This is a picture of the fan mail that arrived today, forwarded from the publisher. It is sometimes a little overwhelming, as you can imagine, though always lovely to read the kind words from readers. Each of those large manila envelopes is from a classroom, and usually there are between 10-30 letters in such a batch; fortunately the teachers who send then realize that one letter in reply is all I can manage, and in fact it wll often be a standardized letter addressing whichever book the kids have read.

If only through some magic I could sit here and write a personal letter to each reader, as I did years ago when the letters dribbled in maybe 2-3 a week. I loved the intinacy of that correspondence. Not long ago I received an email from a woman whose daughter is now reading my books; she asked if by any chance I remembered her; she had wrtten several letters to me years ago, when she was 10 and 11. And I did! I remembered details about her and the letters we had written each other.

But there is no way I can do that now. This mountain of letters will get replies but I won't remember the individual kids, and that is such a loss.

I said a few posts back that I would update readers about THE GIVER movie. It has been a long, long haul with that project...years. Literally years. This past week, the time expired, and the producers who held the rights had not been able to get the necessary funding to proceed. The end. Or so it would seem. But two days later, Warner Brothers stepped in and snapped it up. So now it is very active once again, but in different hands, and we can all - that includes me - watch with interest to see if anything emerges.

I have not seen the film of "Bridge to Terabithia" but it has gotten very good reviews. And that book was published in 1977....thirty years ago. So it is a long, bumpy road to the screen for many of us, and in some cases has a happy ending. I hope that will be true for THE GIVER.