I enjoyed a whirlwind trip to Texas this week for the annual Texas Library Association Convention in San Antonio. I was ion the ground in the Lone Star State for all of 16 hours and made every one count.
View from my hotel window – Good morning, San Antonio!
My writing buddy on the hotel lobby balcony. This is a yellow crested night heron. I think he wanted to be in my book. He’ll have to settle for a blog post instead. When my feathered muse and I finished up work on Chapter 5, it was off to the convention Center!
Here’s the crowd for our author panel, “It Can’t Be Science! It’s Fiction!” It was pretty awesome to see so many librarians and teachers excited about putting science-related novels and chapter books into kids’ hands.
And here are the members of our panel – BIG kudos to our organizers for taking care to include a mix of men and women. (Science doesn’t belong to one gender!)
First row, left to right: Moderator/Author Shirley Duke, Wendy Mass, Suzanne Selfors, Megan Frazer Blakemore. Second row, left to right: me, Nate Ball, Matthew Kirby
After the panel, Megan and I hurried off to sign books with the fabulous Bloomsbury team.
At my second signing with Scholastic, a team of Houston librarians came up to the table and let me know they were members of the committee that chose my mystery CAPTURE THE FLAG for their district’s Horned Toad Tales Award List. It was great to see the faces behind that honor and so, so nice to meet them all in person. It’s always such a gift to an author when a book ends up on a state or local award list. Usually, I don’t get to thank the people who put it there in person, so this was extra special.
Many, many thanks to the Bloomsbury & Scholastic teams and especially, to all of the Texas librarians who came by our panel and signings to say hello. Thanks for being awesome – and for putting books in kids’ hands every day.
Thx for sharing! That sunrise is gorgeous. And so is that packed out room. =)