Hello all! We have been busy, and remiss, and harried, and therefore not keeping you up-to-date on ye-olde-blogge. Apologies.

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had maybe three consecutive days that haven’t been unravelled by bad weather, school closings, sickness, travel or our increasingly incontinent dog. More on that later. But I’ve been told more than once that my blog post entries tend to meander, so I’m going to get right to the point (two paragraphs in).

The BIG news is that we have started a fundraiser in the hopes of being able to buy a book for each of the students at our local Title 1 Elementary School, Garnet Elementary. We’d like to give a copy of Everywhere, Wonder to each of the 192 Pre-K through 2nd grade kids, and one of The Real McCoys to each of the 164 third through fifth grade kids.

If that’s all you need to know, CLICK HERE to go to the fundraising page!

If you are the more cautious sort, who likes a side of storytelling along with your plate of generosity, here’s the deal. Garnet Elementary is the local elementary school where I went as a kid. How strange and wonderful to be walking my kids to classrooms that once were mine, seeing the same bulletin boards with new, different works of art on them, getting to stride right into the teachers’ lounge to drop off paperwork to a crop of teachers who seem young instead of old, to remember old friends as first, second and third graders and then to see them dropping their kids off there too. It is a special sort of gift to be able to live where you grew up.

Garnet has a high population of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches (around 60%), which is what qualifies it as a Title 1 school. Along with poverty come complicated home situations and social and emotional difficulties. And yet these kids are great kids. I love walking the halls and seeing their smiles in the mornings, laughing, giggling, persisting.

Our current funding situation county-wide is dire; positions have been cut and teachers are stretched thin. Garnet has worked hard to maintain extra programming and to keep options available for extra-curricular events, but Matthew and I want to be able to put together something for everyone that won’t add any cost burden to the school.

We plan to spend the day at Garnet doing two assemblies to talk about writing, illustrating, books, collaboration and living a creative life, followed by classroom visits to give these kids nice, new, hardcover copies of our books. All of the $3,550 we hope to raise will pay for the books, and we will donate our time.

If you have $10 to spare, it would buy a book for one of our deserving Garnet kids. Even just $5 will help us reach our goal and would be so much appreciated.

And, thank you!

 

Alright, now that we’re done with that, here’s what else you’ve missed:

We received the Advanced Readers’ Editions of Book 2 of The Real McCoys!

Jasper turned one!

Alden starred as the Little Prince in The Little Prince!

Iggy peed on her bed so many times we had to throw it away!

But that’s okay, we bought her a new pee-proof one!

Jasper, recognizing that it’s going to be his bed once he graduates from the pack-and-play in the living room, refuses to let Iggy lie on it! No pee on this bed, homeslice!

Kato and Augie make their own comics! Jasper hates comics!

And that, my friends, is the latest!

Thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom here. You deserve some sort of special treat.

Oh, well here’s a sneak peak at the characters that will be in Book 3! Yes, I forgot to tell you, we sold Book 3 of The Real McCoys! I know that’s not so much a treat for YOU as it is a treat for US, but we’ll take it.

Happy Ides!