'For children who love to read ... '
By Hannah Benoit
Children's book author and Boston resident Libby Koponen '73 has taken web publishing and marketing to new creative heights. Her web site, www.IfYouLovetoRead.com, is at once a vehicle for her book, Blow out the Moon, and an entertaining resource for young readers.
Based on Koponen's real-life childhood experiences, Blow Out the Moon is a novel about an 8-year-old American tomboy in the late 1950s who goes to England to attend a prim and proper boarding school, where she discovers horses, new friends, cat's cradle and table manners. Koponen began publishing her book on the web in 1999, to the delight of hosts of young readers. The story's online success eventually led to a book contract with Little, Brown, and the print edition of Blow Out the Moon was published in 2004.
So as not to compete with the print edition, the web site now contains only the first six chapters of the book, but the site is still loaded with enchanting extras, such as photographs from Koponen's childhood and her boarding school days, detailed instructions on how to play cat's cradle, an explanation of Morse Code, letters from readers, and some of Koponen's favorite fairy tales. She invites her young readers to e-mail her and promises to answer every letter.
The site now attracts 600 to 800 visitors a day, Koponen told the Boston Globe in a recent article (which is now reprinted on Koponen's web site). As a child, she was an avid reader, and her story has clearly struck a chord with young people.
"I wanted it to be the kind of book I like reading myself," Koponen writes on her web site, "one with real people, things that are funny enough to make you laugh out loud (though there had to be some sad parts, too, because there were in real life), and good conversations."