Children's books debut on Tuesdays, and this past Tuesday was a book birthday for a bumper crop of next-year's award winners--Mapping the Bones, Jane Yolen's 366th (!!!) published book, The Flying Girl, The Field, The Poet X--March 6th was a big day. It was also the book birthday of The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani, which features a wee quote from me on the back (so does Mapping the Bones) right next to a quote by Renee Watson, or, as she's now known, Newbery Honor Winner And New York Times Bestselling Author Renee Watson. (I'm pretty excited for Renee. Can I call you one of my #Newberysisters? Loved Piecing Me Together, and loved meeting you at NCTE.)
OK. Sorry. That was a lot of name/title dropping in one paragraph. What I want to do today is tell you how I came to blurb The Night Diary. Because honestly, I wasn't gonna. Until I started reading.
Namratha Tripathi is the editor of The Night Diary. Her office is right next door to that of my main editor, Jessica Garrison, and Nami and I have worked together on some small things and shared meals and I like her tons. So when she emailed and said, I've got this book you'll love, I didn't want to turn her down. But only because I like her tons. It happened to be right as I was about to embark on two weeks of travel for the release of The War I Finally Won, and I was overwhelmed, and somewhat anxious, and I did not need to be reading something about Pakistan, for heaven's sake, from an author I'd never heard of, let alone as an electronic copy, which I dislike, and really for just about anyone other than Nami or Jess I would have said, no, sorry, I wouldn't blurb the New Testament if Christ himself asked me right now.
But it was Nami, so I said, ungraciously but with as much grace as I could muster, well, send it, maybe, we'll see.
Then on one of the very first flights of my trip I was seated in the bulkhead, so had to put all my bags in the overhead storage, and I was the window seat with two large persons in the middle and the aisle. Somehow I forgot to grab a book out of my bag (some sort of Regency romance, I'm sure, the type of book I read when I'm stressed) but I did have my phone, because I was texting family members until the boarding door closed and I had to switch the phone to airplane mode.
So there we have: bulkhead, large impediments to the aisle, bags overhead, phone. Later in the trip I probably would have just gone to sleep. But I sat sulkily looking at my mostly-defunct phone, and I remembered the story Nami sent me. I dislike reading on my phone even more than I dislike electronic manuscripts in general, but desperate times call for strange bedfellows, or something like that. I pulled it up and started reading. I'll be honest--I planned to stick with the novel for exactly as long as it took for the flight attendants to click off the seatbelts light, at which point I was going to make my seatmates get up so I could rummage in my bag.
Then the plane landed. And I was annoyed all over again. Because I had to get up, and I wasn't finished yet.
The very last thing I expected from The Night Diary is that the story and voice would utterly captivate me, especially when I was so determined not to be captivated. But they did.
So go buy it, hey. Or get it from your library. Worth the trip.
OK. Sorry. That was a lot of name/title dropping in one paragraph. What I want to do today is tell you how I came to blurb The Night Diary. Because honestly, I wasn't gonna. Until I started reading.
Namratha Tripathi is the editor of The Night Diary. Her office is right next door to that of my main editor, Jessica Garrison, and Nami and I have worked together on some small things and shared meals and I like her tons. So when she emailed and said, I've got this book you'll love, I didn't want to turn her down. But only because I like her tons. It happened to be right as I was about to embark on two weeks of travel for the release of The War I Finally Won, and I was overwhelmed, and somewhat anxious, and I did not need to be reading something about Pakistan, for heaven's sake, from an author I'd never heard of, let alone as an electronic copy, which I dislike, and really for just about anyone other than Nami or Jess I would have said, no, sorry, I wouldn't blurb the New Testament if Christ himself asked me right now.
But it was Nami, so I said, ungraciously but with as much grace as I could muster, well, send it, maybe, we'll see.
Then on one of the very first flights of my trip I was seated in the bulkhead, so had to put all my bags in the overhead storage, and I was the window seat with two large persons in the middle and the aisle. Somehow I forgot to grab a book out of my bag (some sort of Regency romance, I'm sure, the type of book I read when I'm stressed) but I did have my phone, because I was texting family members until the boarding door closed and I had to switch the phone to airplane mode.
So there we have: bulkhead, large impediments to the aisle, bags overhead, phone. Later in the trip I probably would have just gone to sleep. But I sat sulkily looking at my mostly-defunct phone, and I remembered the story Nami sent me. I dislike reading on my phone even more than I dislike electronic manuscripts in general, but desperate times call for strange bedfellows, or something like that. I pulled it up and started reading. I'll be honest--I planned to stick with the novel for exactly as long as it took for the flight attendants to click off the seatbelts light, at which point I was going to make my seatmates get up so I could rummage in my bag.
Then the plane landed. And I was annoyed all over again. Because I had to get up, and I wasn't finished yet.
The very last thing I expected from The Night Diary is that the story and voice would utterly captivate me, especially when I was so determined not to be captivated. But they did.
So go buy it, hey. Or get it from your library. Worth the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment
The comments on this blog are now moderated. Yours will appear provided it's not hateful, crass, or annoying--and the definition of those terms is left solely to me.