Okay For Now

If I was into fan girl kinds of squealing, you would likely have heard me from miles away yesterday.

I was skim reading an advertisement from Barnes & Noble and saw mention of what they termed "a very special young reader's pick." Mildly curious, I looked...and looked again. It was a book by Gary D. Schmidt. A book I'd never heard of. A NEW book.

Cue squealing.

And then I read the publisher's description and skimmed a little bit of the early reviews and saw...be still my heart...that I knew some of the characters. That this book, titled Okay for Now, is a sequel of sorts (or at least a "companion novel") to The Wednesday Wars, which in my humble opinion is one of the best mid-grade/young adult novels written in the past few years.

Cue whooping!

I'm seeing words like "poignant" and "heartbreaking" scattered in early reviews. And phrases like "instant classic." The kind of raves that must make an author's heart palpitate.

I have a copy on hold at the library and can hardly wait to get my hands on it. Of course I do have to wait because the book's release date (officially yesterday) means all new copies are still in process. And there's already a wait.

Clearly lots of squealing and whooping going on amidst Schmidt's readers yesterday.

I don't know how I missed hearing this was coming out, but what a delight to get the news yesterday...on a rainy/snowy April morning. It brightened my whole day!

Vote for Your Favorite Literary Character!

September is National Literacy Month. In honor of that, and because it's also a political season, my favorite bookstore Half-Price Books has launched a fun promotion called Vote For Your Favorite Literary Character. Check it out at the link just provided. If, like me, you already have a touch of election year blues, it's an especially good picker-upper. The profiles they've written for the "candidates" make for amusing reading, and I love the creative campaign buttons, complete with slogans, they've created for each. My two favorite slogans are probably: "Seeker of Equal Rights" (Potter 08') and "Winds of Change" (Poppins 08').

You can vote for one of the six literary characters they profile or write-in your favorite character. I thought it would be more fun to choose one they provided, mostly because coming up with a short-list of my favorite literary characters as possible write-ins would be no easy task! So I confess, I cast my vote for Potter...though I almost changed my mind at the last minute and voted for Atticus Finch. Yep, "In a Pinch, Vote Finch" as the slogan says!