I first met Christina Matula four years ago in Hong Kong and bonded with her over books, publishing, and Hong Kong. Every year I return to Hong Kong, we meet up and it’s always one of the highlights of my visits. Now Christina is on tour with her new picture book, The Shadow in the Moon (Charlesbridge, 2018), and visited Chicago for quite a few events. I was so excited to meet up with her at a couple of them.

On Sunday, she read from her book at the Hyde Park Children’s Book Fair and taught young readers to make paper Chinese lanterns, just in time for the Mid-Autumn Festival next week. Christina read from the storytelling stage and amazed the crowds with the cutest rabbit lantern and mooncake, peach, persimmon, and pomelo squishies.

And today she visited my youngest son’s school and boy was he starstruck to know the author presenting to the whole school. She spoke about the holiday and her book with the younger grades and more about her writing process with the older ones. Most of the students–and teachers–hadn’t heard of the fruit people eat during the Mid-Autumn Fest, so that was a great treat.

It’s not everyday I have the opportunity to spend so much time with a friend on her book tour, so this was really a treat and a great chance to catch up before she moved on to her next stop–New York.