Boys and books - memories

We were talking on FaceBook about boys and books and it kicked off a memory:

When I spent a week doing author presentations about writing books (featuring my books) to various Chicago Libraries as part of their Summer Reading program in the early 2000s, at one library the audience was full of boys from a summer camp. Boy Scout or some other camp.

  As usual, after discussing my other books, when I got to discussing picture books I began by reading Busy Toes which was created by three of us - Mary Bowman-Kruhm, Claudine Wirths, and me under the pen name of C.W. Bowie.  (Yes, I'm the W part.)  Then I talked about how we discussed what to write next and began thinking of things we could do with our fingers. At this point in my presentation I always ask the children in the audience to think of things we could do with our fingers.

Well!  Those boys kept coming up with outrageous suggestions.  I kept my face serious and receptive (while giggling inside) and kept saying, "Ya know, we just didn't think of that one."  Meanwhile the librarian at that branch in the back of the room had turned around to face the back wall -- she was either so embarrassed, or was also giggling.  She worried I'd be offended by their suggestions.   :)

Not to worry.  I'd been a Children's Librarian too long not to be aware of the things boys can think up.

Memories of snow

 With all the snow (and rain) hitting the west coast, I was remembering when we were hit with lots of snow in Maryland:  

We got over 5 feet of snow once just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. It was not fun shoveling out. My husband would wake up every few hours to start up the snow blower to make a path to get the latest layer off the sidewalk from the driveway to our house. But when daylight came, we had to use hand shovels to clear off the driveway all the way up a small hill to the road. Then the snowplow would come by and block our driveway entrance with ice and snow and we had to break through that - several times during the day. 

Not to mention that my boss kept calling, trying to convince me to get to work, but it went to the recording because we were outside shoveling. When we took a break, we listened to her messages, most of which were her YELLING -- Wendie! Pick up! Pick up the phone! Stupid lady had some strange idea that we could hear her telephone recording (which we couldn't - it was being recorded) and were purposefully ignoring her. She had made it to work because she lived near the bay and the branch library where I worked was near the bay and had gotten much less snow.