Tag Archives: Awesomeness

Cool Stuff, News, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE

Trees and Tours and News, Oh My!

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First, let me start with the Oh, My! Has it really been this long since my last blog post? Wow. Yeah, I guess it has. I’d like to blame my lack of communication on being really busy and that’s part of it, but mostly I didn’t have enough cool stuff to share. Until now.

So. Where to start.

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Cool Thing #1 – SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE has been named an Honour* Book by the fine kids of Manitoba in their Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Awards. Cool, right? MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch won, which is awesome and so well deserved, but my book was one of two honour books (with UNGIFTED by Gordon Korman). I can’t begin to tell you how amazing this is.

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Cool Thing #2 – As you may know, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE is a Red Maple nominee in the Ontario Forest of Reading program. Another huge honour for me and my little book about ghosts, boys and bras. So I was afforded the opportunity to do a little bit of touring last week up to North Bay and Parry Sound to celebrate at their Festival of Trees. I didn’t take near enough pictures, but here are a few. I always have a great time hanging out with book-lovers of all kinds and I have to say that this event made me feel like quite the rock star. Look at all those fans! Thank you to the Near North School District for making this happen. What a great couple of days!

 

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And this isn’t even the whole crowd. I was told there were about 1600 kids there. Amazing!

Here’s a smaller crowd of SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE fans who came to my presentation and sat in the front row (check out their cool SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE buttons!). <3!

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Here I am with fellow Red Maple nominees, K.L. Armstrong and M. A. Marr (LOKI’S WOLVES: THE BLACKWELL PAGES)

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And a group photo with the rest of the authors (K.L. and M. A. had to leave early) and some of the event organizers. Thank you Near North!

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Also, I was fortunate enough to do some school visits in Sudbury on my trip. Check out the cool artwork some kids did to tie in with my book:

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Here I am with Ms. Vigna’s ASD class. These kids were so great and engaged and asked some of the best questions. I loved meeting you!

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AMAZING! Thank you so much to these great kids. I loved meeting you all and chatting about books.

There will be more Forest of Reading events next week and I’ll update again once I have more pictures.

Until then, thanks for making it to the bottom of my post. Here’s your reward, a dancing chicken:

 

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*These cool things are happening in Canada, so I’ll be using my Canadian spelling here.

Contest!, Cool Stuff, Guests, Random

The Arizona Road Trip of Awesome Giveaway!

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Hi. I hope you’re doing great! I’m heading out for a ROAD TRIP OF AWESOME this week. What makes a road trip awesome, you ask? Well, let me share some cool stuff I’ll be doing:

  1. Going to A.S. King‘s event at Changing Hands in Tempe Arizona on Thursday (if you’re in the area, you should absolutely come!)
  2. Meeting my online friend, Amy Dominy
  3. School visits with the amazing Jennifer Nielsen* (meep! I’ve never done school visits before – hold me!)
  4. Going to the Tucson Festival of Books on Saturday – have you been to this? It’s AMAZING and while I’m there, I’m on panels with Lisa McMann, Heather Brewer, Jennifer Nielsen (hopefully she’s not sick of me by then) and my other online friend, Linda Urban. If you’re in Tucson and coming to the festival, make sure you find me and say hello – here’s the schedule.
  5. This is just the busy, writer related stuff – I’ll also be doing some serious R&R and of course, book buying.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – Congrats to Melissa Roske!

But before I go, I have to pack for the trip. Of course I only have so much room, but I have like a zillion Sharpies! How to choose? YOU are going to help me. Pick from the colors below and tell me why I should take that color of Sharpie to sign books with. Just leave a comment below and you’re entered to win a copy of YOUR CHOICE of SIGNED/PERSONALIZED book by one of any of the authors listed above (or you could get some extra brownie points and pick a signed personalized copy of my book, but if you don’t I understand. I mean, look at those other authors!).

Sound like the easiest thing ever? Yeah, pretty much. And if you tweet, Facebook or otherwise tell your friends about it, I’ll give you an extra entry, just make sure you let me know in your comment what you’ve done. Because I’m not rich, this will have to be a North America only contest (sorry friends from Norway and other lovely places abroad!). AND you only have until this Wednesday, March 6 at 23:59 EST to enter so I can pick a winner and organize the prize.

Here’s what you’re choosing from?

Left to right: bronze, Kermit green, black, teal, sky blue, purple, red, orange, indigo, pink, forest green. Don’t forget to tell me WHY you picked that color.

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Okay, ready? GO!

*Jennifer also has an event at Changing Hands on Wednesday, which I will unfortunately not be able to attend, but if you’re in the area, go and say hi for me. Tell her I’ll see her Thursday.

KidLit Cares

Auction #81 – MEGA Signed Copy of Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner and Small Medium at Large by Joanne Levy

Welcome to KidLit Cares, an online talent auction to benefit the Red Cross relief effort to help communities recover from Superstorm Sandy. KidLit Cares was started by the very awesome Kate Messner, but I’m taking over Round 2. Agents, editors, authors, illustrators and other generous people have donated various services to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with donations being made directly to the Red Cross disaster relief fund. You can read more about KidLit Cares here.

Now, on to the auction!

Kate Messner started these auctions, but I have the honor of closing them, so for this, the final auction, I wanted to do something a little special. Okay, a lot special.  So I got a copy of her Eye of the Storm and got as many authors as I could to sign it.

I kind of want to keep this myself, but I will do the right thing and give it up as originally intended. And then I thought, what’s better than 1 mega signed book. Yep, 2 mega signed books. So I’m throwing in a copy of Small Medium at Large, too and it’s also signed.

Awesome people who signed these books (besides Kate & myself):

R.J. Palacio, David Levithan, Lisa McMann, Eileen Cook, Libba Bray, Marla Frazee, Shannon Hale, Terry Trueman, Maggie Stiefvater, Megan Miranda, Matt de la Pena  and others (books will come with a full listing of signatures).

Opening Bid: $30

This auction closes at 10pm Eastern Standard Time on November 28. Any bids placed after that time will be void.

If you’d like to bid on this auction, check the current high bid and place a higher bid by leaving your name and bid amount in the comments, along with some way to contact you (email, FB or Twitter…I’m not fussy.) Winners will be notified when the auction ends and should be prepared to make an online donation to the Red Cross Disaster Relief fund in the amount of the high bid at that time.  After you’ve made your donation, you’ll forward your receipt to me, and I’ll put you in touch with the person who donated the service you won so that the two of you can work out the details about how and when.   All services will be provided at the convenience of both the person making the donation and the auction winner, but this should happen within three months of the auction’s end unless something else is agreed upon by both parties.

Good luck and thanks for your help!

Tip: if you’re bidding, you may want to subscribe to the follow-up comments, so you can get notice of future bids. Subscribe via RSS on the right. —>

Contest!, Cool Stuff, News, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE

Small Medium at Large Book Birthday Two Weekstravaganza!

Hi and welcome to the Book Birthday of SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE!

It’s finally here! SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE releases June 26 in Canada and July 3 in the U.S.!  To celebrate, I’m all over the internet this week and next, talking about my brand new book baby.

Want to join in the celebration? Sure you do!

Check back, as I’m going to be adding links to new posts for the next two weeks as they pop up. And stay tuned as I get ready for THE BIG FINALE, when I’ll be giving away LOTS OF STUFF! Like books, and swag and maybe a t-shirt and sock monkey. You’ll just have to wait to see, but, yes, that’s right – there will be a Prize Pack of Awesomeness!

Until then, if you’re itching to win something, I’ve just posted the July Street Team check in.

And there are lots of giveaway opportunities below.

IMPORTANT: If you happen to buy a copy of SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE (thank you!), save your receipt for the big finale–I’ll tell you why soon!

Blogs I’m visiting – thank you so much to everyone who has hosted me! I have had a lot of fun doing interviews and posts:

Class of 2k12 – Talking about my release day(s)

Red House Books – Book memories

Get Lost In a Story – Interview

Cari’s Book Blog – Interview

The Nerdy Book Club (Giveaway!) – Guest post

Watch. Connect. Read. (Giveaway!) – Interview and dorky video

Sharpread – Review

Ex Libris (Giveaway) – Interview

Project Mahem – where I talk about writing funny

Reading Away The Days (Giveaway!)

Moonlight Gleams – Lilah’s guest post

InkyGirl Interview

Lavender Lines Q&A

Sarvenaz Tash’s Blog (Giveaway!)

A Thousand Wrongs (Giveaway!)

Cool Stuff, News, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE

Sometimes Cool Stuff Happens To Me

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Some cool stuff happened that I’d like to tell you about.

First, blogger extraordinaire, Evie from Bookish surprised me on Twitter with this tweet: Book Thong I made for @JoanneLevy and am planning to trade it for some extra cupcakes at her awesome Launch:

HOW COOL IS THIS? Right? Evie, thank you – you’re getting a big hug AND extra cupcakes for this. I can’t wait to see the real thing (AND YOU) at my launch.

So that’s one cool thing, how about another? Yep. So here’s the review from Kirkus, those people who even call themselves “The world’s toughest book critics.” You know I bit my nails to the quick when I was waiting for this one, don’t you?

But I needn’t have worried!

Yadda, yadda, yadda…stuff happens (I’m paraphrasing) and then… “In a fresh, frank and funny first-person voice, Lilah tells of her ghostly encounters from the perspective of a normal Jewish girl coping with abnormal powers. Droll middle school drama.“

Amazing, right? FRESH, FRANK and, most importantly, FUNNY! I’m over the moon at this good stuff.

Thank you Evie, Kirkus and the Universe for this awesomeness, and for you, who I can share it with.