Friday, April 26, 2013

On the Road Again!

I have been on the road a bit lately. I visited the Gates Foundation in Seattle to open the exhibit, Let Every Child Have a Name, and was at the Western Washington SCBWI conference in Redmond to talk to - and draw with - children's book authors and illustrators, and to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, to speak about measles during World Immunization Week. The first day home I visited the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn and shared pictures and stories with first, second and third graders.
I have been fed and feted, seen such sights as the gum wall in Seattle and the Emergency Control Room at the CDC, spent time with esteemed Lions and Mac Barnett, and admired the drawings of artists aged 5 to... well... it wouldn't have been polite to ask.

And now, tomorrow I am off to India. My daughter, Olive and I will be accompanying the Measles and Rubella Initiative and Unicef on a mission to Uttar Pradesh to observe routine immunizations.
I have never been to India, but have wanted to go for ever. Mark Twain called it,
India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition... the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. 
I can't imagine all the things we'll see, but we'll be documenting with camera and pencils, and I'll try to post some of it here, (and on facebook and twitter.)




Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Downtown Literary Festival



I'm delighted to be part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival, presented by McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore. Click on the poster above for event details. I'll be telling some stories from the subway and signing copies of Missed Connections around 4pm this Sunday, April 14. Hope to see you there. Oh, and if you are one of the people who emailed asking if I might ever be in a place where they might also be, and if one of us (you) had the subway poster and the other (me) had a pen, if I might sign the said poster, then Yes! This could well be one of those times. 
It would be my pleasure.