ALA for a Day

I’m back from my whirlwind ALA visit. I arrived in Anaheim on Monday evening. Firstly, there was a great view of Disneyland from my hotel window. I caught a quick glimpse of the fireworks show on my way back from dinner.

On Sunday morning I moseyed on over to the convention center and roamed the stacks looking for familiar faces and books!

That evening, I had the pleasure of having dinner with Louise May, Jason Low, and Marina Cambareri of the Lee and Low team alongside the lovely ladies of the Coretta Scott King Award Committee.

Here’s the other side of the table 🙂

During the day, I walked the floor of the convention center and met many familiar faces from the wolrd of publishing. I also had a chance to get some shots of my friends’ upcoming projects. Many friends were represented along the shelves. I was especially excited to see Groundwood Books with Jillian Tamaki’s Skim bursting forth! I love that book *sigh*. Equally excited was I to see an unofficial debut of Hyewon Yum’s Book, Last Night and the official debut of Paul Hoppe’s Metal Man. Here are a few more familiar faces….


(from left to right: Skim, by Mariko Tamaki illus. by Jillian Tamaki; Last Night, by Hyewon Yum; Metal Man, by Aaron Reynolds,illus. by Paul Hoppe; What Happens on Wednesdays, written by Emily Jenkins, illus. by Lauren Castillo; At Night, by Jonathan Bean; A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle, illus. by TaeEun Yoo.)

All in all, it was a huge success. I was more than honored to meet new friends and to reconnect with not-so-new-ones. As far as first-time, whirlwind conferences go, this was tops!.