Happy News! State Book Awards!
I found out this morning that NEW SHOES is a nominee for the South Dakota Prairie Bloom Award for 2017-18. This means that it has been chosen as one of ten best books for this age group and children all over South Dakota will be reading and discussing it in class next year. What a wonderful thing.
How nice to start off my writing day with this news! State awards make me so happy. And often they have such great names, names I know now that my books have been nominated for them. Illinois has the Monarch Award–named after the butterfly.
Nebraska has the Golden Sower! It’s the perfect name for this agricultural state, and it makes me think of Willa Cather’s novels and of a farmer scattering seed.
I’m so happy that they “Read On!” in Wisconsin!
And nothing could be prettier than the name for the South Dakota Award, “Prairie Bloom”! On this rainy Massachusetts morning, I certainly wish I could see the prairie blooming in South Dakota, a state I have not visited yet!.
I looked at photographs to find one of the prairie blooming in South Dakota to add to this blog post, and wow! I have GOT to go visit Badlands National Park in South Dakota! Let’s keep funding our precious National Parks.
