Oh, There Once Was a Blog from Nantucket...

From author Mitali Perkins comes the following contest:

In honor of my birthday, I'm emulating Bilbo Baggins and giving away a bag of my favorite savory, nutty, spicy Hot Mix and a signed copy of Rickshaw Girl. To win, you must supply the best 9-syllable last line of advice in one of two limericks.

Smart people that you all are, I'm sure you'll come up with multiple answers to her samples. Me? Not so much. Rhyming is best done when you're playing a game of Balderdash at 2 a.m., have had a touch too much to drink, and you've started rhyming all your answers with a kind of way-hey gleeful abandon. Or is that just me?

Speaking of Bilbo Baggins though, check this out:


I got this from Saints and Spinners and I believe that what we may have here is the very first Hobbit home I've seen that I actually like. Especially if it was made for kids. I mean, when you compare it to this and this, there is no comparison.

Less Work for Me

I'm flattered. People have asked me in the past to come up with a list of the hottest kidlit women I know and I've been slow to do so. I did that Blue Rose Girls posting, but that was as far as I went. Fortunately someone has picked up the slack. Kirby Larson of Hattie Big Sky fame has established her own Hot Women of Children's Literature. Lady #1? You know her well. A very good choice too.

Send any and all recommendations you like Kirby's way.

Fun With Covers

You guys know my penchant for cool covers. I love them so much that whenever I hear that a friend is going out of the country I beg them to buy me a Harry Potter from whatever region they're visiting, just so I can have a new cover to look at. Current kooky cover winner of a nation: Italy. Them guys is craaaazy.

When I was a child my aunt wrote a little YA (it was called something else then) and sometimes she'd send us the cool worldwide covers of her book. It was with great pleasure then that I saw a recent posting on The Fire Escape by delightful, charming, sweet-as-sugar-on-the-vine author Mitali Perkins. In it, she compares the various covers of her first book The Sunita Experiment. That first cover is the one we have in our children's room in paperback form. Right between Lynn Rae Perkins and Julie Ann Peters. Good company.