Happy Birthday to Lu!

Tonight marked the official celebration of our beloved dog, Lucy, turning 18.

Yes, years. Yes, people years, not dog years. And we've had her for seventeen of them.

In that time she's gone from being the fastest dog on four feet to being a dedicated snoozer who needs to be encouraged to shuffle outside on a quasi-regular basis.  She stopped chasing squirrels and tennis balls when her vision made it challenging to tell them apart.  And she stopped jumping into my arms like a circus performer long before that.  

Impressive old girl that she is, she still eats like a horse.  She still licks the salt off my calves when I come in from a run.  She still enjoys getting her ears or hind quarters scratched (or, ideally, both at the same time).  And her favorite treat is still ice cream.  Ideally the high quality variety, like Ben & Jerry's Vanilla.

So, to celebrate Lucy's new ability to vote in national elections and purchase cigarettes (she cleared the R-rated movie hurdle last year), we took her out for dessert tonight.  The kids thought a nice treat would be the special "doggie ice cream" they sell at our neighborhood pet boutique.  However, Lucy snubbed it, choosing people ice cream - hazelnut gelato - instead.  Hang in there, Lucy, I told her.  In another three years, you'll be old enough to order a nice glass of chianti to go with it!

Happy birthday, Lucy!!!

Dotty Snacks (Healthy Edition)

So, let's say you want to throw a party to celebrate my new picture book, Dotty.  And let's say you want to serve snacks at it - great idea!  The obvious choice would be Dotty Cupcakes, which I grant you sound divine (white icing + red m&m's = yum!).  But what if you want to serve healthy snacks?  Then what?, I ask you.

Well, I decided to explore the possibilities and here's what I came up with.  One idea I love (and I will test and display here soon, I'm sure) is Dotty Popsicles involving lemonade dotted with fresh or frozen berries.  Another idea I came up with is Dotty Fruit Salad, which could involve various kinds of grapes, blueberries, and melon balls.  Personally I hate fruit salads with filler fruits like pears and oranges.  This one would be 100% good stuff!

And here's my best idea of all:  Dotty Cheese Crackers!

What you do to make this is you take a round cracker, cover it with cream cheese, sprinkle grated cheese on one side of it (to make the mane), add dried cherry dots and add two Bugles for horns.

Ta da!  Delicious and nutricious!  Let the kids assemble them themselves and you've got an edible craft project, too.  After they build DOTTY (and make her invisible - get it?), they can get to work building other imaginary creatures, like the fuzzy orange creature with six horns.  Or the black spotted creature with five green legs (raisins and celery).  Options abound!

Dotty is available NOW at book stores so pick up a dozen or so copies today!

Frostburg State University

Thanks so much to Dr. Bill Bingman and his wonderful colleagues and students at Frostburg State University, who hosted me at Frostburg State and U. MD / Hagerstown for their Summer Author Institute. I had a great time, and I can't wait to see the photos and videos of the student presentations based on my work!

It was fate

Fate, I tell you. How else can I explain how I ended up having dinner at

The Hen House?

Having the best fried you-know-what I've had outside of New Orleans and Harlem? Yes, better than Popeye's. By a lot!

It happened like this: 8:01 pm at The Princess restaurant in downtown Frostburg, MD. Which closed at, yup, you guessed it. Flashback to Threadgills, December, 1993.

But luckily, there was a bird of paradise on the horizon. And if it wasn't obvious enough, John Denver's Annie's Song was playing as I left the Hen House. Fill up my senses, yes it did. Maybe not like a night in the forest, but pretty darn close.

Shenandoah Children's Literature Conference

This year marked the 25th Annual Shenandoah Children's Literature Conference at Shendandoah University in Winchester, VA.  I was honored to be invited to present my work with such luminaries as Katherine Paterson, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Deborah Wiles (pictured above), Henry Cole, Pamela Duncan Edwards (shown below getting carded - not a staged shot, I swear!), Fred Bowen, Cynthia Cotten and other terrific and talented authors and illustrators.

I also got to see two of my favorite booksellers, Andy and Jen of the Winchester Book Gallery, which hosted a very fun book reading and signing party featuring me and my books. Chicken Butt! tattoos were optional but very much encouraged, as were the wonderful new "Friend of Dotty" stickers Abrams made (Andy, an enthusiastic fan of Dotty, is wearing two in the photo below)!

There was a strange room service charge (a chickenfeed sundae at 2 am?!) but other than that nothing but fun at the conference. Dr. Karen Huff and her dedicated team have a way of making engineering a big complex event look easy. Well done, Karen, Linda, Gretchen, Tonya and many, many others!!!

Can't wait for the 26th Annual!