They say time flies when you're having fun...

The world's been busy looking toward the future—and indeed, the present!—over the last few days, so it's perhaps an odd day to be posting about the past, but I hope you'll indulge a wee self-indulgent moment of looking back, even still. Because in looking at my calendar, I realized that today marks an anniversary of sorts for me—six years ago today, I walked into my very first job in the big, bad world of NYC publishing.

Within a few weeks of starting that job, a dazzling number of authors and illustrators (real, live, authors & illustrators!), some having their very first book published and some honest-to-goodness luminaries whom I'd worshipped for years, proceeded to walk off my bookshelves and into my reality—into my email, my mailbox, and through the other end of my telephone. And though I'd long admired the books, the words, and the art of so many children's books creators, what I hadn't known when I first began dreaming of working in publishing was how wonderful and fulfilling a life filled with the people connected to books would be.

Six years certainly isn't a long time in any career, and in fact, I kind of get excited when I think of how much I don't know yet—how much more there is yet to soak up and experience over the next few decades. But six years is long enough to know this for certain—that the world of children's books (and not just the writers and artists, but the publishing folk, booksellers, teachers, librarians, agents, reviewers, and readers, too!) is truly is home to some of the finest, most passionate, most inspiring, and most creative minds in the world: people who are, I believe, doing some of the most important work in the world. They've also proven to be some of the most wildly brilliant, remarkably fun, and astonishingly generous people I've had a chance to know.

I'm immensely proud of the many books I've worked on marketing, publicizing, and editing over the last six years, and perhaps even more excited to think of the books of the future that I'll have a part in creating and putting into the hands of readers. But, today, I think it's the people behind the books that I'm most grateful for, and who are a very real part of what makes this truly a dream job. My thanks to you all.