Teachers As Authors? Write On!

Today I'm excited to join a few fellow educators live online with Josh Tovar to talk about being teachers and authors! Click {here} to join Dr. Seuss In The School live at 5 pm (CST) or to watch at your leisure later.

It's always so energizing to gather with a group of like-hearted folks

and find out more about their journeys while sharing a bit of mine.

Speaking of our journeys, this past Tuesday, on what would have been my mom's 88th birthday, we got word that our new picture book,

Knit Back Together, has earned a Mom's Choice Gold award.

That feels so happily serendipitous to me;

if only Mom were here to hear the news in person.

I've been thinking a lot about her lately, probably

because of how much she loved birthdays.

Perhaps also because the book features those slippers,

the ones that Grandma Larsen started but never finished.

The ones that I finished 15 years later and gave to her

so that she could wear them in her final years at the home,

her feet warmed by her mom's very own handiwork of heart.

I've had some lovely author visits this week, and one of the questions was, "What was your favorite part about writing this book?" Too many to count, really, especially collaborating with McKenna, but my answer was how close it made me feel to my grandmothers and to my mom.

In a beautiful gesture of kindness and love, Mrs. Dixon gifted me with a plate of Monster Cookies that she'd made from the recipe in the back of our book. How thoughtful is that? We all ate them together as I shared the book's backstory and then read it aloud to them.