Steven,

I am so sorry I have not yet been able to contact you to send you my heart felt thanks! After your visit we had state testing and it was such a chore to have the children focus again on material that is not appealing to them. April 15th was a wonderful day in Saint Joseph School! We had the time of our lives. My children and myself have never been more excited nor ever so happy! All thanks to you. I hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did and I do hope you felt CELEBRATED! You truly deserve to be celebrated. My children read and read and read. This is something they do not always do. The fact that they read and learned through reading made me one happy camper! Having my eighth graders looking for another book to read was astonishing! I hope you get your rights back to write about the Petrosino Family again soon or write another book about an immigrant family arriving in our country. The children ate up that concept and your storyline.

I really look forward to talking with you soon and having you attend our benefit as well as speak at graduation. It would be such a joy to have you become one of our lifelong friends! We already love you, I hope you were as happy with us as we were with you.

We already have started to plan for next year... a swap of your books across the grades so all students have an opportunity to read all the books we have that you wrote. We also have asked a board member to donate money to purchase more of your books that we do not yet have. I am really excited that the children are so interested in reading! I am grateful you have provided us with material that has done so. You are doing such great work for our youth!!! Thank you.

I am not a writer myself so I am so thrilled that I have finally found an author that interests my children enough to want to read and to want to read more and to research and to write based on what they have read. I am forever appreciative!

I hope all is well with you and I shall try to speak with you soon.

Janine Hughes