Love That School

Sometimes

I visit 

amazing schools

where the enthusiasm

and energy

and good will

is so high

that 

I 

swoon.

Bright and cheery welcome

students independently engaged

playing with words

celebrating books

and people

and

their

stories.

Thank you

Fay School

for a beauteous

and delicious

visit.

You're all

amazing.

xx

Student Art

One class of young readers offered their versions of book covers for The Boy on the Porch.  Below are a few.

You probably already know how much I love student art, right?

I especially loved seeing the elements that students chose as emblematic of the story: the blue tree, the shoes, the guitar, jelly beans, cow and dog.  Perfect.

xx

The Boy on the Porch: Fiction Enters 'Real Life'

When I wrote The Boy on the Porch, I was still living in western New York, with no plans to move, but by the time the book was finished, my husband and I were moving to Maine, following other family members, including two beloved grandchildren.

In The Boy on the Porch, a boy rides a cow. I do not know where that came from. However, several months after moving to Maine, my granddaughter joined 4-H and fell in love with cows.  She liked to sit or lie on their backs after feeding and grooming them:

Mind you, I don't think she had ever mentioned cows before this, nor had I ever heard of a child riding a cow before I wrote The Boy on the Porch.

*

In The Boy on the Porch, a boy is found asleep on a porch.  A week after we moved to Maine, I went out onto our porch and discovered a young boy curled up in a chair:

Okay, this one is not so strange, as I knew the boy, my grandson, but I had a moment's flash of that phrase "the boy on the porch" that initiated the whole book.

*

This is the story of the mystery of a child ('mystery' in several senses), and it is the story of the ways in which children and adults shape each other. 

My own children and grandchildren and all my students were mysteries (in many senses) to me, and I'm fairly certain we have shaped each other along the way.

Mm?

xx

The Boy on the Porch: Beginning

Usually I begin writing a story when a clear and insistent image appears in my mind of a character and a place. That initial image often becomes the opening image of the book, as it does here:

I'm curious about that boy and the people who find him, and so I write the story to learn more.

I hope that readers will be curious, too, and will read the story to learn more. . . and will like what they read.

xx

The Boy on the Porch

(Coming September 3, 2013)

This is the newest book, out in a few weeks.  

The title floated in my head as I woke one day two years ago, although I did not recognize it as a title. It was merely a phrase, insistent enough that it stuck with me through the morning.  The following day, it appeared again as I awoke, and later that day after a nap, again: "the boy on the porch."  A few days later, again.  And again.  And again.

Okay, okay, okay.  I will write to find out about the boy on the porch!

The Boy on the Porch: first look

Whoah!

This really surprised me:

the arrival today of an 

advance reader's copy 

(ARC)

of 

THE BOY ON THE PORCH

!

It will be published in September.

I wasn't expecting an advance copy

so soon.

But here it is, a gift.

It's a book.

No longer sheets of paper

marked with corrections.

A book.

I'd better go read it.

Hope it's good.

xx

The Boy on the Porch

And there it is:

the cover of the upcoming book

The Boy on the Porch

due out in September or October 2013

Ta da!!!!!!!!

Always exciting to see the cover.

Whatcha think of it?

xx