Bartography Express, March 2020
Hey there!
It's nearly here!!!

Fire Truck vs. Dragon — written by me, illustrated by Shanda McCloskey, and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers — comes out a week from tomorrow. Scroll down for details about this month's much-bigger-than-usual book giveaway, and for info on fun activities that Shanda created for our readers.
Fire Truck, Dragon, and I will be in lots of places in the next month or so, starting with Austin's BookPeople, where I'll read the book at the store's regular Saturday-morning storytime on March 14 .

Can't make it to storytime in the middle of Texas? Through the link above, you can order a signed copy of Fire Truck vs. Dragon and have it shipped right to you by a terrific independent bookseller.

And if you can make it to storytime, stick around BookPeople afterwards for the monthly meeting of the Austin chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators , where I'll be commemorating my 20th year in this field by talking about "20 Things I've Learned from 20 Books."
After that, I'll be at:


Meanwhile, there are many other children's literature/YA events going on or taking shape all around the country.
And as I do roughly twice each year, I have just updated my list of every single college- or university-affiliated kidlit conference, festival, etc. — all of them that I could find, any way. This time around, I found 50!

If you know someone who would love to attend a giant national conference but doesn't have the resources, they might find something here that's helpful, closer to home, and within their budget. So please share this list with them.

While you're looking at that list on my website, please take a look around and admire the wonderful redesign my site just received .

In particular, I hope you'll check out:

  • About Me, which includes the book I wrote (and illustrated!) in second grade, The Ozzie Bros. Meet the Monsters.
  • Books, with information about my nine nonfiction books and 11 fiction titles, plus the anthologies I've contributed to.
  • Author Visits, including my absolute favorite new feature on the site — flippy tiles containing verbatim feedback from my recent hosts.

Credit for the splendid new look goes to Sarah Rehm, who designed my previous site and my original one before that, which launched a decade ago. If you need a UI/web designer, I highly recommend Sarah.

Now it's time for my monthly new-book giveaway, but instead of interrogating Fire Truck vs. Dragon illustrator Shanda McCloskey for a Q&A, I thought I'd share these downloadable activity sheets that she created to go with our book.
(By all means, please feel free to share these.)


Thank you, Shanda!

I'm also happy to pass along part of the latest rave review for Fire Truck vs. Dragon , from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books :

"This readaloud is playful in its subversion of kids’ expectations, with the fire truck and dragon building up each other’s skillsets rather than fighting. ... With a lot of reread potential to catch the background characters’ expressions, this is sure to be a favorite at bedtime and storytime."

To celebrate the publication of my latest book, I'm giving away five copies — one each, signed by me, to five different Bartography Express subscribers.

So, if you’re a Bartography Express subscriber with a US mailing address and you want to be one of the winners of Fire Truck vs. Dragon , just say so in a reply to this email before midnight on March 31 , and I’ll enter you in the drawing.
And that's it for me this month. Thank you so much for reading and subscribing to Bartography Express.

Take care,

Chris