Thank you, thank you, Sam-I-Am!

(or Thanksblogging consolidated.)

I'm thankful to be surrounded by children's books - the old favorites, the new discoveries, the tinies and the tomes, the visual and the oh-so-texty, the ARCs and the dusty volumes with decades-old inscriptions, the not-to-my-taste-but-I-see-why-it's-good and the throw-it-across-the-room awful, the sweetly traditional and the progressive (which can also be sweet), the to-read pile and the tempted-to-reread list.

I'm thankful to encounter so many people who care about children's books, be they professionals in the field, invested parents, interested friends, customers who (think they) remember very little but really want to find the right gift, or, of course, kids.

I'm thankful that while our ways of getting information and entertainment keep changing, books are still part of the discussion. Physical books are still a major part of many people's lives, maybe especially many children's lives. And though I haven't gone the e-book route, I think it's pretty cool that in the midst of all the bells and whistles of recent technology, someone thought, "How can I make books a part of this?"

I'm thankful that every time it seems like we could be out of ideas, a whole bunch of new ones prove us wrong. This past year yielded plenty of creativity, and I have no doubt that the next few years' books will surprise us in ways we may not even be able to imagine yet.

I'm thankful that my own manuscript will probably do that, too. (It better, since I don't have all the details figured out yet.) And I'm thankful to belong to crowds in which we all get excited about each other's nebulous ideas. It's a great way to make them less nebulous.

Finally, I'm thankful to all of you for letting me go on and on about my favorite field. Happy Thanksgiving.