Last night we had the final keynote address from Leonard Marcus, a noted expert in children’s literature, and its history and a biographer of some of the greatest names in child lit! Started writing this post at the Hong Kong airport, and now that I’m back home, safe and sound, I can finish it. Ooh, […]

One of the biggest challenges I face is going into a venue and trying to explain the Muslim perspective to people who think completely differently. It’s never easy, and I’m not complaining, it’s just a challenge that has landed on my plate for whatever reason. I do the best I can, but it can get […]

Someone told me that Singapore is a little island of prosperity in an area of the world that is struggling, and I think I know why. For the longest while, I’ve suspected that it was vision and innovation that made America become the superpower it is. You get a sense of that here in Singapore […]

The problem with being right on the equator, surrounded by water, is that the humidity is just gruelling. I went to a school yesterday and the librarian informed me of how the body adapts. She said, “You just wait, in six months of this heat your body would have made some physiological changes, and your […]

Caught a bus this morning to Singapore, and am writing this comfortably ensconced in my hotel room at the Peninsula Excelsior hotel. Where did the time go? Feels like yesterday I just got to KL, and this morning I had to say goodbye to it. Goodbye to the pungent aromas of the street vendors steaming who knows […]

When I returned from London at the end of November, I had dreams, nightmares really of me sitting on the London tube, worried that I’d miss my stop! And that was in a situation where I could speak and understand the language! I had absolutely no intention of taking the public transit here in Kuala […]

My third day in Kuala Lumpur and where do I begin? Went to visit a publisher this morning. Kuala Lumpur has quite the train system. Apparently most people rely on the trains to get across the city. Problem is the signs are in Malay, and I don’t read Malay. I’m informed that there are signs […]

Left home on Thursday night at around 10:30 pm, arrived in KL at my hotel room about 2:30 pm on Saturday. It’s a twelve hour time difference. Basically you can’t go any further around the globe before you start coming back. The  fifteen hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong is difficult. I was dreading […]

I was invited to a publisher party tonight. I always find them so daunting. Meeting people I admire so much…tends to make you feel kind of inadequate. But I went, because I’ve always found that I never regret it afterwards–even though I had a ton of preparations to do for tomorrow night’s trip to Malaysia […]

I guess by now everyone’s heard the news of the death of Maurice Sendak. From everything I’d heard of him, I suspected he was a curmudgeonly sort, but it was only absolutely confirmed when I saw the interview between him and Stephen Colbert. It’s actually very funny. He swears like a sailor and says stuff […]