ALA Chicago – Day Three

I really meant to blog every night, but last night, after a full day on the exhibit floor, a trip up the Sears Tower, and then the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder Banquet, all I could do last night was climb the stairs to our room, take off my pointy shoes (how do some of you wear those every day?), and fall into bed after an amazing, amazing day.

It started with a moment I’ve been waiting for 28 years.

I met Judy Blume. JUDY BLUME!!!!!! Her signing was right before mine, so my daughter and I were the first ones in line. She and Beverly Cleary were my first favorite authors, and I remember reading FUDGE and ARE YOU THERE GOD, IT’S ME MARGARET in the beanbag chair in my closet wondering what Judy Blume must be like. She is beautiful and delightful and kind, and I just about cried when I met her. Her books made me want to be an author, so having the opportunity to tell her so and say thank you was something I will never forget.

Then it was time for me to sign advance copies of THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z at the Walker/Bloomsbury Booth. My husband and kids acted as loyal members of the paparazzi and took lots of photographs.

Here’s the whole Bloomsbury/Walker crew!


Bloomsbury Editorial Director Michelle Nagler, me, Walker Publisher Emily Easton, School & Library Outreach Goddesses Katie Fee & Beth Eller

Thanks so much to everyone at Walker/Bloomsbury and to all the librarians and all my LJ friends who stopped by to say hello. It was great meeting so many people who work with kids & books every day, and seeing friends like , , , , , ,

made me feel so much more relaxed.

After my signing, we walked the exhibit floor for a while. Everywhere I looked, there were people whose work I’ve admired for years.


Pam Munoz Ryan signing with Brian Selznick

After we mailed a box of books home (they have a Post Office right there in the exhibits hall!), we headed out for some sightseeing.

The Sears Tower has a new attraction — the Airwalk, where you can step out onto a glass platform that hangs out over the edge of the skyscraper. The bottom is glass, too, so it feels like you’re just hovering there, 103 stories up.

By late afternoon, it was time to head to the Book Cart Drill Team Championships, which were as entertaining as Betsy Bird promised me they’d be. Here’s the team from Des Moines in action.

Then it was off to the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder Banquet, which was held downtown at the Sheraton, too far from the convention center to walk. Due to a bizarre series of events which included some poor planning on my part and hour-long waits for shuttle buses, I ended up paying $10 for a ride to the banquet in this.

The driver  (I’m convinced he was sent by the literary gods to keep me from missing my first ALA banquet) appeared in the convention center lobby offering rides to those of us stranded at the back of the cab line, so ten of us made quick friends with one another and piled into the limo.

At the hotel, I found Betsy Bird (Fuse #8) who had offered to let me join her table when we met at my writers’ retreat a few weeks ago. How fabulous is her outfit?!

She shared some of her literary tattoos. I ended up with Marla Frazee’s A COUPLE OF BOYS HAVE THE BEST WEEK EVER on my left arm.

The banquet itself was unforgettable. The winners’ speeches moved and inspired me. I’d try to recap, but I know I wouldn’t do them justice, so you should probably just listen when they’re shared online.

  also did a great writeup of Neil Gaiman’s speech on her blog.

After the banquet, you could stand in a receiving line to congratulate everyone.

At one point, someone ducked in front of Betsy to talk to Neil Gaiman, and I thought, "Hey! That guy’s cutting the line!" …until I saw that it was Sherman Alexie. Sherman Alexie can cut in front of me any day.

Today, we’re headed back to the exhibit hall for the morning. Then I’m meeting a friend for lunch & aiming for a two-museum afternoon before we head home tomorrow.

ALA Chicago – Day Two

My ALA signing is tomorrow morning from 10-11 at the Bloomsbury/Walker booth (#1711).  That meant today was a free day for me to enjoy the exhibit hall and merrily gather books.  (I am guessing that Heaven is a lot like the ALA floor only with a better food court.)

Random House was one of my first stops of the day, where I was delighted to find this.

I’ve been dying to read Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOU REACH ME, so one of these signed copies is now on the nightstand next to me – yay! 

It felt like every time I turned around today, there were familiar faces.  At the Scholastic booth, I ran into  , who will be accepting the Morris Award tomorrow morning.  Congratulations, Elizabeth!

And I almost literally ran into John Green on the way to his signing. He was gracious enough to forgive me for the near-miss and stop for a photo.

I didn’t see   at ALA today…but I saw a friend of hers!

Actually, I met another friend of Linda’s, too – the talented Marla Frazee, who illustrates the CLEMENTINE series and won a Caldecott Honor for  A COUPLE OF BOYS HAVE THE BEST WEEK EVER. 

We saw Neil Gaiman signing at Harper Collins, and I picked up my ticket to hear him speak at the Newbery Banquet tomorrow night. I hadn’t planned on going, but my husband convinced me that things like this don’t just come along every weekend.  So true.

Kate DiCamillo and Chris Van Dusen signed my daughter’s copy of MERCY WATSON…and we also watched them cheerfully sign a stuffed pig.

Candlewick, by the way, won some major points with us for producing boxes of Mercy Watson popcorn just when we were about to collapse of hunger.

Laurie Halse Anderson was signing after her Edwards Award luncheon…

…and Blue Balliett, which was extra-amazing since E and I just read CHASING VERMEER and THE WRIGHT THREE in preparation for our trip to Chicago. 

We didn’t know ahead of time that Blue Balliett would be here, so we were thrilled. As an amazing added bonus, we ran into her waiting for the train after her signing.  She gave us some insider tips for a walking tour of the Hyde Park setting of her books, including some spots we never would have found (or known that we could go) on our own. More on that later….

I’ll wrap up today with more photos under the cut.  I so appreciated it when folks at TLA and BEA beamed back pictures of GIANNA Z so I could see her out in the world, all grown up. So I spent a good part of today stalking friends’ books (so much so, in fact, that the guy at the WestSide Books booth glared at my Bloomsbury/Walker badge and asked why I was taking pictures. He seemed certain I was some sort of publishing spy, but I finally convinced him that I was just a harmless, if slightly giddy, author.)

Tuesday in NYC

I have come to the conclusion that there is no good way to go to New York City "for the day" when you live where I live. 

My JetBlue experiment, which began with a sprint through the Burlington airport at 7am yesterday and ended with a four-hour flight delay and my arrival home at 4:15 this morning, confirmed this.  Next time, I will spend the night. 

My time in the city,  however, was delightful. It began in this fabulously pointy building.

I love that the publisher for THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z, Walker Books for Young Readers, is in the historic Flatiron Building.  There’s something about the look of the building that I’ve always loved, and the people who work inside are wonderful, too.


The wonderful Anna and Mary Kate

Editor Mary Kate & I got to chat a little about my second novel with Walker, SUGAR ON SNOW, about a girl from a maple farm who earns a scholarship to figure skate with the elite in Lake Placid.  I love MK for a number of reasons, but she added one to the list yesterday, telling me that after she read the pancake breakfast scene in my manuscript, she immediately had to go to the store and get stuff for pancakes because it made her so hungry. 

After our coffee date, Mary Kate & Anna directed me to the right subway train to get down to SoHo, where I met with the editors and art director for my MARTY MCGUIRE chapter book series with Scholastic.  The series doesn’t have an illustrator assigned yet, so after lunch, we looked through some illustration samples, several of which made my writer heart go pitter-patter in a big way. 

Downstairs in the Scholastic store, there was a party going on to celebrate the paperback release of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows.  The employee cafe upstairs got into the spirit, too.

I did not partake of the polyjuice potion, unsure of whether it would transform me into JK Rowling or Arthur Levine or Clifford the Big Red Dog or what.  It seemed too much of a chance to take with a long night of travel still ahead.  Those transformations, as you know, can be daunting.

This Friday, I am off to Chicago for five days at the American Library Association Annual Convention.  I’ll be signing ARCs of THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z at the Walker/Bloomsbury Booth (#1711) on Sunday morning from 10-11.  If you’ll be at ALA, too, please let me know.  I’m looking forward to meeting writer & librarian pals and checking out all those beautiful books!