Here's the teaching guide for  Sleepover at the Haunted Museum, complete with vocabulary, biology, comprehension, math, sequencing, library skills, grammar, writing, suffixes, and common core standards.

Books are on their way across the United States and Canada to the winners of the Sleepover at the Haunted Museum contests. I laughed at the funny stories, silly cakes, and wacky hair-do's created by some very creative kids! Thanks for joining in the fun. To the right is a picture of the randomly selected hair winners. You can see all the winners on my past Facebook posts and in the Debbie's talks section of my website.

We must say goodbye to these wonderful authors and illustrators. They may have passed away this year, but their spirit lives on in the wonderful stories they created for us. We will miss Patricia Reilly Giff, Robert Quakenbush, Eric Carle, Lois Lowry, and Beverly Cleary.

Years ago, I wrote two picture books (Shooting Star-Annie Oakley the Legend and Will Rogers-Larger than Life) that were part biography and part tall tale. For the last six months, I have been working away on a picture book biography (no tall tales!) that I desperately wanted to get right. I felt the world needed to know about this person. I'm so happy that it has been purchased by Lerner and will be shared with the world in 2023. It will be illustrated by Juliana Oakley.

It is the story of Katalin Kariko, who worked for forty years with little funding and almost no encouragement to develop the mRNA technology. In fact, many people belittled her efforts. But through it all she persisted and she is my hero. Without her, we would not have the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Hurrah for Curious Kati!