Another celebration of Laurie Halse Anderson's visit to St. Louis

There's no way I can top Shannon's account of Laurie's visit, but I do have a few more images to share.

Laurie has been on book tour since October 14th.  Does she even look tired?  She began her talk last night by showing us pictures of her chickens on the "focus" slide shown here.  "I hope I won't offend any vegetarians out there," she said, "but those chickens will become dinner in a few weeks."  Later in the talk, Laurie showed us a picture of a skinned rabbit that she was roasting oven an open fire in order to experience eating like a Revolutionary War soldier.

If I was a better photographer, I would have gotten a shot when Laurie turned her right hand to show the inside of her wrist.  "Mama, she has a tattoo!" my nine-year-old son Ethan whispered.  In the book signing line, we heard Laurie tell some kids ahead of us that her tattoo is the word "Hwaet," which is the first word from Beowulf, and which roughly translates from Anglo-Saxon to mean "Listen to my story."

Try to ignore my underwhelming photography skills, but check out the slide to Laurie's left.  It reads, "George Washington is my homeboy."  Laurie talked for a good while last night about her love of history; her disillusionment when she learned that Benjamin Franklin, her favorite founding father, had owned slaves; and her conviction that a lot of the problems we still struggle with in America regarding racism and hatred stem from the fact that we don't know our own history.  But she touched on these subjects at the same time she was making us laugh.  "Benjamin Franklin was the kind of guy I would have dated in high school," she said.  "He must have had ADD."

The quote that moved me to get out a piece of notepaper was this one:  "We read literature to prepare for life's challenges."  Laurie said that if she wore a hat, it would have a big elephant on the front, because as an author, she chooses to write about the elephant in the room, or things that people would prefer not to talk about.  Then she gave a hats off to Missourians because so many of us wrote to her after the Wesley Scroggins editorial that called Speak pornography.  Laurie said she loves George Washington because he fought for us to have a country where people like her and Wesley Scroggins have the freedom to publicly disagree.

I'd say these last two shots illustrate how readers are made.  Thank you, Laurie.

Jennifer Buehler