I am peeking in from a very busy schedule (Travel! School visits! Holidays!) to join the chorus of authors singing the praises of their agents.

In late 2005 I began to think that I might be ready for an agent. I live in Brasil and several of my submissions had gone missing, and several more rejection letters had gone missing in transit and it was becoming increasingly difficult to submit to US publishers from Brasil. I am primarily a picture book writer, though. I knew the odds. Agents make a seriously small pittance off of picture books, and the process takes so long to publish them, that the amount of work that an agent puts into agenting picture books is often not worth the return. I knew I’d have a difficult time finding an agent. But I thought I’d at least try.

And when Kendra Marcus at Bookstop Literary sent me an email saying she was interested, my heart stopped. I phoned her. We talked. We talked some more. She phoned me. We talked some more. I sent her more of my mss. We talked some more. We clicked. Kendra is forthright and honest, but also gentle and affirming. She is discreet, she is honest and she is successful. And then when MInju Chang joined forces with Kendra in 2006, I became the beneficiary of a duo with the business savvy, literary insight and requisite goofiness you want in a literary agency. My agents at Bookstop Literary Agency are by turns my sanity and my saints. They listen to me, they value my opinion and they care about me and the readers I’m writing for. And most importantly, they make me giggle. What more could I ask for?