Report from the Stacks (ALA 2009)

Unlike some people, I find it difficult to blog AT a convention. Let alone tweet. I mean, there’s too much conventioning to do. Plus my spouse was along, and he took up those snippets of time usually devoted to blogging. (Notice how I deflect blame?)
So now I’m home and blogging instead of tackling the BIG REVISION.
Chicago is a great city. My visit was a combination of business, pleasure, and pain. We got the pain over with early. That was the five-hour flight delay that cost us our first day in Chicago. Seems Continental forgot that they’d need a crew to fly the plane.
Our hotel was great, though—the Trump Tower Hotel.

We got a deal on the price, it was in a fabulous location, the room was huge, and it had a stovetop, dishwasher, microwave, and a refrigerator you could actually put things into. With a built-in ice maker. The service was gracious, but not stuffy. Imagine that—a luxury hotel that goes out of its way to make guests comfortable.

We went and saw the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was focused on the movies (one of the guides said they weren’t supposed to talk about the books because it is sponsored by Warner Brothers). It included lots of props and costumes, such as Harry’s wand and Professor Mcgonigal’s dress robes, and recreated settings including Hagrid’s Hut and the Great Hall of Hogwart’s.

We also visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and the Chicago Art Institute.
My ALA experience began with the Voya/Scarecrow Press reception for Perfect Tens and Top Shelf Fiction. (Voya named The Dragon Heir a “perfect ten.”) And, frankly, that is the only way I’ll ever qualify.
Then we went to a “Newbery banquet alternative dinner” at Aria organized by the awesome Nancy Werlin . Visited with Kindling Words buddies Laura Rubie, Toni Buzzeo, and Frannie Billingsley. Web designer Lisa Firke and authors Delia Sherman and Annette Curtis Klause were also there.
After dinner, we headed over to the Sheraton to hear the awards speeches. All the chairs were filled, so we ended up sitting on a platform at the back of the room.
We arrived just in time for Caldecott winner Beth Krommes’s speech and heard Neil Gaiman (Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book) and Ashley Bryan (winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder award). Gaiman’s speech was especially moving. He described himself as a feral child raised amid the stacks by librarians. I congratulated Krommes outside the ladies’ room and she let me hold her Caldecott medal. It was weighty. And I shook Gaiman’s hand in the receiving line and told him his speech was fantastic. “Really?” he said. “I was kind of nervous about it.”
Maybe greatness rubs off.

The next day was my signing. I spent the morning chasing key ARCs and buying a few books (still no Going Bovine, alas). Arrived at the Disney-Hyperion booth to find out they were already out of ARCs of The Demon King. Signed Heir series books and met lots of people I’d only met online before.

Librarians rock! Seriously.

Newbery-Caldecott Banquet

ALA – Sunday, June 24, 2007

We went back to the exhibits again (there is no rest for the greedy). Cecil Castellucci was signing in the Candlewick Booth. I’d been meaning to pick up some of her books, so stood in line to have her sign Beige and Boyproof. When I introduced myself, she said, “Oh, yeah, you wrote that Warrior book.” I nodded, pleased that she’d heard of it, and she said, “It’s on my reading pile.” I brilliantly told her I had a reading pile, too. Then she pulled out an autograph book and asked for MY autograph! One of those unique ALA moments.

And I thought, that’d be cool to do at my book signings. Because readers are as important as writers when it comes to story.

I asked Laurie Halse Anderson to sign Speak, which I’d read but didn’t own. Her editor, Sharyn November, was sitting with her in the Penguin booth. I introduced myself because I knew she and my agent, Christopher Schelling, were friends.

Martha and I had lunch in a tapas restaurant on 7th Avenue, then back to the hotel to chill before the evening’s festivities and to sort out the takings.

VOYA had invited me to their awards reception at the Grand Hyatt from 4 to 6, because The Warrior Heir made their Perfect Tens 2006 list. So I put on the polka-dot dress and my black wrap and cabbed up there. I chatted with Nancy Werlin, (Rules of Survival) and Paul Acampora (Defining Dulcie) whose books made the same list. The party also honored the Top Shelf winners and several other lists.

Then back to the Hotel Monaco to meet Hyperion staff and on to the Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder awards banquet. Saw Cindy Lord collect her Newbery Honor for Rules. Yay! Susan Patron delivered a very funny acceptance speech for her Newbery for The Higher Power of Lucky, referencing the whole scrotum controversy. She said a 6th grade class emailed her and said they’d found the word “scrotum” in the dictionary, so if they banned Patron’s book, they’d have to ban the dictionary, too. Sometimes the young ones are the wisest of all.

Hyperion Books for Children was well represented, because Hyperion illustrator Kadir Nelson received a Caldecott honor. I sat with Jonathan Yaged, Hyperion’s new U.S. publisher, author Roland Smith, Alessandra Balzer, Donna Bray, Angus Killick, Scottie Bowditch, and others from Hyperion’s editorial and marketing staff.

Met up with YAckers Martha Levine and Jody Feldman, all glitzed up for the party. Jon Yaged introduced us to Mo Willems.

ALA - Friday June 22

Friday June 22nd

Whoa. This idea of “blogging from ALA” business is harder than it seems! First of all, I took an involuntary tour of greater Maryland on my way in from the airport on the Super Shuttle. Missed a lovely dinner with writing friends Martha Peaslee Levine, Jody Feldman, Debby Garfinkle, Mary Pearson, and a chance to meet the Newbery “honored” Cindy Lord.

I checked in at the lovely Monaco Hotel, dumped my stuff, and hoofed it down to the Renaissance Hotel in time to hear the last couple of speakers at the Printz Reunion, Walter Dean Myers and Ellen Wittlinger. Sadly, didn’t get to hear Laurie Halse Anderson and the others.

I rendezvoused with Martha, Jody and Debby, who were kind enough to stick by me while I wolfed down multiple canapés at the Booklist YALSA 50th Anniversary cocktail reception. Christina Getrost, the teen librarian at Stow-Munroe Falls Library stopped by just as my blood sugar began to normalize. Two glasses of wine and I was feeling restored enough to walk back to the hotel, though perhaps no longer blog-worthy.

The Monaco Hotel was once Washington D.C.'s General Post Office, built in 1839 by Robert Mills, the same architect to design the Washington Monument. It’s really cool—full of marble and pillars—kind of like a small-scale palace. Except people kept asking where our hotel was, and I kept having to say F and 7th . Which sounded like F-ing 7th. And they’d say, why, is it really far away?

Here’s my roomie Martha on the roll-away bed in her tiny alcove. Notice that she is between me and my computer so there could be no blogging that night.

What to Wear, What to Wear

OK, so after my whining posting of last week about not getting to go to BEA, I AM going to the American Library Association conference in Washington, DC. This is my first ALA conference and I’m doing a signing at the Hyperion Booth for Warrior Heir and Wizard Heir on Saturday. I’m also thrilled to be going to the Caldecott-Newbery Banquet (or is the Newbury-Caldecott Banquet.)

So here’s the problem: What to wear? I asked my contact at the publisher, and she said, “Black is good.”

Here’s the data:

I’m from the Midwest, and the conference is on the East coast, plus there will be all these NYC publishing types there. They all wear black, right?
The banquet is black tie.
My hotel is ~1/2 mile from the convention center and I’ll be walking back and forth.
I’m vertically challenged and my bodily contours are, shall we say, redistributing themselves.
My typical dressup fashion look is a cross between throwback flower child, gypsy’s night out and high bling
I don’t go to these kinds of events often, so I have to be aware of the cost-per-wear factor

Cocktail Dress Criteria
Black
Flattering to short person with redistributed contours
Sexy, but not too sexy
Inexpensive, but looks very expensive
Comfortable (does not require constant strap and infrastructure monitoring and adjustment)
Emphasizes what I want to emphasize
Downplays what I want to downplay
Available in one of the three malls I frequent (requires no visits to formalwear stores)
Ironing? What’s that?
Totally in context with whatever my table-mates will be wearing

Shoe Criteria
Very comfortable for walking long distances on pavement
Look good on my feet
Very high heel
Inexpensive but look very expensive
Sexy. Just. Sexy

So after searching my three malls (one of them twice) and trying on scads (Midwest term) of dresses, the one dress that fit, looked good, emphasized, de-emphasized, etc. is…black and white polka-dot.

Does polka dot have anything to do with polka? Here’s what Wikipedia says

http://www.answers.com/topic/polka-dot

Polka dot is a pattern consisting of dots. Polka dot patterns are quite variable: they range from a series of dots that are equally spaced and sized to a random arrangement of multicoloured dots of different sizes. Polka dots are most commonly seen on children's clothing, toys, and furniture, but they appear in a wide array of contexts. The pattern rarely appears in formal contexts, however, and is generally confined to more playful attire such as bathing suits. Occasionally white on black regularly spaced polka dots appear on more formal clothing.
While polka dots are ancient, they first became common on clothing in the late nineteenth century in Britain. At the same time polka music was extremely popular and the name was also applied to the pattern, despite no real connection between them.

I’m doomed.