Between now and ALA

Yay!

I'll be signing Operation Yes during the Annual Conference of the American Library Association here in Washington, D.C. Look for me at 2:00, Saturday, June 26, at the Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books booth. I'll be the author handing out little green army men. I predict a few battles might erupt in the aisles. Perhaps one of the LGM might work his way onto a book cart for the Sixth Annual Book Cart Drill Team World Championships. Or be spotted at the Newbery/Caldecott banquet cheering for friends Marla Frazee and Liz Garton Scanlon (All the World) and Joyce Sidman (Red Sings From the Treetops) and all the other winners/honorees.

I'm also excited about the KidLit Drinks Night on Friday, June 25, at RFD (Regional Food and Drink) from 7-9. All are welcome! Details here.

I hope to see many, many friends at ALA, including some of the Poetry Seven, my DC KidLit Book Club, and the awesome people who create Arthur A. Levine and Scholastic books. However, between now and then, I have a draft to finish. So this is my last post until ALA rolls into town. See you soon!

P.S. For ALA conference goers, I put together a list of fun literary things to do in D.C. Add to my list if you like.

P.P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment over at TeensReadToo if you want a chance to win a copy of the audio book of Operation Yes---I found out the contest stays open until the end of June.

Book Club Rumble

I love talking books with like minds, and yesterday's D.C. Kidlit book club was my monthly outing to do just that. Unlike most of our meetings, this one was a free-for-all discussion of most of the ALA winners and honor books.  Newbery, Printz, Caldecott, Geisel, Odyssey....everything!  

It went something like: NO! YES! MEH. REALLY? WHY? WHAT ABOUT ____?? WHY NOT  _____??? DID YOU SEE GAIMAN'S TWITTER?  (Backed up by passionately argued facts, of course. We're trained in the art of verbal combat.)  I half expected the non-book-wielding people near us to edge away in polite horror. Not because we were uncivil, but because we were so opinionated and enthusiastic. I mean, when's the last time you saw a bunch of people raving about books in public? 

At the end of the mad jumble of ALA books, we saved time for a more focused look at the National Book Award winner, What I Saw and How I Lied.   There was much discussion of who was a "bad guy" in this book and who wasn't, not really. Do we expect YA heroines to "do the right thing" even if everyone around them isn't? Does how deeply you get sucked into a character's point of view alter how you experience a novel? (Of course it does! But why do some readers remain distant and others buy in immediately?)

Afterwards, I was reading more of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and found this great quote: 

"If literary writing has any distinguishing characteristic, it's that the more you look at it the more you see, and the more you see the more you want to go on looking." 

Thanks for making me want to go on looking, book club!

DC Kidlit Brunch: Books (and Friends) Both Old and New

Oh, my double mocha was divine! The real whipped cream was so rich and stiff that it stayed afloat on the dark espresso sea as serenely as a sugar cloud.

The table was piled with books! We found each other by them, in fact. Who else would be carrying Hugo Cabret or Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! into a restaurant and waving them about?

The conversation was scintillating! Tales of book ordering frenzies after the ALA awards so wild they would win a bond trader's admiration. Stories of manuscripts being finished, started, revised, sold, dreamed about. Newbery and Caldecott winners passed from hand to hand. Confessions about what we had read and what we hadn't. Who loved what (and who didn't) and why. Cheeky ARCs for 2008 hobnobbing with seasoned 2007 titles.

Yes, folks, the DC Kidlit Brunch was everything I could've hoped for. If you live near the DC area, please come out next time. Email Caroline Hickey to be added to the A-List. (Hey, around here, we're all A-List.)

The Brunch Crew, after being instructed
to hold a book we had NOT yet read

From left to right:

Susan (Wizards Wireless) holding The Wednesday Wars.

Louise Simone holding Henry's Freedom Box, written by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. I would buy this book for the cover image alone. Stunning.

Caroline Hickey (Author of Cassie was Here and member of those fab Longstockings) holding The Wall by Peter Sis

Gina Montefusco (PBS) holding Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

MotherReader and Tami Lewis Brown (of the soon-to-be-released Soar, Elinor!) both holding Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

Anamaria Anderson (Books Together) holding Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains by Laurel Snyder of Kid*Lit(erary)

Sara Lewis Holmes (me!) holding an ARC of A la Carte* by Tanita Davis (Finding Wonderland)

*But since I had PRE-ORDERED this book already, I let someone else take the ARC home. I could hardly stand it, but I did it. (After peeking at a few of the recipes.)

Why stop at lunch?

We ate French crepes. We signed each other's books. We talked about writing, and moving, and critique groups and author visits and bookstores. And we hatched a plan to start a DC/VA/MD Kid-Lit group. Yes, Caroline Hickey (author of Cassie was Here) and I had a very productive lunch yesterday. Here's her post, "D.C. Lobbies for Own Kidlit Drinks Nite," with info on how to contact her if you want to join in the Capital City fun.

And just in case you're wondering what the D.C. area has to offer in the way of kid-literary adventure:

What about a field trip to the Library of Congress? (Caroline's idea) Think they'd let a bunch of kidlit enthusiasts rummage around in the archives? Or trot out a few of their kidlit related treasures? Maybe not if we've had a few drinks beforehand, but if we promise to show up nice and orderly on a weekday morning?

I'd like to check out the new Arlington location of Busboys and Poets. The original location, on U Street in D.C. was named for Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the nearby Wardman Park Hotel and left poems beside the dinner plate of another poet, Nicholas Lindsay. Most of the authors that visit seem to be decidedly non-kidlit, but hey, with as edgy as YA is becoming, we could probably pitch something to them. Or just hang out and eat. They've got peanut and banana sandwiches, if we wanna stand up for our youthful perspective. Think those would be good with a green apple martini? For pictures, see here.

The Lorton Arts Foundation is transforming a closed prison workhouse into a 55-acre cultural arts center. In 1917, the workhouse once held 170 women arrested for agitating for the right to vote; throughout the years, it housed other prisoners up until December of 2001. Now, it's the site of proposed arts programs that are heavy on the visual and performing arts, but I did see in their planning documents something called Letters and Lore, which promises workshops and author readings. Perhaps our newly formed D.C./VA/MD Kidlit group could come up with a rocking program? I'm game!

Go see Caroline at the Longstockings or comment here to join us!