Jamie Lee Curtis to visit Naperville with new picture book

Best-selling author and actress Jamie Lee Curtis will visit Naperville this week with a very American story told in her new children's book, "This Is Me." It's the story of an immigrant girl who takes a deep look at her priorities in deciding what she will pack on her adventure moving to a new home across the sea.

Curtis visits at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, at Anderson's Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville, to celebrate her latest picture book collaboration with illustrator Laura Cornell. Tickets are required and available at jamieleecurtisandersons.brownpapertickets.com.

This timely picture book about immigration raises identity issues like "Where did we come from?" and "Who are we?" In "This Is Me," a teacher tells her class about her great-grandmother's dislocating journey from home to a new country with nothing but a small suitcase to bring along. And she asks: What would you pack? What are the things you love best? What says "This is me!" With its lively, rhyming language and illustrations, "This is Me" is a book to read again and again.

It's an interactive book, too: Tucked into the back cover is a sturdy pop-up suitcase. As a younger reader fills the suitcase, he or she learns a lot about what really matters: "Now YOU take this case/ and imagine it's true/ that you're leaving and needing/ to choose what says YOU."

Curtis is the author of several best-selling children's books, including "Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born," "It's Hard to Be Five," "I'm Gonna Like Me," and "Today I Feel Silly: And Other Moods That Make My Day." She is also an actress known for her roles in "Freaky Friday," "True Lies," "Trading Places," "A Fish Called Wanda," and the television series "Scream Queens." She and her husband, actor Christopher Guest, live in Los Angeles with their two children.