TRACKING TRASH
By Loree Griffin Burns
Houghton Mifflin, 2007
Yesterday afternoon was like any other around here. By three o’clock all three of my kids were home, plus an extra—a guest for the afternoon—and all was chaos. How can four children hyped up on Friday afternoon possibilities and playing in January air that smells like spring create anything but chaos? They were flinging coats and backpacks in my general direction and asking for snacks and choosing sides for the soccer game all in the same breath. Chaos.
And so I was distracted when the Fedex man showed up in his white van. I’ve gotten used to him turning up at this time of day since I began reviewing books for the Cybils award. The package he handed me was clearly a book. Nothing unusual. Except that my Cybils work is done and I wasn’t expecting any more books. Hmmm. The return address raised my eyebrows further: Houghton Mifflin. That’s my publisher. Hmmm. I stopped thinking about whether the kids would deal with clementines as a Friday afternoon snack and ripped open the package.
Can you guess what was inside? I can hardly believe it now, twenty-four hours later. It was my book. An actual hardcover copy of TRACKING TRASH, complete with a jacket cover sporting my name and, in the flap, my photograph. I knew it would come eventually, of course. I’ve pored over proofs and seen the ARCs and have recently been distributing bookmarks with the book’s cover on them. But none of that prepared me for actually holding this book in my hands.
Crazy.
There was a momentary lull in the din as my husband assembled the troops for an impromptu standing ovation. We celebrated in style: Oreos and milk all around. Then the kids went back to their Friday afternoon, my husband went back to work, and I started to thumb through the pages of this little wonder.
Crazy.