Meeting Suzanne Collins!

Last Friday, I met Suzanne Collins during a signing of Mockingbird. I even waited to read the stamped book, which was hard as it kept me off blogs and most of the internet for days. It was hosted by RJ Julia's but held off site. This bookstore always has amazing authors. I've met so many great ones there!

In honor of the event, I wore a special shirt.

Here she is waiting in the wings before coming up to the stage









Here she is on the stage where she read a little bit of Catching Fire for the audience to fully appreciate Katniss's voice before diving in and reading in the first few pages of Mockingjay.









Then we all waited in line. Here she is stamping my friend - a fellow librarian's - book and chatting with her. There wasn't much time to chat, but it was awesome nonetheless.

I wish there had been a Q&A as there were several questions I wanted answered, but it was still great fun. Plus I won a door prize! - a Hunger Games bag clip, which I think I can alternate and use it as a necklace or bracelet!


Finally, I chatted with her and asked her to pose of a READ poster:

Created: READ posters

I hang these up around in my library. Some of these authors I've met and snapped their photos and others I begged to send them to me. I made some earlier and their posted to my facebook page, but I did some tweaking since I've learned a thing or two since then. Enjoy!

Ally Carter's READ poster

Check out the READ poster I made from a photo taken at the signing event I attended over the weekend (See below)

I think it came out cute!

Saw: Michael Scott

On Saturday, I traveled to Madison to visit RJ Julia Booksellers

where I saw Michael Scott of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series Fame

where he read the the latest novel: The Sorceress and answered questions.

Some cool things he said:

1. A book is really one Big fat lie
2. Readers become writers
3. Scents and colors from the magic gives your a visionary but more importantly smell to connect with the characters
4. It's a 6 book series (Somewhere I thought it was a 5 book series, so that makes me wicked happy)
5. He came up with the concept and then outlines all 6 books
6. All the characters (except for Sophie and Josh) are all real characters from history and you can research them
7. Flamel wasn't the original hero, Dr. Dee might have been except that Scott went to this house:

and it changed his mind a little.

Here we are together after he signed my books

and here's a READ poster I made:


and if you want to know more about the series, here's the book trailer I made for the first book (which is actually our middle school book club pick for November)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Rick Riordan

Last Friday, Jill (the Children's Librarian) and I went to an outing for librarians, where we got to see Rick Riordan! If you don't know who he is, he's the author of the Percy Jackson series plus the first author of the 39 Clues book: Maze of Bones. He also writes adult mysteries, which I need to get my hands on.

He gave a presentation that included several amusing stories:

This is his first rejection letter: at the age of nine. His mom framed it. She still has it.










This is the manuscript for his first novel. 14 seemed to be the magic number because that's both the number of drafts to make it into his manuscript and also the number of rejections before it found a home. Here's the cover art for that book - it's the first in an adult series.




He wrote this book because his son made him. It started after he told his son all the Greek mythology stories he knew. His son pestered him for more. When he said he didn't know any more, his son demanded that he make one up. Here's the first cover for the Lightning Thief. It didn't make the cut - too boring.

He sent in the Lighting Thief under a pseudonym for fear that his younger readers would find his adult series. That also changed. When he realized it would be a 5 book series, he knew that he had to give up teaching middle school. There was no way to write two books/year as it hard enough writing one while teaching.


Here we are together after he signed my book and t-shirt (never washing again)









Here he is with Jill








I also won a raffle which included: 2 play aways (giving to the library), one 39 Clues back pack (Will be a summer prize) and 2 copies of the first three Percy Jackson books all signed (Jill and I are each taking one and the rest will be prizes for the summer.)

I also have a picture of Rick posing with the 39 Clues book which I will be making into a READ poster shortly.

It was a great day! He's awesome - really nice and funny!

Meg Cabot

Best Friends and Drama Queens:
The third series in Meg Cabot's tale for younger girl is completely wonderful. Here, another girl moves to town, taking Allie's place as the new girl. Allie's so excited to have someone new in her class...until she's asked to give up her seat and move to the back of the class with the boys. She's so sad to leave her friends, but she's determined to make the best of it. After all, it's a special favor to her favorite teacher. However, Cheyenne isn't nice. At All. Instead, she thinks that the girls in grade four are babies. She's rather chase boys and kiss them than play make-believe games. Cheyenne soon has a following, but Allie stubbornly refuses to give in to Cheyenne's ways. Does Allie stand a chance against sophisticated Cheyenne?

I adore this series. Allie's so feisty and fun. There's so much drama going on at that age and Cabot nails it perfectly.

Meg Cabot: Here's a very interesting biography of Meg Cabot which included how her novels tie in with her life, her childhood tales (and pictures!), how she met HWSNBNITB, and much more. Since it was published in 2008, it's pretty up to date.







A READ poster I created with a picture Meg sent me.
What do you think?


She's holding up Bad Kitty; an excellent mystery.