A few weeks ago, the publicity person at my publisher’s emailed me to say that David Greene from Morning Edition wanted to interview me about my new book, Bugged: How Insects Changed History. This is not something that happens very often to a nonfiction children’s book writer. The NPR producer told the publicity person to tell me that I should bring along some middle school kids to the interview.

I called the amazing head of the middle school in Waterbury where my youngest son went, and he proposed three kids to take along. I drove Maya, Rob, and Sophia to the NPR studios in Hartford, Connecticut. They seemed pretty psyched to be missing half a day of school.

Here they are in the waiting room.

I think I was as nervous as I’ve ever been in my life—like ten violin recitals piled on top of one another—but the kids were so fantastic, prattling away the entire time, even as we were putting on our big headphones and the engineer was doing the sound check. We didn’t know it at the time, but the microphone was on while the four of us were sitting in the booth, waiting for David to come on. And they used some of our pre-interview banter in the edited piece (the producer later asked permission).

And then when David started talking to us, I suddenly got much less nervous, and it just felt like a conversation. He’s awesome. We talked to him for forty minutes.

The lighting in the booth was oh-so-flattering.

And then three weeks went by.

Those were a long three weeks. I sank deeper and deeper into despondency with every passing day. And then they emailed and said it was scheduled for the next day. The morning it was scheduled, I happened to be in D.C. for a meeting with National Geographic. I was staying at my brother’s (he and my sister in law had had a wonderful book party for me the night before). And it was supposed to air at 6:50, and my brother and I sat there listening, and then it wasn’t on, and my husband back in Connecticut said it wasn’t on there, either, and I burst into tears.

But now I understand—local stations can chop up Morning Edition programming and air the segments in a different order. So across the country, hundreds of stations did air it. And it did air, later on, in both DC and Connecticut. My email, Twitter and Facebook started going nuts.

Since the story aired, it’s been kind of crazy, but all in a good way. I’ve been barraged with speaking requests, radio interview requests, library visits. The story got retweeted on Twitter hundreds of times. Bugged hit #11 on Amazon (briefly, but still!), and both Bugged and Poop sold out quickly there. (My publisher says both books have been reprinted and will be available asap—sorry to those people who found that Poop was being scalped on Amazon, used, for over $300. Please try contacting your nearest independent bookseller, who may have a much more direct line to the distributor and can get it for you as soon as it’s reprinted).

Here’s the link to the story, which aired this past Monday.