School's Out!

 Friday was our last official day of school for the 2019-2020 school year!  As always, there are some things that we'll continue through the summer, but once we have officially declared the year over, we can take the day to do something fun and not feel at all guilty about it!

 We had our traditional food flags--sorry I am not sure how to put these all in one pic on the desktop!

We've been doing these a long time!

This summer is going to look quite a bit different than recent years.  Camps have been postponed and the fair is not going to happen as planned.  Alice isn't signed up for any kinds of classes at all!  Jack is going to be swimming again and hopefully will be working some, too.  We're definitely disappointed to miss out on some of these things, but on the bright side, we're hoping that we'll have more time for the pool and some day trips, too!

Katherine Applegate

 The Zarrow Award presentation has been a tradition in our family for years.  I went to my first one in 1998 and when we moved back to Oklahoma I traveled back to Tulsa most years to go with friends.  In 2013, I took the kids for the first time.  The winner that year was Jim Murphy.

 In 2014, the winner was Jack Gantos.

 I'm not sure why I didn't have the kids take a picture together...

 2015 was Sharon Draper

 2016 was Gordon Korman

 2017 was Laurie Halse Anderson

 2018 was Pam Munoz Ryan

 2019 Was Rita Williams Garcia

 We often go with friends and make a whole evening of it with dinner before and dessert afterward, and fun conversation in the line waiting to get our books signed.  So we were really excited when it was announced that the 2020 winner was Katherine Applegate, who wrote The One and Only Ivan, which is a big favorite here.

 Alice loved the story so much she used the picture book version as the basis for her dramatic reading entry at the Communication Rally a couple of years ago.

 We were disappointed that the presentation was on Zoom instead of in person this year, so we threw our own party!

 She's written tons of books, but we based ours on The One and Only Ivan.

 We had canvas cookies, since Ivan is an artist.

 Some of his subjects to snack on...

 And lots of other yummy things from the book!

   

We watched it live on YouTube while we ate!

 She included pictures of Ivan in her talk--that's him on the left.

 The mall where he lived

 Ivan in captivity at the mall

 Ivan living at the zoo with other gorillas!

The sequel, The One and Only Bob, comes out Tuesday and our copy should be here by 5 pm, so we'll be starting it right away!