UPCOMING APPEARANCES:

I'll attend the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, California, this summer, and will be signing at the Simon & Schuster booth (good old Booth 2449!) on Sunday, June 29, 9 to 10 A.M. More on the ALA trip is on the blog, here.

Later in the summer I'll speak at the Mazza Museum at the University of Findlay, in Findlay, Ohio, on July 15; and give a reading at the Fish Tales, Tugs and Sails Festival in New London, Connecticut on July 26. Watch this space for more information.

UPCOMING BOOKS:

Coming in September from Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum is The Hinky-Pink, a story by Megan McDonald. The Hinky-Pink is set in Florence, Italy, a city which a dedication to verisimilitude obligated me to visit. While there I collected valuable research material and also enjoyed two lunches in as many days at Trattoria Mario on Via Rosina, where I ate the rarest pork chop that I have ever seen, and where I wish I was having lunch right now.

At the printer now is my next book as author and illustrator, Moonshot, coming from Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum in April of 2009, in time for the 40th anniversary of, well, you can guess. More on Moonshot is on the blog.

Recently completed, but not set in Italy or outer space, is a set of early readers by Patricia Lakin about two spirited hamsters, Max and Mo. Those books are being released by Aladdin/Simon & Schuster.

And then, I'm happy to say, there's more to come: drawings for another great book with Avi at HarperCollins — Poppy and Ereth, the concluding volume of the Poppy Stories — and Ballet For Martha, an exciting picture book by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan about three remarkable American artists that I will be illustrating for Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press.

Stay tuned!