Naked and Afraid

Peeps!  How have I missed the boat on the Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid for four whole seasons?!?  It is my new obsession.  Here’s why. First, the story of how I came to [...]

The latest

I’m back home from a whirlwind weekend in San Francisco.  I was in SF to attend the annual librarian convention and an awards ceremony.  Both were awesome!  But perhaps my favorite part of [...]

Hello, San Francisco!

Today I landed in my adopted second city, San Francisco, for ALA, the annual librarian convention.  I dragged my neat little wheelie bag on to the Air Train and fired up Google News.  There I saw [...]

I can’t believe it

My little boy – who was so tiny just a minute ago – is now a young man.  I don’t usually post about my kids here, but this has been a month of marking the passing time. [...]

Signing this Saturday

Librarians: Will you be at this year’s annual American Library Association Conference in San Francisco?  If so, I’d love to meet you!  I will be doing a signing at the Moscone Center, [...]

Nasturtium jewels

When we are small, it’s impossible to know how we’re being shaped by the things we see and experience.  If you’d told me when I was a kid that some part of my brain was watching [...]

Solstice

Today is that yummy day when those of us in the Northern Hemisphere enjoy the longest period of sunlight in our year.  Celestial events have long influenced humans, giving our lives a certain [...]

Grey

Oh my god oh my god oh my god, people.  It is not often that I want to send you off to read someone else’s words.  I want you all to myself, but today I must put your needs ahead of my own. [...]

The green door

It was an unprepossessing little set of scraggly leaves in a plastic pot, a gift from my mom. My mother, raised on a dirt road halfway around the world, chickens and grapevines out back, loves [...]

First of all

I have a tendency, especially when I’m angry, of starting with, “First of all…”  “First of all” usually turns into a long harangue, at which point I’m [...]

Housekeeping

For those of you who subscribe via email, I wanted to write you a little note about the posting that I do sporadically which I like to call “housekeeping.”  This morning, I created [...]

Awards and Praise

2014 National Indie Excellence® Award winner. 2015 International Latino Book Award Finalist 2015 CLASP Américas Award Commended Title A School Library Journal Top 10 Latino Books of 2014 pick. A [...]

Upcoming Events

I hope to meet you this fall at one of these upcoming events! Texas Teen Book Festival Austin, Texas September 26th, 2015 Click here for more information Bar Harbor Book Festival Bar Harbor, [...]

Surviving Santiago

Last night I took a drive to Manhattan’s Lower East Side to celebrate the launch of Surviving Santiago, my friend Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s latest book. Lyn was one of the first people I [...]

Texas Teen Book Festival

Today it was announced that I’ve been invited to participate in the Texas Teen Book Festival in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, September 26, 2015. The Texas Teen Book Festival is one of the [...]

Bar Harbor!

One of my favorite things about traveling to promote my books is getting to see beautiful places in the country.  I’ve been everywhere from California to Massachusetts to Virginia, as well [...]

Profile piece on VOYA

I am honored to be included in June’s issue of Voice of Youth Advocates, a leading journal for librarians who specialize in young adult books.  I was interviewed by the journalist Haydee [...]

BooksNJ: See you Sunday!

I just love book festivals, but BooksNJ has a special place in my heart.  First, it’s right in my backyard in Paramus, New Jersey.  Second, since it’s local, many of my FAVORITE local [...]

Privacy

I’ve been posting daily (or close to it) on this blog for a little over two years now.  It’s been massively helpful to me in a variety of ways.  It helps me commit to writing daily. [...]

Manspreading

I have a running list of “things I wonder about” written in the Notes section of my phone. Fodder for blog posts, random thoughts, things that irk me which somehow feel better written [...]

Is it working?

I’ll never forget the day I realized that I’d been booked to go to a conference for work in Las Vegas the same day my daughter was graduating from fifth grade.  I was at a new job [...]

Fundamental

Recently, I had to go to a conference for work.  It catered to the educational wants of religious fundamentalists (don’t ask) and was full of “biblically inspired” educational [...]