Breakfast with Simmone

This morning I opened the Age newspaper to find a beautiful photograph of Simmone Howell gazing up at me from beside my breakfast. Go Simmone. Kathy Kizilos interviewed Simmone about her latest book Everything Beautiful and an upcoming event at the State Library (Sunday - read the article to find out more).

I've been meaning to blog about Everything Beautiful ever since I read it last year. I loved it. I loved it so much that I agreed to launch it at Readings bookshop in St Kilda. And then I meant to blog about both the book and the launch. But I have been a bad and lazy blogger the past few months so I haven't blogged about either the wonderful novel or the tasty launch (there were cupcakes).

Everything Beautiful is brave, funny and deserving of serious attention. It's heroine, Riley Rose, is so out-there, so true to life, so alive that she will startle a lot of readers. Thinking about her again - and she's a character that is hard to forget - makes me realise, I need to write another posting just about Riley and why she is so important in contemporary YA fiction. More later.