Awards and A Lit Fest

This past week was Emily's final day and there was an award ceremony at the school that we do our independent studies through. As is customary, each year as the sixth graders leave elementary behind for jr. high, the teachers choose a student of the year for each category they attend on their bi/monthly Fridays. This year, Emily won Art Student of the Year. She also won a superior ribbon for her poetry entry in the ACSI Writing Contest. Needless to say, that girl makes me smile.

I wasn't able to stay for the Field Day after, as I normally do, because I had to leave for New York and the Millbrook Literary Festival. The event was a bit on the slow side, and I didn't sell much; but I had a fabulous time catching up with my good friends the Mojicas. Victor writes and illustrates his own works as well as illustrating for Barbara who writes a history series. Together they make a formidable team. There latest collaboration is their book about Ford's Theater.

I also met and chatted with some Face Book friends I hadn't personally met yet. There was the oh so kind and charming Susanna Leonard Hill, author and host of writing contests, and her table mate the fantastic Nancy Furstinger. I also made some new friends like the talented Karen Kaufman Orloff and the talented illustrator/author Isabelle Garbani whose book, The Secret Elephant, is too, too funny. And I was delighted to be sandwiched between the eloquent David Cundy and the charismatic David Neilsen. David Neilsen charmingly shared with me the back story of how Chris Grabenstein helped him get published. So if his work is good enough to be promoted by Chris, I'm pretty sure you want to check it out. Just listening to the spiel, for his soon to be released book, made me wish I had more time to read chapter books.

Nancy, Me, and Susanna

Me and Karen

Isabelle Garbani

David Neilsen

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. Also be sure to drop by Literacy Musings Mondays for more great blogs as well as my personal website Fun With Aileen where you will find more on reading, writing, and my very own chapter and picture books. And finally, you can find me on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Road Trip!

I know this post is a tiny bit late today, but Emily and I just got home late last night from a four day road trip to the Central Massachusetts Children's Book Festival. This is the first time just she and I have traveled together, and we had a blast. We played a travel scavenger hunt and a license plate game, to help pass the time, which I downloaded from education.com. Education.com is a great site for worksheets, and I have found it particularly useful since we started homeschooling. 

My Very First Selfie

Once at the book fair, Emily helped me set up and watched my table as I passed out blueberry banana bread to my fellow authors. It seemed appropriate to choose this recipe because it is a recipe from my latest book, Cooking In Fern Valley. It received lots of compliments and a few people even purchased the book so they could go home and make some bread of their own.

I was super excited to see my friends Barbara and Victor Mojica, two extremely talented people. Barbara is the author of a series of books called Little Miss History which is illustrated by Victor. The third book in this series particularly caught my eye as I have long been fascinated with the Sequoia trees.

Beside illustrating Barbara's books, Victor has a wonderful book of his own called Captain Crossbones. It is a story of fabulous treasure. Victor keeps the reader in suspense until the last page as to what the fabulous treasure really is, and since I don't want to spoil the surprise, you will just have to get a copy of  your own to find out!

I was also able to finally meet some of my Face Book friends in person. I met the incredibly talented illustrator Diane deGroat, super talented author/illustrator David Biedrzycki, and fabulous author Melissa Stewart. And I met some great new friends like Jef Cezkaj, Carol Gordon Eckster, Joannie Duris, Jennifer Kam, David Kelly, Sarah Lamstein, Heather Lang, Jane Sutton, Joanne Roach-Evans, Susie Rich, and Gordon Morrison.

For school, I asked Emily to interview one of the authors in attendance. She chose Paul Czajak who was sitting beside me. She fell in love with his monster series and decided to chose one of his books as her take home souvenir. As soon as she is finished, I will post her interview.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, the sequels, Return To Fern Valley,  and Cooking In Fern Valley, along with my very first picture book, Quack and Daisy! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.