Happy Monday Everyone!
I hope you all had lovely weekends and happy celebrations of Father's Day!
I am happy because I get to start off the week by giving out prizes to some of my favorite people :)
You will recall that on Friday, we celebrated the 100th posting of Perfect Picture Books, and by way of a little thank you, I had 9 highly acclaimed picture books to give away randomly to 9 lucky staunch supporters.
And here they are!!!
I will list their names, their fabulous blogs where they have faithfully posted tons of wonderful picture books, and the picture book they won:
Barbara Gruener at The Corner On Character wins: On A Beam Of Light: A Story Of Albert Einstein
Joanna Marple at Miss Marple's Musings wins: Warning: Do Not Open This Book
Julie Rowan-Zoch at Julie Rowan-Zoch - Writing Illustrating Reading Children's Books wins: Mitchell Goes Bowling
Stacy Jensen at Stacy S. Jensen - Writer & Designer wins: Gaston
Vivian Kirkfield at Picture Books Help Kids Soar wins: Mr. Wuffles
Joanne Roberts at Bookish Ambition wins: The Dark
Beth Stilborn at By Word Of Beth wins: Journey
Carrie Finison at Story Patch wins: This Is The Rope: A Story Of The Great Migration
Laura Miller at Laura Miller - Children's Book Writer/Illustrator wins: The Watermelon Seed
Winners, please email me with your snail mail addresses so I can get the books mailed out! And if any of you want to exchange what you won for any reason, let me know and we'll see if we can work it out :)
Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to the winners and to everyone else who has faithfully posted Perfect Picture Books, visited the many wonderful blogs each week to read and comment, and generally supported the whole Perfect Picture Book project! You guys are what makes it all work! :) Like I said on Friday, I wish I could give everyone a prize!
Alrighty!
Now that we have completed the happy task of giving out prizes, let's talk summer plans a bit, shall we?
I've got a busy summer ahead.
Full classes in Making Picture Book Magic for June, July, and August (for which I am exceedingly grateful!)
A full queue of picture book critiques to do through mid-July (for which I am also exceedingly grateful!)
A house full of family - my kids for the whole summer, my sister and her family for about 4 weeks (again - so happy :))
Another summer of college visits (tons of fun, but on the road again... :) Ohio, Maine, etc... lots of driving and time away from home)
Life in general, and, oh yes, my own writing which I'm supposed to get around to from time to time :)
I am not one to take blog breaks lightly. I like consistency, and I so value all of you and appreciate that you make time in your day for me and my blog. I worry (a LOT) that if I drop off the grid for a while, you'll all find someone else's blog to go hang out at and I will miss you terribly!
But I think it's unrealistic of me to pretend that I'm going to manage blogging with any kind of regularity this summer.
So here's my plan (such as it is and subject to change because you know me and plans :)):
Would You Read It Wednesdays will continue uninterrupted through the end of July, because they are all already scheduled. I do so hope that you'll continue to stop by and help our brave pitchers!
Perfect Picture Book Fridays are on hiatus until September 5 or 12 (depends when all my kids go back to school :))
I may post on sporadic Mondays if and when I have something to share.
But I will be completely on a blog break for the whole month of August.
I know. Hard to imagine me shutting up for a whole month, but there you have it :)
I hope you guys won't mind. I figured you all might actually like a break too - we all have things to do in the summer that involve being away from our computers, and I know a lot of people do step away from blogging. I think a little break will help us all feel refreshed come September.
I had all kinds of plans... another season of Summer Short & Sweets (but Tracey Cox is running Summer Sparks which is kind of the same thing)... a writing contest in August... something new and different which I haven't thought up yet... but I think I've reached my limit for a bit and my family is going to disown me if I don't pay a little attention to them :)
So I hope you'll all continue to visit on Wednesdays through July, as well as on whatever other random days I happen to post, and I hope you'll forgive me for the sparse posting, and I hope you'll all have wonderful summers full of fun, family, time outdoors, productive writing, and enjoyable reading!
Please feel free to voice your thoughts on the matter below :)
Have a magnificent Monday, everyone! :)
