Yesterday I did the Wanting Mor presentation again.

To a disparate group of grade 4 – 8’s in an Islamic school.

Islamic schools are always iffy. The kids are quite sheltered. You see a sweetness and innocence in them that just isn’t there in their more hardened, jaded public school counterparts.

But really there’s no risque stuff in the presentation. Grade four kids must have heard about drugs, and I didn’t feel too many qualms about presenting it to them.

I had offered them a special deal though. I did a combination of the Roses in my Carpets and Wanting Mor presentations, and it worked SO well! Sure made up for Friday’s experience.

Just the way the kids sat still for way longer than most kids would, close to two hours! And they were engaged the whole time, even though the room was way too light for an LCD projector and the images were hard to see.

Apparently I made some of the teachers cry. Always a good sign!

And there was one boy in particular, a tall intense looking teen who asked me a number of times if I’d be staying after school so he could ask his parents if he could get Wanting Mor.

I hung around especially for him, and he asked me one more time before he went outside to get picked up. But he never came back inside again, so I guess the answer was ‘no’. Oh how I was tempted to just give him a copy, but you can’t do that. It’s not fair to those who do buy the books.

But still, I had donated a set to the library so he definitely had access to it.

The trip was a total of over eight hundred kilometres! But I came back feeling it was well worth it.

And then this morning I got news that Kirkus is making a special insert of the best books of 2010 and lo and behold, Big Red Lollipop made the cut!

It’s going to receive a special call out in the December issue.

It was a good day.

I feel like I’m back on track.