The First Person I Ran Into at the Convention Center
My Austin friend Liz Scanlon. If you want to be easily spotted on a crowded show floor, it helps to have great hair. Liz has great hair.

The Complete Current, Recent, Long-Ago, or We’ll-Them-Anyway Austinite Wrap-Up
I saw Liz again at the banquet where Marla Frazee picked up the Caldecott Honor for illustrating Liz’s All the World. Jacqueline Kelly was there, too, to receive her Newbery Honor for The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. In the post-banquet receiving line, I met Thom Barthelmess, president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), which sponsors the awards — I hadn’t known that he used to be the youth services manager at the Austin Public Library. Austin librarian extraordinaire Jeanette Larson was also there, and earlier in the day, I got to meet Vicky Smith, the children’s book review editor at Kirkus, which is now owned by an Austin company. On Monday, I was delighted to see Austin authors P.J. Hoover and Jessica Lee Anderson when they dropped by while I was signing Shark Vs. Train. And it would not be a legitimate publishing event if I hadn’t gotten to see former Austin bookseller Heather Scott.

Holy Moly, I Got to Go to the Caldecott/Newbery Banquet!
Eerdmans, the publisher of one of my forthcoming books, invited me to sit at their table and, in the process, made me want to never, ever, ever not be at one of these banquets. At the Eerdmans table alone, I got to meet Melissa Sweet, who received a Caldecott Honor last year for A River of Words, and also visit briefly with and/or holler across the tablecloth at Carole Boston Weatherford and Jen Bryant. Before, during, and after the dinner, the elbow-rubbing opportunities were off the charts — old friends, editors I’d been wanting to meet, freshly behobbled and temporarily tattooed Betsy Bird, John Green (whom I quickly gushed at over Will Grayson, Will Grayson as we were commanded to take our seats), Françoise Mouly (whom I gushed at in a more leisurely fashion over her Little Lit books adored by my sons), and many more folks, including my marvelous agent, Erin Murphy.

Plus, Those Speeches!
I’ve been reading the Newbery and Caldecott acceptance speeches in The Horn Book for years now, so to hear them as they were delivered — exceptionally well, I should add — by Rebecca Stead and Jerry Pinkney — was a thrill. It was a little disconcerting, though, to find a souvenir CD containing those very speeches at my place at the table before the banquet even started. So much for being able to procrastinate on those suckers.

Breakfast #1
Don’t be surprised, if you go to a restaurant called “Teaism,” to find that they don’t serve coffee. It’s kind of a thing with them.

Breakfast #2
The main reason I was at ALA this year was to attend the ALSC breakfast where the Sibert awards (along with the Batchelder and Geisel book awards, plus the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children’s Video) were handed out. The breakfast included coffee (which had become kind of a thing with me by that time), nifty speeches (including one by Mo Willems, for his Carnegie, that really ought to receive an award of its own next year), and the opportunity to say hello again to Sibert medalist Tanya Lee Stone and honoree Brian Floca, and to introduce myself to my other fellow honoree, Phillip Hoose.

Just to My Left…
At the Sibert ceremony, I got to sit next to Claudette Colvin, the subject of Phillip’s deservingly lauded book Twice Toward Justice. During one of the speeches, I surreptitiously (I thought) snuck a package of gum from my coat pocket and began to extract a piece. That’s when I felt an elbow in my side and from the corner of my eye saw Ms. Colvin smile. I gave her a piece of gum. I figured it was the very least I could do.

Books for the Trip Home
I managed to bring home only two new books from ALA, but I sure chose well (and exclusively from Charlesbridge, the publisher of The Day-Glo Brothers): Mitali Perkins‘ Bamboo People and Karen C. Fox and Nancy Davis’ Older Than the Stars.

About That Trip Home…
Around 4 p.m. Monday, after a late lunch with Shark Vs. Train’s editor, Alvina Ling, I took a cab to Union Station. From there, I took Amtrak to the Baltimore airport, then a shuttle bus from the train station to the terminal. At pretty much the same moment I arrived to check in for my flight, it was canceled (for reasons presumed to be weather-related but which were never actually explained by American Airlines). So, I hopped a bus back to D.C., and took the Metro to back to the hotel I’d checked out of that morning, arriving five hours after I’d begun trying to leave town. I decided to view the whole thing as an unplanned adventure, and in fact I did get to see some mighty pretty Maryland countryside from my seat on the bus. Andrea Spooner’s profile of Jerry Pinkney in the current Horn Book really helped me keep things in perspective:

Jerry would be the first to say that he’s been blessed in many ways, but luck is not always in his favor when it comes to traveling. Every time I speak to him after a trip, there is a story of wretched flight delays or other mishaps. And yet he always relays these tales with a bemused chuckle, in the spirit of “Such is life! Why complain?”

Breakfast #3
This one wasn’t supposed to happen, and I’m not entirely convinced that it did. Surely I didn’t have my most important meal of the day at a Fuddrucker’s in the Ronald Reagan airport at 5:30 a.m. when I was supposed to be asleep in my bed back home…

One Last Reminder from ALA
Thursday afternoon, back at the office, I was starving. I had only a $5 bill, so couldn’t use the snack machine. Then I remembered the Luna bar that Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich gave me on Monday between my back-to-back book signings. It was still in my messenger bag, and it was delicious.

For details on the event, info on my other upcoming appearances, and other news about me and my books, check out the latest edition of Bartography Express (available online through mid-July).

Some other big news this weekend: Shark Vs. Train will appear on the New York Times’ list of best-selling picture books for the second week in a row!

What else is new? Real quickly-like:

Last Saturday, I got to share the bill with a tank containing live sharks at a party hosted by the Starlight Foundation at this downtown Austin bar.

I received PDFs this week for the galleys of Can I See Your I.D.?, the cover of which is beyond captivating — I can’t wait to share it here.

I’m happily submerged in the research for a new picture book biography. “Happily,” as in “I got my kicks during my lunch hour this Tuesday by rooting around in the microfilm section of a university library.”

My friend Audrey Vernick has a brand-new book out this week, but you’ll probably like it only if you have a thing for really funny books by really funny people.

If you want to see it, and you’re in Austin this week, you’re in luck. I’ll be debuting the Shark and Train and Bob and Joe Show this Thursday afternoon at a “Meet the Author” event put on by the Writers’ League of Texas and the Austin Public Library.

The details:

Thursday, June 10th @ 2PM
Ruiz Branch
Austin Public Library
1600 Grove Blvd., 78741
FREE and open to the public!

And I’ve been in great company lately — yesterday, most recently, when the amazing staff at Austin’s BookPeople hosted a launch party for Shark Vs. Train for a few dozen folks who eagerly chanted “GRRRRR!” and “CHUGRRR-CHUG!” whenever I asked them to. Now those are my kinds of people, and I really, really appreciate the time taken by everybody involved to make it such a great day.

The week before, I got to attend the Young Authors’ Celebration at Beth Yeshurun Day School in Houston and the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio, both of which allowed me to rub elbows with some terrific authors, librarians, and other lovers of children’s literature. Again, I’m full of thanks for all who made those occasions so terrific. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather hang out with.

Unless, perhaps, it’s the characters in my current work-in-progress. And as much fun as I’ve had these past couple of weeks in the real, it’s time for me to pay more a little more attention to keeping those guys company.

Here’s what I had to say on the subject:

I’m not sure if you would call this a habit, or a strategy, or a pathology, but being hardheaded was absolutely essential to my getting published.

When it comes to your creative work, I think you have to have the ability –- the SITUATIONAL ability -– to believe that you’re right and everyone else is wrong — for example, when your picture-book biography of the guys who invented Day-Glo gets rejected by 23 editors but you keep submitting it anyway.

But for that to be an ABILITY and not merely a chronic case of delusional thinking, you have to do more than just believe strongly in your own work.

You also have to know the market. You have to know your audience. You have to know your technique. And you have to take seriously the feedback you receive.

Then, based on knowing all those things, you simply reach a different conclusion about your prospects than all those people who keep telling you “no.”

And notice how I called it a SITUATIONAL ability. If “I’m right, they’re all wrong” is your M.O. -– if it’s your approach to EVERYTHING you create –- then you’re just acting like a jerk.

That tends to work against you.

As folks recover from the conference, I’m sure there will be lots of thorough posts about the goings-on there. I may add links to more as I spot them, but here are the bloggers whose accounts I’ve seen so far:

Don Tate
Shelli Cornelison
Kirby Larson
E. Kristin Anderson
Carmen Oliver
Cristin Terrill
P. J. Hoover
Jessica Lee Anderson, P. J. Hoover, and Jo Whittemore
Vonna Carter
Samantha Clark
Heather Powers
Grey McCallister
Sara Lewis Holmes
Greg Leitich Smith

A few of my favorites have come from:

BookMoot: Sometimes it is personal
I’m afraid I may now be on the hook to pay more attention to conference-goers’ shoes than comes naturally to me.

Original Content: I Can’t Believe It! I Know Another Award Winner!
Until Gail said so, I hadn’t realized quite how long the whole name of the award is. I think I’ll stick with “Sibert Honor” so I don’t pass out in the middle of trying to get all the words out.

How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator: ALA honors for Austin authors
You read that right: All three Austin authors with ALA-honored books, plus Caldecott Honoree Marla Frazee, will be on the faculty for next Saturday’s conference.

Unabridged: ALA Midwinter in Boston
Why didn’t I think of Day-Glo cupcakes?

But my absolute favorite thing online this past week is on page 17 of last Monday’s Cognotes, the ALA’s conference newspaper. In the bottom-right photo, check out who that much-lauded lion is checking out…

No?

In that case, why don’t you wait a few days before wrapping things up for the year?

This coming Saturday, Dec. 5, I’ll be signing copies of The Day-Glo Brothers at Austin’s Arboretum Barnes & Noble. I’ll be there between 12 noon and 2 p.m as part of the Brentwood Christian School Holiday Book Fair, and if you drop by to say hi during that time, you can also get yourself in the running for a free advance copy of Shark Vs. Train.

“Almost four years.” It says here, that’s how long it took author Phillip Hoose to convince civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin to participate in the book he wanted to write about her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1955 — nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested for the same.

That not only shows some serious patience and persistence, but it also suggests quite a bit of diplomacy on Hoose’s part — otherwise, it seems Colvin would have been plenty sick of him after all that time. It all paid off pretty well, I’d say.

Anne Kennedy
Anne Ursu
Betsy Snyder
Bobbie Hinman
Carmella Van Vleet
Dandi Daley Mackall
David Catrow
Ellen Schreiber
Jane Morris Udovic and David Udovic
Jeannine Garsee
Lisa Klein
Lynda Durrant
Marcia Christensen
Marlane Kennedy
Michael J. Rosen
Michael Salinger
Michelle Houts
Pat McCarthy
Sara Holbrook
Tammie Lyon
Tiffany Laufer
Tim Bowers
Tony Abbott
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Will Hillenbrand

Join us, won’t you?

I delivered a brand-new presentation — Me? Write Science? — to three groups of seventh-graders who had just begun their own writing projects for an upcoming science fair, and it was easily the highlight of my week. (The highlight of the highlight? Hearing my tie described as “beast.”) But there’s been other good stuff lately, too:

The 2009 Teddy Award nominees have been announced by the Writers League of Texas. Congratulations to Dotti, Jenny, Kathi, and Xavier!