Welcome to the world, BLUE BIRDS.

My friend Caroline Starr Rose's beautiful new middle-grade verse novel publishes today.

Thanks to her gracious publisher, I had a pre-publication sneak peak.

I've written about it HERE. But now you can read it everywhere!
Tell your library, your independent bookstore, your teacher friends. Such a good story.

In honor of all our books going out into the world this year, I'm borrowing Caroline's quote. I love this thought via Katherine Paterson.


Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I could; now it is their turn. I have no more right to tell readers how they should respond to what I have written than they had to tell me how to write it. It’s a wonderful feeling when readers hear what I thought I was trying to say, but there is no law that they must. Frankly, it is even more thrilling for a reader to find something in my writing that I hadn’t until that moment known was there. But this happens because of who the reader is, not simply because of who I am or what I have done.

-Katherine Paterson, A Sense of Wonder: On Reading and Writing Books for Children


 

 (In honor of Caroline's new novel, I'll share bluebird art from Adolf Dehn,
"Winter Song," 

from a Christmas card I love.)