Hey everyone!

I spent a lovely morning in my trailer writing about The Jade Notebook and doing some interesting sea-turtle-related research for it. It feels good to get back to this book after time away from it traveling and working on other manuscripts (The Queen of Water and The Ruby Notebook).

So, as promised, here are pics from my super-fun school visits in south Texas last week! I *love* doing author visits when the students are this enthusiastic! Thank you for an amazing visit, guys!

Check out the looooong autographing line... I need to learn to sign books faster... but at least everyone was patient!

Look at the pretty Oaxacan shawl they gave me! Love the color-- makes me think of sunsets and mangos and melons and tropical flowers...

Here I am with Lucy and Ann, two of the librarians who orchestrated my visit-- we had fun in the evenings going out to eat yummy Tex-Mex food... one night a few of us went to South Padre Island for seafood and a walk along the beach... heavenly!

We had great food for lunches, too-- here we are at a Texas Barbeque place-- check out the drinks -- an entire pitcher per person to drink out of... isn't there some saying about how BIG everything is in Texas? ;)

The whole school district community gave me an enthusiastic welcome-- not just teachers and librarians and students, but the entire wonderful staff! Here I am with Cristobal, who's a fan of Oaxaca, like me...

Here I am with the awesome library folks at Biblioteca de las Americas... just after they spoiled me rotten with flowers and a fruit basket complete with Goobers!

Here's Luci Wiley-- English teacher and librarian extraordinaire... love the shirt! ;)

So many cool librarians with their cool T-shirts...

I even got to do a writing workshop with some teachers after school one day... loads of fun, lots of laughing! This is such a close-knit, warm community.

I loved all the small, thoughtful touches, like how one school played romantic Mexican songs as I signed books, and arranged these white flower blossoms (from the book!) by the autograph sign!

Interestingly, my first contact with this wonderful school district was Minnie Vasquez, of Athena's YA Blog (which is fabulous-- you should check it out!)-- she's a teacher there (and a creative writer herself.)

In the next post I'll show you pics of some cool art projects the students did, inspired by Red Glass! Thanks for reading!

xoxo,
Laura