March-April 2010

Al Capone Shines My Shoes is a nominee for the 2010 Indie Bookseller Best Middle Grade Book of the Year Award!

I’m delighted to be on a list with the 2010 Newbery winner, When You Reach Me and the 2010 Newbery Honor Books: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and When the Mountain Meets the Moon and the 2009 Newbery winner Neil Gaiman and the 2001 Newbery winner Richard Peck. I’ve met the ever-dapper, always charming Richard Peck before but I haven’t ever met Rebecca Stead, Jacqueline Kelly, Grace Lin or Neil Gaiman. What fun!!! Thank you Indies! My heart belongs to you!

Al Capone Shines My Shoes is a nominee for the 2010 Northern California Indie Bookseller Best Children’s Book of the Year.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes is on the CCBC Best Children’s Books for 2010 list. I love you CCBC!

Al Capone Shines My Shoes is in the 2010 Kansas State Reading Circle Catalog for the Junior High School list. Thank you Kansas!

(Click here for a complete list of awards for Shoes.)

I’m looking forward to my trip to North Carolina to speak at the North Carolina Reading Association Conference and to Wisconsin to speak at the Fox Cities Book Festival. Later in April I’m off to Los Angeles to speak at the Whittier College Children’s Literature Conference.

When I’m not speaking, I will be hard at work on the third Al Capone book. Or I will be doing last minute revisions to No Passengers Beyond This Point, due out in January 2011.