Grab Bag Friday: Robert's Snow

Every year since 2004, the Dana Farber Institute has held an auction called Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure. This is no ordinary auction.

Here's the story:

Robert's Snow is a children's story about a mouse not allowed in the snow. Children's book illustrator Grace Lin wrote the book, which was inspired by her husband Robert's battle with Ewing's sarcoma. After the book was published, Grace gathered artists from all over the children's book illustrating community to create special snowflakes to be auctioned off, with the proceeds benefiting sarcoma research at Dana-Farber. These snowflake auctions became known as the event "Robert's Snow."

Sadly, last month, Grace Lin's husband Robert passed away. In his honor, and to fight for a cure to cancer, over 150 artists have committed to creating snowflakes for the auction this year.

Here's where you and I come in:

Eisha and Jules, over at the great kidlit blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast have taken it upon themselves to coordinate a massive blogger effort to help promote and drive traffic to this year's Robert's Snow auction. In October and November, more than 60 bloggers from far and wide will be profiling illustrators who have snowflakes up for auction.

Here at Please Come Flying, I have agreed to feature five illustrators and their snowflakes (I've seen some of them and they are beautiful), and given my particular penchant for good children's books, you can imagine how happy I am to be a part of this effort!

More news will come soon, but get ready...I'm going to ask you to send these profiles to as many people as you can possibly think of. Let's see how much of a difference we can make when we work together!

(If you're a blogger and want to help spread the word, please visit Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast and contact Jules...she's great!)