REBECCA STEAD: reblog

It rained all day here in New York City, washing everything clean. Now that the snow is gone, I miss it. From Paul Octavious: http://vimeo.com/18000409 Snow Hill from Paul Octavious on Vimeo .

A little while ago, one of my readers wrote to tell me that she really wanted her mom to read When You Reach Me so that they could talk about it. Was it by any chance published in Korean, she wondered? Yes! Maybe. I knew that a Korean translation was underway somewhere because I had written an introduction for it. But I had no details - I had never seen a copy of the translated book, and I wasn't sure it had ever actually been published. I looked up the name of the publisher, CharlieBook, and sent it to her. Today she wrote to tell me that she and her mom have found the book. She attached a copy of the cover in case I was curious about it (I was! I can't enlarge it enough to see all of the details, but I like what I see. . .). I love the thought of this fabulous girl and her mom sharing the book across two languages.

When I was 8 years old, I went to London for a month with my dad, who enrolled me in a public school around the corner from the apartment we stayed in. (In London, they say "state school" for what we call a public school. And what they call a "public school" is a fancy private school. When I was 8, this confused me.) My third-grade teacher in New York, Ms. Rosenfeld, asked me to keep a diary while I was away. I liked Ms. Rosenfeld, but I did not want to write in a diary. I did, though. Here is a picture of my London diary, along with a sample page. (While there may be such a thing as a "born writer," I am clearly not one of them.)

I was in London last week, meeting kids, booksellers, teachers, librarians, and bloggers - and getting to know my wonderful UK publisher, Andersen Press . I didn't have time for sightseeing, but I did get to ride the Underground. I thought it was downright cozy.