Autumnal Blessings: Kirkus Top Books

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jamie Engle, for the upcoming 12/1 issue of Kirkus, which will feature UNDERCOVER as a Top Young Adult Book for 2007. I was grateful to her for the thoughtful questions, for the way that she returned me to the novel's very earliest days, when it was more impulse and instinct than story, and when being brave mattered more (as it always does at first) than getting it absolutely right.

Yesterday, while walking the streets at near dusk with my camera, I found this fully articulated tree. Its leaves are the very colors Elisa, the novel's heroine, sees—the colors with which I began to limn the tale.