I had big ideas for The Last Loose Tooth’s book tour when it came out this fall.
I’d buy a little red car and cover it in smiling teeth. I’d bring a pocket compass with chain, and set our direction towards libraries, small bookstores, and seaside shanties. In my wildest imagining of this tour, I'd install a quippy robotic vending machine in the back window of my tiny Fiat 500, so it could sell my picture books for me.
But it was not to be, as like you, I've been home. Home has been wonderful in many ways, even through a probable Covid infection, and still now, as both spectator and participant in a year marked by wrenching and overdue upheavals.
I planted more daffodils. I learned Texas Hold 'em. I baked buttermilk biscuits.
And also, possibly like some of you, had moments of feeling down.
Afternoons lost, insomnia found, hours and hours spent wondering how, when, where, and what to do.
But then the photos started flooding in.
Lou on the cover of The Last Loose Tooth, out in the world, as if on his own road trip. Pandemic be damned, Lou was hopping between far-flung libraries in Tofino, hardwood floors in New Orleans, and small backyard parties in Toronto.
I got some pins, a map, and cleared a section of wall. I decided to track all the Lou photos in all the locales, and assigned each country its own color.
THE LAST LOOSE TOOTH'S GLOBETROTTING BOOK TOUR was born.
If it's weird to live vicariously through a character in your own book I don't want to know. Because here we are, early days on the tour, and Lou has been all over North America. We have upcoming virtual dates in Sweden, Iqaluit, Los Angeles, and my hometown—Winnipeg. If you live elsewhere (elsewhere is always exciting), please send me a note or a photo of THE LAST LOOSE TOOTH from your beloved city, town, village, hamlet or isle.
Here are the cities to date on Lou’s pandemic “book tour”:
Toronto, ON Savage Harbour, PEI Portland, OR New Orleans, LA Sioux City, IA Boston, MA Brooklyn, NY Worcester, MA San Francisco, CA Tofino, BC Winston-Salem, NC Napa, CA Nashville, TN
Where will Lou pop up next? Kalamazoo? Kathmandu? Wales? A haunted house? Big Ben? A lighthouse? Montreal? Tasmania? The Jersey shore?
I can't wait to find out. Follow the tour on Instagram!
