{"id":294,"date":"2018-01-03T22:57:42","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T22:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/?p=294"},"modified":"2018-01-03T23:12:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T23:12:54","slug":"best-of-2017-and-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/03\/best-of-2017-and-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"“Best of 2017” and gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"2017 was a difficult year and, for many reasons, I’m glad it’s over. But 2017 included some gifts and joys as well — especially the fact that THIS IS NOT A NORMAL ANIMAL BOOK<\/a> brought laughter to some young readers! TJ Shay shared the book with his students<\/a> and this photo after his students read the book now has a permanent place in my mind. I was also THRILLED when so many children’s book people I respect and admire enjoyed the book: the hilarious Betsy Bird included my wacky book in her Fuse 8 Production round up of the year’s funniest picture books<\/a>; Minh Le dubbed it as one of the year’s most clever books<\/a> in HuffPost; Michele Knott included it as one of her favorites of the year<\/a>; and Margie Myers-Culver shared a review<\/a> that made my heart explode with joy! I’m so grateful! Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2018 has me looking forward to more school visits, a novel writing class, a writing retreat with my Picture the Books<\/a> debut author pals, and the Virginia Festival of the Book<\/a> in Charlottesville in March. It’s shaping up to be a great year! Here’s to more laughter for us all. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2017 was a difficult year and, for many reasons, I’m glad it’s over. But 2017 included some gifts and joys as well — especially the fact that THIS IS NOT A NORMAL ANIMAL BOOK brought laughter to some young readers! TJ Shay shared the book with his students and this photo after his students read…Continue reading “Best of 2017” and gratitude<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,36,29,30,37,35,28,5,32,20,31,34],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animal-book","tag-best-of-2017","tag-betsy-bird","tag-fuse-8-production","tag-happy-new-year","tag-huffpost","tag-minh-le","tag-picture-book","tag-terry-shay","tag-this-is-not-a-normal-animal-book","tag-tj-shay","tag-virginia-festival-of-the-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesegalwalters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}