Gen X, 👀 ! Were you a punk, a preppy, a Jane Fonda acolyte? Did you have a perm, a flattop, a Mohawk? Could you solve a Rubik's Cube in under two minutes? Do you want to share all that wild '80s joy with the kids in your life? Check out My Little Golden Book About the 80s, available TODAY!

Yes! In my mind, AI = scam. "If you can’t get it together to write a simple business communication by yourself, what confidence should I have about any other aspect of your business?"

If you love the 80s, here's your chance to share that magical decade with kids in your life--My Little Golden Book About the 80s is coming out next week! I had the BEST time researching and writing this book. It was a dream project. And Spencer Wilson's art? Totally awesome.

My inner Bridget Jones is very happy right now. For years, I've read about Milk Trays in Brit Lit books, and I finally bought one on this trip to Ireland. It feels so decadent! But it was on sale at Tesco, so I kind of had to, right? And no, I can't . . . won't eat the whole thing in one sitting.

Because bookstores are the best place to hang out. ❤️

Shout out to Story Garden in St. Pete! Congrats on making the list in your first year!

I went out to hear some music last night and my dog's boyfriend was there! She usually plays a little hard to get with him, but they had a real date night, side by side, begging for treats, enjoying the show. ❤️ 🐕‍🦺

Thinking of "crud" and the time I went to a young kids publishing meet-up. Someone from Harper asked about my job. I proudly told her I was an assistant editor at Grosset & Dunlap, a mass market imprint. She literally turned up her nose and said, "Oh. You do merch." I was gutted.

we all in his business have a choice. we can strive to make the literature better by opening doors and lifting people up, or we can diminish and demean it, make it smaller. I believe the first centers the reader, the second centers ourselves.

In conjunction with Children’s Book Week, May 4–10, Chronicle is once again opening its slush pile to unagented children’s book creators

Yesterday I took a tour of the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. These photos are from the Readers' Room. Isn't it beautiful? @nlireland.bsky.social

I was just talking to a friend today about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - new books every month, totally for free, for kids ages 1-5. My son was part of the program - this is a copy of the letter that came with his last book, right after his 5th birthday.

Nobody is going to steal your idea for a novel.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Any Chronicle authors out there? I just logged into the Statement Portal for the first time and I can't seem to find sales figures anywhere, just the dollar amount that I've been paid in royalties. What am I doing wrong?

Dublin has so many fantastic bookstores, but this might be my favorite! Books Upstairs has a great selection of books and a wonderful cafe. (Ironically the books are downstairs and the cafe upstairs.) I recommend the carrot cake--and love the no laptops policy. They ask you to read a book instead.📚

This is an encouraging post, and true in my case, too. I've had manuscripts that I've put in a drawer until something changed--editors, the market, or me.

This is a great way to celebrate the return of flamingos to Florida! 🦩🌴 www.popsci.com/environment/...

I know @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social keeps a list of freelance editors for hire. Does anyone know of a similar list of freelance designers? A friend of my sister is looking to self-publish a picture book. www.ericsmithrocks.com/blog/tag/Fre...

This is a really great post. I'm bookmarking it to share with people who ask me about self-publishing vs. traditional publishing.

I've been in many amazing overstuffed bookstores all over the world, but I've never seen anything like Red Books in Wexford, Ireland. ☘️📚

Ellen was a force. She was one of the first people I knew in kids books, when I was working at a fellow indie kids bookstore and only dreaming of someday working in NYC for a publisher.

Ask Me Anything sessions with Connie Hsu, Alvina Ling, or Rotem Moscovich? These are amazing auctions. Connie was my editor for Besos for Baby and Marta! Big and Small and remains my dream editor to this day.

The best way of describing someone who’s all talk and no action that I’ve ever heard in the UK, by far, is “they’re all wardrobe and no Narnia.” * read on for fun ways of saying “all talk and no action” in other languages (a thread)

This interview is very funny. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Introverted editor friends, be warned! These signs are all over Dublin trains. 😉 I mean, I know the Irish are super friendly, but this is a little extreme.

😂

RT this with your home river. The Hillsborough River, Tampa, Florida

I was so happy to walk into a store in PA while Christmas shopping and find a Richard Scarry print vending machine! Of course, I got one--the toothpaste car. A week later, I was passing by and got another. Pickle car! Best quarters I've spent in a long, long time.

Not just good . . .

No cheating. Reskeet with the most recent picture of your pet.

I'm so happy--today is the book birthday for Abrazos for Baby! 🎉🍾🎉🥂 Blanca Gomez's art is the BEST. I feel so incredibly lucky to be paired with her. (She did the art for Besos for Baby and Sonrisas for Baby board books, too.) It's so pretty, I just want to hug the book. Abrazos, libro, abrazos!

I noticed recently that in the analytics section of my website, suddenly over half of the traffic I'm getting is coming from China. Until a month ago, 95% of the traffic was from the US. Anyone else seeing this? I assume it's AI scraping my site. Is there anything that can be done?

Last night, I was hanging out at a Tampa brewpub with friends when a surprise visitor showed up. This little owl flew in through the rolled up garage door and took up a perch right by the bar. Maybe it came to invite someone to Hogwarts. 🦉🪄🦉

What I reposted earlier may have been a misleading article (see below), but I was still super happy to finally figure out how to turn off predictive text. It drove me crazy to have Gmail guessing what I wanted to say in my emails. Now it's GONE.

Oh, this dog! ❤️ (Basically reposting this so I can go back and look at it over and over on my profile page.)

I had a blast at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge this weekend! Thank you to everyone I got to meet at my panel, program, and signing and thank you to the young readers who voted for Acorn Was a Little Wild as their favorite picture book of the year!

Technically, this is a book of spells.

Love this! Watch the whole thing. 😊

My inner 8-year-old got super excited when I opened Impossible Creatures and saw the absolutely beautiful illustrations. 😍 More of this please!

I love that if I like a post on BlueSky, I know my feed won't be flooded with similar posts. I liked a few #NoKings posts on IG and now that's all it shows me. I check Denis Philips for hurricane reports on Facebook and now it feeds me every two-bit midwest weather forecaster. Thank you, Bluesky!

$41 million: The amount of money we’ve raised for indie bookstores since 2020. $0: The amount of money Amazon has raised for indie bookstores since 1994.

Is there any warmer welcome than going to a new city and a new bookstore and finding lots of copies of your books? Thank you so much, Austin and @bookpeople.com!

I'm visiting Austin for the first time soon! I can't wait to go to @bookpeople.com because I've heard it's such a wonderful bookstore. 😊 📚 But what else should I do? Where should I go? And what should I eat?

Thirty years ago tonight, a monumental event: the first installment of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE premiered on BBC One. @cristinabeltran.bsky.social & I have watched the five-hour series . . . how many times? A dozen? Two dozen?

The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Past 25 Years | Slate

Apparently today is World Car Free Day! Tonight I'm going to ride the FREE #1 bus to downtown and back. What should we do there? 1) Check out the '80s bar. 2) Walk the Riverwalk. 3) Get really bad Tampa pizza. (New Yorkers, you have no idea how lucky you are!)

Thinking about the idea that you need to do something 10,000 times to become good at it. With so many kids using AI for school assignments, and even to write texts, where will the next generation of writers and editors come from?

Students in Louisville, Ky., are checking out library books at record rates after their public school district instituted a cellphone ban | WAVE

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