Robert's Snow; coming auction

One of my favorite kidlit blogs Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has this post up today:

By now, you have probably read the very sad news of the death of Robert Mercer, Grace Lin’s husband, at the end of last month, due to cancer.

You may remember from our May ’07 interview with Grace that she was the driving force behind the Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure fundraising effort after Robert was initially diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma and after writing Robert’s Snow (Viking Books; 2004) soon after that diagnosis. The fundraising effort entailed the auctioning off of special snowflakes, created by children’s book illustrators, whom Grace had gathered together in the name of raising money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). The auction raised a great deal of money in its first year after the publication of this book, which features these illustrators, many of them award-winning, and their creatively and uniquely designed wood snowflakes for the cause. One hundred percent of the royalties from the book’s sale went to the DFCI to support sarcoma research. Robert’s Snow is in its third year and has already raised more than $200,000 for Dana-Farber. (You can see the 2005 snowflakes here).

This year, more than 200 well-known children’s book illustrators from around the world have been given a five-inch wooden snowflake to decorate at will. Like actual snowflakes, each design is unique. The 2007 online auctions for bidding on these hand-painted snowflakes will take place in three separate auctions, open to everyone, from November 19 to 23, November 26-30, and December 3-7. You can read here for more information (the image above is a publicity image for the upcoming auctions, used with permission from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. You may click on the image itself to launch the Robert’s Snow site).

Jules is organizing a blog blitz tour featuring the children's book illustrators and their snowflakes. I am hoping to join the tour so look for more to come in the coming months. If you would like to join in by featuring children's book illustrators on your blog in the tour just contact Jules at 7Imp. Everyone's welcome! For now, go visit 7Imp and read the rest of her post and visit the Robert's Snow site to learn more. Cancer affects all of us and here is something we can do about it. My greatest sympathy and prayers go out to Grace and her family.