Join me on May 3 at the Coral Bay Club in Atlantic Beach, NC with the Beaufort Historic Site! Your ticket includes a signed copy of SUMMER STATE OF MIND, a three-course brunch, and a book talk. Only a few tickets left. We’d love to see you there!
Happy National Libraries Week to the Places that Changed My Life!
This is a VERY special week. National Library Week! And I love libraries. I know, huge surprise. So, of course, I have to tell you a story about libraries. And Book It. And personal pan pizzas.
When I was a little girl, we went to the library almost every single week because keeping me in books was a full-time endeavor. (Another surprise, I know.)
When I was in fourth grade, I wanted to win the Book-It Challenge. Do y’all remember that? You know, personal pan pizza, bragging rights? And I needed a big book to read to win the top prize. The librarian walked me over to a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I remember thinking: That’s a big book about a tree. Sounds boring.
Reader, it was not. It was life-changing. Francie Nolan and I were the same age, growing up in totally different eras, in completely different circumstances. But we were thinking about the same things and wondering the same things about our futures.
That was the first time I realized the power of story to connect us to people we’ll never meet, in circumstances we will never experience. And it changed my life.
Plus, I won the prize for most pages read. That personal pan pizza had never tasted so sweet. Well, salty? You know what I mean.
I always say that when you’re a kid, the world is a place of no. No more dessert. No staying up past bedtime. No TV today. But the library is a place of YES. Yes, you can check out four books. Yes, you can visit outer space or the Outer Banks in the pages. Yes, yes, yes.
Thank you, libraries and librarians for the life-changing work you do, for introducing readers like me to new worlds and making us the best versions of ourselves. We love you!
AND, I’m going to be visiting some libraries on my SUMMER STATE OF MIND tour! Visit me at the Rowan Public Library–the very site of the A Tree Grows in Brooklyn incident–on launch day, May 5. And Coronado Library in Coronado, CA on May 12. Sneads Ferry Library May 16, Kershaw County Library on May 18.
Until then, happy National Library Week and special shout out to my bestie librarian and Friends & Fiction Partner in Crime, Ron Block!
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