Dear friends: 

Have you seen allll the juicy ALA Awards coverage we’ve got for you? Okay, maybe not as juicy as that time when I sat next to a hilarious James Marshall at the Newbery-Caldecott banquet while the waiters flipped the lights off and on in a vain attempt to get Stephen Gammell to stop talking, but still pretty good. 

What are your plans for holiday reading? We still need to have holiday reading! I’ve been enjoying Wendy Lesser’s Scandinavian Noir, which is about that very thing, and it has given me a few recommendations for the coming weekend. And Hamilton is on, right?     

I’ve been keeping busy reading books and writing my Five Question interviews for the September/October advertising supplement. I pride myself on asking five new questions for each author and none of this “what is your favorite flavor of ice cream?” or “what are you working on now?” b.s. (Although once an author did kindly point out that I had asked her a pretty much identical question the last time she had done one of these and I was mortified.) It occurs to me only too late that this apparent facility I have for coming up with questions could possibly have served me well in a more lucrative profession, like interrogating spies or something. But then I never would have met any of you. 

Love,