O festive day!

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For recent book news, check the A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and The Foliate Head tabs above. A new page for Thaliad will be up as soon as pre-orders begin.

Ignore me otherwise--today is my daughter's 21st birthday, and so there is much wrapping and decking and lunching and caking and welcoming of visitors and so on to do!

Congratulations to the finalists--

Guest room decor, 2012

Much of my year was taken up with reading (and sometimes rereading) 316 books for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature, along with panelists Judith Ortiz Cofer, Susan Cooper, Daniel Ehrenhaft, and our fearless leader, Gary Schmidt. I am honored to have been asked to judge, and I enjoyed being part of a harmonious group. I am looking forward to meeting the others at lunch on November 14th and then attending the awards banquet, when the winner will be announced.

The five finalists were announced earlier this morning. I am glad and happy for them. And I wish for all of those nominated by their publishers much pleasure in words in the years to come.

The five finalists

Stacks. And stacks!

In alphabetical order by author:

William Alexander, Goblin Secrets

Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach

Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down

Steve Scheinkin, Bomb

Eliot Schrefer, Endangered

The Chartwell Day, 1

I'm belated in fulfilling a promise (hello, facebook!) to tell about my lovely day that began with my husband handing me a feather from a Mozambiquan lilac-breasted roller. In the afternoon, we abandoned the three children and wandered out of town, ate lunch at a café where we had been once before (curried chicken on homemade raisin bread and a double chocolate cake for me--any day is better with chocolate!), and then rambled on to a garlic festival and craft fair, a modest and country-quirky affair. We picked up honey and bread, garlic and herbs, a tigered maple serving spoon and fork.

On the way home, when I thought the day over except for the pleasure of seeing autumn leaves, we paused beside the road; my husband wanted to peep into a pair of windows always decked out with scenes and toys and figures. Already burning an autumnal golden and falling from its height in the the sky, the sun shot brightness onto the glass that made it hard to see.

In one window stood a goat cart, heaped with harvest. In another, Charlie Chaplin presided over a small dining table with mostly animal diners. While I stared, a cat poked its head through the gap between the backdrop curtain and the wall.

A pleasant White Rabbit sensation crept over me. We had gone to look, and now something looked back at us. While I was communing with the white cat, Michael drifted over. He said that a hand had parted the curtain at the goat-cart window and gestured for us to go around the house and come in . . .

The dining table, Mr. Chaplin at left.

A cat peers out at me.

The goat cart with harvest and animals.

And did we go through the portal and find out what lay inside? Of course.

Moment

Rain on the autumn leaves . . . Inside, my husband hands me a feather from a lilac-breasted roller, plucked from the ground in Mozambique. Given the bird, it might be almost any color, but this one is black, cobalt blue, and sky.

For new poems, see the prior post. For 2012 books (novel and two poetry volumes), see the A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and The Foliate Head pages. A Thaliad page will be up soon.