Books of Wonder and YASD Trip Reports

Books of Wonder

I love thinking about what my ten-year-old self would think of this photograph:


That's me (the one with the curly hair) next to Gail Carson Levine (Newbery Honor author of Ella Enchanted). We're both signing lots and lots of copies of our newest books at Books of Wonder in NYC.

I think ten-year-old Sarah would have done twenty cartwheels across the store.

Or possibly peed herself in excitement.

I loved Saturday.

Okay, I could have done without the rain on Saturday night. Really, "rain" isn't the right word. It was like the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk had up-ended an enormous bucket over all of New York. It flooded out both east-west highways on Long Island. We had to meander through residential streets in Queens to find our way home. But at least we didn't have to float our way home. And at least there was no rain earlier in the day.

Earlier in the day, at noon, I had a reading/signing at Books of Wonder with Gail Carson Levine, Scott Mebus, Claudia Gray, and Diana S. Zimmerman. And it was AWESOME.


Books of Wonder is a fantastic bookstore in Manhattan that specializes in children's books. I want to read every single book in that store. And they excel at events. They do every detail right. This was my second time doing an event there, and it's been a fabulous experience both times.

Part of the fabulousness was seeing so many copies of Out of the Wild and Into the Wild. I'd only ever seen a single copy of Out of the Wild before Saturday, so seeing the two books filling a whole shelf... It took all my self-restraint not to hug the bookshelf.


Speaking of self-restraint... for those of you wondering, I didn't steal an event poster off the wall. I actually stole three. Okay, maybe it wasn't technically "stealing." They had a whole stack of flyers at the front counter with a sign that said "please help yourself." So, while I was totally ready to whip out my Mission Impossible moves, they were, alas, not necessary...


Suffolk Librarians

Rewinding a couple days, I want to tell you about last Thursday. On Thursday, I was the guest speaker at a meeting of the Young Adult Services Division (YASD) of the Suffolk County Library Association. I spoke to about two dozen very cool librarians from around Suffolk County (the eastern portion of Long Island).

I was supposed to arrive at 11:00, but I sneaked in a little early to listen to the first part of their meeting. They were discussing summer reading programs. It totally made me want to be either a librarian or a kid at one of their libraries. One library was decorating their room with live butterfly gardens hanging from the ceiling. How cool is that?

Then I did my presentation -- with PowerPoint slides and everything! I think it went well, and everyone was really nice to me, so I had a great time.


4 days until the Wild returns...