Hot off the press!

Actually it's still on the press.  I'm hopeful for Wednesday, when the printer is promising me a stack of glossy, freshly bound copies of a little something I've been working on lately.

A children's book.

A children's book!

Little did I know that when I became a parent over eight years ago, I would slowly, undeniably fall in love with children's literature.  It started with Sandra Boynton; then grew to Dr. Seuss; included Russell Hoban; then Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. B. White, Mo Willems, Tomie de Paola, Christopher Paul Curtis and a host of others soon followed.

Then I developed a heart for Detroit and all its gardening potential.  Over 100,000 vacant lots!  That's a lot of tomatoes.

Combine that with a Food And Farm Tour of the city, a blog referral, and a sharp pencil, and the result is a sweet little picture book about a little girl who moves to Detroit, misses her garden back home, gets some help planting in a nearby vacant lot, and finds joy in urban gardening.   And it even slips in a definition of compost.

That was about a year ago.  It was only recently that I came upon an all-Michigan publishing house, that seeks to connect Michigan authors and illustrators, and employs a unique (and healthy!) business model to put more profits in the hands of the authors.  (I have learned that typically the author only receives 10% of the cover price of most books.)  A talented illustrator has really transformed this little book into something special.

If you'd like to see it in person, come on over to either of the Book Launch Events that I've got planned.  One will be the Lunasa Open House Market at the Washtenaw Food Hub on Tuesday, May 8th.  The other will be the Mix Marketplace in downtown Ypsilanti on Saturday, May 12.

The book will also be available online through my publisher in the next week or so.  In the meantime, check out my author bio.

So, I think that officially makes 2 goals met, of the 3 for this year.  I'm still putting the 3rd into motion and hope to have news about that by summer.  It's also around that time that I'm hoping to discover our first egg, proof of goal number 1.

I hope you are as charmed by this book and its topic as I am.  And I hope to see you at the upcoming events!