Further Adventures in Author Stalking

Those of you who actually read my blog (and I guess, if you are reading this now, than I am talking to you) may remember that I wrote about a forthcoming book by the great Lemony Snicket and the Caldecott award winner and honoree Jon Klassen called The Dark.

If you follow me on Facebook, you'd know that Mr. Snicket's representative Daniel Handler and Mr. Klassen were at Hicklebee's this morning and so, therefore, was I.

They presented a slideshow in which they showed pictures from their childhoods and some of the things they've done in their lives before they collaborated (a word which here means 'worked together') on The Dark.  Mr. Snicket's representative explained that while Mr. Klassen wasted his childhood playing on swings and looking at pictures, Mr. Snicket was busy doing research.

Here, Mr. Snicket's representative is demonstrating how he learned to perform the trick pictured in the slideshow.  We also learned that while Mr. Snicket is not afraid of the dark, he is afraid of crabs, and his representative appears to be as well. 

To add a layer of difficulty to the reading, Mr. Snicket's representative tied a blindfold on to Mr. Klassen who continued to illustrate the reading blindfolded.  There was a surprise ending to this but I won't give that away here.  I'll share it at school next week.

Here is the dynamic duo signing my books (one for me and one for Marshall Lane). 

This one proves that I was there.

If you would like the opportunity to meet Mr. Klassen and Mr. Snicket or his representative, depending on who shows up, they will be at the Burlingame Library tomorrow at 4.  It's about a 45 minute drive from here so if you leave right after school, you should be there in plenty of time.  I highly recommend you do this.  Especially if, like me, you love books and you like friendly and funny authors and illustrators.

A singularity of children's book authors.

Some of you may have read on Facebook yesterday that my head had exploded in a fit of squeee.  This is true.

After I posted here yesterday, I went on Twitter to promote my blog post.  While scrolling through my feed, I noticed that Jon Klassen and Lemony Snicket had kicked off their book tour for The Dark, a book I knew was coming. This made me excited and hopeful that they'd make an appearance somewhere in the Bay Area so I could stalk them together, as I've already stalked them separately as evidenced here and on my author shrine wall in the library.

Then someone tweeted that Neil Gaiman had shown up and joined the presentation.  How cool is that? But what was Neil Gaiman doing there?  I know he's pals with Lemony Snicket but is that enough cause for him to pop in on a book tour?  I decided to do a little digging and that's when I discovered that he was there because he is the reader of the audio book version of The Dark! Squeeeesplodey!
So here is a third author - my all time favorite author, no less - that I have stalked separately:

Working in collaboration with two of my other favorite authors on one project!  And they were all in one space for some very lucky children in New York.  You can read about it and see pictures here.

And, of course, I had to have this amazing work so that is when I discovered that the ebook is an enhanced ebook with Neil Gaiman's audio reading built into it so you have Jon Klassen's beautiful illustrations, Lemony Snicket's amazing words, and Neil Gaiman's velvety voice all at once.  This was my bedtime story last night and it made me so happy.

Also, it turns out Mr. Klassen and Mr. Snicket will bringing their book tour out this way on April 29 at  the Burlingame Public Library.  I'm going, who's with me?