At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 4

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In the spirit of student creativity, I, former King student Kayla Cogle, will be doing the blogging tonight. It’s 12:17 AM. Whoo hoo! Well, it’s actually more like a ‘nughhhhhh….’. But there’s definitely some supressed enthusiasm going on there.

We kicked off the morning with a Young Adult Author Breakfast. ‘Breakfast’ being the questionable word in the title. Expecting eggs, toast, and the like, we struck out from the hotel without eating the breakfast the hotel provides. What was actually served at the event was a martini glass filled with small pieces of fruit. This was added to by a basket of dainty croissants, which was passed around our round table, one of about 45 in the room.
Also passed around the room were several well known young adult authors. They got about five minutes at each table as the circled through the room. We met: M.T. Anderson, Chris Crutcher, Walter Dean Meyers, Allan Stratton, Garrett Freyman-Weir, Gary Schmidtt, and Marilyn Nelson, who wrote ‘A Wreath for Emmett Till’. We were also joined by some publishing reps from Candlewick Press.

After that it was off to the exhibit halls, where we filled our wheelie suitcases with books. Some of you will be pleased to know that we managed to get a copy of the next book in the ‘Bloody Jack’ series. You can also be expecting new works from Nancy Farmer, Meg Cabot, Herbie Brennen, Charles de Lint, and the amusingly named Pseudonymous Bosch. You can politely pester Mrs. McDaniels about reading them, but please kindly do not mention that it was I who told you to do so.

At 4:00, Otrell went to hear Judy Bloom speak. He also tried to get one of her books signed, but alas, the line was far too long. By this time we were starving due to our lack of proper breakfast, so made our way to a cafe and then home. We spent the rest of the afternoon in book filled bliss.

‘Till later,
Kayla

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