I got home late last night from the Keystone State Literacy Association’s 2023 Conference in Hershey, PA. I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll toss down highlights:
It started with The Eyeball Alphabet Book winning the KSLA 2022-2023 Keystone to Reading Elementary Book Award for the Intermediate Level.
Jerry and I were invited to a book signing Sunday (and the award ceremony luncheon on Monday in Hershey). Here’s the poster for Sunday night’s book signing:
We had some fun with Miss Kiss and the Reese’s character:
Miss Kiss was rocking one of my lucky 🍀 art pins!
The conference was at the Hershey Lodge - Kisses. Chocolate. Enough said, that place is to-die-for phenomenal. Chocolate butter, fresh hot cocoa bar with eye popping toppings and stir-in’s. Even the hotel soap was chocolate infused. Chocolate is EVERYWHERE. I need to return! 😋
So in addition to creating many new lucky 🍀 art pins to give away, Lou suggested I also make 100 of these Eyeball pins to hand out:
The Eyeball pins are pivotal to my story. For I simply posted the above photo on my Facebook account and mentioned I was heading to Hershey a few days before heading out.
My mother came from a large family, 8 kids. She grew up with her siblings in Pottsville. She married my dad and they moved to Boston, but most of her family - and their kids - all remained in the general area. (I think my sister and I have 32 first cousins.) Being born and raised in Massachusetts, I didn’t have the opportunity to get to know my relatives, or even meet most of them. (My mom passed in ‘89, it’s been a long time since I’ve visited Pottsville.) One of my first cousins, Ruthann, saw my Eyeball pin Facebook Post. She mentioned she lived about an hour from Hershey. (She later told me she recalled meeting me once, when she was 5 and I was 6 - I believe when our grandfather died.) Without my knowledge she reaches out to our cousin Bob…. Bobby had lived with us in MA the year I was in fourth grade. He attended BU for his freshman year and commuted from my house to school. I hadn’t connected with him since that school year. Our cousin Maryann also saw my “heading to Hershey” post, and she reached out to her sister…..
Monday’s award ceremony luncheon comes around, and as I’m about to go onstage - I receive a text I had cousins in the back of the room…
I get up onstage to give a little speech, see my cousin “surprise” and I’m now overwhelmed with emotion, all choked up and teary-eyed.
After the luncheon, we all got together for a couple hours to chat and catch up. I had the phone number to our cousin, John, in Texas - so I called him and put him on speakerphone so he could ‘join’ us.
Here are my cousins who went out of their way to surprise and celebrate my award with me: Ruthann, Bobby, me, Maryann, Dotsy.
After my cousins left there were many books to sign:
And a LOT more chocolate to eat:
Oh and the jacket I wore on Monday - I had it custom made in London by www.bagsofloveuk.com I uploaded 15 eyeballs from pages of The Eyeball Alphabet Book, and they created the fabric and sewed the kimono for me. Check them out, Bags of Love. Fantastic job! (The back has the cover snake eyeball centered with the others surrounding it.)
Together with Jerry Pallotta. I’ve illustrated many more of his books, check out Jerry’s site: www.JerryPallotta.com
Onto my next book…. Updates will come later. 😉
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