ALA Monday (Day 3)

Monday was figuring to be another hot, hot day. (Have I mentioned that Washington, DC's temperatures were in the high 90s all weekend and went over 100 degrees on Sunday?)
Luckily the hotel, the convention center, and the ALA buses taking us to and fro were all air conditioned. So much so that almost everyone had Pashinas in their bags to toss around them in the cold rooms.

No early breakfast meetings scheduled today. Another banana and oatmeal cookie in the room. My roommate made me hot tea, then shivered when she realized that I preferred the cold tea I had in my cooler. (I plan to do a post of "funny things that happened at ALA soon to tell you of our adventures together on Sunday.)

Although I had planned to arrive at the conference early enough to see more of the exhibits, didn't happen. I did get there in time for the ALSC Awards Presentation. (ALSC = American Librarians who Serve Children, or something like that.)

It kinda gripes me that, when the Sibert Award was created to be given to the best Nonfiction Book of the year, it was supposed to be equal to the Newbery/ Caldecott. In fact it was awarded at the Sunday N/C banquet. Yea for Nonfiction Writers, I had thought. And then it disappeared. Several years later I finally discovered it was being awarded at this ALSC meeting on Monday morning -- at 8 am in the morning. No wonder I kept missing it. I, and most of the people who had been at the N/C banquet, usually slept in on Monday Morning. But recently they moved the meeting to 10:30 am, much to our relief.

I kept meeting people I knew (or wanted to know) or who wanted to know me, in the line for coffee. (me, I was in line for the juice bottles at the end of the table, but it seemed polite to stay in line and take my turn at the table, instead of simply bypassing the coffee people.) I even, literally, bumped into Mo Willems. Not my fault. He was going one way and suddenly turned around and crashed into me. It seems he was showing up at almost every event I attended. His daughter, Trixie, has become a lovely 8 or 10 year old and an old hand at these ALA gatherings.

Why was he here? (again)
Not for the Geisel Award (easy readers), although Cat the Cat books would certainly have qualified him for this.
This time he was accepting the Carnegie Medal. His book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, had won the Carnegie Medal. Naturally, he did the voice of the Pigeon, but his good friend Jon Scieszka gave voice to the bus driver. I'd love to see it over again because I missed a good part of the give and take between pigeon and bus driver that takes place as the credits roll -- all newly created by the two of them, just for fun.

The Geisel was won by Geoffrey Hayes for Benny and Penny in the Big No-No!

Scholastic again won an honor Batchelder award for the second Moribito book. The winner was the Swedish book, A Faraway Island.

Tanya Lee Stone won the Sibert Medal for her Almost Astronauts: 13 Women who Dared to Dream. She's a member of the blog, I.N.K. Interesting Nonfiction for Kids where she often talks about her Passion for the subjects she writes about.
The other fantastic winners of this nonfiction award were
-- Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Phillip Hoose brought Claudette up to the speaker's podium to accept the award with him!
-- Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca, who didn't use photographs, but also illustrated it.
-- The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors. Since Charlesbridge is one of my publishers, I stopped by their booth in the exhibits later to congratulate them. And to tell them about my own problems with Day-Glo. I'm one of those people who can't look at Day Glo papers. The color overwhelms my eyes and I can't see anything printed on that type of paper. I have to put the message onto a copy machine and reproduce it onto white paper before I see the message printed there.

When I left this meeting, I ran down to get into line for a signing of the Caldecott winning book, The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney at Little Brown, but he had just finished. So i wandered the exhibits, stumbling onto exhibitors selling off their stock. By the time my bags were full of (two for $5.00) books, I found another long line -- another line for, you guessed it, Jerry Pinkney signing the Lion and the mouse. Hurrah! I got into line. The looooong line. By the time we reached Jerry, all of us were best of friends. (and I had handed off one of the heaviest books I was carrying to another librarian who had found that title all sold out. Which meant I could buy two or three more books before my back began breaking, again. It was a Win/ Win situation.)

Why did I stay in Washington for Monday evening? To attend the Poetry Blast. Hosted for the 7th year by Barbara Genco and Poet/Writer, Marilyn Singer. I've known Marilyn since the old days on AOL when she ran discussion evenings and celebrations there. Even if you don't like poetry (and I'm finding that I do. Especially since a lot of the speakers tell funny poetry.) you'd love this presentation.

And off to bed. -wendie Old

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