Hot NPR Action

Skimming the blogs. Minding my own business. Then, suddenly, I stumble on ShelfTalker and see that she has written the following:

Mark Peter Hughes shared some uber-cool news with the Association of Booksellers for Children's list-serv today, and I am thrilled to be passing that news along!

First let me say that Mark has (as of March 30th) quit his job to write full time. As if that wasn't brave enough, he is currently planning a seven-week road trip with this family to travel across the country visiting bookstores (mostly independents) and promote his most recent novel, Lemonade Mouth, which I've mentioned previously. Here is where we come to the biggest piece of news: National Public Radio has asked Mark to record "audio postcards" during his road trip -- "audio postcards" that will be broadcast to the 12 million regular listeners of All Things Considered!! Wow, wow, wow! How fantastic is that?!

She goes on to explain how one goes about proposing this kind of thing. It's ironic that I heard about this today since I had just learned too about Jon Scieszka's recent obit for the great Lloyd. Alexander. Apparently noses come into the conversation.

Obituary: Lloyd Alexander

From the child_lit listserv:

Dear Community,

There is sad news. Lloyd Alexander died this morning. He was under Hospice care and was at home in his own bed where he wanted to be.

His wife, Janine, to whom he was married for sixty-two years, died two weeks ago - also at home. (He met and married the French Janine in Paris at the end of WWII.)

His last book, THE GOLDEN DREAM OF CARLO CHUCHIO is out in galley form. Holt publication date is August. It is vintage Alexander.

Lloyd said about CARLO, "I have finished my life work."

For more information check out SFScope. Also, Roger Sutton has linked to a rather charming letter from the Horn Book vaults here.