My (Still) Inchoherent Thoughts On The Weekend

Wow….just wow.

I have had so much fun this past weekend hanging out with all of my fellow nerdgirls.  I think (and I could be wrong) that it was the first time all 4 nerdgirls were together since the midnight showing of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”  Is that right??

Well, on Thursday night Amber, Jill, and I went to a Meg Cabot signing at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville.  I zoomed in at the last minute and had to stand in the back because the store was so crowded.  Meg gave a very funny, spontaneous talk about several of her books including Airhead, The Princess Diaries, and the Allie Finkle series.  Anderson’s had the priviledge of selling the third Allie book early even though it doesn’t come out till March.  Meg looked absolutely fabulous in a sparkly dress, fantastic tights, and the best heels ever!  She also had a very adorable way of posing her feet under the desk while she was signing that would have taken me weeks of princess lessons to figure out.

She was so sweet and talked with everyone as she signed all of the books.  The crowd was a balanced mix of adult fans, teens, and little girls.  When she signed my book I think I blurted something out about reading all the Princess Diaries books in ten days and she said, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve even read them that fast!”  Then I think I giggled like a little girl and ran away.

Friday night Lindsay arrived and we had a wonderful time putting together Meg’s gift.  It involved a lot of preparation including clothes shopping, hair cutting, and gluing things.  I won’t go into too many details because I think someone might post a video later (maybe…we’ll see……the sound went kind of weird due to a non-competent camera operator…..which of course was me).

On Saturday we all got dressed up and went to the 7th Annual Children’s Literature Breakfast to see Meg again.  We decided to give her the gift right away since she was innocently eating breakfast and would be easy to ambush.  She looked so pleased to receive the present (a Hannah Montana doll transformed into Meg Cabot, complete with snowflake necklace) and we got to take a picture with her and everything.  We were all on cloud nine for the rest of the morning.

The speakers at the breakfast were all very good, including Meg and her very skilled Powerpoint, Steven Kellogg and his stories about the real Pinkerton, Sharon Draper and her Sassy bag, and Peter Yarrow with his guitar.  I was a little teary through all of Peter Yarrow’s presentation, but when he started singing “Puff the Magic Dragon” and invited people on stage to sing with him I totally lost it.  I was literally sitting at one of the front tables sobbing like a 12 year old who just touched Robert Pattinson.  The waiter standing at the front of the room kept staring at me like he thought I was going to pass out or something…..but it totally wasn’t my fault, “Puff the Magic Dragon” is like the saddest song ever!!!!  Poor Puff having to waste away because stupid Jackie Paper grew up……that’s why you have to be like me and never grow up.  (And don’t say the song is about drugs, because I heard it from Peter Yarrow himself that it is NOT.)

So, those are my thoughts so far.  It was an amazing whirlwind of a weekend and it was phenomenal to meet Meg Cabot, but the best part had to be getting to spend time with my girls who live so far away.

Jen

**All photos stolen from Amber’s camera since mine can no longer take pictures involving a zoom or indoor lighting.

P.S.  A big thanks to Meg Cabot for mentioning us on her blog!!!!!

Authors Who Are Awesome: John Green

There are certain things I love about living near “The City.”  And when I say “The City” I mean Naperville, IL.  Because Naperville is home to one of the best book stores in the entire country…Anderson’s Bookshop.

Last Friday I went there with my friend Abby to see one of her favorite authors, Mr. John Green.  I went along because even though I hadn’t read any of his books yet, he is young and hot and I’m always up for a road trip.

There were probably around 130 people crammed into the store to hear him speak and he bravely stood on a chair the whole time so that those of us in the nosebleed section up near the cash registers could see him.  Needless to say he was charming, well spoken, hilarious, complex, intelligent, and emotionally deep.  We waited around so he could sign Abby’s book and he was so friendly when we got up there even though he had literally signed 80 books before hers (probably more because some people were clutching all three of his titles).  He talked with Abby and then thanked me for coming even though I was just a straggler who hadn’t even bought one of his books.

I don’t remember everything he talked about when he was up there on that chair (I know it was all great) but I do remember he talked about the “in your pants” game.  I think it is from his book An Abundance of Katherines, but I am not sure, I am reading that one next.  But anyways, the way you play the game is you add “in your pants” to the end of any book title.  Mr. Green pointed out that two of his books work very well:  Looking for Alaska in your pants and An Abundance of Katherines in your pants.  I have been looking at my bookshelves and found some others:

Shel Silverstein’s The MIssing Piece in your pants

Andrew Clement’s Things Hoped For in your pants

Mary Higgins Clark’s Remember Me in your pants

Lesley Blume’s Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters in your pants

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women in your pants

Oh my, it never gets old!  (Have I mentioned I have the maturity level of a fourth grade boy?)

Anyway, John Green is awesome.  Period.  He won the highest award in YA lit (the Printz) with his first book!!!!  And his second book got a Printz Honor (so close).  He has a new book out now called Paper Towns that is getting GREAT buzz.  Go to his website here and make sure to check out his YouTube channel because he is hilarious!  Also go to Abby’s blog to see a pic of her with Mr. John Green himself.

Jen

I Found My Savvy in Naperville

Let me just preface this by saying that September has not been kind to me.  Somebody hit my car and drove away, my apartment parking lot flooded, the check engine light is on in my car, work is knocking me on my ass, the spiders are back, my best friend’s cat died, and I spent 45 minutes today scraping dried egg off my car.  Yeah, that’s right……I can’t even afford to buy eggs to eat and somebody tossed them all over my car.  I wish I could have know, I would have stood out there and tried to catch them.  Maybe I could have had an egg salad sandwich.

But all of that was made better by the fact that last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the most awesome conference in the history of the world (except of course for the Harry Potter conferences, which will forever remain the best).  I went to the YA Literature Conference put on by Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville.  I don’t even know if I can find words to describe how awesome it actually was, but I will try.

I knew that Suzanne Collins was going to be there, but I hadn’t looked at the flyer in a long time, so I really couldn’t remember any of the other authors.  Imagine my shock when I opened up the schedule and saw that Ingrid Law (the author of Savvy, duh!) was one of the presenters.  I literally screamed in the middle of the Holiday Inn Ballroom.  Thankfully, my friend Abby was just as excited about YA lit as I was, so she didn’t judge me (at least if she did, she pretended not to).

When I went up to Ms. Law and got her to autograph my book, I actually got a little teary, but I don’t think anyone noticed.  It was just so cool to meet her and get to tell her how much I loved her book.  You don’t usually get to do things like that in life.  During her presentation, she said she just wrote down the first sentence that popped into her head and that became the first sentence of the book.  She wasn’t quite sure where the story would go from there, which makes the book all the more amazing.  (The first sentence is quite a doozy to just pull out of thin air.  You should buy the book and see for yourself what I mean).

Here is a pretty picture of all my books that I got (two of them for free!):

Here is a list of all the people that I got to hear speak:

Suzanne Collins (duh, you should all know who she is)

Ellen Klages (wrote the amazing historical fiction novel The Green Glass Sea and its follow-up that I can’t wait to read White Sands, Red Menace)

Holly Black (wrote the Spiderwick Chronicles and the new graphic novel The Good Neighbors, plus an all around bad ass)

Nancy Werlin (wrote the incredible new book Impossible and made me cry during her speech)

Paula Yoo (cutest woman ever!  her speech was so great that I had to buy her book Good Enough……and she played the violin)

Cameron Tuttle (very funny lady who wrote the new book Paisley Hanover Acts Out)

Ingrid Law (Yippee!!)

John Stokes (one of the only remaining members of a group of students who went on strike against segregation, he wrote Students on Strike)

Caroline (B.) Cooney (wrote the Face on the Milk Carton!!!)

All that was crammed into one day (with no time for bathroom breaks).  I had a great time and even ran into a friend from library school (Hey John!).  I walked away with lots of free stuff and a renewed passion for books.  It was worth every penny of the money I spent on it (because my library doesn’t pay for frivilous stuff like that) and I can’t wait to go to the author’s breakfast in February.  I hear someone named Meg Cabot is going to be there……….hmmmmm…… where have I heard of her before???

Jen

I will leave you all with pics of my autographed books: