Dropped in on the Books for NYC Schools event to see Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier read. But the trains were running late, so I missed their part of the reading, and forgot my copies of Leviathan and How to Ditch Your Fairy at work, so I pretty much listened to Bennet Madison and Cecily von Ziegesar’s part of the reading–and I’m so glad I did, because I haven’t read their books and really enjoyed hearing their work–and said hi to Scott & Justine, just getting my copy of Specials signed because that was the only one I had at home. But I was able to donate several books to the event, which was the most important thing. I love that they did this, and it looks like it’s an ongoing non-profit project sponsored by ReadThis and The Center for Fiction, so you might be able to find ways of helping out even with the event over.

Even if you can’t help NYC schools, remember that most school libraries are suffering right now because of local and state budget shortfalls. April is School Library Month, and there’s a lot you can do in your own neighborhood, city, and county to get involved and make sure that kids in your own area have the tools they need to get a good education. A huge part of that education is access to a library–and librarians to staff those libraries. Laurie Halse Anderson is this year’s spokesperson and she has a video over on her site talking about why school libraries in particular are important. Pull quote:

On the fact that math scores are up across the country, but reading scores are not: “We haven’t asked parents to volunteer to teach our algebra classes… we haven’t fired math teachers and let kids to figure it out on the Internet, but we’ve closed libraries and fired librarians, who are the central figure of literacy in any school.”

After that, I was on to run a few errands near work that I forgot to do yesterday evening, which put me in the neighborhood of a kimbap cafe across the street from the Asian market I needed to pick a few things up from. I saw it yesterday on my way back to the office from picking up japchae at a Korean restaurant on the same street, but it didn’t register until I got back to the office. I love kimbap–but it takes forever for me to make it just for me, and I always end up with too much. So just over $5 for a roll all for myself? YUM.