It's Author Stalking Season

Have I told you that Hicklebee's is the best bookstore ever?  Today they hosted Kate DiCamillo who on tour for her new book Flora & Ulysses.

I arrived a bit late thanks to a wrong turn and some road construction so my signing number was 77.  This turned out to be not a bad thing because it allowed me some time to read a bit of Flora & Ulysses while I waited.  So far, it is absolutely delightful!

The story begins with a comic which tells the story of what happened when Mr. Tickham gave Mrs. Tickham a vacuum cleaner for her birthday.  Comics illustrate parts of the story thoughout the book.

Flora, who lives next door to the Tickhams, is a natural born cynic who loves to read comics.  Ulysses is an unassuming squirrel whom Flora saves from an unfortunate vacuum cleaner accident.  Ulysses is not unscathed by the accident and, in fact, is quite changed by the experience.  I'm 60 pages in and I can't wait to see what happens next.  Here is a picture of Ms. DiCamillo reading the first chapter of the book to a very crowded bookstore.

Next week, T. A. Barron, Adam Gidwitz, and Richard Peck will be appearing at Hicklebee's.  You need to be there!

Son of the Top Librarian and other stories.

Friday night, Mr. Richards and I drove up to San Francisco to see Neil Gaiman who is on his final book tour for his new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  I got a copy of the book signed and I read it over the weekend.  It was a wonderful read.  Mr. Gaiman has described it as his most personal work and it is dedicated to his wife, Amanda Palmer.
The story is told through the memory of a seven year old boy who, when life gets difficult, escapes into books.  Events from Mr. Gaiman's own childhood are woven into a mythical story starring characters that have lived in his head for a very long time.  The scary things that happen in this book are made scarier because they are happening to the narrator as a young boy and the unsettling things that happen, which are not understood by the boy, are more unsettling as they are remembered by the adult.  It was a very good book and I wish I hadn't read it so fast.  Because now it's over.
But, I get to look forward to his new book for children coming out in September called Fortunately, the Milk.  He read a bit of it Friday night and it sounds like a fun story, like if Douglas Adams had ever written a children's book, it might be like this one.
Here is a picture of Mr. Gaiman signing my copy of Ocean, and a copy of Chu's Day for the library.

And now, back to second grade stories.

This one is untitled and it's by Avalon and Bella and it comes with an illustration.

Once upon a time, there was so much noise in the Marshall Lane School Library that everybody in Marshall Lane needed hearing aids.  Then it got so noisy that the hearing aids broke.  Then the police station shut down the library until the whole school was quiet.  Then three months later, finally the school got quiet.  The police station reopened it.  Then everybody loved the library and they were always quiet when they were in it.

The End

Noise seems to be a recurring theme in these library stories.  That was a short one so lets do another.

The Transforming Mrs. Richards

by Rachel and Lauren

One day in the library Mrs. Richards picked up a book about the desert.  She said the magic word (which is "library") and was transformed into an extra character in the book.  But now she could not get out.  She had to do whatever was happening in the story.

Mrs. Richards was there for one whole night and was getting bored and hungry. Lauren and Rachel happened to come into the library and happened to pick up the book and suddenly, she came out.  Poof!  Now she is careful.

From now on, Mrs. Richards teaches all the students to be careful so that you don't get stuck in books!!!!

The End

I've always loved the idea of being able to actually go in to books.  An idea that I'm sure I got from watching Gumby when I was a kid.  (Kids, ask your parents about Gumby!)

My Good Friend Mac Barnett

Okay, well, he's not really my good friend but he is a very nice fellow and also very funny.  He happened to tweet on Friday that he would be at the Burlingame Library today reading some of his books to kick off National Library Week. Well, Burlingame's not so far away so I decided to go because Mac Barnett is a great writer!  Just ask him.

I'm so glad I did because I got to hear him read from his new not-yet-published book Count the Monkeys, which is illustrated by Kevin Cornell and will be coming out in June.  It is delightful and hilarious and I cannot wait to read it to you guys!  Sadly, I won't be able to until next school year but you don't have to wait to read it for yourself once it comes out.

Here is a picture of Mr. Barnett reading from his new book with an expert page turner (she claimed to be a volunteer from the audience but I think she was a plant):

After the reading Mr. Barnett kindly signed books for the folks in attendance.  I asked him to sign a couple of books for Marshall Lane and he asked if he'd been to Marshall Lane.  I said 'no, but you've been to Hicklebee's' to which he replied, 'oh I've signed books for Marshall Lane before' and I said 'yes, many.' (Look for Mac Barnett in the list of labels to the right to see evidence of this.)

Here is a picture of me with Mr. Barnett that makes it look like we are good friends.

Mr. Barnett is a very nice man with a high tolerance for stalkery school library techs.

Elephants and Piggies and Pigeons, oh my!

Mr. Richards and I went up to San Francisco for the third weekend in a row last weekend to see more comedy shows.  It was the last weekend of SF Sketchfest.  Sunday morning we went to see Don't Let the Comedians Do Story Time.  This was a fantastic hour with Mo Willems and some of his comedian friends reading his books.  Here is a picture of them all from the @SFSketchfest twitter feed:

In the picture: Mo Willems, Maya Rudolph, Ken Marino, Rachel Dratch, Janeane Garofalo, Jo LoTruglio, Andy Richter, David Wain, Lorraine Newman, Patten Oswalt, and Michael Ian Black.

As I said, it was a terrific and very funny show.  The comedians read Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and We Are In a Book.  Mo Willems taught us all how to draw the pigeon by putting shapes together in the right order. We got a sneak preview of Mr. Willems' new book that will be coming out in the spring That Is Not a Good Idea.  You can see the cover here.  I've already pre-ordered this for the library, I know you all will love it!  Mr. Willems closed the show by reading Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus with Patton Oswalt reading the part of the Bus Driver.

Mr. Willems was kind enough to spend some time after the show signing books for his fans so I bought some books for the library and he signed them for me.  (They're all checked out already!)  Here's a picture (I'm telling him how is books are always checked out and he thanked me for being a librarian):

Happily, this all coincides with our CYRM reading of We Are In a Book this week.  I read it to a second grade class today and told them about meeting Mo Willems and how he taught us how to draw the Pigeon and they wanted to draw the Pigeon too, so we put some shapes together in the right order and drew pigeons.  Then I asked them to write titles for their own Pigeon books and they came up with some great ones such as:

Don't Let the Pigeon Swim in the Magma
Don't Let the Pigeon Babysit Because He Might Be a Vampire
Don't Let the Pigeon Eat at MacDonald's

Their teacher is going to have them write complete stories to go with their titles and then we'll mail them off to Mr. Willems because I know for a fact he doesn't get enough of these, plus ours will be the best he's ever seen.

You can see more about Mo Willems' books at his fun website www.gomo.net or follow his blog or follow @the_pigeon on Twitter

This is not my hat

I have to thank Hicklebee's for making it so easy for me to stalk authors.  Today Jon Klassen was there for his new book This Is Not My Hat, a follow up, nay, a companion piece to his first, best-selling book I Want My Hat Back, which I wrote about here and here.  I loved I Want My Hat Back so much that I was inspired to make Bear's hat.  Now I am working on a hat for Little Fish so he won't have to steal Big Fish's hat anymore.  Sadly, I didn't think about doing this until last night and couldn't finish it in time to give to Jon Klassen.

Here is the book trailer for This Is Not My Hat

You can probably guess that everything will not be fine for this little fish.  Whereas in the first book, we shared in Bear's pain and anguish at the loss of his hat, the horror of discovering that it had been stolen by some one with whom he was acquainted, no less, and the needling self-doubt as he ponders his ultimate course of action; in this book, we are privvy to the thief's tale.  And he nearly convinces us that what he's done is not such a bad thing, but in the end, the bigger animal always gets his hat back.

Jon Klassen has long ago given up being coy about what happens to hat thieves in his books but I prefer to leave it ambiguous.

Last time I saw Jon Klassen at Hicklebee's, I gave him the pointy hat I had made.  This time, I gave one to Miss Valerie, the co-owner of Hicklebee's because I didn't want her to feel left out.  Here's a picture of her wearing the hat:

And here she is with Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett who showed up for the heck of it:

Thanks again, Hicklebee's!!

Wrapping Up the Weekend.

Well, tomorrow took longer to get here than I thought! In fact, it took almost a week! But here I am to finish the story. Let's see, I left off after seeing the amazing William Joyce. I had one more goal for the day but I was getting pretty tired from standing around in lines and hiking around the enormous convention center. Have I told you how enormous the convention center was? One attendee joked on twitter that not only did the exhibit floor have its own time zone but the exhibitor directory had its own gravitational pull! This is only a small exaggeration! The place is large. I couldn't help but think of all the money going into and circulating around this convention, which is a definite boon to the New Orleans economy. In fact, this is the second ALA conference to be held in New Orleans since Katrina. ALA was the first organization to hold a conference at the convention center in New Orleans after the devastating floods caused by Katrina, which contributed significantly to the city's recovery. Yes, librarians rock.

So, by this time I was getting tired and actually debating whether or not I should I just go back to my hotel or wait a bit longer and get one more book signed. Well, I thought about that book, and the author and illustrator who would be there to sign the book, and I thought of the Marshall Lane kids and knew I had to stay. The author and illustrator were Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter and their book is '17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore,' a favorite read aloud at Marshall Lane. It was a good thing I stayed because, as it turns out, there is a sequel to the book called '11 Experiments That Failed' and it's equally as hilarious! The book was hot off the presses. So hot, in fact, that the creators hadn't seen it yet in it's final form. The book is due to be released in September and the publisher had brought their first batch of books to the conference and I bought the first one so that makes the first person in the world to own this book! (I bought it for the library though, so the library is first!) How special is that? Here is a picture of the author and illustrator. I'm not in this picture because by this time I was too tired and wilted to bother.


So that ended my day. Mr. Richards and I went out for some delicious food and then I went to bed. The next day, I had just two objectives and, again, I showed up early so I could get a good spot in line. And again, Success! Can you guess who I'm with in this picture?If you guessed Judy Blume, you'd be wrong, oh so wrong. If you guessed Mo Willems, you'd be right! Yes! That's me (again with the squeee! face) and Mo Willems! He was signing his brand new book, 'Should I Share My Ice Cream?' a Gerald and Piggie book and it's just as delightful as you would expect. And look who else I got a picture with! Yes! It's Gerald and Piggie! Who were at least as popular as Mr. Willems himself, if not more.

Now, all this time on the exhibitor floor added up to me having a lot of books and stuff to take home with me, which I wasn't thinking about as I was collecting all this stuff. How was I going to get all this stuff home on the plane? Well, lucky for me, they had a post office set up right there on the exhibitor floor! So that was my second objective, I packed up all my swag and mailed it home! And as you can see in the picture below it all arrived safely! Mr. Richards and I spent the rest of the day together enjoying food, the sights, and some music. Then Monday morning we flew home without incident.

That same Monday night we drove to Berkeley to see Neil Gaiman interviewed by Mythbuster Adam Savage for the 10th anniversary of Mr. Gaiman's groundbreaking novel American Gods. Remember lat year, I went to an American Gods gathering at The House on the Rock. Thanks to more standing in line for ages, we got a front row seat! To celebrate the anniversary, a new edition of the book was released with some material added back into it, so now it's longer! As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much Neil Gaiman!

So that was my Book Geek Weekend, spent chasing down authors like they were rockstars because they are rockstars! Mr. Richards might call this stalking, but I disagree! The reason I do this is because when I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. But then I decided I didn't have the talent for it, but I still love stories. And I hope that, in some small way, this little blog might encourage one or more of our students to pursue their dream of being a writer, or an illustrator. Not because crazy ladies will stalk you like you're a rock star, but because stories are important. In all their forms. Storytellers tell us the truth in fiction, they preserve our culture and histories, they frighten us and take us places, stretch our imagination and challenge our intellect. And I'm going to stop now, before this becomes a giant tangent. Next time, I will update you on my Nerd Wars tournament.