The Day the Crayons Quit/Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers

So there I was, at Children's Book World in Haverford, to hear Elizabeth Wein talk about her passion for World War II, her adventures in flying, and the thoughts she had while slicing an onion, which led her to the tremendous success we all know as Code Name Verity. (This is how the big stuff happens, folks. A long-time passion for a period in time, personal passion for a hobby like flight, and knife work. Also, slicing the onion must have made some sort of imprint on Elizabeth's storytelling sensibilities for, as she related last night, her books make many people cry, including Elizabeth herself).

I arrived early, because I love that place, but also because I was on the hunt for The Day the Crayons Quit, that new uber-bestselling picture book that my friend Michael Green of Philomel helped guide into existence.

People have been buzzing about this book since the BEA (and probably before that, but I wouldn't know, because I'm rarely in the know). My first trip to another bookstore earlier in the day had left me empty handed. But there I was, at Children's Book World, and there we were, the crayon book and me—just two copies left. One for the beautiful, age-appropriate family sitting on the step reading, and one for moi.

This adorable book is just what its title promises—a klatch of overused (except for Pink), big personality (let's leave White out of this), stripped down (I'm looking at you, Peach), niggling (spoiler alert: Yellow and Orange are at war), and negotiating (oh, Green, thank you for breaking type and defeating envy in favor of peace keeping) crayons that have decided to have a word or two with little Duncan, who finds a stack of letters in his waxy box.

I wrote "age appropriate" a few sentences ago, but don't think my old age stopped me. I bought a copy of this book for myself, because I do believe that nothing is more universal, and more endlessly appealing, than an excellent picture book.

This is an excellent picture book.

(Also, these books are going fast. Better get one for yourself real soon.)

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Small Damages: it's paperback pub day!

The very great Jessica Shoffel sent me this copy of Small Damages, delivered on the day of the book's paperback release by the Penguin imprint, Speak.

It's a beautiful package, this book. Ever since Tamra Tuller acquired this story for Philomel, it has been given extraordinarily good care—through editing and copy editing, through design and publicity, through its transformation as a paperback.

I placed my implicit trust in Tamra, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and the sales team, and I was never given a reason to doubt. When Eileen Kreit and her team assumed responsibility for the paperback, I was equally at ease.

So much can go wrong in the publication of a book. Nothing went wrong with this one. I am so proud and happy to have my first paperback (with the stepback!) copy of Small Damages in hand. And I will be grateful, always.

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Small Damages Paperback: the gorgeous stepback

Sometimes you write books and love those books and they disappear. Sometimes they're never published. Sometimes the person who doesn't love your book is precisely who you thought you were writing your book for.

And sometimes you get so hugely lucky. You find an editor (and friend) like Tamra Tuller and a house like Philomel, a publicist like Jessica Shoffel and a friend like Michael Green. And then (you can't believe your continuing luck) you get a paperback team like Eileen Kreit and Krista Asadorian, who package the book with great grace.

Small Damages will be released by Penguin as a paperback on July 11th, and include this gorgeous stepback page. I am so grateful. I'll be launching the paperback in Old Town Alexandria, VA, and would love to see you there.

New News: Small Damages has been named a 2013 Carolyn W. Field Honor Book by the Pennsylvania Library Association.

July 27, 2013, 3:30 - 5:00 PM
Launching Small Damages paperback/Memoir Workshop
with Debbie Levy
Hooray for Books
Old Town Alexandria, VA 

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Invisibility: Andrea Cremer and David Levithan/Reflections

This is how it happens:  I write an adult book that Laura Geringer discovers and reads; she gets in touch.  For a year Laura and I talk about how ill-equipped I feel I am to write books for young adults.  A conversation in a Philadelphia restaurant changes everything; I am persuaded to try.  I write what will become several books for Laura, and in the midst of story development, copy editing, cover design, and publicity, I meet Jill Santopolo—utterly adorable, fashion savvy, super smart, wildly well-organized, and Laura's second in command at Laura Geringer Books/HarperTeen, where I will write four books, one of them (The Heart is Not a Size) being Jill's very own.  Then one day Jill calls to say that she is headed to Philomel to join a children's book empire carved out by a man named Michael Green.  I'd really like Michael, Jill says.  She hopes I'll eventually meet him.

(She is right.  And I do.  Facts made true in reverse order.)

A few years later, I see Jill again, this time at an ALA event, where she slips me a copy of Between Shades of Gray and whispers two words in my ear:  Tamra Tuller.  Jill and Tamra are, by now, colleagues at Philomel, and Tamra edits the kind of books I like to write.  Jill, looking trademark gorgeous, encourages me to read Ruta Sepetys' international bestseller of a debut novel as proof.  I do.  Again, I am persuaded.  Not long afterwards, I have the great privilege of joining the Philomel family when Tamra reads a book I've been working on for ten years and believes that it has merit. Jill has opened her new home to me, and I am grateful.

What happens next is that Tamra moves to Chronicle and I, with a book dedicated to her because I do love her that much, move to Chronicle, too.  What happens next is Jill and I remain friends (Jill and I and Michael and Jessica, too (not to mention Laura)).  Which is all a very long way of saying how happy I was to receive two of Jill's newest creations just a few weeks ago.  Last night and early this morning I read the first of them.  It's called Invisibility, it's due out in May, and it is co-authored by Jill's fabulously successful Philomel author, Andrea Cremer (The Nightshade Series) and the big-hearted author/editor/sensation/Lover's Dictionary Guru David Levithan.

I hear David Levithan—his soulfulness, his tenderness, his yearning, his love—when I read this book. I hear Andrea Cremer—her careful and credible world building, her necessary specificity, her other-worldly imagination.  It's a potent combination in a story about a Manhattan boy whom no one in the world can see.  No one, that is, except for the girl who has moved in down the hall—a girl who has escaped Minnesota with a brother she deeply loves and a mother who cares for them both, but must work long hours to keep her transplanted family afloat.  Cremer and Levithan's Manhattan is tactile, navigable, stewing with smells and scenes.  Their fantasy world—spellcraft, curses, witches, magic—is equally cinematic and engaging.  The love between the invisible boy and the seeing (and, as it turns out, magically gifted) girl feels enduring, and then there's that other kind of love—between Elizabeth and her brother—that gives this story even greater depth and meaning.  The parents aren't nearly bad either (not at all).

What it is to be invisible.  What it is to see and be seen.  What it is to know there is evil in the world and that any strike against it will scar and (indeed) age those who take a stand.  Invisibility is a fantasy story, but it is more than that, too.  It's a growing-up story in which courage, truth-telling, sacrifice, and vulnerability figure large, and in which love of every kind makes a difference. 

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Remembering Ghosts in the Garden (with a huge thank you to Ed Goldberg) and Small Damages

I had only just returned from Florence and was still adjusting to the hours and the lack of pasta when Ed Goldberg, now a long-time friend, read my fifth book, Ghosts in the Garden, and shared his thoughts on his blog, Two Heads Together.  Ed is the kind of guy who never shouts and will not boast and does not stomp his feet or pop his bubble gum to get attention.  Only yesterday did he whisper in my ear:  Beth, I read that book.

And so he did, reinvigorating for me, in his thoughtful, surprising way, a book I wrote when I fully believed I was writing my last.  Writing is hard on the psyche—not making the books (I am dangerously addicted to the making of books), but living with them when they are out in the world.  They're not going to please everyone, nor should they.  Some will say that kindly, some will say it cruelly, some may veer from the truth, some may hurt people you love. You have to live with that, when you write books, and in writing Ghosts, I felt myself fading, vanishing toward another life, searching for another art to believe in. 

That was too many books ago, but it was a time I remember well and a feeling to which I often return. Ghosts in the Garden is a wandering, wondering book. I remain a wanderer and a wonderer, never precisely sure.

Just as Ed whispered in my ear yesterday, Jessica Shoffel, my beloved Philomel publicist, wrote to share the news that The Repository, a newspaper out of Canton, OH, had celebrated Small Damages as a novel "Worth Your Time."  Michael Green, Philomel's head honcho, wrote something Michael-ishly funny, after that.  But we're not telling.  Not a chance.   

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Small Damages sells to France, is buoyed by friends

The inimitable Michael Green sent word earlier today that Small Damages has been bought by the French publishing house La Martiniere Group, for a paperback release.  This makes me very happy—and warrants a snowflake dance.  (The snow had already started its rumba-tango outside my window when Michael's note pinged in.)

At nearly the same time I learned that author (!) and blogger Danielle Smith, pictured here to my far left, had nominated Small Damages for a Cybils Award in Young Adult Fiction.  Moments later, Florinda Pendley Vasquez, whom Danielle and I are flanking in this BEA photo, wrote to let me know that she cast a write-in vote for Small Damages in the YA Fiction category of the 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards.

I feel enormously blessed by all of this, but mostly I feel blessed by such friendships.  Those are what carry us through, on the good days and the lesser ones. I never lose sight of my fine friendship luck. 

Thank you.

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The Small Damages Launch Party: Radnor Memorial Library, September 12.

My books are never quite yet real books to me until I get to share them with Pamela Sedor of the Radnor Memorial Library and my own Main Line community.  Pam brings cake.  Pam (a knock-out international-class rower, by the way) orders punch.  Pam dresses in high but somehow still understated fashion, shines like a star, gives me a hug, and I stand up there and read.  I read from a book I have loved, a book I have inevitably struggled with, a book that I do want to share with my friends.  This is my chance to share my book with my friends.

That book, this sweet season after summer, is Small Damages, a book that has been humbled by kindnesses from near and far (beginning with Tamra Tuller's yes, long ago, and fortified by Jessica Shoffel's care).  For more about this book and the journey it has taken since its release on July 19th, please visit this dedicated Small Damages page.

So join us, if you can, on September 12, 7:30 PM, at the Radnor Memorial Library.  The details are here, in this poster Pam and her team created. 

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In Leavittville: A Small Damages Conversation (and my love for Philomel)

I wanted to find a pair of cowgirl boots for my friend Caroline Leavitt, to thank her for making room for me on her roost today, but the best I could do was this sign, photographed in Nashville four years ago, which sat (you'll have to believe me) right near a cowboy/cowgirl boot store.  Why I didn't think to photograph the boots themselves is beyond me.  What is not beyond me, at this moment, is gratitude.  For Caroline's friendship.  For her own talent.  For conversations we have had in public and in private as we both journey through this writing life.  I don't even know how Caroline got an early copy of Small Damages, but she had one.  She's in the midst of writing a brand new book, and she made time to read it.  Then she asked me excellent questions, the kind of questions one who knows another well can ask.  I answered them all here.

Among the things we discussed is how much I love Philomel, and how I made my way to this great place to begin with.  I extract a small fraction of our conversation below, but hope you will visit Leavittville for more.

Philomel is exquisite.  At Philomel I have a home.  There I have never felt like a fringe writer, a secondary writer, a marginal, will-she-please-fit-a-category, we’ll-get-to-you-when-we-get-to-you writer.  Michael Green, Philomel’s president, is a most generous person, and correspondent.  Tamra—beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, embracing—approached the editing of this book, the design of its cover, and the preparation of it for the world with the greatest care, and in the process we became great friends.  Jessica Shoffel, a wildly wonderful and innovative publicist, wrote me a note I’ll never forget after she read the book and her devotion to getting the word out has been unflagging, sensational.  The sales team got in touch a long time ago and has stayed in touch.  And on and on.  

But no, I never knew I would shine.  I don’t think of myself as a diamond or a star.  I never think in those terms.  I just keep writing my heart out.  And when you are collaborating with a house like Philomel, when you are given room, when your questions are answered, when you are given a chance, there are possibilities.

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two birthdays: a son's, a book's

The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday.  He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor.  He had a full head of thick, black hair.  He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight.  The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.

There's no accounting for a mother's love.  There's no math that will contain it.  The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.

That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law.  We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls.  We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows.  We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars.  We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville.  We watched the nuns flutter by.  We saw children playing on rooftops.  And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table.  He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments.  He said, "Believe in yourself."

I don't think there would be a Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.  Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today.  That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.

An unforgettable moment in time.

To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.

Cake is now being served for all.

The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great) Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive Serena Agusto-Cox.

From Pam:

It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read novel that makes you want to stand on top of a building and read the prose aloud to those walking below. Words that make you feel human and humble in the most gorgeous way.

If I could read Small Damages over and over again just like it was the first time I would never read another book again. This post is less of a review and more of a plea. Please go to your bookstore, or your library and bring this book home. Make yourself a glass of iced tea and sit in the sun and imagine that you too are in Spain and imagine the scents of Seville all around you while you read.

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Out of the Easy/Ruta Sepetys

The dignity of Ruta Sepetys is telegraphed from afar. It's in the books she writes—the international sensation Between Shades of Gray and now (coming in February 2013) Out of the Easy.  It's plain as day in her interviews, her commentary, her web site, her broadcast segments.  And if you ever have the chance to meet her (and I'm lucky; I briefly have), it's all right there in her face.  Ruta isn't a writer simply and only because she wants to be a writer.  She's a writer because she has something to say.

She's a writer, too, who knows the value of deep research—the liberating and liberalizing ways that rooting around in both personal and world history, in the files of the Soviet secret police and the murky streets of the historic French Quarter, in old maps and and the catalogs of Smith College, in the workings of all kinds of watches will, when pondered long enough, when tacked and quilted, generate story.  Research, particularly historic research, can be hard to master and harder to contain.  Ruta makes it look easy.  What she knows never trumps the many things that she imagines.

I spent today lying in a steamy east-coast house, circa 2012, reading Ruta's delectable new circa 1950s New Orleans novel.  Often I forgot just where I actually was as I slid into the dream, drifted in and out of the old bookstore (and the chatter, always smart, about books), had a good old walkabout in the brothel (equal parts gaudy and opulent), and fell in with Easy's seventeen-year-old heroine, Josie.  Josie has found her way despite her mother's poor profession, witless selfishness, and fancy for bad men.  She's a spitfire, an I'll-do-it-myself-er, a girl walking around with a pile of lies but without a dent in her actual morality.  She's the favorite of the wily, big-hearted madam known as Willie.  She's loved by two boys—Patrick, her co-worker at the bookstore, and Jesse, a beautiful boy with a mysterious past—not to mention a whole lot of poor souls who make her tattered life rich.  Josie's mother's on the lam and Josie's in trouble, and there will be murder, mayhem, lies, sacrifice, and choices before this story is through.  There'll be a whole lot of color and New Orleans twang, a rip-roaring cast, and, always, Ruta's intelligent sense of humor, not to mention instructions from Dickens.

Easy, which is a Tamra Tuller book, which is to say a Philomel book, which is to say the product of a remarkable book family headed by Michael Green, sounds spectacularly like then (the details are so right, their webbing-in so clever), but it resonates for now.  It's going to generate a whole lot of book love when it debuts next winter.  

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this is a picture of people I love

Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel: Philomel.

That's all I have to say.

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Publishing Perspectives Conference: the day that was

If I am too exhausted to state with any inch of eloquence how grateful I am for today—for being included in a well-run, truly substantive, inviting conference, for sitting on a panel among greats, for meeting, at long last, the delightful Jenny Brown, for spying on Roger Sutton's socks, for a chance to hurry through a loved city's streets, for an excuse to visit the extraordinarily wonderful Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo, for the opportunity to meet the funny and fun and winning Lauren Marino—if I am too exhausted, might I at least share these two images of a conference I won't forget?

Thank you, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives for making this day what it was.  For making me a part of it.

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a video thanks, and the Small Damages jacket reveal

The Small Damages jacket reveal and a big thank you to all of you ... all offered up in less than two minutes.

Check out the Mood T-shirt.

smoking!

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Mood, Memphis, Shubert, the Big Apple, the A plus, the book jacket: the day in pictures

On our way to "Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?).  Oh, this was a great thing to do.  Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt.  Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby.  All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?):  I stood among the vapors of Mondo and Austin. 

"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother.  I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir.  I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.

Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned.  It's gorgeous!  It's debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me.  And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches."  Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.

On the bus home from NYC, our son called.  He's an extremely happy kid.  No, not a kid.  He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week.  "What did the professor say?" I asked.  Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.

"Well," he said.  "He actually called it awesome."

"Awesome," I repeated.  "Wow. Was there more?"  I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut.  (Obviously he's a better person than his mother, but I've been saying that since the day he was born.)

"He said it wasn't just persuasive but innovative and inspired."

"Innovative!  Inspired!  Well, that must feel good."

"Yeah."  

"Can I see it some time?"

"If you want to."

If I want to.  Jeepers, I want to.

Today is Palm Sunday, April Fool's Day, my birthday.  There will be no client work undertaken during the next several hours (for any clients who may be reading).  There will be church, and then I'll take a drive to Clay's Creative Bakery and buy a couple of cupcakes.  I will eat at least one.  I will write Berlin in the afternoon.  I will figure out how to photograph the Small Damages jacket.  I will or will not take a walk, depending on the weather.

Peace.

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Small Damages: the first interview (conducted by the remarkable Kathryn Erskine)

I talk a lot about how much I love Philomel, Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jill Santopolo, and Jessica Shoffel, not to mention the amazing sales and marketing team—but hey, it's not without good reason.  Among the many gifts of working with this house is the sense that I have joined an active, loving, functional family.  These are people who care.  These are people who read your books when they arrive and who send you notes throughout the process—notes that you cling to in the midst of hair-tossing winds.

Among the many gifts that Tamra has given is introductions to two of her own writers—both of whom were heroines of mine long before I ever thought I'd meet them.  One is Ruta Sepetys, whose Between Shades of Gray is a towering international success; Ruta and Tamra were just in Lithuania, for example, meeting with the prime minister about that very book.  The other is Kathryn Erskine, who isn't just the National Book Award winner for Mockingbird, but a woman of such abiding curiosity and abundant imagination that when you ask, What are you working on these days, Kathy?, you get a series of gorgeous history lessons and a few foreign phrases thrown in to boot.

Both Ruta and Kathryn kindly read Small Damages and contributed their words to the back cover.  A few months later, Ruta wrote to say it would be fun to find a way to do an event together (imagine!) and Kathryn asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview for Book Hook, an email newsletter written for parents, homeschoolers, teachers, librarians, and grandparents.  The answer to Kathy's question was pretty easy (yes), and today I share the link to our conversation.  This was the first interview I'd done for Small Damages, and it was an honor to have had the conversation with Kathy.

I share a snippet below. You can find the whole by going to this link and then downloading the February/March 2012 edition. Between now and then, I share the photo up above from one of my many trips to Seville.  That gorgeous kid is the boy I love.  In a few months' time, he'll be a college grad.  I dedicated Small Damages to him, because it was this young man who, at so many junctures in his life, would sit and let me read aloud from a book that challenged me greatly; he was the one who listened.  Write about the living, not the dead, he said one day after I had read a funeral scene.  With his words, my story turned.  So did my future.

Kathy: You really captured the mood of sultry, sun-drenched Spain. Can you tell us about your Spanish travels?

My husband, who was born and raised in El Salvador, has a far-flung family. His youngest brother lived in the south of Spain for years, and so we visited a number of times. Seville became a city that I could walk alone, discover on my own, a city I loved and love still. We would also drive out to the countryside. During one excursion, I met one of the best known breeders of the fighting bulls of Spain. I set SMALL DAMAGES in a cortijo very much like the one we visited. Miguel is in some ways patterned after that heroic breeder.

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Profiling Alane Salierno Mason, my first editor, for Publishing Perspectives

My journey into the land of books began in the way that most things begin with me—by braving myself away from the margins.  I had written in secret for years and without any "proper" literary education.  I had not met my first real writer—Fae Myenne Ng—until I was already a mother.  By the time I finally figured out what writing workshops were and what they might teach me, I couldn't enroll in any of them until I somehow wove them into family vacations. This I did, spending time with Rosellen Brown and Reginald Gibbons in Spoleto, Jayne Anne Phillips and William Gass in Prague, and Jayne Anne Phillips once more at Bread Loaf.

When I sent my unsolicited manuscript to Alane Salierno Mason at W.W. Norton—added it to what must have been a staggering slush pile—I had already been told that my work was too "literary," that it was unlikely to ever sell more than 3,000 copies, and that I should either look for something else to do or change my relationship to language.  Alane didn't say those things to me.  Instead, she called me on my birthday with the news that my first book, a memoir, would be edited by her.

Alane, then, was my introduction to book publishing.  She walked me through the streets of New York City and made sure I made the train home on time.  She introduced me to the Rose Room of the New York Public Library.  She sat with me over the course of many meals, was there for me throughout the National Book Award reading and ceremony (pictured above), and bought two more of my books—a memoir about marriage and El Salvador, and a memoir that called out for parents everywhere to give children more time to dream out loud. 

I have since read and reviewed many of Alane's books on this blog.  I have watched her harness her passion for international literature into the widely respected publishing and education venture, Words Without Borders.  I have read her own beautiful essays, and her reporting in Vanity Fair.  I have cheered as one of her books, The Swerve, went on to win the National Book Award.

A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail conversation with Alane about her life in books, and about the state of international publishing.  That story has gone live today at Publishing Perspectives and can be found here. 

To read my other profiles for Publishing Perspectives, please follow the links below.  For two more photo memories from a night I shared with Alane in 1998, go here.

Transforming Children's Book Coverage at the New York Times: My conversation with Pamela Paul

Success is when the world returns your faith:  My conversation with editor Lauren Wein

Between Shades of Gray:  The Making of an International Bestseller

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My interview with Pamela Paul, the NYT children's book editor

We'd been in London until late last night, celebrating the christening of this enormously special little boy.  Among the packages we'd carried with us was this beguiling deluxe pop-up version of The Little Prince, the Antoine de Saint-Exupery story that has never lost its magical glean. (We also brought Felix The Man in the Moon, the gorgeous new book by William Joyce.)

Pamela Paul, who was named the fifth children's book editor at the The New York Times earlier this year, has an innate understanding of the importance of books made for children and has radically transformed their coverage since taking on the role.  I began to notice the changes some time around April.  The conversation was deepening.  The reportage was growing broader.  There was more children's book talk, not just on the weekend, but during the week.  Melissa Walker was having her New York Times Book Review moment.  We were being treated to behind-the-scenes conversations that I found frankly thrilling. There were more back-page essays exploring the influence of early books on readers.  Who, I wondered, was behind all this? What magic was she working behind the scenes?  What else could the rest of us expect to see as the weeks and months went on?

A few weeks ago, Pamela Paul graciously agreed to a conversation about this and more for Publishing Perspectives.  I'm honored today to share that conversation with you and to suggest that our future is in extraordinary hands.

To read my other pieces for Publishing Perspectives, please click on these links:

Success is when the world returns your faith:  My conversation with editor Lauren Wein

Between Shades of Gray:  The Making of an International Bestseller

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the two-book deal with Philomel

 

It is with tremendous happiness—and a sense of terrific good fortune— that I share the news that I will again be working with Philomel on two new books, a deal that was announced earlier today in both Publishers Weekly and Publishers Lunch.  My experience throughout the editing and pre-launch of Small Damages (due out July 19, 2012) has been unparalleled.  My respect for Tamra Tuller (my editor), Michael Green (Philomel president), and indeed the entire Philomel team—and author list—cannot be quantified.  My appreciation for their kindness and care, their intelligence and wisdom, and their faith in me is unspeakable.

It is a remarkable thing to be believed in by people this smart and this good. 

Here is the deal as Publishers Lunch noted it earlier today.  My thanks to my agent Amy Rennert for helping to make this happen, and for being there through all the years.

National Book Award finalist and author of more than a dozen books including the new YOU ARE MY ONLY and the forthcoming SMALL DAMAGES, Beth Kephart's two untitled novels, the first of which introduces a teenage graffiti artist living in Berlin in the early 1980s on the eve of a daring escape, to Tamra Tuller at Philomel, by Amy Rennert at the Amy Rennert Agency (World).

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The Kaleidoscopic Vision of Ruta Sepetys

I have written here of the extraordinary kindness and straight-through goodness of the people of Philomel—Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jill Santopolo, and, last night, the dearest note from Colleen Conway.  I have written of how lucky I am to find myself in their company with the forthcoming release of Small Damages.  I have written, too, about the important and hugely acclaimed novels that Tamra has edited, and of the writers she has brought into her fold.

But have I told you how kind those writers are?  How generous both Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) and Kathryn Erskine (Mockingbird) have been with me?  Perhaps I simply haven't had the words.

I still don't have the words. But this morning I invite you to visit with Ruta Sepetys by way of her remarkable, whimsical, internationally seasoned web world.  It's like being in Manhattan in the snow, Christmas season.  Like finding yourself inside a kaleidoscope.  Like talking to a friend.

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Juno meets Under the Tuscan Sun: The Small Damages Catalog Page

This has been a day full, gigantically full, and only just now did I realize that mail had come in.  The Penguin Young Readers Group May - August 2012 Catalog was among the packages that found their way to my desk.

On page 188, I discovered this.  A full and glorious page devoted to Small Damages, and a headline that put a big smile on my face.

Thank you, Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, and Philomel. What is the quality of publishing house beyond first-class, top-rate, dear?  If there is one, that is what you are.

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