And the Good News Keeps Coming!

The Canadian Children's Book Centre (CCBC) is a national, not-for-profit organization founded in 1976 dedicated to encouraging, promoting and supporting the reading, writing and illustrating of Canadian books for young readers through services, publications and programs. The CCBC is a vital resource for teachers, librarians, students, authors, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and parents. It is also now one of my favouritest organizations (I know favouritest isn't a word but cut me some slack in my excitement here) because it named ILLEGALLY BLONDE as a Recommended read in the Summer edition of its quarterly magazine!

I have been living in a world of packing boxes, family health issues and other related personal chaos for the last four months so when I picked up the magazine on Friday and flipped through the pages and saw a picture of my book in the section on Recommended Books I just about passed out. This was just after I'd read the lovely review in CM magazine. I cannot tell you how grateful I feel to read that the editor of the CCBC News thinks

"It's refreshing to see a Portuguese-Canadian protagonist in YA fiction and Lucy do Amaral is an appealing newcomer …"

and that

"Author Nelsa Roberto has taken a true story from the news headlines (about Portuguese-Canadians deported when their citizenship was called into question) and skillfully crafted an enjoyable and well-written tale. Lucy do Amaral is a welcome addition to the YA scene."

I am verklempt. It's also the best medicine for a very sore and aching back!

And that's not all, people!

On Saturday I saw a very nice advertisement in the Toronto Globe and Mail Book section from Great Plains Teen Fiction promoting their Spring books and ILLEGALLY BLONDE is right there alongside the two other teen books published this spring: Craig Russell's BLACK BOTTLE MAN and Susan Roccan's SPIRIT QUEST. Yay for a supportive publisher!

And best of all, it was a beautiful sunny, fall day yesterday for my son's belated birthday party and he also played an amazingly great game of hockey on Sunday.

Sometimes life is just plain good.