On Sunday, I gave a talk about my life as a story at the Charlotte Turgeon Tea at Smith College’s Alumnae House whih was very well received. Sold quite a few books. Met some old friends (including my next door neighbor!) and some new ones. Smith Alumnae of all ages and stages in life were there, some from as far away as Boston! Good tea, good food, and I hope a good talk.

A young woman working on an interesting Master’s thesis interviewed me. Then I raced home to take Heidi, her girls, and Glendon’s boyfriend out to dinner as none of us wanted to cook.

Off early on Monday to Virginia to give a speech at the University of Richmond. I drove Maddison to school on the way to the airport, missing the exit off 91 to her school, so I had to drive us over Mount Tom and back to Easthampton, but actually didn’t lose more than a couple of minutes.

Easy flights–to Washing D.C. and then Richmond. Met there by Libby Grunner (not sure of the spelling of that) who teaches a course in children’s lit in the English department. We had an immediate rapport, and I must say she gave the single most memorable introduction of me ever later that evening.

I was put up in the visitor’s center, a lavishly appointed place with lovely rooms and a four poster bed that was so high (and I am only 5’3) I had trouble getting up into it. The next morning at breakfast I met a man in a nearby room who was well over six feet tall and he had little steps to climb up into his bed! Hmmmm.

There was a hiatus of about four hours before I had to do anything public, so I stayed in my room, got online and downloaded the illustrator entrants for the UConn Raab prize. Made my choices for the winners and justified them. I am one of three or four judges each year. It’s going to be a difficult choice this time. So far one of the other judges who sent around her choices had only one overlap with mine.

Then it was time for a pre-speech dinner with a number of members of both the English and Education departments. Turned out one of the guests was the redoubtable Tricia who runs the Miss Rumphius Effect blog, a favorite of mine on the web. So we had a jolly time talking children’s books, poets and poetry, and the Harry Potter phenom, etc.

And then downstairs for my talk. A reasonable crowd of both college students and working teachers/librarians. The intro by Libby, as noted above, was a brilliant and seamless academic overview of my career AND an outrageously funny parody of a HOW DO DINOS book. And then I gave a talk on poetry and the three Rs: Reveal, Revision, and Re-invention. (Similar to the talk I’d given at Keene though with some additions and deletions. Even my speeches are constantly revised. Ended by signing loads of books, though most (I suspect) were not new-buys but well-beloved books. Someone even had a first edition (without Caldecott sticker) OWL MOON which is worth a pretty penny these days, as I told her.

To bed by 10. A full day.