#SIBA16, #TRIO, And RUBY LEE AND ME Dolls!

Fifteen books were selected to be part of TRIO 2017, and I'm excited for RUBY LEE & ME to be among them. You can see all fifteen books chosen at the SIBA website:

For each book selected, a songwriter penned an original song inspired by the book, and a visual artist created a work of art. The Trio exhibit debuted this past weekend at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance conference in Savannah.

Artist Jennifer NyBlom created dolls that depict the main characters of my book, Ruby Lee and Sarah Beth:

I couldn't love these dolls more! The musician Chris Clifton wrote a song inspired by Sarah and Ruby's story. I haven't heard the song yet, but am really looking forward to it.

A big thank you to Shari Smith, the heart, soul, and mastermind behind TRIO!

ALA 2016--RUBY LEE & ME

Lots of cool things have been happening to me! I attended the American Libraries Association Conference for the first time ever.

This is a photo of me signing with my friend and fellow Scholastic author, Augusta Scattergood. Several of our Florida SCBWI colleagues gathered to show their support, or maybe just to ham it up!

And I had to snap a photo of my new book beside Augusta's new book!

And this is a stack of our books ready for signing!

In other cool news, I toured the TRIO exhibit at ALA. I was especially interested because RUBY LEE & ME will be part of TRIO in 2017. That means my book will be given to a visual artist and a songwriter. Using RUBY LEE & ME as inspiration, the visual artist will produce a work of art, and the songwriter will pen a song, thus completing the TRIO. The exhibit will debut at the Southern Independent Booksellers' Conference in Savannah.You can learn more by clicking on TRIO.

And finally, I had the opportunity to meet a Louisiana family whose son has been assigned RUBY LEE & ME for summer reading. Here we are at Inkwood Books:

That's all the news that's fit to print. Happy Fourth of July and Happy Summer Reading!