Tomorrow I head back to Pennsylvania for a 3-day visit to Pittsburgh. Kate’s Book Bash has arranged a school visit and parent event on 9/26, and an educator event at Riverstone Books on 9/28. In between I’ll have time to catch up with Noa Denmon; we collaborated on A Place Inside of Me (for which Noa won the Caldecott honor award!) and Noa is illustrating my Juneteenth book that got postponed after the last illustrator was arrested…

I’ve been sharing A Place Inside of Me a lot lately because it’s #BannedBooksWeek and we faced two challenges in TN and VA that ultimately were unsuccessful due to community resistance (read this great article about teenager Julia Garnett’s activism). If you want to know what you can do to join the fight against censorship in our schools and public libraries, head over to Ruby’s and Pearl’s, Edith Campbell’s new School Library Journal blog. Edi’s got a list of quick, easy actions that will support banned authors and keep important, inclusive books in kids’ hands. Earlier this week I found out that my poetry collection was challenged again—this time in Oregon. The reason? “Objection: Unknown.” The outcome? My book was “retained” by the public library. But many books by LGBTQ authors are pulled from the shelves, which HAS to stop.

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