What Color Is Your Toothbrush?

Once a year my husband visits the youth group at our church for a Meet-the-Pastor Q&A session, and this year he got asked, "Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot he couldn't eat it?" (If you wonder about the answer, you may want to sit in on this session next year.)

Not to be outdone, I was invited  to visit 7th and 8th graders at Eastside Christian School in Bellevue, to talk about writing and publishing and Being an Author, and these students had also prepared questions ahead of time. Some I was ready for, having done adult book events: What inspired you to write the story? How long did it take you? Was it hard to get published? Did you revise and edit?

But some caught me off guard, though not to the Jesus-burrito extent. Consider: What was your favorite book as a child? Do you have a pet? What was your favorite pet? What is your favorite Halloween candy? What color is your toothbrush? And then, at last, to stump me--Do you like pie?

I so like pie.

The teacher also invited me to read a passage, "age appropriate, of course." Easier said than done! I spent the morning stressing over this and flipping through the entire book only to realize that there was not one age-appropriate paragraph in the entire thing. However, it turned out a good 1/3 of the class had read the TWILIGHT series, so maybe I was getting anxious about nothing. What's a cuss word here and there, compared to sneaking your vampire boyfriend into your bedroom every night and begging him to bite you?

In any case, I ended up excerpting Chapter 2, In Which the Heroine Goes to Church. And the classes paid me the highest compliment--no one fell asleep.