Can we read? A celebration + surprise 🎂
Happy 1st birthday!
I started this newsletter a year ago today. Well, it was actually May 22, but it was a Friday night — the Friday before Memorial Day — which felt like a bar low enough to casually throw myself over while desperately trying to hang onto my sanity deep into quarantine with two little kids and no childcare and a full-time job I was doing from home.
It worked.
I told everyone I knew and I stayed sane and then I started to enjoy writing this to a degree that kind of astonished me. I listened to your feedback and I experimented and I created additional ways to offer you my knowledge, experience, and passion re: children’s books and reading. I haven’t missed a single week. People I don’t even know starting subscribing from sources I can’t ascertain.
I’m so incredibly grateful.
Surprise! This is a giveaway 🎉
To mark the occasion, I’m doing a giveaway.
To enter, simply reply to this email with the age/s of the child/ren in your life and either what their common interests are (e.g., three kids all into fairy tales; one child with a popcorn obsession; whatever it may be) or what you are looking for in a children’s book for them.
The deadline to enter is Sunday
I will draw one name at 10:00am CST on Sunday, May 30 using the cutting-edge technology known as “my kid pulling scraps of paper out of a bag,” after which I will notify the winner and ask for your address. Then I will hand-pick a title, buy it, and mail it to you all at my expense.
Nothing else to do on your end. If you’d like to share this newsletter with someone because you enjoy it and want them to have it too (or because you’d like them to give them the chance to subscribe and enter this giveaway), that’s good energy I am (always!) willing to accept, but it’s not required.
(If you don’t hear from me on Sunday morning, it didn’t work out this time. This is the second time in a year I’ve done this particular giveaway so the likelihood of my doing it again is high. Turns out I enjoy giving away books — no surprise there.)
Thank you
Thank you for your inbox space, time, and attention.
Thank you for reading.
It means the world to me that you are here.
Sarah
Special acknowledgements
This is my chance to publicly thank a handful of specific people in regards to this newsletter, and I’m going to take it because this has not been an alone thing.
Deep gratitude to:
Rebecca Healy, for believing in my vision for some kind of passion project relating to children’s books for years — really, years — before I figured it out.
Helen McLaughlin, for your listening ear, your insight, and your tireless encouragement.
Marjorie Stewart, Jeanne Paré, and Mandy Handeland — my own personal cheering section — for your constant enthusiasm and support.
The librarians and staff at the Mount Horeb Public Library, for keeping me up to my neck in books and for all your help (especially Melissa Roelli, queen of SpecILL and my real friend). I might be able to do this without all of you — it’s unlikely — but I wouldn’t want to.
My husband Matt Miller, for never (okay, rarely) complaining about the piles of books in every room, on every surface in the house; for making sure I am fed; for listening to me talk about this newsletter at least daily. Which is to say: for believing in me, always.