Reader Suggestions

I'm pausing today, having spent long days polishing a fourth draft of the next book. For a change of pace, I turned to some reader mail.  There's always at least one letter that makes my day.

This reader has already read these two books, Love That Dog and Hate That Cat. Both are novels-in-verse and are as much about a boy and a dog and a cat as they are about poetry and teachers and finding a voice:


This is what the young reader suggests: ". . . you should make a new one called HATE THE NEXT DOOR SNAKE. I can already read it in my head."


I just love that.
LOVE THAT LETTER.

And now, to close with something completely unrelated (except that it is also yum), I've just made, for the first time, skillet cornbread and it is molto, molto good.  (Recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, by Ree Drummond, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2009):


Go on. Have some.  Mmm, mm.