We spent yesterday with our heroes—teachers from across the country. Robbi stood outside the bus giving overviews of the tour, after which I welcomed folks inside our rolling home.
 
There were plenty of gasps and lots of questions. Several intrepid souls climbed up through the emergency hatch into the rooftop tent.
 
Everyone was already smiling when they got to the bus on account of the free reading buddies they’d received at the First Book booth (courtesy our friends at Build-A-Bear Foundation). All the Title I teachers were also holding a free copy of Everywhere, Wonder.
 
One teacher/mom took a selfie with us, sent it to her son, and showed us the photo he sent back—gasping with disbelief that she’d met two of his favorite authors. It’s a gift to be part of this kind of excitement.
 
The whole day was an enthusiastic exchange of gratitude. The teachers thanked us for what we did for a year. We thanked them for what they do every single day.
 
We did two signings, one with our friends a Perma-Bound another with our Cookie Chronicles publisher, Random House Children’s Books.
 
The Washington College research team hosted a poster session about their early findings—and surveyed hundreds of teachers about the rewards and challenges of hosting author visits, expanding the reach of their study.
 
We finally got a chance to meet the fabulous Malia Maunakea, who we met online as she was setting up a tour to bring her debut novel Lei and the Fire Goddess to Title I schools in Hawaii.
 
We exchanged hugs and hellos with Vicky Fang and Dayna Lorentz, fellow children’s creators who graduated from Williams College around the same time we did.
 
Kidlit superstar and recently anointed National Book Award winner Dan Santat came by to see the bus. Check out his graphic memoir A First Time for Everything.
 
We met the wonderful Barbara Marcus, president and head publisher of Random House Children’s—and caught up with Melanie Nolan, our publisher at Knopf. It is a privilege to make our books with such smart and passionate people.
 
It was an inspiring day, one that has us dreaming of next steps for the bus—and eternally grateful for teachers.
 
#busloadofbooks ...

It’s Robbi’s birthday! This year, instead of a present, I thought I’d get her an adjective. But I’m hanging trouble boiling it down to just one.

Courageous? Ebullient? Resourceful? Obstreperous?

I need your help, friends. What adjective will you give Robbi for her birthday this year?

(I’ve chosen a few photos to remind you how difficult it is to choose just one.) ...

To the list of unlikely places the bus has been, we can add Exhibition Hall B of the Columbus Convention Center. We drove through the huge loading dock gates early yesterday afternoon and proceeded to a taped-off section of the floor. The process was surprisingly smooth.
 
A few minutes later, some guys showed up to make sure our bus passed the fire marshal’s standards: batteries disconnected, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers on site, and less than five gallons of diesel in the tank.
 
This morning we gave a joint presentation on the Tour, the importance of author visits, the ability of books to spark wonder, and the incredibly exciting results of the research project. It was an honor to share the stage with these inspiring folks: Alison Morris (of First Book), Amanda Ensor (Title I specialist), Bridget Bunten (education prof and literacy specialist) and Nick Garcia (anthropology prof and major data sets expert).  
 
After the talk, we connected with some teachers, including our new friend Nichole Folkman, whose son is a big fan of the Cookie Chronicles.
 
We returned to the exhibition floor to get the lay of the land and make sure the many, many boxes containing 6,000 teddy bears had arrived. Luckily, they had, and to express our excitement, Jude Kaufman of Build-A-Bear Foundation and I climbed Mt. Reading Buddy and posed for a photo.
 
We got to connect with folks we’ve been working with for several years now but had so far only met virtually, including Sisi Beltran of Build-A-Bear Foundation and Dana Bond of First Book. Sisi asked for a tour of the bus, and impressed us all by dexterously climbing through the hole in the ceiling to tour the kids’ pop-up sleeping tent.
 
Over the next few days, booth 900 will be the epicenter of excitement. Every teacher who swings by will get a reading buddy. The first 1,000 Title I teachers will get a copy of Everywhere, Wonder (courtesy First Book). Robbi and I will be giving bus tours and handing out bookmarks. The research team will be on hand to talk about their findings. Anyone who feels inspired to follow Sisi’s lead and climb into the pop-up is more than welcome to try.
 
#busloadofbooks ...

We spent the past few days visiting two incredible Title I elementary schools in Columbus, Ohio—Oakland Park and Westgate. The visits were a true collaboration—between Busload of Books, First Book, Build-A-Bear Foundation, NCTE (the National Council for Teachers of Education), and the Columbus City Schools literacy team.
 
Robbi and I stayed up late on Monday night, struggling to remember our presentations, but
when our first assembly began, we remembered what to say. The kids laughed in all the right places. It was just like old times.
 
At the end of the assemblies, we had the fun of announcing that every kid would be getting a “reading buddy” as a gift from Build-A-Bear Foundation. Seeing a room full of kids get free bears is one of life’s great joys. A little boy from Oakland Park came up to me and said, “I named my bear Best because he’s the best. I love him and he’s real to me.”
 
It wasn’t just the bears that got kids excited. After our presentation at Westgate, two girls told Robbi and me they were going to make a book together and were going to get feedback from their classmates so they could make it better. Which is to say, they were putting the lessons from our assembly into motion before we even left the building.  
 
These schools were full of kids eager to read, write, draw, and share their creations with us. Dior started writing a book based on the brainstorm we’d done in the assembly. Malaysia drew Robbi a butterfly.
 
Our visits were made all the more special by the wonderful folks from the Columbus City Schools literacy department, who were on hand to help us set up, hand out bears, and spend time with the kids. They work incredibly hard to promote reading throughout the district, including an initiative to get two million books into student hands over the past three years.
 
We hadn’t done a school visit in almost six months. It was strange (and sad) that our own kids weren’t with us and that we couldn’t bring Dumbles out to scowl as hundreds of kids showered him with love.
 
But it was so good to be back with the kids, back with the teachers, back in the heart of that wonderful, hopeful, transformative energy.
 
#busloadofbooks ...