Giveaway of WAITING TO SCORE and PRINCESS FOR HIRE will be later tonight! And FYI, I'll post Thursday, but not Friday because I'll be in NY/DC for ALA and other bookish things. I hope to do a wrap up post this weekend on that. I'm going to the Newbery dinner, and it's pretty much something I've wanted to do, oh, my whole life.
So now! Kimberly Derting! Last year, at SCBWI LA, my room fell through right before the conference, so Kim and Shelli Johannes-Wells offered to let me stay with them. And since I was pregnant, they gave me a bed and slumber-partied together. Just to be nice. I almost named my first-born after them, but Killy didn't really work for me.
Switching gears...
We give. Here and there. My nephew has special needs so we donate to The Special Olympics. I contribute to friends who do the 3-Day Walk. I support local fundraisers and the children’s hospital…whatever charity presents itself at the right time. But I’ve never really put much thought behind it.
Yet I have this daughter, nine-years-old, with a bleeding heart that she wears on her sleeve. I’m not sure I realized just how intense these charitable feelings were for her until the night we were watching American Idol Gives Back and they were flashing images of impoverished children, starving and disease riddled. My daughter was stricken. She openly wept. And my husband pulled out his credit card.
But it was the days following his phoned-in donation when we realized what we’d just done. Not just the money we’d contributed, but the gift we’d given to our daughter. She recounted over and over again (and to anyone who would listen) how many children we’d just fed, how many immunizations we’d provided. Her chest puffed up as she reported these statistics. She probably slept better at night knowing that some little girl, in another part of the world, might be sleeping better because of her.
That was eye-opening. Our little girl, the one who sobs during the ASPCA commercials (you know, the ones with the horrifying images of abused animals that flash by while Sarah McLachlan sings?), reminded us what giving really means…that spirit of thoughtfulness that should be behind the donation. Beyond just reciting some numbers off of our credit cards.
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Kimberly Derting lives in the Pacific Northwest, which is the ideal place to be writing anything dark or creepy...a gloomy day can set the perfect mood. She lives with her husband and their three beautiful (and often mouthy) children, who serve as an endless source of inspiration for her writing.
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