Q&A with Leah De Forest

  

photo credit amathiowetz

 

 

Leah De Forest is the author of the new novel Any Kind of Known Tomorrow. She is an editor at Bloom Literary, and she lives in Boston. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Any Kind of Known Tomorrow, and how did you create your cast of characters?

 

A: The book began with a realization: teenagers pulling away from parents is developmentally necessary, and hard. Both parent and child are grieving, in different ways.

 

At the same time, I was thinking a lot about displacement and belonging. Who gets to belong where, and why? In the very early drafts, I was thinking about that on an international scale (some of the characters were refugees). As the book evolved, the story became centered on Brooklyn, New York.

 

While dealing with the growing-away of her own daughter, Hadley Parris decides to take in a teenager—a situation I was interested in exploring because I was a ward of the State as a teen.

 

In the draft I finished in 2019, Hadley was struggling with a novel disease and the threat of a pandemic; when 2020 happened, I changed course to account for real-world events.

 

The characters are so real to me now that it’s hard to recall exactly how I created them! Iteratively is probably the best description. In their earliest stages they developed out of my interests/obsessions: mother-daughter relationships, questions of belonging, the endless mystery I see in how we each interact with the wider world.

 

As each character took shape, I thought a lot about pressure points: given the situation, what kind of character trait might create the most interesting problems?

 

And I always went back to the novelist Margot Livesey’s idea of character attitude: how does this character see themselves and their world? Once I had a solid handle on that, I knew I had a fleshed-out character.

 

Q: As you noted, the novel is set in New York City in 2020--how important is setting to you in your writing?

 

A: It’s hugely important. Reading offers the gift of meeting another mind in the quiet of the page.

 

To me, a big part of the pleasure of that is inhabiting another time and place—whether it’s a distant fantasy world, a historical time period, a culture I’ve never personally experienced, or a fictional version of last week. In this novel, of course, the setting informs some of the story’s central tension.

 

Q: The author Sarah Stone called the book a “moving account of survival and reinvention that shows both the costs and the unexpected gifts of living in an increasingly fragile world.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: To have someone as thoughtful and intelligent as Sarah Stone describe my work in that way? I think it’s marvelous, and I’m deeply grateful.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title comes from a line in the novel; until quite late in the drafting process, the book had a different, working title.

 

To me, the title signifies the kind of gateway space we all occupy in any moment: we awaken every day having made reasonable assumptions about what’s on the horizon, and move through the world, again quite reasonably, assuming ordinary things will occur. Mostly they do. But not always. To me, that’s one of the great challenges of being alive.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A new novel. I love big, baggy social novels with a love relationship at the center. That’s my vision for this new project.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I publish a craft newsletter, The Point of View Playbook, on Substack—it’s a resource for writers, a rolling list of POV examples and author interviews that I hope will be useful now, and as it continues to grow. So if you’re a writer working with POV (aren’t we all?), please check that out.

 

I’m also a senior editor at Bloom Literary, an online magazine that spotlights writers who published their first major work over the age of 40. We also publish original fiction and poetry. More about these and other endeavors at www.leahdeforest.net.

 

Thank you, Deborah, for all you’re doing to spotlight books and writers! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Nancy Schoellkopf

  

 

Nancy Schoellkopf is the author of the new novel Catherine Over Water. Her other books include Yellow-Billed Magpie. Also an educator, she is based in Sacramento. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Catherine Over Water?

 

A: Catherine Over Water is the story of a woman named Catherine who feels trapped in a kind of limbo ever since the disappearance of her daughter Sierra. She’s afraid to grieve because she thinks that would mean giving up. She wants to be strong but she comes across as angry and intolerant.

 

Then she meets a chatty young crow she dubs Veronica.

 

This story was inspired by two ideas that became linked in my mind.

 

The first came from my work as a special education teacher with children who have severe disabilities. I was reading a book about sensory integration disorders, which may affect anyone, but most often affects people who are on the autism spectrum.  

 

One of these issues is called face blindness, an inability to recognize even familiar people. I realized that happens to me sometimes, that I myself apparently have a mild case of face blindness.  

 

Around the same time, I heard a podcast about a group of ornithologists who captured and banded several crows on their university campus. Soon these hapless scientists were being attacked by crows—and not just the birds they’d banded.  

 

It appeared the crows not only remembered which humans had captured them, but they spread the word. The scientists felt compelled to don masks! Then they changed the focus of their study to facial recognition itself. It soon became obvious that crows excel in this area.

 

I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a seeing-eye crow as a support animal? A crow who might perch on my shoulder and whisper the names of people I didn’t recognize? Of course, such a crow would have to be able to speak, so I knew my story would enter into the realm of magical realism.  

 

But a woman with a support crow is a situation, not a story. I wondered for a long time what the two of them would do together. Finally the idea of a lost child came to me, and I started writing.  

 

Q: Can you say more about how you created your characters Catherine, Veronica, and Mari, and why you chose a crow as one of your protagonists?

 

A: Among writers there’s a question I learned not too long ago:  are you a plotter or a pantser? In other words, do you meticulously create your characters and plan out your plot before you begin writing OR do you write by the seat of your pants? Me—I’m more or less a pantser—I start with a vague idea and a prompt or two, and then I start to scribble.  

 

I wouldn’t say that I “create” characters, not really. I invite them into my story when I need someone to talk to my protagonist. I write and write, and if I’m patient, my characters will tell me about themselves.  

 

I knew my protagonist had a missing daughter, and I knew she had face blindness, but I didn’t know who she would be. I knew my other main character would be a crow, but I didn’t realize at first that she was going to be so young, so naïve, and yet also so very wise. This all evolved as I followed the two of them around.

 

Mari was the big surprise. I wrote her initially as a way to bring Veronica into Catherine’s sphere in a dramatic way. I thought she might fade away into the streets of midtown, but Veronica loved her and wanted her two human friends to come together. Soon Mari seemed to be driving the plot, and Catherine and I allowed this.  

 

I love allowing stories to evolve naturally. I see it as an outgrowth of writing as a spiritual practice. I feel a lot of joy that my intuitive process and my magical content are becoming aligned in this way.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: In my fictional crow community, the story is told that birds have a near-mystical relationship with air streams. No one may see the air, and yet it holds birds aloft; it allows them to fly.

 

As Veronica’s mother explains to Catherine, when a crow is flying over water, when she may no longer see the land she left, and the land where she is heading is not yet in sight, it may be a very scary time. But it is also a precious time, because this is when a bird will learn to trust in “The Stream” more than ever before.

 

Since the disappearance of her daughter Sierra, Catherine feels she’s been stuck in an unbearable state of limbo. Veronica and her mother help Catherine reframe her experience as a liminal time, when she learns to trust herself, and allows herself to be guided.

 

Q: The author June Gilliam called the novel “a down-to earth fable for our time.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love this description because I could see that my dear friend June had discerned the mythic themes that evolved as I was writing. 

 

I didn’t set out to write a story about climate change or the plight of unhoused people. I began telling a very personal story of one woman who had lost her daughter. But as Catherine led me on this journey, she met other women who had concerns for their own daughters. 

 

This led me to a larger issue of the loss of nurturing feminine energy. It’s always been women who have sought to create flourishing homes for their families and communities, not simply nice houses, but healthy environments to raise children, places with clean air, water, and food.  

 

To lose the feminine perspective is to lose our joy—just as Demeter’s creative energy is diminished when Hades takes Persephone underground. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m focusing on flash fiction right now—along with a lot of promotional material for Catherine Over Water. 

 

But I’m also in an exploratory phase, playing with the idea of a brewing rebellion in a dystopian society. Unbeknownst to the larger culture is that the rebellion is being led by a group of shape shifters, working in concert with creatures from the natural world.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am very grateful to Brooke Warner of She Writes Press, and to project manager Addison Gallegos; as well as the team at Book Sparks: Crystal Patriarche, Rylee Warner, Leilani Fitzpatrick, and Maggie Ruf.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Tony Castro

  

 

 

Tony Castro is the author of the new biography The Girl Who Would Be Marilyn Monroe. His other books include Looking for Hemingway. Also a journalist, he lives in Los Angeles.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write a biography of Marilyn Monroe?

 

A: In truth, I didn't set out to write another biography of Marilyn Monroe. There have been hundreds of books about Marilyn, including some very good ones. I became fascinated instead by the girl who existed before Marilyn Monroe did: Norma Jeane Mortenson, and for much of her childhood, Norma Jeane Baker.

 

I wanted to know how a frightened and frequently displaced little girl, growing up without a father and with a mother unable to care for her consistently, moving through foster homes and an orphanage, became perhaps the most recognizable woman of the 20th century.

 

We know the ending so well that I think it has sometimes obscured the beginning. Marilyn Monroe didn't simply appear one day in Hollywood. She was created, consciously in some ways, unconsciously in others, by Norma Jeane's childhood, her loneliness, her remarkable powers of adaptation, and her determination to become somebody whom the world could not abandon.

 

The Girl Who Would Be Marilyn is the story of that becoming.

 

Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about her?

 

A: The greatest misconception may be that Marilyn was somehow inevitable. We look backward at that extraordinary face and the white dress and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, and we imagine that this creature called Marilyn Monroe must always have been there.

 

She wasn't. Norma Jeane was shy, insecure, desperately hungry for affection and stability, and much more observant and ambitious than the "dumb blonde" mythology surrounding Marilyn would later suggest. She learned very early to study people and to understand what they wanted from her. That was partly a survival mechanism.

 

Another misconception is that her sexuality was simply something innate that Hollywood discovered and exploited. Norma Jeane participated very consciously in constructing the woman who became Marilyn Monroe. The walk, the voice, the hair, the clothes, even the name were parts of an identity assembled over time.

 

But beneath that construction remained the girl who had spent much of her childhood wondering where she belonged and whether the people she loved would still be there tomorrow. That's the Norma Jeane I wanted readers to meet.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I approached the book as a journalist as much as a biographer, going back whenever possible to contemporary records, interviews, archival material, photographs, accounts by people who actually knew Norma Jeane, and the enormous body of material that has accumulated around Marilyn Monroe.

 

The challenge with Marilyn isn't finding information. It's separating history from mythology. Her life has been retold so many times that stories repeated often enough have acquired the appearance of fact.

 

What surprised me most was the degree to which the adult Marilyn could already be glimpsed in Norma Jeane. Not the movie star, but the emotional architecture beneath her. The fear of abandonment. The longing to create a family. The ability to reinvent herself according to her surroundings. The enormous sensitivity to how others perceived her.

 

I was also struck by how precarious everything was. At several points in her young life, a different decision by an adult, a different foster home, a different marriage, even a different encounter might have sent Norma Jeane down an entirely different road.

 

Knowing what she became makes us think her life had a destination. Living it forward, as she did, there was no such certainty. That became one of the guiding principles of the book: to stop treating Norma Jeane as though she knew Marilyn Monroe was waiting for her.

 

Q: The author J. Randy Taraborrelli said of the book, “What emerges is a moving portrait of a young woman shaped by instability, longing, and an enduring search for love and safety.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: I think Randy captured the emotional center of the book beautifully.

I was especially pleased because he understood that this isn't fundamentally a book about celebrity. It's about a young woman's search for permanence.

 

Norma Jeane spent much of her childhood being moved from one place to another and learning that the people and circumstances around her could disappear. She wanted what most children take for granted: a home, security, somebody who would stay.

 

That longing didn't disappear when she became beautiful. It didn't disappear when photographers discovered her or when Hollywood did. If anything, fame eventually complicated it.

 

One of the tragedies of Marilyn Monroe is that millions of people came to adore her while some part of Norma Jeane continued searching for the much simpler thing she had wanted as a child: to feel safe and loved.

 

So, yes, I think Randy got it exactly right.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Several projects, which is usually how I get myself into trouble.

 

I'm completing work on Pancho: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tennis Legend Pancho Gonzales, my biography of tennis great Pancho Gonzales, which Bloomsbury will publish in June 2027.

 

Pancho is another fascinating and complicated American figure, a Mexican American kid from Los Angeles who became arguably the greatest professional tennis player of his era while battling both the establishment and, quite often, himself.

 

I'm also continuing my interest in formative biography, looking at iconic Americans before they became the people history remembers.

 

One of those projects is The Boy Who Would Be JFK, about the young Jack Kennedy: the sickly, often overlooked second son who grew up in the shadow of his seemingly destined older brother, Joe Jr., long before anyone imagined that Jack would become president.

 

What interests me increasingly as a biographer isn't simply what famous people did after the world discovered them. It's what happened before that, when nobody knew how the story would end.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Perhaps only this: I hope readers who pick up The Girl Who Would Be Marilyn because they are fascinated by Marilyn Monroe finish it feeling that they have met someone else. Norma Jeane.

 

There is an understandable temptation with an icon to interpret every childhood photograph and every adolescent experience as a preview of what is coming. I tried very hard not to do that.

 

The girl in this book doesn't know she will become Marilyn Monroe.

She doesn't know that people will someday analyze her photographs, imitate her voice, auction her dresses or argue about her death. She's simply trying to get through childhood, find somewhere she belongs, fall in love, create a home and imagine a future.

 

For me, that's where Marilyn Monroe's story becomes most human.

Before she became an icon, she was a girl trying very hard not to be left behind.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Tony Castro. 

Q&A with Joseph Coulson

  

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Joseph Coulson is the author of the new novel The Prince of Memphis. His other books include The Vanishing Moon. He is also a poet, playwright, and musician.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Prince of Memphis, and how did you create your character Aron Beale?

 

A: I wanted a fresh perspective on American pop culture, given that many writers and journalists have examined the topic, and I wanted to deal with the iconography of Elvis Presley in a unique way, as opposed to the well-known facts of the Elvis myth.

 

I’d also been thinking for a long time that a powerful symbol or mirror of the American experience is the arc of Elvis’s career, which I would sum up like this: an opening shot of musical invention and rebellion supercharged by rags-to-riches fame is eventually held hostage by a carnival grifter and Hollywood corporatization, ending in addiction and loneliness.

 

Were I to use that arc and make it a central metaphor in my novel—part of my take on pop culture and American culture writ large—then I would need a new point of view for dealing with Elvis.

 

So the character of Aron Beale began to take shape, first as the disavowed son of Elvis haunted by an absent father who is endlessly present, and then as the child of a Black mother, Clara Mae Beale, to further complicate his identity, and finally as young musician trying to make his way in a world largely determined by Elvis Presley, who Aron knows only as we do—a voice and an image heard and seen from afar.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I read the canon on Elvis Presley, especially Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick, but I also made several trips to Memphis and made repeated journeys to Sun Records and Graceland (Stax, too, and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel) and hung out in places that I hoped would give me a feel for Memphis as the birthplace of rock-n-roll—a magic that’s still there some evenings if you go to the right bar and try to get back to the streets as they were in the ‘50s or ‘60s.

 

What surprised even me, a lifelong fan of Elvis and many others from his time, is how much of that Memphis feeling is captured in the music that was made there—it’s an indelible sound, filled with equal measures of joy and pain.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between your characters Aron and Odelia?

 

A: Aron is looking for confidence and credibility, perhaps redemption, while Odelia is something of a time traveler, a young woman intrigued by a world she never knew, whose fascination seems to grow deeper as she falls in love with Aron.

 

They share much in common, but Odelia is sure of herself and direct, at times outrageously candid, so she supports Aron but won’t let him get away with much.

 

Odelia’s energy and enthusiasm drive Aron’s ambition to finish his book, a memoir, wherein he reveals his identity as the son of Elvis, and Aron depends on Odelia to help him outwit or evade the conspirators that want him to cease and desist in terms of writing.

 

Odelia, a burgeoning journalist, gains access to Aron’s world and beyond, a treasure trove of surreal experience, but she begins to realize that trying to live in his world comes at too high a price.

 

Q: You also co-wrote a song that’s featured in the book--can you tell us more about that?

 

A: Making Aron a musician who might follow in his father’s footsteps meant I needed a song that would be his signature piece, a chart-topping record, say, from 1974, an accomplishment that Aron would never repeat, making him a one-hit wonder.

 

Before writing the novel, I’d written a song, “Midnight Candy,” with Robert Schleeter and William Relling Jr. We liked it well enough at the time that we even made a demo. Then, when I started writing The Prince of Memphis, I needed a title for Aron’s hit song, and I thought “Midnight Candy” would work well on a variety of different levels.

 

Later, when I was sending the book around, I would sometimes include the demo with the manuscript, but most publishers either ignored it or pointed out that they were in the business of making books and not records.

 

Dreamfield Press, on the other hand, liked the song as much as the book, so their enthusiasm opened the door to a full studio treatment of the tune with an amazing roster of musicians and then, finally, a limited pressing of the song on 7” vinyl to accompany the book.

 

Now, you can read the story of “Midnight Candy” in the novel and then listen to it on vinyl, streaming platforms, or online (josephcoulson.com/midnightcandy).

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m putting together a collection of new and selected poems and also making notes for a fourth novel, a covert love story, which is set during World War II.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just this—The Prince of Memphis is a serious novel that is also fantastical and fun. It presents Elvis as both an inspirational and tragic figure. And in the same ways that Elvis’s life as an international superstar veered finally toward things unreal and bizarre, so does Aron’s story—offering a mix of dark humor and startling twists and turns.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Kirk Van Brunt

  

 

 

Kirk Van Brunt is the author of the new young adult novel Fight Song. His other books include My Life as a Clone. He is also a lawyer, and he lives in Maryland. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Fight Song, and how did you create your character Nokes?

 

A: I wanted to tell a contemporary, realistic story about a girl who is a fighter. Hockey was at the top of the list of real-life situations with tough girls who “fight.”

 

But I wanted it to be about an indigenous girl who not only had to fight her way through challenges on the ice, but through hurdles in life/society as well. Chris Simon, tragic former NHL player and Ojibwe, was an inspiration, although Nokes is not modelled on him.

 

Nokes was created by taking what you need in order to be a successful hockey player and transferring those things to her life.

 

I call it the Tau of Hockey.

 

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had no clue how the story would end when I started writing (I don’t use outlines, just a page of bullet point, stream-of-consciousness ideas); it changed many times during the initial drafts.

 

And it kept changing: there was the ending I queried my agent with, the ending my agent went out on submission with, the ending after acquisition first edits, and the final ending (epilogue).

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The original title was “Big Bird and the Cyborg” (which is now the title of a chapter). My agent suggested coming up with something else.

 

I offered Fight Song because of—okay, I admit it—the Rachel Platten song. The lyrics nicely meshed with the story and Nokes’s character, I thought. Fight Song was intended as merely a placeholder until something better came along, but it stuck.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: Girls are so much tougher than guys.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Working title: “A Hard Day’s Night.” An indigenous girl and her mother are forced off their reservation during the Indian relocation campaigns in the US in the ‘50s.

 

They flee to LA, hiding a big secret, where a young Maureen develops her music talents and joins a band in 1964. She and her bandmates are soon swept up in Beatlemania, and with it comes a painful reckoning with her mother’s secret and their indigenous heritage.

 

I'm almost done with a first draft. Of course, if the opportunity arose for a sequel to Fight Song, I would drop everything to write that.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: “Beat me once, shame on me. Beat me twice . . . that’s just not going to happen.”

 

—Nópika Lasley-Cheval, press conference after scoring game winner in OT

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Deana Plaskon

  

 

Deana Plaskon is the author of the new children's picture book Bella and Bird Explore Sadness. She also has written the book Bella and Bird Explore Anger. She is an educator and a mental health expert. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write about sadness in your new Bella and Bird picture book?

 

A: Sadness is something every child experiences, but adults often want to try to make it go away. We say things like, “Don’t be sad,” or immediately try to cheer a child up. But sadness is a normal emotion, and children need to know it’s okay to feel it.

 

I wanted Bella and Bird Explore Sadness to give children permission to be sad, while also showing them some things they can do when sadness shows up. Sometimes that means talking about it, sometimes it means crying, and sometimes it’s simply having someone sitting beside you while you work through what you’re feeling.

 

Q: How did you create your character Molly?

 

A: I wanted Molly to experience something that would feel very real to children and chose being left out by friends because many of us can relate to that experience. When her friends tell her she isn’t good enough to play with them, it hurts, and she starts thinking about what that means while trying to process feelings of sadness.

 

Molly isn’t based on one particular child, instead, she represents what so many children (and adults) experience at some point: wanting to belong and feeling hurt when they don’t.

 

Bella and Bird help her explore not only her sadness, but also the thoughts that come along with it. Eventually, Molly begins to see that one difficult friendship or experience doesn’t define her or her worth as a friend.

 

Q: What do you think Lea Marie Ravotti’s illustrations add to this book?

 

A: From the beginning, I wanted each Bella and Bird book to take place in a different season, and I specifically chose the season of fall for Bella and Bird Explore Sadness. The changing leaves, the colors, and that feeling of transition seemed like the right backdrop for Molly’s story.

 

Lea brought that vision to life beautifully. She captures Molly’s sadness in her expressions and body language, Bella’s gentle presence, and Bird’s personality and humor. There are emotions in the illustrations that don’t need to be explained in words, too. I think children can look at Molly and understand how she’s feeling before she ever says it.

 

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the story?

 

A: More than anything, I hope children understand that it’s okay to be sad. Sadness isn’t something they need to hide or hurry through.

 

I also want them to have a few things they can actually do when they feel sad. Bella and Bird introduce Molly to simple tools such as breathing, drawing what she’s feeling, talking about her thoughts, and looking at a situation in a different way (foggy thinking).

 

And I hope Molly’s experience with her friends reminds children that being left out can really hurt, but it doesn’t determine their worth. Sometimes friendships disappoint us; that’s inevitable. But sometimes we need to look around and realize there may be other people waiting to be friends, too.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Quite a few things! Bella and Bird Explore Happiness is next and will be available in late September 2026, followed by Bella and Bird Explore Fear, which is with Lea (my illustrator) and will go to print in the winter of 2027. That will round out the Bella and Bird the Emotion Explorers series.

 

I’m also working on stories beyond the series. Bird has branched out on his own in a few fantastic books. The first is about worries. It’s a fun, short book that is sure to help children and adults with their worries! And I have several other children’s books in development. I love writing about animals and imagining the world from their point of view.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Bella is my real Gypsy Vanner horse, and Bird was inspired by the barn swallows that make their home in Bella’s barn. That connection to real animals is where Bella and Bird began after Bella and I experienced Hurricane Ian in 2022.

 

Also, I’ve spent more than 20 years in education and am also a licensed clinical mental health counselor, so those two parts of my life naturally find their way into my writing. But I always want my books to be relatable, fun stories first. The emotional tools are woven into what the characters are experiencing rather than being the story itself.

 

In this series, Bella brings gentle guidance, Bird brings humor, and the children bring experiences young readers can recognize in their own lives.

 

At the heart of the series is a simple idea: children don’t need to be taught not to feel anger, sadness, fear, or any other emotion. They need help understanding what they’re feeling and what they can do with it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Deana Plaskon. This Q&A was conducted in partnership with Deana Plaskon. Big feelings, big prizes! Follow along on this virtual book tour and enter to win one of five signed copies of Bella and Bird Explore Sadness by Deana Plaskon. Feeling extra lucky? One grand prize winner will take home the complete set—signed copies of all three books in the series: Bella and Bird Explore Anger, Bella and Bird Explore Sadness, and Bella and Bird Explore Happiness.

Sept. 18

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Sept. 18, 1947: Drew Gilpin Faust born.