Dear friends:

Welcome to the end of this week! Better days are coming. Happy New Year to all and I hope you got some restorative time during the holidays, although who knew one would need it quite so quickly?

Lori and Richard and I took our annual sojourn in Provincetown, which was far busier than is usual for the end of December, an apparent result of many of the summer vacationers sticking around through the pandemic. MUST BE NICE. Still, we avoided the crowds by staying in our cozy hilltop rental to read books (I just can’t quit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache despite the eye-rollingly frequent descriptions of food and the clueless gay jokes made at the expense of the couple who runs the inn responsible for most of the food porn moments. Really, “Ethel Merman” hasn’t been a punch line among my people in decades) and watching movies (the new Godfather III revision, The Holiday, and our New Year’s Eve tradition, Moulin Rouge!). Lori and I also got in a couple of good runs, although I was defeated for a third by rain plus mask-mist. (Has anyone else tried the shaving cream on the glasses trick? It doesn’t work.) And we ate very well — like queens, Louise Penny would want me to add, I’m sure.

Here back at the ranch, the January/February issue of the Horn Book Magazine is out and on its way to you; don’t forget you can also still read it online for free (for now). I keep sending people to Oge Mora’s BGHB “acceptance speech” therein, because it’s brilliant, and don’t miss her cover collage. We are hard at work on March/April (Fountas & Pinnell, grrr; diversity in nonfiction, yay) and May/June (Special Issue: Latinx children’s literature in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pura Belpré Award, ¡hurra!). Why, it seems like July/August, with its Newbery/Caldecott/CSK speeches, is just around the corner. There is still time to place your bets.

Love,

Roger