Last week I attended my first virtual book launch, hosted by BookHampton bookstore, for my friend Theresa Trinder's picture book There Is a Rainbow, illustrated by Grant Snider. Theresa described her inspiration for the story, written in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown but looking ahead to brighter days: "It's the idea that right now something may be between you and your loved ones; or that something's very far from where you want to be." She made that narrative "something" a rainbow, also a nod to the rainbow art on display around the world during COVID.

Illustrator Snider (also an orthodontist!) guided us through a rainbow-making art project (I won't quit my day job), also confessing that he "borrowed" his kids' colored pencils to create the book's illustrations. His favorite part of the project was "being able to be in the world of the book – living the book" during this especially uncertain period of time. As the event's moderator described, the book left her feeling "calm and well taken care of."

There's nothing like being at an actual, in-person book event, but getting to "be" where you otherwise wouldn't was definitely day-brightening. 

For more books about COVID-19, see RLH's COVID Booklist from May 2020 and reviews of Brian Floca's Keeping the City Going and LeUyen Pham's Outside, Inside (also our cover) from the March/April 2021 Horn Book Magazine.