A Busy April

No more whining! I have nearly finished my scheduled school and bookstore visits. All things considered, everything went very well. I only had trouble getting to one place, a bookstore appearance, and the manager was just lovely about it. The school presentations have gone well so far, even though I had to do four different presentations in one day. By four different I do not mean that I had to do the same presentation four times. I do that all the time. No sweat. I mean that I was speaking to kids in such a wide range of grades that I had to come up with new material for some of them. Then I did an evening talk on the history behind The Hero of Ticonderoga. I've done that before, but not often so I did have to do some planning.

What I have learned this spring: A. from talking to a bookstore owner and a young woman who joined her PTA rep mom and me for dinner, it appears that teenagers do read YA. Conventional wisdom suggests that they don't, that twelve and thirteen year olds read YA and older teenagers read adult fiction or nothing at all. Which just goes to show you can't believe everything you hear. B. After reading the first few pages of Prince Whiskers (have I mentioned that here?) to two kindergarten classes I now know I need to make some changes. What's more, I know what some of those changes should be. and C. Grade school kids really aren't terribly interested in the Puritans and Enlightenment philosophy. Which is so sad, because it's fascinating!