Literary Candy Land

This weekend, I'm going to BEA (Book Expo America -- to quote Jay Asher, it's a "literary candy store"). I've never been before. It's in the Javits Center in NYC. I'm told its huge. And scary. I'm a little nervous. Okay, a lot nervous.

When I'm nervous, I tend to have really vivid dreams, often either involving dragons (which is fun) or having to pee but there's no bathroom in sight (not so fun). The other night, I dreamed about going to BEA.

In my dream, I had to take a submarine to BEA. It left from Ace Hardware (because Ace Hardware has absolutely everything, including, apparently, a submarine dock). The sub was manned by the cast of "The Hunt for Red October." Or at least the Russian crewmen. Minus Sean Connery. Pity. The crew did speak in Russian, but there were subtitles so it was okay. Yes, my dream had subtitles.


Anyway, I took this Russian nuclear sub to BEA. It surfaced in the middle of an aisle of booths filled with books. I climbed out of the sub and happily headed toward the booths. I'd been told there were lots of free books at BEA, and I wanted to snag some. But when I approached the stack of books (which seemed to grow taller and taller as I walked closer), a bookseller jumped in front of it with his arms spread wide and said, "No! These are not for you! You can only have jelly beans." And he pointed at a giant vat of jelly beans, in which many other authors were frolicking (imagine those playpens full of balls that they have at Chuck E. Cheese).


So I climbed into the vat of jelly beans, which had by this time turned into Tribbles (from Star Trek). And then I was very sad because all I could do was eat jelly-Tribbles and watch the submarine crew gleefully scoop up all the books.

I don't think BEA will be like that. I hope. I'll post a trip report when I return and let you know. Wish me luck and no jelly beans!

For those of you attending BEA: I will be at the Children's Book & Author Breakfast on Friday morning, as well as the ABC (Association of Booksellers for Children) Evening with Children's Booksellers Auction and Dinner on Friday evening at the Copacabana. (Everyone, sing: "At the Copa... Copacabana...") For the rest of the weekend, I'll probably be wandering around the exhibit hall, most likely forcing INTO THE WILD bookmarks on everyone I meet. If you see me, please come say hi!