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I am back, yo!
5 days in D.C., many fabulous conference sessions, author signings, and super cool freebies later, I have returned home. ALA was super cool, even though it was also Super Exhausting. That convention center is big, dude, and walking around the city carrying around 50 pounds of free books all the time is a welcome but tiring proposition.
People. I went to the Printz award 5th anniversary celebration/panel and got to see/hear Laurie Halse Andersen (who is cool and sassy), David Almond (who is awesome and British), Ellen Wittlinger (who is a spunky revolutionary), and Walter Dean Myers (who is Walter Dean Myers, and need I say more?) speak on a panel about the Printz and their books. I experienced my first totally geeked-out those-are-real-live-authors-of-way-cool-books (!!) moment of the conference. There were many more.
I went to a session on appealing to boys through multiple intelligences, a session on picture book author/illustrator collaborations, and a Reader's Theater session that knocked my socks off (Readers Theater with David Almond, Virginia Euwer Wolff, Cornelia Funke, and Tim Wynne-Jones, doing a scene from an old and a new work by each of them!). I went to a panel on trends in teen literature that was really super fun, with various authors including Perry Moore, author of a new as-yet-unreleased-but-I-got-a-signed-ARC-yay book about the first teen gay superhero (he was fabulous and I wanted to take him home).
I got So. Much. Free. Stuff. I have so many advance reader copies and gallies and brand new books, and I only had to pay for a few of them. I got books signed by a whole bunch of authors. I SPOKE TO LOIS LOWRY. I carried my weight in free books around all day and wrecked my neck and shoulders, but OMG, it was worth it. I got a copy of "Parrotfish", Ellen Wittlinger's new book about a trans teen, in the first hour that it was available - and I read it in the first 24 hours. (It was awesome, btw.)
We also did some D.C. stuff, and that was fun too. We went to the International Spy Museum, ate at various cool restaurants, and visited the Sculpture Garden for Jazz in the Garden on Friday. We did a lot of swimming in the hotel pool, and I read like 10 books that I need to log in the near future, while they are still in my head.
Speaking of swimming, that's pretty much the plan for today - it's supposed to be 95 degrees, so we're going to go swim in a lake until I have cranio-sacral therapy this afternoon. I needed a day of this nature after the whole trip - it feels good to be home and chilling out. :)
5 days in D.C., many fabulous conference sessions, author signings, and super cool freebies later, I have returned home. ALA was super cool, even though it was also Super Exhausting. That convention center is big, dude, and walking around the city carrying around 50 pounds of free books all the time is a welcome but tiring proposition.
People. I went to the Printz award 5th anniversary celebration/panel and got to see/hear Laurie Halse Andersen (who is cool and sassy), David Almond (who is awesome and British), Ellen Wittlinger (who is a spunky revolutionary), and Walter Dean Myers (who is Walter Dean Myers, and need I say more?) speak on a panel about the Printz and their books. I experienced my first totally geeked-out those-are-real-live-authors-of-way-cool-books (!!) moment of the conference. There were many more.
I went to a session on appealing to boys through multiple intelligences, a session on picture book author/illustrator collaborations, and a Reader's Theater session that knocked my socks off (Readers Theater with David Almond, Virginia Euwer Wolff, Cornelia Funke, and Tim Wynne-Jones, doing a scene from an old and a new work by each of them!). I went to a panel on trends in teen literature that was really super fun, with various authors including Perry Moore, author of a new as-yet-unreleased-but-I-got-a-signed-ARC-yay book about the first teen gay superhero (he was fabulous and I wanted to take him home).
I got So. Much. Free. Stuff. I have so many advance reader copies and gallies and brand new books, and I only had to pay for a few of them. I got books signed by a whole bunch of authors. I SPOKE TO LOIS LOWRY. I carried my weight in free books around all day and wrecked my neck and shoulders, but OMG, it was worth it. I got a copy of "Parrotfish", Ellen Wittlinger's new book about a trans teen, in the first hour that it was available - and I read it in the first 24 hours. (It was awesome, btw.)
We also did some D.C. stuff, and that was fun too. We went to the International Spy Museum, ate at various cool restaurants, and visited the Sculpture Garden for Jazz in the Garden on Friday. We did a lot of swimming in the hotel pool, and I read like 10 books that I need to log in the near future, while they are still in my head.
Speaking of swimming, that's pretty much the plan for today - it's supposed to be 95 degrees, so we're going to go swim in a lake until I have cranio-sacral therapy this afternoon. I needed a day of this nature after the whole trip - it feels good to be home and chilling out. :)
