A Slow, Quiet Reunion

by Jody Feldman

March 15, 2020
Something-corona-something-virus had been increasingly talked about in recent days especially on the West Coast where, for the past week, I’d been on an early spring vacation traveling from Los Angels to San Francisco, visiting family and friends along the way. It started getting real when our friends in Sonoma took us to a popular winery that was nearly deserted. Then, the next day, when we pulled up to the hotel in San Francisco, the bellman said, “You’re really checking in?” We did and summarily checked out 14 hours later, catching the first available flight back home where we went directly to the empty toilet-paper aisle at the grocery store and--

I’ll stop there. You lived it, too.

For me, I was later to become increasingly grateful that I had been able to travel without ill effects just before this whole quarantine business started and even more grateful for my home-based work. And so I sunk very deeply into the writing. My guiding thought: If I can’t be out and about and if all school visits are canceled, I might as well be productive. 

Soon, I discovered that my COVID escape was in writing... and writing... and writing some more. But dedicated writers are also dedicated readers, right? 

So, I asked a local bookseller to gather a group of middle grade titles together for curbside pick-up, books that might have flown under my radar. When I got that stack home, however, I didn’t have the patience or mindset or drive to read. This weekend, I thought. This weekend I’ll pick one and open the cover. But that weekend turned into the next weekend into months of weekends.

Sure, I finally read a book here and there, but it wasn’t my normal. Then again, the world wasn’t normal. It still isn’t, but as I’m adapting to this new normal, I’m also finding the old urge to connect with my to-be-read pile again. It’s been a slow reunion, but a happy one. And while some things will be forever changed, I know, for certain, books will always be there, waiting for me.

Award-winning middle grade author of The Gollywhopper Games series and The Seventh Level, and historically voracious reader, Jody Feldman may be taking a brief dip to the other (older) side with a YA thriller coming out next summer, but never fear. As you read this, she’s revising what she hopes will be a new MG story that you'll want to read immediately, no matter what.