Let's face it- this year is going to be over before we know it. I hate how fast time flies the older I get. And there is pretty much only one reason I would ever wish time to march faster- so I could get my hands on books I'm looking forward to!

As you probably know, I'm something of a research nut. My bookshelves are full. My "To-Read" shelf on Goodreads is huge. I keep the inter-library loan service at my local library ridiculously busy. And I love giving book suggestions to other people and getting them excited about books!

While I'm busy trimming the tree and making reindeer cookies and working on my WIP (from a PiBoIdMo idea! Day #12, to be exact...) in the coming weeks, I thought I'd give YOU something to look forward to with me in the New Year. My peek into 2011 will be heavy on releases for the first half of the year, of course, because those are the ones that have info online already, but (ahem) there are gonna be some terrific fall releases too :)

So, what's whetting my appetite for 2011?



Yeah, I think 2011 is going to be a very, very good year :)

That darn Mo Willems.

He made me pick up a pen and write a picture book not too long after reading this book:



It was smart. It was funny. It spoke to kids. It was amazing. I wanted to do that! (Of course, I still haven't done *that*, but that's a different blog post...)

Then he went and wrote a bunch of other books because, apparently, I wasn't the only person who liked that book. Some of these other books I loved, some I liked, some I didn't like as much. It's that way with most authors, no? I don't hold it against the guy- it's a rare person who can be brilliant every time at bat.

Then he went and wrote this book:



just when I was bemoaning the lack of easy readers that interested my son. This book and My Friend Is Sad, the next Elephant & Piggie book, taught my son to read. Oh thank you, Mo Willems! I owe you my next-born son (which, thankfully I'll never have, so I won't have to go giving him away to Mo Willems or anything...).

So, we literally devoured the subsequent Elephant & Piggie books that came out, even after we had no excuse to "need" to read them. So wonderful, so charming. Are You Ready To Play Outside? is a particular favorite of mine. And then, you know, we hit a few that we didn't exactly love as much as others... and, very, very secretly, I started to gloat a teeeeeny, tiny little bit- It's hard, isn't it, Mr. Brilliant, to come up with home runs every time at bat, I think I might have said to myself once or twice. But not when anyone could hear me, of course. I mean, the man DID write Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.

In any case, I was starting to be a bit relieved that that ol' Mo Willems wasn't super-human. Until I read this:



and now I feel a bit like Charlie Brown, lying flat on his back, at the mercy of that mad-genius Lucy and her football-yanking ways. That ol' Mo Willems just came up with the BEST Elephant & Piggie book yet!! It's charming. It's funny. It's perfect. It's mad-genius, is what it is. If you haven't read it yet, please do so as soon as possible. You want to be in on one of the *best* books of the year.

Oh yes, you do.

:)

It's Day 12 of PiBoIdMo, and I must say, this is turning out to be a very interesting experiment. I am forcing myself to come up with one idea a day, knowing that I won't be able to capitalize on it right away. Okay, I fell off the wagon around Days 8 and 9, but I hopped right back on and caught up.

This is the opposite of the way I usually write, by the way. Normally I seize the idea and write until I block, then I do something boring and mundane, like mop my floors or fold laundry until I un-block, then write-and-repeat until I have a story. If I get halfway on a WIP and LIFE interrupts, I often lose the enthusiasm for the project for awhile (which could be anywhere from weeks to months to years!). Sometimes I pick it back up, sometimes not.

But with these ideas, some of them are, I think, pretty good. And I'm anxious to get started on a few of them, um, now. So the anticipation is really building, and my subconscious is kind of working on a few of them while I'm not writing (November = no writing time!). That subconscious thing is really important- often I don't give the idea time to simmer in the background and seize it too fast and it doesn't produce.

And honestly, I never would have focused my mind enough through all the current chaos around here to even come up with one or two ideas, let alone 30. Of course, we'll see how it plays out once I get my writing time back. If I have 30 ideas staring me in the face and I can't come up with anything, I won't be so in love with PiBoIdMo.

But right now, I'm thinking this whole thing is pretty awesome- and Tara Lazar? Genius.

:)