Cesar Chavez Day, Middle School & High School Visits, and Totally Cool Teen Art

I've been doing some San Francisco middle school, high school and juvenile hall visits recently with my YA novel, SHIFTY. I've really enjoyed meeting youth, teachers and librarians at S. F. Juvenile Hall, Horace Mann Middle School, John O'Connell High School and Mission High School. I'm inspired by the questions from the youth about SHIFTY and their interest in the writing process. Writing is usually such a solitary process so meeting teen readers has been great fun (and has given me ideas for new stories)!



I took all these photos of the inspiring student art work in the hallways of Horace Mann Middle School. Wow!














Imaginary Readers, isn't that some of the coolest art you've ever seen?

Forecast: More school visits and maybe someday I'll even catch up on downloading the rest of the photos off my camera!

SHIFTY--A Smithsonian Notable Book of 2008!

Wow, I'm jazzed! SHIFTY was chosen as a Smithsonian Notable Book For Children 2008!!!
(For Older Readers Ages 10 and Up)

"Surprising, inspiring and outstanding titles for youngsters and the grownups that read to them"

I like the sound of that. I received the good news about SHIFTY being a Smithsonian Notable right after I heard that SHIFTY was chosen as a Cynsational Books of 2008 by Cynthia Leitich Smith on her Cynsations Blog.

Okay, I feel the need to add a few more happy exclamation marks.
!!!

Forecast: !