ALA round-up

I am about to leave for Granny Burton's house, the only place in my life without Internet, so a full report will have to wait until next week.

My weekend at ALA Annual in Chicago was amazing, filled with books, authors, and editors, plus great learning about ALA itself and best practices for working with my students.

Best celebrity author moment: watching Sherman Alexie and Laurie Halse Anderson bump into each other and start chatting, three feet from me, as I lingered by the wall before the Newbery banquet.

Best non-celebrity author moment: learning that the quiet librarian sitting next to me during YA author speed-dating was herself a YA author who had just published Serendipity Market with HarperCollins this spring.

Some great conference reports posted this week:

I was delighted with Tasha Saecker's post about her conference because, while our themes are similar, she attended an entirely different roster of events than I did. That's how big this conference is!

Conference report from Publishers Weekly, and photos

Scholastic authors brunch, which I attended directly after YALSA's YA Authors Coffee Klatch (what a morning that was!)

Two reports on the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder banquet. I was there.

More to come!

(And again, credit to the Baker & Taylor/YALSA grant that enabled me to have this incredibly memorable experience. I can't say enough about how fabulously I was treated by all the members and staff of YALSA who I met this weekend.)