication, appeared in the spring, 2010 edition,which went online yesterday.  You can read it here. 

Prolific Blogger Award

I was so pleased to be awarded the Prolific Blogger Award by Ruth Donnelly at Readatouille!  Apparently, once you are the recipient of the award, you need to award it to three other bloggers.  This was a tough decision but, here are my three choices:

Blee Bonn  who always has fun and interesting posts and who makes the best book trailers around!

Kelly Pollark  who has the highest energy blog posts I've read - they're exhausting!

Scotti Cohn   whose blog, It Happened in Chicago! includes all-things-Chicago and fascinating interviews with authors with a Chicago connection.

Congratulations, Blee, Kelly and Scotti!  Now go forth and pass on the award.

39th Annual SCBWI Conference in LA!

I'm so excited - I signed up for this year's SCBWI conference in LA!  It's going to be "4 days of agents, editors, publishers, workshops and networking designed to take your writing and illustration to the next level." (scbwi.org)

It's expensive so I wasn't going to give myself permission to go until I sold another manuscript - don't get excited - it didn't happen :-(  But, my husband, John, got free airline tickets and a hotel voucher from work and he's been wanting to visit his brother in San Francisco so, CA - here we come!  While I'm at the conference, he'll be visiting  his brother - it worked out perfectly!  We'll  tack on a couple of days after the conference to see LA.

Another great thing about it is, I'm going to meet my agent, Jamie Weiss Chilton, in person for the first time!   I'm really looking forward to that!

Are any of you going?  I hope so - it would be great to meet online friends in person!