ALA, Monday

Ah, Monday. The last day of ALA. Boy was I moving slowly that morning. Tired. It was a lovely hotel room and a soft bed, but I'd been walking more this weekend than I've walked for a long time. (since the last ALA?)
This day was spent trying to wiz through the rest of the exhibits in between meetings.

10:30 am -- At last. The Sibert Award for best nonfiction of the year was to be awarded. The printed program was beautifully done with a semi-transparent view of masses of men in the NASA control room overlaid on a bright view of part of the moon with the Earth hanging above it. When it came to the award for best short film, we learned that Mo Willems and his daughter had recorded the father and daughter's voices in "Knuffle Bunny : a cautionary tale." He brought his daughter up with him to help accept the award. cute.

Ah, the awards program ended at 11:30. I had just enough time to rush back to the Exhibits floor to stand in line, a very looong line, to get a Harry Potter bag from the Scholastic booth. I'd been seeing the bags during the convention and had recently discovered they'd be handing out the last ones at noon on Monday.

Hot dog on the exhibits floor for lunch.
Then more exhibit walking until it was time for me to sign my own books at the Albert Whitman booth.

This was the first time I'd be signing with any of my illustrators. In fact, this is the ONLY illustrator of any of my books that I've even met -- Paige Billin-Frye. She's not only done a wonderful job on my books, but also had close to 10 books she had illustrated on display at the booth. We spent our time at the booth telling passersby how wonderful the other person's books were. (and inviting them to pet the Groundhog -- a Folkmanis puppet)

Maurice, our Technical Trainer at HCPL, happened to catch Paige and me at this signing and snapped some pictures. Yes, that is the groundhog sitting between us. The best picture is posted on his BLOG at:
baldgeek.wordpress.com/

Doesn't Paige do wonderful work? I just love the covers she did for my books, don't you?
(Halloween will be available in September -- if you bought one and had it signed at ALA, you have a special copy just for you.)

Of course, then he e-mailed me the picture and I"m under orders to post it in this BLOG.
okay....
Just as soon as I get to that part of the 2.0 course.
(a technology course that all librarians and most of the other people who work in Maryland's public Libraries are required to take this summer.)

Soon afterwards I had to go back to the hotel to pack and make my way back up I-95 to Baltimore. Got home just in time to see my 7-year old win a ribbon at her swim meet. In backstroke, her most difficult stroke.

Nice end to a busy, busy weekend.
-w