Today is Operation Teen Book Drop day! Yay! Last year I participated as a librarian, hiding books around my school. This year I did it again, as a librarian, but also as an author! That was super cool. I did not actually get to hide the books at my school, because I was at Reading Roundup, a conference for Maine librarians about books and reading. My plan had been to hide Secrets at the conference, but then I forgot about it, and then when I remembered, it was almost too late. So then I went home, and was thinking, “Man, I totally messed up my first TBD. Also, I need some spinach and tomatoes.” Which led me to the perfect solution: I would go to the brand new natural food store in my town and drop it there. With all the emphasis on local, organic food in the book, it was actually the perfect spot. So I put it on top of some natural peanut butters. Mmmm. And of course forgot to take a picture.

I also forgot to take pictures at the conference. I did a panel with Ellen Booraem, Deva Fagan, Carrie Jones (who apparently almost died on the way there), and Kelly McClymer. Kevin Hawkes was the keynote speaker. He was funny, charming, and really insightful. I loved seeing his work step by step. He also said something that I wrote down in paraphrase: in illustration, everything needs to add to the emotion of the picture; otherwise it should be cut out. And I kind of want to write it out and frame it as a reminder to myself, because the same could be said of writing, of course. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of it.

O