Escargot!

Not too long ago I followed someone on Twitter because she looked interesting. I found her because she entered the giveaway for my book, KICK! JUMP! CHOP! THE ADVENTURES OF THE NINJABREAD MAN, that was happening through Ninjas Read. Miss Gee, known as @MsGeeLvsBooks on Twitter, is a 2nd grade teacher and an aspiring teacher-librarian. Sounds just like my type of gal! When I followed Ms. Gee I had no idea I was entering a contest. And a really cool one at that! Not long after I received this tweet:

@heatherayris you're my 100th follower! So cool! My class is going to pick their favorite picture book to mail to you 😆 DM an address ❤️📚 pic.twitter.com/89LVi4vK9D

Unexpected and exciting! I got in touch with Ms. Gee and soon this cute little pink package arrived. I had run to the post office before work so I went straight to my favorite part of the library, the children's section amongst the picture books, of course, to find out what was inside the package!

I opened it up and there was the most adorable snail I had ever seen! (I put the book up on my shelf to admire it while I read the card!) Ms. Gee's class chose ESCARGOT written by Dashka Slater and illustrated by Sydney Hanson as their favorite book!

Now, I see a lot of books every single day in my work at the library and I was super excited not only because of the beautiful illustrations and the fact that this is a book about a snail. I love snails! I was excited because I had never seen this book before and oh my gosh do I love the story! You see Escargot is a beautiful snail from France and he simply wants two things: to be your favorite animal and to eat the fabulous salad at the end of the book. But wait! There is a carrot and that is trouble. Big, big trouble!


Oooo, la la! I cannot wait to share this story with the kids who come to the library for storytime and tell them about Ms. Gee's 2nd grade class in Virginia and how they chose this very book as their favorite!


Want to hear one more amazing thing? Miss Gee won the copy of my book in the Ninjas Read giveaway. I had absolutely nothing to do with picking the winner on that. It was completely run by the amazing ninja writer, Corey Rosen Schwartz. I'm no mathematician but there has got to be a mathematical lesson in probability on that! Maybe Corey could help us out. Her new book, TWINDERELLA, is a mathy fractioned fairytale.

Mathematics aside, I love that luck, Ninjas Read, and Twitter connected me with this fun new book and let me have a peek into what a second grade class on the other side of the United States from me loves.

A huge THANK YOU to Ms. Gee and her second grade class! You are magnifique!