One of the very first people I ran into at the recent Texas Library Association conference was the North Texas librarian who, four years ago, provided a new home to my seedling from the Oklahoma City Survivor Tree when it had grown into a sapling too big for me to continue caring for in the way it deserved.

And this librarian knew exactly what I wanted to hear: We’d barely even said hello when she let me know that our Survivor Tree is thriving on her family’s land.

You may not know about my picture book All of a Sudden and Forever: Help and Healing After the Oklahoma City Bombing, which was published the month before the pandemic was declared.

All of a Sudden and Forever uses the Survivor Tree as a symbol of the recovery and resilience of the people affected by that 1995 tragedy:

Families, survivors, and helpers came together. They talked, they listened, they cried, and sometimes even laughed. They fixed—they made right—what they could and began looking to the future. Some took solace under that elm tree that had survived. When the next spring came and new seeds fell from the Survivor Tree’s branches, someone thought to collect them. Something could be done with those.

The journey of All of a Sudden and Forever began ten years ago this month. In April 2016 an otherwise unremarkable book tour allowed me a last-minute opportunity to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum for the first time. That chance stop on my way to the airport resulted in some of the most emotionally challenging — and meaningful, and satisfying — writing of my life.

Honestly, this book has never reached the audience I had hoped it would. That’s just how it goes sometimes. But I’ve never stopped trying to help it connect.

Each month I send books to four randomly selected subscribers to my Bartography Express newsletter. (Folks can sign up here.) But for April 2026, I’ll be giving away four sets of signed books written by me and brought into the world by Lerner Publishing.

If you’d like to be one of the winners of All of a Sudden and Forever and Dazzle Ships: World War I and the Art of Confusion, by the end of this month either say so in the comments below or contact me directly, and you’ll be in the running. (Subscribers with U.S. mailing addresses only.)

I’ll close with this quote from Dazzle Ships, a reminder — to readers, to students I share this book with during my author visits, and also to myself — of the benefits of creative problem solving:

The willingness to tackle problems by trying the unlikely, the improbable, the seemingly bonkers will always be needed. After all, as those of us inspired by Norman Wilkinson’s paint job know, sometimes desperate times call for dazzling measures.