Good-bye, Seattle! I'm going to miss you! Sniff, sniff...

I had a fantastic week visiting Summit K-12, Eckstein Middle School,
Einstein Middle School, Chinook Middle School, and Whitman Middle
School and meeting all the cool student, librarians, and teachers there!

Here's what I've been up to on my tour so far...

Thursday May 8th:

After visiting Einstein Middle School and signing books at All For Kids Books & More, I stopped by The Seattle Times, my old stomping grounds when I was an intern in their features section waaaaay back in 1992-93. It remains one of my favorite memories and jobs of all time. My editor, Terry Tazioli, is now in charge of the Travel section. He kindly arranged for me to meet some of the staff who I had worked with when I was an intern. It was sooooo wonderful to see everyone again after all these years! I will be posting a lot of picture galleries of my tour in the next week or so... please stay tuned for a more detailed report of my visit to The Seattle Times, complete with pictures! For now, here's a couple teaser photos to whet your appetite...

And here's Bartlett sitting at what was probably my old desk back in '92, but they now have a much nicer computer system! 

After visiting The Seattle Times, I drove through the Capitol Hill area where I used to live. Remember the movie "Singles" by Cameron Crowe about the love lives of 20something Gen Xers in Seattle circa 1992 during the infamous "Grunge" era? Yeah, that's my generation. The original apartment building they filmed the movie at was just a few blocks down from my old apartment on the corner of John St.:

I was so sad, however, to learn that the famous early '90s Seattle club called RCKNDY (Rock Candy, or as my friends as I used to call it, "The Club With No Vowels") was torn down and replaced with yuppie condos... I was heartbroken! (See the blue building behind Bartlett in the picture below? Imagine a sign that said RCKNDY and that's where the club used to be!)

Thursday night, my extremely kind and most generous hosts, ALL FOR KIDS BOOKS & MORE owner Chauni Haslet and her husband Bill invited over several librarians and bookstore staffers and author Michael De Guzman ("Beekman's Big Deal," Farrar, Straus & Giroux '04) and his lovely wife. I'll write more about this fun dinner in detail in the photo galleries I'll be posting later this month when I return from my tour, but here's a teaser photo for now:

Friday May 9th:

I spoke at my final school visit in Seattle. This time, I went to Whitman Middle School.

Again, the students and teachers and librarians were TOTALLY AWESOME! They even did a special presentation based on the first chapter of Good Enough where actors acted out the scene between Patti and Ben at the All-State audition. It was so cool!  Thanks again to the awesome Whitman Middle School kids and staff!

Then I stopped by the All for Kids Books & More store to say good-bye (sob) to my wonderful amazing brilliant totally cool host, owner Chauni Haslet, and to sign their famous wall.

I will show a TON of photos of the walls of the store's event room, but in a nutshell, this room features signatures and artwork from some of the most famous and distinguished Caldecott and Newbery award winning authors and illustrators for children's literature. My friend and journalism colleague Robert Jamieson of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a column about this wall and how the store is closing June 30, 2008 (sob - more on that in a future blog and photo gallery). I met a Seattle PI photographer and she took photos of the wall and also of me signing the wall. This story will be published next week in the Seattle PI. You can go here to find it:

The Seattle PI

or to Robert Jamieson's column page here 

Here's what I wrote on the wall:

Saturday May 10th:

Now I'm in Portland, Oregon, visiting a very close friend and her husband and adorable son. They are both amazing and talented writers, too! Since I arrived Friday night, we ordered dinner from The Screen Door, had drinks at the Jade Lounge, and this morning had breakfast at Broder (I ordered the speciality Swedish meatballs because they are a Scandinavian restaurant). We then stopped by a local park where the awesome Audobon Society of Portland was hosting a bird festival.

I learned a lot about owls - they can swivel their heads almost 270 degrees because they have twice as many vertebrae as humans!

I learned how Peregrine Falcons can be trained to eat from their owner's hand!  

And an Audobon Society volunteer/bird expert told me this beautiful owl is not too bright - his brain is smaller than his eyeball! But what a gorgeous bird, huh?!

Well, we're getting ready for dinner at a cool Portland hot spot. I'll file a full foodie report later in the week. Then I leave for Dayton, Ohio tomorrow and I'll start blogging live again on the road from Kentucky and Ohio! And I'll keep y'all posted on when I will finally get these Good Enough Book Tour Photo Galleries set up in the PICTURES section of my website.