NCTE 2009 wrap-up

As I mentioned last week, I was in Philadelphia for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference. I took the train to Philadelphia and met Grace at the hotel, then we walked over to the conference center to meet Jarrett Krosockza and his wife Gina for a quick lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.

I had the mac and cheese, of course!

Good, but not the best.

Then Grace and I ran off for her session on "The Art of Story" with author Carmen Agra Deedy. We had a few technical difficulties at first, but then her talk went smoothly and I think the audience was impressed by her talk. I know I was!

Carmen was a fantastic speaker/storyteller as well--her final story about her mother in a mall parking lot brought me to tears.

Afterwards, we headed to the convention center for Grace's signing:

at the Little, Brown booth:

That evening we hosted a children's book dinner with special guests Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Jerry Pinkney (The Lion and the Mouse), and Suzanne Selfors (Smells Like Dog, pubbing May 2010) at the restaurant Fork. Delicious food (not pictured), delicious company:

The next day I'm sorely lacking in pictures, but it started with booth duty for me in the morning, when Jerry Spinelli and Chris Lincoln had signings back-to-back. Then Jerry and I escaped for a nice lunch, and in the afternoon I walked the floor for a bit saying hi to authors such as Lisa Yee, G. Neri, Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, E.B. Lewis, and more.

I helped out for our Jerry Pinkney signing in the afternoon, then escaped to the hotel for a quick nap.

That night Assistant Editor Connie Hsu and I took "our" authors to dinner at another amazing restaurant called Supper. Once again, I'm sad that I neglected to get any pictures of authors Matthew Quick (Sorta Like a Rock Star, pubbing in May 2010) and his wife Alicia Bessette, Grace, or Stephen Emond (Happyface, Connie's first acquisition, pubbing in March 2010), but I did manage two photos of the food. Here's the farmer's plate we ordered for the table:

And my duck and waffles. Yum.

The next afternoon I had coffee (and cheese--odd combination, I know) with the incredible Janet Wong, and then that evening was the cocktail party that kicks off the ALAN Workshops where Sarah Ockler and Sara Zarr vamped it up:

And then it was off to our YA fiction dinner where Matthew Quick joined the two Sara(h)s at Portofino. And yes, once again, we had amazing food (spinach ravioli! tiramisu!), conversation, and this time we had the added wonderment of readings from 20 Boy Summer (Ockler), Sorta Like a Rock Star (Quick), and Once Was Lost (Zarr).

And that, my friends, sums it all up. Thank you Philly, NCTE, ALAN, all our authors and illustrators, and of course our amazing school and library marketing team of Victoria Stapleton and Zoe Luderitz.

Till next year!