Every spring, our fourth grade hatches chicks. I always took my class to visit the chicks in someone else's class, but we never hatched our own until last year. Even then, my coteacher did most of the chickening. This year I was solo again, so this was really the first time that I was the official chicken mama. It all began like this, with a dozen eggs in our incubator, and twenty-one days of patience.

I think this event (the kid-centered portion of it) initially came across my radar because the Scholastic facebook was promoting Selina Alko  and Sean Qualls' appearance to do a reading of their (really lovely) new book Why Am I Me? And when I dove into the listing on the Brooklyn Book Festival site and saw their was a panel with Ellen Oh, Jacqueline Woodson, Rita William-Garcia, and Gene Luen Yang, my decision was made. I texted it to my best best friend (the one who already met Rita at our local bookstore), saying, listen, I know this event is in Brooklyn and breaks the two rivers rule (we live in New Jersey, so anything in the outer boroughs involves crossing two rivers in some kind of way, and requires careful consideration and a really good reason why), but check out this panel. She immediately wrote back, "I would SWIM to Brooklyn for that panel." Excellent perspective, friend! We didn't swim, we just took the PATH and the subway and it wasn't bad at all. The adventure, however, was a Best Day Ever kind of day.