Writers on tour

There's a nice long profile of Kate DiCamillo in today's New York Times on the release of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, "Candlewick's biggest fiction title to date, with an announced first print run of 350,000 and a $300,000 marketing campaign."

Jane Margolies interviews DiCamillo and covers the "Valentine's Day" premier of Edward Tulane at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.

Margolies finds that DiCamillo's strength as a writer lies in the fact that "love, spiritual salvation and emotional transformation are hallmarks of her books, but so are senseless cruelty and excruciating abandonment."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This article in Sunday's Guardian (by Anushka Asthana and Matthew Ogborn) about eight-year-old writer Adora Svitak, scares me a little bit.

Here's the intro: "Over the past 18 months she has had a 296-page book published and written 400 short stories and nearly 100 poems. Typing at 80 words a minute, she has produced 370,000 words while reading up to three books a day. The last novel she finished was Voltaire's Candide. Not bad for an eight-year-old."

From Seattle, Svitak is headed to the U.K. to "to convince children [here] of the joy of reading."