Happy Blogiversary to Me!

I realized the other day that I had recently passed a blogging milestone of sorts--my one year "blogiversary."  I started my blog on May 17, 2010, after learning about book blogs in one of my library school classes and having an "aha" sort of moment.

Why add my voice to the approximately 126 MILLION bloggers out there (a statistic tracked through BlogPulse)?

I wanted to do something a little different than everything else out there--blog about historical fiction, one of my favorite genres, and specifically about historical fiction for kids and teens.  I expanded into some history-related non-fiction as well as I developed a focus for my blog.  At the beginning I wondered if anyone would read my blog--like the hostess who throws a big party and wonders if anyone will come!  Much to my delight, people started to follow my blog (and they're not members of my immediate family, for the most part) and I quickly discovered that blogging can become a bit of an obsession--both writing my own and reading those of other bloggers.  One of the great parts is a very supportive on-line community of book bloggers.  I even got to meet some fellow bloggers in person this past year at Kidlitosphere in Minneapolis and at the American Library Association Mid-Winter conference in San Diego, where it was great fun to put some faces to some of the names I've been following on-line.  

I also wanted to give a shout-out to fellow blogger and librarian Lisa Taylor at Shelf-Employed for co-organizing with me an inaugural Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month blogging event, in which so many supportive authors and bloggers participated.  Over the past year I feel some sense of accomplishment to have reviewed over 150 books on my blog and published over a dozen author interviews.  I hope I'll be able to keep up my pace!  I wanted to thank all the supportive readers out there who've kindly commented on my blog and made me feel like someone is paying attention out in cyberspace.