Dear friends:

Happy Anniversary to me! Yes, Richard and I officially tied the knot* ten years ago today. And to continue in the same nuptial vein: congratulations to eternal friend of the Horn Book Katie Bircher, who got married** to her guy Wilber (who apparently has thus far successfully resisted Katie’s efforts to get him to change his spelling to more clearly honor E. B. White) last Sunday. It was a beautiful ceremony, splendidly officiated by fellow EFOTHB Shara Hardeson and attended by all of us (Cindy, Elissa, Kitty, Martha, Shoshana, and me) at the Horn Book along with our other former, much-missed colleagues Katrina, Lolly, and Jennifer. I’m glad my seersucker still fit.

Our move back in to new quarters at Simmons continues. It’s going to be…tight but I think we will enjoy being even more closely down the hall from Cathie Mercier and the children’s literature department and in the same building as the food coffee. I remain tickled that the name of the building we’ll be in, the main college building, is officially titled the Main College Building.

Elissa and Critter pulled together a “super-sized” Notes from the Horn Book with a back-to-school theme this week. I love the interview with Emily Jenkins (author of Harry Versus the First 100 Days of School) and her full-throated defense of the freedom to read: “first graders need a steady diet of excitement and comfort in book form. If they want board books still, if they want picture books, if they want chapter books that seem way too old for them, if they want New Yorker cartoons they can’t understand, if they want some badly written TV tie-in books, if they want superhero comics — get those babies for them from the library on the regular!” AMEN.

Love,

Roger

*Our first dance

**Katie and Wilber’s