NOAH WEBSTER & HIS WORDS is getting great reviews! I am soooo happy and relieved. Horn Book, Kirkus, starred review in School Library Journal, a Junior LIbrary Guild selection and more!
I wish you all lived here in the Sacramento, CA, area. On Thursday, June 14, I'm giving a (lively and fun and thought-provoking and altogether wonderful) presentation here in Lincoln on "People Who Made America Great!". Of course I'll be talking about NF research and writing, but mainly about the eleven people in my first eleven books. Come if you can! Here's an announcement from a local newspaper: June 14 is Flag Day! The perfect day to learn more about our amazing American history. What more is there to learn, you ask? Come to the Orchard Creek Lodge ballroom in Sun City Lincoln at 2 p.m., June 14, for everything you always wanted to know about people who made America great! Don’t miss hearing award-winning author Jeri Chase Ferris bring eleven people from 1776 on back to life (okay, not really). Don’t miss the good and the awful of researching people’s lives. Don’t miss her slide presentation on how an author gets the facts – on an ice floe in the Arctic, for example, or … well, come and find out. But don’t worry, she won’t be trying on eleven different sets of clothes. Who wrote the best-selling book in the English language (after the Bible)? What IS that book? What did John Adams reply to Abigail’s “remember the ladies”? Who wrote almanacs, built the first wooden clock in America, and more. Hint: first name Benjamin. Hint: NOT Benjamin Franklin. Which Chief Justice turned his back on which President-elect when administering the oath of office? Why? There are at least three hugely significant events tied to July 4, 1826. Do you know what they are? Can you tell us even more? What escaped slave took one of God’s attributes as her last name? Why? And what WAS it? What world-famous American singer could not … What Native American … What president … You’ll know the answers on June 14. And you may want to add to the discussion yourself. Come and celebrate Flag Day with people who made America great! So – my picture book bio text was perfect, right? Alas, no. But my editor knew just what to do. With comments like the ones below, she began to whip my text into shape. Yes, it can be a bit painful, but my editor was wonderfully gentle and tactful. And these comments may help all of us as we edit and tighten our work. "...I worry that the story might be trying to do too much..." "...focus more on Noah's teaching experience, frustration with America's lack of resources, commitment to bettering the American education system..." "...streamlining might help reveal a smoother, more economical narrative.." More of her comments next time. Now I need to go tighten my current ms! Blog #1 – How do people DO this? First time doing anything is kind of tricky, but if I can write whole books I can write a blog. Right? I hope you'll come along for the ride. Speaking of which, I realize this will cut into my horseback riding time, though my horse will be happy to lounge about. First, thanks to Mira Reisberg for teaching me how to do this (as they say, any mistakes are mine). Not that there will be any mistakes. In my next blog posts I'll be telling you about my adventures with Noah Webster. This picture book biography will be published in October 2012. Yay!! There will be More Later: why I wrote about Noah, where I got the idea, why he's important (what did HE write? and what else did he do?) the process of actually writing and working with an editor, and more. And, boy, the joy of seeing what Vincent X. Kirsch did with the illustrations! Whew. That wasn't so hard. | 
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