I'm really beet

This mysterious photo is a salad. A beet salad, to be exact. And it's a lousy photo...taken with my cell phone....because you can't really tell that it was the most incredibly beautiful beet salad I think I've ever seen, with red and golden beets in cubes, carefully arranged on the plate and decorated with tiny nasturtium leaves.

This was the first course at a lovely restaurant called ELEVEN MADISON PARK in New York, at a luncheon yesterday in honor of "The Willoughbys." Publishers do wonderfully gracious things to announce a new book, and this was Houghton Mifflin's highly edible welcome to the Willoughby family, with some terrific guests, all of them from the publishing/media/library world, all of them book lovers. Two of them just back from serving on the Newbery Committee! and though of course they can't describe their process of deliberation...at least I was able to tell them what a wonderful choice I thought they had made with this year's winner.

I am now back home in Cambridge after two busy days in New York, trying to get organized to go off to St. Paul on Sunday. Sunday evening I will give a reading at Hamline University. I thought I had the perfect selection...a short story I once published, called "Snowbound," set during winter (and it is certainly winter in St. Paul, Minnesota!) and—I think— quite funny, and appropriate to a college/university audience. Ah, therein lies the problem. I suddenly (fortunately) realized that this event is open to the public...and so there will very likely be children in the audience. And the winter story, the funny story, the college story, has some bad language in it. Sigh. I guess I had better read something else.

Comments

[N.]

Oh! Is that the story with the lasagna?

[Lois Lowry]

Yes! Exactly right! Good for you. I didn't know anyone had ever read it.

[N.]

I read it in a book called Necessary Noise.
So, what do you think you're going to read instead?
Someone I was with at the ALA midwinter meeting found a galley of The Willoughbys and has promised to pass it on to me when she's done! I'm excited!

[Lois Lowry]

Haven't decided. The first chapter of THE WILLOUGHBYS, I think. But that won't use up all the time. And it would be nice to read from something that the bookseller has available, and TW is not yet available. Suggestions welcome!

[Erin]

If you had a lovely Englishman named Nathan as your sommelier, that's my sister's boyfriend! He and my sister both work at Eleven Madison Park. They'll be glad to know you had a good experience.

[Lois Lowry]

"A lovely Englishman named Nathan" sound like a line from a Noel Coward song, doesn't it?

(I'm remembering a NC song that had the passage: "And then there was Phipps, who had very broad hips, and whose waist was exceedingly slim...")

Make me stop.

I don't think we encountered Nathan, because we were in a private room upstairs and he was probably in the main restaurant charming the patrons there.

We DID have a young handsome blond waiter, though, who whispered to me that he loved "The Giver."

[N.]

You could read the story about the Harringtons' daughter. Or one of the parts in A Summer to Die where they're outside picking flowers. Since you can't read the snow story.

[Donna Rooney]

I have taught The Giver in my 8th grade classroom for several years. I have told the students that The Giver will soon be made into a movie and they are exciyed! However, what is the hold up? The deadline seems to be moved quite a bit.
Donna Rooney

[Monica]

Thank you so much for the enthusiastic response to our Newbery choice. I posted about the lunch and linked to this at my blog and also spoke to Colin about you and Carol Otis Hurst. It was great to meet you.