Long Island Newsday!

Back in June, the most amazing thing happened. The Popularity Papers, along with Tom Angleberger's The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, was reviewed in

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Yes. The New York Times.



It was amazing. Growing up on Long Island, the two newspapers that were always in our house were The New York Times and Newsday. The NYTimes review came out on the day that we were all together at my father's house celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday. That's right, I totally stole the spotlight at my own grandmother's 90th birthday party. She taken 90 years to get to that point, and I was all, "LOOK AT ME, THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS I'M HUGELY TALENTED!!! Happy birthday, Grandma. LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!!!!"

My grandmother and some of her great-grandchildren, clearly enraged that I have hijacked her big day.

After the party was over (and I accidentally let a mylar balloon fly up into the top branches of a tall tree, prompting my father to remark, "Hugely talented, my *%#") I resigned myself to the bittersweet truth that unless I won some sort of Nobel prize I would never again do anything as awesome in my career as getting a good review in The New York Times. I might as well just give up.

Until...

LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY CALLED.

I'm pretty sure that this blog is read by eleventy-thousand or so people, and they've all been wondering why I went up to Long Island for about twenty-four hours to do no book events while my dad wasn't even in town. I was being interviewed! By a reporter! For Newsday! Here is the picture that was in the paper--

Okay, so it was superhot when I got to my dad's house and I'd been schlepping this big bag with my computer in it and I was all sweaty in an unattractive way so I took a shower before checking if there was any shampoo and when I found out that there wasn't I just used conditioner and then I tried to make up for the lack of shampoo by using a bunch of my stepsister's mousse and maybe I overcompensated and yes, that is why when my brother saw the picture the first thing he said was, "Did you get a perm?" I did not get a perm.

The article all about me appeared in the Lifestyle section of Long Island Newsday this weekend. You have to be a subscriber to see the whole thing, so I'll just paraphrase what was written.

Amy Ignatow, who grew up in Huntington and once played the role of Goose in her junior high school's production of Charlotte's Web, the Musical, wrote the greatest book ever. Everyone must run out and buy it and read it immediately. To do otherwise would be folly. She will be appearing at Best Bargain Books in Centereach on Thursday, August 5th at 6:30, and at Barnes & Noble in Carle Place on Friday, August 6th, at 2, hooray! The End.

It was something along those lines. So come out to Centereach and Carle Place!

I know, it's hard to believe, but even back then I was this awesome.