Things I Did Not Tell You: I Was on the Radio! Plus M. T. Anderson, Pittacus Lore, and NaNoWriMo books at The Hub

November 1, 2011

Dear readers, there are things I have not told you. Between summer reading, preparing for our first-ever high school lock-in at my library, and then the 31 Days of Authors feature at The Hub in October, I’ve been very busy–and being busy has kept me from sharing things with you.

The most exciting of those things is that back at the beginning of September, one of our children’s librarians and I were on the radio! In honor of the release of the fifth movie, Jane Williams invited us to talk about Harry Potter and its effect on kids and their reading for her Bloomberg EDU program. It was really exciting and a lot of fun and I’m so glad we were given the chance to do this. (Also exciting: that same day I visited the feather store that supplies Big Bird’s plumage!) You can listen to the segment online [mp3]; our part starts at the 14-minute mark. I know this was two months ago, but I’d still love to hear what you think!

And less exciting but still worth telling you: earlier this month I wrote about my love for MT Anderson at The Hub. I’ve met him more times than any other author–from longer-than-expected conversations at conferences to seeing him speak at our local high school–and I’m so taken with his intelligence and thoughtfulness.

I also wrote about I Am Number Four and Pittacus Lore for The Hub, since the book was #4 on this year’s Teens’ Top Ten list. Mr. Lore (is that the correct way to address an alien? Can I call him Pittacus? Do I need to always use his full name?) also agreed to answer some questions for our readers.

This month is November, which means it’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! We’re going to be hosting a meet-up and a write-in at my library, so I spent part of my day at work today preparing a list of resources for teen writers. While we were preparing all of our press materials and web content for NaNoWriMo, I learned that there are a good number of published novels that started out as NaNo projects–and a good portion of them are for teens, so today for The Hub, I wrote about books written during NaNoWriMo that have teen appeal (including Water for Elephants!). Are you doing NaNoWriMo yourself or hosting WriMos at your library this year?